Exposing Profits on the Web

So I was looking at my stats, and I notice that before my article marketing test, I was ranking almost no where for the term cat lovers, and I also noticed that my top keyword that I targeted in my testing is now producing more page views. A lot more.

As an added bonus, I got Google to love the site. Finally! 

If you’re wondering if article marketing works as a website promotion tool, have a look at some of my stats and you’ll see that it definitely does. Since May, I’ve added very little content to the site and done very little updating of existing pages. Yet, there are many more referrers and my site has been found for many more keywords. The number of times my site has been found for my targeted keywords has increased exponentially.

This is only from submitting a few articles using the Wizard.

Here’s what we looked like in April, prior to the test. Oh, and this was during my test of another article submission service, and my traffic was going down at that time…

 Notice 748 total keywords that my site has been found for in the engines, and that the term cat illness has resulted in 70 total page views from searches for the month.

Now let’s look at August (remembering that August is not quite over as I type this)…

Wow! A 344 percent increase in total keywords, with a few days left to go in the month. And… my two target keywords are now on top. With cat illness pulling in 1024 page views, up from 70 in April. That’s over a 1462 percent increase in page views from just that one keyword.

Also notice that in April, my top keyword had 181 page views, and now my top keyword has 1024, and my number 2 keyword has 353. I believe this is quite the proof of the effect of article marketing, since that is my major method of promotion here.

Keep in mind that these numbers show the results from organic search. You’re looking at how many page views have resulted from free search per keyword. This is an addition to any other traffic generated in any other way, including from the articles themselves. I highly recommend that you use article marketing and distribute unique content, and I highly recommend that you use the Unique Article Wizard to do it for you.

Article marketing is a fantastic way to generate traffic, and it attacks certain deficiencies that some of the other traffic methods have. I won’t go into on page and off page search engine ranking factors here, but links are a huge factor in how your site ranks in organic search results.

In case you don’t know, organic search results are simply the links in the free search engine results pages that come up when someone does a search. Considering that an organic search listing is worth up to 6 times what a pay per click ad is worth, it makes sense to get your site ranked as well as possible for free search.

Plain old on page SEO works well, of course, but off page factors such as links seem to be more important than anything else when it comes to ranking. And, better ranking means better traffic.

I heard an SEO expert say that he tells his clients that if you ignore using solid organic ranking techniques, you’d better consider that you’ll have to pay for that decision forever with paid advertising.

When you’ve already got a large mature site with thousands of links coming in, and your site is well indexed and considered an authority site, adding a properly SEO’d page may put you at the top for a keyword.

But a brand new site has no such benefits. While it’s all well and good to build your well constructed site up to many pages, a faster, and perhaps better way, is to write a few pages for the site, and then submit articles to the article directories.

Why? Well, submitting properly formatted articles with properly structured links to your site in the resource box does several things, including:

1. Gets you links in from respected sites.

2. Exposes your website to thousands of visitors who might not have seen it.

3. Allows your articles, equipped with links back to your site to be quickly placed on hundreds of sites with no extra effort on your part.

4. Uses the authority and traffic of other sites to improve your site’s ranking and traffic.

5. Brands your name, your site, and your keywords.

6. Promotes you as an authority in your niche.

If you have a brand new site, it has no power. So, why not use the power of article marketing to build traffic? Essentially, this allows you to use other sites to get your articles listed in the top search results. Within days of submitting, I often see my articles on the first page of Google for the keywords I target.

If you’ve been following my Unique Article Wizard journey, I have an update. Our traffic has been improving steadily, with slight fluctuation as expected. More importantly, my Adsense income is now 2.5 times the average that it was prior to starting the Article Marketing.

Enhancing Your List Building

I hope you’ve had some time to look over my viral list building idea using Advertising Know How and List Inferno. There are a ton of list building ideas and techniques out there, but rarely do I see people outlining exactly how to put several techniques and systems together to create your own, customized system for your needs. Hopefully you can use my suggestions to get a system going for yourself.

In order for list building to be effective, you have to have three things. Actually, for almost any web business, you need those three things.

