Is It Worth Your Money?

Posts Tagged ‘Mike Long’

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.

Technorati Tags: Case Study, Content Lockdown, Conversion, Internet Marketing Info, Internet Marketing Tips, Launch Jacking, Mike Long, Product Reviews

I’ve had a few people ask me how my Bring the Fresh sites are going. After getting distracted from the holidays for a bit, I sat down to analyze my results a bit more.

Here is the plain and simple truth – Bring the Fresh works. It absolutely, no doubt works and I earnestly believe every person serious about marketing online needs it (well, maybe not. If everyone had it, then everyone would know “my secret”).

Before getting to all the good (I don’t want to sound like a complete shill here), let me point out some of the bad. One, and this was to be expected, Kelly and Mike are getting a bit slower with their support. Note, I said “slower” – they still respond to everything, provide great advice, and are more than willing to help everyone out the best they can. I had a couple of messages that took a few days to get answered, but still, they WERE answered personally, which can not be said of many (if any) guys in their position. I will also admit, I’m not the pushy type and while I do have their personal Skype and cellphone numbers, I’m holding back on using them unless I have something tremendously important to ask.

Another downfall – the course is most effect if you spend a little money. This may not be a big deal for some, but it is for others. I will admit- I’m one of the cheapest people on the planet. That being said, you can get very good results by using “half” the program to save on costs, and then once you’re making income, you can reinvest in the other things they suggest. I’m still not too keen on one of their suggested tools, I prefer a free method, but overall it’s the diversity in their simple-yet-effective SEO plan that makes it work. As for actual costs, I try to do 2-3 sites at a time. Not including hosting (which I pay $10 a month for with Hostgator), it averages out to be about $20 or so to launch a site effectively. Can that add up? Yes, but when you follow the program, you WILL make it back.

One of my biggest struggles overall was with over complicating things. I think sometimes when you’ve read other courses or have heard so much “junk” on SEO or marketing, it’s hard to get those ideas out of your head. But basically, do what they say and you will have success.

Ok, as for results… I’ve been doing a bit of launch jacking, which can apply to both digital products and physical ones.
Site #1 – Ranking #4 for primary keyword and Top 10 for numerous other keywords with ONE POST
Site #2 – Ranking #11 for primary keyword out of over 1,000,000 competing sites with 2 POSTS
Site #3 – Ranking #1, #2, #3, and #4 for primary keyword
Site #4 – Ranking #2 and #3 for primary keyword, #15 for misspelled primary keyword
Site #5 – Ranking #3, #5, and #7 for variations of a product name
Site #6 – Ranking #11 for primary keyword

I don’t believe there’s a single site out there that I followed the complete BTF protocol on for cost-saving reasons, yet I’m still ranking well. I can not recommend this course enough. If you have any other comments, questions, or concerns about the course, feel free to shoot me a message!

Check out Bring the Fresh for yourself!

Technorati Tags: Bring the Fresh, Bring the Fresh Case Study, Bring the Fresh Results, Bring the Fresh Review, BTF, Kelly Felix, Mike Long

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?

Technorati Tags: Article Blueprint, Article Marketing, Blog Blueprint, Bring the Fresh, Bring the Fresh Case Study, Bring the Fresh Review, Mike Long, SEO Blueprint, SEO LinkVine, Steve Clayton, Tim Godfrey, Unique Article Wizard

I purchased Bring the Fresh on July 14th and have still not made my way through all the training material. The Fast Start guide (which includes their SEO principles) has been updated a couple of times and I have read it thoroughly each time as well as used the forum multiple times. The support is pretty remarkable – it’s one thing to have successful marketers answering a couple of questions, but Kelly Felix and Mike Long check the forum just about every day and really offer a full disclosure on all their knowledge. I’ve not 100% decided yet, but I will most likely upgrade to a full disclosure membership once I finish the massive amounts of video training already available. There is so much there. I get a bit overwhelmed as I’m not a huge fan of how the videos are organized (there’s no clear “Start here” point), but what I’ve watched has been great.

All this being said, you’re probably wondering what kind of results I’m having. I have Fresh-ened two sites and am building 3 others. For the two I’ve freshened up.

Site #1 – Significant improvement. I did not really do my due diligence it keyword research here and while my competition numbers are low, it’s a pretty competitive keyword. However, my little site did go from ranking 242 to 99, so there is a significant improvement. Interestingly enough, a related keyword that receives nearly 20,000 more searches (but also has 450,000 more competition) is ranking even better. I don’t track anything over 300, which is where I was for the first couple weeks of the site. I’m now 83. These are not the what I would consider great rankings, but they are steadily improving in a very competitive niche. On the plus side, three secondary keywords (all keywords targeted by posts that had campaigns in Link Juicer) – #2. All three of them. That just pretty much rocks.

