Is PPC Right For You?
August 20, 2008
Most people who market products online know what pay per click advertising is… You simply have a text ad, and whenever someone searches your chosen keywords in the search engines, your ad will appear and you will be charged each time someone clicks on your ad.
In my opinion, this was once one of the best forms of advertising but it has gotten way out of control… There’s just too much competition, even if you’re better than all of your competitors it still may not be worth it; why? Because no matter how hard you try you’re not going to be able to make a good return on investment… Now, this isn’t true for all markets, so don’t start cursing me out just yet.
Sure ppc can work but if you’re in a very competitive market then it’s probably not the best thing to do unless you’re very experienced with it… You see, pay per click is now so crowded that $1 clicks are no longer looked at as expensive… Just look around, in more seriously competitive niche markets like insurance and web hosting you have cost per click up around $20 or more!
Some people will tell you to just use smaller pay per click companies so that your cost per click will be much less. While this is true, the reason why it is so cheap is because most people realize that it’s not worth it anyways, so they don’t even bother. You’ll get cheaper clicks, but the visitors won’t be as targeted.
The main point I’m trying to get across is, pay per click can still be very useful, but you need to be mindful of your niche and keyword competition.
Posted by Sean at 11:18pm
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SEO Troubles…?
August 20, 2008
Yeah, I know… SEO is in one word; frustrating. But it really doesn’t have to be… People find it frustrating because they don’t see instant results; it just doesn’t work that way. You have to take your time, and pace yourself for the long haul; unless of course your keywords don’t have that much competition.
With most competitive keywords it usually takes anywhere from 5-12 months to rank well… I’ve done a study and that’s what I found so there’s what you’re looking at… Don’t get too discouraged yet though.
SEO doesn’t have to be 600 page websites, it can just be hordes of smaller websites that rank well for lesser competitive keywords… Once you rank for enough lesser competitive keywords, than you’ll start to see the traffic increase steadily.
You can create these small websites using sources like squidoo, hubpages, zimbio, etc… Using these sites will ensure that you’ll rank well quickly; all you have to worry about is using the right keywords and providing good content for the visitors who find your page.
You can also start using a blog if you don’t already have one… They really do the trick when it comes to SEO and all of your hard work will really start to pay off before too long.
So as you can see SEO isn’t always the funnest things in the world to do, but it is possible to build large streams of web traffic using SEO, so I’d suggest making a habit of writing new content on a daily basis.
Posted by Sean at 11:16pm
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Twitter Traffic
August 20, 2008
Social networks can be leveraged for big traffic to your website when you know how to use them correctly. The following steps are going to help you increase traffic to your website while also increasing your list size in the process.
Viral marketing is an important aspect of social marketing… If you can create a tool or reference that is useful enough, you will see a huge increase in traffic because everyone will tell their friends and so on and so forth. You don’t necessarily have to make the next big thing… Just something that’s useful that will make people’s lives a little easier and you will benefit from it.
OK, now you need to focus on branding yourself as an expert… Talking to friends is fine but you need to provide new content in the form of blog posts if you want people to look at you as someone who is an expert and that could help them. If you need ideas for new blog posts, just check, article directories, forums, and other blogs…
Now you should think about joining or creating your own groups inside of the social networks… Groups are a good place to find new friends and if you create your own group and it really gets big then you will get a lot of recognition as an expert and someone that can be trusted in your field.
The main thing you always want to stay away from in social networks is spamming… If you spam, you will end up with no friends and it will defeat the whole purpose of joining the social network to begin with.
Posted by Sean at 11:14pm
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Article Marketing Idea
July 01, 2008
Here’s a good idea I read about just the other day… When you’re looking for ideas for your articles, just go to answer sites like Yahoo Answers, Wiki Answers, etc… Then just put the questions together, write an article answering the questions, then use your article as a reference when you answer questions.
This can get you even more traffic if you’re one of the most viewed articles for the week…
Hopefully you put this to good use; alright get out there and start writing!
Posted by Sean at 9:39pm
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Expanding Affiliate Marketing Traffic…
June 26, 2008
Alright… Here’s a good way to start driving in more visitors and sales for your affiliate products. The main idea is to create as mnay squidoo lenses, and hub page “hubs” as you can in as many different niches as you can handle.
Here’s the layout:
1. Pick whatever your main niche market is, and create squeeze pages (lead capture pages) so that you can build up an opt-in list to promote to whenever you want.
If you want to build multiple opt-in pages for multiple niche markets than you can do that too, but each niche has a different mind set and selling point, so one squeeze page that works in one particular niche may not work well in another.
2. Alright, now what you want to do is go to Squidoo, Hubpages, or Zimbio, or all three; and start creating content pages for each product you want to promote.