1. Something of value.
2. A method of delivering that value to customers.
3. A way to attract interested parties and turn them into customers.

This trinity of value, delivery, and attraction are the key building blocks to a web business. Each one could be one or more books by themselves, but I’ll try to address them a bit here. As this applies to list building, here are the descriptions of the above 3 items…

1. Something of value - you must have something of value to offer your customer who joins your list. Why would you build a list or have a website, or any business, for that matter, if you did not have something of value to offer?

Now, you do not have to create this value yourself. You can offer someone else’s product or service. This is the core idea behind affiliate marketing.

You can offer information. This can be information you create, or information that someone else creates. What kind of information? Well, if you’re selling someone else’s product, that question is answered for you. Or, you can start with something you know a lot about and build a website, email ecourse, or ebook around the subject. This is often how niche marketers get started.

2. A method of delivering that value to customers - this delivery can be via email, the web, or real goods shipped to the customer. You can package up your thing of value however you like, and even use a combination of delivery methods.

For example, let’s say you focus your list building efforts on a course on “10 Ways to Overcome Procrastination.” You’d use list building techniques to build an email list and send them the ecourse or ebook.

Now, as you build your list, you can take this in a number of directions. You could:

1. Offer an advanced version of the course for a price, and you could ship them a hard copy workbook that they could use for the course.
2. Sell someone else’s course on self-improvement.
3. Expand your offerings to include seminars, audios and videos.
4. Sell leads to another company that offers similar products. Be sure not to sell any leads unless your subscribers agree to it.

As an example of number 4, offer an advanced course for free for signing up for some other offer. The other offer is provided by the company buying the leads from you. Now you’ve got a real business going!

I’ll give you one last example of how to offer value. Perhaps you’re using affiliate marketing to sell someone else’s product on Internet Marketing. Write up a report or ecourse with information on how to better use that Internet Marketing product. Then, offer your list the report or ecourse either as a pre-selling tool, or as a bonus for buying the product.

3. A way to attract interested parties and turn them into customers - something that is almost always overlooked is how exactly to generate website visitors or subscribers. There’s all this great information out there on how to create an Internet Marketing business, or a niche marketing website, but how do you actually promote it?

I’ll have to leave the details for a more in depth discussion, but you might want to try article marketing. It’s a great place to start!

Here’s a free viral list building formula that works well if you have a website. You can do this without a website as well, but you’d have to modify it a bit and you’d lose much of the viral aspect of it. It can work for any niche, but I’m focusing here on the Internet Marketing crowd.

1. Join Robert Puddy’s Advertising Know How (AKH)

2. Join each program in the downline builder for AKH

3. Set up an autoresponder (Aweber is excellent and you can test drive it here, or you can join freeautobot)

4. Create an autoresponder series for your ezine/free report and enter it into your autoresponder, leaving the thank you page and confirmation pages at the default for now. (I’m assuming we’re using double opt-in here to avoid spam complaints as much as possible)

5. Set up your ezine/free report sign up details in the list builder for AKH. This uses your thank you page to generate more subscribers, and yes, it does work. Copy the url for this page into a text file for later use.

6. Create your confirmation page on your website. Your confirmation page should state that your visitor will be receiving a confirmation email, and that they must confirm by clicking the link in that email if they are to receive any gifts you offered for subscribing, as well as your ezine/free report. If you offer more than 1 free gift for subscribing, you can put 1 free gift download link on this page. The rest, either put in the emails, or on another page.

7. Log in to your autoresponder and change your confirmation page to the one you just created. Change your thank you page to the url you copied and saved from AKH in step 5 above.

Now, whenever you get a new subscriber, your thank you page will show them more ezines they can subscribe to. In return, your ezine details will be shown on someone else’s thank you page. In fact, if you’re a paid member of AKH, it will actually be shown on 6 other thank you pages (3 if you’re a free member of AKH). I have found the sign up ratio to be relatively high.

Note* If you don’t use double opt-in, you lose the ability to use both a confirmation page and a thank you page, and thereby reduce your list building efforts (you’ll see why in a minute). Also, while you may lose some subscribers who do not double opt-in, the ones you do get will be more responsive.

