Keeping It Simple The End of Avelcomms
By · CommentsYou may know that I have joined Chris Farrell’s membership site
and in the forum there I was directed to a video, that will
if you are in the Internet Marketing land of confusion,
strip all of that away.
This is by a lady called Jo Barnes who has managed to make
massive strides online in a very short space of time. I
think by any ones measure 6 months is a very brief space of
time.
As you know Internet marketing is all about problem solving,
people want to have pleasure or avoid pain. Once you have
identified the pain or pleasure people have got in mind then
you have to provide them a solution.
This is where it all gets a little bit confusing.
You can use PLR, write articles, create videos, write your
own ebook and many more things besides, the end goal is to
ensure that they join your list in return for receiving
that solution.
Jo Barnes manages to strip all this noise away and add just
one final step after you have identified the issue people
have got in their mind.
If you would like to strip away all of the nonsense in your
Internet Marketing then I highly recommend that you watch
the free video on Jo’s site via the link below
Article Marketing is Dead
By · Comments
Unless you have been hiding on an island detached from the rest of the online community then you will be aware that Google updated its view on traffic generation strategies and really when it comes down to it there were no real surprises.
I have written about who Google loves in my guide to starting an online business and as marketers we should be aware that we are not its target audience.
An example here will clarify this situation, my ex-wife could never understand why nightclubs were so keen to attract and protect their female visitors even to the point of removing anyone that spoiled their night.
The reason is of course patently obvious, a nightclub with a high female ratio will attract those of the opposite gender and encourage them behave in a manner attractive to the ladies. Which means that the ladies won’t have to see bouncers fighting, the club does not need to market to the male community the entire club experience is nicer for everybody.
Returning to Google, they sole objective is to provide their general user with the results that they desire in the most engaging manner as possible. Of course as marketers it is our desire to be chosen to provide at least one of the top 10 results.Thus we should be where the audience prefers to get its information from.
One of the key selling points of article directories was that your content could perhaps be syndicated by other content providers on their sites, thus these sites were for our community to make content provision easier. You will of course notice that I have failed to mention, Googles target audience in this scenario.
Google’s, just like the nightclub owners, main objective is to look after its target audience, knowing that others will follow this target audience, therefore is it any wonder that pure article marketing is pretty much dead in the water.
However content provision is not dead and cannot ever die, it is only where and how the audience wishes to receive this information that will alter.
It is now time to start re-reading the Google search results for our keywords and see what categories and specific sites are being favoured by our target audience. We can always outsmart Google for a short while but ultimately all we want to do is provide answers where our target audience goes to find their solutions and this is exactly what Google wants to provide for their audience.
Traffic Exchanges The Final Word
By · CommentsWell I have only gone and done it.
Not only am I now getting hits I am also getting conversions onto my auto responder lists. Which leads once again to tracking, I mentioned before about a great test you can use to check your auto responder tracking but lets cover it once more.
When you take a look at all of your web forms in your auto responder, do you know where each of these is being used?
It is important to remember that each form should only appear on 1 site. There is nothing worse for a marketer than getting a conversion and not knowing which site it came from.
Thankfully I corrected this mistake and with thanks to TEToolbox and TrafficWave, I can quickly see which sites are working and what element, whether that be site, banner or text link, is attracting these new subscribers.
The key is to be available 24/7/365 which means that you must have view credits available all of the time, TEToolbox will tell you what the daily view credit requirement is for each site. All you have to do is workout whether it is cheaper to buy of surf for those credits.
Below is the banner ad that is working for me but before you get all excited and start to emulate this banner, let me give you a piece of important information from a site that I no longer use.
This in itself is an important mind set tip, I love easyhits4U as their menu is simple and logical but their community has shown no interest in any of my offerings. Therefore reluctantly I have stopped using this site for the moment. Thankfully they do have a fantastic learning opportunity which led me to create the banner that has worked on other sites. For each advertising element they have a link to the 10 most effective ads, this allows you to see what is working and to figure out what the key attraction for each advert is.
I am now getting signups due to my TE activity and if you persevere and learn from your previous attempts, you will be able to do likewise. The only thing left to do now is split test and increase the conversion rate.
What a nice place to be, rather than hunting for success I am attempting to increase my success.
Traffic Exchanges Are Not Pants
By · Comments
Traffic exchanges and their close cousin safe lists have been a bug bear of mine for as long as I have been marketing, they are promoted by so many people as the way to go and yet I have never managed to get even a single click from any of the sites that I have used, this week I learned at least part of the reason why.
For all those that still believe in push button simple, I must I am afraid burst your bubble.
There is no secret room where you can be transformed into a marketing genius overnight nor will you awake in the morning with your bank manager asking to borrow money from you. Well in the present climate this may happen but in normal times most definitely not.
The point is that, traffic exchanges require you to master the traditional skills of marketing, from discovering what your target audience wants to ultimately how they prefer this offer to be presented.
