NetMax Systems

Taking control of your assets

2008-06-03T08:04:00.007-06:00

Something really funny:

An ad on a Google Adsense widget:

Wanna Get Rich Blogging?
I Make $6,000 A Month From My Blog. Now I Reveal My Secrets For Free!
www.RipYouOff.com (not his real url of course)

Something really sad:

A lot of people probably give this dork money.

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This little series of posts are directed at people who love to write, have something to say, blog in large part because they love to write. And who would not mind making some money from their writing.

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You love to write.

You wouldn't mind earning a tidy side income from your writing. Truth be known, you might not even mind earning your ENTIRE living from writing.

I don't want to get into talking about places you can sell your writing. I don't want to talk about the traditional writer's marketplace. There are already plenty of websites devoted to that. If that is your bag, go for it. But know you are in the wrong place right now, and you should stop reading this and leave. Because, my purpose here is to get you thinking about the possibility that you should be doing it all yourself: not just the writing part, but the publishing and marketing as well. That is really the only way you are ever going to keep the lion's share of the money that your writing earns. Wake up and smell the 21st century. You don't need the publisher leeches any longer. Keep the money yourself.

In my opinion, you absolutely must get out of the box that tells you that you are a writer, and start thinking that you are, instead, a MARKETER of written assets. Further, those written assets are created by YOU. And you have an infinite capacity to create these valuable, marketable, assets.

Does that turn you off? Do you think you simply MUST be a writer, and nothing else? That kind of thinking may hold you back, may keep you from earning a living with your writing. Please understand that EVERY job, EVERY occupation—even your dream job of being a writer—will always include some aspects that are less exciting than others. For you and me, the act or process of WRITING is the sweet spot. But writing, no matter how good it is (and in spite of how bad it is) must be marketed. It must be sold before you get any money for it. Fact. Sorry. An unpleasant fact of life.

You can turn this task over to a publisher, and give them 95% (or more) of the money, or you can do it yourself and keep the money yourself. In other words, you can choose to work on a small commission while conforming to the timetable and other dictates of someone who doesn't really care about promoting your product, or you can become an actual business man or woman and take over control of the sales of your products.

A blog, for such a person, is simply a vehicle to promote one's products. I suggest you consider NOT using your blog, and your excellent writing, simply to attract buyers of the products of OTHERS, especially when those "others" aren't really paying you jack shit for all your trouble.

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A note: I haven't said this for a long time, so I should probably mention it from time to time. The header of this blog, the picture collage, is tongue-in-cheek. It is meant to ridicule the stupid websites who, like the Adsense ad at the beginning of this post, try to induce you to buy into some phony "secret" of success. I am here to tell you that the only "secret" to success I have ever come across, is the secret of being willing to work your ass off during certain periods of every day. Sorry.

Are you really a writer?

2008-05-30T04:06:00.010-06:00

This post is one of a series of articles directed at people who love to write. Bloggers. Authors. Explainers. Analysts. Teachers. And, like myself, Interpreters. This series is not intended to try and tell you how to write, but rather how to make money with the writing you do on your blog.

So many bloggers are really, really good writers, at least from what I have seen. But when they attract readers with their good writing, they often then just try to send those readers off to someone else’s store. That doesn’t seem right. Especially if you aren’t making much money (or no money at all) for all that effort. In my opinion, if you are a good writer, then you ought to be reaping the rewards of that writing. Why just give it away?

Remember, I am only speaking about bloggers who have a desire to earn money on the internet. I am not talking to bloggers who simply want to publish their news or opinions or journals to the world.

If you are (a) a writer, and (b) a blogger, and (c) you would like to earn some money from your blogging, then I think the answer is pretty obvious: find ways to sell your writing and keep all the money. Don’t use your great writing simply to try to sell an iTunes and keep 9 cents. Or whatever. Or don’t put up Adsense on your blog and take up half your sidebar, simply for the privilege of giving Google free advertising. How much did you earn from Adsense last month? Me too (and I didn't even have their widget installed last month!)

Mainly, I want to share with a few of you what I used to do (and what I stopped doing), and what I do now to earn money. Hint: I do somthing I love to do: write. More specifically, I “interpret" things.

And here I should stop and mention that just saying you want to earn money from “writing” isn’t a clear enough definition. You need to define exactly what kind of writing you like to do. That will depend on your own particular personality.

For example, are you are reporter or a researcher?

Do you like to explain things?—How to do things, or how things are in the world?

Maybe you are like me: an interpretor. I like to clarify complex issues for other people. I like to simplify things. This is a very wide field, by the way, and a much-needed field to be in.

Of course there are more kinds of writing, but you get the idea. The point is, you must realize that you have value, and your writing has value. And, if I get no other point across in this post, you need to know that your valuable writing—that which you love to do—is the product that you should be selling. It is not simply a way to attract eyes for other people’s products!

Cut out the middleman. Don’t give away your most valuable assests. Use your blog to sell your own products (your writing.)

K?

We are just getting started.

Giving it away

2008-05-26T05:07:00.005-06:00

You like to write. You have something to say. You are passionate about some subject. After all, that's why you have a blog in the first place, right?

Generally speaking, a blog (if you are using it to make money on the internet) is simply a funnel site. That is, it either redirects traffic to your store, or it teases some primary content you have written. Otherwise, it is just a social blog, or public information blog.

This post starts a series of articles directed at people who love to write. Bloggers. Authors. Explainers. Analysts. Teachers. And, like myself, Interpreters. My first little informational tidbit: STOP GIVING YOUR GOOD SHIT AWAY!!

Assuming you are reading THIS blog, you probably earn at least part of your income from internet sales or commissions, and are interested in additional ideas to enhance that income.

I think there are a lot of good writers out there who are mistakenly giving their products away instead of selling them.

If you read a good series of articles over a period of several (or many) days in someone's blog, I think it is safe to assume one of two things: either the blogger is passionate about the subject and has a burning desire to share his information with others as a humanitarian or philanthropic project, or else that person is a moron.

