Internet Blog Marketing - The New Craze

Posted on August 30th, 2007 in Internet Marketing by fox

Blog Marketing

So you have been hearing about the latest rage which is having your own blog on the internet. However, you have no idea how to start an online blog and pretty much figure you are the last person on earth who is yet to start a blog on the internet. While you may think that this is true, you are going to be shocked to know that not everyone has a blog and even more scary is the fact that many people with a blog on the internet have them for internet blog marketing purposes. Internet blog marketing is the new rage just as much as blogs are. What is internet blog marketing exactly? Blog marketing is the use of internet blogs to market products and services on the internet. That would be the simplest way to put it.

Marketing products and services on the internet is not as easy as it was just a few years ago. Due to a high internet marketing drive promising internet surfers untold wealth and fortunes everyone is now marketing online. And that means that the competition is fierce. Many internet marketers are starting out with little capital to fund their internet marketing business so blogs are a favourable option since the introduction of free sites such as Blogger and Blogspot.

Additionally Internet Blog Marketing has become popular as blogs in essence are heavily Web 2.0 by nature. Web 2.0 is defined by a website’s interactive content. Such Web 2.0 sites are Flickr, Youtube, Facebook and Myspace. However blogs are also interactive in their own right as visitors can submit comments, vote on posts and participate in games & surveys. Web 2.0 interactivity is accomplished with the implementation of blog widgets and plugins. A good resource for blog widgets and plugins is Widgetoko. By enhancing your blog’s interactivity you create “stickiness” and visitors will often come back to your blog on a regular basis.

Internet blog marketing isn’t difficult and there is no “secret formula” but some internet marketers may find it daunting. The sooner you jump in and start your blog the easier it will be for you. Because the internet changes every day and things are not all ways the same, the faster you learn the best marketing techniques and tools now, the easier it will be for you once they change and start to become more complicated.

Not only does the internet change frequently, so do the search engines. For example, Google changes about four times a year. You will find that when it does go through a change and update everything, your page ranks are different, and so are your search rankings. When you might have been in the number two spot on Google search for 3 months, after they go through a change you just might find yourself to be on page three. It is for this reason that you should update your blog regularly with fresh content.

Internet blog marketing is all about knowing and becoming familiar with the internet. The more you know about what’s going on in the internet world the better off your blogs will be. However, if you are just starting out, don’t get discouraged, you can still learn everything that you need to in order to become successful at blog marketing. A great place to join once you’ve set up your blog is The Blog Log. It is a community of bloggers and you can see what others have achieved and gain experience along the way. It is at this point that I will stress the golden rule of blogging - don’t steal other people’s content! You can get great ideas from other people’s blogs and see which plugins they’re using, but never steal articles or content. With that said, get started on your blog! Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Free Keyword Research Tool At MSN Adcenter

Posted on August 28th, 2007 in Keyword Research by fox

Keyword research is a vital part of internet marketing and many new marketers are always looking for free keyword research tools. Microsoft Adcenter Labs have a comprehensive list of various tools to assist you in your keyword research. Check it out. There are a number of different tools listed on the page that have different functionalities.

Ad Text Writer: Automatically generates text ads for an input URL.


Context-Based Acronym Resolution: Expand acronyms and abbreviations based on related search keywords.
Keyword Group Detection: Given a word or phrase, find a set of similar words.


Keyword Mutation Detection: Detect frequent misspellings or alternative spellings of the same keyword in search query logs.
Search Funnels: Analyze and visualize user search sequences in the form of funnels.
Search Result Clustering: Cluster a set of documents, such as search results, into semantically related groups in real time.
Forecasting Search Volume Seasonality: Forecast the seasonality patterns of search queries.
Keyword Forecast: Forecast the impression count and demographic predictions using one or more search terms.


Entity Analysis: Analyze multiple-word entities in a search query.

The tools provided are very helpful for conducting research, analysis and assisting with your Pay Per Click ad campaigns.

Why People Aren’t Successful In Affiliate Marketing

Posted on August 27th, 2007 in Internet Marketing by fox

Increasingly, internet users are recruited into the world of affiliate marketing. It’s a promising way to generate extra income from the comfort of your own home and is mutually beneficial to merchants and affiliates. Affiliate programs are cost effective and are practically risk free. More and more companies are creating affiliate programs to gain worldwide exposure, and opportunities for affiliates are expanding.

Yet there are still a surprising number of individuals who are unable to be successful affiliate marketers. The primary reason is that the industry has become more competitive over the years. As with most areas of marketing, successful affiliates have to be flexible and think of creative ways to advertise, promote, and sell products. This begs the question, what are individuals in affiliate marketing doing wrong?

