A few quick changes later and the bounce rate dropped significantly.

On this blog all the posts with the highest number of comments are ones where I ask people to tell me what they think. See a trend here?

A few years ago the joke about twitter was that it was full of people posting things like  ”Having a Shower” “Eating Toast and peanut butter”  why do you think that was?   Could it have been that the question they asked in the posting box was..  What are you doing? They later changed it to Whats Happening? and now it says Post a New Tweet.

The whole point of this is that before you write a post or before you even set up a blog you need to know what you want to achieve and then design the post or blog around that.

If for example I had a post that I wrote a year ago that got me a load of facebook likes then I would probably write a follow up to that post and point you to the original post.  The chances are I would get more likes.  If I wanted people to sign up to a list I would give information then maybe include a video and a link for further information that was available after a signup.

If I wanted to get some traffic from Pinterest well then I’d probably just do this;

With planning and design you can help your readers do what you want them to do. But first you need to know what direction you want them to go in

I’ve done 2 presentations In the past to members of WordPress Goldmine and because they were quite small groups it didn’t really prepare me for a full on seminar like this which had over 120 attendees and 10 other speakers. Let me tell you this,  I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Being able to talk to people at different stages of Internet marketing, from people with multi million dollar income to people who have been in IM for a few months and haven’t made any money yet you get a real feel about what actually matters in IM and more importantly what matters to people.

I am very aware that this was generally a UK centric audience, we did have a few visitors from the US and Europe so maybe the feeling would be different in the US but the impression I got was that people are tired of being sold to all the time, they are fed up of the hype, they even don’t want to have to market like that themselves.  Overall I felt that majority of the people i talked to really would like to see more rounded Internet Marketing.

So what does more rounded Internet Marketing entail, in my personal view the balance between selling and education needs to be adjusted any selling should come on the back of educating your subscribers and readers. Rather than thinking what can I sell my subscribers today, think what can I teach my subscribers today, then you can look for products that will enhance that learning.

This post isn’t for everyone, just like my presentation wasn’t for everyone at the seminar.  Internet marketing is also like that.  For some people full on Marketing is a good fit, it’s suits their mentality and personality. For others like myself it really isn’t right for us,  we need to market in a different way.  I think this is maybe where people go wrong and give up online marketing,The see it sone one way and  they don’t feel comfortable doing it that way so they walk away from marketing.

There is another way.

Before going to London I thought that my “Anti-Marketing Marketing” style was something that not many people would be interested in I think I was wrong.  After my presentation I had lots of feedback from people who said that they would feel much more comfortable marketing if they could do it in a similar way.  You Can!  However you need to be aware that it is a far more long term strategy that can take a while to really pay off.

Even as you read this I am marketing to you,  I have my products listed in the sidebar, I have a link for a trial membership of my WPGoldmine Forum.. do you feel like I am selling to you?

More Importantly I don’t feel like I am selling to you and that suits me just fine.

Sometimes it seems like everyone Is selling something, be different & be original and stand out from the crowd, get potential customers to come to you then build a relationship then and only then point them in the direction of stuff that will help them achieve what they want.

One of the other presenters who has been in IM about the same time as me showed how he made $12,000 on the saturday while he was looking around art galleries, thats a great achievement and I take my hat off to him, he also mentioned his office, his staff, his telephone sales staff, the $10,000 a month he’s spending on coaching.  That’s really not for me.

My idea of a good day in IM is to sit in the bar after a game of golf, check my emails and find I’ve made 10 product sales and got a few new subscribers to WPGoldmine… Different Strokes for different folks.

Find the type of Marketing that suits you, that you are comfortable with and then just get out there and do it!

Thanks to all the great attendees and presenters I talked to in London, you guys gave me so many ideas and so much encouragement to continue on this slightly weird marketing path.  There also wasn’t 1 presentation where I didn’t have an AHA! moment.  I am 100% serious the seminar really was that good. Finally a big thanks to Paul Clifford and Justin for organizing it and inviting me to speak.  Now bring on the next one!

The topics covered this month include , Why copywriting is important,  How to launch products like a Guru, How to be successful online and why trying to rank in google might no longer be a good business move.

