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Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing’ Category

If you’re at all like me, you’ll be totally fed up with the hype-filled sales pages for most IM products these days.

You know what I’m talking about…and if you actually whip your credit card out and actually buy the product based on the promises in the sales page, you just know how disappointed you usually are when the product itself just totally fails to live up to the sales letter details.

Let’s face it, most Internet marketing products being sold today (and we all know just how many seem to be being released on a just about weekly basis these days) are just rehashes of stuff that’s basically been around for years.

To be honest, there are not that many different individual approaches that actually work well when it comes to Internet Marketing (for the best one that’s totally stood the test of time, see the post immediately before this one ‘What Is The Best Way To Start A Web-based Business?‘).

Traffic generation methods come and go – and the fact that a lot of the ‘flavor of the month’ ones disappear really quickly should make you wary of them – but really what you’re really talking about in terms of a business plan is having a product or service to sell (your own or someone elses via an affiliate program), a Website with some content to do some pre-selling and provide some informative content related to the product or service, and ideally a means of collecting a name and email address from your Website visitors so that you can put them into an autoresponder sequence. All that you need then is to put a program together that generates a sufficient amount of traffic to your site to make the whole thing work.

My favorite traffic tactic that’s definitely stood the test of time big time is article marketing (I’ll be providing a lot more information on this in the future – watch this space!), along with backlinking of other types (I’m going to be testing out some backlinking software shortly and will be reporting back on this in due course too).

Don’t get caught up in all the hype. Don’t believe the promises of an instant full time income whilst sitting on your butt doing nothing – ain’t gonna happen I’m afraid – if it sounds like it’s too good to be true then it almost definitely will be just that – too good to be true.

Stick with the tried and tested – there are no secrets, there are just a few basic things that just plain work – but they all require you to put in the work, so just roll up your sleeves and get used to it!

Just exactly how do you start a Web business? That’s a question I get asked all of the time – and I guess it’s probably a question that most people who run their own Internet business also get asked on a regular basis.

I actually think that the answer should be the same whether the person asking the question is looking to start an information-based business where they are going to be supplying their own info products – ebooks etc. or those of others via affiliate programs, or whether the person asking the question is looking to supply physical products of their own or physical products via affiliate programs.

The best way to start an Internet business of either of the above types is by giving information away for free as an incentive for people to join your list.

You basically need three things to put this strategy together:

1. A ‘special report’ to give away as your freebie, which can be as short as about ten pages, so it need not be onerous to write – it should, of course, be of interest to the people in the market you are aiming at.
2. A squeeze page spelling out why your target audience should want to download your free report. This page will have a sign up form for collecting the name and email address of the prospect.
3. An autoresponder system to store the names and email addresses so that you can follow up with them over and over again.

Whatever the latest flavor of the month Internet marketing system may be that you’re getting bombarded with right now, just remember that the above system, and variations of it, have stood the test of time and form the basis of all solid Online businesses now and will continue to do so in the future.

When you have the above components in place all that remains is to send traffic to your squeeze page. You can use various methods to do this, but the best one to start with – and another one which has stood the test of time – is by writing articles containing links back to your squeeze page and submitting them to the top Online article directories.

The above is a pretty simple system – no rocket science there – but it is solid, dependable and will continue to work when lots of the latest whizz bang techniques have fallen by the wayside.

I’ll be bringing you more details of the above system – including downloadable reports – in the future, so remember to keep checking back.

And stop being attracted to the latest shiny object!

At long last I’ve managed to get Web Traffic Mechanic ready for you to download at absolutely no cost – yes it’s FREE, and you like free don’t you?

If you’re having problems getting traffic to your Websites and squeeze pages, or even if you’re an old hand just looking for a few extra traffic tactics that you might not have tried before, then this free guide could be just what you need to get the stat counter on your Website jumping.

Ok, so you do have to opt in to a newsletter by giving your name and email address, but I promise I won’t bombard you with emails trying to sell you stuff all the time (just some of the time!) and I promise to let you in on all of the very best traffic tactics around as I find out about them and as I prove they work for me.

