"craigslist viagra jail"

While it's nice to rank for ANYTHING these days, I'm goign to have to be honest and tell you that I am trying to stay away from all three of those particular keywords these days, so I'm not so sure that turning up on the high side on the search engines there is meeting my short term goals in any profitable or appreciable way.  Although I have been thinking about jumping back on CL in the near future, I'm hoping my viagra days are still a few decades away, and the last time I spent any real time in the hooskow I was 21 and exercising my American right to buy kegs for my underage fraternity brothers at homecoming.  ( I didn't however, shave the neighbors cat as was part of the strange set of charges that followed a homecoming party that got quickly out of hand..:-)

On a side note (as if that wasn't side enough) people amaze me.  I love reading peoples thoughts, ideas, brainstorms, and stream onf conciousness thoughts from around the web.  Nothing is more exciting to me - on some strange visceral level - than getting a simple and slender shred into someone's mindet, and mental machinations as you sort of surf around their world of thoughts, ideas and oddly inspiring minutae.  I'm a fairly wierd dude, and a huge fan of the bizarre… the paranormal pandoras box of wild and  wierd stuff that runs the range from reincarnation research, to OBE's, Near Death Experience research, and all kinds of what I think are pretty fascinating forays into the creative cosmology of this wierd world and our place within it. 

I did some consulting work on a pretty well known project a few months ago, featuring some of the bigger and more well known names in the world of both the Paranormal - AND the Skeptics and Scientists who make a career out of debunking and refuting everything these folks find.  Anyway….I was searching some keywords earlier tonight around some of these various related anamolous phenomena to see how some of the promotion we had done on a few of these topics were "sticking" SEO wise a few months later, and came across this blog which I hadn't seen before - a little blogger blog penned by one Leo McDonald.  Leo has a ton of posts and I started reading a few, just to see what his thoughts were:

 The part that really fascinates me about this post was the seamless segue between the paranormal podcast he points out in the first sentence…and THEN the stats on his benchpress figures immediately  thereafter.  I really don't think I've seen someone do that before - and am quite impressed…:-)

Not to be Undone….Leo Pulls off another interesting one here - going from mowing the yard, through a brief discourse on super nintendo and then RIGHT through magnetic fields and varieties of Relgious Experience, which again, is a blending of topics you WON'T see anywhere else but on Leo's blog.  I love it..;-)  If you've got an interest in the supernatural - or super Mario - you can check out Leo in all his magnificence at the link below.

The grass was really long it took a long time but I got it done. I also rack the rest of the grass up.

Recently I have been playing the old super nintendo system with two controllers and 5 games which are

-Super Mario Kart
-Super Mario World
-Mario Paint
-Super Mario All Stars includes super mario 1,2 and 3 also super mario lost levels.
-Pocky and Rocky

Pretty fun games I also like super mario the most.

Posted by Leo MacDonald at 1:36 PM 0 comments

Labels: Mowing, Super Nintendo

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

In 2005 there was doubt cast on magnetic fields spark religious feelings was published.

Doubt Cast on Theory that Magnetic Fields Spark Religious Feelings: Studies showing that magnetic stimulation of the brain induces spiritual experiences are being questioned by researchers who cannot reproduce key results. We have reported in the past that in a study by Michael Persinger 80% of participants who wore helmets that targeted their temporal lobes with weak magnetic fields, of roughly the same strength as those generated by a computer monitor, felt an unexplained presence in the room. Persinger suggested that magnetism causes bursts of electrical activity in the temporal lobes of the brain, and he linked this to the spiritual experiences.

 

I do still check my analytics on this site daily, and interestingly enough, the readership numbers are growing day to day…even while I do nothing.  Which, to be honest, had I known would work 6 months ago, I would have spared myself lots of creative blogging bursts at 2am and just caught up on old episode of Matlock instead. 

