Archive for May, 2008

by Elance

Well known to you are the useful pay-per-click admin tools of Wordtracker and Overture along with AdWord Accelerator. These tool help evaluate and set up keywords, bidprices and find the top performing ads. Lets look at some others that have attributes that make them singular and a valuable asset. There are two: Keywords Analyzer (www.KeywordsAnalyzer.com) and Adword Analyzer (http://www.adwordanalyzer.com/).

If I were to look in your toolbox out in your garage, most likely I would find both a flat head and a Philips head screwdriver. This is like your keyword tools. The same way you need more than one kind of screwdriver you need more than one keyword tool. Individually they have their strong points but together they represent an entire set of tools, not just two screwdrivers.

And there’s more to learn still. The first list of keywords you come up with, even if it’s a long one, will be incomplete. AltaVista once reported that 20 percent of all its searches were totally unique in the history of AltaVista. You never know what people are going to hunt for. So here are some fresh ideas for successful PPC management:

Keep your keyword list filled with synonyms and similar subjects so you know you will be able to let people know that you have what they want.

Though you will have to deal with copyright headaches, you can attempt to bid on brand names. Google has dealt with many legal issues just for allowing AdWords users to bid on brand names. Even still, company names, periodicals, associations, well- known people, and well-known places may just be relevant to your advertised goods. Two examples are “Buddy Rich” for “drums” and “Jeremy Jones”, the well-known pool player, for “billiards”.

Misspellings are a big opportunity, because so many advertisers don’t bid on them, and the clickthrough rate is often higher. For a Lord of the Rings promotion, “Tolkein” (misspelled) got twice the CTR of “Tolkien” (spelled correctly).

An impressive website that is handy for pay-per-click advertisers is LexFN.com. In essence it is a massive thesaurus that utilizes the internet to compile synonyms and relevant concepts into a comprehensive list. What an entertaining site to fiddle with! Just bidding on the conventional word not on variations you will miss out. Utilizing “expanded phrase matching” feature Google offers can help, but it is better to use the exact words people type in and it will almost always cost you less. Example: WalMart, Wal-Mart, Wal Mart.

About the Author:

Need to optimize or “fix” your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When it comes to adwords ppc management, he’s the man!

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by Rosie Cottis

One of the simplest free ways to attract more web site traffic is to leave comments on blogs. And it’s no problem at all to find the right blogs now that you can get your hands on Comment Kahuna, a link building blog comment tool from Portal Feeder, absolutely free.

This is not a lite or trial version. This is the full version of this powerful tool, and it is completely white hat. The only drawback is that it may not be available for free for very long.

‘What Is A White Hat Blog Commenting Tool?’

A white hat blog comment tool will simply find blogs in your niche area that you can leave comments on. You have the option to add a link or URL to your comment and of course you will want to do this, so that people can click through to your site. A professional tool like Comment Kahuna will list the page rank of all of the blogs, or offer you the option of searching only with blogs with a certain page rank. These are likely to be the most visited blogs. Then you simply write an individual comment for each one and submit it along with your details.

‘And What Is A Black Hat Blog Comment Tool?’

Black hat tools are basically spamming tools. They send one identical comment to perhaps thousands of blogs automatically, without any individual input. The problem is that because the comments are so generalized, the blog owners will almost always recognize them as spam and delete them before they are even published, wasting your time and money. Comment Kahuna is NOT a black hat or spamming tool.

‘Why Should I Leave Comments On Other People’s Blogs?’

It’s a great way to get links to your site(s) and, most importantly, traffic. Leave a good comment on a well-visited blog and people will click through on your link and visit your site. There they will read your pages and perhaps visit your advertisers, click on your affiliate promotions or your Adsense ads.

‘I Don’t Know How To Use A Tool Like This.’

That is not a problem – it is very easy! There is a training video right there on the page that you can watch right now before you even download, to see how simple it is.

