I was looking through the stats for this site today and saw that someone had followed a Google search for “The Go To Guy” and arrived at my homepage.

Being the curious type, I clicked on the referring link to see what came up on a Google search for that phrase and where www.AndrewSeltz.com placed in the search results.

This site is number 11 (top of the second page) for the phrase “The Go To Guy.” Not bad considering that I have made no specific effort to rank well for that phrase and there were 295,000 results.

The results that placed higher than this site were mostly big news sites and/or referring to well know people, so I’m in good company.

Maybe someday this whole Go-To Guy! thing will stick in a big way?

Andrew Seltz, The Go-To Guy!

“Make Easy Money Online!” “3 Easy Steps To Internet Riches!” “The Secret Money Making System That Google Doesn’t Want You To Know About!”

In Greek mythology the seductive song of the Sirens lured sailors to their doom. Orpheus played his lyre so loud that it drown out the sound and his ship passed on safely. Odysseys had his men stuff their ears with wax to avoid the sound and had them tie him to the mast of the ship so that he could hear their song and resist temptation.

Wading through the world of Internet marketing you sometimes need the strength and cunning of these mythic Greeks to avoid being seduced by the promises of instant wealth.

Yesterday I received an email for a website that promised to show me first hand a money-making site being built and promoted. (they also promised I could make a bunch of money by trying to convince you to watch the videos as well.) A series of videos promised to show me everything step-by step from the keyword research, to building the site, promoting the site, tracking the traffic and profits, and then refining the site for improved performance.

How could I resist such a promise? I look at the stats from my own sites and the slow trickle of income from ads and affiliate sales, and I want to find a new trick that will unlock the secrets of wealth - I watched the videos until 3am.

The system appeared to work. The author collected a series of free articles for content and then used an automated tool to wrap keyword rich material around it and plug in Google ads and affiliate ads. He used social bookmarking sites to bookmark the pages in his own site, and then used another automated system to generate a blog that would automatically add new keyword loaded content every day, ping the blog directories, and link to pages in his main site. Within 72 hours he was getting traffic from the bookmarking sites, Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines. He also made more ad money than I did all last month.

It was all so easy. He didn’t have to write a single piece of content - just plug in the keywords and a handful of free articles and push a button. Out popped hundreds of website pages targeting his list of keywords. I was tempted to buy the software tools immediately and sign-up for membership to his website. I knew I could have a site up within 24 hours and be making easy money online! But I started getting a sinking feeling in my gut. Something wasn’t right.

There is only one way to generate thousands of keyword targeted web pages from a handful of articles - it’s called content spam. Even though this website wasn’t full of keyword gibberish or content scraped from other sites using sleazy tools, it wasn’t adding any value to the web. It was just re-directing traffic and grabbing a little toll money along the way. There wasn’t much trickery involved (no bait and switch content, no site cloaking gimmicks) just another duplicate site that lured visitors in without giving them what they hoped for.

I want to find ways to make money online and build my own business. I don’t believe that you have to suffer for every penny to be a legitimate business person and make an honest living. But, I want to add value along the way. I want to point to the work that I’ve done and be proud of it. This type of ‘business’ just doesn’t feel right.

I’m trying to keep myself lashed to the mast so I don’t fall victim to the siren call of ‘Making Easy Money Online.’ But a part of me still argues that it won’t hurt anything just to give it a try. Nothing but my reputation, that is. Still, I’m straining against the ropes.

Thank goodness I’ve got a good day job. Otherwise the temptation might be to great and I wouldn’t take the time to learn a better way.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Don’t give me the last word on this subject - leave a comment and let us know what you think!

There are many advertising sins you can commit online - you can focus on features instead of benefits, you can try to promote too many things at the same time and diffuse your message. But, there is one sin that is unforgivable.

Before I start, I must make a confession. I have committed this sin. I am guilty. But I am doing my best to “Go forth and sin no more!”

So, what is this horrible sin?