8. Join List Inferno and enter your ezine details. Grab the list inferno code and modify your confirmation page that you created above to include the List Inferno code at the bottom of the page.

Now, each time someone requests to subscribe to your ezine, they will be shown the confirmation page with the List Inferno code. So, even if they don’t double opt-in, you will rack up a credit with List Inferno so that your ezine details are shown elsewhere on the web. Then, if they do double opt-in, your thank you page will also rack up up to 6 credits and your ezine details will be shown on 6 other thank you pages.

You could go with single opt-in, and yes, you’d get your thank you page viewed every time, and yes, the ratio there is much better (6 to 1 or 3 to 1 instead of 1 to 1). But, my opinion is that first, you probably should be using double opt-in anyway, since spam complaints are a huge issue. If you’re using double opt-in, then your confirmation page is empty real estate, and here we’re just putting to work something that would have gone to waste.

Second, it is better to have two systems working for you than just one. Also, if you word your confirmation page correctly, you can get over 70% to confirm the double opt-in. Third, if you wanted to get creative here, you could actually rotate your confirmation page code and use several other list builders in order to test what works best. In the end, it’s up to you.

While it might seem counterintuitive, I believe the reason the sign up ratio is high for the viral list builders (especially the AKH thank you page) is the same reason that add on sales, upsells, downsells, and one time offers work so well. That is, you’re catching people in the “buying mode.” In this case, buying refers to signing up for an ezine, rather than an actual purchase.

9. Sprinkle the List Inferno code throughout your website. You don’t have to put it on every page if you don’t think it fits, but on some of your high traffic pages would be a good idea. The sign up ratio for LI will be quite a bit lower than for the AKH system, but it’s probably on-par with regular traffic. That is, organic search traffic that has found your page with an opt-in form on it somewhere, not targeted traffic being sent to an opt-in squeeze page.

Now, when people visit those pages that have the code, it will get the ball rolling by giving you LI credits, and things will grow from there.

Notice we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we can do here with this. What can we do to kick start it? Well, I’m glad you asked, but this post is already way too long. I’ll show you how to supercharge things in another post.

Want to see this system in action?  Subscribe to my Proven List Building Secrets.

Want to use my thank you page to help build your list? Join Advertising Know How

Let’s continue our discussion on viral list building, including a list builder I like, and a trick that I’ve rarely seen used.

There are a number of list builders that I like. There are various viral tools that I would say are on the short list, and they come in different flavors. I won’t go into all the different types here, nor will I list all the ones I like, but let’s explore the concept a little.

I happen to like List Inferno, so I’ll use that one as an example. They have an easy three step sign up process, and this tool doesn’t have to be a pop up, although it can be.

Some people don’t like pop ups, or they may conflict with the terms of service of some ad and affilate programs. Also, unlike some other list builers, List Inferno offers the ability to promote ezines on topics other than Internet Marketing. All of the above makes LI a good choice.

How does it work? Basically, your traffic is used to show several ezine subscription forms on your site. Somewhere else on the web, your ezine details are presented as well. You simply enter your ezine subscription details in the List Inferno list builder and copy their code into your web pages. The more times you show a page with the code, the more chances you have of getting another subscriber.

This means that for every visitor to your page, you get the opportunity to gain another subscriber. In my experience, the sign up rate with viral list builders is rather high. My list building efforts, once started with these viral tools, just seem to spin off on their own without my having to actively do anything. I like that, and you will too. If they slow down for any reason, I simply ramp them up a bit with a few techniques and there they go again gathering subscribers.

I offer an ecourse on beginning list building in which I cover the basic elements that you need to properly build a list. One element that most list building courses tend to gloss over, is a way to reach potential subscribers.

One challenge, however, is that many people find it hard to drive traffic to their websites, or they don’t want to spend the money on a website at all. While I highly recommend that you build a website and develop a number of ways to drive traffic, viral list builders like List Inferno can be used with free websites, and once you get a few visitors, the viral effect begins to build your list for you.

