Internet Marketing On The Front Line

Internet marketing is easy. There I said it, the genie is out of the bottle. It’s not complicated, you find a keyword, create some content and then drive traffic to that content where some people will buy from your site or click a link. What is complicated is all the layers and layers of complication marketers add to it so that you need to buy their products to decode it.

It’s not just internet marketers who do this , How do you lose weight?, it’s obvious isn’t it eat less and exercise more. Thats all there is to it so why is there thousands of lose weight products released every year.

Almost any aspect of internet marketing can be explained in a few sentances. For example list building, set up your autoresponeder, add some free products, send regular good quality emails.There is probably no need for any listbuilding product to be longer than 15 pages or a 30 minute video…but then it wouldn’t have perceived value and would have to sell for $17 and not the $97 a 200 page manual and 8 hours of video would sell for. The content is the same but you are paying an extra $80 for the fluff!

What can take time to explain is the technical aspect of things thats where products can prove their worth. A good product that shows you how to do something can be very valuable so before buying a product make sure that the technical aspect is well covered and there is support for any questions.

This brings me on to the real reason for todays post. The 2 types of internet marketers you will find. The First is the internent marketers who are actually doing what they teach, building sites, creating products, etc. There are what I call frontline marketers. I consider myself to be one of these. After I write this I’ll be getting backlinks for my blogs and researching new sites.

The 2nd type is the marketers who just create products for the sake of having something to sell. You’ll recognise them because you’ll be getting emails throughout the year where X promotes Y’s product and Y promotes z’s product then z promotes x’s product etc etc. The product will be big ticket items and be incredibly professional.

These guys have teams of writers and designers creating products out of thin air , it’s amazing to watch how they can turn a simple idea written on the back of an envelope into a multimedia $997 exstravaganza. They truly are the Alcamists of the 21st century.

It’s easy to be dazzled by their presentation skills you will believe that you need their products to succeed. But remember thousands of people buy these products…how many have you ever seen succeed? Also remember most of these guys profit comes from selling each others products NOT by implementing what they teach!

So next time before you buy anything make sure that the creator is practicing what he preaches!

2 things before I go.

I sat down yesterday afternoon with 2 of my online friends Paul Forcey and Peter Coughlin and we recorded a call. It was supposed to be a shortish chat about internet marketing but It stretched to over 2 hours. We covered loads of aspects about working in the IM field and you’ll find a few real gems of information in there. it’s also quite funny in places.

I’ve uploaded it as a podcast to http://wpgoldmine.podomatic.com/ where you can listen online or download it

Finally, I have bitten the bullet and decided to build a subscribers list (no it won’t be constant emails saying “buy this”!) I’ll be using it to send out regular tips , advice and updates and release various research reports I have planned. You’ll see the sign up box on the right hand side of this post and as a blatant bribe you’ll get a copy of my Resource Box Report.

Enough is enough, when are some internet marketers going to realize that you can’t keep releasing crap products just because you want a new holiday or a car.

Sometimes I get so frustrated with some of the crap products that get released onto the market. First you get your rehashed rubbish that just expounds common myths. This type of product is from marketers who can’t be bothered doing their own research and have probably never made a cent doing what they are supposedly teaching.Then you get the marketer who releases basically the same product under different names or under Version 1 version 2 and version 3. All Products based on an original book should have a lifetime update guarantee.

Whats worst of all is marketers who have always been honest and straight forward who release utter and total rubbish with an outrageous price tag of $995 and with a big discount if you get in early. (hmmmm Mark that sounds very specific!)You might be able to justify it if you spent months writing the product but when it is so obviously outsourced to the lowest bidder and not even proof read then that shows a complete lack of respect for you customers. At least my spelling and grammar mistakes are my own!

As you know I’ve recently done some outsourcing experiments and I am aware that there is a need for a good quality product on the topic that doesn’t hook you into a long term payment system just to get the info. So i’ve been checking out whats on the market and getting feed back from people I know who have the products.

Anyway a certain product by 2 well known exponents of PLR was mentioned but not in a good light. Below is a sample that was sent to me , I am assured that it is the same all the way through the book. I was told that the videos are much better and there is a separate audio taken from the video’s So my main gripe is the appallingly poor pdf’s as seen here…

Low Quality
The cost should set you back about $2-$3. Links is about 400 words. It is best for information site. If you get 50-100 articles written for $2, that’s $200 that you’re testing the market with. If you get a $100 a month back from testing that, then it is worthwhile to test the market and see how to invest that into some higher quality content
Best written by predominantly English speaking Romanians and Philippines. Higher end non-native English speaking countries; based on experience you can get good contents from the Philippines and Romania. You can give $600-$800 a month for a 50-80 articles a week. You can start off hiring them to do 10-20 articles per month, then 100-300 articles per month. Then they can’t take anymore and you find another person. And that’s what you want to do. You want to maximize their time and get to them to work full time for you.

Mid-range
These range from $6-$10 probably 400-550 words give or take, in links. This is sort of like a step up.
I wouldn’t put this on an authority site but it’s also better stuff than what you can get from the Philippines or Romania. Best for information sites and affiliate sites. Best people to write this are primarily English speaking countries: US, UK, Australia. These are people who do not have specific expertise. They are average people (like Mom and Pop) who are doing writing on the side to earn extra cash.

