♫♫♫ OIO Publisher is Great…But, no Longer Free
Get Good Karma, Baby! If this is your first visit...why not subscribe to my RSS feed and make sure you stay up to date with killeronline marketing tips, tricks and tweaks I dare you to find anywhere else for FREE!
I had a great response on last weeks post on oio publisher - ( the ad management platform plugin I use on this site and several others) as it is really a turn key, simple solution for taking a complete online newbie and giving him or her the tools neccessary to immediately plug in ( no pun intended..:-) to not only a great piece of software that allows ANYONE to immediately purchase and place an advert on your site 24 X 7 ( provided the spots aren't filled ), but also into a growing and maturing marketplace of advertisers (theoretically) eager to drop some bucks on your blog. And a lot more too….And I'm hoping that some of you took my advice and signed up for it last week because according to the email I got from the developer a few minutes ago….He's has upgraded the software to V 1.4 and is now charging a one time fee (37) to use it. Anyone who already is a member ( like MOI) doesn't have to pay a cent - so I'm hoping that is you, too. (more…)
Karmic Coaching & Consulting: Empowering People Through Service, Information and Opportunity
Karmic Coaching is coming back..:-) ( And no - for the odd stray Google search on "karma" I'm getting - please don't send another email about Tarot Cards, - I told you twice - Uranus is in deep trouble ) For the rest of you who are here to make more money - stay tuned for details - this is not the free variety and not for everyone - but for those of you who really want to take your marketing to the next level - or, if you just starting out and simply want to leap frog the learning curve, I'm going to work my rear end off to see that you do. (more…)
More Easy Affiliate Marketing Strategies: Making Bucks with BubblePly
I actually got an email ( or two) about this the the other day, and checked it out last night - and it is actually a pretty exciting way to quickly and easily "brand" online videos to your site, service or even affiliate re-directs for EASY commissions - it's called BubblePly, it's free - and essentially, it makes the process of adding, or embedding your message into online videos dummy simple. ( I had a fairly detailed post on this general concept last month - this tool works PERFECTLY with those strategies, and you can more or less get started in 5 minutes.
Essentially all you need to do is paste any video URL you want to work with into a little code box on their main page - this will take you to (more…)
Why People Fail to Make Money on Craigslist: Desconstructing A Real Life Ad
(photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/gypsyrock/)
I was looking at a few different potential categories to post to a few minutes ago for a new affiliate offer, and was checking out some of the ads that were already running for similiar products in that market. And this sort of coincides with what I've been saying on here forever - what other people who use CL successfully have been saying forever - and what people who aren't making one cold slippery nickel while busting their asses on CL have been missing forever: It's all about the copy. No more, no less. You can make a few bucks on Craigslist on sheer volume, but you'll make MUCH more in far less time by writing good, clear, compelling copy before you ever even get a sniff of planning your posting protocols. ( cities, frequencies, etc) (more…)
Get Good Karma Delivered Daily!
After a fair amount of thought, I decided to change up a little bit the way I am updating both my site content as well as my "subscriber list". In theory, and in most markets that I play in, as well as in almost all of the consulting advice I offer, my first, foremost and unwaivering recommendation to ANYONE getting started online is to start collecting names. Build a list. Offer good, solid, actionable content and keep in touch with your subscribers often.
Clearly, this isn't big news. Everyone does this - (some to the destructive detriment of both their reputation and their subscribers). I have many different lists, in many different markets. But - as those who are on mine for this particular site can probably attest - I RARELY send anything out at all. Because (more…)
More Easy Ways to Make Money From Your Blog: Free Advertising Solutions
( Photo Credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)
Over the last week or so, I've gotten a few more questions submitted about making money with a blog - which on the surface seems like a pretty easy thing to do, especially in the affiliate marketing space, right? Note - that does not mean INTERNET marketing space - a much tougher slog in my opinion, and well worth staying away from if you are just starting out. Why? Because for the most part, you are just going to get caught with your pants down and your hand in the cookie jar, which is quite an uncomfortable position to be in especially if you look bad naked. I can spot someone who doesnt' have a clue who is passing him or herself off as "expert" of one type or stripe from a mile and a half away and I'll bet you can too. So make your bones as they say selling the low hanging fruit - ( Clickbank products, contextual advertising, Commision Junction, Azoogle, etc) and when you are pretty sure you can walk the walk, jumping in with the proverbial Internet Marketing tips sort of site is ok, and par for the course. (more…)
How to Make Money Blogging and Other Miscellaneous Musings
How to Make Money with an Affiliate Blog: A quick start primer on getting started with an affiliate product blog
Ok boys and girls– sorry for not posting anything new in the last week and a half or so – with Thanksgiving just passing, and my sister getting married this past Sunday ( and now honeymooning in St. Barts with a tremendously cool and smart guy I’m excited to welcome into our family) – 
I have been inundated with fun family stuff…which has provided a welcome reprieve from thinking about Craigslist, blogging, article marketing, PPC and everything else that keeps my rear end glued to a chair 12 hours a day.
I’ve got a few good questions over the last week or so – half a dozen odd ones – and few people who simply filled out the contact form and just asked for “ some good ideas”. Let’s take a look at what Elizabeth asked earlier on tonight, and see if we can’t point her in the right direction to starting to make some easy and quick cash out of the gate with a free blog ( or two). My reply is posted immediately following her question.
Thanks for getting back to me. I wouldn't mind if you posted things on your site. If it works, then it is worthy of posting, and all the better for me. 
I paid for a set of e-books from someone on blogging. I don't normally do that (very limited funds). It was $27, and it seems like it is going to cover all the areas I have been wanting to learn about. I can read through those, come up with something, and then have your help defining it all more, if that would help. I have read, maybe even at your site, about how it's important to have a blog for one affiliate item that I am promoting so that the search engines have a clear picture of what the site is about. I need to choose a good product - I know there are a lot out there - and then write a review. I guess a squeeze page would be after that, and I know I would have to offer something free to get their info, and then I guess the affiliate page. I want to cloak the link and all that good stuff, and then figure out what newer things to do so that I can stand out and have some results. I guess I am going to get 21 days of automated emails from you, right? I will read them and get back with you when I have some questions. Thanks!
Elizabeth
Hi Elizabeth –
I wouldn’t worry about cloaking and all of that good stuff to start..:-) Very simply – you need to pick an offer, create content and promote it. It doesn’t have to be a review – and depending on your approach, you can very simply use a free blogging platform like Wordpress to serve as a “ planet” style site for your general niche – from where you would be promoting ( at least to start) one very specific product that you picked at the very beginning of the process.
Very simply – If I were you ( and I do this all of the time myself) you need to go out and identify some good content sources ( i.e. – RSS feeds/video content/polls/articles/rating and commenting systems on your site, etc ) to quickly and easily fill your site with content that will make it appealing and interactive to your customers.
