Jonathan Leger, author of $7 Secrets and the excellent scripts for viral promotion, has kicked out another excellent report: Write That Report!!!

I grabbed a copy and it is very good (no surprise there.) If you have been wanting to try a $7 report but just can’t seem to get one going, this report is for you.

Jonathan walks you step-by-step through the process of writing a report from selecting a topic to outlining, fleshing out, polishing it up and creating a PDF. No surprises, just a solid process.

Of course, his whole point is to use these with his $7 Reports method. If you haven’t already purchased $7 Secrets, he includes it with your purchase of this report 2-for-1! (this is an un-advertised bonus! Get your copy before he changes his mind!!!)

If you want to check it out, here is the link:

http://www.WriteThatReport.com/

The premise of the $7 reports system is that people will perceive a $7 price tag is very low risk and would be willing to purchase a short focussed report without a hard sell. Then, by using a set of scripts that Jonathan includes with the report, you let your first level customers sell the report and keep 100% of the purchase price. The money goes directly to the affiliate’s PayPal account - no waiting - and the report author gets the name and email address of the customer. The script also includes a mechanism to include a one time offer (OTO) who’s cost is split between affiliate and report owner.

The scripts are pretty amazing and it is hard to believe they are included with a $7 report. But Jonathan claims to be making very good money with this system. The $7 Secrets book explains the whole system in detail!
Keep an eye out, I’ve got a couple of reports in the works already!

The Go-To Guy!

Write That Report, by Jonathan Leger Squidoo Lens

Website Traffic: You can either pay for it or cast a wide net to pull it in.

Paying is pretty simple (well, technically it’s an art unto itself) but you join up with a PPC program, select your keyword groups, write some ads and start paying.

You can also find websites where your potential visitors hang out and buy some links or ads on those sites.

To cast a net you will invest time rather than money. I have two basic strategies.

The first strategy is to write a batch of 300-500 word marketing articles with links back to my target site in the author’s resource box and post them to directories like www.ezinearticles.com and www.goarticles.com. (I wrote an article about how to write effective marketing articles on my blog.)

It will take some time before the articles start getting picked up by other publishers and reprinted, but once they are out there, you’ll keep getting traffic. I have articles that were published over a year ago that still bring me regular hits to my sites.

The second strategy takes advantage of the work done in the first. I will pull apart the articles I wrote and format them as blog entries laced with links back to my target site. Then, I’ll take advantage of the many free blogging sites out there like www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com, www.myspace.com, www.livejournal.com, www.friendster.com, and www.squidoo.com and make a bunch of new blogs and post the revised article content.

Almost instantly you will find sites like Technorati linking back to your main site. Within a few days you should start seeing visitors and find yourself geting indexed in the search engines - just don’t use the exact some content on every blog. It will count against you in the search engine rankings.

The last time I did this, I got my first visitor and earned my first dollar in under 48 hours.

Keep adding new content to the blogs and article directories for a few months (once ore twice a week after the first week.) If you’ve targeted a good niche, chosen good keyword targets, and written good articles, you will see a steady flow of traffic drawn into your site through this network of pages linking in.

One warning: Don’t forget to actively promote a newsletter or some other device on your main site to capture visitor’s email address. The next time you want to talk to them you don’t have to wait for them to wander by, you can send something straight to them!

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Using an approach like Jonathan Leger’s $7 Secrets to promote a simple report you’ve written can quickly build a mailing list without all of the blogs and article writing. That’s my next project!

“If You Knew How To Easily Create One Single Page Website That Earned You $3600 A Year…

If You Knew You Could Create That Site In Just ONE DAY…

If You Knew That This Site Would Be Putting Cash In Your Pocket In Just A Few Days Time…

HOW MANY SITES WOULD YOU MAKE?”

Those are the headlines at the top of the sales page for a new Internet marketing e-book, Niche Marketing on Crack*.

I just bought (and read) Niche Marketing on Crack*, by Andrew Hansen. The title of the book is unfortunate, and the ‘Miami drug dealer’ photo on the cover and website aren’t much better, but the sales letter hooked me, what can I say?

