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My Ads Don't Work So I Don't Do Them Any MoreMy Ads Don’t Work, So I don’t Do Them Any MoreBy Alan Boyer 8:27 PM - Thursday, December 6, 2007What is Traffic and How Can You Get Some? Part IVWhat Is Traffic And How Can You Get Some Part 4 of 4(c) Charlie Page http://www.RealWorldTactics.com ------------------------------------------------------ This week we complete our multi-part series on real world ways to get traffic to your site. There are basically two ways to get traffic. 1. Free methods that take a long time to work. 2. Paid methods that work fast. This week we look at two final ways to get very responsive traffic - also known as people who are VERY interested in your offer - to any website you promote. -------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT: Please don't think that these tactics don't apply to beginning marketers. I know people who did these very things only weeks after going online, and are doing very well today. You *can* do this. -------------------------------------------------- Here now are the final two entries in our 'how to get traffic' series. >>> TELESEMINARS Teleseminars might just be the perfect way to market online. That's a bold statement, so let me back it up. Teleseminars offer these benefits over any other form of marketing. NOTE: There have been books and courses written about the benefits of marketing with teleseminars, so I'll just cover my personal top four reasons. 1. Teleseminars are personal. When people listen to your teleseminar they are hearing both the information you want to convey as well as what you believe about that information. They get to hear your soul as well as your mind. 2. Teleseminars are easy to consume. Finding time to read a book can be hard. Finding time to listen is easy. Listening can be done at the gym, in the car, or while doing almost any other activity. 3. Teleseminars are entertaining. Sound is powerful, and adding music or other sounds to a teleseminar is easy and makes your teleseminar stand out. 4. Teleseminars allow you to say more. No pun intended. While people find it hard to read a 5000 word sales letter, they will think nothing of listening for an hour if the material is interesting and informative. So, how can *you* profit from teleseminars? Here are two ideas to get you started. Idea 1 - Interview and expert and sell the audio. You can sell seats to the live teleseminar, the audio after the teleseminar, or both! Idea 2 - Sell an existing teleseminar. Find a teleseminar with resale rights and create a product from that audio. HINT: Want to find teleseminars with resale rights easily? Type this into Google (including the quotes). teleseminar + "resale rights" Idea 3 - Create a teleseminar that highlights your product. This doesn't need to be a pitch-fest, but rather a verbal form of your best case for why your product helps people. No matter how you do it, marketing with teleseminars (or even marketing teleseminars themselves!) is fun and very profitable. The KING of teleseminars is Alex Mandossian. Find his information and devour every word. http://teleseminarsecrets.com >>> YOUR OWN AFFILIATE PROGRAM Want to sell more products than ever before and NEVER pay a dime for advertising? If that sounds too good to be true, it's not. By developing an army of active affiliates, you are paying in commissions what you would have paid in ads, but - and get this because it's powerful - you only pay AFTER the sale is made! Sharing how to run a great affiliate program would fill a book, so I'll share here my top three tips to help you maximize profits with affiliates. Tip 1 - Make your program easy to join. Your terms should be clear, your links easy to use, and your affiliate center easy to access. Be sure there is a 'lost password' function too so you don't have to answer tons of "I lost my password" emails. Tip 2 - Be accessible. Most affiliates will not have questions. But when affiliates need help, help them. After all, they are making money for you! Tip 3 - Provide tools. Make sure your affiliate center includes ads, links, banners, and more to help affiliates sell the way that's most comfortable for them. While there is no such thing as great free advertising, if you look at affiliate commissions as the expense you choose instead of buying ads, it can be a wildly profitable venture. I hope these tips help you achieve your goals and dreams online. ******************************************************* Charlie Page helps people succeed online. How can he help you? Find out now at his main site or call his toll free number. http://www.RealWorldTactics.com -------------------------------------------------------- Free Content For Your Website Or Ezine! -------------------------------------------------------- You may use this article in your ezine or on your site as long as the article and resource box remain unchanged. CharliePage.com affiliates, you may also replace my link with your own. Not an affiliate yet? Become one today at http://www.realworldtactics.com -------------------------------------------------------- CharliePage.com is located at 1511 South Texas Ave #326 College Station TX 77845 1:35 AM - Saturday, September 29, 2007What is Traffic and How Can You Get Some? Part IIIWhat Is Traffic And How Can You Get Some Part 3 of 4(c) Charlie Page http://www.RealWorldTactics.com ------------------------------------------------------ This week we continue our multi-part series on real world ways to get traffic to your site. There are basically two ways to get traffic. 1. Free methods that take a long time to work. 2. Paid methods that work fast. In the last issue, we looked at ezine advertising and pay per click. This week we look at how to maximize your investment with these powerful methods. EMAIL MARKETING Email marketing is without any doubt THE most powerful form of paid advertising online. What most people miss is that there are many ways to accomplish email marketing for their site. Just look at these ways in which email marketing can help you sell more online. * Ezine advertising - ads are sent via email * Joint ventures - Basically an ad to a private list * Rented lists - Again, and ad to a list you rent * Autoresponders - all follow up systems use email * Ezine publishing - ezines are delivered via email * Blog post announcements - usually delivered via email If you are not using email in your marketing now, let me offer these tips on how you can start using it today. 1. Create a follow up system for your site. The BEST selling sites online convert about 10% of visitors to buyers on the first visit. This leaves us with one all-important question ... What happens to the other 90%? Basically, one of two things happens to visitors who come to your site but don't buy the first time. 1. They forget about you, never to return. 2. They do return and buy what you sell. How can you make sure that your site falls into the second group, the group that makes sales? You *remind* them to return via email. In my years online I've found that there are about five core principles that work every time. And I do mean every time. One of those truths is this ... if your site does not follow up via email, you ARE losing sales and money. No doubt about it. Happily, you can fix that and fix it today. Use this link to discover how easy it is to create a follow up system today (not next week or month but today!) http://www.realworldtactics.com/followup.html JOINT VENTURES Joint ventures used to mean an arrangement between two people where they both did about half the work and split the profits. Ideally, they had complimentary skills such as one being a programmer and the other a marketer. Today, the term 'Joint Venture' has devolved into a situation where one person has a mailing list and the other wants to sell their product and will pay a very high commission. And that's okay. So how do YOU profit from joint ventures? Here's my short list of things to do - and things to avoid - when it comes to joint ventures. Remember, these are guidelines based on what I have seen work, not hard and fast rules. Use this list and, over time, it will help make you more profits than you can imagine. Do ... * Create a list of joint venture partners you want. * Send an email introducing yourself and asking if they are interested in a JV at some point. * Tell them what's in it for them. * Keep your emails to them short. * Create a web page where they can learn more. * Get interested JV partners to join a list of JV announcements. * Make more than one offer. Not every offer is right for every partner, but time can become your ally if you are persistent. * Post your JV offer to forums that allow such posts. * Be creative. Not everyone is