Exposing Profits on the Web

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!

I’m beginning to wonder if any help desk out there actually does anything about the tickets they receive. Perhaps I missed an email, or the spam filters got to it, or whatever, but I either way, I haven’t received my NEG refund yet. In the meantime, my army of blogs idea is on hold I suppose, and I’m going to have to make some decisions.

I did find a tool that I’m thinking about trying out, and the sales pitch indicates that it’s actually much more powerful than Niche Empire Generator. Of course, you never know until you try. Sooooo…. I have to decide whether I’m going to go for a new tool, or just go it on my own with a WordPress blog, or… hmmm…. I read Blogging to the Bank. Not much in there except put up a blog (now recommending WordPress hosted on your domain instead of free Blogger blogs as the old version did… I could have told you not to let someone else host your blog if you really care about it, but that’s another story) and promote it with some Web 2.0 techniques. This is not new or startling information folks.

Rob may make a lot of money with his blogs, but I suspect he’s keeping the techniques that really make him some bucks hidden… at least for now. Unless… hey, wasn’t there a back end for a paid membership site in there somewhere…. ahhh… that’s what he’s really after. I don’t blame him. I would be too.

Niche Empire Generator (NEG) offers a way to launch an army of blogs for profit, all from one easy to use interface. I decided to test it along with some other tools for my army of blogs concept. Well, I’ve delayed writing about the whole blogging for profit idea because I’ve been having some issues with NEG.

I’ve been testing Andrew Hansen’s Niche Empire Generator for several weeks, and, although I like the concept and the promise, I’m just not thrilled with the way it performs in the real world. This post probably won’t get me invited to the inner circle of anyone’s latest Internet Marketing hoopla party or whatever, but I really need to get this out.

I simply must go on a rant, and you know, I’m beginning to wonder if any of the so-called Internet Marketing gurus out there actually use their own product. I’m also beginning to wonder if any of the people recommending these products actually use them either!

I know that hype is everywhere, and I know that many times a product comes out and it sounds great and it addresses a big need and people start promoting it and before you know it, if you don’t start promoting it, you’re going to leave money on the table. Breathe! Well, that whole thing is really starting to piss me off. There I said it.

Ok, so this very site was created with NEG (after some trial and error on my part), and the first few posts were made with NEG. But the thing has annoyed me to the point where I’m throwing in the towel and going with another method, unless someone can convince me otherwise. Of course, since I like to be in the weeds, I’m going to be testing another idea.

NEG uses WordPress blogs, and I’ve never used WordPress until this site. I’ve mostly used Blogger. WordPress does have some interesting features, so I’m really not sure whether I’m going to keep this a WordPress blog or not. I’ve heard that some people using WordPress have a hard time getting any search engine love from Yahoo! but I have yet to confirm anything.

I just this morning purchased Blogging to the Bank, to see if the techniques in it are worth trying. Blogging to the Bank is based on Blogger blogs, and I’m not sure if some of the key ideas in there will work for me the same way with WordPress. Maybe I can come up with my own testing and try both WordPress and Blogger and see how it goes.

Back to Niche Empire Generator… The three things I liked about the promise of NEG were being able to manage your blogs from one easy interface, easy ability to adjust templates and themes that work best, and the word2link feature which automatically links words or phrases with a url. Unfortunately, none of those features do me any good if I’m spending all kinds of time cleaning things up everytime I make a post. Blogging should be (relatively) easy. A tool should make it easier, not harder!

Now, when I purchased NEG, it was supposed to be a self-hosted install. In other words, it was software I needed to install on my own domain. I thought, ok, I can deal with that. Sometimes self-hosted solutions are best. Well, apparently so many people had problems with the install that they had to change it. They set it up so that they host the software and you simply are given a web page to log into. This probably appeals to more people as well. So, after waiting for them to get that up and running, I was expecting big things.