Just a tip: If you’re in the Internet marketing niche, it’s better to promote these products as soon as possible, since they usually only have a life span of two to three months and then the traffic dies down.
Most other niche markets won’t give you this problem because there won’t be marketers checking every new product that comes out. So you could promote products for acne, weight loss, electronics, pc safety, etc.
OK, let’s say you’re creating a new squidoo lens and you want it to rank well for a mid to long term keyword… I would suggest writing 2-3 keyword targeted articles; inserting a Youtube video; throwing in some testimonials from what others are saying or some proof of the product owners income since most people searching for a product name or even a long tail keyword are searching for reasons to buy.
If you don’t give them enough eveidence and social proof than they’ll take their business elsewhere…
3. Once you’re done with your page now it’s time to get some back links to it… Write a few articles with the link to your lense; you can also comment on blogs, leave a small advertisement on Craigslist (PR 7), or comment on other squidoo lenses or hub page hubs.
Doing a little extra link work will give your site a big boost in the search engines to beat out your competitors.
4. Repeat on a wide scale. Alright, once you get the gist of creating these pages you can start building these sites for all types of products targeted hundreds of mid to long tail keywords, or product names…
Use this for digital and physical products and you will see sales start to flow in… Just make sure you do a good job at pre-selling; people want to see eveidence and social proof (testimonials), so warm them up and then send them to the product page so that you can collect your commissions.
More Traffic Strategies Here.
Posted by Sean at 6:28pm
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Affiliate Marketing Tip…
June 15, 2008
Get in the habit of creating a few content pages each time a new product launches on clickbank… Use squidoo, hubpages, etc… Your main goal should be to list on the first page during the first few days of the launch so that you can pick up some nice free traffic from the search engines.
To create the content, you should basically create 2 or 3 articles about the product and add some pictures videos or whatever else you want, the main thing is that you want your affiliate link spread throughout the page so that you can increase your chances of success.
You may also want to add a bonus pack to entice people even more to buy through your link but don’t continue to use that same bonus… You may want to change it up a little just in case you get any returning customers.
To keep up on the latest launches check out imnewswatch.com or just sign on to a few “guru” newsletters since they all promote each other most of the time.
Keeping up on your niche and taking the proper action will surely boost your sales and traffic in the end…
Posted by Sean at 10:54pm
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Getting 500 Visitors Per Day…
June 11, 2008
Today I’m going to talk about SEO (search engine optimization). In my personal opinion SEO is important because it’s free, residual traffic (and targeted too!)
I know that a lot of people find SEO to be a difficult and frustrating task but when you break it down into it’s simplest terms, it really isn’t that difficult to do… You just have to set reasonable goals… And no, attempting to rank for a term with 100 million search hits isn’t a realistic goal!
I suggest going for medium and long tail keywords on your website or blog; this way, even though you won’t get as much traffic as the real broad terms; if you use and rank for enough long tail keywords your traffic will start to get significantly high.
Alright here’s a simple video overview on SEO to give you a better understanding of exactly what I mean…
OK, now that you have an idea of what to do; get out there and start taking over the search engines!
If you want more in-depth and advanced SEO knowledge check out the Traffic Blueprint.
Posted by Sean at 4:14pm
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How did Google go from just a website… To a Mega-Power!
June 11, 2008
I feel like this is an important post for many reasons… One, because it can possibly give you a boost in energy so that you’ll want to go out there and kick butt.
Secondly, it may give you a couple of good ideas for your own business. OK, so let’s get started…
Google started as any site… It certainly wasn’t the first of it’s kind, there were other search engines before it. So how can we try to copy some of the success traces that Google has left in its path…?
Well, let’s start at the humble beginnings… Check out what Google first looked like when it started back in “98″.
Did you catch the part about the 25 million indexed pages? It would’ve been cool to be one of the originals; and it would’ve been a piece of cake to rank on the first page! Not that it would’ve meant too much back then…
Alright so when and how did Google start to actually hit the “Big time”; where they went from average computer nerds to above average billionaires…
It all revolves around one solid thing, and that’s viral marketing. Not that they were actually doing any marketing… Their service just went hugely viral; and like any site that goes mega-viral and starts driving unheard of amounts of traffic, there is a big opportunity to cash in on everyone that wants to advertise on your website.
But first, they started to expand; meaning they brought new people aboard… A cool thing to be apart of if you ask me… Even better if you hopped on the bandwagon and bought some stock! : )
OK, let’s pause for a second and see how this relates to your business. You create a product… It doesn’t have to be a brand new idea, just think quality. Mainly, you’re looking for a useful tool here, something that can help automate a tedious task… Or a really useful or exciting website like a Myspace or Facebook…
Now how can I relate all of that to Internet Marketing? Well, let’s say you came up with a really good idea for automating the entire article writing process… Instead of having to type everything out, all people had to do was click a button and they had a full blown article in a matter of seconds.