This takes time and plenty of testing, which is the non sexy part of marketing.
One of my favourite references for marketing is a book by Claude C Hopkins called Scientific Advertising. This is a very old book and by this I mean well before the 80’s in fact long before the birth of the Internet and the home computer. Yet his advice still holds water today and the book illustrates how a systematic approach to marketing can be formed.
Mr Hopkins, I think would be very pleased with the activities of many of the top marketers as they know the value of understanding their metrics and just like him they use these to guide them forward.
Therefore with the importance of tracking your results firmly established, lets return to the problem of creating an attractive and engaging advertisement for use in a traffic exchange.
The best thing that you can do is think about why you want to use one of these sites in the first place, is it like most Internet marketers to attract people to your site?
Like you this is the primary reason that I use traffic exchanges.
But Which exchange to use?
Thankfully there is a site that will highlight the current favourites amongst the community of users. This site is called Affiliate Funnel and will provide a list of the top 10 sites, I would recommend starting with just 5. However be sure to read the terms and conditions as there are some pretty strange restrictions included.
Once inside each of these sites, get stuck in and surf for credits. At the moment you are only trying to see how others are marketing, you will quickly realise that there are many who do not appreciate exactly how marketers new and old use traffic exchanges, so let me highlight how I use them and you can compare notes with me.
If you are not in this initial research phase then you will be surfing for credits and you may not even look at any of the pages. You are only interested in the timer and the method of progressing to the next credit, plus you maybe moving between your exchanges such that you have perhaps 1 or 2 seconds exposure to each advertisement.
This clearly is not a place for blockbuster movies or extracts from war and peace.
What you need is to get the benefit of your offer understood within those 2 seconds.
Therefore lets return to research phase and find sites that are achieving this, these are the sites that you should be emulating.
This rapid delivery of information is achieved with the use of a splash page, which is a very simple page that only includes an engaging hook line and a call to action. It is important that you keep the page clear of all distractions, all you need to provide is the why and the how. You will in fact be using 2 copies of this page as you will want to develop the best page possible and this is achieved through split testing.
Split testing is where you make a at least 2 copies of a page and then make a single change on one of them to see how your target audience reacts. If they like the change you adjust both pages to include this new feature and then begin the process once again.
Always have your target audience sat in front of you and treat them like a friend, you are trying to do them a favour, not steal from them.
With this in mind the benefit that you promote on Traffic exchanges should be one that will make their marketing easier or more effective and have a story that can be told in 2 seconds.
No mean feat but if it was truly push button simple then we would all be on the beach instead of drinking coffee and credit clicking by candle light, whilst our better halves slumber.
Does Your Mum Understand
By · CommentsNow this is not mean to be a sexist comment, just a nice little headline to grab your attention and yet I mean it sincerely.
Whatever your method of making money online it is important that you keep the system as simple as possible, after all one day you will want to outsource this system so that you can move onto new ventures, whilst keeping the money flowing in the right direction.
If your outsource team cannot comprehend your system the you will have to waste time removing your personality from the system and writing up a process that makes sense to others.
One good test for this is to explain your system to a caring but not totally interested party, such as a relative and if they get the gist of the system then you know that you are on the right track.
The most obvious result of understanding your system is that it makes it far easier to tweak and experiment with, once you know what each element is supposed to be doing you can ensure that it is actually doing it.
The reason that I mention this is that i have just watched a great video on making the most of your Gmail account, I used to have several accounts, one for each task. After this video, I now understand the power of labels and filtering and can run my existing email services on a very limited number of accounts. This of course means fewer account details to remember and thus the entire system operates far more efficiently.
Stand back today and take a look at your system, you will be sure to find at least one element that is not really vital to your future or on-going success, remove this and always keep an eye out for that creeping complexity.
Not All Traffic is Worthy of Praise
By · CommentsOnce you have started to promote yours and the products of others you will be glad to see any result in the beginning, I know this to be true as this is how I felt over the festive period, when I was testing the bum marketing method.
I also added one important factor into my campaigns and that was to track every link that I used to promote the Clickbank product. This have proven to be a wise decision as the initial smile of traffic success was soon replaced with the realisation that not all traffic is worth of praise.
Part of the bum marketing strategy is to use usfreeads.com to promote the product, however I also added solo ads into the mix, this was a mistake and one that I am not going to repeat.
The majority of the clicks that you will recieve from the solo ads sites will be to increase the readers mailing credit balance, thus these clicks have to be discounted as these people are probably not even looking at your offer but merely at the amount of credits they received for clicking on your link.
I assume this to be true as this is what I did when building my mailing credit balances and I do not consider myself to be anymore focused or intelligent than any of the other members.
The problem with these false clicks is that they add noise to your statistics and thus make it harder for you to determine whether or not any changes you have made were for the better.