After using it for several weeks, here are some of things that I’ve experienced as, well, annoyances! I opened a ticket with NEG support and sent them this list and asked for a refund. It resets some of the post dates to December, 1969 (seems to select random posts to do this with so I have to check every single post for the right date and adjust if needed. When I have 200 posts, I’ll be ready to kill small animals). Also,  I can’t get it to work on a subdomain. That was something I wanted it to do. Some more complaints from my list are below…

1. Everytime I update my blog, it essentially recreates everything as a new install, rather than an “edit.” This, among other things, gives me a new WordPress login password every time I make a blog entry. This is extremely annoying, and, in my opinion, unnecessary.

2. Sometimes, the “edit” button shows as “setup site,” even though I’ve selected the option to manage an existing site. If I go back to the main menu and choose “manage” again, it shows “edit” as it should. Again, extremely annoying and somewhat misleading.

3. Everytime I add a blog entry, it messes up any comments and associates them with the wrong blog entry. If I have WordPress set to approve comments before they’re posted in any way, it requires me to reapprove comments everytime I make a blog entry. Annoying!

4. Although the system asks for the Adsense pub ID, as well as a channel code, it does not put Adsense ads on the site for me, so I had to install an Adsense plug in.

5. The preview for the theme I choose shows up, Adsense ads and all, but the only theme it loads is the basic theme, and no Adsense ads.

6. Everytime I make a blog entry, I have to once again setup the Adense plug-in I installed in order to get the ads to appear on the site. Again, annoying and unnecessary.

I’ll report on my army of blogs concept as soon as I decide which way I’m going to go next with it. Talk to you soon.

So the backlinks in Yahoo! for the magnetic jewelry site have now gone from 78 to 121 within a few days. We submitted our first article for that site to the Unique Article Wizard on May 25. We haven’t submitted an article since June 5, and our backlinks continue to grow.

Considering that we had consistently been seeing less than 25 backlinks when we started the test, that is quite impressive in my book. In addition, we’ve only submitted three articles for this site so far. Had I submitted eight or 10 or more, I believe that our results would be substantially better.

Also, the traffic has now stabilized at almost four times the number of unique visitors per day compared to what it was when we started the test. This, in spite of the fact that two engines have dropped most of our pages. This also happened to one of my other sites as well at the same time. What I notice, however, is that we’re getting reindexed quite fast, and I believe this is due to the number of backlinks as well as the type of sites we have our backlinks on from this test.

It should be noted that I am not testing in a glass bubble, but I’m firmly convinced that most of what is happening here is a result of the Unique Article Wizard. Over the course of this test, I am growing the site naturally in other ways. For example, I have added several pages to the site over the course of the test.

In addition, I had submitted several other articles over the last few months, both manually and using another submission tool. While it’s possible that some of our results are from those previous submissions, I have no doubt that most of it is from this tool alone. The accelerated level at which we increased traffic, saw pages indexed in the search engines, and increased our backlinks has been unmatched.

The next step? Submit some more articles of course! I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Want to test your site and see if you can get even better results? Try it out!

By now, you should know that article marketing is one of the best ways to increase traffic, brand your name and your website, improve search engine rankings, and get backlinks to your websites. What you may not realize is that if you’re submitting the same articles to the article directories, a lot of your efforts are being wasted.

I’ve been testing Noel Swanson’s Unique Article Wizard in order to drive traffic to two different web sites. One website has been around since June of 2004, and has over 130 pages, and the other has been online only since January of 2007, with under 30 pages. I thought these two sites would be a good test, since one is more mature and has quite a few more pages. In addition, they are both in two totally different niches, and neither one has anything to do with Internet Marketing, MLM, or business opportunities.

We’re at the one month milestone in our test, so I thought this would be a good time to let the cat out of the bag and let you in on what I’ve been doing. So far, the results are impressive. I’ll tell you more about the results in a minute, but if you can’t wait to test your sites with it, run over to Unique Article Wizard and sign up. And yes, I’ll get an affiliate commission when you do, but that’s not why I’m recommending it. I’m recommending it because it works!