Submit your site to as many relevant, human edited directories as you can find ( directories that manually check the submissions to ensure the sites aren’t spammy sites – the links you will get are far more worthwhile) Don’t run ads or opt in forms on your pages when submitting to these directories, wait until you are listed and then you can swap back your more salesy material – this is especially easy if you are using widgets, etc for affiliate banners, text links, etc which can be quickly integrated ( or removed) from your template – I would write a series of articles and submit them to the directories pointing back to your site on your niche – use internal pages of your site for the links rather than the home page which will help with SEO – as well as conversions on the affiliate product – i.e. – if you do a review style article that converts well on the product – send the links to this page – you can alternate this from an SEO standpoint both from within the resource box in the directories – as well as rotating the article “page” title on your site as well which will also help longer term SEO rankings.
I would utilize press releases to alert the PR directories that you are out there – find an angle and write a release – i.e. – if you are selling a diet affiliate product on your site – write a press release about the cumulative effect of the average weight gain during the holiday season has on early mortality rates, heart attacks, etc – you can do same for link baiting – i.e. – the “Kris Kringle Cholesterol Crisis: 7 ways Christmas is killing you” – or whatever it is you are promoting – health/wealth/relationships/etc – all can be swapped in and out with this sort of thing.
Blogging just boils down to on site content and external links with a a little bit of SEO awareness in your keyword usage – I would focus my keyword attention to article titles – that is sufficient for your purposes – submit feed to the RSS directories when you create your site - and your posts to Pingoat after you write them – and very effective for me – submit EACH post manually to Google’s blogsearch directory, I have found many of my posts are indexed within hours and ranking for my article title simply by submitting here.
Use the social networks judiciously – don’t’ overdue the digg/delicious/propeller/reditt submissions as they will give you a lot of ego traffic, but not much in terms of conversions – if you are going to submit a lot of social network stuff, make the on page offers more universal things that everyone would like – i.e. – if you are selling a dog product on the affiliate side ( organic dog food for example) you might submit a funny compilation of dog videos visa vi a Splashcast channel as I’ve illustrated in previous posts, and then monetize the video and site sidebars with some sort of “ are you killing your dog with Purina?” offer for a better, healthier pet product, these are really the only types of offers that have converted well for me from social network traffic – ( you have to find products that transcend and distract the “cynical I” and push emotional hot buttons with the web 2.0 sort of traffic in my experience - otherwise you are wasting a lot of time and effort )
Stumbleupon is a great place to promote your stuff - and you can use free services like ONLYWIRE to automate and expedite the process of getting bookmarks and incoming links on your new posts.
If I were you – every affiliate offer I promoted to start would have at least one free e book to offer as an enticement for someone to signup for your list – while squeeze style pages will out convert this straight away for sign ups – I would build a sidebar or header style opt in form into your blog that offers a freebie giveaway from the affiliate vendor in exchange for their email address/contact etc – upon opt in they get the freebie – you get the name – and you can re-direct them immediately to the affiliate offer or keep them on your site for more content, etc – it’s up to you. In the “ work at home” market for example – you might want to look at site build it ( SBI) as a model for this sort of thing from an affiliate standpoint, they “give” you so much material to “gift” your prospect with, and do so much of the selling for you, all you really have to do is get them over to their site with your cookie to start making some money. I would look for and find as many analogous affiliate offers with this model – there are plenty out there. ( or just promote SBI if you haven't picked a product yet - they convert well and are very popular)
If you haven’t before – use the “flock” social networking browser for your blogging – I have built entire sites using flock’s “blog this” function – which lets you incorporate and strip out text/pics and perfectly format, link and attribute the content to the source material which is a very white hat way of building good, solid content that your visitors will like – as well as those you are “quoting” as they are being attributed and linked appropriately per your post – ( which theoretically is providing them with good, solid incoming relevant links as well ) and in combination with your own articles, press releases, RSS feeds, etc – ( and some more sophisticated aggregation tools which you may not quite be ready for – like feedwordpress, datafeeds, etc ) you can build big sites quickly that are designed around content, yet are affiliate marketing beasts behind the scenes..:-)
Again – if you are totally just starting out, I would heavy up on article submissions to outside directories like Ezinearticles.com, they are free to do and require only a time investment. You can really do quite well simply by doing this alone. In my experience – this is the absolute easiest way to get started making money in a new niche – and you can always take the very same articles and re-write them a little bit and put them on your site as well – and then follow the above process to get incoming links from social networks, other blogs, etc – on the very same content. Also – if you are looking for something to give away – your articles make for a very nice enticement to use in addition to the freebies offered by the affiliate vendor.
Lastly – in my experience – just get out there and do it – I wouldn’t buy too many 27 dollar e books as I haven’t come across ONE yet that has been worth it. Unfortunately the perilous pursuit of perfection is usually the enemy of achievement in trying to make money online – picking the perfect choreographed approach to tying it all together rarely works quite as well as it looks in the cookbook. But if you build lots of good quality pages that help, inform and educate people about the problem your product fixes – you should have no problem at all making money – and doing it pretty quickly!
( Pick good products though – find ones that have good testimonials, good network earnings, EPC numbers in Commission Junction – gravity/popularity in Clickbank, etc – and you will do well )
And I think my 21 day email sequence poops out at day 7 or something – I’m sorry – but I really have to re-visit it or take that down I guess…as a lot of people are probably wondering what happened a week and a half in! But I’m posting a lot of the ideas here anyway – so just stay tuned ..:-)
Thanks and best..:-)
Ian
How do I Make More Money Online? More Karmic Q and A
Here is a free email consultation I did over the last few day for Sully. He has a lot of good stuff going on, differents irons in the proverbial fire and was just sort of looking for some feedback on where might be a better direction to focus his primary efforts and online business building energies. I emailed him back a short overview of some of the ways I would approach his particular markets and where I might focus a bit differently. I removed the links to his specific sites, as I am always uncomfortable giving people's specific information out on mine - although he seems like a very nice guy and didn't seem to mind. Sully and I have subsquently discussed doing a project together as well on the basis of some of the things we covered in an email following this one.
I do believe that this is a good " consultation" for lack of a better word to post, because it seems to address some of very same issues a lot of people ( including myself) struggle with on a daily basis - finding the time, energy and acumen to do EVERYTHING we want to do online. I have the ability to outsource some of my workload, but lots don't - and it can get overwhelming quickly. ( as it does for me. ) I recently wrote something for a directory submission that I don't think the problem with achieving tremendous success is related to A LACK of really good ideas - rather, it has more to do with HAVING SO MANY that your efforts become diluted and your results suffer as a consequence.It's like a relationship - you can think it's a good idea to juggle 10 girlfriends simultaneously, and somewhere in Hollywood heaven it might appear like this is a pretty attractive route to go. But in reality - you end up simply having 10 bad relationships. It's far more profitable, fun and rewarding to have one REALLY good one at a time.
Or at most - two or three…;-)
Anyway - here are Sully's questions below and my responses immeditately thereafter at the bottom of the post. If any of these are areas you are struggling with as well, I hope this helps your efforts as well. I would like to apologize in advance for the annoying {product removed} and {xyz} references when addressing the specific name of his product and the software whose user experience it enhances - I obviously don't want to compromise any of his future efforts - and while not a huge deal, I think erring on the side of caution is always a better approach.
Hi Ian,
>
> This sounds great! I don't mind if you identify me in the
> testimonial, that's up to you. Right now I'll give you a quick
> overview of what the different aspects of my business are.