motivated by money only. * Use the phone. Limit yourself to email and you won't get as many JVs as if you email *and* call. * Give partners lots of lead time. Nothing is worse than getting a great JV offer that has to be done tomorrow. * Provide partners with ready-made marketing tools like 'copy and paste' emails, banners, and more. Do Not ... * Approach people to joint venture with you on products that they can become an affiliate for themselves. * Buy someone's product thinking that doing so will obligate them to JV with you. * Send very long emails with a sales pitch. * Send too many emails and waste their time. * Offer anything less than 50% commission. * Spam your JV offer ... ever. * Quit - Never quit trying. JVs work and can work for you no matter what. * Think that you can't get a JV because you don't have a big name. Everyone starts somewhere. You can do this. The keys to success with Joint Ventures are to be creative, generous, and persistent. Find the right JV partners with the right offer at the right time and watch as very good things happen, all without you having to spend a dime! In the next issue we'll cover the last two ways to get paid traffic to your site, teleseminars (yes, they can work for you!) and creating a powerful affiliate program. Until then, apply these words from Winston Churchill to your marketing. "The nose of the bulldog is slanted backwards so he can breathe without letting go" In other words, when it comes to YOUR success online ... never give up - never surrender your dream! ******************************************************* Charlie Page helps people succeed online. How can he help you? Find out now at his main site or call his toll free number. http://www.RealWorldTactics.com -------------------------------------------------------- Free Content For Your Website Or Ezine! -------------------------------------------------------- You may use this article in your ezine or on your site as long as the article and resource box remain unchanged. CharliePage.com affiliates, you may also replace my link with your own. Not an affiliate yet? Become one today at http://www.realworldtactics.com -------------------------------------------------------- CharliePage.com is located at 1511 South Texas Ave #326 College Station TX 77845 1:34 AM - Saturday, September 29, 2007What is Traffic and How Can You Get Some? Part II--------------------------------------------------What Is Traffic And How Can You Get Some Part 2 of 4 (c) Charlie Page http://www.RealWorldTactics.com -------------------------------------------------- In our last ezine we looked at ways to get traffic without spending any money at all. While that is a worthwhile goal, it is not always realistic for every person. Sometimes you need results faster than those methods allow. For that situation there is a solution ... paid traffic. Let's look at several ways to get traffic to your site by paying with money instead of time. >>> Ezine Advertising I'll bet you knew I'd list this one first. ;) The reason I love ezine advertising is that it is so targeted. After all, people who subscribe to golfing ezines are golfers and want to learn about golf and buy golf products. Same holds true for any topic ... health, making money online, marketing, sewing, fishing. The list goes on and on. Basically, you buy an ad in an ezine and the publisher sends your ad to his or her mailing list of subscribers. It often takes a week to place an ad, so plan ahead. If you shop wisely, you can expect to pay about $100 for a solo ad to about 50,000 subscribers. The two resources I offer regarding ezines are a book I wrote called "How to make money with ezine advertising" and my membership site, the Directory of Ezines. Here are the URLs if you are interested. http://www.directoryofezines.com http://www.realworldtactics.com >>>> Pay Per Click Pay per click is when you pay a search engine - usually Google or Yahoo - to display ads on the page they show to people who search. The way it works is this. You go to a search engine, let's say Google, and create an account. That's free. Then you tell Google that you will pay X for every visitor they send who searches on a particular keyword. That can be one word like "money" or a phrase like "make money on the Internet using my computer". Both are considered a "keyword" by the search engines. With pay per click you can set a budget of what to spend and the search engine will send you that much traffic and no more. EXAMPLE: You bid 50 cents per click on the keyword "recipe" and set a budget of $10 per day. Google sends 20 visitors a day and no more. -------------------------------------------------- HINT: 20 visitors a day might sound small, but if you convert 10% of them to customers you make 2 sales. If you sell a recipe book (to follow the example) for $45 you make $90 and spend only $10 on the clicks. -------------------------------------------------- The advantages here are that pay per click creates almost immediate results when done right and it is highly targeted. You can expect to pay about 50 cents per click unless you are targeting very competitive keywords. The downside is that there is a ton of competition and something called 'click fraud' is causing problems. Click fraud is when people click your ad even when they have no interest at all in your product. Weird I know (why would they waste their time?) but it happens and you pay for that click no matter what. The king of pay per click is Perry Marshall. You can find his excellent books about it at ... http://www.perrymarshall.com These two methods can become the backbone of any marketing plan, so we'll stop here for this week and give you time to check out those resources. In the next issue we'll continue with paid traffic sources, including ... * Email Marketing * Joint Ventures * Teleseminars * Affiliate Marketing Until then, check out ezines and pay per click. They really do work, and can form the a firm foundation for your long term success. And having a firm foundation can make all the difference! ******************************************************* Charlie Page helps people succeed online. How can he help you? Find out now at his main site or call his toll free number. http://www.RealWorldTactics.com -------------------------------------------------------- Free Content For Your Website Or Ezine! -------------------------------------------------------- You may use this article in your ezine or on your site as long as the article and resource box remain unchanged. CharliePage.com affiliates, you may also replace my link with your own. Not an affiliate yet? Become one today at http://www.realworldtactics.com -------------------------------------------------------- CharliePage.com is located at 1511 South Texas Ave #326 College Station TX 77845 1:31 AM - Saturday, September 29, 2007What is Traffic and How Can You Get Some?I found this article by Charlie Page to be easy to understand and helpful.What Is Traffic And How Can You Get Some Part 1 (c) Charlie Page http://www.RealWorldTactics.com ------------------------------------------------------ When it comes to making money online there are three elements that everyone MUST have in order to succeed. 1. Something to sell 2. A website that makes the sale and collects the money 3. People coming to that site and buying Getting items 1 and 2 set up and in place are as easy as pie. In fact, you can have these in place in the next 10 minutes by becoming an affiliate. But it's that third element, getting REAL people to come to your site and buy something, that has most people stumped. Getting visitors to your site is called, in Internet terms, getting traffic. And there is no other topic on which so much is written, and so much is wrong. Being a fairly simple minded fellow, I like to keep things simple and easy to understand. In that light, here are some thoughts on understanding, and getting, traffic. There are only two types of traffic. 