Don’t Always Trust A Guru (and my newest site revealed)…
Recently an IM guru (who I consider a friend) came out with a series of videos on running a profitable campaign. Now, I am not saying who, and above all, I still respect and admire this person greatly, so I don’t want this to come across too negative because their intentions are in the right place.
Anyway, the first video was about keyword research. I was a bit dissapointed to find that the primary way they said to find good keywords to rank for was to do the quote search and the “intitle” search.
If you get under 50,000 results in quotes and under 10,000 results for intitle, it could be a good keyword is what was said.
And that was it.
So, as I was in the middle of creating my new site, I thought I would ditch my usual method of keyword research (found in this post and emphasizing looking at average page rank of the first 10 results) and give it a whirl.
These are the results I got…but first let me tell you about the new site I was building.
I got to thinking about how I could really add value. And I mean REALLY add value to peoples lives.
Well, I thought about it for a while and realized how silly it is for me to try and market all the things I market – double chin exercises, guitar courses, anxiety treatments, registry repair software, boil treatments, emetophobia and on and on.
First, I don’t know squat about most of this stuff, so first I have to spend time learning. And second, they don’t really get me all jazzed up to write about, so they get boring after a while. And finally, am I REALLY trying to add value or make a buck selling e-books and miracle potions?
So, as amazingly stupid and simple as this sounds, I came up with the idea of doing something in the profession my offline business is in – accounting. Not the most exciting, but I do it every day, I know it inside and out, and I truly get to help people solve problems. And most important of all – I KNOW exactly what their problems are (this is crucial).
So I came up with www.learnquickbooksforfree.com. I won’t go into the details of why this is a problem for business owners, but basically I recorded 14 videos on how to use Quickbooks. It’s about 7-8 hours of video training, all completely free. And I encourage people to email me with their questions.
I could not find free training like this anywhere online. So, it really, truly adds value to people.
And its a simple opt-in list where I can build a relationship with my subscribers. Check out this email I got from one subscriber about the site and the help I gave her:
Mat,
You are amazing. I have gone to many sites and forums seeking an answer for this reimbursement issue, and I always seem to get confused and not really get my question answered. You have explained my options below and I see it so clearly and it seems so simple.
I will be using option 1 which is easiest for me to do. You have saved me a lot of time and frustration. The greatest thing about this is that I feel confident and I am now very excited to continue to populate quickbooks with my information and see my final reports. I wish you could understand what it means to users like us to find someone like you who is so knowledgeable, but more than that, is the fact that you are willing to share this information and devote your time for no cost, in today’s world. You are truly amazing and different.
Happy 4th and I know that I will have another question soon.
Thanks again!
Is that awesome or what!! That makes you feel good and is truly adding value to peoples lives.
So, thats my new site, and it is a simple Wordpress template I found free. I paid $10 for the domain and spent time on the videos. I plan on getting subscribers, building the relationship, and presenting offers on any one of the 1,000’s of business affiliate products out there (for example, a Stamps.com CPA offer pays $50 if they sign up for a 4 week trial!).
Now back to my keyword research fiasco.
My first keyphrase I chose was “free quickbooks training online” and here are some stats:
1. Between 1,300-1,600 searches per month
2. 369,000 search results
3. 39,000 quote results
4. 157 intitle results with quotes
Should be a slam dunk, right?
Final data:
5. Average page rank – 3.6 (yikes!)
So, I did 1 video, submitted to about 15 video sites, like Youtube and Metacafe. I wrote one article and submitted to about 25 social sites and I have built maybe 40-50 backlinks to the site.
See if you can find me ANYWHERE in the regular search results. Good luck, I can’t be found on at least the 1st 5 pages. Do it in quotes and I’m number 1, but people don’t search in quotes.
But I have 22 subscribers so far – and they literally have ALL come from Youtube.
I know, I know, one keyword can’t determine whether or not looking just at quotes and intitle is the best or not. BUT, I’m telling you, you can’t always blindly trust a so called guru, and you have to know what works.
In the case of keyword research, look at average page rank – that will be the best indicator of if you will rank quickly and high or not (remember www.bamboopatioshades.com? It’s still ranked number 1 and I have done NOTHING to it!).