Why not let me know what you think of the magazine and what articles you’d like to see covered, you are more than welcome to also submit your own articles.

It doesn’t matter if you are a big name guru or a newbie just starting out your views and insights are just as valid. (you’ll also get some exposure which is never a bad thing!

I would also ask that if possible you spread the word about IM Manifesto, the more people that read it and know about it the more people will realize that being an Ethical Internet Marketer and being successful are not mutually exclusive.

Spread the word by sharing this post in Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Plus and by Tweeting,  Feel free to do all 4 if you wish..I won’t mind!!

Enjoy the magazine and I welcome your Feedback Download Issue 3 (and the previous issues ) at  http://mjthompson.net/im-manifesto/

The secret of effective guest blogging is to provide posts that are of High quality and relevant to the blog you want to post on. The posts shouldn’t be self serving or thinly disguised adverts for your site. Done correctly a guest blog will get you a link back to your site plus traffic.

Below you’ll find a Video that shows you how I find sites to Guest post to and also how I get others to write a lot of my blog content by encouraging guest posts.

The Guest Blogging process is simple,

Site Owners Who accept Guest Post:

Create a page called “Write For Us”  and tell the world that you accept guest posts, also list the topics that you would like content on.  List any rules you have such as;  Maximum 2 links,  No Pharma links, links only in the bio section or links below the fold etc.

Thats it then sit back and you should soon start to get posts or requests for posts sent through.

Guest Bloggers

Search google for “Write For Us” Keyword and find suitable sites to write blog posts for.  Next you need to contact them and propose a post at this point I will usually just include a proposed title and summary. I also tell then that I will include a link in my bio or in the body below the fold.

Some people send the article through with the proposal, I don’t particularly like this as a blog owner, these posts often seem to be of a lower quality and it does seem presumptuous on the part of the guest blogger.

Once you have a reply from the blog owner then tell them when they can expect the article. I usually tell them that I will write it and send it through within 72 hours. Sometimes I have articles in stock and other times I write fresh articles.

If i have a particular rush on and need a bunch of articles I get Allison to write a lot of them  for me you can contact her through Article and Content Solutions

After Your Article Has Been Posted

As soon as your article has been posting give it a bit of Social media love. Tweet it, add it to linked in mention it on Facebook or G+. It takes 5 minutes and will separate you from 95% of other guest bloggers.

I never understand why more people don’t do this, it benefits the blog owner who will be grateful plus it can generate a bit of extra traffic to your site via your links. If I see that one of my guest posters has put a bit of effort into promoting their article I always offer them the opportunity of writing more posts.

Have a great weekend!!  Oh and Well done to Rach one of our WordPress Goldmine members who not only had her highest earning day yesterday but has a #1 Kindle book  on Amazon

Finally….  Samsung 1080P HD site owner you are a spammer and i’ll never publish one of your comments so SOD Off!!

It really is Ok to fail if you know the reason you failed, and that is where most people go wrong. Once a site or a product fails then you need to analyse why it bombed it’s only then that you can learn from it.  Be like a pathologist investigating a death and find the cause of the failure, then next time you can make sure that you don’t have the same problems.

Over the time I was doing WSO’s I created 8 products,  their level of success can be measured as follows.

Success, Failure Failure Failure (at this point I nearly gave up, instead I looked at what was wrong) Success Success Success Success.

After the initial success I thought I’d made it , but I was wrong the following 3 failures nearly made me give up IM but instead of throwing in the towel I looked at what was wrong and it was obvious , I was just stupid for not realizing it earlier.

My target market were just not seeing the products, at that time WSO Plus didn’t exist so no one would promote a WSO for you, I refused to build a list for moral reasons (see told you I was stupid) so I couldn’t tell my previous buyers about my products It doesn’t matter if you have  the best products in the world if no one knows about them.

The run of relative successes came once I started to spread the word about the products I created, I knew that there was no point in creating a course or a series of videos if no one was going to see it so I started to make sure that I had a ready market for anything I produced.

Without analyzing that run of failures I would probably not be writing this and living where I live today.