Now, before I go on, let me say that I’ve used and tested Isnare, Jetsubmitter, manual article submissions, and a few other methods. Nothing comes close to the results I’ve seen with Noel Swanson’s tool. Not even close. This is power article marketing at its best.

This tool combines the advantages of Isnare’s hands-off approach to article submission, with the control of being able to choose exactly how your keywords will be promoted (with Noel’s expert guidance). It combines Jetsubmitter’s ability to submit unique versions of articles to multiple directories (literally hundreds), without having to decide for yourself what is or is not unique content. The tool does that for you.

It is also easier to use than Jetsubmitter, and using a proprietary process which I can’t reveal, will ensure that not only is unique content being distributed to each directory, but that you can get up to twice as many backlinks as standard article marketing. It also gives you reports and shows where Yahoo! lists the site you’re targeting for promotion. Very cool.

For example, I submitted two articles for one site, and three articles for another, and within three weeks I had over 1100 listings in Yahoo! for just one of the sites. But that’s not the best part!

The best part is that, and I just checked, at our one month milestone, both sites in our test rank on the first page of Google for the anchor text I selected. Here’s what I just noticed in Google for one of our test sites, www.magnetic-jewelry-connection.com…

For the keyword, magnetic jewelry connection… we now rank number 2. We came from total obscurity, by the way, to number 2 within one month. Next month, I expect to knock the top dog out of first place. How? I’ll submit two more articles, of course, and let the wizard do its magic.

The second keyword, magnetic bracelets, we’re having a harder time ranking for. This is to be expected for several reasons, not the least of which is that is was a secondary keyword and I did not put it in the wizard as much as the first.

Also, prior to this test, this site had 0 pages indexed by Ask.com, and only a few indexed by the big 3. Within 2 weeks of the first article submission, we saw Ask index it’s first page, and about 90% of the pages were indexed by the big 3. This is a huge accomplishment. I could go on about this, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

I’ll report on the other test site in another article, but I highly suggest you at least try this service out for a couple of months. If you’ve been considering article marketing, don’t do it unless you do it right. If you’ve got some websites you’d like to get some traffic for, I recommend you sign up for Unique Article Wizard and give it a try. You can report on your testing here after a month.

Brad Fallon has done it again!

Brad Fallon, of myweddingfavors.com and StomperNet fame, has combined all the strengths of Youtube, Google, and Amazon into one site.

Right now, as of this writing, anyway, you can get in on the beta version of FreeIQ free of charge!

Check this out…

This site has an affiliate program that allows you to embed video on any site you want just like YouTube. But when the person goes to the site and makes a purchase, you get paid.

Yup… You actually get paid for promoting other people’s videos. Cool, huh? In addition, there’s a 1 year cookie, which means that if the visitor returns within a year and makes a purchase, you still get paid.

But wait! There’s more!

Once the visitor is tagged as your customer, you can get paid over and over again. This is in contrast to many affiliate programs where you may get paid once, if at all. Also, it’s a two tier program, so you can build a solid income by encouraging others to become affiliates.

As evidenced by his past successes, Brad is a master, and anything he touches seems to turn to gold. Now you can cash in on some of that gold. Also, if you’ve been hearing about Web 2.0 as the latest and greatest, this site has that part of it nailed down. Here’s why… The videos have the latest technology to that will allow ratings, relevancy, and scoring.

If you don’t know what any of that means in practice, don’t worry about it. Just head on over and sign up with FreeIQ now!

I’ll be updating you on my progress with the first of my sites in my army of blogs in a few days. For now though, and based on the response to Alok Jain’s list building blog entry, I’m going to make this a short post and simply recommend that you join a very simple but very powerful list building program. List building is not the only way to go, but it certainly is one way to get more visitors, repeat customers, and produce a more steady income on the Internet.

Judging by the comments on Alok’s blog, people really are starving for a list building system. I’m going to be testing an update to my list building concept soon. If you haven’t built a list before, it will certainly help you do that. But for now, you can get started right away by joining Robert Puddy’s list building program.