Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing Info’ Category
Proof That “Hard Sell” Marketing is Not Always Successful
January 22nd, 2011
So, I’ve been experimenting with launch jacking a bit more. If you’ve not heard the term before, “Launch Jacking” is a phrase coined by Mike Long of Bring the Fresh where you build small sites based on new products being launched and soar to the top of the search engines in time to make a number of sales as a product is released. It can be extremely successful, with one Bring the Fresh student (Rick Rivera) making over $140,000 is six months and is now releasing a course on launch jacking.
I’ve had mixed feelings about it and have been lenient putting these principles into practice. You see, I am extremely cheap and don’t feel it necessary to promote 50 Internet marketing products, most of which end up being pure junk. It’s so easy to get distracted when you’re learning IM and if I’m one of the ones pushing a new product, for a while I felt very responsible if you decided to buy said product. It wasn’t until chatting with someone that I came across a revelation – I promote physical products all the time that I haven’t tried out or would not buy myself to a world that is already over saturated with stuff, and it never bothered me. This thought goes hand in hand with the quote I read recently “You are not your market”. While my opinions and experiences are valuable, I’m not selling to myself. So with this in mind, I jumped in on a number of product launches.
I do believe I’m going to make a rule for myself, however, that I will not promote anything unless I see a review copy (even if it’s a draft). During launches, more often than not individuals are bonus shopping, but as time goes on, they really want an honest review of the product. I really hate all the hype involved in launches – canned emails and “fake” review sites that sit more like advertisements. However, this stuff has known to convert so I decided to try some of it myself.
I built a review site on the product Content Lockdown by Jared Croslow. I was able to get a review copy and saw that it was actually a pretty good course. I got my site to rank #1 for “Content Lockdown” and “Content Lockdown Bonus” as well as #3 for “Content Lockdown Review”. I tweaked my site for conversions the way all the “experts” said to and waiting. One sale.
Now granted, one sale for some people would be amazing, but it was far below my expectations. I also learned that this particular launch did not do extremely well, so I chalked it up to bad luck. The thing is, I kept getting traffic – not much, but some. I began to get really frustrated.
At this point I decide to stop being an idiot and going back to “my style”. As I’m sure you can tell, I don’t write like an expert marketer, but instead a real person. She may not be a millionaire, but time and time again I look back to Tiffany Dow and how she markets. I don’t need to focus on the same things she does to understand the value of how she communicates to her readers and customers alike. So I did some more tweaking on my review site.
Rather than try to sell my bonus, I actually wrote in depth about what the course contains, why I like it, and revealed whether or not the upsell is actually worth it’s cost. I was honest, not flashy, and while I am offering a bonus, I made the point of the site to be a real review, not a “bridge” page. (A bridge page is a term Google uses for affiliate websites that are built with the sole purpose of redirecting traffic to a vendor and offer no real content).
The results of my “soft sell” approach? In 2 hours I had one unique visitor and one sale to show for it. 100% conversion rate – you can’t beat that.
I’m going to chalk this whole thing off as a new learning experience – launch jacking is fine and well if you continue to offer value with your sites. I can keep the keys to good conversion in mind when building my site, but I must always remind myself to assess if my site is made up of bridge pages or if it’s truly valuable. These sound like simple statements, but I think taking them in and making them your focus will bring much greater success to all of us.
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MUST. READ. Period. Dot. Com.
August 26th, 2010
Sorry for the headline, it’s actually an old tagline a friend of mine came up with. When she was serious about making a point, she would always end the statement with “Period. Dot. Com.” to stress it’s importance. That’s what I wanted to convey here – it’s that important.
Lisa Parmley (yes, the same one mentioned below), just wrote a free report on her blog about why most people fail at making money online. It’s without one of the best reports I’ve found in a while – she simply and easily clarifies the internet marketing community and provides information that literally took me 10 months to learn. Plus, it’s free.
No hype. Just read and think. I’ll be discussing it a bit more over at my personal blog, Ami McCain.com
What I’m Writing About Instead of What I Planned to Write About
August 26th, 2010
I was chatting with a very cool reader, Kean, and he was giving me great insight on internet marketing from a beginners point of view. He asked great questions and have given me better ideas of how I can help anyone reading this blog. I wanted to go through some of his questions, but something popped up in my email box today that I had to share.
I’ve been following Andrew Hansen for awhile. He doesn’t mail that much and provides good content when he does. I will admit, I was disappointed with his Plug and Play Niche cash system, but I still trust what he says and he has some great viral guides that provide a lot of content.
