In the past I have marketed on mobile networks such as Admob, Inmobi, and Mojiva.  I knew for a fact that Admob offered a “click-to-call” function for their mobile advertisers (so does Inmobi, don’t know about Mojiva) so I chose to try out their traffic.  Basically what happens is when someone clicks on your advertisement they are shown a message that states “Are you sure you want to call XXXXXXXXXX” Then the person clicks call or cancel.  Now, the theory behind this is that if someone clicks the call button then they genuinely want to call your company.  At least that was my thought on this process.

Here was the first banner creative

This was the first creative that was used.  This was a text version of an Admob ad.  Originally the ad just said “Free Debt Elimination Kit – Call Now!”.  However, we noticed a terrible CTR for the offer.  Because we were sending traffic after business hours we assumed that people just weren’t clicking.  Most people know that if you call after business hours you will have to deal with an automated system instead of an actual phone operator. So to combat the issue we put on Call 24/7 to the ad to help ease people’s minds. 21k impressions, 130 clicks, 6 confirmed calls, $48.xx spend, average $0.30 a click. Not the best… so we moved to a banner ad approach so we could add more info to the creative.

Here was the second/final creative

This was an actual image instead of using the Admob default background and custom text.  Image ads on mobile networks allow you to add more content to the actual creative.  You can also see that we were pre-qualifying people by letting them know that if they click they will need to continue with a phone call to us. The creative also let the surfer know what they would be receiving for calling in.   1,316,753 impressions, 9,871 clicks, $1,353.50 spend (about $0.14 a click)… you ready for this?… 410 calls.  That’s $4,100.  AWESOME RIGHT?  Well… yes and no… The advertiser wasn’t too thrilled about the quality of traffic… Don’t worry… they’re going to pay up… but…

Here is what I learned

Mid day we received a report of the traffic quality.  Unfortunately it was quite low. And here’s why…

Any good marketer knows that they should always track their stats with a third party company. For this project I chose to go with Dynamicic.com (a phone number tracking service). Dynamicic also offers the option to record the phone call so that you can hear what exactly is going on. Out of my own curiousness for how the calls went I made sure to turn on the recording function from the beginning.  After we received the report from the advertiser I went back and listened to about 50 phone calls.  While some of them were indeed real people the majority were remnant noises of little kids… WHAT?  Yeah… little tykes making their little googoo gaga sounds.

So… While I did make a HUGE return for the investment, the quality of the actual phone call was utter $#!^ to say the least.  This venture in mobile marketing taught me that 85%+ clicks on the advertisement come from kids that are playing with their parents phone.  Now… Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but when you have an advertiser that is paying you for a phone call of ANY length then this is a critical matter that needs to be resolved.

That traffic was ran on Friday.  Right now the campaign is paused until I can get a full report as to the quality of the leads. If it’s extremely bad I’ll just ask for a pay decrease and hope that I can keep pushing traffic.  Even at a couple dollars a lead I’ll still be making oodles of dinero from this campaign.

Here’s some screen shots for you

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When writing your articles the common misconception is that they must be very informative and based solely on your specific niche. While the majority of articles you submit should follow protocol, don’t be afraid to throw in some fun and interesting articles that will grab the readers attention.

Also, if you have dipped your hand in this type of traffic generation method before, you know that MANY of the articles out there are low-quality dime-a-dozen type articles. It may seem like the more the better, but that does not mean you can not write rich, interesting, and exciting articles. If you want people to read them and come to your site. Take some time and write well.

Now, there are several places where you can post your articles, but I personally recommend article directories above all else. Article directories are places where you can get your articles published quickly and easily for free.

You can submit your articles to dozens of different directories,  but here is a list of directories I think you should start at:

www.Ezinearticles.com
www.GoArticles.com
www.Articlecity.com
www.Isnare.com
www.Amazines.com
www.ApprovedArticles.com
www.SubmitYourArticle.com
www.Articlesbase.com

These directories will allow you to publish your articles and post a one-way link back to your website. Before creating your link, think about what page you want to send traffic to. For example, do you want to send your readers directly to your sales page? Or do you want to send them to a page with more information to warm them up a bit. This all depends on your product, and should be split tested to see what converts the best.

So there you have it. Just a simple breakdown of Article submissions. With some intellect and moderate writing skills this can and will generate free traffic to your website.

Kris – One of the great things about article submissions is that people will often scrap your article to fill in content on their website. This will place a link on their site back to yours… 1 article submitted to an article directory can turn into a handful of inbound links to your site!

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The simplest way of doing this is using Facebook and Myspace.

MySpace is a great medium because it is full of younger adults who are eager to become an adult; whereas, Facebook is full of adults who are employed and generally have a college education. You should know your demographic and choose accordingly.

The first step of joining either of these communities is to create an account. The process is simple and takes less than 2 minutes. Once you have created your account, you can access the creation page, where you can begin to promote yourself and your business on your profile.