The technique is a variation on Bum Marketing, but includes niche websites and basic SEO.

The book is hype free and promotes a very focussed application of respectable techniques. You could learn about them all by scouring forums and websites then cobbling together all of the information into your own system. But, Andrew includes a step-by-step action plan and doesn’t gloss over any of the details which saves a lot of trial and error. (How much is your time worth?)

I am well versed at all of the individual techniques that are written about here, but still picked up some valuable pointers about identifying profitable affiliate products.

The book covers searching for profitable affiliate products/niches, setting up an SEO friendly niche site using Wordpress, creating promotional articles, and the full process for promoting the site and getting profitable traffic.

Niche Marketing On Crack* is a good book for newbies who want a detailed outline of what to do to create and promote a niche website and also for more experienced marketers looking to refine their work process.

Niche Marketing On Crack* is a great fit for 5BaD projects as it focuses on a system that can be completed, from start to finish, in less than a week.

View the Salespage: http://andrewseltz.com/recommends/nichemarketingoncrack/*

I recommend this ebook!

The Go-To Guy!

*This is an affiliate link.

Article marketing is a low cost strategy to direct traffic to a website and begin to develop one-way backlinks to its pages. For new online ventures it offers a great way to build traffic to a site and to establish its authority in a particular niche.

Article Marketing is also an excellent strategy to quickly get a new site listed in search engines like Google and Yahoo!

The basic process for article marketing is this:

• Write a series of short 350-700 word articles related to the content of your website
• Add an author’s resource box to each article that contains links back to one or more pages on your website
• Upload the articles to various article directories like www.EZineArticles.com or www.GoArticles.com
• Wait for other publishers to reprint your articles and resource links
• Wait for search engines to index your articles (and the links back to your site) from the article directories and also from the websites that reprint them giving you relevant inbound links and new visitor traffic

The process works. I wrote my first small batch of articles over a year ago and continue to see traffic from them today. I even make a dollar or two every now and then from ads on the pages that the resource links are pointing to. If I had more articles out there, the overall traffic would rise. But those first articles were a test to see if the process worked and were not well written for the task of making me money (or even getting me good search engine ranking.)

Once I proved to myself that the basic system worked, I next had to learn how to write articles that compel people to click on the resource links and how to optimize those links to improve my search engine rankings. The best SEO in the world won’t help if your content isn’t compelling and the most compelling articles are pointless if they don’t improve your business.

Optimizing the links was easy. I just had to include the primary keywords for the page I was directing traffic to in the anchor text in the link. Like this: Energy Efficient Home Construction information. Every article gets unique words based on the page that is being linked to. When multiple articles link to the same page I make subtle alterations to the link on each article so that the search engines don’t always see the exact same text and devalue it as duplicate content.

Making the articles compelling so that readers want to follow the links and come to my site is more challenging. The most effective articles for this marketing method give readers a taste of the topic and lead them to deeper subjects they need to explore to really be satisfied. The resource box should promise them this next level of information and the links will lead them to the new information.

I realize that this explanation might not be clear enough, so I’ll give a quick illustration:

Say you are selling camera equipment for product photography - cameras, lights, display stands, backdrops, etc.

You write an article about how adding a photo to your eBay auctions can radically improve your profits. Your readers will be eBay sellers who want to make more money and your article leads them to realize that good product photos will improve their income.

In the article you make a special point of the importance of professional quality images to set yourself apart from the crowd. You further explain that with a modest investment in the right tools and some basic training anyone can learn to take the kinds of images that will make big money. If you write this well, the reader will now want to know how to take a good product photo and what equipment is needed to get professional results.

In your resource box you promise them free tutorials for taking product photos they can use in their auctions. These links will land them on pages where they will learn techniques and discover the basic tools they need to take good photos (with ads for the gear highlighted in the tutorials, a newsletter sign-up form, and maybe an offer for an e-book guide to taking professional product photos.) The link text might be something like “Learn 5 Simple Steps to Professional Quality Product Photos.”