I will clarify this abusive statement next time.

Everything Old is New Again...just wait your turn.

2008-04-05T05:16:00.009-06:00

More discoveries.

Except that the more I keep digging, the more I seem to keep uncovering things I learned and tried 35 years ago. The methods have been updated, but the message is still the same. Surprisingly, this is not especially disappointing: all those tried and true things really worked in the "old" days--really made money for the people who "worked" the plans. No reason they can't work again using a more modern technology. Might work even better.

The one disappointment--and I'm giving this to you up front so you can stop reading right away if you want to--is that I have not, still, suddenly come across that "magic bullet" which nobody knows about and which will start the money pouring in just as soon as you install the "Incredible Secret Billionaire Method of the New Millennium." Sorry. You'd think I would know better after all these years. Why do people still have that unreasonable hope? (Me included, by the way.) When, in true fact, the only things that have really consistently made me money were the ability to clearly define and articulate the essential process, and the willingness to work harder (and longer) than other people in order to implement and work the system once I had defined it. This is such a simple formula for success, especially if you're an analyst as I am. So why is it that the longer I stick to a proven system, the less competition I seem to have? I'm starting to believe it's because there's actual WORK involved. Horrors!

As one of my readers earlier pointed out, there was an article on Darren Crowse's blog about a new breakthrough idea they called "Selling Teaching" (I can't seem to find the article anymore, but I am pretty sure that's what this "new" system was called.) I read about it until it became obvious that it wasn't exactly a new idea, and that all I really had to do was go in my back room and blow the dust off a few 30-year old "Get Rich by Explaining How To ______________" books. It sounds so dated and stilted, but truly there is nothing new under the sun. And there hasn't been, probably, since that sun was quite new.

On the bright side, I am happy to tell you that this little search of mine has refocused my mind on getting back to the basics that have paid my bills for many years. Actually, these things are the true "secret" to financial success. Indeed, there is one sentence you've already read in this post, tossed casually out--as Napoleon Hill would say--to see if you have brains enough to pick it up and begin using it to make money.

I hope you will find a way to endure your disappointment at the lack of an Ali Baba ending to this story, and continue to join me as I revisit some old and very wealthy friends I have come to know over the years. Long dead, most of them, they continue to speak to us if we will stop and listen. As always, give me a few days. My goal is no longer to post daily, but to post when I have something to say.

Selling the Sizzle, Not the Steak

2008-03-23T20:08:00.010-06:00

Well I found it! I've been in Vegas this past week spending the money!

I wish.

But I have excavated a couple more pieces of the puzzle. And I am even more convinced than last week that a new big picture exists of which those pieces are a piece.

That's not quite true: it doesn't appear to be new, actually. I can't quite put my finger on it just yet, but it is starting to smell like something Melvin Powers used to do. I remember old Melvin Powers, the self-promoted "King of Mailorder." I mean, this guy would promote anything! I think he cranked out a new book of some kind or other every 72 hours or so. I swear!

He was the kind of guy who would run classified ads in 100 little newspapers for 10-cent bars of soap, and then, when the orders started to flow in, he would go out and start looking for some soap maker to sell him soap for a nickel a bar. Anyway, one of the things this guy promoted was books about how to do various things, and music (for some reason he was into hawking sheet music.) He would talk these middle-aged singers (who had used to be popular but hadn't been for years) into recording some of his stuff and going 50-50 with him on any profits. (Melvin really fancied himself an actual song-writer.)

The point that I need you to glean from this turns out to be one of the pieces of that big picture I was talking about earlier. That point, that the old hustler Melvin Powers teaches us, is this: It doesn't, within reason, really matter what the product is. All that really matters is the proper promotion of that product.

If you are an American with a few years under your belt, you will recall the incessant TV commercials of trinket-inventor Ron Popeil. You know--the Ronco Veg-O-matic, and the Ronco this and the Ronco that. And then came the age of TV "infomercials"--long commercials. And when he had run Ronco into the ground, then came the Popeil this and the Popeil that. Ok, maybe you are too young to remember.

Dan Ackroyd of the original Saturday Night Live crew in the late 1970s did a skit which entailed grinding up fish on live TV. That was a parody of Ron Popeil's ubiquitous TV commercial, and of the way Ron talked. (Actually, Ron didn't talk like that; it was an announcer. Ron himself didn't talk like that at all.) Dan did that carnival barker voice perfectly in that famous skit.

This post is getting too long to hold your attention, so I am going to come back and finish the thought in a few days. Just keep the first point I am trying to make in the back of your minds: it's not really the product that's of greatest importance; it's the proper promotion of that product that makes money.

Think I'm crazy? Then while I'm gone, ponder Britney Spears. Yes, Britney Spears. Helluva fantastic singer, right? That voice deserves to rise to the top, right? Sheesh! No, people. What makes the money is product promotion.

Something else to chew on: How even cooler would it be if the product you are uber-promoting is also itself something of great value? What a thought!

Paradigm Change

2008-03-15T08:57:00.006-06:00

I have been away for awhile taking care of another baby, trying to teach it to walk on its own. Sorry. While I was away, though, I have been continuing my studies on how to make money on the internet--reading the philosophy of others, as well as reviewing the basics of making money in general.

Mostly, as you probably have discovered as well, the "how to make money" philosophies out there are the same as what I have been preaching on this blog. That is, "think up ways to try and attract a lot of visitors." But you know what? There has been a feeling building inside me for quite a while now that tells me that ship has sailed. There has to be more. I have lately had the queasy feeling that this preacher is preaching the wrong religion. So I have been out probing and poking for the answer, as is my habit.

No, I don't have the complete system figured out for a new and earthshaking method of making money on the internet. Yet. But I have glimpsed a flickering candle down towards the end of this dark internet cave. It is the light of a completely new idea (for me, at least.) It has nothing to do with simply working to apply the Law of Large Numbers, like most of us are doing right now. If it works, it will set us apart from the traditional "make a million with your blog" crowd.