>
> 1.) Lead Generation: I have an account with CPAEmpire.com as well as
> Azoogle.com I post ads in Craigslist under the "small business"
> category, and "services - financial" category. The category I choose
> depends on what I'm selling. In the past I've had very slight results
> with a few cash advance offers. I get decent traffic to each offer,
> usually around 200-300 clicks, but very few of them convert. I've
> been using CPAEmpire.com, and what I do is search for an offer that
> seems to be pretty easy to convert, such as college comparisons.
>
> 2.) Web Design: I do small projects for web design. Usually a family
> friend or someone needs a site and I'll help them out with it. Since I
> can't charge too much for this kind of work and its very tedious and
> time consuming, I try to keep away from this.
>
> 3.) SEO/Link Building - I'm working on getting more SEO/Link Building
> business. Right now my site {Link Removed for Privacy}is almost
> up. I am looking to focus on this since I can outsource the link
> building to my siblings. I would like to advertise this business on
> Craigslist among other places. I know a thing or two about SEO, I'm
> no expert at it, but I'm sure I can get a page ranked higher than it
> was before for its targeted keywords.
>
> 4.) Early in 2007 I wrote a marketing guide about how to use
> [product-removed.com to advertise products. {Link Removed}
> Since, then {product-removed} has kind of went downhill in its SEO capability.
> The guide is still useful for other advice, but I would say it is
> outdated ever since [product-removed} started falling off of Google rankings.
>
> 5.) PPC - I have sold Clickbank products and Pherlure with PPC ads,
> and made a little cash. Here is an example of a landing page I used
> for Pherlure {Link Removed - Pictures of Hot Women Here:-) I
> would make about 50% or more profit from my ad expenditure with this
> landing page. I stopped all of my PPC campaigns after my business was
> getting too disorganized.
>
> 6.) WSO (Warrior Special Offer) - I have sold products at
> http://www.warriorforum.com This is usually a pretty quick way to
> make a few bucks. I've sold a PLR guide on the PlayStation 3, my
> {xxx} marketing book was a big hit when it first came out. Since
> then I haven't used it much.
>
> I have so many info products on my computer that it would probably
> take a lifetime to go through them. There are lots of ideas that I
> try to implement and of course some work out and others don't. Income
> fluctuates from month to month, on a really good month I might make
> XXXXk from all of the above, most months are YYYk. Well that's the
> jist of my business, if you have any questions or need clarification
> let me know. Thanks a lot for your help Ian !
Sully -
Here are my initial thoughts per your current projects:
1) What I have found works best on Craigslist for me, and per my longer term
business goals - I would simply drive everyone to a page whose primary
purpose is to give something away in exchange for their opting - in, ie I
will focus on affiliate programs that have good solid products, in
conjunction with good lead generation tools, freebies, etc - and simply use
these as an enticement to get the name. If I'm selling a credit repair
book, for example - I drive them to a page that simply shows the image of
the free ebook they are about to get - get the name - and redirect the
"thank you " page right to the merchant - hence I now have their email -
they have the free ebook from merchant - and are now on merchants sales with
my cookie. This is obviously pretty standard stuff, but my conversion rate
has skyrocketed here per my ability to "follow up" with each respective lead
from CL visa vi my sequence or single broadcasts ( ie - I have about 800
credit repair leads straight from CL that I will send a post thanksgiving -
"Santa says fix your credit for christmas" kind of incentive - of which had
I done a simple "one and done" offer from CL ad - I would be losing all of
that potential revenue. For you - you might also want to consider making
your affilaite choices similarly - and essentially just giving away a lot of
free stuff to these lists - (i.e - and choosing affiliates which give you
this flexibility out of the gate)driving each sequence in the email back to
a page that has contextual ads and the affilaite offer, in combination with
the freebie you are offering them per this pie piece of the email sequence.
Again - this takes the problem of low converting CL "leads" ( which is just
a euphamism on CL for people more than happy to click on your ad) and drives
them into a sales funnel - from which you should be able to monetize at
least a third of them either through selling the CL product they initially
clicked for ( lower percentage) or simply clicking through on your other
smaller contextual offers on page.
By the way - even using the above squeeze page approach - I do convert a
fair amount ( low percentage but enough to make it worthwhile) of the
opt-in's immediately into affiliate sales - straight up from the opt in
re-direct to merchant ( as I was telling someone on phone today - I've had a
bunch not even OPEN the free ebook ( or email ) I sent as the enticement to
opt in - but rather purchased the product immediately from merchant.
2) I would kill the webdesign for family and friends..:-)
3) Offer a white paper on link building - if this is where you want to
focus, very simply pre-sell it with statiscal research on directory
submissions and search engine rankings and how the two will combine to
faciliatate a huge growth in income opportunity for existing web
business's - we know it does - and there are plenty of testimonials that you
would cull ( don't even have to be about YOUR service..:-) that simply
pre-sell the direct relationship between lots of incoming links and better
SEO, with it's natural bloodbrother - more money in sales, product
recognition, services, etc. I think you could probably do well testing this
both ways - 1) straight up directory submission service ad - vs 2) a free
link building guide and see which one of the two converts better - my guess
from my own experience, is you will get more ( eventual) eyeballs from the
free download. Of course you could offer this everywhere - make it a viral
giveway - ie - "10 biggest mistakes that you are making with your directory
submissions" sort of thing - we know that people will grab this from forums,
blogs, etc - I would put somethign like that in the sidebar of your site as
well and just pre-sell the hell out of your services through educating
people about the very real benefits of directory submissions. Obviously you
could incentivize this a million ways from Sunday, too - you would have to
figure out how that would conform best with your business. As far as doing
it on CL goes - in my experience you simply have to do these things on a
magnitude of scale proportionate to your goals - if you are selling
nationwide - you post accordingly.
4) I would actually do something similar with your {product -removed} ebook - you could
either "re-launch" it with a whole new set of "rules" and tips to
circumvent and transcend the deletrious effects of the "xyz Slap" - you
could probably add a chapter or two, change a little bit of the content and
re-offer it and do quite well, as lots of people are stuck using {xyz} as
they don't know any better, there is a HUGE market there still - come to
think of it - You could probably give it away on CL as well as a free primer
and put three or four topical and relevant affilaite links that are
complimentary to {xyz} marketing, ie - autoresponder, nichebot keyword
tool, etc……Offer it as a - "this product was selling last year and it's
my Christmas gift to you"….sort of thing, even on CL - that would probably
work as lots of these people are freebie seekers. Or you could give it away
as an incentive when people sign up for directory submissions - OR even
better - if your siblings are willing to do web design - sell it on
Craigslist for 97 bucks ( add some content and an audio or something ) and
offer 1 free {xyz} built with ebook - which will take your sister or brother
one hour - you pay them half ( or much less if it was my sisters..:-) and
pocket the difference. I'm a big believer in giving stuff away, just
because it is the best enticement for people to come back and spend money
with you later - plus, even if not - the law of large numbers takes hold and
you really can't lose if you've got affiliate links in the offer, as long as
they are relevant, well intentioned and genuinely helpful, people will
naturally utilize these services and you make a passive income on the back
of this alone. ( I would also bundle in other ebooks if you have them - I'm
not sure what you meant by "have lots of ebooks on my hardrive" - wasnt'
sure if you meant your OWN stuff, or that which has been written by others -
but if you have your own stale stuff -bundle it and repackage it as one big
offer. I don't know if you looked at Clickbank for your {xyz} product -
but if you can write, and like to create products - which it appears you
do - this is simply the best way to make some quick cash.