There are a number of things you can do to increase the power of a viral list builder. One simple technique is to create a number of relevant keyword rich pages on your site, and place the list building code on each of those pages.

You can drive traffic to those pages in the usual ways in order to generate the viral effect of the list builder. Then, during your auto responder sequence or broadcast emails to your subscribers, systematically send your visitors to those pages.

In this way, each visitor from search engine results will help build your list. In addition, each subscriber can be responsible for producing several opportunities for you to gain new subscribers, a technique that will make you a viral list building champ.

I like to enhance my list building by using viral list builders. I wouldn’t rely on them completely, but I think they have their place. This is especially true if you’re a beginning marketer.

Some marketers have come out and given some reasons as to why they don’t like these tools. I think their reasons are valid, but perhaps they’re overlooking something. There are many tools that are quite effective when used in the right way. Those same tools can be a miserable failure when not used properly.

Don’t tell anyone, but I still use viral tools for list building. I believe that many who don’t like these viral methods simply either don’t use them well, or they’ve used the wrong ones.

A viral list builder maximizes your ability to reach potential subscribers by using other websites to promote your ezine subscription or autoresponder ecourse. It allows you to use existing subscribers to create new subscribers. Once set up, this type of advertising technique continues to work without additional input on your part.

These tools can help make every visitor or subscriber increase your opt-in list, often fairly quickly, and for zero cost. Some have criticized these tools, saying that they don’t build lists fast enough.

This might be true, but fast is a relative term. I hear from new marketers all the time that they can’t or won’t spend money. Obviously, if you can afford to pay for traffic using say, Google Adwords, then you will dramatically speed up your efforts. But, if you can’t spend the money, but you can drive traffic to a web page using other means, viral techniques can significantly increase your bottom line.

If you read some of what the top marketers have to say, making every visitor count is a key theme. Not everyone is going to be interested in what you have, and certainly only a small percentage of people will actually buy from you on one visit. If you go viral, you have a way of making the bulk of your visitors multiply your efforts, with minimal additional work on your part.

If you’re a beginning marketer on a small budget, or you simply want to give your subscriber base a good kick in the pants, this is a great way to do it.

Some viral list builders work by placing code on a page on your site, some use their site, some can be popups, and some replace a page entirely. Before I continue, I want to be sure that we’re clear that zero cost is referring to money only.

When using viral list building, there are some other costs you should consider and understand. These include an investment of time, and a certain amount of control that is lost. The fact that you’re often building someone else’s list or traffic as well as your own is often seen as a negative. The trade offs can be worth it, however, if you use these tools correctly.

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk about one of my favorite viral list builders, as well as a simple technique that I see very few (if any) people using to enhance the viral effect. We’ll talk soon.

I got a brand new site indexed in Google in about 2 days. Actually, I was indexed in Yahoo! and Live (MSN) before that, and I used only one simple technique.

What did I do? Well, let me say this… I have done NOTHING except build the site (with HyperVRE Gold), and place one free ad in one location. That’s it.

With all the people out there selling secrets on how to get backlinks and quick indexing, I thought I’d share. I’m planning on slapping together an ebook about a lot of this, but for now, here’s a trick that so far has worked for me.

Before I tell you what I did (it’s so simple you’ll laugh), I want you to know that I almost bought an ebook once that promised to show me how to get indexed in Yahoo! guaranteed.

Wanna know what the “secret” was? Pay $299 US to Yahoo! to get listed in their directory. The thought was that if you’re in their paid directory, you’d also get into their search engine. Yep, that’s it. For $39 US, they told you to pay Yahoo! Nice. Fortunately for me, I got the ebook as a freebie when I bought something else.

Ok, back to my story…

I registered a new site on Aug 4 (I don’t want to mess up my traffic stats, nor do I want to create any competition right now, so I won’t reveal the name).

…and I was indexed… tada… Aug 6…

The secret? Place an ad with an inline link to your site using your keywords as anchor text on Craigslist. That’s it! How simple… are you laughing? I’ll bet you are.