In deference to the above seemingly conflicted sets of metrics, I would like to put one standing offer on the imaginary table for anyone who is reading this.  While I will not be pro-actively posting on here for the forseeable future ( maybe a few days - maybe a few weeks, not until my time frees up a little bit anyway) I will answer any questions you have, marketing related, via the comments or, if it sufficiently stimulates my cognitive creativity, I will create a post to answer it for you instead.  This is much more enjoyable for me anyway, rather than blathering on about something I think is relevant…only to find out that most people only really care about making money on Craigslist…which frankly, just bores the hell out of me already.

So as the late, great Layne Staley said so eloquently years ago - " I have been guilty of kicking myself in the teeth.  I will speak no more of my feelings beneath."

Again - anything that YOU want to know - just ask.  If I can help you make more money (which I'm pretty sure I can..:-) it would make me happy to be able to help.  Also - just disregard the cheery message below about emailing for private coaching and all of that happy horseshit - I'm taking a break there too, I'm just too lazy to change the message.  I will come back to this at some point as a premium priced service for people who want to drain my brain and implement my system for automated online publishing profits. ( of which I'm re-tweaking my entire system for my own niche business's and seeing a dramatic difference in our own efforts) But otherwise - I just need a bit of a break…and this blog seems to wrap a healthy helping of guilt around my neck - a perpetual reminder that I'm not doing enough.

Last time - if you have questions - I have answers.  Short of that, I'm keeping my fat trap shut..:-)

I've gotten a few interesting questions over the last few days about selling affiliate products, this one came in this morning and seems to cover a few good points that lots of people struggle with, so let's cover it quickly and see if there is a little light at the end of the article marketing tunnel for everyone.

Hi,

I have been article marketing for a couple months now for affiliate
products like Clickbank etc.

I have enjoyed some success, but there are a few things I do notice about
article marketing that I would like to fix so I can take myself to a better
level.

1. About half of my articles actually seem to turn out good.

2. Traffic from articles seems to drop to a trickle after a couple weeks

3. Re-writing winning articles multiple times for submission to other
directories is a huge pain and time sucker how to get around this properly

Thanks,
Troy

Let's cover these point by point:

"About half of my articles are good."

About half of Kobe Bryant's jump shots go in, about a third of A-Rods swings are hits and about a quarter of my jokes are funny. Affiliate marketing (and even more specifically article marketing is a NUMBERS game) No more, no less. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, it is simply a function of scale. Look below at the two articles submitted in the last week (and only appeared live within the last couple days) One is a total, abysmal flop….the other I'm getting great traffic and a pretty killer conversion on the CTR. The truth is, as much as you try to optimize for this stuff, there are so many variables that you simply can't control (and some you simply can't track) that you simply have to take the fruits of your own intellectual observation, and couple them with a relentless and furious need to succeed. I, as I've covered on here ad nauseam, optimize as MANY components of my own campaigns as I can, take a studious approach to what I see happening in real time, and make modifications on the fly accordingly.

I still have a ton of flops – articles that simply don't get the eyeballs…or when they do, they aren't profitable. You can't look at affiliate marketing in singular shreds of fancy fabric, (articles that you THINK are going to crush – but don't) it's the tapestry itself that has enduring value. Said differently – I don't micro maganage, I simply look at the individual pieces as part of the larger unit, and trust that as a whole, all will perform as expected if I've done my job right.

Here is a simple rule of thumb you can apply if you are doing a ton of off site content creation.

• Go to the article directories and find a random collection of recently written articles in your topic of choice.
• Get a rough estimation of the average amount of views each is getting per month.
• Make a prediction (or commitment) to a certain CTR (click through percentage in your resource box)
• Figure out what the general EPC is for the program you are promoting – CJ et al will give you this, Clickbank you have gravity, etc – but you can look at your stats historically if you have some data and figure this out.
• Formulate based on the above, how many articles you need to write, if your article views are average to your peers, and your CTR is where you want it, and your EPC is on par with the program mean, to make one sale per day. And then two sales. Keep going until you have the amount of content you need to create to get where you want to be.
• Double that number and get to work… (always err on the side of more work – less money. and you'll eventually reverse the equation)

2) Traffic from articles seems to drop to a trickle after a few weeks

Simply stated, this is a function of poor keyword research.