Napoleon Hill, the man famous for the legendary "Think and Grow Rich", wrote another huge volume--his life's work, really--in which he elaborated on his earlier overview. In his monumental "Law of Success" which, I think, is probably now out of print, he related how he was privileged to "sit at the feet" of many industrial giants of an earlier age, such as Andrew Carnegie, and listen to their answers to the same question he kept posing. He said that, on occasion, they would drop hints here and there, without explaining fully, just to see if he had brains enough to see what they were talking about. It took him his whole life, but he finally put the puzzle together. At least as much as any of us can do that, I think.

I certainly don't profess to know all of what Napoleon Hill learned, but I am starting to see a glimmer of what those old Robber Barons all knew very well. And I want to try and apply that concept to internet marketing. If those old boys had had access to our internet today, we'd all be dead. Babes in the woods. They would crush us.

I am only now beginning to put the pieces together, much less devise a workable plan of attack for the internet. I just wanted to make a post and let all you smart people out there (you must be extra smart if you read my stuff, right?) and let you know where I've been.

I'm afraid it may be a week or so before I have an update on the puzzle I am trying to put together. And even then, it is unlikely it will be complete. Please don't give up on me in the meantime.

Making money basics: traffic

2008-03-06T09:39:00.008-07:00

Just as there are three major ways to earn money on the internet, there are also three ways to get lots of visitors to your website:

1. Advertise
2. Advertise
3. Advertise

This is not meant to be insulting to you; it is meant to focus your attention.

How many ways are there to advertise? A heck of a lot more than three. A heck of a lot more than Google Adwords.

In short, pretty much every single thing you can think of to do which will somehow serve to publicize your website falls under the general category of advertising. A lot of the things on the following list are things you very likely do already. Maybe you just haven’t thought of them as being “advertising.”

Adwords bidding (I didn’t say not to do it, just that it isn’t the only way to advertise.)

Visiting other websites and commenting.

Syndicating your content.

Creating a topical and informative newsletter.

Forcing yourself to join some social networking websites.

Making a list of relevant forums and being a regular contributor.

Pay for advertising space on popular websites, at least as popular as you can afford.

Write free PDF downloadable informational ebooks.

Be a teacher. Set yourself up as an authority on something. (You are, you know.)

Finally, make sure your website is attractive, informative, entertaining, and fun to visit. Unless you are selling used cars, respect your audience by leaving out the audio, the popups, and the unutterably despicable sticky regenerating exit windows. If you happen to be selling cars, new or used, then the above is ok, because you don’t respect your audience anyway.

Are there more? I haven’t even scratched the surface. Use these to jog your thinking about more.

More importantly, DO them.

Making money basics, part 2

2008-03-01T18:51:00.003-07:00

1. Making money selling your own products or services means you ship the product yourself or perform the service yourself. “Yourself” includes dropshipping and 3rd party fulfillment, but the point is that you are the person who is responsible for seeing to it that the customer gets the product they paid for.

2. Making money selling the products and services of others means “Affiliate Marketing.”

3. Selling eyes means Pay Per Click (PPC) banners or widgets on your website, or selling advertising spots on your site outright.

There are variations and combinations, but those are the basic ways to make money on the internet. All of them require visitors to your website (or blog) in large numbers. That’s why I said in the last post that the question of how to make money on the internet is really a question of, “How can I induce a lot of people to visit my website.”

The way you lay your blog or other website out, in ways that are attractive and interesting, which at the same time give the visitor a clear and easy way to buy something, is called “monetization” or “monetizing your site.” Your monetization should not be offensive or even intrusive and should, as much as possible, blend right in smoothly with your editorial content. Blogs which do not have ads of any kind are not monetized. Blogs which do have ads ARE monetized. Needless to say, a blog can be monetized poorly or it can be monetized effectively.

Next: getting people to come to your blog to see all your great stuff.

Starting over

2008-02-26T13:12:00.002-07:00

From time to time, speaking for myself at least, I find it useful to review the basics of whatever project I am working on. It helps keep me focused on what I started out to do.

This is a blog about how to make money on the internet. The posts to this blog serve to clarify my own thinking on the subject, as well as to share my discoveries with others. Accordingly, the following is a recap of some of the basic things I believe are true about the subject of making money on the internet:

You make money on the internet by selling things.

•Selling your own products and services.
•Selling the products and services of others.
•Selling eyes.

Each of these things requires finding ways to get customers to come into your “store.” As a result, the real question that needs to be addressed is not so much “How to make money on the internet?” as it is, “How do I induce people to visit my website?”

Many of these things have been addressed already from various angles in previous posts, but they are so important they need to be revisited from time to time -- for my own personal clarity if not for yours, dear readers. Let’s devote the next few posts to again exploring the basics of making money on the internet.

What are you doing?

2008-02-20T08:35:00.004-07:00

What are you trying to do with your blog? What is your goal? Why are you blogging? If you are reading this post, the answer is most likely, "I'm trying to make some money." Fine. Me, too.

If you already had lots of money, would you still blog? I mean, do you LIKE to blog? Do you feel you have something to say? A huge percentage of bloggers today don't really have anything to say, you know. They have become like the newspaper columnist hack who has to crank out a column on deadline every week. What used to be fun has turned into work.

If you are blogging as a business, there are a lot of things you have to do that are really not that much fun. If you intend to earn money blogging, then the name of the game is high traffic. And people don't visit your site in large numbers simply because it is interesting and relevant and you write well. Sad, but true. If you are playing the PPC numbers game, many of your visitors won't bother to read your posts anyway. And if they bother to comment, it will be simply to grab a few "follows" to their own sites.

But that's cool. I don't write this in order to criticize what is going on, only to lament the demise of interesting blog posts, as a percentage of the whole. I understand and fully accept that if you are blogging for dollars today, that means you are blogging for advertising. You are a newspaper. A magazine. It is how money is made with a blog.