Today he mailed regarding a new post on his blog. He has just recently visited an internet marketing conference in NYC and was pretty shocked by what he read. You can read about his experiences here. Unfortunately, I’m not all that surprised by all the scummy people out there, and IM has more than there fair share. With the lifestyle perks that IM offers (primarily finances and freedom), immorality is going to run high. However, I’m not going to go on a rant on everything that’s wrong. Instead, I want to share my own list of people worth listening too and how I intend to be different from the guys mentioned in Andrew’s post.
Top on my list of people I listen too is Tiffany Dow. I don’t prescribe to all of her marketing methods. For one, she’s big on Squidoo. I’m not as much of a fan, though I do see some value in it. She has had a very positive experience with Info Product Killer, as I have as well. However, she loves the Network Blazer system recommended with it – I can’t stand it! It’s incredibly dated and inflexible, and a bit costly if you ask me. However, Tiffany’s not a huge wordpress person, which I am, so NB is a quick and easy way to get up sites on her own domains and frees her a bit from web 2.0. If that is what works for her, go for it, but I personally would recommend staying away from it at all costs.
What I love about Tiffany is that she is not only forth right with her projects and earnings, she will only recommend products she’s personally tried. It sounds a little crazy, but that is so rare it’s not even funny. She genuinely wants to help others and is great about email. Her list and her RSS feed are permanently on my subscribe list.
Lisa Parmley knows her stuff. She is a bit of an underground SEO guru and her free content is outstanding. I’m not crazy about her as a marketer, as she once chided me a bit for sending her an email asking a simple question and while I understand she’s put a ton of value into her InlineSEO course, it’s not cheap and she’s looking to double to price or more – I’m not to keen on courses that cost a ton, no matter what the perceived value is. However, subscribe to her list and while she doesn’t update it all the time, her blog is great too. She’s been putting out some great free reports lately called the Truth Files – a honest retelling of what it takes to gain truly passive income.
Aidan Booth, Josh Spaulding, Pat Flynn, Travis Sago, and the phenomenal ViperChill make up the rest of my RSS feed. Why do I like any of these people? They provide content. I’m not a huge fan of forums, but I loving checking in on a blog or two. They may promote a product or two, but they’re slime-ally promoting every launch that comes their way.
Which makes me question myself a bit. I’ve tried two product launches and they’ve both been busts. This first one I was a slimeball – I did solely for the commission’s sake. Turns out this marketer was known for crappy, under-producing courses and I was very glad not a single person paid the $997 price tag, as I would have felt guilty afterwords. The second one was half hearted and half forgotten – I ran a quick PPC campaign (and I HATE PPC) and got a few hits, but no sales. The course sold out and I haven’t heard any complaints (truthfully, I wanted it myself), but it was still way over priced.
Bring the Fresh, which you know by now I love, teaches a lot about “launch jacking”. I can’t lie – internet marketing is an extremely profitable niche and there is good money to be made with launches. However… I’m very iffy about what I want to promote this was, if anything.
That being said, on September 7th (about a week and a half away), Alex Goad is launching Rank Builder, which I decided to promote. Why am I promoting something I haven’t personally tried? Check in tomorrow and I’ll explain why.
Internet Marketing Info and Product Reviews – Why This Site Exists
August 8th, 2010
The ‘information business’ is becoming one of the most lucrative occupations all over the world. The stability of internet connections arrive in more locations around the world, more and more individuals are discovering that the selling of information and digital products can bring both wealth and freedom.
You don’t need any previous experience, technical knowledge, have English as your first language, or spend tons of money overhead and countless hours behind a computer screen to be successful. With the internet, you can create your own business from your home, no matter where in the world that home is. What you DO need, however, is the proper training. You could waste thousands of dollars on services or advertising and spend months and months with no results unless you understand the basics and have a system in place. Finding the honest, truthful, and effective training can become a bit of a maze, however.
I wanted to build a site to cut through some of the hype. It took me months to get started because this first product I purchased was filled with false information and unrealistic goals. If I didn’t see the finish line way off in the distance, it would have been very easy to give up. I want to save more individuals the time and money I wasted because everyone has the right to have a successful life.
I have two products I recommend above all else and either one would be a great way to start your business (you only need one). They are Info Product Killer and Bring the Fresh. Below you can see my Bring the Fresh review and I’ll soon be updating this site with my Info Product Killer review. This is not “product launch hype” – these are systems I have bought, used, and have found success with myself.