Failing to Capture Email Addresses

When the first thoughts of Internet profits dance in your mind, people (like me anyway) rush out and start trying to drive traffic to affiliate sites or their latest Adsense niche sight. In all of the excitement about starting a new venture, new marketers often miss one of the first truths of marketing:

Attracting a new customer is the most expensive and least profitable portion of your business.

Attracting New Customers

Think back to the days of the first Internet boom. Companies were spending thousands and millions of dollars trying to get their names “out there.” In many places you could not buy ad space. I remember seeing signs posted along highways (like political campaign posters) and taped or tied to every imaginable surface. Getting your name “out there” takes time, money, creativity or all three.

People who are new to marketing often get focused on the advertising side of things. There is a lot to think about and you can spend months and years studying and practicing the art and science of advertising. But, to get the best results from your advertising you must know why you are doing it.

The Primary Purpose of Advertising

The primary purpose of advertising is not to sell products, it is to acquire customers.

The customers you are acquiring may not buy from you initially, but they will give you permission to contact them again directly. Eventually, many will buy your products or services and you can send follow-up messages that build on each other and lead people through the buying process.

Most purchases are made after the sixth or seventh time a person is exposed to an advertising message. Repetition is key. The first time they see your message, you are a stranger. By the sixth or seventh time, you are familiar. If you have provided trustworthy and valuable information inside every one of those messages, you may even be a trusted friend.

Of course, you need to sell products and your products will attract customers. But, you must remain focused on customer acquisition so you do not waste your efforts and money.

To acquire customers, every advertising effort should include at least one way for a potential customer to subscribe to a newsletter or email course. If they are not willing to give you money, but are intrigued by your advertising copy, there is a good chance they will give you their email address and name in exchange for a sample of your product.

How to Build a Mailing List

A common way to build mailing lists is to give away a free course or e-book as a thank you for joining your list. I used this technique to begin my own marketing and e-business mailing list.

Another approach I used was to include a sign-up check box on an email form. One site where I used this technique had an “Ask an Expert” feature where people could get personalized answers to their questions. They had already agreed that the site’s authors were experts by taking the time to write, and it wasn’t a big leap to request more information. The plus side of this approach was that the newsletter subscribers were “pre-screened” which resulted in a very low un-subscribe rate on future mailings.

Information marketing expert Fred Gleek uses something he calls a “bounce-back” with everything he does. He creates a sign-up system that only requires a person to send a blank email to one of his email accounts which adds them to his list. He then forwards them a special gift of some kind. He includes text that says, “For free gift on [subject] worth $35 send a blank email to [email@address.com].”

That line goes on every item Fred Gleek publishes and is included in every joint venture project he participates in. I bought two of his books, sent in an email (the “bounce-back” was printed at the bottom of every page) and hear from Fred on a regular basis.

Go Forth and Sin No More

If you do not have a mailing list, stop everything and set one up. There are a number of online services like *Intellicontact, Aweber, and *Get Response that will provide mailing list management for a nominal fee.

There are other software solutions that you can use on your desktop, or server to do the same. *My Autoresponder Pro, *SendStudio, and *Follow-Up Mailing List Processor are just a few of the commercial applications available. Infinite Responder! and PHP List are free mailing list managers that run on your server. PHP List is very feature rich and Inifinite Responder is a simple program for managing auto-responders.

Managing a mail server is a big job (it takes a lot of work to ensure that marketing emails do not get filtered out before they reach your subscribers.) Plus, most of the hosted services, to protect against spam accusations, will not allow you to upload a list of addresses to your account. So if you use a do-it-yourself solution and change later, you will have to ask your subscribers to re-subscribe (and you WILL lose subscribers in the transition.)

Finally, some hosting providers (like the one I use for this site - *1and1.com) also provide a newsletter tool as part of your service package.

However you decide to manage your mailing lists and newsletters, make sure you include a sign-up method in every advertising campaign you create. Always find something valuable to offer to people who are interested in your product but not ready to place an order. And then, follow-up and build relationships.

Happy Marketing,

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Would you like to gain free access to a large and growing collection of e-books that you can use as bonuses for your mailing list subscribers? Sign-up for Platinum Access to the Go-To Library today!