What exactly is covered in this free Web traffic guide? Check out some of the tactics discussed below:

• How to generate unstoppable traffic using free resources
• Fast and powerful backlinking strategies
• The #1 traffic source that will instantly catapult your Website into the search engines
• Critical components for the best search engine rankings and how you can set them up in as little as 15 minutes
• The best way to create powerful article campaigns that will lead to floods of customers for your offers
• And much, much more!

Check Web Traffic Mechanic out by clicking HERE NOW!

I’m currently working on a new Website that’ll help you to generate traffic to your Websites. There will be free and paid options – and I’ll make sure that the free option will be more than worth your while getting involved with, I promise.

I’ve invested in some new hosting to run this on – and it’s with a Webhost I haven’t used before so I have a little trepidation (I’ll let you know how I get on with this host in due course).

Traffic is always a huge bugbear for most people involved in Internet marketing – I know, I’ve been there!

It doesn’t matter what it is you’re attempting to sell, whether it be your own product, or if you’re promoting someone elses product as an affiliate, if you can’t get targeted traffic to your Website, squeeze page or landing page, you just aren’t going to make any sales. I know that isn’t rocket science, but it still bears repeating.

If you’re like I was in the past, then you’ll probably enjoy building the Websites, but get really bogged down when it comes to promoting them. Spend a little time doing a bit of this, a bit of that, not see totally fantastic results, and then give up.

Let’s face it, most traffic generation techniques are pretty mind-numbingly tedious to carry out so you either have to face up to the fact that you’re going to be bored out of your skull doing them yourself, or you’re going to have to shell out some of your hard-earned to pay someone else to do it for you.

My solution is pretty fun to do, and has a huge viral component to it as well, so you just set it on it’s way and it starts the process of getting you some hands-off traffic. I can’t tell you too much more right now, but I’ll update you when it’s ready. I’m pretty excited about it and I think you will be too when you see it!

And, talking of traffic, I’m also getting a product ready that will tell you all about something that’s close to my heart – how to get free traffic to any Website. Being a cheapskate I don’t like paying for traffic, I like to get it free of charge (I also find that many free traffic sources are much more longterm – i.e. do it once, benefit well into the future – than most paid sources).

Anyway, I’m putting the finishing touches to an ebook and video series detailing just about all of the free traffic sources that are working right now and that will work on an ongoing basis – no flash in the pan stuff here. And I’ll be letting you have a free audio taster too, shortly.

Keep checking back and I’ll update you when both of the above are open for business!

UPDATE: 8/8/10 – had a problem with the Webhost I’m using for this site – they needed to change the server over and managed to delete all of the files for this site. This was quite a complicated install that I had done professionally so, needless to say, I’m pretty disappointed. Have tried to get everything set back up myself, but having problems and don’t really have confidence that user accounts would be safe on this host, so, for now at least, this has been put on the backburner.

Nevertheless, traffic generation is such an important subject that I’ll definitely be giving you lots of info on it going forward to help you put into place a traffic strategy for your own Websites.

I recently received an email letting me know that one of the earliest sites on the Internet that sold a digital information product has been put up for sale on eBay.

The late, great Corey Rudl put up the site CarSecrets.com in the mid nineties selling an ebook giving tips  on buying cars. Subsequent to this he set up the Internet Marketing Center to sell his famous Internet marketing course, detailing what he’d learnt about Internet marketing as a result of the success of sites like CarSecrets.

Corey tragically died in a car accident a few years ago but his legacy lives on via the Internet Marketing Center, who are now offloading the site that started it all, which they admit they haven’t really done anything with for the last couple of years.

The interesting thing for me is that IMC are stating that CarSecrets has generated $647,000 worth of sales in about 15 years. Why was that interesting, well, given what I know about what Corey earned over the years it seems quite clear that he earned more money from showing other people how to market on the Internet and providing the tools allowing them to do it than he earned from selling his own niche products. Something to be learned from that eh? Just like the Klondyke Gold Rush, sell them shovels!

If you’re interested, the current bid, as I write this is $7,197.00, (and the reserve has not been reached). The auction ends on 12th May 2010.