If you still love to write, for the sake of having something to say, how do you cope? You might do what I do. I have blogs for money and blogs for pure pleasure. You will find no ads on the latter, and no Technorati pings. It helps me keep my sanity. If you need to make some money, but you also still love to write, consider coming up with a fantasy pen name and open a separate blog just for the pure pleasure of it.

More backdoor online selling techniques

2008-02-13T15:00:00.004-07:00

Another way designers (graphic designers, not web designers) can sell their services on the internet “through the back door” is by offering printed brochures, flyers, business cards, quartlerly reports, etc., for sale on your website.

What? You’re not in the printing business, you say? Ummmm...so what?

The “back door” angle of this money-making idea is to (again) NOT sell your design services at all. Sell the finished product. Get in tight with a reputable printer with fast turnaround time (on line, of course!) and use the printer’s rate card to compute your own price list. Of course, your price to the customer includes the design work for the brochure or whatever project you feel capable of working on.

Customers who buy brochures and other advertising and publicity projects are hardly ever in that business. They just want to get it over with. They don’t want to deal will 10 different companies. So do it for them. Offer them slam-bam one-stop service. Take care of their entire headache for them, not just the design work. Of course, the "headache" part is you simply sending a file to the printer online. (A file that the printer can use exactly as you sent it, without having to work on it themselves. They will tell you precisely what they need before you even start.)

Don’t sell the customer your graphic design services: sell the customer the finished product which INCLUDES your design services.

It's not against the law to have fun

2008-02-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

Another thing you will notice if you visit several of the “superblogs” every day is that these bloggers are constantly working on projects that will somehow get ther readers to interact with the site. They concoct contests and giveaways and various competitions, and they ask their readers to participate in these.

As a recent example, I noticed that John Chow and ShoeMoney had a friendly competition to see which one of them could increase their RSS feed readership members the most. Ok, that’s kind of silly (not for them, of course, but for their site visitors. I mean, it is obvious what Chow and Shoe get out of it, but why would their blog readers care about signing up? Most of them read both sites regularly anyway.) But that’s not the point. It was just fun for the readers to get involved, to interact. To be asked to DO something.

The event or contest or whatever doesn’t have to be that big of a production, or cost you anything. It just has to have some semblance of fun or excitement about it, and it must somehow get the readers involved in the process.

Are YOU asking your readers to interact with you and the others? What have you asked them to do lately?

The whole enchilada, through the back door

2008-01-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

Moneymaking tip #137

Do you like designing websites?

Often it is easier to make money on the internet "through the back door", so to speak. Instead of simply trying to sell their design services, many web designers have learned that selling websites (already designed and ready to go) seem to sell more easily, even though they end up costing the customer more money. You may have noticed that several webhosting companies do this as well.

For some reason, probably simply because it is very convenient, a lot of people look for a "turnkey" operation when it comes to getting a website up and running. Since you like to design websites anyway, why not go ahead and do it before you even get the customer? Make a variety of styles. Construct templates so that you can offer certain variations to the theme without causing you too much trouble.

Basically, you just display your work (from which the customer may choose) on your website. Later, if you want to get involved even deeper with the client, you can become a reseller for your favorite webhost. Then it would truly be a turnkey operation.

NetMax reviews HostICan

2008-01-28T16:03:00.001-07:00

Overview

In just a few short years from when it was founded in 2003 in a small home office, HostICan has today grown into a company that is able to handle and service thousands of happy customers from all over the world. Located just outside Richmond, Virginia, HostICan offers excellent quality and guaranteed satisfaction at an unbeatable price, 24 hours a day and seven days a week to all its customers. According to HostReview, HostICan is one of the top ten fastest growing companies in the world today.

Customer Support

Online customer support is an interesting feature of HostICan, and the unique guarantee states that your site will be up and running about 99.99% of the time, and that if it does not, the company will credit your account with one month of free hosting. Technical support is offered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and a thirty day money back guarantee is also provided to all its customers.

Awards

HostICan has caught the attention of industry and customer watchdogs, and the company has managed to snag innumerable awards over a very short period of time. For example, HostICan was one of the first domain providers who won acclaim for ethical business conduct by the "Web Hosting Stuff". The company was the recipient of the CNET Award for the best-certified service and support, and the "Approved Host Award" from "FindMyHost.com". HostICan is also a proud member of the "Better Business Bureau" of Richmond, Virginia, and has been named by the HostIndex, one of the toughest domain reviewing sites, as the top web hosting company today.

Conclusion

HostICan is an excellent choice for your web hosting needs. They have proven themselves as a capable and strong willed company that will work hard to ensure their customers are supported and are happy. This really is the true hosting company of the future and we give it a score of 10 out of 10.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED HOST!

HostICan Rocks!

Funnel blogs

2008-01-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

A funnel blog, or funnel web site, is one whose sole purpose is to redirect traffic to a "point-of-sale" website.

You should have interesting, useful, and entertaining information on your website. You know that and (I hope) you do that. But have you ever considered that you should be putting the interesting, useful, helpful, shocking, entertaining information on other websites as well?

You see, with your primary website -- your online store -- you pretty much have to stick to one subject. Your primary niche. The whole general idea of your website must revolve around a pretty specific theme. Otherwise, your visitors won't have a clue about what your website is about. When that happens, they leave. Boom. Gone. So your site needs to be direct and clear about what your subject is and easy to navigate. But you already knew that too.

Funnel sites solve the theme restriction problem. You can set up a website on any subject you want. Just make sure your funnel site is targeting a particular segment of your desired audience. If you are monetized only with pay-per-click rather than affiliate products, your choice of subjects is even wider.

The point is to get people interested in the information contained on the funnel site, and then, after they are "warmed up" so to speak, you "funnel" them over to your main website. As long as you have a variety of things to sell (or affiliate products you represent) there is practically no limit to the number of funnel websites you can set up to direct specialized traffic to certain pages of your main website.