First, many individuals enter into affiliate marketing believing it to be a way of earning income without having to do any work. This is a prevalent factor in why some people aren’t successful. While affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online, it still requires work and effort. Conducting research, finding effective ways to market online to consumers and create interactive websites. This means an affiliate marketer has to be willing to learn, focus only on what works, push the envelope to become better, and work hard.

Another reason why individuals fail is that they are unprepared to select the right affiliate program. In affiliate marketing, you must know not only the audience to whom you are selling, but also the merchants whose products you will be marketing.

Many merchants want to work only with affiliate marketers whose own website matches the product. At the same time, affiliate marketers want to market quality products that are relevant to the content of their site. In addition they want to work with merchants who pay out competitive commissions and who consider affiliates to be their partners.

To save time later down the track, an affiliate should research whether the product is marketable and sells online, i.e. its conversion rate. To understand a product or get a better sense of a company and its affiliate program, consider joining affiliate forums, affiliate membership sites, affiliate blogs, and getting specialized training in the industry. These avenues also provide valuable opportunities to network with experienced affiliates.

Internet Marketing death can be guaranteed to many affiliate marketers who slap together a website without consideration to content and/or design. This is a big mistake. The website cannot be considered only as a means to an end. An affiliate marketer should plan from start to finish what they are trying to accomplish, who they’re marketing to, how the design should be laid out and key features to make the site unique and inviting to visitors.

Appealing layouts are not difficult as there are many good resources on the internet to obtain the best website templates. It is important to make the website layout appealing as it instills confidence within your visitors. Think about the domain name and how it would pertain to a keyword search someone may perform for example if your site is selling “dog biscuits” don’t be fancy and choose a domain name like www.woofchews.com – instead choose something like www.dogbiscuitskingdom.com. Of course if you already have a database of customers from other business projects you can get creative with your domain name, but if you’re starting out, keep it simple. Choose a domain name that is easy to remember, and relevant to the content on your site.

Remember that content is increasingly becoming important, as search engines will help direct tremendous amounts of traffic to your site if the content is relevant and interesting. To take full advantage of search engines, always put trustworthy information on your site on a regular basis.

Continuously learning and trying to improve is also vital for the success of an affiliate. Affiliate marketing, like any e-commerce related business, is changing constantly. Many affiliates are unsuccessful because they cannot adapt quickly with the times. Understand that as an affiliate marketer there is always more to learn regarding new trends and practices within the industry. New technological advancements may also change the dynamics of online marketing.

Finally, be patient and persistent. An affiliate marketing business may take a while before it starts to pick up. Don’t be discouraged if revenues aren’t skyrocketing right away. Affiliate marketing requires attracting traffic to your site, and building relationships with customers and individuals online. To be successful one must stay patient and continue to put in the necessary time and effort

Back-To-College Shopping Niche Market

Posted on August 26th, 2007 in Internet Marketing by fox

With just a little of my time catching up on recent news and some patience I’ve discovered what could be a profitable niche for any marketer.

College Shopping - With many students returning to college after the break and with the enrollment of fresh students comes consumer spending. Think about what college students are likely to buy. Books, Stationary, Laptops are the obvious choices but thinking outside the square many college students are making purchases for their dorm rooms such as furniture, decor and storage options.

Research from the American National Retail Association reports that students and their parents spent $36.6 billion on back-to-college merchandise in 2006. A third of this was spent on electronics including, PC’s, TV’s, iPods and kitchen appliances (coffee machines, popcorn makers etc) and $3.82 billion was spent on dorm furnishings.

Now, look at listing #5 - this is important - it shows that someone has posted a Question on Yahoo Answers. This shows there is a demand for dorm room furniture. After visiting Yahoo Answers I did a search for “dorm furniture” and found some great questions. College students are looking for funky, unique, trendy and cheap. Some of the sites people were referred onto are Freecycle, Teens Themes & SFCC.

I urge you to look at Teensthemes.com as it is a very well presented website and packed full of affiliate links. If you check out the links you can trace them back to various affiliate programs. That’s your homework!

The SFCC site provides a list of essentials that College students will require for living in dorms. Again, research the items on this list and find affiliate programs to match.

Now, I’m going to hold your hand and go one step further in helping you. If you refer back to Yahoo Answers and do some more research you’ll find many other questions relating to dorm life. Some are …um…quite unusual :) Now, if you’re quite savvy you may start a website that caters to College Students offering advice, tips, best places to find books, furniture etc, ideas for activities - make this a one-stop website for college students. As your popularity grows your site will attract more traffic.