Continuous improvement is how great success is achieved and to do this you need to be able to see the targeted traffic results.
If you are interested in the bum marketing strategy then I recommend that you take a look at the following site:
http://www.bummarketingmethod.com/
This is not an affiliate link but merely the source of the free information that I used to get started, sign up and he will outline the system, he will not flood your inbox with trash.
How to Start Marketing a Product
By · CommentsWhen you are starting out online the easiest option is to promote others products and the reason for this is quite simple. The market research has been done; the basic promotional material has been created and there are already marketing channels that are working for this product.
Of course you must ensure that you are working with a winning product and if you select a Clickbank product then this is very simple to do. The key pointers to look for are that the gravity is above 100, the initial sales income is above $30 and you have been provided with marketing tools.
These 3 checks will ensure that others are marketing this product successfully, you are going to be rewarded for your success and the time taken and skills required to get marketing will be massively reduced.
If you ensure that any product meets these 3 criteria then your chances of success will be massively increased.
At this point, you have selected a successful product, you have the material to promote it however you do not know where to promote it.
As you already know that there are others successfully promoting this product then why not see how they are doing it.
The key to success is to never reinvent the wheel, just personalize your wheels.
Simply do a search on Google for the name of the product and see which sites are promoting the product. There will be a split between self hosted sites and free advertising methods, you are interested in the free methods at the moment.
The important point now is to ensure that they are actually promoting the product and not diverting the traffic to another product via a review site.
Once you are sure that it is a genuine promotion then take the time to read the terms and conditions of each site and use these to gain an advantage over your competition.
It is a sad fact that far too many people who are trying to run a business online do not conduct themselves professionally and fail to take the time to understand the business relationships they enter into. Always beware of extremely lengthy terms and conditions, these are a sure sign that the site is being run by non-marketers who neither care nor have any interest in you or your business.
With all this research and analysis done, it is now time to put all of those affiliate resources to good use on each site.
How to Blog Tutorial
By · CommentsIf you are considering starting a blog or even perhaps you are not happy with the results that you are seeing from your current efforts then perhaps you should take the time to review your plan and see if it will actually achieve the goals that you have set out to meet.
I have just gone through this review stage and each of my blogs will come out of this far stronger and more focused than it went into this process.
The key was to get some expert advice and take the time not just to follow their advice but to actually for a change understand the driving forces behind these tips.
The best thing about this advice was of course that it was free, you will of course unless you have managed to hide from the rest of the online marketing community heard of this site.
The site in question is Marketing Samurai.
They are not a free service however they do have a free trial and an area called the Dojo, which is where all of their fantastically clear training is hosted.
Market Samurai in case you are unsure, is a service dedicated to identifying keywords and long tail phrases to maximise your exposure in the search engine results.
What has this got to do with blogging?
You should use this service once you have an idea for a blog topic but have not set anything up. Here you will be able to rapidly validate your idea, determine the domain title, site categories and finally the topics to write about.
This is why Market Samurai is so important to blogging, it is all very well writing about things you enjoy but it is far more enjoyable if you can continue to do this and actually have people visiting your site.
I recommend that you take a look at this site today and review your plans, your future will thank you.
Whose Hero Are You
By · CommentsYou know what you have to do but some days you just do not have the enthusiasm or interest in this task, even though you know it is essential to your long term health
At this point you could of course force yourself to complete the task, however although you will have finished the daily chores you have really not solved the underlying problem, which means tomorrow will start the same way as today.
When you feel that you cannot go on, instead of pushing forward, pause and take the time to look deep inside yourself and discover where this mental black spot is.
Only when you have discovered what is making you feel sad or troubled can you start to work out a strategy to change your mind set for the long term.
No one has gone through life without achieving anything.
There are peoples lives that have benefited from your existence, without you being there, their life would have taken a totally different path. They are I am sure grateful in their own way to you.
The Internet can be a depressing place, everyone telling you how easy it was to bring wealth and health into their lives. You really need to learn to ignore all the exaggeration and focus on the long term strategy, for although you may not think you have the millionaires lifestyle. You are closer than you think.
How many friends have you made on the Internet, these people have seen your profile and your activity and they know you have something to enrich their lives, which is why they want to learn more about you.
Of course if in your past you never took the time to know yourself, then this is the reason that you have returned to the start of the journey again. However what was it in the last time that got you going again, is this still important today?
This last question for many can be a really hard one to answer which is why I recommend keeping a diary, yes they may not be fashionable but they are a fantastic way to remind you of who you really are.
In this diary keep a daily record of all positive events that have happened, from getting a new social media friend to helping a stranger find their way.
You will quickly find that entering the daily events in this journal is very therapeutic and provides a positive glow to end the day on. In the morning take the time to read yesterdays entry and with your mind-set in a positive outlook, you truly can be a hero in someone’s life.