The first thing about this is the amazingly poor English, it’s obvious that it’s never been proof read and has been outsourced. Maybe there was a reason for not writing it themselves and yes outsourcing does make sense if you hire a professional writer. But come on that is just not acceptable especially with such a high price tag..$995 or $295 I wouldn’t pay $2.95 for it.

Secondly the facts are it’s just complete and utter rubbish. You can get great quality articles for a fraction of the amount they are quoting. Anybody who spent time doing any sort of outsourcing would know that. Check out my outsourcing experiment category for examples of what you can get done.

So before anyone says I am talking rubbish and you can’t get good quality content and a great price here is an article I outsourced and that cost me $1. Yes $1 Don’t ask me who my writer is, I won’t tell you, but I save that sort of information for the members of WordPress Goldmine (see some marketers know how to look after their members)

How To Be An Alpha Male

By [INSERT NAME]
So you want to be an alpha male? YOU want to be the one that all the women look at? Well KEEP READING, I will have all the ladies eating out of your hand by the end of this article.

What is an Alpha Male? HOW do you be an alpha male? Well to define it;

“In social animals, the alpha is the individual in the community whom the others follow.”

So do YOU want the people to follow you? The LADIES to follow you? Then you have to assume the position of power, which is a lot harder than it sounds.

This day and age, being ALPHA is a lot more difficult than it seems, as public perceptions on what is “cool” and/or “attractive” in a man is a lot different than it used to be. Not only do you have to consider a general consensus, but there is the individual desires of every woman you have to consider also. If you follow these general tips, and add your own to it, I am certain that you will be asserting your alpha status in no time, and those ladies WILL be begging to get your number!

How To Be An Alpha Male:

CONFIDENCE: THE #1 Trait the separates successful men from others, and DEFINES Alpha males, is confidence. Confidence is a reflection of your ‘inner-feelings’ and the way you feel about life in general. If a man is GENUINELY confident, then he is usually successful in life. He has money, a good job and no worries. Men, Women and Human beings in general all desire to be successful. If you exude this confidence then women will pick up on this and begin to take notice of you.

ASSERTIVENESS: If you carry that confidence that I introduced to you in the first paragraph, you can then move on and be assertive. Don’t be aggressive about it, but being gently assertive can be VERY EFFECTIVE. For instance;

“Hey guys, this place blows, lets go to bar123 and drink there. The women are better there anyway!”

Versus

“Hey, errr, what do you guys think? Should we go somewhere else?”

I want to ask you a genuinely serious question. What would you most likely respond to? Pay attention to? Which guy would you RESPECT more?

……..I thought you’d pick guy #1

BODY LANGUAGE: Asides from confidence, this would have to be the #1, it is quite hard to pick between the two, and I would say the body language and confidence are essential to each other. If you are confident, your body language will be positive, and that is an excellent combination. That being said, if you are confident, but you sit hunched, never look at anyone or speak softly….how can you convey the message of confidence?? You cannot, and you would surely fail!! For instance;

Guy 1: He is WELL dressed, Neat in appearance, Speaks clearly and loud enough so all can hear him. He sits and stands tall, and smiles always. When making eye contact, he will draw you in to him.

Guy 2: IF you could see his face (he is always looking down) it would be indifferent. Un shaven and wearing dirty-ish clothes, his mumble can barely be heard. Slumped down in his chair, he is barely noticeable in the crowd.

Which guy do YOU want to be? ….Guy #1 again, I thought so.

[Resource Box Below]

If you would like to read more of my tips, or learn about being an effective alpha male head on over to [Resource Link] for Blah Blah

I think what really upsets me is that there is so much crap around that products by the good guys  like Potpiegirl and John Xfactor get over looked.

If you had anyone recommend a certain outsourcing product to you recently ask them if they read it!!

I feel much better for venting sorry if some of the language offended you but you really don’t know how angry this made me… (yeah i know get a life!!!!)

Right I hope you read this article and took a copy of it as I suspect it will be another one that ends up with me getting a lawyers letter demanding that I remove it or a threat from the owner.

Are you missing out on a whole host of useful information? If you aren’t using Google Analytics then you most definitely are. Up to a month ago I was happy to just rely on the stats from awstats to track my sites performance. Then members in the Forum started to post bits about their analytics results and what they had discovered and more importantly how it enabled them to increase their income.

So I started to switch my sites over to analytics and see what all the fuss was about. Now it seems each day I find something new that can help me. The problem I have now is that I probably have too much data. So if someone knows of a data mining tool that analyses Google analytics and comes up with results like… Add content on the following keywords, improve the content on page X, Your best earning pages are X,Y,Z The page with the best/worst CTR is etc .. Please let me know or I might just have to build it myself.

Even without a tool you can get great information. For example I now know that one of my pages made $63 in Adsense in the last 30 days just from traffic from ezinearticles. Guess which keyword is getting 5 new articles today?