Another article pointing to the exact same set of tutorials could focus on showing aspiring catalog photographers how to build their portfolios. Still another would entice model building hobbyists into taking professional quality photos of the models they build to show off their skills, etc. You can find dozens of different ways to approach potential audiences for your products.

The article introduces a need and builds the desire for a solution, then the resource box promises to satisfy this new desire.

Model building websites, photography websites, and auction business websites will all begin to reprint your articles and steer their visitors toward your site. The search engines will also start to recognize your site’s pages as authoritative because of the growing number of inbound links. Over time your search engine placement will also improve.

Creating articles that work at this level takes effort. If your main goal is to simply to gain backlinks to improve search engine rankings, this is overkill. But if you are trying to warm up a new customer for a sale, you have to make the effort.

If you would like to see some of the marketing articles I have published visit my EZineArticles profile. (While you are there, please rate my articles - every little bit of promotion helps.) Hopefully you will be able to see the improvement in my articles over the past year.

Now, get out there and start writing.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Don’t let me have the last word. Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Wow!!

That was all I could manage to say when I saw the traffic stats for this website on Thursday February 1, 2007. I had looked at the stats earlier in the day and they were clicking along at their usual rate. There are a couple of articles on the site that turn a good amount of natural search traffic and also have some inbound links from a couple of blogs. But, around 11:00pm things went nuts!

I did a quick stat check before shutting down for the night and noticed a huge spike in traffic. Most of the inbound traffic was going to one single page which registered more than 400 page views by midnight. Every time I hit the refresh button on my browser, the numbers jumped again.

The following day I logged over 1300 visitors to that one single page (this is about 30 times my average daily traffic.) I had never seen anything like it on this site before. A little investigation revealed the cause of this new traffic.

My site was recommended by a member of the StumbleUpon.com community. StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking type website where people rate sites they visit with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. As groups of people see your site it gets rated higher. They also have a Stumble feature where they will recommend a site that you might be interested in based on your preferences and past recommendations.

One of my pages has 2 reviews and 25 thumbs-up. When a user recommended it in a relevant topic area on the site - BOOM!!! My traffic went through the roof.

This shows the power of a new wave of search tool. Sites like StumbleUpon.com and Squidoo.com are relying on the concepts of social proof and word-of-mouth to evaluate the relevance of a site. This is just an extension of what has been happening in the blog world with sites like Technorati and Digg.

So what did I learn?

I learned that I need to do more than add a few social bookmarking links at the bottom of my article pages. Now, I added a “Stumble This” link underneath the title of every article. It is part of the template for my pages, so when you read an article, the link is right there at the top asking people to give me a thumbs-up. It is important to be more aggressive and ask people for recommendations. (I do this at the bottom of the page, but how many people actually read that far?)

I have also decided to make direct requests to my newsletter subscribers to recommend specific articles when promoting something new. (I plan to do this infrequently because I suspect if the same people recommend everything I do, the site will filter them out and devalue their recommendations.)

Never underestimate the power of social proof (the ‘everyone else is doing it so it must be good’ principle.)

If you like this article, please Digg it, Stumble it, Delicious it, and otherwise recommend it in any way you can. The larger my readership, the more time I can spend adding fresh content to the site.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Don’t let me have the last word on the subject, leave a comment and join the discussion.

12/18/2006 - Adsense Blog

The rules on image placement for websites using Adsense ads has changed. Several of the techniques that Adsense gurus have been touting are now explicitly off limits.

The policy basically boils down to this: if you are using images to try and trick users into thinking that the ad and image are in some way connected - you broke the rules.

Two specific examples are given in the Adsense blog entry.

The first example gives the impression that the images next to the ads illustrate the products that the advertiser is offering for sale (if users click the ad and don’t find what they thought would be there, the advertiser is cheated when they click away.)

The second example involves blending the ad into a menu list in such a way that it looks like a menu option. The image is an icon the resembles the icons used for the rest of the menu options. If the user thinks he is navigating through the site, but ends up on an advertiser’s site (only to click away immediately because he hadn’t intended to click an ad) the advertiser is again cheated.

