Here is something new to me…

Google’s First Click Free program.

This is a neat system, if one can implement it reasonably securely, whereby one can have one’s subscription/paid content offered to Google searchers.
The idea is that if a searcher hits your paid for content from Google that they can see that content for free. If the visitor clicks on to additional content then they are presented with a payment/subscription box and they much pay before proceeding further.

Now, there are limitations to this - for example, folks can come back to different pages from Google and still see each of those pages for free but as a way of getting folks into your content other than via a sales page this looks kinda useful. I am thinking that the ‘tasters’ are unlikely to pay so one is not losing anything to them and one does not have to make the whole of the site’s content available to First Click Free.

More info here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.html

In the worlds of internet marketing and SEO there is one theme that stands out above all others. It has been around for years and will be around for years to come.
The concept is called the “Big Red Button” or alternatively the “Big Green Button”. To put it simply, a lot of folks just want an easy one step solution to their problem.
Over the course of internet marketing history there have been many tries to make such a tool. An enabler so that people can make a large amount of cash with their skills and knowledge but with minimal work.

Some readers might remember Traffic Equalizer, some may have used PortalFeeder, others probably tried many of the less successful imitators.

So now it is Peter Drew who has a tilt at the target. The question is this: Has he got what it takes wrapped up in the form of his Brute Force SEO system?

To be honest, at the moment we do not have much to go on but what we do have seems positive.
Firstly - and to my mind (because I am a little big headed) he is doing stuff that I have already done and know works. That means his toolbox simply has to deliver what he claims because the strategies and techniques DO work.
I’ll explain… Over the past few years, I’ve developed tactics that have allowed me to earn very good money from certain types of product launches. My results filled the search engine rankings for the search terms that I was certain would be used by prospects and buyers of these products. I was showing colleagues results where I was getting 16 of the first 20 results in Google for absolutely key terms. If you wanted info on a product in which I was interested then you were coming to one of my pages!

My system was time consuming and almost entirely manual, but very profitable.

Then, a while back Pete Drew started selling a set of tools that duplicated some of the stuff I was doing by hand. I bought them as they came out. All the time I was wondering when he’d get around to packaging them all up as a single toolkit.

Finally he did it. It is called Brute Force SEO

Anyway, gotta go.

Next post we will start to look at just what Bruteforce SEO has to offer us.

I have been thinking about this for a while.

Many of us do article marketing for just one reason - building backlinks over time.

Some of us do article marketing for real human traffic - they actually sell stuff from their article pages on the directories.

Well, a blog network gives me both of these things. Of course I get backlinks and I see this as the primary reason for using a blog network. But it goes further.
If I submit my content to a blog network then I am going to have loads of content that is indexed and should expect to see some real human traffic. I can not help but think that an article on a themed blog is roughly equivalent to an article on an article directory when it comes to folks buying stuff.

As article directories move to a payment for submission model (they will and are doing so right now) then blog networks will look ever more cost effective and a well run site will get traffic and eyeballs.

Of course, if we add our own sites to networks then we get double bubble - links to any of our sites that we control, links to any of our sites from the rest of the network AND revenues from the visiting eyeballs due to the inflow of content.

I can foresee that over the next 12-18 months that the article directory landscape is going to look a little different. Fewer directories, more blog networks and less need to use the directories - particularly the low rent majority.

Are any readers here using blog networks and seeing real revenue from their content submissions OR their own sites in these networks?
Post a comment and let me know how you are getting on with blog networks.

Internet Marketing Video: Business In A Box

It is not as easy as we sometimes think to get into the field of internet marketing. That’s where Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos will help you.

Internet marketing is not easy and every month the field changes. We need to learn about new products to offer, learn about new SEO techniques, sometimes Google change algorithms and our pages get lower rankings.

For a long time I have been building websites for internet marketers, the sites work well and are very popular but I, and my clients always faced the same problem…

How could I provide the training they needed at a price they could afford whilst still keeping the quality at a level that made ME happy to share it.

In the end there was only one way. I needed to set up a membership system that enabled my clients to learn about internet marketing from A to Z and where the content could be updated every month to enable members to keep up with the latest developments.

So, that is exactly what I did. Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos is a monthly membership that each and every month brings new videos, a selection of ebooks and software all on the same topic - this month, for example, we are concentrating upon SEO (search engine optimization).

In fact we have gone one step further and every month all the members of Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos will receive a complete ‘business in a box’ complete to the last detail with the tools that you will need to start to make money using the training provided that month.

Please pop on over and take a look!

Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos

Getting Adsense bans is not the end of the world when you know there are another 84 alternatives to work your way through!

http://justtraffic.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_justtraffic_archive.html

Another sleepless night, too warm and sticky.
Please make the autumn come soon!
(Note to self - next year air conditioning- do it, don’t just promise it!)

Anyway, I rolled out of bed to do my ‘first thing’ checks - always my email:

Any fires overnight that I need to put out?
Who has paid me and how much?
New business requests?
Check Adsense revenue - I always love that one these days!