If a lot of your traffic is coming right away, and dropping considerably over time you are doing inefficient keyword research. Why? It's quite simple – the traffic you are getting in the very beginning is primarily being driven from the directories themselves, and the content aggregators who are running your stuff high on the time stamp. While you will get traffic, (and to a lesser degree drive sales) from these folks, they simply don't convert at the sorts of levels you need to build a business. (Think of it in terms of how many people actually go to the Clickbank marketplace to buy products directly. they don't, they go to YOUR site to buy when you've created content related to the offer and they've discovered you serendipitously, or through hard work!) Same thing here  If you are doing your keyword research properly…the REAL valuable visitors are those who are coming 5 days down the road and beyond, the ones who are SEARCHING for your keyword titles and looking to buy the programs you are promoting. (Or want to lose weight, become psychic, make more money at home, etc)

This is where the "bum marketing" criteria kick in, and do have real value in loosely emulating…although I stretch my own competitive streak to the higher echelons of these recommendations…just because, as they say – you have to go out on a limb, to get the fruit. Change the keyword research you are doing, and I guarantee you see longer term traffic (arguably it should go up) as a result.

Re-writing winning articles multiple times for submission to otherdirectories is a huge pain and time sucker how to get around this properly

Then don't do it. I don't. I re-write TWICE.  ( and I use re-write loosely: New headline, same keywords, some new copy in the body, that's it) Once for submissions. Once for my own sites. I never build a campaign if I don't at least have the intentions of playing in that market on the site side of the street. This is my simple blueprint.

• Write article.
• Publish article.
• Ping the blog directories, do a little bit of social network submissions if appropriate (i.e. – top 7 ways to do X sort of stuff)…then I submit to ezinearticles.com – and that's it.

Don't make it harder than it needs to be. If I'm doing client work, I will submit to article marketer which will syndicate out to ALL of the directories in one fell swoop, after I've done the above, and I find that very powerful in some markets. But, like you, I am lazy…and usually will take the least amount of steps possible to meet my goals whenever I can..:-)

(You can even skip the site building part if need be – I often will simply send all of the article traffic at the root domain, which will simply re-direct to the affiliate offer directly. Ezinearticles.com will NOT let you redirect from sub directories, but they WILL let you redirect from your root domain. ( Of course, to be honest, working around this in any respect is easy…but I like to play by the rules with such a valuable source of free traffic..;-)

So what I would do in this respect is put the blog on a secondary directory (abc.com/blog) and simply use half of the traffic for re-directs, the other half to build your blog readership, where you also obviously have the primary affiliate offer prominently incorporated into the site.

1 article is really all you need, is the one sentence answer. Most of the secondary directories are junky anyway.

Hope this has helped T, and the other people who have asked similar questions..:-)

It's truly amazing how much bad content there is out there, polluting the minds of people who simply don’t' know better with stupid, silly strategies to make money online. When you submit a lot of articles to the directories, you get the benefit of lots of "publishers" re purposing your content on their sites…it's part of the deal ( and theoretically one of the advantages) of allowing your content to be syndicated freely by other site owners.

It also opens a wide window into the wild and wacky world of the many ways people regurgitate other peoples stuff to serve their own purposes. If you do a lot of this sort of stuff – i.e. – article submissions, etc – I challenge you to "follow the links" in your Wordpress dashboard and check out some of the sites that are running ruining your stuff. Sadly, I'm not even talking about the blog spam. I mean – I don't like it…but I guess I understand how my post on improving your click through rates is relevant for a Ukrainian Russian dating blog with a mad lib style content spinner alternating copywriting tips with a travel agency eque sales pitch on why repatriating to eastern Europe for the love of your life is a romantic adventure we all should try.  I have written many times about my adventures in content aggregation…and while I believe I do the content justice when I republish it on my own stuff…I do understand that all is fair in love, war and content scraping.