* Denotes affiliate links.

Are you hunting for advice on how to make money with your blog or website using Google’s Adsense advertising program? You may need this book!

The very first piece of advice that Joel Comm gives in his new book, The Adsense Code, is to make sure your Google Adsense ads do not look like ads. It should not surprise you that his book doesn’t look like a book about Adsense either - The cover is a spoof on the Da Vinci Code design.

While browsing through the business section of my local bookstore the cover caught my eye. I wondered what a Da Vinci Code book was doing in the business section and then realized it was Joel’s book. The gimmick made me smile and I grabbed it to see what tips I could get for free by reading it in the store. After skimming through chapters and having a few aha! moments, I realized I was going to need my own copy to study and broke down and bought a one.

I was first introduced to Joel Comm’s work through one of his Dr. Adsense podcasts. I had been toying with a niche topic website and Adsense to see if it was possible for me to make a little money online. His podcast was helpful and I was soon looking for more Adsense advice from him. That was another reason I was so quick to buy this book.

Joel is not an advocate of slapping up hundreds of software generated garbage sites with ads stuffed in them. There are hundreds of “gurus” out there who promote this type of approach. Google is getting wise to their tricks and the profits made from those types of websites is evaporating quickly. It has a number of folks claiming that Adsense is Dead, but the techniques and strategies that are taught in The Adsense Code will keep you on Google’s good side and keep you making money.

The book spends a few pages giving a brief overview of setting up a site and an Adsense account, then jumps into explaining how to use Adsense on your site. Joel shares his years of experience giving advice on the best formats and placements to use for your ads. He explains ways to influence the ads you get on your site without violating Google’s terms of service. He gives suggestions for gathering and generating content for your site and how to track your ads and analyze your visitor stats.

What impresses me most with this book is that Joel encourages and demonstrates tracking and testing strategies to help you evaluate the impact of the changes you make to your ads. Without tracking and analysis, you are just groping in the dark. Joel recommends keeping an Adsense Journal to track your changes and their impact on your earnings. A wise recommendation!

If you are trying to get a handle on how to use Adsense for your website or blog, this book is a must have. If you have been working with Adsense for a while you may have heard of many of these ideas before, but you will still learn a few new tricks to try (I know I did!)

The Go-To Guy!

If you have spent more than 5 minutes exploring the world of Internet marketing someone has told you how important your ‘list’ is. This ‘list,’ of course, is your list of email addresses for people who have opted-in and given permission for you to send them emails.

You may also have heard that the majority of sales come from the 6th or 7th email you send to someone. It can be difficult, expensive, and nearly impossible to get someone to visit your site 7 times but, if you have their email, it is easy to send follow-up emails.

This article is not about email marketing strategies. (I have several e-books on the subject that you can download for free by signing up for my newsletter mailing list.) This article is about my recent experience trying to get people to sign-up for my list.

I Can’t Even Give Away Free E-Books!

I spend a lot of time and energy hunting down useful resources on the web. I have built up a collection of e-books that I think have valuable information in them and also give me resale/giveaway rights. All of the ‘Build Your List’ gurus tell you to create a squeeze page (a webpage whose sole purpose is to get visitors to give you their email address and sign-up for your mailing list.) They encourage giving away a free gift (like an e-book) as a thank-you for signing up. It is essentially a legal bribe! I decided to put my collection to work.
My squeeze page promised more than just one e-book, I opened the vault and gave access to everything I had. (See my sign-up page.) I promoted it through a Pay-Per-Click campaign and also through some traffic exchanges and other sources. The results, 1 sign-up - not very encouraging.

I tweaked the page, updating the copy and polishing up the graphics. I took advice from a couple of the advertising and copywriting e-books in my library and revised the body copy before trying another promotional run. Results - 3 sign-ups.