If you are going to fail then fail quickly, learn your lessons and move on. Don’t get attached to sites or projects that aren’t going to make it. If you can’t make a project work dump it and move on don’t let it slowly drag you and your other projects down.

You will fail, but there is nothing wrong with failing if you know why. Failing is only bad if it makes you give up.

I wrote a post a few years back that talked about planning to be successful http://mjthompson.net/630/what-has-eating-an-airplane-got-to-do-with-im-success/ but you also need to plan to fail and to know why you failed.  It took the guy in that post 2 years to eat an aircraft. He didn’t sit down and say I’ll eat it all at once he did it one bit at a time and thats how you can be come successful at IM

My golfing & beer sampling buddy Andre Chaperon posted an image as a response to a comment earlier this week so I stole it and I’ll post it here as it sums up success perfectly.

Don’t let failure get you down, and don’t let it make you give up.

I deleted 24 websites from my server this week. Each one of those represented a failure.

I also got sent a payment of $3800 for a deal I made which allowed someone to sell one of my old products as an downsell to one of their products. I originally only sold less than 500 copies of that product… he sold 800.

Was that product a success or a failure?

It all depends on how I want to quantify it.

Watch out for Issue 3 of IM Manifesto later this week, I’ve got space for 1 more article if you’d like to write one but I need it before tomorrow. So if you want to get expose to over 1000 people then let me know and I’ll hold a space for you.

The first thing I’ll say is that nobody can’t say they didn’t know this was coming, Google told us it was coming, blogs like this one told you it was coming (http://mjthompson.net/1451/google-algo-changes-is-seo-dead/  I even mentioned it in the 2nd paragraph) and it’s happened too many times in the past for anyone to think it wasn’t going to happen again.

I ended a blog post last week with the line..  Play by Google’s Rules Or play By your Own.

The problem about playing with googles rules is that they generally change, although not as much as you might think. Google have always said that you shouldn’t partake in link building programs , we just choose to ignore that bit of advice and now google have done something about it.

So how do you play by your own rules?

I’ve talked about this a lot in the past month but a lot of it bears repeating, Cut google out of the loop and focus on generating traffic to your site via other methods.

You can do that in a number of ways.

 1 Build a list 

When you have a list you can tell people when you have writhed a new post or have something important to tell them.  I bet the vast majority of people reading this post came here as a result of an email i wrote or a blog broadcast…  See it works   My Rules 1- Google 0

2 Comment on relevant sites

As soon as this post is published I’ll be going to several good blogs in the IM niche and commenting on their latest posts. By choosing sites that use the comment luv plugin i’ll get the link to this post displayed in the comment. If my comment is relevant and of good quality most blog owners will publish it.

This has 2 effects, 1 people see my link and come here to check out the post I also get a link back to my blog.

Thats more traffic that I don’t need google for  My Rules 2 – Google 0

3. Write Guest Posts

Find blogs in your niche and offer to write a guest post for them,  I had 7 guest posts submitted to various blogs last week , once again thats traffic and links

My Rules 3 – Google 0

 4. Reach Out to Others in Your Niche

If you see a good blog post as well as commenting on it write a reply on your blog and quote the original article. If you see a video on YouTube do a response video.  Be active in your niche, I talk to people on Skype several times a week about whats happening in several niches i am active in. Most people would regard these as competitors i regard them as allies (we all know who the enemy is!).

My Rules 4 – Google 0

Thats 4 simple methods you can use to cut google out of the loop I am sure you know more so let me know what you do in the comments..

You really don’t need Google, seriously this is not just marketer bullshit, with a plan and some focus you can bypass google. One of the members in WPG had a $700 last week and google had no input into that whatsoever.  I know people who generate 5 figure incomes every month and don’t even consider google for a minute.

Try It!!

 A quick announcement..

I mentioned recently that I am having a get together in London in a few weeks time, you are more than welcome to attend, I plan to have a few drinks on friday May 11th and also have a bit of a brainstorming session about what people should be doing in the light of googles recent changes.  Although there will be several big name markers present on the evening, it’s totally informal & totally free.

If you’d like to meet up for a drink send an email to  londongathering@aweber.com and i’ll let you know  where and when as soon as the plans are finalized.