I'm talking about the people who are AUTHENTICALLY giving out marketing advice on buying "million man lists", network marketing strategies, copywriting advice that I'm truly not sure if was written in English or some variation thereof that is so dreadfully BAD that it's embarrassing. People will ( and do) sell ANYTHING that it actually would be amusing if you didn't know that other people will buy the very same dreck, lose money, hope and slide down the slippery slope of believing there really is a better way.

As Al Pacino said so eloquently in the " The Devil's Advocate" ( possibly the worst thespian performance that Keanu Reaves has offered us in his storied career…and that ain't an easy thing to accomplish)

" I'm a FAN of Man!"

I am too. I just wish it was easier to stay that way.

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..:-)

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..:-)

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.

The next thing that people ask is – "how can I convert more of my Craigslist leads?" Simply stated, if you are using Craigslist primarily as an affiliate marketing channel, you are most likely making the whole process a whole hell of a lot more complex than it need be. If you are promoting affiliate offers from Clickbank, for example, you are probably finding your conversions are 1 in 200…or even less. Why? It's quite simple. Even on far more targeted traffic Clickbank coverts pretty badly (depending on the type of traffic you sending it could be 1-2%) so it should be no surprise that far less qualified clicks emanating from Craigslist are simply converting at a low percentage. The key, in my opinion, is too simply re-arranging your priorities as it pertains to each visitor.

For an example – most of the people I speak to (who are able to get their leads to stick, which is a small percentage of you) are still not making any money, or at least enough to justify the time or opportunity cost. Why? Because they are primarily re-directing to an affiliate offer – without collecting the name, without doing ANYTHING in between to develop a relationship with this particular CL customer. How can you change this? Very easy.

• Find good converting affiliate programs on Clickbank and CJ like always.
• Find programs that have a good opt in sequence (simply by signing up for a bunch yourself)
• Put an opt in form on your own landing page rather than redirecting to the affiliate directly on visiting your ad URL
• Offer them the VERY same e-course that the affiliate is – simply by taking the EXACT same message sequence that you are getting, and plugging it into your own sequence.
• (* note – obviously you want to re-write it a little bit – but simply compile the spirit of each email in the sequence into your own words..this is NOT unethical – you are SELLING their product, and they WANT you to make sales using their materials, many top performing programs will offer you a sequence to use for this very reason)
• When they opt in – if you are using Aweber or another commercial grade auto responder, simply put YOUR affiliate cookie in the "thank you" page – sending them to the affiliate AFTER you've got their name.
• Now you're previously worthless Craigslist click is actually on your LIST – which means you are building a real business, PLUS they are cookied with your affiliate link as you forwarded them to the affiliate offer once the squeeze was completed in your Aweber admin.

You can email these folks the sequence you lifted from the affiliate merchant, plus you can send your own personalized modifications, additional messages, etc as you see fit. On top of this, you can send them OTHER offers that may suit their needs better if they don't buy the one you are offering. I.e. – "if you didn't like this diet eBook Joe – how about some popular diet programs before the sizzle of summer sets in and you find yourself avoiding the beach yet another year?"

This is called being *somewhat* more strategic in your marketing mindset – rather than simply throwing stuff against the wall (your CL clicks directly to the affiliate offer) and hoping something sticks (you make a commission). Without question, this is the key to making real money on CL, and anywhere else for that matter online.

There are of course, far other even easier ways to make a few bucks with each ad you run, especially with content pages that are wrapped with high paying contextual ads, think adsense arbitrage through the creative Craigslist lens, but we'll cover those another day, plus they really are tantamount to a small minded mindset as well, i.e. – you aren't going to liberate yourself from real life with this strategy, although you may make some easy money where before you were making none.

I've got some really exciting plans for this blog ( I think) for May….so you may want to stay tuned as I plan to put my money where my mouth is and illustrate how to build a real business online, that anyone can emulate, with up, down, pass or fail real time results that you can watch, mock or follow. And totally without a net – sort of like when Criss Angel did the whole helicopter stunt in the Nevada desert with only fish hooks holding him to the aircraft. Only I'm afraid of heights and my own blood makes me nervous, so this is probably a better stunt for my skill set.

Stay tuned.