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Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill…But Dan & Jennifer are Making a Freaking' Fortune

As a passionate advocate of the power of the pen (and pixel), I'm always on the lookout for great sites that sort of embody what I believe makes for a stellar user experience – and exemplifies great marketing to boot: Great content, good design, (for a content heavy site) good flow, lots of user engagement and interactivity, and a great PASSION for the topic at hand clearly evident by the content creators. And askdanandjennifer.com is simply a stellar example of what good content will do coupled with a couple shrewd self promoting ( and in this context, I mean that in the best possible way) site owners who obviously love talking about SEX, which is, the central theme of the site. (And one of the few sites with half naked women and lots X rated content I can tell my girlfriend I really AM looking at just for the articles..:-)

The truth of the matter is, if you want to be successful online, and can tolerate some risqué content as part of the learning curve, you would be well versed in checking out how they're doing it, from a solid magazine theme masking a simple Wordpress blog, to heavy video "tutorials",(nothing is x rated of course, but it is adult. so please heed this if you are not comfortable) to lots of good, seamless linking structure between related topics, good use of categories, affiliate programs recommendations on the backs of their own established expertise, rotational advertising offers to offsite sponsors, polls, good solid KEYWORD FOCUSED article title designed to target long tail phrases that have good volume and low competition, they've got it all covered and do it VERY well.

Of course sex is a huge marketplace online, and this is MAINSTREAM sex talk that straddles the line between self help and "dear penthouse". ( Which I also read for the articles)

Again, if you want to learn how to be successful online the simplest path to prosperity is creative emulation, find people who are doing it well and mimic their blueprint.

Not all markets have the cache and gravitas of porno pillow talk, but I can tell you from first hand experience that I publish several sites in this market, not nearly as well ( because truthfully…no one wants to see me talking about sex on youtube, my idea of foreplay is a couple of bong hits and the WNBA on sports center) but I check them out regularly for interesting ways to integrate content that has good user interest on their site and weave similar articles into my own. You can do the exact same thing in just about every market, and be mas or menos equally as successful as the marketplace allows and can afford, in combination with your commitment, passion and desire to contribute to the community at large.

What would I change? I would add a simple opt in overtop their rss feed, a free report in addition to their great content i.e. ( 7 mistakes people are making with their feather whip in the sack or something..:-) and build a list on top of the RSS subscribers. (Which they may indeed have…but the list that I did find on their site is an expired offer, i.e. – no active list when I tried to sign up). They could and should have a list of tens of thousands, and a weekly mailing with make them an additional mint.

I would also, and this is just a matter of personal taste, think about maybe changing the show to Jennifer and Jacqueline – or Jasmine and Jennifer or something more Howard Stern eqe. I'm sure Dan is a really nice guy and all, but after watching the episode where he discussed his nipples being unusually sensitive, I've developed a strange involuntary facial tic which I'm sure would go away if she found another party partner.

But overall, before you spend a dime on another over priced DVD course that won't give you half of the real world intelligence that you need to do this successfully, check them out and find a few simple things that you can learn, and incorporate into your OWN marketing machine. Remember, this is a simple Wordpress blog that a year ago I don't believe was much of anything…if even up at all. Now they are a veritable force to be reckoned with across a number of easily measurable and profitable metrics, the biggest being their tremendous popularity, Dan's sensitive nipples notwithstanding.

(Check out their rate sheet for ad spend and see if you couldn't live with just that income alone on your next WP install..:-)

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Since posting a lot of the article marketing experiments last month, I've gotten a whole lot of questions about the intelligence you can glean from utilizing articles in your overall site building mindset...simply as a baseline metric to figure out what works well, and what does not.  Interestingly while conventional direct response wisdom will tell you that what works in one market will work well in another, my own experience as has been quite the opposite.  Human nature may certainly never change from market to market, but the message you use to seal the deal oftentimes very much does. 

John emailed me last week and asked ( and paraphrasing a bit for brevity..:-)

" How Can I tell if my articles are good?"

I can empathize with this question because, like me, I believe all of my articles dress well, and have a good sense of humor.  But that still hasn't stopped Megan Fox from threatening a restraining order if I keep sending flowers on special occasions.  The truth of the matter is this - the marketplace will TELL you whether your articles are good, or need to be improved in fairly short order.  How?  Are you they being opened - yes or no?  Are you getting traffic once they are (is the resource box converting)  Are your landing pages converting the traffic that they send…yes or no?  It's all reasonably simple stuff, and if you set baseline points for each campaign - i.e -these 10 articles should get 10,000 views in aggregate - I would like 2000 new eyeballs in front of my offer, and - considering this affilate program converts at X, or the adsense/YPN ads on my page are worthY - the totality of this campaign, if it performs AT expectations - should be Z, and that is worth the expenditure of time and effort to knock them out.  Of course if you are list building, or simply using all of the individual parts of the campaign to measure the individual anatomical "correctness" of a larger body of work, the monetary gains most likely are far less important at this stage and you are most likely more concerned with simple intelligence….in which case, often times getting shitty results is preferable as you'll learn a lot more, and have greater incentive to refine, rework and rejuvenate your efforts when the curtains open for real.