I also know another site gets 84% of its revenue from ezinearticles resulting in about $2 a day, so that’s one site I need to promote to push up the Google rankings. Not only that the CTR from visitors who come via ezinearticles is 2% higher than visitors from Google, so maybe not too far up the rankings ?

If you had a 5 page site that earned $50 a month in Adsense you would naturally try to send traffic to all the pages … not if you use analytics! As was pointed out in the forum once you know which pages have the highest paying ads on them you can send more traffic to them. So 80% of the traffic might then go to the page with the highest paying ads turning a $50 site into a $70 a month site.

If you look at the content report you can immediately tell which pages people spend a low amount of time on and which ones have a high bounce rate. Once you know this you can improve the content, maybe add a video and make it more visitor friendly. You can make links to other pages more visible so you lower your bounce rate.

You can even channel visitors from the most visited page to your highest paying pages. Thus reducing your bounce rate and increasing you income. Just by looking at the stats from a few of my sites I know which type of links on my sites get clicked 60% of the time. When those links are going to a sales page or a presales page that knowledge is priceless.

If you haven’t used Google analytics yet try it today on a few sites you’ll be amazed at some of the information you can extract.

If you like learning about how to improve you income and make money with out spending a fortune please check out the WordPress Goldmine Forum

A Forum member posted something today In WordPress Goldmine that is so true I thought I should do a post about it. “Internet marketing is not a get Rich Quick scheme it’s a Business” (thanks Heather!) She was so right and it’s something we can forget from time to time especially with all the crap products that get hyped up by loads of wannabe gurus who just want to make a quick few dollars with no concern about their subscribers.

I heard them described on another blog as Psychopathic Marketers, They can happily sell things without a thought for their Victims. That is so true there have been some products released lately that are nothing more than scams. Imagine asking people to pay to Join a CPA network, some times I despair! If you are not sure what I am referring to then I suggest you grab a cup of coffee and read the link at the end of the post post. I just wish I could write half as well as that.

I recently likened Tony Robbins, Frank Kern, John Reese and Eban Pagan to The 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. Bringing forth the end of Internet marketing as we know it. I didn’t mean it in a particularly good way but when you look at what these guys produce they do treat IM as a business. And they generally target their products to the right demographic, established marketers.

The problem is that Joe Schmoe whose free report on backlinks you bought a few months back will hype the product to death to get commissions. He doesn’t care if the product is a good for you or not so long as it’s good for him. You don’t find good business people recommending a product to their customers that are so obviously a bad fit that they know the customer will be disappointed.

Of course this is a two way street , so long as there are people willing to believe the crap then it will be perpetuated. Next time someone says that you can make $100,000 a month by building a store in an hour to sell products or submitting articles to ezine articles, Step back and ask yourself how many people do you know that have done it? I certainly haven’t done it and I’ve been earning all my money online for 4 years.

Please don’t believe all they hype, as soon as people stop buying over hyped rubbish you’ll start to see more of the good products with good systems come to the fore. They are out there but just overshadowed by the over hyped crap.

Internet marketing is a Business and Businesses take work. If you are prepared to work then welcome it’s a great life.

Any way go an grab that coffee and read the article below it will hopefully open your eyes a bit more.

Take care it’s a jungle out there!

http://www.ppc.bz/industry-news/affiliate-jump-the-scam-of-the-century

One of the most common threads in the WordPress Goldmine Forum relates to how to get accepted by EPN.

The first thing to say is that don’t take it personally, I’ve been turned down by loads of companies when i applied to be an affiliate usually a quick email get your application reviewed and accepted. The ones that don’t accept you usually come begging once you start to make $$$$. Strangely as soon as I had a $10,000 month On CJ.com some of the the very same companies that turned me down 3 months previously emailed me and asked me if i would be an affiliate…It gave me so much pleasure telling them where to stick their affiliate program.

Right back to EPN

Even if you follow the steps below you will probably initially get rejected by EPN however a few emails asking why your application got rejected and asking them politely to review your site and tell you why it’s not acceptable usually gets you accepted.

Step 1. Find a good niche and create a nice looking blog.

Step 2. Add several pages of good quality UNIQUE and relevant content

step 3. Add your contact details, a privacy policy and a TOS

Step 4. Do NOT Monetize your blog in any way shape or form!!!!!!

Step 5  Do not use privacy on the domain..eBay like to see your contact details if they do a whois check

Now ask yourself..If I was one of the biggest online companies would I like a site like this to represent me??

Now submit your application and expect to get rejected. If you do get rejected send a polite reply asking why. You will probably now get a cut and paste answer…cool we are almost there!!

Now email back and politely point out that you site does not fall into any of the categories mentioned. They will have now run out of cut and paste replies so someone will need to physically look at your site and if you’ve followed the guide above you will get accepted.

Just consider EPNs automated responses as a bit of gentle hazing, which would you rather have affiliates who take initiative and try to get accepted or ones that give up at the first hurdle.

Believe me that it is Worth trying that extra bit harder to be accepted by EPN it is probably one of the best affiliate programs available to you. Especially with tools like Phpbay, Bayrss and excellent and highly recommended Reviewazon (yes you can add ebay items to the posts & also overstock items)