Strategic Marketing At Warp Speed

I got this question in a forum this evening. People sometimes stretch their niche blogs so wide that they don’t know where it begins and ends. A little example would be something like this.

Instead of having a blog on a topic with 10-20 categories, try to dig a little a deeper. The deeper you dig, the easier it is to get ranked for the keywords. What I try to do is take a domain and for this example I will use DVD Players as my example.

So we would have –> dvdplayers.com (probably someone’s domain :) )

Then we would setup folders and yes I say folder. I am not a big subdomain type of guy. We could argue all day on the aspects of folders and subdomain in terms of SEO but if your using Wordpress difference then WTF is the point? Anyway….

DVDplayers.com would be our “mama” site. This is the site that needs updated the most actually. While all your niche specific blogs will need constant updating, generally speaking those would be like review type blogs. In essence, I have found that getting product reviews in mass quantities is a lot easier for writers than having someone working on your mama blog. You can actually just work on the mama blog and have the niche specific blog reviews outsourced, and this will cut yor time tremendously, it’s almost AUTOMATIC :)

Ok now dvdplayers.com and then we have folders like this:

dvdplayers.com/orion              dvdplayers.com/panasonic      dvdplayers.com/sony

Don’t even know if those are DVD brands, I just use an Xbox 360 :) Anyway, the point is to keep these blogs topic related. You don’t really want a blog where you have dvdplayers.com reviewing every single category of DVD players because it’s quite possible to get overwhelmed. Besides if your outsourcing the reviews, then you can have a writer work on one blog a piece. It gets much easier when you get into it yourself, I promise.

I was checking out StumbleUpon’s Ad Campaign Service today and was actually starting to take quite an interest in it. There are many benefits to a service like this, and if you have a blog that is extremely popular you have the potential to pull some really good traffic numbers. I would say that your blog topic and writing style are going to have huge effects on the nature of such a campaign. Is it worth or not? I really do not know as I am just gearing up to run a campaign on one of my Video Blogs (Vlogs).

Here are a few site testimonials from a couple of large sites:

“By advertising on StumbleUpon, Farecast has been able to reach an audience that is actively looking to find new and innovative websites like ours. An added bonus is the ability to target based on a user’s geographic location or interest in a specific category. This has allowed us to land users on highly targeted and relevant landing pages, resulting in positive Stumbles.”
- Farecast.com

“StumbleUpon proved to be a wonderful channel to drive targeted, cost effective traffic to our website. Furthermore, their vocal community helped us to further understand how to better position our product.”
- Sixapart.com

 

“We are a new site that needed some promotion and found Stumbleupon to give us almost instantaneous results.”
- SimplyExplained.com

Pretty lame testimonials if you ask me, but it is an ad service intended on bringing blogs traffic. I don’t know for sure but it is in my opinion that StumbleUpon users are very finicky and particular as to what they like in a blog. I have always found that the “bizarre” tag when submitting a page to StumbleUpon always seems to bring the most traffic. I guess trying to cater to that would be an effective weapon, but if your blog is not catered to that, then I guess your only going to get a fraction of the StumbleUpon traffic. At least that traffic will be better targeted right?

Halloween is coming up within a couple of month’s now and it is prime-time to start gearing for the Halloween season. Now personally, I don’t tend to build websites or blogs gearing towards the Halloween market, but I do build a lot of landing pages geared towards it.

For me the success was last Halloween went I had simple landing pages setup on Adwords that were pretty much just polls to gifts from networks such as Azoogle and Maxbounty. A simple survey, zip submit/email submit offer can really pull in a lot of cash rather quickly. If you set up your landing page correctly and have an offer say giftcard/iphone/electronic accessories then you can drive some really nice leads over the course of the next 6-8 weeks. Now lately since all the "Big Google" seems to do is shit on the little guy I have shifted focus to other smaller engines, but it still works on Google, it just costs you more so having a damn good conversion rate on a $1.15-$2.00 lead is vital. Here’s some keywords I came up with today with my little tool :)

halloween 150110
halloween costume 41715
sexy halloween 15488
halloween party 14865
halloween hot 5892
halloween mask 5471
halloween movie 5213
sexy halloween costume 5181
halloween drag 5134
halloween 9 4760
halloween 2006 4386
hooters halloween 4306
halloween baby 4305
halloween slut 4088
halloween nurse 3896
halloween girl 3763
halloween crafts 3575
adult halloween costume 3424
halloween decoration 3353
halloween vampire 3262
kid halloween costume 2981
rob zombie halloween 2878
halloween leg 2819
halloween naughty 2605
halloween game 2526
halloween store 2338
halloween bunny 2321
cowgirl halloween 2321
halloween tights 2309
halloween booty 2052
halloween prop 1934
halloween as a girl 1927
halloween make up 1919
halloween boob 1912
halloween michael myers 1903
this is halloween 1891
halloween horror night 1879
cat halloween 1814
dorothy halloween 1670
halloween cheerleader 1668
halloween butt 1580
baby halloween costume 1566
halloween night 1556
child halloween costume 1544
halloween town 1541
halloween 06 1459
dog halloween costume 1446
halloween whore 1441
halloween ballerina 1428
maid halloween 1422

I was just cruising blogs today and it seems that all the blogger’s are on this “things you don’t know about me” frizz. So I will approach to being a little more personable and give you a few things that you may not know about me.