For now, let’s skip right to searching for other people’s blogs and commenting on those blogs. I will give you a breakdown on how to do this.

The first step is to search for the different blogs about your business. We will use “surfing” as our example topic.

1. Start by going to http://blog.myspace.com. You should see the following page:

   

   MySpace’s blog search page. From here, you can locate all MySpace blogs through searches.

2. Search for your niche topic. In the case of my example, I have entered the word “surfing” and then searched for it. MySpace’s engine returned 13,400 results:

   

   A sample of some of the profiles that contain surfing blogs.

3. Move from blog-to-blog until you find one that both receives traffic and is relevant to your particular niche, as well as your goals. In my case, I found a surfing blog that may be worth commenting on occasionally:

   

4. Select a blog to comment on.(Some bloggers require you to be there friend before you can comment). If necessary, become the blogger’s friend by sending a friend request.Once they have accepted your friend request, you can begin to comment on their blog.
5. Be sure and compose a constructive comment that is useful to the blogger and its readers. Under your comment be sure and include a link to your site. (This step is VERY important, as it would be a waste of time if you do not drive traffic back to you).

This is a great method for pointing one way links towards your site and can drive a large number of visitors to your site. Additionally, it has the potential to increase your site’s SERP. This process should be done regularly as it keeps you involved in your niches community. It may be faster and simpler to have the comments written elsewhere, like on Word, and then simply copy and paste them onto the blog page.

In addition to MySpace and Facebook blogs, you can find places to leave comments in Technorati and Yahoo! Blog Directory, you should also consider checking out the various blogs on http://www.squidoo.com and http://hubpages.com/.

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So here is your update to the series.

First thing I did a couple of weeks ago is I put the site together. Not just a bunch of random pages like it was before, but now the site is hooked up and working. The first page you hit is the squeeze page.  We used aweber for the autoresponder.  After they sign up for aweber they get pushed off to a secret tip.  This secret tip should be good enough to keep them coming back for more. At the bottom of the secret tip they are presented with a link to the sales letter.

For this product we used paypal as the payment gateway.  If you don’t know how to set that up you can ask in the members forum.  I’ll be more than happy to jump in there and help you out. Anyways, after they purchase the product paypal will push them off to a thank you page.  This thank you page should only have a little thank you message and another autoresponder form.  This form will be for a different mailing list.  Not the original list we had people sign up to before.  This is how we separate our buyers from the rest of the group. Once they sign up they get pushed on to a page so that they can download their product.

The URL for the thank you page and the download page should be some weird combination of numbers and letters.  For example your thank you page could be www.domain.com/thankyoualakajlewjc9393aj9309cj409jcojrrlkcjsli4jje.html . This will keep people from guessing the link.

Then you can use a robot.txt file to block the thank you page and the download page from being indexed into the search engines.  Here is the code for blocking pages from the search engines.

# robots.txt for your site

User-agent: *
Disallow: /thankyoupage.html
Disallow: /downloadpage.html
Disallow: /orthewholefolder/

Ok if you didn’t understand that User-agent: * means every search engine spider/bot. Then you are telling them to not have access to specific pages or folders… It’s really easy. Just upload that into a regular .txt file, name it robot.txt and then upload it into the root of your website.

Okay once the site was all set up I sat down for a couple of hours and I showed the two guys how to do some basic FREE marketing.  We went over yahoo answers, blog marketing, forum marketing, and youtube video ripping.

You can see we have begun to gather visitors to the site. Here are our results for optins from aweber.

So, we’ve begun to get some results.  I’m sure some of those optins come from readers here.  I promise… there isn’t any reason for you to sign up so please don’t if you don’t have to we would like to try and keep these numbers as close to accurate as possible.

We have yet to make a sale, but we are in there working hard to drive traffic to the site. Once we get some more data I will begin to tweak the site to make it convert better.  I’ll also be installing a click map over the site.  This will help me determine what actions I need to take.

That’s it for an update.  I’ll get with these guys tonight and tomorrow.  I’ll make sure to have something for you on Thursday!

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Here’s the webinar we had with Ryan Moran. I apologize for the audio issues. The first 8 minutes have no sound except mine… Weird I know… Then we started to pick up the audio.
If you have any questions feel free to jump into the members forum and ask away!

ENJOY!

OH HEY… Thank you Nick and Jesse for the audio. (Mine didn’t record Ryan’s half of the conversation.) I used their audio recording for this vid.

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While everyone is giving you BS posts on PPV marketing I’ll be taking you down a real road for profit! Let me explain some things first.  I’ve been making a full time income from PPV for quite a while. If you have questions on PPV feel free to post them in the members forum.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try PPV I’m just saying there are other more profitable ways to generate money.  Unfortunately not everything you do with PPV will make you rich.  Don’t buy into the hype of it all.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to cover a method for making money online that you can use for ANY niche! Best of all it is GUARANTEED to make you money. How many people can GUARANTEE you that you will make money.  I’ll tell you what… If you follow this course and can’t make money after putting in some honest effort then I will pay back any and all expenses that you incur (just make sure to document everything that you do)

This method isn’t a one hit wonder that will die out in 2 weeks so you have to pump it back up and start all over again.  I’m going to show you how to build a profitable online business.