Use the San Francisco Bay Area site, under services and small biz ads. In your ad, simply announce your site, your product, or your service. I have some specific ways that I format my anchor text, but a link is a link, so have at it. I used this on an existing site and got a backlink listed in Yahoo! within 3 hours. That’s fast!

 So there… I just saved you $39 US!

Remember, you still need to have a well constructed site and good content. If you’re looking for a relatively quick and easy way to do that, I have a suggestion. I was able to build a well constructed site with 20 pages of content in less than 2 days using the Gold version of HyperVRE. Most of that 2 days was the learning curve as I figured out how to use HyperVRE and built and rebuilt the site.

Next steps for my new site? A Word Press blog, and some article submissions.

Please try out my technique and comment here on how it goes for you. Happy rapid indexing!

Ok, let me see if I can get you up to speed with what’s going on. My increase in Adsense income is more than paying for my Unique Article Wizard subscription. I have done little to no promotion outside of submitting these articles during my test.

Our magnetic jewelry site has down-leveled its traffic a bit to about three times what it was before we started the Unique Article Wizard test. I’m extremely happy with that, as we are yet to see the long term effects of submitting unique content.

I submitted only three articles, and it’s quite the competitive niche. I chose competitive keywords to rank for, with the exception of the site name. We now rank number one for the site name, and I’m very happy about that as well! I have submited one more article this week, with a new keyword to rank for. Let’s see how that goes.

On to more interesting things. I keep hearing about the latest and greatest whiz-bang thingy or trick or secret that will make you a fortune. I do my best to try many of them to see if they really work. The bottom line is, what always worked still works. Create good content, get links, write articles and submit them, and the traffic comes. You just have to make sure you put a unique twist on what you do and how you do it.  Are there tricks? Sure there are.

Since the web is primarily an information source, you have to diversify your monetization method. In other words, make every visitor count. Use ads, affiliate sales, your own products, build a list, etc.

 As for my cat site and the Unique Article Wizard. Well…

Prior to my test, Google only showed 3 backlinks, all from my own site. And now?

Google always shows relatively few backlinks. Let’s look at Yahoo!

 Yahoo! is showing 516 links in. But let’s look at more important stuff. Traffic!

Let’s have a look at our stats…

As we see, the highest number of unique daily visitors was 238. Keep in mind, I do not pay for any traffic for this site. All of this traffic is either from links, or organic search to the 130 plus pages of information on the site. I wrote almost all of the content myself, and based the keywords mostly off of Sitesell’s Brainstorm it! The primary marketing method I’ve used from the time this snapshot was taken until now is the Unique Article Wizard.

I submitted only 5 articles for this site. I purposely submitted very few articles as I felt that was the best test. Unique Article Wizard is the best system I’ve used so far. I have mentioned it before, but it’s worth repeating. I’ve used Isnare.com… my articles are out there from my Isnare submissions, I checked on one today. I’ve used Jetspinner and Jetsubmitter. I won’t go into all the problems I encountered with Jetsubmitter, but I will say that I really got tired of having to confirm hundreds of emails , and submitting to fewer than half the directories I expected on every submission. It may be better now, but I don’t know since I don’t want to deal with it!

 Ok, are you ready?

Again, I really haven’t done any promotion except the article marketing through UAW, and we’ve got 306 unique visitors minimum.

In case you’re not familiar with traffic stats, do not confuse visitors with “hits.” Hits are misleading. What counts are unique visitors and page views.

Sitesell does its own submission and SEO processes, which work well and give me steady traffic, but my traffic had actually dropped off. In fact, after using Jetsubmitter, my traffic went down!

That may be an indication of the quality of directories to which my articles were submitted and an overall down-trend that was happening anyway, but I’m not sure. I have a zero dollar advetising budget for that site, so traffic is all free, and fluctuates. I reserve the right to change that model at any time, but I have not paid for any traffic during this test. By the way, I have not submitted any articles other than the ones that have gone to UAW.

In any case, the Unique Article Wizard has certainly made a bigger impact than any article submission service I’ve tried. I highly recommend it. Release the hounds!