Why are you so different?

2008-01-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

What’s the difference between your online income and the online income of somebody like John Chow or Darren Crowse or Jeremy Schoemaker?

What’s the big difference between your blog and their blogs, attractiveness-wise and writing quality-wise?

If you are blogging about a subject that you care about, the writing quality of your website is probably as good as theirs. (English was not even John Chow’s first language.)

And if you have honestly put in the effort, then the format and attractiveness and even the monetization may well be as good as theirs, too.

One possible difference is that none of their blogs is less than a year old. If your blog is just a few months old, then hang in there and keep plugging away. Keep doing the things you know will bring more traffic to your site. Success doesn’t come overnight. Not even for these guys.

But if your blog is more than several months old and you still are not making any money to speak of, consider that you might be hiding your candle under a basket, and that the world doesn’t know you exist. It isn’t that people don’t like you or that they don’t like what you are writing. Maybe they just don’t know who you are and where you are.

Preposterous, you may say. After all, there are eleven zillion people surfing the web at any given moment.

Perhaps. But there are a heck of a lot of blogs and other website choices available for those surfers, too.

Consider the possibility that your low-traffic problem may have something to do with the fact that you don’t advertise. I have honestly never met anyone who truly put forth the effort to publicize his web site (using all the tools at his disposal to do that) who hasn’t been able to dramatically increase the traffic to his or her website.

Is it time you made the financial decision to really go into business, instead of just pretending to go into business? On the other hand, If you are a good writer, but have no desire (or discipline) to learn and execute promotional skills, then I humbly suggest you go out and find a publisher and let them worry about promoting your writing. Take the ads off your site and blog for fun.

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The web sites referenced in this post are:

John

Darren

Jeremy

John is johnchow.com
Darren is problogger.net
Jeremy is shoemoney.com

Your own art store

2008-01-24T17:23:00.000-07:00

At no cost, you can have a professional-looking internet poster and art store designed for you, effortlessly and automatically. You will receive a high commission for all art sold as a result of your mechandising efforts. You will also have an opportunity to earn recruitment commissions. If you like working with graphic art, this may be something you want to look into.

For more info, click on the "making money with art" link in the column at right.

Linkbait

2008-01-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

Linkbait is anything on your site which induces visitors to return to your site on a regular basis, thereby making it desireable for those people to link to your site rather than type in your address in their browser every time.

Like what?

A list of current sports scores. A picture of a pretty girl that gets changed every day. News of movie stars and other entertainers. A blog on a specialized subject. Any site that provides a specialized reference tool.

Number four is what I personally do. But remember, with regard to incoming links, search engines are rating you in large part by the QUALITY of the incoming links.

All of the examples on the above list of examples might get you some regular traffic. Any social media traffic can generate a substantial amount of links to a web page. But how important are these links to Google? Often, not very.

I’ve said it before: sustainable quality traffic and quality linking is, over time, rooted in quality content. Period.

Early to bed, early to rise...

2008-01-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

Mailing out catalogs and advertising flyers is (of course) a euphemism for suggesting that you continue to advertise all the time, even though your mail order store is on the internet instead of in a mall. Although direct mail will still bring customers to your website.

The point is, don’t just sit there and wait until nothing happens for so long that you go out of business. Spend some money on advertising. Adwords. Popular websites that you can afford. And leaving bread crumbs all over the internet on the sites you visit.

Why do some people assume that just because their store (or affiliate catalog) is on the internet, they are magically exempt from advertising their business?

What rhymes with “rise”? Go back to the beginning and read the title of this post. Ah, yes.

Early to bed
Early to rise
Work very hard
And...

Advertise.

Remember "Mail Order"?

2008-01-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

There used to be businesses that were called “mail order” businesses. The way they worked was, they would mail out catalogs or advertising flyers in envelopes, and then a certain percentage of people would mail in orders and enclose a check. When the mail order business received the customer’s order, they would mail the product to the customer. Or they would notify the company who actually stocked the product to “drop ship” the merchandise to the customer.

How quaint, you say. That wouldn’t work today. Hmmm. Or would it?

If a business has a website, and they sell merchandise on that website, and they mail the merchandise to the customer (or have another company “drop ship” the merchandise), exactly how is that different from old-time mail order?

The main difference is that, in the old days, the mail order companies where constantly mailing out flyers and catalogs, and constantly placing little ads in newspapers and magazines. The internet mail order business of today doesn’t seem do that. Instead, he opens a website and puts up pictures of his products and then he sits back on his behind. Did you catch the subtle difference? Can you guess why such a modern mail order business might fail?

If you are really in the mail order business, why would you stop mailing out requests for orders? It seems like that is a pretty important step in the process. But I may be wrong.

Happy hunting.

Putting up signs and leaving trails

2008-01-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

Shortly after its original inception, the internet became known more commonly as the World Wide Web, with “web” being the operative word. With more and more people being connected and cross connected and cross-cross connected with one another, a metaphoric map of the internet soon looked like an airline route map, and then even more complex, like a spider web.

You know all that, but I remind you that the innate purpose and value of the internet is interconnectivity. The fact that you can visit hundreds of websites and be a voyeur or get otherwise entertained, or the fact that you can quickly access the information you are looking for, is indeed a cool thing. But if you are a person who is merely strolling down the corridors of a huge mall, you are missing ever so much. The whole point is not to just look through the windows, although that can be fun in itself, but to go inside and interact with the other people who are also shoppers and lookers.

Blogging, a relatively recent addition to the web, captures the spirit of what I am talking about perhaps more than any other example. Blogs suck you inside them. Blogs satisfy your desire for new information as well as giving you a nice shot of voyeurism and titilation. Above all, blogs offer the easy opportunity of participation and interaction. In fact, blogs practically BEG for your participation.

Participation means commenting on the posts or other comments. Commenting is certainly a step in the right direction, and certainly a step above simply “windowshopping” from the outside. To be sure. But there is more. Much more.