1. Free Traffic 2. Paid Traffic What this means is that you are going to have to buy traffic through either your efforts (free traffic) or your pocketbook (paid traffic) Let's look at each and see how they work. This week we focus on free traffic. >> Free Traffic << If ever there was a siren song of the digital age, 'free traffic' is it. Can you really get absolutely free traffic to your site? Sure. Can you build a business based on this traffic? Yes. BUT - and there is always a but - you will have to learn how to get it and work hard as well. If that's okay with you, let's look at how it works. Here are the main sources of free traffic, along with a word about each. >>> SEARCH ENGINES - Often touted as the #1 way to get free traffic, the tactic here is to get your site listed in the venerated 'top ten' search results. You can't trick the search engines, so the best way to do this is to provide content, and lots of it. If your site is helpful to human readers you will do well. If you try and outsmart the search engines to get traffic you will go broke buying the latest and greatest thingy that simply won't work, or won't work long. Create a CONTENT RICH site and the search engines will reward you by displaying that site when people search for the type of information you provide. >>> FREE ADS - Free ads are a mixed blessing. They are free, which is good. They usually don't work, which is bad. If you can get a free ad in a place where ads are usually sold, like the free ad you get for subscribing to some ezines or classified ad sites that are visited by people, then it might be worth the time. BUT - ad blasters and automated submitters do not work in testing and are to be avoided. >>> ARTICLES - Without a doubt, marketing with articles is the #1 free traffic method. You don't need to be Hemmingway to do this. All you have to do is write a short article - about 500 words works best - that describes a problem people face and also provides ways to solve that problem. Once your article is written, you can submit it to article directories, ezines, other website owners, and more to get the widest possible distribution. Write and submit an article a week and very soon you will get very interested visitors who are proven to buy. >>> VIRAL MARKETING - Viral marketing basically means creating something of value that others can give away while making sure you benefit from it being given away. The most common form of this is a short booklet. Creating a viral marketing booklet is a win-win situation. You win because the links in the product are yours, so you get paid when people click. Readers win because you provide valuable information and they can give the booklet free from their website. Create a viral report and get visitors from the links inside the report, as well as visitors who want to give the report to others. >>> PUBLISH AN EZINE - Publishing an ezine is highly profitable and easy to do. All you need to do is gather, or write, articles about a specific subject and publish an ezine (like the one you are reading now) on a schedule. That might mean every week, or every month. You can get great articles from all sorts of places, like article directories or ezine directories. Publish an ezine, offer it to everyone in your address book and who visits your site, and watch your traffic grow. >>> PUBLISH A BLOG This is super easy today. If you have a hosting account, the chances are you have blogging software on that account free. If not, you can always use Blogger. The basic idea here is the same as a website ... provide great content and the search engines send people. The advantage to a blog is that you can have some interactivity by letting people comment, and you can easily structure your blog for easy reading. Set up a blog today, provide great content, and the search engines will send traffic over time. >>> PARTICIPATE ON FORUMS This is an excellent, and free, way to earn while you learn. The idea here is to visit forums that are specific to your site and post questions or make comments. This works well if you understand reciprocity and are wiling to give a bit before you receive. It does not work at all if your forum post is simply an ad in disguise. Once forum members get to know and trust you a bit they will visit the site you list in your signature area. If you visit the forums specific to your topic of interest and get involved, you will get very targeted free traffic on a steady basis. Other methods of getting traffic free include * Provide endorsements * Press releases * Linking * And more You can read about most of these methods at http://www.realworldtactics.com Just look on the home page for the 'articles' link. As you can see, there are many ways to get free traffic to your site. These methods take time that could be spent doing other things. But if you have more time than money at this point in your life (and we've all been there) these techniques will work to get some traffic to your site. I hope they work for you too. Next week we are going to look at ways to get paid traffic, so stayed tuned! ******************************************************* Charlie Page helps people succeed online. How can he help you? Find out now at his main site or call his toll free number. http://www.RealWorldTactics.com -------------------------------------------------- LIKE THIS ARTICLE? Then you'll love my book called "Common Sense Internet Marketing" Get it here http://www.realworldtactics.com/ebooks-by-charlie-page.html -------------------------------------------------------- Free Content For Your Website Or Ezine! -------------------------------------------------------- You may use this article in your ezine or on your site as long as the article and resource box remain unchanged. CharliePage.com affiliates, you may also replace my link with your own. Not an affiliate yet? Become one today at http://www.realworldtactics.com -------------------------------------------------------- CharliePage.com is located at 1511 South Texas Ave #326 College Station TX 77845 1:27 AM - Saturday, September 29, 2007Why Doesn't Pay Per Click Advertising Work?Food for Thought
Why Doesn't Pay-Per-Click Advertising Work? About twice a day I get a note from people saying I'm doing a ton of advertising with pay-per-click search engines. I get 1,000 people a day to my site and nobody buys. What is wrong with my site? Often, NOTHING is wrong with the site. The real problem seems to be with PPC search engines. While they work magnificently for some businesses, they work poorly for others. For some reason nobody has yet explained to me, the masses of folks who come from PPC's have a 15 to 20 second look around your site, then leave without buying anything. There are three solutions to this problem. 1. Instead of going for the order, try to get PPC traffic to sign up for your newsletter or email updates. People who have never heard of you before are unlikely to buy. People who have been reading your newsletter for weeks are much more likely to place their order. 2. Sell an item or service people buy on impulse. Things that are cheap and "feel good" have the advantage. 3. Stop spending all your ad budget on PPC's. Spread the money around a bit. Advertise in ezines, get on mainstream search engines, send out your own article with your ad at the end. ----- "See Kevin's 10,000 free marketing tips at http://drnunley.com" 1:00 AM - Thursday, September 27, 200716 Methods For Getting Free AdvertisingAll of us in the business world need advertising to be successful. This article lists 16 methods for getting free advertising, which many of us will find helpful. If you make tons of money, you may not be interested, but the rest of us can use some help!16 Methods
for Getting Free Advertising 2. Check with local newspapers. Before going to press, many smaller newspapers have space left that needs filling.. Your ad may be just the right size to occupy this unfilled space and they will run it free. 3. Place your circulars on windshields of parked autos, Youngsters will be happy to do this for you for a dollar or two. Check first with city ordinances to see if this is permitted in your locality. 4. Leave sales literature on doorsteps of homes & businesses in your area. Do this on weekends in residential areas; weekdays for businesses. 5. Have your best pulling 1 inch or 2 inch ad made into a rubber stamp. Stamp this on envelopes of all of your outgoing mail.. Check rubber stamp dealer's ads in current mail order publications for price information. 6. When you have envelopes printed with your return address, have them also print your best ad directly beneath your address. It costs noting additional to have this printed on the front of your envelopes. 7. If you publish a mail order magazine, newspaper, adsheet, etc., contact other publishers, If your circulation is equal to theirs, many will be happy to exchange an equal amount of ad space with you. 8. Many publishers will give you free adspace for mailing a few copies of their publication. Simply write to them and ask if they will give you a free 1 inch ad in exchange for mailing 50 to 100 copies of their pub. 9. Write informative articles for mail order trade publication. Most publishers will give you free ad space for the use of your article. 10. Take advantage of advertising specials. Many publishers offer ads on a 3-for-the- price- of -2- basis, or 4-for-the-price-of-3, etc. This saving is the same as getting one ad free of charge. 11. Some publishers offer a free classified ad with your first display ad. Watch for such specials. Use the free ad and pocket the savings. 