Send press releases to High Schools, Colleges and local coffee shops to promote your site.

Other advertisements you may consider for your site can include, internet access plans, cheap mobile phones, fancy dress costumes (yep, there’s an affiliate program out there for this!)

Now I’ve given you some free golden information - what you do next is up to you!

The Value Of Adding RSS Feeds To Your Blog

Posted on August 23rd, 2007 in Web 2.0 by fox

Many people fail to realize that blogs started out as a subscription style online journal for people to receive via email, otherwise known as a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. Blogs are at their most fundamental state nothing more than a journal posting that can be delivered to subscribers via email. The RSS feed is an easy way to land your blog post in millions of people’s inboxes, and on the internet under bookmarks as well.

With the advancement in technology the RSS feeds will now auto update themselves to provide people with a wonderful array of blog posts daily without ever having to actually visit the blog itself. This means that one can grow a virtual subscriber base with one simple niche blog, and profit from the experience every time they make a post. Utilizing the power of blogging and RSS one can make some serious money by keeping people up to date with affiliate products, and services.

Since the RSS feed will deliver the blog to subscriber’s mailboxes, and let millions of people on the net know what your blog is about through a RSS feed description, it makes sense to attempt to profit from such an advantageous situation. By offering affiliate products, one can provide their own affiliate link embedded into the blog for readers to click.

One example of setting up a blog for maximum RSS exposure is to write a blog with hyperlinked keywords that are directly linked to your products. The more links the better, as the more chances you will have to sell the affiliate items to your subscriber base. Make sure that the links are either live, or given actual URL’s in the actual post so that the user can stay within their own e-mail application while reading, and visiting the recommend site that you provide them with.

RSS feeds are hugely popular today, and known to help search engine optimization as well, and thus are a must do for anyone serious about profiting off of blogs. Setting up the RSS feed is as easy as filling out a short questionnaire in the blog application of your choice, which means it takes little time to do something that can help you profit big.

Benefits of a Wordpress Blog

Posted on August 23rd, 2007 in Blogging by fox

Concentrating on the benefits of a Wordpress blog can provide you with some great optimism for the future. The reason Wordpress is such powerful software is the combination of value, quality, and ease of use that is unparalleled in the blog software world. While some people prefer to use more basic blog software, they too can truly benefit from the power of Wordpress, and once they read about all the perks they too will be downloading the software for profit as well.

What might be the most notable benefit of Wordpress is the ability to work on a post offline, in a standalone interface. Most blog software applications require one to be logged onto the internet, and geared up ready to go to post to the blog, whereas Wordpress allows you to edit, build, and post a blog at anytime, without being connected to the internet.

Another benefit of Wordpress is the ease of use, and advanced functionality of the software compared to some blog software applications. Wordpress functions code free if one needs to post in such a fashion with easy to use icons similar to what one would see in a word processing program. Having the ability to utilize a program like this allows people to create blogs that are as high tech, and complete as full blown websites.

Yet another benefit of Wordpress is its remarkable plugin library that allows for users to instantly add features, and functions to Wordpress’s already impressive abilities. The plugin library for Wordpress is robust because of the popularity of the software, many programmers and designers have created plugins based on their particular needs.

When you add up all these elements you end up with a program that is fully capable of creating highly attractive blogs that encourage people to visit the sight and stay to read whatever is posted on it. If you ever wanted powerful blog software that was less template and more unique Wordpress is it.

Add The PlugIM Votebox To Your Wordpress Blog

Posted on August 23rd, 2007 in Pimp Your Blog! by fox

Another take on the “Digg it” voting buttons. PlugIM is fast becoming popular and having the voting buttons on your blog greatly increases your  blog’s exposure to the internet community.

After reading your post, your blog visitors can click on the button to cast a vote for your post. This is displayed on the PlugIM website and the more votes you gain, the higher your blog is positioned. It’s that simple.

A very effective web 2.0 technique to increase your blog’s stickiness and attract fresh visitors.

Installation Instructions:

1. Upload `wp-plugim.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory using your FTP software (I use Smart FTP)
2. To activate the plugin go to the ‘Plugins’ menu in your WordPress control panel
3. The PlugIM votebox will appear on each of your posts automatically.

Should Internet Marketers Ignore China?

Posted on August 23rd, 2007 in News Releases by fox

Earn $150 A Day With Bum Marketing

Posted on August 22nd, 2007 in Internet Marketing by fox

OK, so many of you don’t want to build an online empire. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you simply want to make a bit of extra “play” money each month then Bum Marketing is for you.