20 New Sign-ups In Less Than 7 Days

After a couple attempts, I let this whole idea slide for a while. And then I came across a promotion for the Viral Marketing Giveaway 2. The concept is simple, you sign-up as a Joint Venture partner and offer a free giveaway item to the effort. All of the partners then promote the giveaway and, as new members join and download the freebies, you get to gather new people for your mailing list. They land on your squeeze page and then sign-up. I joined the fun and sent people to exact same old squeeze page to get my freebies. There are over 35 pages of offers in the giveaway and mine landed near the end.

Within days I had added 20 new names to my list. Same squeeze page, but now they were signing up (and they had probably signed up for dozens of other offers before getting to mine.)

These giveaways seem to be popular right now. I have received invitations for 3 more in the past week:

• End of Summer Giveaway
• Toolbox4Success Giveaway
• The Halloween JV Giveaway

I signed up for all of them and connected to the same squeeze page. The first went public last week (the other two are still gathering JV Partners as I write this.) My list has added more than 30 new subscribers.

Why All The New Mailing List Subscribers?

My offer, and the content of the squeeze page, has not changed. Why are people signing up now? I have a couple of guesses why this is happening.

Trusted Referrers - The giveaways are promoted by all of the JV partners sending messages to their lists. A known person is making the recommendation and essentially endorsing the whole thing. This kind of social proof that the operation is legitimate puts visitors in a trusting frame of mind before they get to my page. The copy on my site does not have to convince them to trust me, only that I have content they want.

Momentum - Once visitors start getting some free stuff they get into a feeding frenzy. They start siging up and downloading everything - my stuff is just in the pile with all of the others and the giveaway has created the momentum.

The X-Factor - Maybe there is some other factor that is motivating folks to sign up. If you have other ideas why people are more willing to sign up when my squeeze page is promoted through one of these giveaway sites, leave a comment with your ideas.

What Is The Quality Of The List?

So far the emails and names I have gathered seem okay. Very few people are giving obviously junkmail addresses and bogus names (there have been a few - ‘Pho Nee.’) I’ll have to make a few mailings to the list before I can determine how responsive it is, but my list is growing.

This list is made up of folks looking for online business and marketing opportunities. My current plans are to use it to recruit affiliates for some of the info products I am developing.

The GoTo Guy!

I don’t blog just for fun. This site isn’t a public diary of my life. My goals for AndrewSeltz.com are to share my knowledge and experience with more people than my friends, family, and co-workers and to collect that knowledge in a form that can be reused to create products and services I can sell - help and make money.

I have used a combination of Adsense, affiliate ads, and Amazon affiliate links to try and generate income. I’ve made a few bucks, but not even the minimum required for them to cut me a check.

A few months ago I found a site that promised I could make money by doing nothing but writing on my blog. The company, PayPerPost.com, pays bloggers to write about specific topics that their advertisers want to create a buzz about. You write an article, include a few links, and post it to your blog. After a preset time period (usually 90 days) they send a payment to your PayPal account. You don’t have to get anyone to click on anything and there is no guesswork - write about what they ask you to write about and they pay what they promise to pay.

There are limits to how often you can post per day, but you could easily grab a quick $10, $20, or $30 a day. I have yet to make enough in a month from Adsense to cover my Internet expenses, but 4 or 5 sponsored posts a month would do the trick.

I just received my first payment today for a post I wrote. The system works.

Consider adding PayPerPost.com to your revenue mix. It gives legit advertisers a venue for building buzz for their products and services and gives a measure of control to bloggers about what they promote for money on their blogs.

If you’ve had experience with this company, or made money with a similar strategy, leave a comment and let me know about it.

The Go-To Guy!

Every year there is a state fair near where I live. They have a good old fashioned midway. Huge colorful signs and a fast talking man with bad teeth promise to show you amazing wonders and human oddities if only you will pay a little money and step inside the tent.

I’ve paid once or twice to see inside the tent and it is usually not amazing or wonderful. It is usually just a gimmick - a fake. The Carny Folk conned me out of a little money.

You wouldn’t trust these people to help you with anything important and if you came across a business in your town using similar advertising it would probably make you suspicious.

There are a lot of people on the Internet who would say or do anything to get you to ’step inside their tent.’ They don’t really care what you think about what you see inside. Their sites are full of keyword loaded gibberish and articles that have been duplicated a thousand times on a thousand websites. They use software that automatically generates hundreds and thousands of these useless webpages and then litter the Internet with them.