Once you have solid training behind you, you will want to invest in one or two tools to assist you with your business. I won’t go into recommendations here as both programs use different tools and I don’t want you to think you have to spend a ton of money up front.
So really, that’s all there is to it. Follow Info Product Killer or Bring the Fresh word-by-word and there is no way you can not succeed. As Kelly Felix says, ignore most of what you hear. Every time a new product is launched, you’ll hear a lot of comments, so called “honest” reviews, and offers of thousands of dollars worth of bonuses. Don’t waste your time! Product launches primarily exists to make affiliates and product owners some quick cash – very rarely are individuals promoting something they actually believe in, or have even tried, let alone trying to recommend something of true value. Don’t fall for the hype like I did!
Bring the Fresh Review Update and SEO Blueprint Review
August 2nd, 2010
I wanted to bring you two updates on my Bring the Fresh review and case studies, as well as partial review for Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey’s SEO Blueprint software. I think you’ll be pretty surprised by what I’m sharing about SEO Blueprint, so make sure to read on.
At this point, I still have not gone through the the Bring the Fresh core videos, however I watched a number of them today. Even though you can do just fine with the hotsheet guide, the videos give a number of golden nuggets of information. Mike Long’s “One Article to Rule Them All” video series is FANTASTIC! Seriously, it in itself could practically stand alone as a course. I’ve heard so much about article marketing but no one really teaches HOW to do it, only the why. Copywriting is so important and Mike literally allows you to look over his shoulder as he researches, writes, and spins a great article in a non-IM niche. I know I will watch this video over again.
I’m finally getting to some of the conversation videos, which seem packed with good insight as well. If you’re looking for lightening fast results, the Fast Start guide will get you there, but if you’re looking to build a business instead of a hobby, make sure you watch all the videos. I’m growing more and more impressed with this course by the day and really give it my highest recommendation over any product I’ve ever tried.
In my Bring the Fresh case studies, I’ve been watching my rankings do a little bit of a Google dance. I’m not too concerned, they said to expect this. I launched another new site focusing on a two-word keyword word phrase with over 40,000 searches. I’m number 9 in Google and number 1 on Yahoo with only two small posts. That being said, I’m not getting the rankings I really want so I decided to investigate why.
While the Hot Sheets teach you onpage SEO techniques, there is a method for off-page SEO as well. For that, I’ve been using Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey’s SEO Blueprint. Here’s what sold me on that suite:
- Three separate ways to get links, which make my linking pattern look more natural
- All blogs and article posts went to sites with homepages of a PR3-5
- All blogs went to sites that were retired after 300 posts, making the links look less like spam and more valuable.
Since purchasing the suite (which contains Blog Blueprint, Article Blueprint, and Link Blueprint) about 3 weeks ago, I’ve sent out 2 major articles an 4 blog posts. All have been accepted, the blog posts each posting once to individual blogs and the articles to over 400 directories. Well, sort of.
Problem 1 – For various reasons, the articles are now only posting to the private network run by Steve and Tim. I was under the impression that these would go to actual directories, and niche related directories. If that was, it is no more.
Problem 2 – Because both the article and blog networks are private, they do not give you a list of the URLs where you content is posted. While I can understand their reasoning and I do believe that my content is getting published, I have no proof of this. This has become a problem because Google (and Yahoo and Bing) is NOT finding any of these links. Bring the Fresh teaches a method on how to get backlinks indexed, but you need to know the URL of each link to do so. I should have close to 800 submissions right now, and only 1 backlink has been indexed! I believe this is the sole reason why my sites are not doing as well as I’d like – Google believes only one backlink to one site exists.
Problem 3 – The quality of these links were the most prominent selling point of the SEO Blueprint suite. However, I examined the one backlink that did pick up. The domain had a home page with a PR of 2. In a separate directory on that domain (no where linked to the homepage) were a number of article submissions. I didn’t count how many there were, but most of them were poor quality articles and a variety of topics no where near related to the engine parts niche that the blog was on (not to mention my article was on a Halloween costume).
Conclusion - While I don’t know if my concerns are new because of the new system recently unvailed, I do not believe I received what I paid for so not only to I NOT recommend SEO Blueprint, I’m asking for a refund.