1. My main hobby is fishing. I live in Kansas, (USA) and it’s truly about the only thing you can do here. I am a huge avid catfishermen. I fish for Channel Cats and Flatheads every spring and fall. Up until this year I fished a lot in the summer as well. I really do not take the heat as well as I used to, and this summer has really been busy for me. Nonetheless here is a nice Flathead I caught earlier this spring. I usually try to go as much as I can in March-May. This is the prespawn time and when it warms up at the first of the year it tends to get them moving around a bit more. I fish probably more than anyone that you might know, it is actually quite ridiculous but so is, working 80-100 hours a week online when I am not out there fishing.
2. I am a HUGE Halo 1 & 2 fan. Not only am I a fan but I play Halo2 more than I should. It is actually how I usually take my breaks here in the upstairs office. I just turn the chair around and flip on the tube and it’s time to go kill some bad kids. I was actually rated 3rd in the World for Big Team Battle for over a year when Bungie used to have their online leader boards. Since they have taken it down, there really is no incentive for me to play anymore, because let’s face it…it was all about dumbass bragging rights to begin with anyway.

You know I really do not have anything too negative against Digital Point. I am a happy member over there, and as well as WickedFire, Warrior Forum, RJ Forum and Self Starters Weekly Tips. I can see a boatload of animosity and maybe even jealousy between the forums and it’s members. Well back up for a second, we can exclude RJ and Self Starters from that list, as either of these forums could give two squirts. As for the other three, it’s alarming how many times I come across a virtual bash or a verbal poke at one or the other.

Now for some people forum bashing and all of that nonsense might be for you. I can say I rather stay out of it, as you can see earlier this past week, I tend to have more personable problems arise than to sit around and bash other forums. The deal is that I like all 3 forums. Of course they all have their perks and there are different things that can upset the “herds” rather quickly. One of them, is that you really do not talk about other forums when your there.

Ok, I can handle WickedFire’s cockiness beacuse they have a ton of cool people that go out of their way to help you and Warrior Forum’s “pact of wolves” that will jump at your throat if you say something even remotely close not to their liking. One thing I cannot really stand is that Digital Point’s Freebie section used to be “FIRE”. I have found countless gems lying about in their freebie section over the past year. But now it’s like a viagra stand for a pack of horny old timers getting paroled from the nursing home. Here’s some of the shit I witnessed today:

• Stumb Unlimited: Unlimilited

Google Groups is a great way to get some laser targeted traffic to your website. The base over there has exploded tremendously over the last year in regards to the vast amount of people supporting and participating in the groups. I remember very vividly awhile back when I was working over there. While I was making some sweet cash, I knew all the awhile that the amount of work involved was taking away from completion of some long term goals. It is very easy to go over there and type a keyword in and return yourself a list of groups for whatever niche you want.

There are no tricks or gimmicks, as I have seen sites like this or sites with the same idea in mind. The idea is to go into these groups and post well thought out posts. I can assure you now that if you go over there in a marketer’s mindset, your going to have a really rough time. With that said, you should generally pick a niche and have a product for it as well. I personally always had the link in my sig over there. I always had it redirect off a domain as well. You do not want one of those long and hideous affiliate links in there.

I use to go over there with an army of “outsourcers” and post to multiple groups everyday. I was doing great but the fact that my workers knew exactly what I was doing actually cost me in the end. They ended up doing it themselves. To make matters worse, as my income was falling they were reporting that they were still posting. So not only did I lose income from the Groups themselves, I had outsourcers sticking it deep in me as well.

Hot Damn! I love the Internet! There are so many places that are allowing people to make money from them that I am about to burst a testicle bubble. The NewsRoom is letting people publish their content on your site/blog and you can earn from it. There are endless possibilities going on with this one, but let me point out some things to you.

Here’s the direct quote from NewsRoom:

Here is how you get paid! Each time you mash video or video feeds to your site and it is played by your viewers, you’ll earn a guaranteed CPM (cost per thousand). Additionally, you will get paid each time you mash text or an image and it is rendered or drawn by your viewers. As a registered participant of TheNewsRoom, we track your success. Each time you login, be sure to click on myRevenue to chart your earnings!

See our CPM payout structure below.

Â	CPM On Your Site	CPM On Referred Site
Video Feed	$4.00	$1.00
Video Story	$3.00	$0.50
Text Story	$1.00	$0.50
Image	$1.00	$0.50

If you want to be paid when free, licensed news from TheNewsRoom is viewed on your site, simply register with your payment information — and start mashing!

Now here is the cool thing. If you publish content and someone comes by and republishes it on their site, you still get paid for the views. Oh yes people, you get paid. Think of it as viral video marketing with a few twists. With the proper headline and news coming to you, you could have a Digg crashing video on your site. If you have never had a front page story on Digg, I assure you that it causes major happiness in your pants. Well, when your site goes down your not very happy, but other than that, it’s like the coolest and safest high you can get. I only say that because every now and then I get a little excited about traffic numbers.