And there is something to TRULY adding value. For one, it makes you feel good, and two, you build trust MUCH, MUCH faster. Think about it in your campaigns – are you really adding value or just trying to make a quick buck?
The One Piece You May Be Missing…
Man, I apologize for not posting in a while. I have been super busy on a project recently which I will let you know about in a future post. I created 15 videos for this new site, each one being 20-30 minutes long. So, it took a while to get up and running.
But the idea for the site hit me one day, and it combines my offline business with my online skills, so I think it could be a big hit. And its a little different because my total focus on this site is list building on the front end with sales on the back end. So, I’ll unveil that, maybe in my next post.
What I want to talk about in this post, though, is something almost everyone overlooks. And doing this can boost your SE rankings tremendously - internal linking.
What is internal linking? In its simplest form, it is linking one page to another in your site.
And I am no SEO expert by any means, so I don’t know all the technicalities behind it, but I do know that it helps your rankings. And the way I think about it is that if I have 10 pages on my site, and each one links out to an affiliate product or some other site, then when the spiders come crawling, they will hit a page, follow the links and be off my site in no time.
But my goal is to have them on my site as long as possible, so they can crawl and discover and index ALL of my content, so it is critical to have some links on your page linking to other pages on your site (like this one!).
So, what is the best way to do this?
Again, I’m no SEO expert, but my general approach is to have at least one link on each page going to another page. Or, if it is a blog, with every post, I make a link to the previous post, like this post I did about the product reviews and the Affiliate Genie review.
Now, I’m sure there are guru’s out there that tell you to do it a specific way to get the best results, but just link to other posts and other pages on your site, and use varying anchor text, and it should work fine. Keep it simple and uncomplicated.
That’s it. Doing this one simple thing can increase your ranking tremendously and get more of your content noticed by Google.
Pretty cool, huh?
Be Sure To Check Out The New Pages Added
I have been asked by a number of people to do some actual reviews of IM products I have used, so I set up a separate page on this site specifically for product reviews.
I just posted my first one entitled “Affiliate Genie Review,” and you can see it on the menu bar (it also includes a video of the software in action).
I hope they are helpful so you can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in some of these tools.
Thanks!
Random Thoughts On Effective Headlines…
This morning as I was getting breakfast for my kids, I noticed an interesting saying on the side of the box of Apple Jacks cereal. It said “Life is better when your kids are healthy.”
That grabbed my attention because of course its true. You don’t want your kids to be sick, and life is much easier when they are healthy. And God forbid you feed them something unhealthy so they get sick or malnourished!
This got me thinking about an old slogan for Jiff Peanut Butter. This is showing my age I guess, but the slogan on the commercials and all the print used to say “Choosy moms choose Jiff.” Have you heard this before?
I remember as a kid this being plastered everywhere to where it was virtually branded on your brain.
And if you were a mom, it made you think, “Well, I’m choosy about what I feed my kids. I don’t want to just give them any old food. I probably should give them Jiff!” Maybe not just like that, but you get the point.
You see, I have NEVER liked the headlines people use in Internet Marketing.
Things like, “Discover How I Made $50,376.48 In My Sleep In 2 Hours!” or crap like that. It’s too spammy and I hate when people advocate using headlines like that because in my opinion it’s almost like you are preying on peoples emotions.
But if you break down the above examples I gave for Apple Jacks and Jiff, what are they really doing? Are they also preying on peoples emotions, but in a more subtle way?
Here is the way I think about them – 1) they are attention grabbing because they touch a nerve with something most people already think about themselves (keeping their kids healthy, not just putting any ‘ol junky food into their kids), and 2) people reading the headlines have to agree with the statements otherwise they would be “bad parents.”
I am no psychologist (but I love psychology), but my guess is that if the headline states something they CAN’T disagree with and implies what just about every parent wants (to be a good parent), then the copy below it ties in the product and BINGO, they now associate the food with being a good parent. Make sense?
It’s brilliant in its simplicity.
So, how can we use this type of knowledge to become better Internet marketers?