I saw a few people using this technique last summer. At the time, the Adsense rules did not clearly ban the practice.

The technique seems to have worked as a way to increase ad clicks. Soon, a major Adsense guru incorporated the technique into the templates included in a product being promoted to people creating Adsense sites. Before long, thousands of sites were using the technique and Google pulled the plug.

This all boils down to one thing, if you try to set up your ads in a way that tricks users into thinking they are not ads, Google will eventually catch up with you and officially ban the practice. It is their responsibility to protect their advertisers. It is in the best interest of the whole community to help them. If advertisers find themselves battling fraud instead of finding customers, they will stop using pay per click ads (and this source of income for site owners will disappear.)

Adsense is a great tool for generating revenue from a website. There are plenty of ways to optimize the click through rates and earnings per click on your site. Google rewards sites with valuable content and allows a great deal of latitude for you to creatively incorporate Adsense ads into your site. Leave the trick tactics to spammers and ‘black-hat’ outlaws and go build quality sites that users want to visit.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Don’t let me have the last word. Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Mrs. Go-To Guy and I are expecting our first baby soon and I am anticipating less free time in my schedule for writing.

To make sure that I continue to address topics that are important to you, I’ve compiled a list of some of the most recent questions I have received.

Please look over this list and let me know which ones are important to you. Also, let me know what needs to be added to the list. Just leave a comment with your thoughts.

Possible article topics:

1. What are the steps to designing my own newsletter?
2. How do I update my newsletter for monthly/weekly release?
3. How do I set up a newsletter subscription page?
4. What are some strategies for getting subscribers?
5. How do I create an email list?
6. What are the steps to directing traffic to my site?
7. What are some ways to get people to buy my book from my site?
8. How can a press release help me?
9. How can I re-purpose/re-package my book to reach more people?
10. How do I get people to respond to my blog entries?
11. How can I improve my site’s standing in the search engines?
12. How do I turn audio recordings into MP3’s for my site?
13. How do I partition my Wordpress site to create a subscriber only area?
14. How do I use YouTube to get video on my site?
15. How do I combine audio MP3’s together into an audio book?
16. How do I create banners, page headers and other graphics usine Photoshop?
17. How plausible is it to create multiple newsletters to reach general and targeted audiences?
18. What are some ways I can increase income from my website business?
19. What is the best way to record audio for my website?
20. Do I need a content management system for my website? If so, which one?
21. What equipment do I need to record video for my website that looks professional?

Vote for the questions you really want answered. Leave your comments below and let your voice be heard.

The Go-To Guy!

“Earn enough money through online marketing to pay for the month’s hosting fees.”

That was my goal back in January of 2006 as I decided to try and find a way to earn a living through my own websites.

I had been working online for over 10 years at that point, but never ran my own online business. My income came from working on websites for other people and a full-time corporate gig.

I knew how to manage vendors and build websites and media components, but I had never built my own website with the intention of turning a profit or tried to create and sell a product - I thought about it a lot, but never did anything about it!

Setting a Small Goal

My hosting fees are pretty low (I use 1&1 Internet and my fees are roughly $25/month.) I decided my first threshold would be to make sure that my online activities didn’t cost me money - $25/month!

I set out creating a niche website and writing about it (and other things) on this blog. I read every book and website I could find about building traffic. I learned about Adsense, Adwords, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I ran tests and wrote up my results. I got indexed in the Google search engine and did some article marketing. I made a little money and spent a little money. But mostly, I learned a lot.

The big thing I learned was that the real steady traffic was coming to the articles on this blog - and not just the ones focused on marketing. My niche site gets a little traffic here and there, but currently ads very little revenue.

I also learned the value of focus. At first I tried a little of every legitimate technique I found. But, if you’ve ever tried to make a sandwich with a little bit of everything in the kitchen, you know that the results are usually disappointing.

In the last few months I have started to list all of the different things I want to try and then evaluate which ones will most effectively build on the work I’ve already done. The goal is to continually improve and support things that show promise and not chase around looking for a big overnight score. Sometimes the real value of a work takes time to develop.