I may have been a little bit harsh with my verdict as I’ve not compared their software to any others, however I know of two others in the same price bracket that at least give you your link URLs so you can assist when them getting indexed. They are Unique Article Wizard and SEO LinkVine. I tried SEO LinkVine briefly, but because I did not have access to the Bring the Fresh methodologies at the time, I really wasn’t using it at it’s peak performance. I think I may go with Unique Article Wizard, as I have read recommendations on that product before.
Have you tried either? What do you think? And did you encounter the same problems I had with SEO Blueprint?
Bring the Fresh Review 1.1 – What Tools Am I Using
July 19th, 2010
As I write my Bring the Fresh review by trying out their SEO tactics, let me be fort right with what tools I have available to me. Bring the Fresh markets itself as a course that anyone can pick up and succeed with, but does anyone include those of us on a budget. The BTF course recommends a few tools/memberships that seem to be extremely beneficial, but at this time, I can’t afford to drop a few hundred more on software and such.
As I mentioned previously, I have hosting with Hostgator and get my domains through Go Daddy. What else do I use?
Google Keywords Tool and Market Samurai for Keyword Research
There is no perfect keyword tool out there and I’ve heard from a lot of people who switch between Market Samurai, Traffic Travis, Micro Niche Finder, etc. I’ve tried a few programs (I have NOT tried MNF yet), but I seem to always come back to Google’s Keyword Tool and Market Samurai. Why do I like these two:
Google Keyword Tool
Pluses: FREE!, Adsense cost data, good variety of related keywords in addition to the phrase you entered
Minuses: No competition data, no commercial intent data
Market Samurai
Pluses: Fantastic video tutorials teaching you what each function can do, competition and commercial intent data, in title competition data, trends graph, picks up some keywords Google misses, 30 Day trial
Minuses: Cost ($97-ish if you buy within the trial, $147 after), misses some phrases Google finds, not so great for micro niche keywords – better with macro niche keywords, difficult to navigate at first (particularly if you don’t watch the tutorials)
Right now, I have an extended trial of Market Samurai due to a promotion being held, so I’m using it for free 
. My hope is to make enough affiliate earnings before my trial runs out to purchase the software in a couple of months.
SEO Blueprint, The Link Juicer, and Angela’s Links
These are three membership programs that I’m using right now. I’m on a 30 trial of The Link Juicer currently, so as of right now that hasn’t cost me anything. Angela’s Backlink Packets cost only $5 a month, so that comfortably fit my budget. I did splurge with SEO Blueprint, however.
SEO Blueprint is composed of Article Blueprint, Blog Blueprint, and Link Blueprint. I’ve yet to use Link Blueprint (I think Angela’s will take it’s place), but I am extremely impressed with Article Blueprint. Their sales letter best explains what each web-based program does, but let me offer a simplified summary of the three. Blog Blueprint creates short blog posts on high PR blogs offering contextual links with your anchor text. Article Blueprint uses a unique spinning method to submit a number of article submissions to quality, on topic directories. Link Blueprint, as I understand it, allows you to trade for one-way backlinks on blogs of various PR. The cost for all three is $67 a month, which will be a great deal if I get the kind of results I want. I can’t offer a full review of SEO Blueprint yet as I’ve only started to use it, but I will within the next week or two as I see how well it’s results play out.
The Link Juicer is another monthly link building membership ($47). It creates blog posts and social bookmarks for any URL, spreading the links out on a number of different accounts at various times. Very quickly, I managed 160+ backlinks to two posts on one of my sites. The site itself is not doing well yet, but those two posts are ranking well for each of their secondary keywords. I’m still not sure what I think of the tool. Your text needs to be spun, and while there is a spinner attached to it in Beta version, it’s a pretty lousy spinner and doesn’t work very well. I have The Best Spinner, but it’s a Windows based program and as I do the majority of work on my mac, so I have not had a chance to use it in conjunction with The Link Juicer. I’m going to try a couple more days without using it (I really want to see how well I can do with as few tools as possible), but I may eventually cave.
Angela’s Backlink Packets are just what the title alludes to. Each month, Angela offers a PDF of 30 high PR blogs in which you can leave links. The service is only $5 a month and she offers excellent graphics and instructions on how and where to leave these links. It’s a great tool, but it’s a pain in the butt to implement. From my initial sign up, reading of instructions, and implementation of 4 links, it took me about 2.5 hours. Yikes! I am considering outsourcing this link building, but I hate spending anymore money before I actually make some of that money back. We’ll see.
So that’s my bag of weapons. Now to implement the Bring the Fresh strategies. I can’t wait to update you on the results.