Then, kinda like reading the front page of my newspaper I check out the headlines of the emails I have received from the umpty ump lists I am on. I probably wastebasket a hundred or so messages every morning.
One email had the headline “blogging for influence - money.power.wisdom’
I was going to bin it but blogging is what I do, kinda so, I was pretty much forced to look.

I am glad I did. I just saw today’s ‘Most Beautiful Thing’. Now, let me just say, I live in Tallinn, Estonia. This is the home of the most beautiful women in the world - if you don’t agree with me come pay a visit and then you can at least disagree with some authority!
When I leave here to go for a coffee, I will see 10 ‘beautiful things’ before I even get to my favourite coffee place, over the road from my apartment.

So, if I already saw ‘today’s most beautiful thing’ then, it must be pretty damn beautiful.

OK, already Andrew; we all have ADHD here, don’t waste our time…

Four words.
Promoting, Your, Music, Online

Come on Andrew, what is that, how does that compare with the beauty that is Eve, or Larisa, or Gertti?

OK, here it is. Mark Joyner, a guy known for his Simplology online training for making folks into internet marketers has hit upon a blindingly obvious and yet totally invisible concept.

He has identified a non-Internet Marketing niche and figured out how to apply his Simpleology training to the market - and it makes perfect sense.
He is selling a viral marketing package to MUSICIANS!

Wow!

Damme!

Stuff like that, but all too obscene to write here!

It is masterful. Just look at the copy: http://www.simpleology.com/training/musicpromotion/ (no affiliate link)

I love his story. It is plausible, credible, has a perfect tempo and builds in a lovely way to its crescendo.

But he goes further. He is like a drug dealer. First hit is cheap, but the regular supply, well, that’s gonna cost…

He is selling the course for $69, with so many testimonials it was getting hard to see the rest of the words - was that done on purpose?

Actually, I might just buy the course myself.

But, Andrew, I hear you say, that is fun and all, but just look at Eve’s legs, they go all the way to the ground. What makes this Mark’s course SOOOOO beautiful?

OK, mea culpa…
The point, the inspiration, the CRUX of the matter. The thing that made me sit and spend 30 minutes typing away before I even have a shower. (yuck horrid image - waytago Andrew) Is this: Mark has succeeded in taking an online product and making it relevant to the ‘real world’.
How much competition is there in the ‘real world’ for this product?
I dunno, but let’s try ZIP, ZERO, NADA, NUTTIN’.

Almost certainly NOBODY sent a similar email to the thousands of aspiring musos who all want to give up their day job and sell enough downloads to enable them to live like I live.

How much EXTRA money can we make just by opening our product up and making it relevant to people who may use a PC for email but who have NO idea about selling anything online, no intention of being ‘internet marketers’ but who can see a way to meeting their own goals through our products.

This is, of course, not a sales letter. But, please go take a look at this link and understand why Larisa’s long blonde hair was not a distraction this morning.
http://www.simpleology.com/training/musicpromotion/

When ever I get a project done by a freelancer whether it be articles on Elance or coding on Scriptlance I always get the contractor to sign and send me a ‘Work For Hire’ agreement by post. I wait for it to arrive before making any payment is made.
I tell freelancers that if the agreement is taking a long time to arrive and they complete the project before the agreement arrives (has never happened this way yet) that they can have the option of scanning in an image of the signed agreement and emailing it for a quicker payment. Even so I still require a posted version of the Work For Hire agreement.

Nowadays I use a free legal agreement that can be seen in the link below which was recommended by Frank Kern, he says he has used the same document for his own ebook projects on Elance.

http://www.copylaw.com/forms/Workhire.html

I’ve only just relatively recently started getting into hiring freelancers for writing and even though the costs can mount up it is really worth it. I have used some ok and some pretty poor writers along the way but have now found a couple of sources who I use regularly and are great.
In my opnion, if you just keep trying new people you will eventually find someone that works well for you.

It helps to be very descriptive and precise in your project descriptions and also mention that, depending on the quality of work, there may be repeat business - this can add an incentive for them to do a better job and just possibly make them bid a tad lower than they might otherwise have done.

Make it very apparent you want to build a relationship with them, make the process more personal and less cold/distant, especially if you are talking to one individual and not a group of writers.

At the start I was tempted into going with one of the very cheap bids from a non-English speaking country, took a bit of a gamble, and well, it didn’t pay off. They got the job done in the end but you could definitely tell the articles were written by either someone in a big hurry or whose English was most not their native or daily spoken language! Go for writers who speak English as their primary language, it well may cost a little more but you can expect more natural writing. That said, there ARE writers who are from places where you would not expect to find top quality English but it is much harder work tracking them down and that should be reflected in the price that you pay.

As serious internet marketers all know traffic is the bedrock of our businesses. Without traffic nothing happens.