I once paid $5,000 for what I’m about to teach you. So why am I going to give this away?  Let’s just say that I am tired of all the bullshit that goes around online.  I’m tired of people saying “HEY YOU CAN MAKE $14,597 A DAY WITH PPC”.  While it may be true… You won’t start out making that much money.  And most of the time the courses are full of holes.

I said it before and I’m going to say it again so you fully understand what I’m doing here…  I’m going to walk you through step by step what I have done to build a huge online business that has allowed me to work from home.  I’m not just going to cover PPC, PPV, SEO, Media Buys, but other forms of marketing.  Plus I’m going to show you how to set it up from the beginning so that you can capture emails and market to a group of people over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over… Okay you get the point… and over again.

This is for the beginner.  This is for the person that isn’t making money right now… This is also for the person who wants a more stable online income something that isn’t going to die away once the FTC says something…  This is for YOU. I’m going to start out slow with the most least amount of expenses possible.  But as we move along with the series we will be opening the doors to some more costs as we grow.  Don’t worry.  You don’t have to spend money until your ready to.  No need to buy into PPC until you are ready!

Here is what I want you to do… Sign up below so that you can be alerted to new updates when we have them here. You don’t want to miss out on anything.

Now that you have signed up… Just wait… I’ve already got the next post written up. It will come out very shortly! You don’t have to be signed up to see the next post. It’s just a way to be notified when the next post comes out :)

That’s it for now!

To Your Success!

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• Pay Per Click- This is the most widely known method for Internet marketing. It is super easy to jump onto Google, Yahoo, or Bing, and create an advertisment. There are other networks that you can use as well. Don’t just stick with the big three. One of my most profitable campaigns ever came from a second tier search engine.
• Media Buying- You may or may not have heard of Media Buying before. It’s where you advertise banners on other websites, blogs, or forums. This can be one of the most profitable forms of advertising that I have ever seen. It can also kill your bank account if you don’t do it right. They key (as with any advertising) is to match a sites demographic with the banner you want to place.
• Social Networking- I’m sure we all have a facebook or myspace account. What about a twitter account? Anytime you can use your “friends” to make a quick buck you should give it a shot. Leveraging the power of the social networks can be very beneficial to your long term success. It’s all about the power of the “word”… word of mouth that is. What are other people saying about you?
• Mass Mailing- Not the spammy type of messages. I’m talking about building your own list. Or even renting a list from someone who has done the leg work for you. Of course it will be more profitable if you build the list yourself, however, you can always make money from someone elses list. Building a relationship with the reader is the #1 way to get them to buy what your selling!
• Advertise with Online Classifieds- There are tons of classified ad sites online. It is very easy to jump in and create an advertisement for an offer you want to promote. However, you have to watch out. On some of the advertising networks you can get your ads taken down pretty fast. They key here is to be creative and post your ad in multiple cities. Take it one step further… hire someone to post for you!
• Promote with Blogs and Forums- One of the easiest ways to gain traffic is by showing people how much you know. I don’t mean to create your own blog or forum. What you should do is find a related blog/forum in the niche you want to promote, then take some time to answer peoples questions. Don’t forget to include your website in the signature. Whatever you do… Don’t blatantly promote your product.
• Article Directories- Here is a tactic that can cost you either money or time. Create articles and post them in article directories. Just give out general information on your niche. These articles don’t have to be long. They just have to prove that you know what your talking about. Remember to site your sources with a reference to your own site. This is sure to help your SEO and generate some easy traffic.
• Web 2.0- Squidoo, Blogger, Xanga, Tumblr, and HubPages all have one thing in common. They all cater to thousands of people on a daily basis. All creating little information portals. These sites can receive quick and easy rankings in the search engines. Using many of these tied together with links can create a huge web of success in terms of traffic and traffic rankings.
• Offline Advertising- Billboard for 30 days =$500. Visitors to my website =2423. Leads created=171. Commission generated =$897.75. And that was just for a dating offer. Imagine if you purchased billboard space for Google Bizopp. Or have you ever tried purchasing space in a newspaper? Think about college scholarship offers in college newspapers… The possibilities for offline advertising are endless!

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• United States (US)
• United Kingdom (UK)
• Canada

BAM That’s money right there. Unfortunately my #1 country isn’t on the list.

Click here to see Googles official list!

Click here for the article in Search Engine Journal!

Get those campaigns ready. It’s going to be a dirty fight to take over some of those trademarked terms!

You will need to remember to look at the original TOS for the offers that you are running.  Some offers make their own rules and you will still need to follow their rules on bidding on trademarked terms.

