Strategic Marketing At Warp Speed

For all the whiners and crybabies wanting an explanation of why Google bitch-slapped them about a month ago and took away or degraded their pagerank, you should be happy to know that they have provided an official explanation.

Notice this:

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

So it looks to be ok in selling links if you have the nofollow on them. I am sure this will stir up the blogosphere. Glad it is not one of my money making models. There’s just way to much bullshit to deal with.

What is PayDotCom?

PayDotCom is much like the Clickbank marketplace. Some have even deemed it an “alternative”. A lot of the products on Clickbank that have been canned or just don’t like them have resorted to becoming part of the PayDotCom network. It doesn’t have to be a digital product either. You can easily sell physical goods and memberships within the PayDotCom network. My partner and I currently have the #1 best selling product in the Paydotcom marketplace. It is located in the Money and Employment section (obviously). It’s nothing spectacular, just a basic survey membership site geared towards people wanting to make money online. I was normally only going to review Paydotcom in a nonchalant manner but having been a vendor with a partner of mine since February and an affiliate for even longer, I thought I would give an overview from both sides.

As a vendor it is incredibly simple to be allowed to sign your product up with them. All you really need is a Paypal account. As a vendor you are responsible for paying out your affiliates each month. It is easily done as PayDotCom has a “mass pay” button that allows you to payout all your affiliates with a click of your mouse. It also has it advantages in regards to refunds as well. Since you are the vendor and Paypal is the payment processor you can challenge any disputes that arise. I can’t tell you how many times my partner has won these disputes. It’s another way to keep jerkoffs from ripping you off. It’s free to join up and there is no fee to list your products. There are fees that Paydotcom charges on successful transactions ($3). That is basically it though.

In a nutshell, here’s the vendor advantages:

Good news has arrived! In my earlier post at the end of October “2CO Launches Their Affiliate Beta” I mentioned that 2Checkout was going to support Paypal Express Checkout. Well, after cruising around and searching for more information I came across this. It is been written in public that 2Checkout now supports Paypal. This is great news for people who live in countries where they cannot use Paypal or Clickbank.

The PayPal payment option will be available for all non-recurring orders in the following currencies:

• Australian Dollar (AUD)
• Canadian Dollar (CAD)
• Euro (EUR)
• British Pound (GBP)
• Japanese Yen (JPY)
• U.S. Dollar (USD)

If you haven’t already you should check out Mohsin’s blog post “No Paypal, No Clickbank, No Problem“. Mohsin did some extensive testing where he stated the following:

My own tests has proved that if i did not offer Paypal at my salespage as payment processing source, I lost more than 60 percent sales. I have offered both and tested 2CO and Paypal, and even i offered $1 discount to use 2CO, more than 50% sales come through Paypal. That is Paypal is a MUST HAVE at your Sales letter online.

He goes on to state that it was not easy for him as he was unable to have a Paypal account. He’s got some great screenshots inside of 2Checkout as it is still in beta and not open to the public yet, but Mohsin was invited it looks like, so he was kind enough to provide an early preview and inside look. Thanks Mohsin!

I won’t duplicate TechDirt’s content but if you want a good story on what can happen when you think Googlebombing isn’t that bad then go have a read. Try to remember if you have ever engaged in this type of activity or not, but more importantly this dude was tracked down. Scary stuff, but obviously he was an idiot who didn’t cover the prints to well.

Story

Far too often and just recently I get the uncomfortable task of watching people go down in a “blaze of glory” so to speak. There is not enough forum posts or coaching in the world to save someone from drowning in the large ocean of Internet Marketing. It is in my experience that if a person is going to fail, there are early signs that indicate that inevitably, a dramatic change is about to occur. Here are some of the things I have seen before someone has completely vanished from the Internet Marketing world.  Use these to your advantage and turn them around if your experiencing a “hard time”. I assure you I have been here before myself, so I am speaking from personal experience. Another thing is that when I say “Internet Marketing” I mean making an income from the computer in general.

Ingredient 1. This is the easiest of them all. You are lazy and do not take action. I assure you that working online is not all bells and whistles. It can be, but the path leading there is a very rough one for most. This is one of the things I stress most when trying to help someone. I push them harder than most, because I want to know if they “have it what it takes”. It is very obvious that if a person cannot take a little verbal pushing, then they are going to have an “extremely” tough time coping with the path that leads to “righteousness”.

I was checking out PayPerPost this morning as it could possibly be a way to combine another income stream with some of my niche blogs. Now I have not joined up just yet, as I wanted to give an unbiased review and talk about PayPerPost from a “civilian” (LOL) stand point. Then if it sounds like something good for you, you can make the choice on your own accord. I just wanted to tell you that there are no affiliate links in this review, just a straight forward look into them.

First thing I did this morning was rush off to find out what all the hype is. According to the PayPerPost Marketplace they contain the world’s largest sponsored content marketplace. Basically you get paid as a blogger to create and publish advertiser sponsored content. Almost anyone in the world can do it too. Here’s a little quote as I do not want to rehash their info from their site:

 The PayPerPost marketplace is self-serve and easy to use. You create an account in our system by providing some basic information and your blog URL. You are here to make money so a valid TAX ID (either social security number for individuals or an EIN for companies) is required for US citizens.

Advertisers create “Opportunities” for bloggers to write about their products, services and websites. They range from $5 to several thousands of dollars, depending on the criteria set by the advertiser. Bloggers with high amounts of traffic can expect to earn a significant amount of money for each post they create on behalf of an advertiser.

It sounds like a really neat idea especially, if you have had trouble with contextual advertising and affiliate marketing. You can make specific blogs to review for PayPerPost and at least generate a solid income to fund your further online efforts.

Blogging your business to increase profits will kind of tie into Tips On How To Sell Information Products. The days of “marketing to the herd” so to speak are not working as well as they used to be. While some “big wigs” and “businesses” will still have their protected “target markets” it is becoming increasingly aware that people are getting more “internet savvy” and thus, are looking for and actually requiring more infomation before a purchase.

This works out really well if your like me, and give almost everything away at no cost. It does not work well if your from the “Stone-Age” where you instilled fear and hype to nab the dollar. While you may still be selling, it is apparent that there is a downhill trend in selling just by having hype and a sense of urgency as your two weapons of choice.

When your Blogging Your Business, your giving your “ultimate” weapon (The Search Engines) the ammunition they need to keep you fully loaded and firing away. Sorry for the analogy, it just came to me and sounds really cool. Keeping content up and consistently updated is what it takes these days to keep favor in the Engines. Keeping your visitors coming back and increasing your awareness thru Search Engine Optimization is the biggest and most important thing you can do with your blog. Everything else just falls into place.

Your blog should build credibility, respect, awareness and trust for you and your business. While building all of these your also building another characteristic that you may not realize (but you should), and that is –>Action. If people trust you, they respect you, they know you only come forward with the best content and products, and they are aware that you are an authority in everything you do, they WILL buy from you. It only makes sense right? Of course it does, as your going to great lengths to capitalize on your talents and researching abilities.