( Plus - I would raise the price beyond 17 bucks either way - add some
audio, and interview with you about things not in the book, etc - 60 minutes
of audio raises the perceived value a ton, has minute incremental cost and
you could sell that same ebook for 47 instead)
5)Lastly - If you are making a straight 50% and up profit on your PPC ads
for that particular market, you need to continue to run those ads! Rather
than pulling it down, I would simply expand on that one component of your
businss as long as it's making you a profit - I would actually try to both
add more keywords, as well as try to drive down the CPC if you can with more
targetted landing page - maybe add some longer tail keywords into the mix
and - to be totally honest with you - if that particular landing page is a
big part of the conversion success ( I thought about buying myself..;-) I
would simply write 20 articles using low competition keywords on that very
topic and send them directly to that page through the resource box - (i.e -
the bum marketing approach which has worked well for me for these sorts of
offers, even still today) which should make you a nice passive income for
months to come. What I would really do - actually - is build a series of
sites on this sort of topic ( one that has good converting products and
reasonably affordable keywords that convert on the PPC side) so in essense -
i would build three or four sites that are derivations of this niche - each
would be a wordpress blog for example, with an optin in on every page for
some sort of freebee - I would drive the PPC traffic to the most segmented
site relative to the keyword ( or you can use a silo page plugin or simple
static html site in similar fashion) which becomes very relevant from a PPC
standpoint and drives your costs dramatically lower, plus gets very good
natural traffic as well - and all converts on the main product which you
already know sells well from your PPC efforts.
( If it was an ebook - I would simply make my own for the whole network of
sites - throw it up on Clickbank, etc)
One more thing - and this doesnt' take any exceptionally sharp mind to
observe, but we are guilty unfortunately of the same mistake…Pick one
thing, and do it well! If I could tell you how many half baked, quarter
done projects I have cluttering my desktop and my mental landscape - like
you, it's a lot - and holds us all back..:-)
Anyway - hope this was some help - if anything doesn't make sense, let me
know!
Thanks and best..:-)
Ian
More Good Questions: Craigslist, Copywriting and Copyright
(Photo Credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)
Thanks to every one who has submitted good questions the last few days - and at this point, I have to sort of selectively post the ones that seem to be most univerally applicable to everyone who is reading ( seems a lot of people are arriving via Craigslist keywords and submitting CL questions, which is sort of interesting considering that is only a VERY small part of what I do - and not sure I am the best authority to answer a lot of them- but I appreciate the submissions anyway..:-) (more…)
Why Women Make Terrible Bum Marketers: Part 1 ( of Many more to come)
This really has nothing do with marketing advice ( ok, maybe it does a little bit ) but I have come to the distinct and decisive conclusion that women make absolutely terrible bum marketers. Now for those of you who ( thankfully) are blissfully unaware of online money making little monikers and so forth - bum marketing is essentially the process of churning out of large quantities of short informative articles designed, mas or menos, to drive boatloads of backsides to your niche marketing sites, obstinently for the purpose of making the money making process so easy, even a bum could do it. Now being the bleeding heart liberal type, and especially around Thanksgiving, I prefer to think of them as housing challenged but that is neither here nor there. One of the primary vehicles that a bum marketer employs to earn his ( or her) trade is the process of submitting these articles to sites with good page rank and trust, almost ensuring your highly focused, carefully keyword crafted article will catapult to the top of the search engines in short order gaining you fame, fortune and lots of page one SERP back links. For the most part - as Travis outlines in his four or five page free bummarketingmethod course ( which is well worth reading and does a much better job of explaining the process than my half hearted attempt above) this process does indeed work, and works very well.
But that has really nothing to do with my point here.
One of the best areas to write and submit articles on - especially on ezinearticles.com - is the love ,dating and relationships section. A good article here is guaranteed to get a lot of views on the SERP's and even on the directory itself, and ultimately, if you do your job right, is fairly easy to monetize with a good landing page, affilliate program redirect, or whatever it is that you are selling on your own site. One of the best ways to get ideas for your OWN articles - is to seek out and find the best and most widely viewed articles in the categories you want to attack. If you see an article has been viewed a lot, it is usually relatively easy to quickly cook up your own better version of the same article and unsurp the occupant of that spot with your own.
What I find sort of humorous is, you can ALWAYS tell the male bum marketers who are writing in a female voice or pen name. Obviously, far more guys are going to read an article about "what a woman wants in the bedroom" than they would if some guy named Joe wrote it. Of course though, you have to realize that Joe really is writing it, and just calling himself josephine. Which is all well and good, no blood, no foul - all fair in love, war and article marketing as the great saying goes.
What is really funny though - is you can ALWAYS tell when a woman is writing the articles instead. They tend to be much better, more detailed, and make far less mention of the fact that your girlfriend really likes chicken wings and football as much as you do.
But they also usually have this sort of Oprahesqe drivel that I really have a hard time reading.
"If you are dating a commitmentphobe, the first step for you is to acknowledge the truth: over his problem you have NO CONTROL. That is right - NO CONTROL. That means that you absolutely, positively, definitely, and certainly CANNOT FIX IT. No matter how patiently you wait, no matter how much you love him, and no matter how many times you tell him that it hurts you, his problem will still be there.
I will go a step further - you are helping him keep his problem. That is right - you are "enabling" him to continue with his fear of commitment. How? By loving him unconditionally minus a real commitment; by not having your own boundaries; by forgiving him and taking him back after break-ups without any real change on his part. The only reason to ever take him back is if he shows up with a ring, a proposal, and the desire to set a date for the wedding. Anything short of that merely hooks you back into the same old, same old."
I'm not even sure what any of that means? Do women really think like this? The only reason to take him back is if he shows up with a "ring, proposal and the desire to set a date for the wedding?" What kind of half assed advice is that for people in a relationship crisis? And this woman has all sorts of national awards and accomodations in her little resource box, CNN, FOX, Wall Street Journal, etc….My made up woman's PEN NAME is giving better advice to the ezine articles community on commitment phobia issues and I'm just making the shit up. I feel slighted that I'm not getting any media invites for what I think is some pretty damn good advice ( and a pretty good clickbank product for sale on my site ) as well.
For what it is worth - my articles have much better readership numbers, which does to show you that the ezine articles community is sophisticated and discerning with where they invest their reading material trust.
That's all for today..
More Advanced Ways to Use Video to Make More Money Online:
More Advanced Ways to Use Video to Make More Money Online:
Ok, I’ve received a few more questions regarding using video to make more money, especially as it relates to using Splashcast, which I think I’ve answered directly to the people who didn’t’ feel the previous post was clear enough. I would certainly encourage anyone who is having a hard time conceptualizing how to use Splash cast to make a few bucks, or even just to add another layer of sophistication to your existing stuff, go take a look at their site and see some of the really good channels, shows and monetization opportunities other people are putting out there.