The very nature of the Web is interconnectivity between people. A big part of that interesting and useful interconnectivity is the referral and other linking that goes on between blogs. When you think of the World Wide Web, you should think “link” or else you are sort of missing the point.

Do you desire more visitors to your own website or blog? There are many ways to increase traffic, but I can think of no BETTER way than going out every day to visit people and make new friends. These comments and links and social networking are the “signs” I spoke of in the last post.

There are many proactive things you should be doing every single day in order to build traffic to your blog or other website. Traffic equals money. If money is not your object with your blog, then traffic equals more people to read your thoughts and more people to have the joy of interacting with.

Of those many proactive things you should be working at every day, probably none are more important, or more effective, than putting up signs on the turf of your fellow bloggers (and returning the love in their direction as well.) Overcome your shyness with the knowledge that they very much WANT you to interact with them. Honest!

Creating traffic to your website

2008-01-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

Asking how to create traffic to a website is not the same as asking how a new store gets customers. The difference is in location. A store is usually on a busy street or in a mall. Traffic is therefore built in to a certain extent. Of course, there should still be advertising going on.

Creating traffic to a website requires a different strategy. A website is like a store that is located way out in the sticks on a country road. You have to work very, very hard to tell people where to find you. Another, perhaps better, analogy, is that your "store" is located in a very busy mall, but it is a tiny little store on the third level of the mall located down a long corridor, tucked away where few people happen by. Advertising becomes more important than ever and, in addition, there must be “outside selling” going on. Outside selling refers to a business which hires salespeople to go out and sell its products rather than waiting for customers to come into the store. In the case of a website, “outside selling” means becoming proactive about bringing people to your website rather than sitting back and waiting for them to find you.

With a website, “outside selling” can take several forms, but they all have the same end-purpose: to send people to visit your website rather than simply waiting for people to find you. Some peope have made a fortune by calling these techniques “guerilla marketing” but they are really just things you need to do, logically, to help people find out where your website is and what they will find there. Let’s talk about a few of these techniques I call “outside selling.”

One of the first things you will want to do, I think, is go out and put up some signs. Signs are good advertising, because signs can be placed where the people are. You know what a sign is. You see them everyday in your travels. Billboards. Signs on taxis and buses. Signs on poles and walls. Signs are everywhere. In this sense, TV and radio advertising is a kind of sign that goes to people instead of waiting for them to come in.

With regard to advertising a website, signs are a metaphor, of course. I mean you don’t really go out and nail signs to people’s computer screens. When I talk about signs, I was thinking about you going out like an outside salesman and posting signs on other people’s websites. With their permission, of course. But real traditional advertising, whenever you are able to afford it, is very effective as well sometimes. By this I mean advertising your website address by using traditional advertising media such as TV commercials and magazine ads. But that kind of advertising will usually come much later, if at all, for most web entrepreneurs.

What does “putting up signs on other people’s websites” mean? Let’s continue that thought in the next post.

Hint: concentrate on being a “visitor” rather than a “stay at home” manager.

If you can't fight them...

2008-01-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

Get rich quick on the internet

2008-01-16T21:29:00.000-07:00

Do you want to start earning more money than the world's top-paid corporate CEOs? Do you want to start earning a lot of money without doing any work? Do you want to get rich in less than 10 days? If you are in the mood for some snake oil today, here are a few Get Rich Quick claims we have seen making the rounds lately:

*****
1. The world's most fantastic false advertisement:

"The 12 Month Internet Millionaire. The Amazing Money-Making Secret Of A 28-year-old Convicted Felon Who Earns More Money Per Year Than The CEOs Of FedEx, eBay(R), Amazon, Time Warner, Apple Computer, McDonalds, Microsoft, Nike, Yahoo, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, And Goodyear Combined!"

*****
2. Meet Andreas, the Super Forex Trader. He wants to share his secret with you:

"Please let me introduce myself, my name is Andreas Kirchberger and I make an extrordinary living trading the forex market. I used to work for the Deutsche Bank as a forex advisor but i had to quit because a question kept nagging me and even haunted me in my dreams: Why should i work, sweat 8 hours a day, making other people rich, researching reports and monitoring market movements? That`s why I and 2 colleagues developed the Forex Killer, the only working forex signal generator on the market today. I`ve already made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here is a screenshot of my swiss bank account. Would you believe that all I did to generate this sum is spending a few MINUTES a day adjusting some easy BUY & SELL ORDERS???"
*****

3. This guy tells how easy it is to sell Google ads:
"I made $57,317.01 in just 87 days..."

[The 1 cent is what makes this believable.]
*****

4. And here's Michelle...advisor to corporate giants. Very believable indeed:

"My name is Michelle McAllister and I have to share my life changing story with you. I'll tell it to you straight: The CEO's of Nike...Ebay...Amazon and Walmart are tripping over their own feet to give me money! These million-dollar-a-year fat cats, know squat about their customers! So they pay 'normal' people like me to tell them the word on the street."

[Have you no shame, Michelle?]
*****

(Caution: be prepared to be bombarded by sticky and relentless popups, confusing exit choices, and audio-video headbeaters. [And, surprisingly, none of these fabulous multimillionaires have learned to spell.] Have fun, if you think this kind of thing is fun.)

These claims (and many, many more) were found at the headquarters for this kind of thing, Clickbank.

Here’s the thing: they work. They really do. They have always worked. These kinds of ads have worked for decades (centuries?) before anyone ever thought of the internet.

I don’t mean the PLANS will work. I mean the outrageous ads work for the sellers of the ebooks, because you (and me, sadly) buy them. It seems to just be human nature to want to believe there is some inside secret to easy riches.

Here's one final one for you:

*****
The Rich Jerk. Blah Blah Blah. Who Cares.
*****

Who, indeed.