That’s the same weekend as the Warrior Gathering In London I can highly recommend it (apart from the fact I am doing one of there sessions there).  I get the impression that people think it’s all going to be all about WSO’s it’s not!

It’s going to be  about building a business and showing you how to do it the right way… it’s also a no Pitch event!  http://warriorgathering.com/   you can check out the list of speakers and topics on that page.

Seriously if I wasn’t speaking i’d go just for the networking aspect, these events very rarely happen in the UK so make the most of it, I guarantee you won’t regret it..It’s even tax deductible!  (ok I am not a tax lawyer or an accountant and that might complete tosh!)

The price has recently gone up but as one of the speakers I can pull some strings and get you a link for tickets at the original price (50% of the current price) If you’d like to go then let me know and i’ll hook you up with a link.

Have a great week

Jonathan Leger made a post on his JL Forums today about the latest google update in it he said that a lot of old sites that shouldn’t be on the first page of google were now appearing. and he gave an example:

Overall Affect: Old Sites With Less SEO Ranking Better

Lots of old sites are being resurrected into the search results, apparently because they have been less optimized. Google has been saying for a while that they would be going after over-optimized sites. That’s fine, but it’s sadly pushing a lot of really poor quality stuff into the search results, at least for the queries I’m following. Stuff that simply should not be in very highly competitive results is ranking well.

I mean, seriously, THIS page is ranking on page one for “bicycle wheels”?

 

Please go and look at that page and click on any of the articles that are linked to from it. I especially like the wheel building one.

If thats poor quality what on earth is good quality!

Now that you’ve read it please tell me why that site shouldn’t be on the front page of google?? In fact If I owned google I would put that page at #1

I accept that it’s a damn ugly site but not all of us are web designers, when that site started 17 years ago Wordpress wasn’t even a glint in it’s mother eye.

The wheel building article alone is 10,000 words of unique content and if you were building a wheel it has everything you could need in it. The site provides an amazing resource for all things related to cycling and building bikes.

The site hasn’t been built to make money it’s been built to help people and provide information the monetization was a secondary consideration. It’s exactly what google wants on the front page of google, the site has over 1,200 Facebook fans and you just know they weren’t bought for $5. You just also know he hasn’t used spun content and SEnuke to get thousands of backlinks.

So Mr Leger please explain why this site shouldn’t be on the first page of google?

I honestly can’t think why any marketer would begrudge a site like that a top 10 ranking. Unless of course it’s keeping their crappy MFA sites with 5 pages of perfectly spun content that don’t give value off the front page.

Far from decrying Mr Sheldon Brown I want to stand up an applaude him for the effort he’s put into the site, I want to hold him up as an example of the type of sites you should be creating (maybe use wordpress and a nice themes though!)

Let me make myself clear I have nothing personal against Jonathan Leger or nothing against MFA sites , hell I have enough of them myself but what I do object to is marketers who make their money from MFA sites and spun content saying in a public post that a “real” site shouldn’t be on the front page of Google.

We as Marketers do not have the divine right to be on the front page of google if google are making it more difficult for MFA sites to rank then we need to adapt not cry and whinge in forums that our sites have dropped 30 places and a horrible looking site has got to page one.

I’ve been saying it for a while now, you have a choice , play by Google’s rules or play a different game.

So should that site be in the top 10 for wheel building? Feel free to tell me I am an idiot and Jonathan is 100% correct!

The first was a post in the WordPress Goldmine Forum by one of our long term members Paul Nichols who pointed out a fiver gig that offered to sent 67,000 poor quality links to your competitors.  (probably the same gig that offered to send you 67,000 quality links before the last algo update!)

I know what you are saying…. Google says that competitors can’t harm our rankings.

Do they ?  Really?

Read this from the same thread

Just so that’s clear: A competitor CAN build crappy backlinks to your website, and hurt your rankings. And Google now admits this.
Look how google have adapted there guidleines:

 

“Can competitors harm ranking?

 

There’s nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.”

 

Then, in November, it got “slightly” modified… just a TINY fraction too:

 

“Can competitors harm ranking?

 

There’s ALMOST nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.”