Lets take a look at a few other simple things you can do to REALLY accelerate your earnings using video in the affiliate marketing sector, and this time – doing it not only WITHOUT any videos of your own, but without a WEBSITE either.
Let’s say you are promoting a fishing affiliate product you found on Clickbank. Ordinarily you would put up a site with good fishing content, grab a few RSS feeds, put up a banner or two and weave in your affiliate links throughout the content. The video strategy we outlined previously has you go out and set up a Splash cast channel for fishing, which gives you good entertaining content to keep your fishing site visitors comfortably engaged and interacting with your site and all is well with the world, right? Lets for a moment visualize that you haven’t’ quite made it that far and are sort of stuck in affiliate marketing no man’s land – you have a fishing product picked out, but no site and no clear strategy in how you are going to get started.
Here is a very simple way to test the affiliate product you want to promote, and do it VERY quickly and efficiently.
1) Go find 4 or 5 popular videos on Youtube related to fishing – and that are both popular and relevant to your affiliate product ( i.e. – Deep Sea Shark videos if your Clickbank product is on Fly Fishing would be a mistake..;-)
2) Download the Videos – ( if you don’t have one – just do a search for a program that will download directly from You tube )
3) Edit the Videos locally on your machine using something like Windows Movie Maker ( it’s free and comes with your PC) by very simply using a text frame overlay to add your domain name to the starting frame and ending frame of the each video. You might also want to add a short “ break” in the middle of the Vid with the same – i.e. – brought to you by “yourdomain.com”
4) Set your domain to redirect to the fishing affiliate program you are promoting using your affiliate ID – very simply either use either the re-direct offered by your Cpanel host, use php, JavaScript’s, meta-refresh, whatever it is that know how to do. ( If you don’t know how, very simply do a Google search for the code – it’s VERY easy to do – and if I can learn how to do it, trust me, so can YOU..:-)
5) Re-upload the video to youtube with the same tags, and descriptors as you found it. This is why you want popular videos that lots of people have already found entertaining or enjoyable ( note – funny IS ALWAYS good here!)
6) Your video is now going to get views and discovered the very same way that you found the original! Only yours is “branded” to you visa vi your domain overlay on the Video itself, which, when a percentage of the viewers type into their browser, will be expeditiously re-directed to the Click bank affiliate program you are promoting, with your cookie!
Dating offers work great for this, FUNNY stuff works great as well. Obviously you can be as creative as you want – a good idea, especially if you are doing funny stuff – is to have some of the text on the video you edited say – “ for even FUNNIER videos, visit www.myfunnysite.com, etc – in which case you would be sending them to YOUR site, not the affiliate program. ( Or you could simply have different text – i.e. – “ TO CATCH FISH WITHOUT LOSING YOUR PANTS, LIKE THIS GUY, visit www.BestFishingSecrets.Com, etc)
(Note: I have NOTHING to do with either of the two sites above - I just made them up - and checked a minute ago - they are LIVE sites that can thank me later for the free incoming link..:-)
If you make your own, syndicate your videos, i.e. – encourage other people to cut and paste YOUR vid’s on their sites, how quickly do you think your “ Viral Videos” are going to make you some real money? Encourage other people in your niche to put your edited vids on their sites, ( with your affiliate re-direct of course..:-) And they will. Everyone wants free content. You just gave it to them, helping them while at the same time, putting your affiliate link in front of the noses of any number of potential customers that you would NEVER have had the opportunity to connect with otherwise.
There are a thousand and one ideas like this – The above was recommended to me a few months back on someone ELSE’S site, and now I am sharing it with YOU! Any questions, be sure to ask!
How to Make Money With Online Video - Even if You Don't Have a Camera, or a Clue
I submitted this article earlier today to one of the online article directories, covering some of the basic elements of making money with a video blog, and how quickly you can really be doing this, and doing it well. The article is worth reading, especially if you aren't familar with creating a splashcast, which is a totally free service for hosting, publishing, aggregating and monetizing ( although this part you've got to figure out on your own..:-) online video. There are alot of these companies out there on the bleeding edge, doing a lot of very cool things, and splashcast does a few things very well for me that would be difficult and time consuming to do on your own.
1) They host all of the videos that you create - obviously saving a ton of bandwith and potential hosting cost (not unique - a lot of them do this)
2) You can embed html, pdf, powerpoints, text files, etc - right in the video. Why is this relevant? You can simply create little breaks between the video clips to offer product links, advertising opportunities, little messages that add unique and entertaining content, etc. A very nice option to have!
3)It is not only a great looking player with the usual aggregation options ( rss, email to friend, etc for huge VIRAL marketing opportunities) it can be incredibly segmented for very specific offerings per your demographic. For example - your main channel may be "Psychic TV" - but your individual shows can be broken down, within the player itself to be things like " Psychic Readings", " Become Psychic", " Psychic Books and History", etc. This way you can truly break down a marketplace into small chunks, through one main channel and also have the ability to offer very specific advertising opportunities - ie - "hey, for $100 a month you can advertise on my "psychic readings" show - which is one of 10 specific shows on my Psychic TV channel located at psychic.tv ( or whatever URL you are using to host this particular channel)
4)Lastly - and this is the most powerful element of this for me - you can simply collect all of the videos related to your market with pushbutton simplicity. As I outlined in the very basic article below, you simple tell splashcast to "fetch" all of the videos tagged with your keywords, it will go out, bring them into your interface and allow you to pick, prune and re-order the videos you want to use for your channel. You can import RSS items for an autoupdating channel as well based on the content on other publically available streams as well. I love it, and am betting you will as well.
I highlighted how easy it is to make money from one of these below as well - if you need more ideas, shoot me an email. In the meantime here is a channel I really like - ( this is how I discovered it in the first place) ====> ZenTV. They really aren't monetizing it because, well - I guess nothing would kill a site whose purpose is the quest for authentic purpose and meaning in life with a whole bunch of text link ads or advertising banners..:-) Most of these videos are aggregated from other providers as well - meaning, they aren't hosting them, or creating them, rather they are pulling them from other sources. Here is a client of mine who has a splashcast of their own stuff, a non - profit Police Organization who we took their existing videos and uploaded them, did a little light editing with Windows media maker and created a little show to "show off" some of the kids who participate in their annual charity races, etc. Their site isn't pretty - but the splashcast looks pretty good, and based on our analytics and feedback, the people who visit are watching, and spending A LOT more time on thier site - and for marketers like you and I - that is what we want. But for those of you who need to make some MONEY, simply apply the basic principles outlined above, and below - and you should have an income producing asset in less than 4 hours of total work to start. Enjoy!
How to Quickly and Easily Make Money with a Video Blog – Even if You Don’t Have a Camera or a Clue!
I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who wanted to turn his passion (a small but very active collector/hobbyist market) into a full time business from home. Having worked in a corporate setting for a long while, and with two small kids at home that he fears missing out in seeing them grow up, he decided he is ready to take the plunge and turn his hobby of twenty some years, into a bankable income. Knowing that this it the type of consulting work I do, he stopped over last week with a business plan in hand to gage my thoughts.