Site #2 – Slow but steady improvement. I have had this site since February, but literally did not receive a single visitor. It is going to be an authority site, but my domain is not keyword related at all. I started working on this site…. maybe 5 or 6 days ago. I’m number 11. Traffic is still a little slow, but I expect that to increase as I’m starting a couple of new campaigns on it.

New Site #1 – I’m ranking anywhere from 7-12 on my keyword with 18,100 searches. And this is only with three posts – I have a LOT more content that I need to add. Bring the Fresh basically teaches you how to rank with as little content as possible, but for this particular niche, I think the more physical products I can offer the better my conversion numbers will be.

New Site #2 – I am so excited about this site – I consider it my best success yet. I bought a domain on Tuesday (3.5 days ago) – a .net for my primary keyword. This keyword is for a new physical product that already receives 22,000 a month and that will surely grow as it looks like it will be quite popular this Christmas. I consider a .net domain itself quite a find, but it being a physical product makes my competition a lot of online retailer’s sites. Though it’s competition numbers are quite high (over a million), I decided to follow the Bring the Fresh steps exactly as written, not adding any of my previous knowledge or techniques to the process. Less than 24 hours, I was ranked 19 with one post. This morning (Friday), I was up to 11. I’m at the very beginning of my Bring the Fresh SEO campaign with this site, so it’s results are still in process, but I’m quite excited.

So….. It’s clear to me from my Bring the Fresh case study that my SEO is improving. The interesting thing is that I’ve yet to follow all the Bring the Fresh guidelines with no deviations. I’m out of my domains budget this month, but next month I’m going to try targeting a Clickbank product rather than a physical product from Amazon or Commission Junction and will follow every step to the T. I don’t know how or why it works (it’s pretty darn simple, if you ask me), but it works. I earnestly and honestly recommend this training – and if you have a little extra cash to get the exact tools and memberships the recommend, I can’t see how you could possibly fail.

Technorati Tags: Bring the Fresh, Bring the Fresh Case Study, Bring the Fresh Results, Bring the Fresh Review, Kelly Felix, Mike Long

While they may bring the most lucrative types of affiliate commissions, I have decided to refrain from 99% of product launches from now on. If I’m going to earnestly recommend something, it’s because I’ve seen it or tried it – I’m not going to buy into the guru’s spammy promotions anymore.

Tiffany Dow, a marketer I highly respect, first mentioned Bring the Fresh when she responded to a blog post by Kelly Felix (better known as The Rich Jerk). She is still in the process of giving it a throughout review, but based on her thoughts and reviews of others, I’ve decided to check the course out for myself.

My first impressions – if I can do what they claim I’ll be able to do for the cost they’re offering, this may be the best course ever. The course itself is headed up by Kelly and his business partner Mike Long. Inside the Bring the Fresh members area, there is a fast start guide which contains their detailed step-by-step SEO plan, recommended products, and a slew of videos. I read the guide right away and had mixed thoughts. Their primary SEO tactics involve a lot of paid products, though they do give a couple of options for low cost methods. I’ve just started going through the videos and I’m impressed by what I see, but I’m still a bit confused as to how I can truly make SEO work on a budget. And hence a challenged with birthed in my mind.

I am going to follow their SEO principles on a handful of sites without necessarily using the products they recommend. I may switch over to those products once I have steady finances coming in, but I want to see if these methods will truly work for those of us on a budget.

What are the initials? Well, the basic membership to the course is $97. I will admit, I had to save to be able to get this, but I really think it’ll be worth it in the end. They do have an upsale for their Full Disclosure membership, which is $499. Typically, I would never consider that, but they’re offering 6 monthly payments of $67, which would possibly fit in my budget. While incredibly tempting, I decided to pass and will consider upgrading a later date – I really want to do this as quickly as possible.

Basics that are needed include one or more domain names and hosting. I’ve had my hosting with Hostgator for the past 6 months or so (after switching from the horrific MattieBlaze) and because my plan includes unlimited domains, I have no additional costs here. My plan with Hostgator costs me $9.95 a month.

I will admit, I’m a domain junkie. I have about 60 of them and would have had more if I could have afforded it. Earlier this year, I splurged on a discount domain buying club with Go Daddy, so a .com is $7.49 and a .net is $5.99 each. I’ll get those same rates on my renewals, and since I only buy one year at a time to save cash, that is a really good deal for me. Why do I choose Go Daddy? I must enter a small disclaimer that their advertising and marketing campaigns disgust me, but their customer service can not be touched.

I have three sites I’m going to be applying my Bring the Fresh techniques to (well, four if you include this site as well). One was already built that I “Fresh-ened” up. The second had a couple of posts on it, but needed more content. The third will be a domain name that I just purchased today. I’m excited to see if all this will work on a non-millionaire’s budget !!

Technorati Tags: Bring the Fresh, Bring the Fresh Review, BTF, Kelly Felix, Mike Long