Now you could do a couple of things here… You could attempt to sell the software; or you could leave it on your website or blog for everyone to use for free, and it would become hugely viral. You’re opt-in list would grow by the thousands, you could basically create a 6 figure income just by promoting other people’s products.
…And it’s not like you have to create the code or software; you just have to have an idea and then share it with a programmer who will then design the program for you (at a price of course).
Then there would be the big payday of everyone wanting to advertise on your blog for $100+ per month because you’re getting so much traffic because your free tool is simply the best of its kind. So this scenario is one way you could sort-a-kinda relate everything back to the Internet Marketing realm; not saying that you have to be in that niche, just using it as an example.
OK, moving along… When Google moved up to the big dog status…
Want to Advertise with Google…?
April 15, 2000 (to the best of my knowledge) - Adwords was first created… Well, it wasn’t called adwords yet, it was just a small “Advertise with us” link on their main page.
Fast forward to present time and you’d be hard pressed to actually find someone who doesn’t know what Google is…
So how do you go from where Google started to where Google is now…? Well, it’s not very likely that it will ever happen to either of us but you can still use this to make your business better.
In my opinion, the main idea here is all about creative and helpful (and free) tools… Tools that have the potential to go hugely viral. But let’s think on a much smaller scale…
- You could just create a resource list about something that isn’t readily available
- Create an ebook that brings a new angle to the table… When Mike Filsaime first created the “Death of…” type ebook, it created a frenzy and he got loads of subscribers out of it. Of course then everyone came out with a “Death of” book and saturated the entire idea, which is the norm for any good idea.
- Create a simple script that is web based on your website or blog… This way whenever someone needs to use it, they always return to your site.
- Make good use of tell a friend scripts; have them on your website just like Facebook and Myspace have… This makes it that much easier for word to spread.
Alright that just about does it for this post… I just wanted you to see the true power of a personal referral and how fast word can really spread if you come up with something truly useful, and then allow people to acces it for free. Hopefully you try and implement some type of viral marketing into your online business and it pays off big time for you…
Good Luck!
Posted by Sean at 1:23am
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Building Up Web Traffic and What to Do with it!
June 10, 2008
Alright, today is all about teaching YOU how to build website traffic quickly, and more importantly, what to do with the traffic once you have it…
Step 1. Knowing Your Market
OK, what are you selling, what is your “niche” or topic… Once you have that figured out, all you have to do is find where the people in your market hang out. Here are a few good places to start:
Forums
Forums are good because people are just there to hang out and learn… The basics behind it are just helping out when you can, and commenting on other threads that interest you. For your own sake don’t spam or else you’ll get booted… Just talk like a normal person and have your signature file showing so that people can visit your website.
Articles
Personally, I hate writing articles, that’s why I outsource them… Have a smaller budget? Well you could write them yourself and then just submit them to article directories, or you could buy some plr (private label rights) articles and just outsource the re-writing of the articles; this is much cheaper.
SEO
What a pain this is… Actually it’s not that bad, you just have to make a consistent effort to add new content to your website or blog each week or every few days. There is always a lot of talk about duplicate content; I tend to lean towards making all of my content unique just to be safe.
Also try making similar type pages to double your traffic with “double listings”… This is where you see a link in your search engine results with another indented link right below it; yeah, this can increase your traffic by leaps and bounds…
I feel like not enough people know how to do this so I posted two videos that were done a little while back by the stompernet crew… Don’t worry I’m not trying to promote them; this product was sold out months ago, just watch the videos and learn from them.
If you’re short on time then the basics are just to create similar web pages or blog posts with very similar titles and body text… You can do this with articles too.
Social Networking & Viral
I put these two together because viral marketing is your greatest tool when it comes to social networks like Facebook and Myspace… Instead of advertising to your entire friends list (which will only leave you with zero friends), you can create a helpful ebook or even a helpful tool that people in your niche can use…
I’ll continue this list in another post, this should be enough to get you started for now… Let me know what you think.
Posted by Sean at 11:45pm
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What do you use articles for?
June 10, 2008
I was just going through a couple different websites and saw a few mass distribution services for articles… They were talking about seo this and that, and it got me thinking…
Are article distribution services for instant traffic? Or are they just simply for back links…? Some will probably say both but I think it’s more along the lines of back links. In my opinion, if you’re just going for instant traffic to send to a squeeze page then you’re better off writing a ton of articles per day and submitting them to ezinearticles.com.
Seeing how ezine articles gets around 5-7 million visitors every month, no other directory comes close, so you really only need to worry about that one…
On the other hand if you have a blog or website that you’re trying to get ranked high in the search engines, then I definitely suggest trying out some of these mass submission services.
Posted by Sean at 6:41pm
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