I loved most of his ideas, you could see the passion and tender loving care he had put into the process of coming up with the plan, but there was ( to me anyway) one major flaw: Out of a budget of approximately four thousand dollars that he had set aside for getting this up and going, he had almost 75% set aside for “video production and equipment” costs. I sort of scratched my head a little bit, and wondered what he had planned to film for three grand his first month in business?
He proceeded to explain that in his marketplace, video, especially online, was very hot, and a lot of the hobbyist sites that he visited had video and didn’t’ want to be left behind. So he was going to go out and buy and expensive camera and pay for a whole host of production work to get the same effect on his own site.
I sort of chuckled to myself and explained how EASILY it is these days to put up a fully INTERACTIVE and engaging video site, with no video camera, no expertise and without even having to have any videos of your own! There are any number of ways to get this done, and do it well, but even people who are really familiar with the popular video aggregation sites are by and large not doing it like this, so I will share it with you as well. Here is what you need to do, and it is not going to cost you ONE red penny.
Set up a “channel” for your niche market at Splashcast.net, which is a free and very powerful video service that not only will host your videos, put them into a killer attractive player that you can easily embed on your site, it will also aggregate all of the videos for your marketplace FOR you, simply by searching public media sources ( Like You Tube for example) for multimedia tagged with your keywords. Let’s say you are starting a fishing site: You would simply create an account, and either upload your own stuff to their servers, or much more likely for a newbie marketer, do a search for ALL media on You tube tagged “fishing”.
It will shoot you back a long series of thumbnail video images that you can review, and check for ones you want to include in your presentation. You can also embed your own html, pdf’s, power points and text files, for an infinite amount of ways to make your particular channel unique ( and monetized – think affiliate links to stores, free reports, re-directs and much more from within the player itself). Each player has an rss feed so that other viewers of your vids can embed them on their own pages, and even email the video link to their friends and subscribers. Talk about viral, wow! Or – what I like to do is simply create unique shows within my channel, so using our fishing analogy we might have individual shows on “deep sea fishing” , “fly fishing”, etc….This offers a whole host of segmentation possibilities that will not only cull more viewers, but also allows for unique advertiser approaches if you plan on monetizing your site through direct ads. ( Rather than Google, yahoo, etc)
I will leave you with this thought. If you are stuck on how to take that next step in getting your online business off the ground – you can have a single page site, with one large multi-media channel right smack in the middle featuring OTHER PEOPLES videos, and have it done in about 3 or 4 hours. People will come to your site, watch you stuff, and click on your ads, sign up for your list ( if you include one) and you are in business, out of the gate, and you can realistically do this from halftime of a bad game, to the final fourth quarter whistle, and be making money by the ESPN wrap up late Sunday night. I know because I have done just that, and more than once. No excuses, get going – you can do it, I promise!
Magnetic Marketing Magic: The Poetry of a Powerful Pull
(photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuenteshe)
I have a man crush on Dan Kennedy. He is not a handsome man, but his marketing mind is drop dead georgeous. If you havent' checked out his stuff, and unfortunately for many online entrepreneurs he is a name of no repute or recognition, his best work was ( in my opinion anyway) mostly done offline and maybe due to decreasing interest on his part, a bit behind him as well. The direct mail principles that he teaches are not his by orgin, but he has certainly perfected them as his own, and you wont' find a great online copywriter or marketer alive today that won't list him in some way as a direct, if not major influence. (more…)
Help! I need an Idea for Starting a Home Based Business that makes me money!
I often get funny, panicked or inspired emails from my clients or readers at odd times of the day ( or night). Fortunately for them ( but unfortunately for me) I am a hopeless insomniac who lives, breathes and loves talking about marketing related challenges. So as I sat on my laptop the other night at 2am trying to decide what to do next other than get some sleep, I got the following email from someone I had never met, never spoken to, or never heard from before.
That was it. And it was signed. So I’m looking at this and thinking, how exactly do I respond to a somewhat odd and ambiguous request at a time of night when most normal folks are blissfully unconscious and counting sheep? I thought back to when I first got started online, migrating from a successful career as an offline direct response marketing consultant, the internet was FAR more uncharted territory for business opportunities. But people are people, and no matter what the medium, a good marketing mind will ALWAYS find easy ways to help people get what they want and need – and in the process, get paid very well for it.
The easiest path? Find an affiliate product you have an affinity for. Know a lot about fishing? Find a fishing product to sell. Weight loss? Same thing. Then very simply identify your easiest sources of low cost traffic – and today, even monumentally different than even a few short years ago, the amount of FREE traffic that you can get from a diverse set of sources is tremendous. And very, very easy!
Social networking sites, peer file sharing networks and the large contingent of free content publicly available makes putting up your own video blog in an afternoon as easy as simply searching for videos tagged with your topic, cutting a little bit of code and pasting it on your site. Don’t have a site? Use one of the plethoras of free ones that will let you piggyback off their virtual rack space! Squidoo, Wordpress, etc – the list is longer than we have time to list. You can literally, with a small amount of ambition and a weekend of free time become a publisher of informative, educational and entertaining information that doesn’t’ even have to be yours! And if you are a little bit more ambitious ( and creative ) the things you can do in that very same weekend would make the direct mail marketers of yesteryear ( of which I was one! ) literally, go green with envy.
How about Craigslist? Talk about FREE traffic! Try doing the above and start posting interesting ads to showcase your content on craigslist – use a good mixture of content, ads and affiliate programs related to your niche, and if you are making money in three days, I’ll eat this article!
Lose Man Boobs Naturally: Say Goodbye to Your Big Blubbery Boobery Forever!
I'm a pretty big believer in the idea of defining moments in a man ( or woman's) life.
Those simple yet important ticks of time where something powerful comes in and pushes through that just makes sense and forces you to face the indelible truths that are stamped on your karmic passport through this cosmic crash course we call life on earth.
I’ve been lucky enough to have several moments of incredible clarity in my life - moments where (more…)
Craigslist Power Posting Pointers: Avoiding the Ghost of Christmas Present
Craigslist Power Posting Pointers: Avoiding the Ghost of Christmas Present
If you devote any appreciable time and effort to posting ads on Craigslist, you have most likely run into the decidedly unparanormal but incredibly annoying phenomena of “Ghosting”. Essentially, ghosting refers to the process whereby your ads appear to go live, show up green ( active )in both your account, as well as when you check the URL – yet, are nowhere to be found in the live, real time results in the CL section in which you posted. This is either Craigslist way of telling you your ads are alive and well in a parallel universe where you are incredibly rich and successful, or, they are just playing some sort of demented, passive aggressive mind f**k where you are being punished for over posting. (more…)
Supernatural SEO Blogging Software: Semiologic Pro Just Keeps Getting Better
I wrote and submitted an article earlier today to one of the article directories on the power of Wordpress, and it’s inherent ability to take a complete and utter online marketing newbie and having him or her creating a killer site in mere minutes – it really is unbelievable the flexibility in both form and function that Wordpress offers, and amazingly it is completely free…..