I think first you have to know and understand your prospects deepest and darkest fear, belief and/or desire about a given ailment or problem they have. Then you have to state the obvious in your headline, something they cannot disagree with.
Finally, in your copy, you have to tie in your product as the perfect solution to reinforce their beliefs.
I am doing this off the top of my head, but let’s say we take anxiety as an example. I know for a fact that people who suffer from anxiety believe that life would be better if they did not have anxiety and they look for “cures” to their disorder. So, maybe the headline could somewhat copy the Apple Jacks example:
“Life Is Better When You Are Cured of Anxiety And Panic Attacks…”
Or…
“Life Is Fuller When You Are Cured Of Anxiety And Panic Attacks…”
Or…
“Life Is Full Of Opportunity When You Are Cured Of Anxiety And Panic Attacks.”
Like I said, these are just off the top of my head and I plan on testing some of them in my campaigns.
But I like it better than the same old “See How I Cured My Anxiety In 5 Minutes!!!” kind of garbage.
Do you think it would be more effective, less effective? Is it as attention grabbing as the spammy headlines? What would make it more attention grabbing? Is it also “preying” on peoples emotions?
I’d love to hear your feedback.
Awesome questions from readers…
I got some questions recently from some readers here, Tony and Claudia. They were really great questions, so I wanted to make a post about them. Here is the unedited text of their questions (and thanks for the compliments too!):
“Your advise and tips are priceless! You have given us more value from your posts than many of those $97 ebooks on affiliate marketing and we thank you so much!
We have a few questions please:
1. Do you still avoid using DocStoc when posting content?
2. Angela backlinks are extremely powerful and have helped us get on page one of Google. Is it absolutely necessary to rewrite an article 10 times and submit them everywhere if you are already on page 1? Can we just use her backlinks for all of our keywords and save time?
3. Your Wordpress themes are very impressive. Where do you find all of these themes? Are they free or paid? Or are these supplied to you from Affiliate Genie?Thank you so much for your help.”
OK, here goes, in order –
1. No, I have not posted to docstoc in a while only because they kill your links. It gets some great rankings, but it just makes me angry when I see that I get 600 views and maybe 5 click throughs (because they would have to cut and paste the URL to their browser).
I am getting some really good rankings from articlesbase.com and ezinearticles, but I am also getting some great rankings and traffic from scribd.com, yudu.com and calameo.com – these are the primary ones I am using.
2. Angelas backlinks are powerful, I love them! It’s not necessary to rewrite an article 10 times to get on Page 1, BUT let’s say you do that and hold 5 of the top 10 spots on Page 1 with different rewritten versions – you have a much better chance of getting the click and the sale this way. So, while its not necessary, it helps long term.
What I like to do is get a piece of content out there, ping it, social bookmark it and submit its RSS feed, then build maybe 10-20 links to it and let it simmer for a week or so, then check the rankings. While I am letting it simmer, I move on to either 1) the same keyword but rewritten article (and go through the whole ping, social bookmark, RSS and links) OR 2) my next keyword with the same process.
After it simmers, if I am not ranking, I take the same piece of content (the 1st one), and go through the process again, then let it simmer, etc. And I just keep cycling through my keywords this way.
It can get confusing and you have to keep it all in a spreadsheet or something, but it makes you get content out there continuously – and the more you have typically the better.
3. Some are from Affiliate Genie and some are free Wordpress themes. I have never paid for a Wordpress theme. There are just too many free ones out there. And to be honest, I have no favorite sites I use for free ones, I typically do a Google search for the theme of my site + “free Wordpress theme.” I think with the bamboo one I did a search for “bamboo free wordpress theme” and “asian free wordpress theme.” I probably looked at about 15 of them before I chose that one.
Bamboo Patio Shades is a free wordpress theme and so are www.verticalburst.com, www.transformyourchild.net, and www.boilremedies.com – some other sites I have done.
I use Affiliate Genie for www.learnelectricguitaronline.net and a new one I just put together at www.anxietymanagementhelp.com – yes, I am telling you my niches, but I don’t really care because 1) it helps you out and 2) they are pretty well entrenched (also, if you check out the anxiety one you can see a video of ME talking about anxiety – don’t make too much fun of me!)