They just hope to get a lot of folks to step inside and maybe a few will click on an ad or one of their affiliate links - a nickle here and a dollar there.

What Do Search Engines Want?

Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines are in a constant struggle to weed these sideshow sites out of their results and push the most relevant results to the top of the list. Your goal with search engine optimization (SEO) is to get to the top of the results for the keywords that are relevant to your site and not get swept away with the Carny Folk.

Your primary focus should be on making your content relevant to other human beings. Then, use the tools and techniques of SEO to help the search engines better understand what your pages are about.

You don’t have to resort to trickery to improve the search engine placement of your site’s pages. If you keep the topic of each page of your focussed and use good basic SEO techniques, your search engine rankings will improve and you won’t have to worry about being mistaken for Carnie Folk the next time Google upgrades its filtering algorithms!

SEO Basics

Keyword Focused Pages: Each page on your website should be focussed on a small set of keywords. Don’t try to cover everything on one page. Break up your topic into focussed sub-topics and then create seperate pages for each one.

Create Internal Links: When you break your website up into keyword focussed pages, there will be natural overlaps in the subject matter on each page. Readers will be interested in these other pages too. When appropriate, direct readers to these relevant pages and use keywords in the links. This has the effect of encouraging users (and, by extension, search engine spiders) to explore all of your content.

Use Keywords in Links: Search engines value links. They also look for keywords in the link text. Don’t use ‘Click Here’ as your link text. If you are recommending another article, link on the article’s title (or relevant keywords you use to describe the article - ‘Learn Search Engine Optimization’…)

Title Tags: Make sure that every page on your site has a unique title with relevant keywords at the beginning that relate to keywords in the content of the page. Your site ’s name should go at the end of the title because the words at the beginning are valued more than those at the end when the serch engines rank your page.

Use H1, H2, H3… Tags: These tags identify headlines and search engines expect headlines to describe content (so do humans.) Keywords here have higher weight. (make sure the same keywords are also present in the text that follows.)

Emphasize Important Words: Bold and Italicized words stand out to the search engines as well as your visitors.

Use Keywords in 1st Paragraph: Get to the point quickly when writing your content. Readers and search engines will make a lot of assumptions about your article in the first paragraph, so make sure you give a quick overview at the top that uses your keywords.

Image Alt Tags: Always include descriptive text in the alt tags for your images. This helps people who can’t see your images make sense out of why they are there, and they give more content to the search engines. Do not simply stuff the alt tags with keywords - this is a Carny Folk move and search engines are wary of it. But, use relevant keywords when describing your images.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing: Cramming keywords into every search engine hotspot is a surefire way to get the search engines to dump or devalue your site. Remember, a search engine’s primary goal is to get relevant results to customers. Trying to trick them into showing a site that isn’t relevant will eventually get you delisted or demoted.

Avoid Duplication: Another search engine no-no is repetition of the same keyword or phrase throughout a page. This sort of repetition tells the search engines that you are stuffing the page with keywords (or worse, the page was created by a program designed to stuff keywords into it) and that they are not a natural part of your page’s content. Use a little variety in your content to avoid repetition - your human visitors will appreciate it too!

Benefits of Honest SEO

Honest search engine optimization has the side effect of making your content more readable to human beings. Since the search engines’ primary goal is to deliver the most relevant results to the human beings who use them, anything you do that enhances the user experience will make them happy too. Stay focussed on providing quality content to your visitors and then optimize the way you present it so that the search engines can understand it too, your site will perform better in the rankings.

When you provide value, other website creators will send traffic to your site to give value to their visitors. The links they create to your site will add value to your site in the eyes of the search engines. They are voting for you every time they create a link.

These SEO techniques and strategies will get your pages high in the search rankings. From there it becomes a game of inches where you will focus your attention on your best performing pages and make subtle changes to try and push them closer and closer to the top. When you get to that level you will have left the Carny Folk far behind you.