Signs You are Blogging Too Much: The existential Angst of an Overwhelmed Generation
(Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/tellumo/)
What was that famous quote from the Supreme Court Justice ( Potter Stewart) about pornography - " I don't know what hardcore porno is, but I know it when I see it." Or something like that right? ( he'll forgive me for paraphrasing )
So - first of all, you'll have to forgive me for not updating this as promised over the last week. I really wanted to get the making money with Craigslist podcast up - but I had two podcasting buddies go down with some rare version of late fall Ebola or another equally debilitating illness leaving me all alone to handle the audio by myself - turning what was going to be a conversation into a monologue. I will get to it asap - and if you are really struggling to get your ads posted on Craigslist, have no idea what you want to sell, can't find good affiliate offers, etc - drop me a note and I will respond to you personally with good actionable ideas, and of course, as always - free. (more…)
Reset the Buying Criteria: Miscellaneous Marketing Musings and Other Odds and Ends
Lesson #1: Reset the Buying Criteria
There really is so much dreadful, tedious and tired stuff out there that when you come across something that makes you take notice – well – it’s worth sharing with the group.
Most of the stuff I do tends to be in smaller niches having nothing to do with internet marketing and if you think the copy being kicked out by the “pros” is bad – just take a quick gander at some of the mom and pop markets…..Typically the small niche’s are much easier to stand out and dominate, and things that are old hat and yesterdays news for the grizzled SEO and online mogul set are very cutting edge and nuevoriche in these spaces. Which is nice because it makes me feel smarter. Plus – they tend not to strip your affiliate links – so it’s a much happier playground to tromp through for most of my day.
Now while not exactly a neophyte market – but I’ve been having a fair amount of good fortune (you’ll forgive the pun) lately in the Psychic Reading market where there is definitely a lot of big players – but I find, in general – lots of easy entry spaces for free traffic.
And tonight – I was looking to augment some of that free traffic with a little bit of PPC to test a few of the different affiliate programs I’m running on this small network of sites. Most of the PPC ads are as you would expect them to read and pretty consistent throughout the first page of results – " good, genuine psychics, XYZ cents (dollars) a minute – call now for your free reading/future revealed/etc ", etc, yada, yada.
Which was pretty much the direction I was going to go as well.
Shame on me.
Because here is an example of simple creative marketing, branding and essentially resetting the buying criteria for potentially an entire marketplace:
Certified Psychics
Registered with the US Government. Guaranteed Authentic. Confidential.
This is brilliant. In two lines they have managed to convey that their psychics are:
1) Certified
2) Registered with the US Government
3) Guaranteed Authentic
Notice how the “guaranteed authentic” immediately follows the US Government in the ad layout. What does this powerfully denominate to good taxpaying folks like you and I? Exactly. This group of Psychics is guaranteed to be authentic on account of the fact that they are registered with the US government!
And if you are going to pick an online psychic – regardless of your feelings about George W and crew – you have to admit – there is a certain reassuring feeling to knowing you are picking one that Dick Cheney personally has given the thumbs up to, right?
Not to be undone – if you link over to their site – rather than * Psychic Friends and Co * you find that they are actually the:
The American Association of Professional Psychics.
These my friends, are not your grandmothers Psychic Friends. They are unionized, pensioned and over insured. After all – they are an American Association, like the American Association of Pediatric Surgeons, Certified Public Accountants, or Beer Bong Hitters of America. (A real group by the way that I proudly served as vice chairman of international affairs throughout my collegiate years)
This is simply a perfect example of looking at your industry, making a few subtle positioning changes, and completely re-setting the baseline of qualification for everyone else.
If I’m going to be hiring a psychic tonight – I want to know if they are registered with the US government. If not – why not? Are they not good enough to be required to register? And if not – are they a member of the American Association of Psychics? Again – why not? This is now important to me – because of course, I want the best reading from the most qualified and capable psychic reader out there – not some fly by night operation.
Of course – forming your own Association is very easy to do… And registering your psychic skills is about as necessary as me registering my spinning wheel kick (that I’ve been practicing since karate Kid 2) as a viable deadly weapon. I’m sure Uncle Sam would take money and file my paperwork – but that doesn’t mean that the guy behind the counter ain’t rolling his eyes while I’m filling it out.
The lesson? Be honest - but creative! Establish yourself as an authority. People will believe you. Go the extra mile – think outside the box a bit.
Are you professional wall paper hanger? Why not form the East Coast Paper Hanging Alliance and make yourself president and CEO? Don’t think that adds a little gravitas to your business card or yellow page ad? Trust me it does.
I’ll tell you a quick story – a year ago I bought an expensive online marketing course from a guy who was awarded the * X medal of innovation and achievement * from some internet school of higher learning or whatever it was. I was impressed – he was a young guy and the plaque on his site was prominently displayed and quite attractive. I figured – “ hey – he obviously knows what he’s talking about, I mean – he won this big award, I’m sure I could learn a few things from him.”
It turned out the only thing I learned from the 12 hours of audio was when you are the only guy who signs up for a contest – they’ve got to give you the award even if you are a total ignoramus. I think it’s the law. Believe me, I checked.
In the meantime – find opportunities to reset the buying criteria in your industry. Change the rules. Make what you offer the only logical choice for a rational mind. It’s surprisingly easy – and done right – quite a bit of fun!
( I’ll let you know how the reading goes – I’m still on hold – apparently Condi Rice is hogging the line again )
Making More Money on Craigslist: A Step By Step, Audio Overview
Table of contents for Step By Step CL Audio Podcast
- Making More Money on Craigslist: A Step By Step, Audio Overview
Ask - and you shall receive..:-)
There will be at least 5 parts to this, maybe more depending on feedback, I will be very simply outlining the process map that I use to make profitable offers on Craigslist, the tools that I use ( which are primarily free ) and the various permutations of each approach ( one of the challenges of " power posting" on CL is you do sort of need to keep your eye on which way the wind is blowing - or you find yourself wasting a good part of your day on ads that " go green" but simply aren't running - or making you any money. )
But this really isnt' about Craigslist - CL is just a really good source for good free traffic, and on the back of the sheer volume of page views and eyeballs your offer will get if you are dillegent with it - but at the end of the day, these principles are the foundational elements of any good marketing effort that involves using * advertising * ( in this case for free ) to drive traffic to your site, service or offer.
Stay tuned. Should have the first piece of this up within 24 hours. And don't forget - if you have a specific question of conundrum, drop me a note and I'll try to address it in the podcast.
The Refuge Vow as a Marketing Mantra: The Problem of Picking the Proper Path
The Refuge Vow as a Marketing Mantra: The Problem of Picking the Proper Path
Here is an email that I exchanged with Joe earlier today ( and yesterday ) regarding his questions on getting started with marketing online.
If there is one thing I genuinely love – one sort of interaction that I really enjoy and would honestly do for free all day long if it was feasible– it’s the creative process of helping someone see possibilites and opportunities to change their lives for the better – be it simple life advice if I have it to share, some sort of spiritual nudge from a personal experience of my own – or more commonly on here – helping people see the “ entrepreneurial light “ through sharing ideas, experiences or whatever it may be to get them pointed in right direction. (more…)
There is no " You" in I: Overcoming the Involvement Obstacle
I've got a confession to make……
Maintaining this " blog " is hard work.