I started using Affiliate Genie about a three months ago and am really liking it because I can put up sites quickly and they are geared towards affiliate marketers. They also have a lot of Wordpress functionality built into them so the search engines are ranking them pretty quickly.
And yes, these are affiliate links in this post for Affiliate Genie because its something I feel I can wholeheartedly recommend – and it helps me keep all of this stuff free!
Anyway, I didn’t mean for this to get long-winded. I hope it helps and if you have any other questions, please let me know.
How to connect with your website visitors?
OK, this idea is so simple it is stupid, but it uncovers a goldmine of information that you can use to establish a connection with your website visitors. Hope you enjoy it, and feel free to leave a comment below the post (or even Tweet it!)…
Cool Tip To Find Untapped Niche Keywords
I got an e-mail yesterday from my buddy, Andrew Hansen, who created Firepow and PnP, with a great video about finding good, untapped niche keywords.
Watch his video below, it should help you find some good gold nugget keywords.
Enjoy…
Having trouble making sales? This may make it easier…
OK, if you are having trouble selling digital e-books, whether you can’t connect with the customer or there is just way too much competition, watch this video on a whole other world in affiliate marketing that most affiliates don’t even bother with – BUT, and keep this a secret — it’s profitable!
So, what’s up with the guitar niche?
OK, so it’s been a while since I posted directly about my “learn guitar” campaign. It is still going and I am still working it. I have had a few sales, so I consider it a success.
There is not a whole lot to say about it other than I continue to post content, ping, submit feeds and build backlinks to the site. All the things that I have shown you in the video posts.
And that seems to be the “mystery” of internet marketing strangely enough. Many, many people seem to think it is this sexy, get rich quick scheme where you use some secret methods to get traffic and make a ton of money.
When in reality, it is a business that takes time to flourish and grow. For this guitar site, I now know that 1) it sells and 2) there is traffic. So, from here, I add additional keywords, test headlines, videos, products, etc., or maybe start a list. But what I am ultimately doing is methodically building a piece of real estate on the web that will provide me passive income for many, many years to come.
So, I continue to build it a little bit, every single day. Then, as a month, 3 months, or a year goes by, I have so much frickin’ authority on this site that I will dominate my search terms, guaranteed.
Right now I am on the 1st page for the name of 2 products in this niche and one of my search terms. Think about a year from now how many search terms I will dominate for!
This contrasts starkly to how I did IM when I started. The routine was – find a niche, find some keywords, build a Squidoo lens, write some articles and wait for a sale. Make no sales, get discouraged and move on to another niche. And I would repeat this process over and over – I have A TON of content online, unfortunately it’s in A TON of DIFFERENT niches and DIFFERENT sites.
Focus, focus, focus on one or two niches, get the foundation built, and then build a frickin skyscraper. Outsource the link building once you are making some sales and start on the next one. You will not only make some money, but you will probably make a lot of it.
As time goes by I’ll keep you posted, but for now I am continuing the same boring stuff and starting some new sites in different niches.
Continue building…
P.S. – I am working on a video right now on what to do if you are struggling to make any sales. It kind of goes contrary to what most people teach in IM when you start out, but it can be 1) a lot less time consuming, 2) be 1,000 times less competitive and 3) you can see sales much quicker.
Stay tuned.
Important News
Hey, I wanted to post this because I think it’s important.
IF you have ever been interested in joining me over at Wealthy Affiliate, the price is going up June 7th.
Kyle, one of the founders of WA, announced last week that they were implementing a “significant” price increase over what it is now.
Right now it is $39 per month if you pay monthly, and $29 per month if you pay annually.
It’s where I started my IM career and it has been instrumental in my success, not only for its awesome tools, but also for its fantastic community.
So, again, IF you have been thinking about joining, now would be the time to give it some serious consideration, and get grandfathered in BEFORE the price goes up.
Go here to explore Wealthy Affiliates resources and see if its right for you
Oh, and if you were never thinking about joining, ignore this post!!
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Tools I Personally Use & Recommend