The Go-To Guy!

I’ve run this blog since January of 2006 and one thing I’ve become very familiar with is comment spam. Comment spam is bogus comment text, stuffed with promotional links that gets sent by auto submission programs. I’ve seen plenty of hyped up ads for “Blog Marketing Software” whose sole purpose is to generate this blog clogging mess. Web newbies and sleazy individuals, with dollar signs in their eyes, buy this stuff and unleash waves of spam to the blogosphere.

I personally have several barriers in place to block this junk and keep my site pollution free. The only ads are the ones I put there.

A new service called PayPerPost.com allows people an honest way to advertise on blogs. Bloggers, like me, can sign up with the service and earn money by blogging. Advertisers place offers for bloggers to write about specific topics and mention their products or websites. Bloggers can scan the available offers to find something that they are interested in writing about. The offer tells you how much you will earn and what type of post you will have to write.

It works (at least from the blogger’s end of things.) I know because I received my first payment today for an article I wrote a while back. It sure beats counting pennies from Adsense. The advertisers get a custom written article with a link back to their site. It’s a fair trade in my book.

If you are looking for ways to earn some money with your blog, give it a look. If you are a marketer wanting to leverage the power of blogs in your advertising, please do this and don’t try comment spam. Everyone will be a lot happier.
The Go-To Guy!

Tired of Internet marketers promising a ’secret technique’ for making money online? How about marketing manuals that tell you to make marketing manuals to sell to people like you? It’s like a dog chasing its tail.

You won’t find any of that junk in “The One Month Magnate“*, by Tony Shepherd. The system he lays out is filled with gimmick-free practical techniques presented in a logical (and profitable) sequence. He chose a real world example to demonstrate his process and leads you through it from beginning until almost the end (he stops detailing his project at the 30 day mark giving an overview of what he planned to do next.)

The sales page for Shepherd’s e-book grabbed my interest and tempted me to risk $27US to find out more. He promised a blueprint for creating a profitable online business that puts money in the bank in 30 days - starting from nothing. I pulled out my Amex card, payed my money and downloaded the e-book. I got my money’s worth.

If you are a seasoned information marketer, or have already consumed as many e-books, websites, and podcasts on creating and marketing information products online as I have, you will find no surprises in Shepherd’s book. I had heard every technique before, but I also spent a lot of time gathering that information. Plus, I still learned something new.

What I found is exactly what Shepherd promised: a sound blueprint for applying reliable techniques to take you from nothing to profitability. He talks about market research techniques, techniques to establish yourself as an expert and build an audience using free reports, how to create an info product, how and where to set up the accounts required to collect orders and deliver products, and how to do it all in 30 days or less.

The book is arranged to take you day-by-day through the process as Shepherd relates what happened with his sample project. By the end of the story he claims to have earned more than $3000US. (You have to take Shepherd’s word on his earnings because he offers no evidence to support his claims. However, the earnings he states seem entirely reasonable.) By day 30 he hadn’t yet created a website or affiliate program (those cost a little money to start and he stuck to his promise of showing how to make money without spending it first.)

“The One Month Magnate“* isn’t likely to be the last e-book you ever buy on the subject, but the quality of the information it contains improves the odds that you will buy the next one with the profits from your new business. You will also know what you need to learn next.

On a scale of 1 to 10, “The One Month Magnate“* is a solid 7. I would have appreciated more samples of the sales letters he created and the free report he used to build his customer base. I also wanted to see some documentation for his earnings claims. However, I got my money’s worth and recommend the e-book to beginning information marketers looking for a clear path through the woods.

The Go-To Guy!

* This is an affiliate link. If you follow it and make a purchase, I will receive a commision. To visit “The One Month Magnate” website without using my affiliate link, click here.

I recently used the Modx CMS platform to build my sister-in-law’s political campaign website. It was my first attempt to build a working site using this CMS. Overall it worked out very well - once I wrapped my head around a few basic concepts. I’ll write more about my experiences with this project if there is any interest. Send me an email or leave a comment and let me know if and what you want me to discuss

The Go-To Guy