Wow, what a difference one word can make! So hang on, saying “almost nothing” means “can”, no matter which way you spin it.

 

Then on March 14th, they caved.

 

“Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.” -http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

 

In case you missed it, the key difference is in that first line:

From “nothing” to “almost nothing” to “perfect political answer”

 

Now do you think that a competitor can’t harm your rankings?

With gigs like that available on google you really had better not be relying on Google for your traffic. Google is no longer a search engine they are an advertising agency with shareholders, 2 things matter profit and the war to stay bigger than Facebook. That means like every war there will be collateral damage and thats us and our sites.

So whats the alternative?

Well one alternative is BRANDING…

Jonathan Leger pointed out in a post over the weekend that many people go directly to Amazon when they look for a product rather than Google.

Well, my friend, Google is only sending your site “walk-in” business. It’s your job to convert those walk-ins into long-term, repeat customers. Do that enough times and it won’t matter if the search engines got shut down by the government. You’d still be in business, because you have a brand. People would still be typing your domain name into their browsers’ URL bars, and you would be fine. Your revenue might take a hit (as would Amazon’s), but your business wouldn’t shut down. Source

Until last year I thought my biggest screwup in IM was not building a list sooner, I was wrong about that as well , my biggest mistake was not branding myself sooner. (not literally!)

I actually mentioned this in a forum chat and branding expert Martin Jelsema replied

“Mark: You’ve been branding all along, you just weren’t in control of it, and it may have not been consistent, unique or compelling. Now you’ll make branding work for you!”

That my friends is the key!  Everything you do online can add to your brand but you need to be focussed,  You need to be consistent, unique and compelling.

How many of you found this post via Google?   Not many!

In January this year I set out to consolidate my Branding and start to drive traffic to this blog, below you’ll see 2 screenshots of the unique traffic from December and from the first 22 days in April. Apart from the obvious increase in traffic you’ll see the percentage of people coming from google has dropped significantly. I really do want to get that figure to be below 10% while the number of visitors rise on a monthly basis.

December Traffic

Traffic April 1st -22nd

It doesn’t matter if you have a micro blog about acne, or an authority site about Finance whatever niche you are in you need to start branding yourself and remove yourself from the threat of googles frequent changes.

Start today!  I’ll come back to this topic a bit more in the coming weeks but the first thing you can do is make sure you use the same avatar on every site you have, every social media account and every forum you visit. Also decide if you want to be the guy with the woody woodpecker avatar or do you want people to see the real you?

The consensus of opinion seems to be that one of the reasons for the AdSense accounts being closed is that google doesn’t like people who set out to earn lots of money from AdSense revenue by creating hundreds of niche blogs.

For a change I can actually see their point, from experience I know that once you start getting a lot of sites you struggle to keep them updated and fresh. That’s not to say that Micro sites don’t have a place, after all I still have a lot of 3 , 4 and 5 page sites but I do think that maybe you should carefully consider what you build in the future.

What I want to discuss today is which is better Micro Niche sites or Authority sites,  … I say discuss because I want your views on this.

I wan’t to be as impartial as possible and I’ll put forward the pro’s and cons for each type of site.  For the purposes of this I am going to call any site with less than 10 posts a Micro Niche site.

What is a Micro Niche Site?

Essentially a Micro Niche Site is a site that is quick and easy to create,  You build it , get some backlinks and then move on to the next site the process is as follows

Find a keyword with 1000+ searches a month.

Find & buy exact match domain.

Create or outsource some content

Build backlinks

Move on and repeat 100′s of times

After that you sit back and hope that it makes a few dollars a day on each site

Micro Niche sites are quick and easy to build and you can take a shotgun approach if you wish. Generally speaking they will make you money and you’ll generally recover your costs in a few months. They can be easily scaled up, by outsourcing all the processes to cheap overseas workers.

Nobody should ever pretend that that Micro niche sites are built for any other reason but to make money and I think that this is why google doesn’t like them.  Micro Niche sites should be looked on as a short term strategy, they still work but I do feel that they may soon struggle to be as effective as they were.