The problem is that we get pretty good at making websites, we do good research, we add appropriate offers for our readers and then it kinda stops.
What happens next?

Well, what should happen next is that hundreds, if not thousands, of folks should find your web pages and offers and some of those visitors should click on your ads or buy your offers.

Yup, that SHOULD happen.
But getting traffic to your websites is not so easy - and it is getting harder.

Every day there are more websites, every day more competing offers and every day more noise in the market place.

Well, what’s an internet marketer going to do?
Actually he does the same as he always did! He asks his friends for their help. He asks them to tell other people about his great website. He asks them to post articles on their blogs about his new offers. He might even ask his friends to say nice things about his articles on his websites and blogs.
This kind of activity has worked in every market since man invented money and markets.

But, I hear you say, ‘how do we find friends’ and maybe more particularly, given the global nature of our businesses ‘how do I find enough friends to make a difference?’

Well, I think I can offer some help here!
I have been working with friends in my business for quite a while. We work together to help each other to do the tasks that need to be done. I have a network of friends with over 1,500 members!
Yup, that’s right. Over 1,500 people all of whom are willing to work with me, and I with them, to get our pages noticed by search engines and real people.
To make a big noise every time we do something interesting.
To help me write content for my sites.
To tell social networking and bookmarking sites about what we are up to.

Well, as a person can always use a few more friends I’d like to suggest that you take a look at how I manage my network of friends. See how we work together to make our businesses stronger. Traffic Kahuna have re-opened the doors to accept another 200 members. Together we are making a big noise about our businesses and people all over the world really do notice when friends help friends to spread the word!

This is a cool opportunity for anyone who wants to get more people to visit their site and make more money from their business!
Join our network of traffic building friends!

I was thinking today, I had been reading an Internet Marketing forum, and I saw an offer. Basically it was another set of websites premade and full of content and the guy selling them was saying about how much money we would make from using these websites. He wasn’t charging little money we are looking at about $50 apiece, the plan was to sell 50 of each site.

It made me think, the guy who designed these sites and built them. Well, he has an interest he is enthusiastic about the sites and he claims the sites have done well in his care, and has earnt good money from them, a little strange, because they don’t have any Alexa rankings and negligable traffic. But who am I to know.
The people to whom he sells the sites - I think most of them are looking for a way to make money and are hoping that this thing will be the thing and that these sites will earn them some money.

Do we really need another website about acne?
Do we really need another website about affiliate marketing?
Does the world really need another cookie cutter site about some kind of aspect of health or beauty?
I don’t think so.

What the world needs is people who are enthusiastic about something. We need to be enthusiasts - then we can make acne or affilaite marketing come alive.
We need to concentrate on adding value, to giving something extra to the world not just another copy of something that somebody else has already made.
It may be that we start off with something that somebody else made, a template. We do that all the time, but it seems to me that success comes when we add value, not simply to copy and stamp out another copy.
Sometimes I wonder whether what I do and whether the small money I earn is because I am enthusiastic about what I do.
The world doesn’t really need another article directory, but some for reason we have something that works.
THe other websites that we used to build and sell work; I was and am an enthusuast about them. I researched and I designed the model. I experimented with them, and make them work.
So is the real truth, the real secret of what we need in order to succeed enthusiasm and added value?
To make something new to the world?
To add to the world not just to spread out what is already there?

Perhaps those who are successful in the longer term successful becasue they add value to the world?
I think that ultimately it’s because we are adding value that the enusiast can make yet another site about acne, becasue the enthusiasm brings some added value.

I think I know the answer. Anybody who talked to me about things in which I’m interested in the world of Internet marketing knows that I am an enthusiast about those things, but when I talk to other people often they seem jaded, they seem flat, and oftentimes they’re not doing so well.
When the same people find something at which they can be enthusiastic something where they can add value the picture changes. All of a sudden the start to earn money.

What are you guys think? Is it enough to just do more of the same. Or should we look for a new something, a new way of adding value of making the world a better place?

Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos is now in its 2rd month and so far nobody has ended their membership.

Having taken some surveys of what people would like to see as extra content we are now adding much more content. This has started with a series of videos on Social Marketing (some call it Web 2.0) and right now I am just adding a WordPress training course which teaches how to install WordPress and then goes on to show exactly how to make a membership site based upon WP. We even provide a specially modified plugin to make the job even easier.

Here is a brief listing of some the topics covered by our video training in just two months:
Press releases
List building
SEO
Internet marketing
How to install scripts on your hosting server
How to use Dreamweaver to build websites
How to use many social marketing sites
How to use and install WordPress

All covered with in depth video, much in two versions - for your PC viewing pleasure and for taking away on your iPod.
In addition we have a monthly ‘business in a box’ all ready for you to promote and start earning money and even a range of ebooks and software covering the major monthly topics.
Check out Andrew Wilson’s Internet Marketing Videos to find out, from the basics, how to make a mint from your online business!