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We all love backlinks.  No really we do.  I know I just got done telling you some stuff about backlinks up there in bold lettering… But still.  This is a great technique that you can use.  And I’m sure all of you can think of other uses for some of these tools I’m going to share with you.

This technique that I am going to show you will help you get some link juice from RSS feeds.  It is basically a technique where you take an RSS feed and send it out to several different RSS Aggregators.

_____________________________________

1. Jump over to RSS Mix <–click that….
2. Add Several different RSS feeds to the list.
3. • Your Blog RSS Feed
   • Your ezine article feed
   • Your Social Bookmark site feeds

   You can literally add anything to the RSS feed.  Videos, podcasts, articles, whatever you want!
   If you don’t have an RSS feed for your website then you need to head over to Dapper.net to create one from your existing content.These feeds should be in your niche and to YOUR sites.  Don’t gather feeds from someone elses content. That would defeat the purpose of getting YOURSELF backlinks.

4. Click create.  This will generate a new RSS feed.  The new RSS feed is filled with the RSS feeds that you inserted.  It basically combined everything for you and put it into one easy to use feed :)
5. Jump over to RSS Aggregators and submit your new pumped up RSS feed!
   Here is a list of sites you can use!
   
   • http://www.blogdigger.com/add.jsp (PR7)
   • http://www.blogpulse.com/submit.html (PR7)
   • http://www.feedage.com (PR6)
   • http://www.2rss.com (PR6)
   • http://www.blogstreet.com/bsibin/add.cgi (PR6)
   • http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss_guide/submit.php (PR6)
   • http://www.plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp (PR6)
   • http://www.feedbite.com (PR5)
   • http://www.rssfeeds.com (PR5)
   • http://feedraider.com/ (PR5)
   • http://www.feedsubmitter.com/ (PR5)
   • http://www.unclefeed.com/rss/addfeed.html (PR4)
   • http://www.feedsee.com/submit.html (PR4)
   • http://www.feed24.com/?c=add (PR3)
   • http://www.feedfury.com/ (PR3)
   • http://www.goldenfeed.com/AddFeed.aspx (PR3)
   • http://www.feedooyoo.com/ref.htm (PR3)
   • http://www.feedest.com/feedAdd.cfm (PR3)
   • http://www.rssmad.com (PR3)
   • http://www.feedbase.net/Add.php
   • http://www.rssmicro.com/?m=fs#theForm
   • http://www.rssmotron.com/feed_eater.php
6. Sit back, relax, and wait for the visitors to come in.

_____________________________________

This isn’t something that you should repeat over and over again for a site.  Just hit it once and move on.

Happy link building :D

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I would think that after talking about Yahoo Buzz and Google Trends we would develop another sense –>Foresight.

Foresight is critical when we are marketing upcoming events. While the Superbowl may not be showing up in the buzz index or the trends, you can bet a dollar to a doughnut (thanks Bob) that it will. Right now there is nobody there. I wonder what a Superbowl survey linked to a hot prize CPA offer zip or email submit would do? Better yet, right now would be excellent for a short blog littered with Adsense Superbowl ads?

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So we want to structure ourselves a thematic site based around the offer. Let’s use the ecards example from previous shall we? We can take a look at what we want to rank for. For this example I want my home page to rank for Ecards. However I may want to target other keywords as well. Now I setup my landing sites and pages on WordPress because I have found that I can often get indexed and ranked for many obscure keywords. Knowing undisclosed details of over 50% of Google’s searches are unique, I never take the fact that since a keyword is NOT showing up in a search tool, does not mean it does not get searched or will get searched. Keep that little piece of advice on the backburner…it’s important.

There’s a truly vital plugin for WordPress that has made TONS of difference for me in regards to Search Rankings. This is also an important plugin in regards to Pay Per Click as well. It’s lowered my costs and boosted my quality scores around the board in ways that would have taken me forever had I been doing static HTML sites. So get the plugin here. The All In One SEO Pack Plugin is a crazy little plugin that will allow us to optimize each post or page (which should be our landings!) very easily. Here’s a quick look at how easy and fast it is to use the plugin to optimize a birthday ecards landing page (a wordpress post).

 So we’ve properly optimized the landing page with some good onpage seo techniques. This alone can get some longtail phrases ranked in the search engine as you move thru your list of keywords and keep on posting. The next part is actually getting links to these pages because that’s going to make the difference on how long you actually stay ranked. For this I will want to use some sort of quick social bookmarking tool. I am no longer a big fan of automated social bookmarking tools. More often than not, when your submitting your own posts your sort of looked at as a spammer. However, many people have different views and being the money grubber I am, I could give two shits. I’ve seen worse posted on the bookmarking sites and for this example *ecards* are a lot fun for everyone. In my eyes, no harm no foul. Keep on, keeping on with the social bookmarking. I also like the Sociable plugin for WordPress. It fits quite nicely below my posts (landing pages) and gives everyone else the chance to share among others as well. You definitely want an *Email This* link as well.