A Tiny Seed Grows And Blooms

As the title of this article suggests, I achieved my earnings goal in November - actually I earned 3.5 times that amount! I earned over $20 from Adsense alone, and nearly every penny of that ad money came from visitors to one page on this site.

I wrote a small tutorial last spring that I posted on the site. It was based on a fun little side project I started and I didn’t think much would come from it. After a few months this article was getting low, but steady, traffic from natural search results. While I was busy working on other projects this traffic steadily grew. Other people started linking to the page and more traffic came. Then, one night, someone using the social promotion website www.stumbleupon.com recommended my site. The next day my traffic spiked. It wasn’t thousands of visitors, but much more than usual.

As the traffic to that page kept growing I focused my energy on trying to find ways to revise the page to encourage affiliate sales and ad clicks. I played with the layout and added some resource links and product recommendations. I wrote a few related articles and added links to them too. No major breakthroughs, but traffic keeps coming and I keep getting a few ad clicks here and there.

In the middle of November the page was recommended again at www.StumbleUpon.com and even more traffic has been coming. Those referrals are now the biggest source of traffic to my site, and the other sources are still sending traffic too. The ad money started building and then, in one day, I sold 2 e-books through an affiliate link. This pushed me way past my goal.

Quit Driving Traffic And Start Building Relationships

At the same time that my site traffic was growing, I stopped chasing after visitors and started building relationships with them.

My primary strategy so far has been building a newsletter subscriber list. I’ve got several hundred people on my first list and I email them about once every week or two.

I let my subscribers know about relevant new articles I have placed on this blog and I can see an increase in traffic every time I send out a newsletter. I also recommend new products that I have tried and that accounts for two more of my affiliate sales this month.

It is amazing to be able to send out a email and see people respond directly to what you have to say.

What Is Next?

Will I make my earnings goal again this month? That remains to be seen, but I am building on the foundation I created. I’m learning more about the people on my mailing list and exploring ways to provide them with the information and resources they need.

I’m planning a project to get to know the people coming to that one super popular page on my site and considering whether to spin that off into a new niche site.

I’m also still exploring new things and writing about them - you never know where that next popular article will come from or where it will lead you.

Oh! I almost forgot - I’m also raising my monthly income target a little higher. I want this business to grow.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Don’t let me get the last word. Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Are you curious about the value of your website? I came across a link in one of the business forums I visit for a website that claims to be able to evaluate what your website is worth. The site is called the Sootle Web Directory. The box on the right side of the page shows their current estimate for www.AndrewSeltz.com. At the time I am writing this they give it a value of $555.00. Not bad for a domain that wasn’t worth anything except the domain registration fee 12 months ago.

This website is worth
What is your website worth?

Their value seems to be based on the number of backlinks coming to your site. This is a reasonable indicator of value as the traffic your site gets (and which can be monetized) is tied to the number of incoming links that are listed around the Internet. Google, and the other major search engines, all use this indicator when evaluating sites.

Just a fun little observation that I thought I would share. It will be fun to see how this value changes over time.

The Go-To Guy! - A $555 value available for a fraction of the price!

Today I decided to fire up my synchronicity engine and see what it would do for my online business efforts. I made a post on Russell Brunson’s Conquer Your Niche Forum in the Joint Ventures and Special Offers section. The gist of the message was this - I’ve got lots of skills and need to work with other people to create products and businesses using these skills.

Within 5 minutes of posting my message I had 3 people checking out my resume online and inside of 30 minutes 2 more. There may be some emails in my inbox when I get home too!

The point of this post isn’t the traffic that the forum post generated, but that the action of announcing my intentions in a public forum has begun a chain of events that has the potential to change my life. Every time you expose yourself to this type of public discussion a new branch of possibilities opens up in your life.

The prospect of people looking over my resume and work and judging me is a little un-nerving, but the possibilities of what ‘could happen’ far outweigh the fears of rejection.

I’m planning to do this again in other forums to try and find people I can work with. There is no telling where it might take me.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Have you started a similar chain of events in your life? Leave a comment and let us know what happened.