12. When starting a new publication, many publishers will offer reduced ad rates to help fill space. Watch for ads regarding such offers. 13. In your ads, request a SASE. Then insert some of your other offers in regular outgoing mail. This is the same as getting free advertising. 14. Become a mailer. Get your printer's lowest price for printing circulars on both sides of the sheet. Contact other dealers and state you will print and mail their circulars for this price with no conflicting ads on the back. Then print your circulars on the reverse and distribute them with your outgoing mail. There is no extra cost for postage and envelopes, and your side of the circular is paid for by your customers. 15. Offer a free commission circulars. Print one of your regular offers on one side; a commission offer on the reverse, leaving space where the mailer can rubber stamp his name & address, Your offer gets a free ride. 16. If you use a postage meter machine, use the ad space directly left of stamp imprint for a free message. Copyright 2004 by DeAnna Spencer 11:31 PM - Sunday, August 5, 2007Quick Tactics To Brand Your Business and Make More SalesThis is one of the more understandable articles on branding.Quick Tactics to Brand Your Business and Make More Sales by Charles Kangethe This may come as a surprise... to you, but Branding is more than just Logo and Business or Product Name recognition. Branding is "The total emotional and intellectual involvement your prospects and customers have with your business and products." This article addresses 5 basic problems and questions about Branding: How Are Brands Created? => Branding by "Personal Experience" This creates the strongest bond between your customers and your business and products. Your customer service, front and back end offers must be of high quality, in order to create exceptional "Personal Experience". This starts a virtuous cycle. Exceptional "Personal Experiences" lead to general public and market acclaim spread by word of mouth and other publicity. In turn, this feeds into a still stronger Brand, starting the cycle all over again. However, always remember it is easier to create a negative Brand than it is to create a positive one, by offering low or poor quality and value products, services and customer support. => Branding by "Indirect Experience" For many direct marketers, "Personal Experience" Branding is difficult and not easily achieved because sales that lead to "Personal Experience" are not easily made. The "Indirect Experience" strategy relies on creating a consistent, repeating association to the product in your prospects mind. Marketers use a variety of tactics to achieve this aim. * Jingles in audio \ visual media. * Using Slogans. * Advertising through classifieds, display, press releases, and give away products and information. * Sponsorship of media, cultural, sporting and other events. Brand Building On The Internet - The Issues: The Internet has re-defined Branding models of the past because it has leveled the playing field, for both consumers and businesses. Prospects and customers are more involved with businesses and products than they were in the past. Research of products and services, before purchase is easier. Consumers have so much choice now they are no longer easily "taught" loyalty to a particular Brand. Consumers are less willing to form bonds or create "loyal" associations with products and businesses. On the other side of the coin, businesses have much more competition and must be more customer focused than ever before. Companies that thrive and stay in business recognize building lasting relationships with existing customers is more profitable, than always trying to find new customers. A World of stronger consumers who by-pass your direct and indirect experiences with a click of the mouse, is difficult for Brand builders. On the Internet those that succeed make profits, the rest fail. The Cost And Value Of A Brand: Brand building has a cost in time, money and effort. The cost of Brand building is easily quantified in Dollar terms. The value of a Brand is harder to establish because it involves measuring emotional and intellectual associations that might not necessarily translate into cash sales. Not understanding the value, but clearly understanding the cost of Branding, some marketers decide to get round this problem by competing solely on price. This is a short sighted tactic because it invites "price wars", and if you get involved in a "price war" against an opponent with deeper pockets you are bound to loose. A better strategy is to compete on high product value and build quality Brand recognition over time. Brands Are Not Eternal: Brand building is an ongoing Business strategy. The emotional and intellectual associations and recognition that together make up Brand loyalty wear off if not re-energized frequently. Brands are subject to fashion, fads and change, and understand recognition is not the same as popularity. Your market may recognize your Brand, but that may not translate into sales if the association is unfashionable. The temptation, in such circumstances, is to spend less on Branding, cut prices, or, drop the business line altogether. These are knee jerk reactions to uncontrollable events when taken in the short term. A measured initial response is to re-invent the Brand, freshen it up and market it to a new generation of consumers. Many businesses re-invent, and re-brand themselves and go on to achieve new consumer acclaim. Strategies For Brand Building: Here are a few short to medium term tactical measures you can start using today to kick start your Brand building program. * Get a professional web site with customized headers, footers and logos - Make your "visitor experiences" happy ones. * Advertise regularly using paid channels where you can. If money is a problem, use fr^ee advertising, but advertise regularly. * Write useful articles and publish regularly. Invite visits to your site through your resource box. * Syndicate your articles and build personal name recognition. * Brand your business by associating and complimenting other successful products - Develop a quality reciprocal link and partnership strategy. Try products like Zeus http://www.cyber-robotics.com and Arelis http://www.axandra.com for this tactic. * Use a good autoresponder service and communicate frequently with your customers and prospects giving useful, and personal information. Branding your business and products is a key part of your success strategy. You want people to associate your business name and products with high quality, and high value. Successful Brands make money - just ask Microsoft, Levi, Ford, Coke. Start Branding your business and products today, and generate maximum lifetime customer values. Charles Kangethe of http://www.simplyeasier.com is a leading new wave Netpreneur and a published author from England. The "Simply Easier" brand name is your guarantee of high value, quality Marketing Products, Services and Resources ______________________________________________________________________ http://www.bizzyblogz.com/DonnaZ ______________________________________________________________________ 12:49 AM - Tuesday, July 17, 2007AGLOCO...new concept in advertisingI recently joined AGLOCO because of a friend recommended it to me. I am now promoting it to you because I like the idea and I want you to share in what I think will be an exciting new Internet concept. AGLOCO’s story is simple: Do you realize how valuable you are? Advertisers, search providers and online retailers are paying billions to reach you while you surf. How much of that money are you making? NONE! AGLOCO thinks you deserve a piece of the action. AGLOCO collects money from those companies on behalf of its members. (For example, Google currently pays AOL 10 cents for every Google search by an AOL user. And Google still has enough profit to pay $1.6 billion dollars for YouTube, an 18-month old site full of content that YouTube’s users did not get paid for! ) AGLOCO is building a new form of online community that they call an Economic Network. They are not only paying Members their fair share, but they’re building a community that will generate the kind of fortune that YouTube generates. But instead of that wealth making only a few people rich, the entire community will get its share. What's the catch? No catch - no spyware, no pop-ups and no spam - membership and software are free and AGLOCO is 100% member owned. Privacy is a core value and AGLOCO never sells or rents member information. So do both both of us a favor: Sign up for AGLOCO right now! If you use this link to sign up, I automatically get credit for referring you and helping to build AGLOCO.