And even if you don’t have a site ready that you need to build links to right now, remember that it’s a $97 value, and right now it’s available for free. You will probably regret it if you don’t pick it up right now. Click on the link below to see all the details.

About the Author:

Pick up your copy of Portal Feeder’s Free Blog Comment Tool – Click Here and start driving more web site traffic today! Plus visit our making money online today blog.

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Owning and maintaining an internet business requires that you have fresh content articles on a regular basis — preferably daily. Articles quench the thirst for information and knowledge that lures your prospects to your site.

So what are your options if you simply hate to write?

Well, for starters if you hate writing articles and you can’t afford to hire someone reputable to write for you, you can get free articles. The first place to look is in the public domain. You won’t have problems with copyright infringement if your material is available in the public domain.

Public domain articles have expired copyrights. In other words, when a work is copyrighted, that copyright has an expiration date. Copyrights can be extended but when the author dies, sometimes they don’t get extended and actually expire. When that happens, they end up in the public domain. So, these are writings that were once published. And, in that light, the writing should be very good.

The downside to public domain articles is that anyone can use them and your competition may have done so already. You may have to edit them a bit to place your keywords and keyword phrases in the appropriate places. Also, make sure that if you use public domain articles they pertain to your niche topic.

Another way to get free articles is to allow other sites which have similar content to submit articles to your site. Most bloggers today do utility posting which is exactly this. They use content from other blogs and give the blog a trackback (link).

Now, some people might think WAIT A MINUTE – I don’t want to put links to other sites on my site! But, if that’s what you’re thinking, you’re a bit behind the times, I’m afraid. If you’ve ever heard the term Web 2.0 that’s really what it’s all about. Even Google knows this and is now serving up pages with the most popularity based on the number of links to and from a site and, of course, a lot of other things too. But social populariaty is REALLY important!!!

So, forget about keeping all the links to yourself and start sharing as much as you can.

But, here’s the gold nugget in all of this and why I’m writing to you today. There are also a lot of article sharing services popping up online. I recently joined one and not only do they send my “unique” articles to about 700 sites each time I submit one, but I also subscribe to the service and get as many unique articles each day as I need. And, you don’t have to write articles if you only want to receive articles.

This article was submitted to them today – minus a few paragraphs added here. Over the next few weeks, you will see below, in the comments sections, pingbacks to blogs that have posted my unique article on their blog. In fact, you can check out my article on Niche Affiliate Marketing to see how many comments I have from one article post I sibmitted three days ago. That one article gave me about 400 new links according to stats in Google.

This is very powerful stuff folks so pay attention!

If you’re a bit skeptical and also want to learn what it takes to write your own articles, you might want to opt-in to this great Stealth Marketing Course that has some great insights into how to write good content.

Now, you’re probably wondering why I keep saying “unique” articles. Well, the service I use has a special way of making every article you submit unique when it’s delivered to the many directories. I can’t tell you how they do it but if you decide to join, you will also be required to keep it a secret just like me. So go take a look at what they’re doing. If you can start submitting articles regularly, you’ll really see a boost in your stats. And, if you don’t like to write, well just join up and get fresh content delivered to you daily.

Hey, it’s not expensive and it’s the best way I know of to share links and get unique content on a regular basis. This makes it so easy for me to post to my blog sites now. I choose the categories, I choose how many articles I want each day and I choose whether or not to actually post them. After all, as we discussed earlier, not everyone can write well! Crappy content gets the boot!

Just one more thing I also want to point out as far as where to get good content for your articles. There are many sites online that offer what are called Private Label Articles that you can publish and take credit for yourself. You can even rewrite them if you like. In fact, that’s how this article came about. I have no problem writing, but by using a PLR article to start with, the ideas flow easier and I don’t have to come up with all original content.