You can check out the auction details by clicking here.

UPDATE: This auction ended on 12/5/10 and it didn’t sell because the reserve price wasn’t met – 7 bids, top bid was $7,497.00. Would be interesting to know what IMC thought this site was worth.

I guess we’ve all heard about this kind of Internet income plan – aim to make just a little money each day from an individual Website (and Adsense usually seems a good bet as the income source with this type of plan), and build lots and lots of these sites to earn your total target income each day. So assuming you think that you can manage a measly buck a day from each of your simple little sites, then to hit $100 a day target income, you’ll have to build 100 of these sites (even I can manage that math!)

Now, I’ve never been a huge earner from Adsense, but it is a regular daily earner for me since I was accepted into the program at the beginning of January 2004, so this sort of plan has always intrigued me.

The big problem with it for most people is just building and maintaining the number of sites needed to make it work. Clearly, even if each site is only five to ten pages in size, that’s still a fair amount of content to write if you’re going to aim for unique content – which is clearly the best kind. And another problem is the boredom factor – unless you’re a genuine polymath you’re probably not going to have much of an interest in most of the subjects you’re building sites around, so coming up with that content is probably going to be quite a chore.

Of course, you could outsource the content, but that takes money, and if you’re like me, you may not be very good at outsourcing – yes, I know, you really should be looking to outsource the time-consuming, menial stuff so that you can devote your valuable time to more productive things, but I guess that’s one of my failings – I never said I was perfect!

Anyway, I got to thinking, what if you could get away with readily available and free content from article directories for example and just use WordPress with a basic theme to build these Websites and maybe even aim for really low expectations of 50c per day or every few days? If the sites were quick and easy enough to build, this might be a feasible plan.

So, as a sort of  a case study, I’ve built a site today using WordPress with just articles from ezinearticles with a simple, non-graphical theme. I’ve even used a subdomain for this site instead of putting it on its own domain.

To compromise a little because of not having unique content I’m using a WordPress plugin called WPUnique which makes the content different enough to pass Google scrutiny without changing the actual wording of the articles.

The other aspect of this that is normally time consuming is the promotion. Now, given that you’re only targeting relatively small amounts of cash from each site, you clearly aren’t going to be doing anything promotion-wise that takes an inordinate amount of time as that would just about invalidate the concept anyway and make it a complete waste of time. But clearly you’re going to have to do something.

I’ll go into more detail in further updates on this experiment, but what I’m trying to do is get away with as much automation as I can. To that end I’ve used a couple of autosubmitters I have which I don’t have too much faith in, I’ve used a WP plugin called Twitter Tools, I’ve submitted the url and xml sitemap to Google, Yahoo and Bing, I’ve submitted the RSS feed to various RSS aggregators, I’m using a ping list with WordPress and, something I’m hoping for big things from, I’ve just purchased a directory submitter called Deep Linker Pro which is way more automated than most and which I’m hoping for good things from.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how this experiment goes in future posts here, so watch out for them. I’m keeping my fingers crossed because this is a strategy that I have an affinity with and an enjoyment in so I’m hoping that this little test gives results that justify it being put to use as a genuine longterm business strategy.

There’s been a lot of talk lately in Internet marketing circles about video squeeze pages and how you’re going to lose out big time if you stick with the old style text only squeeze pages.

Now, I haven’t done any definitive testing, I’ve got squeeze pages of both varieties out there, but I can’t honestly say that the video squeeze pages I’m using in various niche markets are massively out-pulling the text only ones.

I have to say that, like most people who’ve been Internet marketing and attempting to build mailing lists Online for some time, I started out using very plain and simple text-only squeeze pages – I rarely even used graphics on them.

And I have to say that I still have quite an affinity for the simple, some would even say, plain Jane, text-only squeeze page. I like their clean simplicity. And that’s not just coming from me as a user of these type of pages myself – if I’m honest I’d probably say that I’m more inclined to sign up to mailing lists Online if the squeeze page is simple and clean-looking with predominantly text to make its point.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that video is not an important component in an Internet marketers armory – I certainly use it myself for promotional purposes to great effect, and it’s hard to find any IM training courses these days that are solely provided as ebooks. I haven’t, as yet, produced any training materials in video format, but it’s certainly something I intend to do. So video certainly has its place now that a large number of people have broadband Internet connections.