http://www.agloco.com/r/BBBH5764 12:58 PM - Tuesday, January 16, 2007The Art Of Shameless Self PromotionOne of my favorite internet marketers is Willie Crawford. His advice is always practical and helpful. This one gives us ideas of how to get publicity for free or very cheap.The Art Of Shameless Self-Promotion Copyright 2006 by Willie Crawford When it comes to really growing your online business without having a multi-million dollar budget, free publicity is essential. If you can master "the art of shameless self-promotion" you can literally get millions of dollars worth of free publicity. While I call it "the art of shameless self-promotion," that in no way implies that you do anything dishonest or unethical. It just means that you actively seek opportunities to promote yourself - ideally for free. I've been online since late-1996, and a major part of my massive success is directly due to me actively seeking and taking advantage of free publicity. Let's look briefly at some of the things I do, that you can also easily do. 1) Seek interviews on radio, and in magazines, ezines, and newspapers. I haven't personally done television yet although I do have a cooking show coming out shortly. This generally means writing press releases and pushing those out to the media so that they know what your expertise is. Add a "media" page to your website where you offer a downloadable bio, and tell the media how to easily contact you. If you're uncomfortable with writing press releases, here's an inexpensive membership site that not only steps you through the process of writing press releases but also steps you through the process of doing most of the other things that I'll mention here: http://NewbiesStartHere.com The last press release that I wrote (in under 5 minutes), and then submitted through PRWeb.com, was created using the Press Release Generator on this site! Comb the Internet looking for radio shows and websites that feature experts in your niche. Contact the people who select guest for these shows, or to feature on these websites, and point out to them why you'd make the perfect guest. Read some of the interviews on the sites first, or listen to recordings of the shows, so that you confirm that they are a match for you, and that you are a match for them. This is one of the secrets as to how I've done well over 100 media interview over the past few years. 2) Seek to be featured in ebooks and ezines as an expert. People writing ebooks, or regularly publishing ezines on topics for which you are a subject matter expert, need you! They need to interview you and share your expertise with their audience. Your job is to be visible enough that they find you. That often means having a website that ranks high for your primary keywords, and that showcases your expertise. Do this and you'll soon be getting more request for interviews than you care to do. Do as many of these interviews as practical. They all promote you, and provide "signposts" pointing to your site. 3) Write articles on your area of expertise and submit them to article directories and appropriate ezines. This is an excellent way to get your name out into cyberspace as an expert on a given topic. A great article PROVES your expertise. Having someone publish your article serves as an indirect endorsement and is usually MUCH more effective than running a paid ad in the same ezine. The publisher is hinting to his or her readers that they consider you someone worth listening too... and that's why they gave you some of the limited space in their publication. 4) Write a physical book. If you can write ezine articles, you can compile a few of them that are related, expand upon them, and you have the makings of an ebook or a physical book. Have as few or as many copies as you want printed up. Just having a physical book instantly adds to your credibility, and elevates you above your contemporaries/competitors who haven't written a physical book. Think of that physical book as a glorified business card. People tend to throw away or ignore business cards. It's harder to ignore a book sitting on the corner of their desk. In the "about the author" section include information on your projects, and how to best contact you. Also offer some type of free downloadable gift to drive them to your website where you can add them to your mailing list. I have an inspirational biography that I wrote and use just for that purpose. It tells of how a poor farm kid, who spent most of his youth on welfare, eventually rose to become one of the Internet's "superstars." It tells of how I made the decision to do this, made a plan, and then made it happen. More importantly, that book, available at http://GitOffThePorch.com (or at http://Amazon.com) tells the reader what pet projects I'm involved in, and how to contact me if they need my products or services. I have this book printed up by my print-on-demand publisher in small batches so that I CAN change the "about the author" section to target whatever project I want to focus attention on at the time. While I think it is a great book, and so does every reader who has provided me with feedback, it's a great example of effective shameless self-promotion. 5) Seek positions of authority. An example of how I did this is that I volunteered to be a moderator at one of Internet marketing's busiest forums. By becoming an authority figure at the forum, I gained instant credibility. 6) Leverage the "success by association" principle. An excellent way to gain credibility is to be seen, and photographed, with people considered experts and admired by others. This is why I teach subscribers and clients to always take a digital camera to seminars and workshops that they attend. Just by taking photos with famous people, and then posting those photos on their websites or blogs, those who listen to my advice often elevate themselves in the eyes of their audience. People see you hanging out with (or hugging) someone famous, and they subconsciously put you into the same category as that celebrity. In addition to taking a still camera to seminars, take a video camera or portable MP3 player, and look for opportunities to interview celebrities and up-and-coming marketers. Use these recordings as unique bonuses in your product packages. The speakers and other marketers will often agree to do these interviews because they know that when you spread these recordings, you are also promoting them. These are just a few of dozens of ways that I've used shameless self-promotion to grow my business to a point that it's virtually unstoppable. To discover even more ways that I use shameless self-promotion, drop by my blog and join the thread discussing this very topic. That thread is at: http://TheMostTrustedGuyOnTheInternet.com/blog/ I'll share a few more techniques on my blog that I couldn't fit in here, without making this article too long. More importantly than discussing these techniques though - just get out an apply a few of them! They've been proven to work. ------------------------------------ Willie Crawford has been teaching Internet marketing for over 9 years. Take advantage of his uncanny insights and unusual candor by subscribing to his free, information-packed newsletter. Also visit his top-rated blog. Do both at: http://WillieCrawford.com/blog/ ------------------------------------------------------ http://www.bizzyblogz.com/DonnaZ 1:09 AM - Monday, September 18, 2006Cross Promotions--Effective Methods of AdvertisingHere is another article on getting the most out of your advertising without breaking the bank.
8:08 PM - Thursday, August 3, 2006How To Generate Website Traffic Using Only Free MethodsHere are some suggestions about getting traffic to your website or blog.
8:04 PM - Thursday, August 3, 2006Definition of a LeadDefinition of a 'Lead' You see headlines all the time about 'Hot leads' 'Fresh Leads', etc. With this kind of lingo in place, one is likely to get the idea that a 'lead' is some sort of baked good. I'm being silly of course. I'm sure you have some idea of what this term refers to.: A 'lead' is an individual who has expressed some initial interest in your product, service, or opportunity. Typically, this interest is displayed in the form of a request for more information; i.e. filling out an opt-in form to receive a more detailed explanation of what you can offer via email. Acquiring new leads on a daily basis should be your top priority. Instead of spending your time and energy trying to make a sale on the front end, put your efforts into bringing new prospects onto your contact list so you can promote your offer to them on a more personal level. But I really want to focus this article on how you should be collecting these new leads. So I'll get right to the point; capture a prospect's interest by yourself instead of purchasing so-called 'leads' through a third party provider. Consider this analogy: Let's say I stroll into the local video store and strike up a friendly convo with that cute young lady behind the counter. She'd recognize me, because I'm in there renting a new video game at least a couple of times per month. In fact, I've even pulled a laugh or two out of her with a few (well rehearsed) jokes. During the course of our chatter, let's say I ask if she'd like to catch a live band with me over the weekend (unlikely I'll ever acquire the nerve for this but it's certainly a nice thought). Just for the sake of example, let's assume she says: "Hey that sounds cool. Give me a call on Thursday and I can tell you for sure if I'm free." In the above scenario, I have just acquired a (hot ) lead. To put this into perspective, let's look at it from another angle: I could just as easily pay another employee of the video store to give me the phone number of the young lady mentioned above. Then, armed with her contact information, I could call her at home, completely out of any relevant context, and pitch my offer of a good band and a meal on the side. Mind you, the band in question is a local favorite. And the club where they will be playing can deliver one of the best hamburgers money can buy. But despite the quality of my offer, how is my target prospect likely to respond? It's safe to assume I would be in need of a new video store, as I would most likely be viewed as some type of stalker form this point forward. Can you see what I'm getting at here? If someone whose email address you have purchased suddenly gets a message from you, and has no bloody idea who you are, I can almost guarantee they're not going to respond in a favorable manner. Purchased mailing lists work great for big spending companies who can lay out thousands of dollars on this type of campaign. But for the average network marketer who is building a business on a far more modest budget, it simply is not cost-effective to try and play the numbers game with purchased leads. Focus on giving people a good reason to ask you for more information. Once this request is made, over-deliver on the quality and value of information that you provide, and start building a real relationship with your new lead. This business is personal. So don't get sucked into some scam that promises to build your prospect list by selling you the contact info of people who have never met you, and probably don't want to hear from you. ********************** Tim Whiston is one of the creators of Opt-in Master Course, a complete guide to building and managing a profitable mailing list.