Newsletter - Quite simply, if you do not have one of these on EVERY site or page you do then your an idiot, moron, know-nothing marketer. If your in it to half ass it, have fun. I prefer lifetime value over the quick buck anytime I can get it. It doesn’t matter if I am promoting Ipods, gift cards or insurance. I have an optin box on every site/page I promote. No ifs, ands or butts. By the time the site/page is ready to be promoted I have an optin box. Normally I have gone with Aweber but I much prefer Feedburners automatic email update service. Just with displaying a feed count on one of my blogs that is used entirely for the methods outlined above, I have put up a private ad on one and turned down another. The private ad was an exclusive to one of my CPA Networks. Not bad heh? Getting a set amount each month AND promoting their offers. You know what happened after the exclusive ad? I got my payouts raised on EVERY offer I ran.

Feedburner is a godsend in my book. While you can configure Awebers Autoresponder service to deliver updates, I much prefer Feedburner for its simplicity. To burn a  feed and setup a newsletter code takes me all of about 3 minutes. Which is exactly what you need when your moving at the speed of light in testing offers. Just ask my designer Jeff if he is sick of designing neat little graphics for my little offer blogs newsletters. He did 3 in the last week alone. With Feedburner your blog posts are automatically emailed each time you post. So let’s do an example of how powerful this really can be.

Say we have an ecards blog. Tomorrow your going to blog 3 posts (landing pages). One post over birthday ecards, one post over animated ecards and the last post of Valentines Day ecards. Do you see what’s taking place here? After each post it will be delivered via email to your subscribers. They dont even have to visit your site at all. Just checking their email (which is the #1 thing people do online) they have 3 new posts to check out. We already know they are into ecards because they have opted in to your newsletter. Now we have 3 easy chances to find out the interest they have in which type of ecard they are into. Now the next day you may post about funny ecards, sexy ecards, naughty ecards. So on and so forth. The cool thing about this whole idea is that people dont have to visit your site at all. They can easily read the post in their email client and do the offer right there. Can we say power?

Let’s take this a step further because this is exactly what is happening to me ever since I started to promote my offers this way. When people get an email they like, what do they usually do? They forward the email to their friends. With using Feedburner I can have exact replicas of my posts going to people and having it shared among their friends who have zero clue about my site. Now they will

Forums - we can take this yet another step forward. Now that we are gaining subscribers and our subscribers are sharing us among their friends with our simple newsletter updates (which are our landing pages mind you), we may want to consider the idea that all these people will want a place to congregate and talk about ecards. What better way than to set up a forum and start posting about to your blog. Now our subscribers see that they have a place to go everyday and talk about ecards. I can tell you right now that they are going to invite their friends right off the bat. People like entering forums when they know they have someone in there they know.  Now as a marketer this works great in our favor. It builds our site brand, newsletter subscriber count, and viral marketing for our community. Structuring offers like this on this magnitude can bring ALOT of money in. Add the fact that people may want to advertise on your blog, thru your newsletter or on your forum and you have reoccurring commissions from outside your self-promotional efforts

Incentives - What is one thing that most people want more of? — Money!

Now by this point we would have Pay Per Click driving people to our landing pages (posts), properly SEO optimized posts/pages driving search traffic, an auto-sending email updater on every new piece of content we do, a forum where people can congregate and discuss ecards, what else is there to do?

Set yourself up a freebie site. If you can find incentivized offers on networks (which you can) then you can offer people things to sign up to your offers. Be sure to check the terms on the offers but you can send them gifts or cash for completion of the offers. You can run your own arbitrage freebie offer site. Now all your subscribers and forum members will see that they have a chance at some cool gifts (or even cash) just by signing up to these offers. If you were not going viral before (which you should be) you will now. Yet again we post on how people can sign up to the offers for the gifts/cash and they will make this work for us. Just by doing what you have been doing already, you will set up yet another viral campaign to bring in even more people to the site/blog, newsletter and forum.

There are many ways to retain traffic but I am using this as an example of how you can totally structure a high trafficked site/blog around using some of the easiest techniques on the planet. Starting a site or blog is a good start but it’s just not enough this days. Putting a forum and freebie site up is easy. There are tons of free forum software out there and there are freebie scripts as well. I hope this starts to open your eyes on what can be accomplished when you structure around something that people like and their is a way for you to monetize and build around. I have not even talked about offline promotion yet but I will in my next post.

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I had the chance to see an awesome Article Directory by one of my partners. He has his directory being fueled by Article Marketer with automatic *drip in* articles that are added daily. The one thing I immediately noticed though is that the directory just like hundreds if not thousands of other directories out there are severely lacking the extra effort needed to becoming a power house such as Ezine Articles or SearchWarp. You probably can and will do well (I have no idea) with just a few generic directories if your wanting to yank in that Adsense income. Personally as I see Adsense only paying in pennies (ok sometimes more but woo-hoo) I would have to create a few directories that were updated consistently with Content. While this has been and generally is the idea, try utilizing what I am about to tell you and watch your results. I bet you will be pleasantly surprised.