As I've recently posted ( and shared more with others privately) some of the facts, figures and screenshots of article marketing campaigns that have been highly effective, let's take a few minutes and look at some more recent ones that have been atrociously bad…and then see what we can learn.

 What is interesting to note about this particular campaign is the results totally contravene previous tests I have done in other markets using long paragraphs of resource boxes that appear to be woven into the body of the article - versus your more standard fare "click here to learn more about x" sort of approach. Not only did this totally surprise me, but the huge SPREAD between views on the headlines did as well, with the lower figure being represented by my typical long flowery sorts of headlines - " six sensational, sexy secrets to do x" sort of approach - vs - a more stormin' Normin - " do X in six easy steps". 

Had I not tested this out first, I would have gone with the more overstated, sensational title with each one - as I have a terrible habit of saying in 14 words what most likely could have been said equally as effectively in 5. ( Which my shrink attributes to a slightly meglomaniacal personality problem, a deluded sense of self importance and the remnants of some bad Peyote in Costa Rica back in 1998.)

And these results below, from the same general campaign, are more in line with the general sort of range or margin you expect to be working with - generally consistent on the views, which reinforces the use of more subdued headlines as these all did - and while there is a gap in some of the resource box CTR, even a 10% spread on numbers this low (still less than a month old I believe) aren't goign to be alarming or cause for a major re-working of the resource box, although I'll obviously tweak them to run closest to the top performing one.  (although in this case I do believe all three were the same)

There are some MUCH more interesting things you can do in this venue, and some darker shades of grey ways you can up the ante a bit in terms of testing, tweaking and tickling out the profit margins you NEED to make on each one of these campaigns…but I'm not going to post it here, as my good friends at ezinearticles.com do stop by on occasion..:-)  I will however, be putting it up in a pdf in the FREE STUFF section within the next week or so, so that if you haven't yet tested the warm and welcoming waters of the playing on the ecological edges of right and wrong in the HUGELY self grandiose world of internet marketing ethics, you can start on your next article marketing with my blessing..:-)

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I'm working on some exciting things WAY off of this blog…so I apologize for not posting more stuff, more often. Hopefully there remains enough interesting stuff on here to keep everyone who is stopping by well engaged with entertaining and informative content!

A few changes are coming….I will be offering a whole host of downloadable blueprints and process maps ( which I will try to make as linearly oriented as possible, albeit that ain't exactly my writing or thinking style..:-) which I truly believe will be ALL you need to start making real money, right now…and pretty easily to boot. I'm also going to be offering a whole bunch of new and exciting personal coaching services that are simply guaranteed to take whatever income you ARE making online, and exponentially increase it simply by letting me get by grubby fingers into your marketing mindset - and offer my own improvements. I believe this will some of the most cost effective coaching offered ANYWHERE online for someone with my skill set - and if you aren't sure what that is, ( or is not.:-) I invite to simply read the cacophony of content freely available and make up your own mind.

This will be a "for hire" situation with varying degrees and levels of services, all of which will be somewhere up there on the nav bar in an appropriate place - i.e- coaching, fees, etc. ( of which I have been reluctant to put up for some time…yet I'm getting so many inquiries and without having a menu of options, it's sort of uncomfortable (and poor planning) to have to throw out seemingly arbitrary numbers to those who are asking.  There will remain tons of evolving free stuff on here, as I only expect the coaching will be requested by a very small ( but smart..;-) subset of the readership.

All of the Craigslist posts are now available for download. You can simply dial then up, and pull them down to your own machine, print them out and read them offline if you are so inclined. (I'd recommend reading a book - but hey, I'm flattered if you do)

Lastly, I'm working on some new direct response, article marketing, SEO oriented campaigns for some niche sites we are working on with more screenshots of some good intelligence you can glean from these sorts of things that is incredibly easy to implement for yourself, and infinitely valuable from the standpoint of informing your choices ( and amping up your conversions) with what and how you roll this stuff out on a larger level, when you do. As is almost always the case, the results shocked me a bit, with some minor copy edits pulling 600% better than the control resource box, headline style, etc. I'll probably get to those today or tommorrow and post them asap.

I will also be posting some of the internet marketing related articles on this site (most of these campaigns are FAR, far away from the online marketing space..which is actually where you will have the most success - (non income opp stuff is far easier to get eyeballs in front of than the make money at home crowd) but the ones that are - i.e- "selling" my own stuff, my Craigslist info, etc I will post here so you can get an idea (many have asked) about the best way to tone and tenor article marketing posts that are in the entrepreneurial spaces.

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