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Google: The One Big Theory

by Russell R. Collins

Designing and building a website can be a thankless task. You spend hours of your time planning, designing and creating the whole site, carefully assembling it into a work of digital art. Having lovingly pored over every word and put heart and soul into a decent navigation system and a well thought out layout, you eagerly publish your site and hold your breath for the torrent of visitors. It is somewhat disappointing, therefore, to find that days can go by without a single hit. You know that it can take a while for the search engines to identify and crawl your site, but as the days crawl by it can become very disheartening.

After a while, of course, people do start to stumble across your site, and maybe you get one or two orders. This could encourage you, and you start to wonder how many you might come to expect over the next few days or weeks. With regret you start to accept that making your first million by Christmas seems somewhat unlikely. You may start to wonder why, since at least some people have started to find you, you don’t have more people coming. But thinking about it seriously, what have you actually done yourself to ensure that your site attracts visitors? It’s all very well having a site that is so good that people want to stay and buy, but they need to know it exists first.

One thing that you may have done is to browse through the internet and find information on how to promote your site, or tips on ‘optimizing’ it. You are almost certainly aware of the fact that to be successful on the internet you really need the search engines on your side. Having your site listed by Google, MSN and Yahoo for example is going to make a big difference to your site. But, what will make a far bigger difference is the overall rank of your website.

When people search the internet using a search engine, the list of results is ordered by rank. The higher the rank of your site, the closer to the top, on the first page, your website will be. If people enter the keywords ‘alcohol free whiskey’, and this is what your site sells, then you would hope that your website would be fairly near the top, or at the top, and definitely on the first page of results. On Google, a search for ‘alcohol free whiskey’ actually brings up 216,000 results, which at ten results per page is well over 21,000 pages. Incredibly, only 3% of people ever look past the first page of results. That means that 10 website owners will enjoy the company of 97% of visitors, whilst 215,990 website owners will only ever see 3% between them.

Possibly you might have heard of tips or companies that can rocket your website skywards and make sure your site is listed right near the top. Perhaps you’ve tried a few of these tips, and wondered why your site didn’t suddenly become the hottest place on the net? Maybe you even forked out a small fortune on a company that promised you the world and delivered you maybe a few places higher, rocketing you all the way from 164,378th place to 153,735th? Yes, 10,000 places higher, but the only difference is that number. Remember, unless you’re on the first page of results, it makes almost no difference where you are, so even if they had rocketed you to 1000th place, it still isn’t going to make much difference to your business. The thing is, that there is no single way of achieving this, and any company that takes your money on the premise that there is, is one to avoid. There are a whole range of factors, many of which are easily achievable yourself in a few hours, or even minutes. The other thing to remember is that this progress in rank doesn’t happen overnight. For many reasons, search engines don’t respond to changes immediately, and it can takes many months to achieve a high rank.

Be very wary of those sites that suggest that the best way of getting your site noticed is to use keywords. Although this is certainly true, search engines now take the number of keywords as only a minor factor in judging a site’s rank. Search engines got wise to the fact that many website owners were simply cramming great blocks of keywords into the code of a page just to get attention. They get attention now all right – and the result it that they lose their rank position very quickly. There are many other ways now which the search engines use to judge how good a site is, one of which is its popularity. This is measured in several ways, but the most significant is how many other websites are linking to yours. The more links, the more popular, and this in turn implies more relevant and useful.

I have actually come across a website which is able to analyze your website against these, and the myriad of other factors which affect the ranking of your site. I was surprised to come across it because it actually offers its service free of charge. All you do is enter your web address and contact details, and they carry out a whole range of tests to assess how well your site does for certain keyword searches, and what you could do yourself to improve it. Of course, they offer their services as far as making these improvements is concerned, but this is optional, and if you’re happy doing the work yourself, it’s a really handy service that will save you a lot of time, and a very great deal of money.

Knowing what your site does well, and what it doesn’t, will help you go a long way towards getting your website listed higher. I have a site which was hardly visible at all in Google’s results – even I got bored trying to find it. After spending a couple of days implementing a few very simple changes that made very little difference to the way the site appeared, I resubmitted it to Google. I checked it earlier today, and it’s now ranked as number one! It’s a niche market, but even so, it’s now the first site people reach, and more and more people are finding it and spending money, which is great! For two days’ work, it was well worth it. I’d certainly recommend you get your site checked out; from my experience it really made a big difference.