First

You need to get a good script. There are many out there but I believe the most famous is the Article Dashboard Script. I personally do not like this script although the ad placement is pretty good. However, I am sick of seeing these float around the web so I can only imagine their are tons of them. Dare to be different and try getting something that is less used. If you got to spend money, then you got to spend money. If you can get a script that knocks your socks off and everyone else is being a cheap ass then chances are your script won’t be floating around as much. Then of course you can always go have your own made. Just get something different or a little bit more different than the norm.

Second

This is really the big thing. Instead of focusing on general article directories (like most people do), start using your head and focusing more on niche specific article sites. There are quite a few categories in Article Marketer alone that you could target to get your site off the ground. If you focus on a general article directory then you have to fight against sites such as Ezine Articles, SearchWarp, Article City, Goarticles and the list goes on. Chances are with all of your online endeavors it will probably take at least a year to establish a corresponding prominence like them. However, a great idea would to purchase yourself a high pagerank domain if you could. Places such as Sitepoint or Digital Point are great places to spot a domain. However in doing so you will get a domain already named and that probably defeats the whole purpose of registering something catchy and easily remember. You should really focus on niche specific themed article sites though because there are a lot less of those than there are general directories.

Third

SEO is probably why most people get into the Article Directory business in the first place. I know that is exactly the reason I am gearing up for both of my directories. I want to rely on SEO heavily to garner Search Engine Rankings so my incoming traffic runs on autopilot. However, those days are not anywhere near what they used to be. The power of *word-of-mouth* can be a beautiful thing. If you have never experienced it then you probably never created anything online worth talking about. (I apologize for that kick to the gnads). Ezine Articles and SearchWarp go above and beyond providing social interaction on their site. They rate authors and give out prizes sometimes when you reach a certain level. I know for a fact because I have to Ezine Article Mugs from two pen names. Now I am not saying to pour a whole bunch of money into such promotions because let’s face it…they most likely have staff members and we won’t. You should definitely provide something within your article directory that should serve as some type of incentive to encourage other authors. This will get authors telling their friends and talking about your directory in other forums.

The idea with SEO is to not just rely on the directory to funnel traffic to itself thru the SERP’s. You should also develop a traffic funnel around the directory just like you would with any other site. I think the common myth around the web is that if you have this huge article directory then your set for free Search Traffic and Adsense clicks. While I won’t deny that this *can* be true because I have seen it firsthand from other directory owners, you really have to decide if you want to be just another directory owner or not. If your content with auto dripping articles into your directory that are copied on hundreds of other sites, directories and blogs around the web then this next part is not for you.

Developing The Funnel

The cool idea about having a niche specific article directory is that you have something you can treat as your baby. If your building those Article Dashboard type directories that are fugly and unoriginal then it’s pretty hard to get a tingling feeling in your feet everytime you look at it. Making money with something you don’t even like is one of the hardest things to do and it’s horrible for your moral.

Now if you build something that you can look at each day and say “Damn, I rock” then your going to feel a whole lot better in making your directory better than everyone else’s. Even if you don’t want to be better than everyone else, at least people will look at it and take notice that you have put some effort into it.

Developing a traffic funnel around your directory is (IMO) the ultimate way to really dominate some Search Engine rankings AND get the word of mouth going about the features that are associated with your directory. Attaching a blog to a folder is a really great way to serve as a source of incoming links that can be anchor texted to your articles. The only bad thing here is that your helping author articles rank highly in search engines by this HOWEVER you can this to your advantage as well. Your directory will obviously get the traffic but you can even have it featured on your directory that you do this and this will let the authors know that this is added benefit to them. You can even take this a step further by having an auto blog that posts excerpts from your new articles and have a WordPress plugin (Such as ALinks I believe) that has anchor text internal links to certain article categories within your niche directory.

I say to put the blog in a folder because a folder serves as a good source of internal linking structure. If you were to put the blog on a subdomain then it would be looked upon as a root source and therefore an incoming link instead of an internal. All Search Engines are different and all SEO’s have their own opinions (and we could fight this all day) but that is the way I have built everything since I been online and never been disappointed.

Along with a blog, you could also develop a site or link directory. Preferably I think a site directory would be more beneficial and most likely entice authors to interact a little more. By having authors doing their website/blog promotions within their author resource link you could also have a feature on your directory letting authors know about your free site submissions to your niche directory. This can work wonders and as your network grows along and around your article site you will be providing a power packed source for Google and other engines to love.

Making Money

There are a lot of ways to make money with an article directory but it seems Contextual Ads such as Adsense are among the most popular. What ever you decide you should know that instead of just a skinny article directory you will now have a content packed blog and a site directory that will also garner traffic. Selling advertising space has never been my thing but looking at this model it seems that with some proper marketing you could probably make a pretty good amount just from selling space. Popular affiliate programs around the content work great as well, but you could even put some Pay Per Lead offers around the categories as well. Some mortgage offers pay around $50-$60 per lead and I have promoted dating offers that have paid over $5 per free profile. There are tons of ways to monetize but getting the traffic is the hardest part.