Getting people to visit your website

2008-01-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

By now you have certainly descovered the real “secret” to making money on the internet is traffic. Visitors. Customers. In fact, instead of writing about “how to make money on the internet,” perhaps we should retitle this blog to “how to get people to visit your website.”

Once your blog (or store website) is set up and ready to go, a large percentage of your time from then on out will consist of thinking up ways to increase your traffic. You will advertise, of course. You will find ways to get successful websites to link to you. You will make friends. You will create a following of regular repeat visitors by making sure your blog is informative and entertaining (or that your store catalog offers a great selection of merchandise.)

And, all along the way, you will work to improve your ranking with the search engines. And don’t forget newsletters and forums and RSS feeds. Whew! It really is work. Running a blog or an online store is certainly no “lazy way to quick riches.” Which leads us to our next bit of entertainment: we are going to test your credibility by reviewing some internet get rich quick schemes that are currently making the rounds. You’re gonna love it.

Put product reviews on your website

2008-01-12T05:43:00.000-07:00

With your site up and running for a while, it is time to get serious about your initial monetization, even though you don’t have much traffic yet. Of course, if you will be selling your own merchandise, you will have already set up your catalog and payment center during the website setup process.

If your website is a blog, and you have decided to monetize it by offering advertising space and by promoting affiliate advertisers’ merchandise, then you will be wanting to start placing your ads and product reviews tastefully throughout your website.

Remember there are two types of ads, and that you will be most probably be using both. Pay per click ads create revenue for your website if you have high-traffic, and affiliate ads (in the form of product reviews, not banners) will earn you a commission on products sold through your website by that advertiser.

Be aware that many advertisers require a certain level of traffic on your website before they will become affiliated with you. That makes it a little harder for you at first, but there are very many other advertisers who don’t have this requirement--so don’t worry. Pay per click advertisers are especially picky about not advertising with low-volume new sites, so you might just concentrate on affiliate sales at first, until your site traffic increases.

Once you have established relationships with advertisers and have written and posted your product reviews, it is time to concentrate fully on building traffic to your website.

Setting up your blog

2008-01-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

After you are clear about what you really want to do, and have a plan on paper, then you can go ahead and start setting up your website. Knowing exactly how you want it to look, or nearly so, will make this job a lot easier.

Get a descriptive domain name for your blog or store, then choose a webhost after doing research. Choose a webhost that offers the features you need, offers decent service, and is reasonably priced. In general, don’t expect much help from your webhost in setting up your website unless you are willing to pay extra for this help.

There are several ways to set up your website using software that doesn’t require you to know how to code, but it is to your advantage to learn how to code anyway, since that puts you much more in control of how your site looks. You can do this little by little though. Making little changes to the existing css is a good way to get your feet wet.

After your site is up and running, with the basic elements in place, it is time to begin monetizing. Actually, if your site is a blog, you don’t have to monetize right away. You can start blogging and get in the habit of regular writing. But at the same time, you should be visiting the blogs of other people so you can be getting monetization ideas.

Steering by the wake, not

2008-01-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

This also involves two things: creating a business plan, and executing that business plan.

I’ll bet you would be surprised at the high percentage of would-be entrepreneurs, both online and in the real world, that skip part one and go straight to the execution part. This is good news for their competition.

I have put execution before the plan several times in my life, to my personal grief and financial loss. I remember one time when I was very young when I was working in a job that I absolutely hated. More than anything, I wanted to be independent. To me, that meant I wanted to be self-employed.

Without really thinking about what I wanted to do, much less how to do it, I went out and rented a building. Incredibly, that seemed logical to me. After all, no matter what business I chose to open, surely I would need a building. Talk about putting the cart before the horse!

So there I was with a building. It came with some fixtures and equipment left behind by the previous bankrupt owner. An ice cream shop. All I had to do was clean it up, buy some product, turn on the lights, unlock the door, and begin to count my money. Of course the next step was equally as logical: I quit my steady job right away. I had realized my dream. I was independent.

Are you laughing? Don’t. Just look around at all the unplanned blogs and other websites on the internet. The ones that look terrible, have nothing to say, and are monetized so ineptly. They have rented a building. They have dragged some undesirable basic “stock” into that building—stock that they may know nothing about. They have pasted a lot of signs in the front windows. Now they are sitting back and waiting for people to bring them money.

What could I have done differently? What important step did I leave out? Have all these new internet store owners already quit their day jobs? I hope not.

I think it was the great American sage Yogi Berra who once made the comment, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up somewhere else.”

Blogging for dollars

2008-01-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

The actual mechanics of earning a good living from a blog are very simple and straightforward. In fact, there are only two things you have to think about and work at. It is HOW WELL you do those two things that determines whether or not your blog will make you any money or not.

Everything you do will fall under one of these two major categories:

1. Setting up and maintaining your blog
2. Driving traffic to your blog

There are many specific things you have to do, and there are many subtleties and variations as to how you decide to do them, but they will all fall under one of those two main categories.

Interestingly, the actual act of blogging—of writing posts—falls under the second category, not the first.

In order to understand new concepts, it is often helpful to compare these new ideas to things we are already familiar with. With that in mind, let’s compare the opening of your new blog with something you may be more familiar with: the establishment of a “regular” business—say a grocery store.

In such a comparison, setting up your blog will include pretty much all the things you would need to do to open a grocery store. Driving traffic to your blog would include all the things you would do to induce customers to come into your store.

Here we should pause and note the difference between the two words “shop” and “buy.” The word “shop” implies you have induced people to come into your store to look around. The word “buy” means they have purchased something from you and given you money. In the blogging business, this distinction is important because you can make money either way.

POSTED BY RELAX MAX AT 6:00 AM

0 COMMENTS

LABELS: BLOG, TRAFFIC

More popups

2008-01-05T10:20:00.000-07:00

When I talk about popup windows, I am referring to the kind that appear unexpectedly and uninvited when you least expect it. They fill the whole screen, or nearly so. They interrupt your train of thought. They actually attack you. They have one purpose: to put the high-pressure sales pitch on you.