What Is an Authority Site

An Authority site is a site that has a lot of content, is frequently updated and focusses on a much broader niche than micro sites (think of the difference between a pamphlet and a magazine).  You need to regularly update them and you should try to connect with your readers.

Find a group of 3-10 keywords with a large number of searches these are your main categories.

Find a generic domain name or brand type name you can use

Launch the site with 10 or more pieces of content in place

Post Content regularly and target every keyword in that niche

Build links to each post and have a social media strategy that you apply to each piece of content

Focus on a core of 5 -10 sites.

Authority sites are a long term strategy and take time and effort to get established, with a low number of sites you do run the risk of being more affected by any algorithm changes.  However by building a list of subscribers and a strong Social media presence for each of your authority sites you can eventually become pretty much immune to Googles changes.

Building Authority sites does give you the ability to target every keyword in a niche over time,  the main difference between them and Micro niche sites is that you would build a Micro niche site around “Dog Training Collars” but an Authority site around “Dog Training” and within the authority site you would plan to have 1 or 2 articles about Dog Training Collars at some point.

Authority Or Micro Niche Sites?

From a personal point of view I am now focusing on authority style sites, some of which are former Micro sites that I am upgrading and expanding.  But I really want to hear your views on this debate as I do feel it’s extremely important and something that we all should be paying attention to.

Do you think that Google wants to kill off Micro Niche sites either now or in the Future

Should you have a Mix of Authority sites and Micro niche sites?

Is Authority Sites the best way forward?

Should we just do what we want and ignore Google?

Let me know what you think?

What did you do for your business last friday?

Every single day I do at least 1 thing that will (or should) help my business develop. Today I sent an email to a JV broker and hooked up with her via linked in. I now have a skype chat scheduled for later this week.

Nothing might come of it but something might.  I did something similar a few weeks back the result was about $12,000 in sales of one of my old products, plus a Joint Venture that should be profitable to both of us.

Normally the things I do for my business are practical things, I will write a blog post or do a video or offer to write a guest post. However 1 day a week  I try to build relationships with people,  those relationship sometimes prove to be beneficial to both of us and sometimes nothing comes from it.  But once in a while they can change everything.

One of these relationships in particular over the last few years has changed my perception of Internet marketing and made me a far better marketer. it’s probably made me a better person as well. That would never have happened if i didn’t deliberately set out to build 1 new relationship a week.

At first it wasn’t easy for me as I am naturally shy and like all of us I hate the thought of someone ignoring me or rejecting me. However  once you’ve done it a few times it becomes easier.

Building relationships can really work as a springboard for your Internet marketing career, we have a couple of members of WPG who teamed up as their skill sets were a really good fit and they’ve just launched their 2nd very successful product.

You should take every opportunity you can to network and to meet fellow marketers, look around at what seminars are happening near you, I know people who go to Affiliate Summit West in Vegas and never go and look at any of the stands and never go to the keynote speeches or lectures.They travel half way around the world to just meet fellow marketers and share ideas and tips.

So who fancies having a beer and a chat with me and a few friends in London next month?  Myself and Andre Chaperon planned to do one of these informal get togethers a year or so ago and unfortunately snow closed the airports in London so we couldn’t fly in. So we are going to try it again.

I am Speaking at the Warrior Gathering in London on May 12th and 13th so the night before I am going to arrange to meet as many people as I can in a bar in central London. There will be no cost and I don’t expect you to buy me a beer . Andre is going to invite some of his subscribers to join him and we’ll try to rope in a few special guests to come and join us. It should be a great night out.

So if you’d like to join us for a beer & a chat add your email address to the list below (it will only be used for this get together then deleted) and i’ll let you know the time and location once we know how many of you are going to turn up.

 

Email:

 

If you want to make a weekend of it check out the Warrior Gathering, even if i wasn’t scheduled to speak I’d still want to attend it, this opportunity to network shouldn’t be passed up.

I did a short video about using Rapportive a few weeks ago, believe it or not that’s how I find people to reach out to. Their linkedin, facebook or google +  details appear next to their emails ,the rest takes just a few clicks. You can watch the video on the following post http://mjthompson.net/1458/how-to-generate-traffic-to-your-blog-video-series/

Reach out today!