********************** http://www.bizzyblogz.com/DonnaZ 12:38 AM - Tuesday, August 1, 2006Warning...Affiliate Marketers Pay AttentionThis is another timely and relevant article by Willie Crawford, a top internet marketer. His information about purchasing a domain name to redirect your affiliate URL is interesting but I am not clear on exactly how you set this up. Any ideas anyone?WARNING - Affiliate Marketers Pay Attention Copyright 2006 by Willie Crawford A few weeks ago I started getting popup warnings saying that given sites were blacklist when I'd click on a link in my email. I'd then be asked if I was sure that I wanted to go to that site. Since these were sites that I knew to be reputable, I'd click "OK." In many cases, these were sites running special offers for Internet marketing products. After doing some research, and asking questions on discussion forums, I discovered something shocking. The most recent version of Pegasus (the email client) was apparently triggering these warnings when you clicked a link to a site listed in one of the blacklist databases. Further research indicated that Pegasus even went so far as to regularly check for updates to this database. Yes, the software running on your desktop, regularly updated itself by accessing a database of blacklisted sites. A surprising number of MAJOR Internet marketers' sites were in this database. These were sites that had a lot of affiliates who do "silly" things. Some of these were sites that had done major big ticket product launches recently. What caused the problem in the latter category above? Too many affiliates used the url of the affiliate program's site, and there were simply enough complaints to get given sites blacklisted. One of the problems with major product launches is that when enough people email for the same promotion, on the same day, then many people can get dozens of emails promoting the same product. This is especially true in the Internet marketing arena where some people subscribe to dozens... even hundreds of ezines. Some of these people out of frustration will file spam complaints! Some of the recent big ticket launches have offered 50% commission on $997 - $1497 products. Those commissions are nothing to sneeze at! On top of that they often run affiliate contests that offer fabulous prizes. The temptation to get as many promotions out as possible, often using poor techniques,is simply too much for some affiliates! The solution to the problem caused by too many people emailing using the same affiliate program's domain is simple. First, make sure that you use accepted email practices (Don't Spam). Secondly, use a redirect url or a promotional domain. This offers some protection, in that if complaints are filed due to the massive promotions, the number of complaints against the affiliate program's url will be reduced. This also reduces the chances of YOUR email generating one of those dreaded "Blacklist Alert" popups when your link is clicked upon. There are side benefits to using redirect url's including the ability to change the destination of the url. If you become displeased with one affiliate program, and find a more suitable competitor, you can change where one of your redirect url's point to. Without this capability, once your links are in cyberspace, you lose control over them! There are many ways of setting up redirects, to include redirects coded into the header of a web page, java script redirects, and php redirects. I won't explain how to set all these up in this article. You can go to any search engine and find hundreds of sites explaining how to do this. There are also services, and pieces of software, that will redirect url's for you. My favorite technique is to use a promotional domain. You can purchase a domain, and then, without even building a website, simply redirect that domain's url to your affiliate url. This takes less than 10 minutes to set up. You can purchase domains for less than $9 a year at: http://WillieCrawford.com/domains If you read through many of the more than 400 articles that I've written, you'll see that many of the links promoting affiliate products use promotional domains. This is because it work! Many people also think that affiliate url's look less professional. There are also some people who simply don't like the idea of YOU earning a commission off of their purchase. So when they see an affiliate url they simply snip off the end. This sends them to the base url, and you lose the commission. The customer still pays the same price, but they've just cut you out of a hard-earned commission. I could give you a dozen other reasons to use redirect url's or promotional domains. However, I feel that just the problems mentioned above should suffice. One other consideration is, how do you think a potential customer feels when he sees one of those popup warnings? The title of this article begins with "WARNING." That's fully justified, because if you're not heeding the warning, you're losing a major percentage of your affiliate sales! ---------------- Willie Crawford has been marketing and teaching on the Internet since late-1996. For more great tips, and updates on the world of Internet and affiliate marketing, visit Willie's very popular blog at http://WillieCrawford.com/blog/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.bizzyblogz.com/DonnaZ You may comment on this article below. 6:25 PM - Monday, July 24, 2006Do Pay Per Click Advertising Campaigns Really Work?The following article is by Cody Moya who is a prolific internet marketer/writer. He has several educational series of internet marketing mini courses to which you can subscribe.Do Pay Per Click Advertising Campaigns Really Work? Pay per click advertising works through search engines that have an agreement with a business. This business will place a small ad on the results page for certain key terms. The listing on the search engine page usually has a title, a short heading, and a short promotional wording blurb. Depending on the search engine, the advertiser may or may not get to control the text. The advertiser pays nothing to appear on the results page itself. He or she only pays a previously agreed upon amount to the search engine when a visitor clicks on the ad itself. Despite its popularity and its once record profit returns, pay per click advertising has lost something in returns. It is still, however, one of the best, fastest, and most effective methods of advertising on the web. According to Google's record profit posting recently, lots of people see these ads and click on them. While it is true that pay per click advertising is only worth it if the sale gets from click to close, those businesses that do manage to close the sale have an excellent deal in their hands with pay per click. This means that customers are usually directed to their site for about five cents each, depending on the price of the key word. Pay per click advertising is even better than high search engine rankings because the ads can go up in just a few minutes while changing your web page content to improve your rankings, even with the help of a search engine oriented text company, can take weeks. There are many different current companies that offer pay per click advertising. Google's pay per click program is called AdWords. Google estimates that over eighty percent of internet users visit Google as a search engine. That results more customers seeing the ads than most businesses ever thought possible. Google allows you to create your own ads. They do, however, have a service that will design your ad for you if you choose. Yahoo is the other most popular pay per click program. Yahoo's Overture works through partner sites like MSN and Alta Vista. Through these many sites, they claim to allow you to reach over ninety percent of internet users. Choosing a company to sign up with can be difficult, but the most difficult part of pay per click advertising will be the planning and writing stages. To make the best pay per click ad campaign, you have to bid on key word phrases that work best for you, write the most effective ads, and have a strong, quality page when they click on your ad. The price of some key word phrases is extraordinarily high, so picking the right phrases immediately is your best bet. If you know how to catch the customer's attention and offer them a perfect presentation, you will get the sale almost every time. If you don't, you will lose some serious money with pay per click advertising. Some people recommend using a search engine oriented professional to design your pay per click advertising campaign. However, the right campaign can be self-managed, with the right skills. You need some understanding of consumer psychology, excellent writing skills, and plenty of time to research what will work for you. Before you get ready to start your pay per click campaign, be sure to do some research into what is out there with regard to your product or services. When you get ready to write, you'll want to notice that the best campaigns are legitimize by what their pages declare about them. Without that legitimacy, your ad will not only fail, it may be removed by your pay per click service. The search engine company you choose to work with may be able to help you find the right key words, but their suggestions can sometimes be ineffective. You can find the best key words by using several services and performing web research on a regular basis. Pay per click advertising campaigns can be very effective if your ad is well written and if your target site helps to complete the sale with the customer. Without these elements, pay per click advertising is simply a waste of your valuable time and money. You would be better off with a traditional ad campaign. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cody Moya writes about Web Site Traffic Generation in his free 50 parts course on Web Site Traffic Generation. You can sign up for his free Web Site Traffic Generation and get additional information at his website: http://www.trafficgenerationcourse.com ______________________________________________________________________ http://www.bizzyblogz.com/DonnaZ Your comments on this article may be made below. 12:00 AM - Monday, July 10, 2006Yahoo Jumps On Video Bandwagon-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Yahoo! Jumps On Video Bandwagon - by Jim Edwards © Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved http://www.thenetreporter.com -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Despite Google's "Wall Street Darling" status, Yahoo! still rates as the most popular cyber-destination, getting more visitors than any other single website on the Internet. With the recent surge in production and consumption of online video, it's no wonder that Yahoo! wants a piece of the action, especially with the intense interest from marketers eager to find the best way to cash-in with video advertising. Though Yahoo! cataloged online video long before Google's entry into the online video market, a massive redesign of Yahoo!'s video interface indicates they want a bigger piece of the online video pie. When you log onto http://Video.Yahoo.com, it looks pretty much like every other online video search engine, such as YouTube.com or Video.Google.com. You can search for videos by keywords as well as log in and upload your own videos right through your web browser to share with others online. You can also easily share the videos with your friends in a number of ways, including: posting it on your blog; sending an email with a link; and adding it to your publicly available favorites for others to see. However, despite the similarities, Yahoo! Video does carry some variations worth discussing. Hosted vs. Linked Video Virtually every single other major video directory on the web hosts all the video that gets displayed on their sites. Google Video, iFilm, YouTube and others all force the user to upload video to their servers before inclusion in the directory. Yahoo! Video does both. Users can either upload their videos through their web browsers to the Yahoo! servers or wait for Yahoo! to find the videos and include them in their directory. The fact that Yahoo! includes remotely hosted videos in their search results means you have a better chance of finding the videos you want, since you get more potential choices with each search. However, it also means a greater chance of going on a wild goose chase when a video file no longer exists on a remote server. Video File Formats Almost every single other video directory converts uploaded videos to the FLV file format before making them available for viewing. This enables both Mac and PC users to view videos using the free Flash browser plug-in. On the other hand, since they both host and link to video, Yahoo! Video makes available multiple file formats, including FLV, WMV (Windows Media Video), MPEG and more. Since all of these formats don't work on every computer and operating system, I believe this will cause confusion among users. And, based on my experience, confusion causes people to look elsewhere for what they want. Overall, Yahoo!'s video service looks more like a "me too" effort than a serious attempt at innovation. Yahoo! does not include video in their main search results page, the advertising on the video results page is not targeted, and the multiple file formats will create frustration for some users. Despite any shortcomings, if you publish online video, of course make sure you submit your video to Yahoo! simply because the Web's most popular site is bound to get you some extra visitors. -- Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-creator of an amazing course that will teach you step-by- step and click-by-click how to get your own money-making videos posted online... -=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "Finally! A Quick and Easy Way For YOU To Painlessly Create, Post and PROFIT From Your Own Money-Making Online Videos... Without Being a Computer Geek or Paying Outrageous Fees To A Webmaster!" => http://www.WebsiteVideoSecrets.com -=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Feel free to comment below. 11:27 PM - Wednesday, July 5, 2006How To Get Free Traffic To Your WebsiteI hope you enjoy this article on ways you can obtain free traffic to your website. I found it helpful. If you know of any other methods please feel free to comment at the end of the article.How To Get Free Traffic To Your Website Many website owners start a website and find they only have The most obvious way is to submit your site to sites You can also sign up to various traffic exchanges, and Submitting your site to directories is also a good way of Similarly getting links from other related sites, either Safelists are a traditional form of free advertising, and Posting on popular forums that allow sig files (external A truly viral way of getting lots of free traffic to your Finally, another great viral advertising method which can As you can see you don't necessarily need to pay out lots Whatever methods of advertising you choose to persue, you James Woolley is a successful marketer who has several _____________________________________________________________________ http://www.bizzyblogz.com/DonnaZ _____________________________________________________________________ 1:34 AM - Wednesday, June 7, 2006What Is Google Adsense?If you are not completely familiar with Google Adsense here is an article that can help.You’ve heard about Google AdSense, but how does it work? Can you really make money by just allowing Google to place ads on your website? And if so, how much money can you make? The following are the most informational Google AdSense basics to know. You must first have a website before you can apply for a Google Adsense account and start profiting from Google AdSense. You are more likely to be rejected if you use a free domain, so invest in your own domain. And make sure that your website makes sense; that may sound obvious, but if you are running a website that is disorganized with random content scattered all over the place, you will not be viewed as professional and will most likely be rejected. Once your site has been accepted, Google will give you code to paste on your site, thus enabling them to start placing ads on your site that are relevant to the content of your site. For example, if your website is about creating scrapbooks, Google might place ads on your site dealing with places to purchase scrapbook materials. Now, what about making money? Google makes money by advertising. So, by placing ads on your site, you are helping them to advertise by providing them with a place to display their ads. Every time a visitor to your site clicks on one of the ads that Google has placed on your site, you receive a certain percent of the money. It’s a win/win situation. Google AdSense allows you to view your account and earnings information at any time, and once a month you will receive a check for the amount of money you earned. Of course, these are just the Google AdSense basics, and more detailed information can be found at www.google.com/adsense. So, if you’re dedicated to the website you operate, why not make an extra profit from it as well? Or, maybe you’re looking for a way to make some extra cash on the side and are interested in a subject enough to create a website for it. Either way, consider these Google AdSense basics and check into opening a Google AdSense account of your own. When your account is ready, you might want to have a look at some advanced eCourses to help you get the most of adsense: http://must-have-products.com/AdsenseVideos/ Attract New Customers and SkyRocket your Sales 24/7/365. Visit my WebSite Now to Learn Free Internet Marketing Strategies and Improve your Affiliate Marketing Skills ! Internet-Marketing-Springboard.com Vita Vee. _______________________________________________________________________ http://www.bizzyblogz.com/DonnaZ _______________________________________________________________________ Please share your comments below. 5:20 PM - Monday, June 5, 2006Another Crucial Reason Why Pay Per Click Is Bad BusinessWow, Bob Serling has an entirely different take on pay per click advertising than I have read from others. What do you think about this subject? Feel free to comment below this article.
Another Crucial Reason Why Pay-Per-Click
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PPC campaigns are extremely time-consuming to run properly. That's why many companies use a service to run their campaigns — but that can be pricey. |
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The rules keep changing — and the search engines don't want you to know what those rule changes are. If you could lock in top positions, all searches for a given key word would always produce the same results. That would be death for the search engines, as they must keep things fresh in order to keep people coming back. |
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The rules are different for each search engine. Think you've mastered Google's rules? It won't help you with Yahoo, MSN, or any of the other search engines. If you enjoy tearing your hair out in clumps, you're a natural for enjoying PPC marketing. |
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The biggest drawback of all — the leads you get are as
unqualified as they come. So you've paid top dollar for keywords, written some
killer ads (sure, if you think you can write a killer ad in about 15 to 20
words, I've got some lovely swamp land to sell you), and created dynamite
landing pages. What do you get for all this time, effort, and expense? Very
little. Because people who click rarely buy. Think about this, using a technique I call "Marketing to Yourself". How many searches do you conduct in an average day? Let's estimate 10 searches. Multiply that times 30 days in a month, and conservatively, you're searching 300 times each month. Now — how many times out of those 300 searches do you actually buy something? If you're like most people, the answer is very few or none. So what makes you think that all that traffic clicking on your PPC links is any different than you? |
Another compelling reason you might want to reconsider using PPC is the "400 pound gorilla in the room" that none of the PPC experts seem to want to talk about. I'm referring to click fraud — a massive problem that is on the rise and can't be stopped.