But I certainly don’t believe, from my own experience, that you are at a disadvantage if you continue with your simple little text-only squeeze pages, despite what some Internet marketers say.

I guess some of us are pretty wedded to the written word and don’t really want to move too far away from it. And the good news is that I don’t have the hard evidence to suggest  that we really need to.

Are you in a niche market that is difficult to keep coming up with new articles for? If article marketing is your chosen – or one of your main – traffic-generating techniques, and you’re in a niche where you find coming up with new articles on a regular basis to post to ezinearticles and goarticles etc. difficult, then I’ve got a technique to give you that you may not have thought of.

With your typical article marketing, if you’re promoting, say, waffle makers on the site that you’re sending traffic to, then you’ll be writing articles on various aspects of waffle makers right? In your resource box you can then hyperlink the keywords you’re targeting to your Website home page or a specific page on your Website that’s dedicated to selling waffle makers.

Now, the problem with the above scenario is that after a while it can be difficult to come up with new angles related to waffle makers to write about. Also, for most of us, waffle makers would be a pretty boring subject to write about on a regular basis. And so we stop writing the articles and the traffic to our Website dries up as a result. So what do we do?

Well, I have a solution. You can write articles that have absolutely nothing whatever to do with the subject of the Website that the link(s) in your resource box point to. Sounds daft? Well, let’s clear up a couple of things.

There are two main benefits of writing articles and submitting them to Online article directories. The first one is to get direct traffic to your Website as a result. I.e. your banking on the people reading the article, enjoying it and clicking through the link to your Website as a result.

But there’s another reason to be submitting articles to article directories and that is to get backlinks to your site. And we all know the importance of backlinks in the eyes of Google, don’t we? Yes, they count as a sort of vote for your site, and help to push your site higher in Googles search results for your chosen keywords that you’re using as anchor text in these links.

Now, writing an article that’s on a completely different subject to the Website that’s linked to in your resource box isn’t going to do much for your direct traffic from people reading your article, but it works just fine as a backlink method to count towards the overall number of backlinks your site has.

The best policy to follow for this method of article marketing is to choose a subject that you’re interested in to write articles about, because that way you’re probably going to be able to write lots of articles without running out of ideas and you’re not going to get bored witless in the process.

In fact, for this process to work at its best you really must make sure that the keywords you’re targeting in your resource box are not mentioned at all in your article – we won’t your own Website to rank in the search engines for your chosen keywords, not the articles you’ve submitted to the article directories.

So, in a nutshell, the articles you write can be about any subject you care to think of that is in no way related to the subject of the Website that you’re going to link to through your resource box.

Give this a try, I’m sure you’ll be delighted with the results.

Yes, I’m busy, busy, busy right now! I’ve been Online since 1997 and put up my first Website in 1999 so I have quite a bit of experience of things that work and things that don’t. I’ve always intended to put something together in the coaching line and just about have everything mapped out, so it’s nearly ready to go.

I have a lot of Websites in tons of different niche markets, but this coaching is mainly aimed at people in or who want to be in the IM niche – although, of course, a lot of the tactics and principles will be applicable to marketing products or services Online, no matter what the niche.

Anyway, again, when this is ready for your custom, I’ll make the announcement.

I’m in the process of setting up an Internet marketing reviews blog.

As it’s name suggests it’s going to have reviews of Internet marketing-related products – mainly in video format, but I’ll probably toss in some text reviews too to mix it up a bit.

I just felt that it would be a good idea to have a blog dedicated solely to reviews rather than have them mixed up amongst other posts here.

I’ll let you know when it’s ready to be announced to the world.

UPDATE: Alan’s IM Reviews is now live. Only a few posts on it as yet, but there will be regular updates with videos combining Internet marketing training with specific product reviews.