About the Author:

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Every affiliate marketer is looking for that key market that reaps the largest reward. You don’t need a magic formula when a simple plan can work wonders. Affiliate marketing isn’t rocket science, but you do need to have a strategy. It takes proven marketing principles, hard work and dedication.

As time goes on, things change and what may have worked yesterday is no longer effective today. The following 8 affiliate marketing tips, will help you to increase sales and become more successful online.

Tip #1 – It’s best to use unique web pages to promote each product you’re marketing. Don’t put all your products together on one page or website. Web hosting is not expensive and it’s best to have a site specifically focused on each product.

Tip #2 – Include product reviews on your site. This shows that you’ve actually used the product and how it compares to other similar products. A little research on competitive products can help you write a knowledgeable review.

Tip #3 – Testimonials are a must. I don’t know about you, but even though I know testimonials are a sales tool, when I read them, it does something to really compel me to buy the product. Your visitors are the same. Testimonials are just powerful juice for your web page. Ask your customers for testimonials. If they are happy with the product, they’re usually happy to comply. If you’re just starting out, you may be able to find testimonials on the product owner’s website.

Tip #4 – Offer a free report to your readers. The best place to advertise your free report is in the upper left corner of the page. Everyone looks there first and it’s proven to be the most effective spot. A “special” report will carry more weight than an autoresponder series. Make sure, however, that it is also unique and valuable to them or they won’t be back. And, of course, make sure they have to opt-in to your autoresponder before they can download the report.

Tip #5 — Create your list. There can be only one of two results when a potential customer visits your web page. You will either make a sale or the prospect will leave and probably never come back. By capturing their email address before giving them the free report in Tip #4, you can continue to remind them of your product which they may have wanted to purchase at a later date. Make sure that the emails they receive are directed toward specific reasons to buy the product and don’t make it sound like a sales pitch.

Tip #6 – Focus on benefits, not features. In other words, talk about how your product can save them time or help them make more money. Those are benefits. Include compelling subject lines without sounding like you are hyping the product.

Tip #7 — Targeted traffic is important. There’s a difference in types of web traffic. If you drive traffic to your site that isn’t interested in your product, it’s worthless regardless of the numbers. So, always focus on targeting the traffic to your product.

Writing articles for online ezines or other blogs is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your site. But, make sure you’re writing about the same subject as the product you’re trying to sell. Writing an article about RSS feeds if you’re trying to market real estate investing is a waste of time. I saw someone do this very thing today and had to just shake my head. What were they thinking! I actually published their article on my blog, which is related to affiliate marketing. It was a good article, but the traffic draw to their website will be minimal because the people reading my blog are not high profile prospects interested in real estate investing.

Tip #8 – Quality before quantity. Try to write as many “quality” articles per week as you can. I hear some people saying they write 10 articles per day. That’s absurd because you can’t possibly write 10 quality articles per day. You can probably draw the same numbers as they are with half as many “quality” articles. Each article should be about 300-600 words in length. By continuously writing and generating these articles you can create an ongoing flow of traffic to your site.

Remember that only about 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product. So, if you can generate 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, that means you should make about 10 sales on average. If you then consider that you will make about $25 on an low to average priced Clickbank product and then multiply your daily earnings by 30 days per month, that’s $7,500 per month. Not bad for a little bit of persistence and “quality” article writing.

The tips I’ve outlined here are not difficult to do. They just require time and an action plan. Take some time each day to focus on the tips above and in no time, you’ll be driving quality traffic to your site and growing your list each day.

And, over time, by using these tips for several affiliate marketing programs, you can create a nice source of income with a simple plan and a little persistence. Most affiliate marketers fail because they don’t have a plan. Just think of the huge paychecks you will be receiving!

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