This is just a general overview of my idea I am incorporating to my upcoming article directories. There could be more things out there that I didn’t even touch on such as Built In Web2.0 Traffic. Utilizing sites such as Blogger, Weebly, Squidoo and your Social Network profiles are other great ways to get a lot of visitors fast to check out your masterpiece.

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Back In August I gave some general tips over making money with P2P Networks and Torrents. Torrents are still alive and kicking and I have not really spoken of them since this last post. I really should but the fact of the matter is that this method is very petty and so very easy to do. However, I bet 99% of the people who read this post probably didn’t even try it or quickly gave up on it. Let’s take a look at just one program I promoted with these petty torrent methods.

Here are payments for the last 6 months. For a method so easy I sure seen a lot of bitching from people who said “it’s too much work”.  Here’s what happens when you dedicate yourself to a project for a couple of hours a week no matter how petty, simple and boring it is.

Also in August, I wrote a free report detailing how I go about getting high rankings for articles. I normally do not write my own articles but I do however use the methods described because it seems nobody can get it right even with a guide. I guess that just goes to show that what works for someone, may not necessarily work for another. However, the guide is free and it’s a great read….(IMO). :)

In September I also introduced a way to advertise your blog cheaply utilizing Stumbleupon. I have tested this out a few times and it seems to work well. When I say that, what I really mean is that as cheap as it is, you get back about the same return. However, it’s a great traffic building method and I am sure the right type of blog will make the difference.

Also in September I touched a bit on using Google Groups. Both Google and Yahoo Groups are goldmines, and I bet since I haven’t talked about them recently that most people don’t utilize these services. This is a huge mistake. Did you know that if you have a Yahoo Group you can sign up for Article Marketer and have yourself to be put in their distribution queue? Or how about having your own article directory and being in their submission queue? Who cares if it’s duplicate content, your going to have so much of it, your not going to be able to avoid NOT getting traffic. Spamming the groups is always fun for quick cash too. Who does that though? The power is in having your own group.

In October I finally revealed what led me to believe I could work fulltime online. It seems the post touched a few nerves. That was really the point. If a dumb redneck from Kansas can make half a million dollars online in his first full year exclusively online, so can you.

I also did my 5 day case study with Copeac. If you haven’t signed up with Copeac, then you really need to. They are a great network and I haven’t had any problems with them so far. However, I am only running two of their offers on their network and these offers are on one of my lower trafficked websites. However, I have squeezed a little over $1,400.00 just by placing a couple of banners on a site.

It was during this same month that I also revealed some stats on one of my “baby” sites. Say what you will about such sites, but someone has to sell the dream. I revealed a net profit of over $159,000.00 that this site has pulled. This site is ran between a partner and I. We launched the site in late January of 2007. We haven’t added it up yet but between membership sales and CPA from within the site, the newsletter and monthly broadcasts, I would bet that it’s at least over the $200,00 net profit mark.

I am kind of hoping to see if it’s a quarter million. How cool would that be? One night of work with a partner yields a website that does a quarter million dollars in less than a year. For all the doubters out there, this stat alone is enough to keep you twiddling your thumbs at your day job. For everyone else it should serve as inspiration. It can be done, but it could NOT be done without the support of our affiliates.

We have held the #1 best selling product in the PayDotCom Marketplace with this site since February and NOBODY has even come close to touching us. Between fees and affiliate payouts, I would say we done damn near $600,000.00 total. Not too shabby.

We also have a replica membership site on Clickbank as well. This is called affiliate dominance. I don’t really care for half-assing it. I prefer pure market dominance.

In November I introduced my 4 step video marketing method. This is truly some of the easiest money I have ever made and there are many variations to monetize this with. Domain parking, affiliate marketing, and Pay Per Lead are just a few. I have actually built a few mini sites that are completely ran using these methods. I get a little bit of search traffic, but I can just easily take videos, watermark them and upload to over 25 sites with just a few clicks. There’s a little more to it than that, but not much. A really simple method.

I also tested out a new PPC advertising platform called Clickriver. If memory serves me right, I made about $1,000.00 before Clickriver changed up their system. You were allowed to place advertisements within Amazon’s marketplace. However, Amazon must have felt that they were sending too many people out and Clickriver quickly changed their TOS and how to advertise. A sad day really, because I was truly rocking out pretty good with them.

 I also gave out my exact method to utilizing Yahoo Buzz to gauge market trends. Along with Yahoo Buzz their is also Google Trends and both of them have proved to be real money makers for me. Hell, I would go as far to say that about 25% of my PPC campaigns were based off these after the later part of August.

