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?
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!)…
Why do you buy stuff?
Why do you go online and buy things? Why do you buy things in stores? If you break it down, what information do you really want and need to hit that final “Buy Now” button.
Does it depend on what you are buying? The cost? Do you like really detailed specs or is just a summary fine?
What is it that tips you over the edge to say in your head “OK, I have enough information, I’m ready to buy?”
If you go through this process in your mind when you buy things, don’t you think most other people do too?
You see, this is the essence of marketing online (and marketing in general). Giving people the information they need to make a decision to buy.
Screaming “BUY, BUY, BUY” on your site simply DOES NOT WORK. It’s like a used car salesman and totally turns people off.
I have been guilty of it and so are about 99% of online marketers out there. Why is this?
Well, I think it’s because when you first get into marketing online, that’s most of what you are exposed to, you don’t know any better. All of the slick sales letters, and being exposed to all of the other crap that other new marketers are putting online influences you to do the same thing.
But you have to STOP. People DO NOT want to be sold to, they want to find answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Your ONLY job is to answer those questions and offer those solutions, simple as that.
It’s hard to do, believe me.
One way I have trained myself to take this approach is to NOT think about selling anything on my site. I put myself into the shoes of my visitors and ask myself some questions:
- If I were looking for this information, what would I want to know?
- What questions would I ask?
- What questions should I ask?
- How would I want this information shown to me?
- How much is it?
- How much is it compared to other alternatives?
- How do the different ones compare in reliability and price?
- What would make me hit the “Buy” button?
Brainstorm a little bit and put yourself in the shoes of your visitors.
So, if you are having problems converting visitors into buyers, step back and examine your copy.
Are you screaming “BUY, BUY, BUY” or are you truly trying to help people find a solution to their problem.
-
Tools I Personally Use & Recommend