Follow this action plan every week and you will be well on your way to earning $150 a day within a month.

 

Step 1 - Find 5 products to promote

You will need to find 5 decent products to promote that fit the criteria I talked above in the above sections. Clickbank.com is a good start to find products to promote. There are new products being added daily.

Make sure they pay you enough for your time. Don’t promote a product that pays you peanuts. It’s not worth it especially if there are more products out there that pay you better.

 

Do you want instant cash paid via Paypal?

If you want instant cash, go to Paydotcom.com and find products to promote. They pay every 2 weeks directly into your PayPal account. However you can email the product owners and tell them you are going to promote their products, ONLY if they pay you instantly as soon as you make a sale. Depending on what resources they use to manage affiliate payments - and on their time commitments of course - they may or may not be able to accommodate you. The most common reason payments are not paid instantly is to allow for product refunds.

Another great idea for the bum marketing method is to promote residual income affiliate programs.

For example, affiliate programs that pay you every month, like web hosting, website templates, membership sites etc. I love residual income affiliate programs. Promoting a product once and getting paid for as long as that customer stays a customer.

If you promote a web hosting company and make a sale, you will make that same amount of money every month for as long as that customer stays with that web hosting service. Therefore if the sale is $14.95 a month and you generate 10 signups - that’s $149.50 each month.
Recommended Programs

Niche PLR Products

Wordze Keyword Research

iStock

Daves Videos

Step 2 - Find at least 30 keywords for each product

If you want to find more keywords, even better, but start with 30 first to see if the product will be worth it. There is nothing worse then writing 50 to 100 articles to promote a product and then realized the product doesn’t covert to sales.

This is very frustrating and it is going to happen on occasion, that’s life. Some products will convert better then others.

But the very minimum articles I write for a specific product is 30.

If I write 30 articles and I make very little sales, then I know not to keep going.

The great thing about bum marketing is it’s a perfect way to test if products are winners for free while making money. If a product is a winner, there is nothing stopping you from advertising with Google Adwords and Ezine advertising.

I know all the top bum marketers write at least 30 articles for each product they promote. I know this because I write for them and myself and this is what works for us.

 

Step 3 - Write the articles for your keywords

Now is the time to write your articles.

I’ve given you many tips above to make this easier and more profitable for you.

If you wanted to outsource the article writing you could do that as well.

There are places that write articles for as little as $6.

If you go to forums.digitalpoint.com and signup to that forum, and go to the services for sale section, you will find many, many people offering article writing services for as little as 2 or 3 dollars a pop. Alternatively check out Elance.

Never pay upfront. Pay after the articles are completed.

Write the articles quickly. Give them an action plan to use, top it off with an interesting article byline and you will make sales.

 

Step 4 - Create your landing pages and submit your articles

Ezinearticles.com will no doubt in the future change the rules for what is acceptable as the landing page people click on in your article byline.

In the future Ezinearticles.com will probably not allow you to redirect their readers straight to a signup form for an optin email list. They probably won’t even let you send readers straight to a sales letter or affiliate page via redirect.

For example, you would have the reader directed to a page on your website, something like….

http://www.yourwebsitehere.com/worldofwarcraft/index.html

This page would be a simple presell page. But instead of just having one page site visitors can click on and either sign up to your free optin list or click straight over to the affiliate website, on the side of the page in the navigation area, you would put links to other articles you’ve written.

This makes your website more of a content/resource website. This will please your website visitors and Ezinearticles.com.

When a reader can see that there is more content to read on the topic, they will read those articles as well and get even more excited about the product you are promoting.

This is preselling at it’s best. A lot of people really hate giving away their email address straight away just to get more information, so give it to them for free again and again and again and again, and they will eventually WANT to give you their email address.

Once you have created your landing page, submit your articles MANUALLY to Ezinearticles.com and Goarticles.com.

 

Step 5 - Double up on your keywords

By now you should have written 150 articles and submitted them to the relevant article directories. If after a few weeks, you find a certain product is doing really well, double up.

Also go and look for other keywords you can write articles on. Milk it for all it’s worth.

Do all of this for 4 weeks straight and if you are not seeing $150 or more a day in your Clickbank account I will eat my Russian fur hat.

 

Have You Thought About Buying Your Own Article Directory Site?

This is for the more technically minded bum marketer who wants to take his or her bum marketing to the next level. I don’t know about you but I’m getting sick of Ezinearticle’s rules and regulations.