In the May 11, 2006 edition of Technology Review, the ugly facts are laid bare for all to see. Among these crucial facts is the report that Google just agreed to pay $60 million to settle a click fraud lawsuit.
That amounts to $4.50 for every $1,000 Google took in on PPC in the past four and a half years. I'll come back to this figure in a moment and show you why this is so important.
The fact that Google is even admitting that click fraud is rampant, in fact uncontrollable, is huge. For years, Google and all the other major search engines have essentially turned a blind eye to the issue. The article even quotes sources who feel that the search engines are less than helpful in getting click fraud issues resolved and payments refunded. It quotes one major user's description of a vague message he received from Google telling him that their internal investigation showed that the click fraud didn't exist and he wasn't billed for it. However, they provided no data to back up their findings.
Here's an important point. I'm not singling out Google and that wasn't the intent of the article in Technology Review either. The fact is, Yahoo is being sued in the same court as Google and click fraud is out of control on every search engine. The article focuses on Google simply because it commands the lion's share of PPC revenues.
Now, let's get back to why the refund of $4.50 for every $1,000 PPC revenue generated is so important. There's a disturbing secret built into this figure. I'm going to reveal this secret in just a moment, but first...
You've got to hear this if you'd like to profit with information products
If you've ever considered creating and marketing your own information products, you've got to hear an 8-minute interview I just did with one of the members of my info products mentoring program.
His name is Graham McGregor, and with hardly any experience, he sold over 9500 copies of his first information product within a few weeks of completing my materials. He already has even more orders and is using a very simple twist to boost his sales to 100,000 copies or more.
Don't miss this remarkable 8-minute interview. You can listen to it — and get more details on my Information Products Master Course if you'd like — at:
So let's get back to that figure that Google has agreed to pay out — $60 million to settle the lawsuit, which amounts to $4.50 for every $1,000 its customers spent on PPC. If you convert that to a percentage, that means Google is admitting that click fraud occurs on less than one-half of one percent of all clicks.
However, independent studies quoted in the Technology Review article assert that click fraud occurs for between $100 to $400 of every dollar spent on PPC marketing.
Do you understand the magnitude of that statement! What it tells you is that 10% to 40% of all the clicks you get are bogus. When you factor in the cost for all the time it takes to develop and manage your PPC campaigns — along with the fact that the vast majority of the traffic you get is completely unqualified — you can begin to see why I don't advocate using PPC at all. Not for my own business, not for my clients, and not for you.
There are a lot of people who feel that the search engines aren't exactly bending over backwards to eliminate click fraud. After all, as the Technology Review article states, "The shady activity produces revenue for Google, Yahoo and a long list of Web sites that display the ads because the clicks trigger sales commissions even if a referral does not produce a sale."
I can't say that I really agree with this line of thinking. After all, if PPC is deemed to be plagued with fraud, it would only hurt the search engines. Once people decide their billings are unreliable — that is, if they ever decide this — a lot of PPC revenue will dry up. The damage would be so extensive that there can't be any reason for the search engines to want click fraud to continue.
The greater problem, and what makes this unsolvable, is that click fraud is much like spam. The people perpetrating the fraud are profiting from it, and they're very clever about it.
Your competitors may click your links hundreds of times in an attempt to raise your costs and drive you out of the market. Companies that make their money through Adsense and similar programs from the other search engines can click their links on other sites in order to boost their revenue. And these activities can be easily cloaked.
Like spam, click fraud isn't about to go away soon — if ever. There are far more reliable ways to drive traffic to your site. And when you factor in the rising cost of good key words along with click fraud, there are many more cost-effective ways to drive traffic to your site.
My conclusion is that PPC is simply bad business. Use it at your own risk.
Copyright © 2006 by Bob Serling All rights reserved
If webmasters want to
monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are
lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their
sites. But then some of the "geniuses" of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars
a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different
from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.
The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to
help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have
boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.
Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense
earnings.
1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format
that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same
format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates.
Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads
will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them,
click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your
Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.
2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go
well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try
to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to
patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web
pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.
3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at
the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can
see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense
locations can make when you see your earnings.
4. Maintain links to
relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put
your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already
lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them.
That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.
5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages
using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server
supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text
file, save it as "adsense text", and upload it to the root directory of the web
server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver
especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages
on their website.
These are some of the tips that have worked well for
some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is
important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of
the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary
purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons
will be viewing already.
Note also that there are many other Adsense
sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will
be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough
that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your
Adsense something that people will definitely click on.
Tips given by
those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share
with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work
wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will
bring.
If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for
yourself.
About the author:
Zamri Nanyan models a
low-cost, high-profit concept to build successful internet businesses, as
mentioned at http://www.LowCost-HighP rofit.com.
He now owns and operates several money-making websites from the comfort of his
own house. Read more about Zamri Nanyan at www.ZamriNanyan.com
Feel free to comment on this topic below.
If you are an affiliate for any program here is an article with a tip for your consideration.
Writing and distributing a free report is another great way to get exposure for your affiliate products. A report is usually a 5 to 25 page PDF document that provides good information on a particular topic. You can promote your own site as well as affiliate programs directly in your report.
You can use a free report in three different ways to make money. Try to use two or even all three in every report to maximize your profits.
1. Incorporate affiliate links directly into your report
You can add recommendations to the end of each chapter, or work your affiliate links directly into each chapter.
2. Add links to pages with more information or reviews of a particular product on your site. The page on your site will of course have your affiliate link of the product on it. By getting them to your site, you can also encourage them to visit other pages and join your newsletter.
3. Use the report to encourage visitors to join your newsletter. Offer the report as a free download to any new subscriber. Not only will you be able to market your affiliate products within the report, but you will also be able to follow up with your subscribers each week or month to encourage them to buy, or offer them a different affiliate product.
A report can turn into a great viral marketing tool as it is passed on from person to person. You should encourage the readers of your report to share it with others who may be interested in the topic. If the readers of your report pass it on to three other people on average, your exposure to new potential customers will grow quickly.
You can put a report together by combining a few related articles, or by expanding on something you have already written. Of course you can also write the report from scratch. Decide on a topic and what affiliate products you want to promote with your report. You can then write your report in a word processor like Microsoft word and turn it into a PDF. Use adobe acrobat, or free software like open office or the PDF creator at http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm to turn your word document into a PDF.
A report is easy to put together and adds yet another way to promote your products to your affiliate marketing toolbox. If you have not been using free reports yet, I encourage you to give it a try. If you can come up with just one free report a month, and get it circulating, you will increase the amount of visitors you attract and the number of sales you make.
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