In December I introduced how to rock out with an affiliate mashup. It was a basic principle aimed at more advanced marketers. The concept is still pretty new to me however both of the mashup sites I own have generated me a nice amount over the last couple of months:

Like I said the concept is still very fresh in my mind and am still working harder than ever on refining it. With just a couple of mashups and the traffic methods of PPC and SEO this is not a bad return so far.

I feel that I could definitely get a few more and turn these sites into an easy $100,000 a year business. That’s the plan anyhow.

It was in December that I also introduced some ideas for how I handle my Parasite SEO. Most people will try to tell you that this is worthless or for a small return. However, they were obviously doing it wrong or made it very hard on themselves. One of the first things I did with my mashup sites was link them with authoritative links from high traffic and good pagerank sites. It works, don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t. It may be a bit time consuming at first, but it can be easily outsourced.

Of course there was also the Zero 2 Hero – 60 Days To List Building course that I wrote as well. This is by far one of the easiest methods to build email lists. However, it seemed most of the people that tried this didn’t have a clue as to what email list building was all about. Unfortunately, the course was not about how to email market but rather how to build email lists. It was sad that the #1 ebook I used in the method went off the shelf, but hey, that’s tough love. I was able to quickly pick up another book, before I decided to put my own together.

Well, that is just a few posts and a little bit of the money I made over my first full year working exclusively online. Anyone that tells you that this is hard is only half true. Most of the people that tell you that making money online is hard, usually aren’t making this type of money. Yea, I work a lot of hours, probably more than most, but that is what happens when you love your job. So keep plugging away and I hope to write up some more great ideas and methods as we progress into 2008.

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So what does the future hold?

I don’t know for sure. Although I have a photographic memory, I still haven’t developed any senses to see in the future. Which really sucks, because if I could, work would sure be a lot easier. However, I have some huge thoughts on what we MIGHT see.

1. Blogs will continue to kick the shit out of static sites. However, regular bloggers will probably turn more into user interactive communities. Take a look at CashTactics. I have already begun to do this. I have incorporated a forum where we can all get together on a more personal and regular bases to talk about every aspect of making money and marketing online.

It won’t stop with community sites though. Bloggers will also be podcasting and vlogging (video blogging) a lot more. As a matter of fact, your going to see something I hope that will interest you greatly in a few weeks. I will have a live streaming video feed so you can communicate with me at certain times and watch, read and listen as I respond to questions. Websites are still great in my opinion but will not stand a chance against someone that will regularly communicate with readers. While website owners will rely on their content to do all their preselling, they most likely rely on SEO, PPC and every other traffic method out there. That’s great but that is traditional also. The more social interaction you see with a website, the more likely you will return. Returning visitors are key and without them, your site sucks. Period.

2.  Landing pages are truly on the decline. I am not saying that landing pages are not effective but my trip down to Florida was a real eye opener for the group of masterminds I associated with. I took them to a site that completely blew them away. It’s a site that is basically a landing page for every blog post that is made. Traditional landing pages now require About pages, contact us, terms of service, disclaimers and privacy policies. On top of all of that, you need to have outgoing links to authoritative sites and consistent inbound links as well. Add to the mix that Search Engines love a good internal linking structure and you got yourself a winner. However, building such a site for an offer just to get past a Quality Score for Pay Per Click traffic, and making a site the search engines will index and rank because it provides a great user experience is quite an overwhelming task considering there are thousands of offers and affiliate programs out there.

Building large sites like I spoke about recently are going to have huge advantages over traditional affiliates who build quick little landing pages to advertise with. Building them one at a time is a hell of a waste when you can simply have hundreds if not thousands of them in minutes. Figuring out what your time is worth is vital to your ongoing success. Taking the plunge to build a large site quickly will continue to give *Super Affiliates* the advantages over *small timers* as it always has.

3. Misinformation seems to be going down quite a bit. Thank god I actually got readers that will listen. The amount of bullshit being packaged and sold on the Internet is phenomenally large but at least some people are starting to realize that you don’t have to pay for this shit. You can simply find someone already doing it and sharing their methods and success for a mere 5-10 minutes of reading time. Reading, writing and watching are 3 things you need to develop. The more information you can consume, the more success your going to have. However, too much reading can cause severe ADD ( I know from experience) so you need to develop a 4th sense along with the previous 3 that tells you “enough is enough” and start to implement some of what you have already read.

 These are just a few things I see coming into play this coming year. I could be wrong however, if I am, then I am in for a severe kick in the ass as I am already preparing and start to change up some of my strategies online to incorporate these ideas.

What do you think? What’s the future hold?

No related posts.

How To Rock Out With An Affiliate Mashup is available for download here.

There will most likely be a large discussion starting over this in the forum. Everything from site ideas, development, implementation and tons of more traffic generation techniques and methods will most likely be covered. However, feel free to download the guide as I have a lot of points I touched on that will prepare you to start asking your questions as you gear up for your first affiliate mashup.

Going to pass out,

Ruck :)

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