I’m not one to sit around and whinge though, it’s their site and they can do as they wish with it, but I’m going to find another solution.

What I am doing right now is this.

 

I’m at forums.digitalpoint.com and I’m looking on their forum to buy a website with a PR rating for Google of 7+. I’m looking for one to buy.

I’ve seen a few already. They range from anywhere between $300 and $3000.

What I’m going to do is buy a PR 7 website and setup my own article directory on it. As you know, Ezinearticles.com is a PR 7 website and that is why it gets such good rankings in Google so quickly.

But there is nothing stopping anyone out there from buying a site with a genuine PR 7 rating and turning it into an article directory site. Then you can submit all your articles to this site that has a PR 7 rating and not have to worry about rules and regulations as it would be your website.

This is something I will be doing and investing in and I know a few other bum marketers I told this idea to are thinking about it.

Imagine owning your own Ezinearticles.com article directory, except you play by your rules and you can submit whatever the heck you like.

You don’t even have to accept other people’s articles you could just use your own.

Here’s a software program / script you can use to even set this up now: http://onlineseo.net

 

Do you think this would work? You better believe it will.

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/fi2ts87ajy” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

Affiliate Rockstar Status - Full Review

Posted on August 21st, 2007 in Product Reviews by fox

I’m sure many of you have been bombarded with emails and advertisements for the latest release Affiliate Rockstar Status from Eric Rockefeller.

I’ve ignored most of these emails as I generally don’t buy products that spit a blatant sales pitch out at me. Many of my members have been asking about Affiliate Rockstar Status and wanted my opinion as to whether it’s a good buy. So, I’ve purchased the product to give you a review of what’s inside.

If you are completely new to Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing then this is a good package that explains how to sell other people’s products. However, if you’ve been around a while you’ll be a little disappointed with the book. In essence it’s a re-hash of his previous product Day Job Killer. It isn’t uncommon for marketers to re-hash old products and re-market them with new packaging and sites. All companies do this in fact. However, in saying that - these products aren’t going to disappoint new marketers who are just starting out.
Whilst the first few pages outline Eric’s life story, we skip to the guts of the book and find details on the following

1. How to find products to promote

2. How to find good keywords and track those keywords

3. Setting up your ad campaigns

4. Adwords copy - copyright tricks, Click Through Rate, Quality Score

5. Web 2.0 -Gaining more traffic using social media tactics like Squidoo and blogs

6. Great free resources listed for finding keywords, pinging, making your blog web 2.0 friendly

7. Using direct linking to pay 0.1cent for adwords clicks

8. The “free lunch” method - no cost marketing

9. How to gain subscribers using squeeze pages and landing pages

There is some real meat to this book and it includes picture examples to make it even easier to understand.

For anyone who purchased Day Job Killer there are a few added tips but the release of Affiliate Rockstar is really aimed at newbie marketers. It is a great all-in-one book that covers enough topics to keep you busy for a while. If you follow the techniques you WILL make money - no question.

Is the investment worth it? At the time of publishing this post, the price is $77 which can be viewed as reasonable when you add up the cost of all the traffic, squidoo, Adwords books you may purchase seperately. Be warned though, I’ve been told the price is going up. Now if you know marketers, they always say this to get you to purchase - but lately it doesn’t appear to be hype! Site Stealer was one such product that went up from $27 to $37 to $47 etc.

The sales page offers you $10K worth of software that is to be used in conjunction with the techniques shown in the book. There is a catch with this - you must sign up to MidPhase hosting first. As they charge yearly the cost is $95. Now if you currently don’t have hosting $95 is a small price to pay for 12 months of hosting! That’s less than $10 a month. You also get 1 free domain name when you sign up. The software mentioned sounds intriguing and I believe it’s going to be launched later in the year on it’s own. I keep receiving emails stating the software offer is about to be removed. I’m unsure how true this is but they’re really pushing the urgency to lock it in now.

I personally use a couple of programs that have similar functions to the software attached to Affiliate Rockstar Status and I can tell you each one cost me $77, $87, $127 & $299 respectively.
For anyone wanting to make serious money online and get some clear cut instructions on how to do this then grab your copy of Affiliate Rockstar now.

For a limited time, I am offering a bonus to everyone who purchases Affiliate Rockstar from the link below.

Check out the bonuses here

 

To claim your bonuses make your purchase through the link below and send a copy of your receipt to superstar @ fortunefox . com

Once your purchase is verified you will then receive an email with a link to your bonuses!

Yes! I Want To Check It Out NOW!

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