And not because of the technical issues, or topics to cover, or even the writing itself. I love to write and do it all day anyway on many other topics and a multitiude of other sites.
It's the conversation with self that gets monotonous. The murmerings and mumblings of my monkey mind. The internal dialogue that has to be captured, transcribed and transmitted in such a way as to make this site useful and purposeful and helpful to those of you who stop by to read it. (more…)
Where is the Love? More Lessons In Link Building
More lessons in link building.
Ok – we are getting a few more questions on how to use * link bait * effectively for your marketing projects – several people even wrote in that it wasn't an appropriate strategy for “ their” business – which is just a euphemism for – my customers/clients/prospects are better/busier/smarter than to be sucked in by some sort of superfluous, manipulative means or machination.
Which is of course, in my humble opinion – just flat wrong.
First – a quick look at using the Compliment ( ary) link baiting strategy I mentioned in the previous post, in quick combination with two of the other 6 C's - Creativity and Comedy.
Here we have Alex – who does a mind map comparison contrasting Britney Spears and her bald head with that of Jeremy Shoemaker – aka - “ Shoemoney “ a popular and iconic blogger and online entrepreneur of AuctionAds.com fame.
http://mappio.com/mindmap/alex/why-shoemoney-is-better-then-britney-spears
Who is ( was ) Alex yesterday?
Who knows – but today – his mindmap – with a link – adorns the top spot on Shoemoney's very popular blog –
http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/10/01/shoemoney-britneyspears/
where untold thousands of people most likely ( I did ) took a look at what Alex had done to get there.
( which was – in case you missed it – not create an incredibly funny/insightful/amusing mind map per se – but rather – find a unique way to pay a Compliment to a person of influence – and using some creativity and a ( very ) thin veneer of comedy – was able to generate a ton of eyeballs ( and probably other links ) to his project file.
And of course – Shoemoney himself states straight away – link bait – I'll bite.
Why? Because we all want to be acknowledged. I don't care who you are – or where you are on the totem pole of success – we all just want want our egos stroked. Which is why there are very few Buddhists in the Internet marketing field;-) . You need a fair share of ego to get up everyday and share your thoughts with the world – because ultimately – it's all about approval. If you can recognize this – and tap into it – I don't care how big the fish is – if the compliment is big enough – you will be recognized ( and rewarded )for the effort.
Now let's look at how to incorporate some of these very same ideas in your business – totally eliminating the * Internet marketing * crowd from the equation ( which seemed to me to reflect the basic objection a few people emailed about – ie – this is an Internet marketing only effective strategy)
As I mentioned before in the previous post – my favorite approach to doing this well is using the publicity pounding battering rams of Controversy and Confrontation in your strategic approach to getting attention.
One of the readers who “ objected “ to my link baiting laws said that these things would be hard to incorporate into his field ( financial advise to to low income & minority populations) as they were sensitive to confrontational approaches – and controversial topics.
Ok – I will buy that – I'm not in that business so I won't pass judgment.
(Yes I will – I disagree – but for the sake of this example let's pretend not..;-)
The idea then – is to pick a different entity to confront – or controvert! Rather than worry about the sensitivities of your clients in devising this strategy ( who – to be honest, I wouldn't have made the target of the strategy anyway) why not pick on the biggest guy in the playground if you are looking for some momentum in your marketing.
If you help low income people borrow money – and advise them on best practices for applying/qualifying and remitting loan applications and forms – and find that there is a huge discrepancy in their ability to secure funding that other populations don't….Why Not:
What have you done here? You've Confronted a problem ( minority lending practices ), created an enemy ( the bank) and provided a solution ( You )
And your headline is controversial – people well outside of your niche/geography/sphere of influence or care will stop by and read what you've got to say. Will some people take exception to your article? Probably so. But - that is sort of the point of this approach to begin with. And if you are highlighting and illuminating a real problem ( and real solution) as you see it - more power to you to say it well. And if you say it strong enough and do just a little bit of active promotion ( social networks, pinging some relevant blogs/etc ) you are going to get a lot of attention. And attention – especially when you are wearing the Robin Hood hat – usually means more business.
You can spin this a thousand ways from Sunday and try lots of different approaches to the same game – stronger or softer than the above depending on your comfort level and the brassiness of your balls. But in this case – it would certainly be a much more effective strategy than Comedy – or Creativity – or even Complimenting your potential customers or competition.
I'll cover some ways to do this again in another post covering some of the other “ C's” as well as expanding on this area a little bit more as it's ripe for picking, poking and prodding ( as all good link building strategies should)
Agree? Disagree? Let me know – send me an email ( or just leave a comment ) below and share your thoughts - ( on this – or any other marketing problem/question/conundrum you have )
The 8 C's of Link Bait Law: More Lessons in Link Love
Ok - it's about time we covered some more fun ways to generate free traffic - ideas that can tap into your creativity and if done effectively - transform you almost overnight from just a local yokel blogging in nowheres ville USA into an overnight media magnet - a thought leader in your field - a benevolent benefactor of worthwhile causes and ideas - or just a pretty freaky fellow if that is the note you are trying to hit. ( no pun intended )
As Usual - a lot of the so called gurus and SEO guys and self important ninny's of different types and stripes are spending inordinate amounts of time trying to explain to you what link bait is and how to do it the right way.
All you need to know about link bait - from an understanding and execution standpoint standpoint is this: There ain't no such thing as bad publicity. Ever. (more…)
What Should I sell on my Website To Make Money?
Thanks for all of the questions, guys ( and gals..:-) ! In light of a very busy schedule and a severe case of ADD - I haven't gotten to many of the really good inquiries submitted over the past couple weeks - for that I do apologize - and for those of you who I promised privately to post answers to your pressing questions - don't give up on me..:-) I will do my best to give each of you a personal reply - sorry for making you wait - and of course, the ones that serve the broadest cross-section of our readership ( which is growing I am very pleased to say ) I will post here for your review. I'm going to tackle the shorter Q & A's over the next few days - the ones that would require ( or really would be best served by a more detailed explanatory sort of response ) I will table until I have the time - and mental acuity to cover as deserved. Thanks..:-)
—————————————————-
Hi Ian -
Thanks for the helpful tips. I am starting a consulting site to offer debt advice in my local community. I liked your advice using CL. My question is what should be the best way to make money with my site? I have a blogger site that has adsense and I was figuring that was the best place to start on my own domain as well. Should that be the focus, or would you recommend a different program. I see you have different affilaite programs on yours - anything in particular you recommend? BTW - I did buy a google adsense optimization guide - if I get a fair amount of traffic I'm pretty sure my CTR will be high based on her recommedations.
Thanks again.
Jerome
— —- — — — —
Hey Jerome!
Congratulations on starting your site.
Here are my thoughts:
1) I wouldn't worry about optmizing your adsense ads for your new pages - because, well - I wouldn't put adsense on your new consulting service pages at all…:-) The key, in my opinion to properly monetizing your site ( any marketing endevor for that matter ) is really having a clear cut, well defined plan for what is the most important driver - or purpose to what you are trying to achieve. Google ad's just muddy the waters - dilute your message, and again - in my opinion, add a certain measure of diminshment of your offering.
For example - if you were providing a resource for Debt Cons