We have discussed how some businesses—like big-city new car dealers—treat their customers like they were a piece of meat to be devoured, giving no thought to the feelings or humanity of the customer. All they see are dollar signs. I hope you have decided not to be like this with your online business.

One of the rudest things you can do, if it is your object to be rude, is to use big ol’ nasty popup windows on your website for things other than the helpful amplification of information. The kind of popup we are talking about takes over the whole page and tries to manipulate the customer or beat them into submission. It doesn’t offer unobtrusive and helpful information--often you don’t even have to click on anything for the popup to appear in all its blinking rude glory.

When you start to read the message on the homepage of a website, and you get to the second sentence, and a huge offensive popup window opens on top of the information you are reading, what does that say to you? What does it say about the person who wants you to spend your money with them? What does it say about their opinion of you and your feelings?

Balloons vs. Popups

2007-12-29T12:33:00.000-07:00

A balloon is a little window which opens to give brief information or a helpful suggestion about something a computer user has questioned. We’ve all seen them. Even our computer’s operating system uses them to tell us little things.

There are several differences between an info balloon and a full-blown popup window. A popup window doesn’t briefly explain or provide instant help that is needed. A popup window is intrusive. A popop window tries to manipulate you and take over your life for a moment. In short, a popup window is like a car salesman.

Most of us appreciate getting a little extra discreet information when we need it. Balloons are a non-intrusive way of getting this done. We are used to balloons and mouseovers and “hovers” in the computer world. But we have never quite gotten used to popups. Perhaps you feel they are rude and intrusive. You would be right.

I hope you will make your website as clear and helpful as you can. I hope you will find polite ways to give your customers the information they need without acting like a car salesman. I hope you will never consider treating your customers like car salesmen treat their customers. In short, I hope you will never even consider making a big blinking popup window appear in front of your customers’ faces univited.

Please?

Newsletters build loyalty

2007-12-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

As you continue to broaden the circle of your internet friends, don’t forget the importance of offering a newsletter. Keep your newsletter interesting and entertaining, and be sure to talk about things that were not discussed on the regular blog. Use a newsletter to make friends and to build a solid base of regular visitors to your website.

Don’t send out your newsletter so often that you irritate people and defeat your purpose. They should look forward to receiving it because of its interesting content. For the same reason, don’t put too much advertising in your newsletter.

Make sure your newsletter is sent out regularly. Keep in touch, so that your blog readers are reminded of you. A newsletter is also a good place to run unique coupons and other special incentives that are not available to the general web population.

Along the same lines as a newsletter is the offering of an RSS feed. This also will help keep your regular readers in the loop and help keep them in your big happy blog family.

Links

2007-12-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

Another really important thing that will increase traffic to your website is when other sites begin to link to you. As usual, there are several ways to get people to do this, but the most important way is the same: content. That is, make your content interesting enough and entertaining enough and useful enough so that people will WANT to link to your information and articles.

When you have been producing quality content for a while, you can begin mentioning it when you are out reading the blogs of other people and when you are making comments on those blogs. Also email the owners of popular blogs about your subject, and briefly tell them you have written an article they may be interested in reading, and give them the link to the article. Don’t do this very often, until you build up a circle of friends by making the rounds like this.

That’s really what the Web is all about--reading each other’s material, inviting them to read yours, interacting. If you continue to be a frequent commentor on other blogs, you will begin to get noticed. People will begin to visit your own blog as well, and many will begin to link to it.

The simple act of commenting on several blogs on a daily basis will in itself bring you some additional traffic, even if the visitor doesn’t actually put up a link to you on his site. You can’t be a wallflower in the blogging world. Most people are friendly. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Otherwise nobody knows you are lurking silently out there. Silent lurkers don’t make any money.

Work to become known, without being intrusive. Work to build up a circle of internet friends. And--always--return the favor by linking back to these people.

Advertise

2007-12-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

As with any business, you must advertise. They say word of mouth is the best advertising. This may be true, but it is only useful if you have the patience to wait a hundred years or so for it to pay off. In the meantime, you’ll need another job. These are tongue-in-cheek statements, of course, but the intention is to remind you again that no matter how pretty your site is, no matter how scientifically it is monetized, it takes too long to make any money if you just sit back and wait for people to notice you and tell their friends about you.

Advertise. Be very proactive in this regard. Many things you do to get traffic to your site technically fall under the umbrella of advertising. When you strive to get people to link to you, is that not advertising? But what this post is about is direct advertising that you pay for. Generally this is in the category of pay-per-click advertising.

Whether you choose the most obvious, Google’s Adsense, or whether you choose another of the several very good other sources that have been springing up around the internet, you just need to do it. This generally involves setting up an advertising budget you can live with and bidding on keywords--words that describe the subject of your business. Then the advertising company can run your ad where it will be most effective.

How many other ways can you think of that come under the heading of advertising?

Blog purpose

2007-12-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

Although you must pay attention to how your website is perceived and classified by search engines, as we have just been talking about, it is important to pause and remind ourselves that there is something more important than search engines we should never forget. That point is that we are first and foremost writing for the readers of our blog. In other words, you are writing because you have something to say.

Sometimes we can get so caught up in our search engine placement that we end up basically writing for Google and Yahoo and not our readers. There is a delicate balance to be kept here. I don’t think I was wrong in my last post to say that you should always be mindful of how search engines work when you write. But never go so far as to write FOR search engines instead of your audience.

If it comes down to a choice between writing naturally and writing in a stilted manner to please the search engines by conciously including certain words, I say always go with the natural flow of your writing--don’t pay THAT much attention to what the search engines might want to see!

There is no reason, however, that you can’t still pay attention to the titles of your posts, and make sure they are to the point and descriptive. Something as seemingly small as that is helpful to the search engines and also helps define your subject for your readers.

Titles of blog posts

2007-12-14T06:48:00.000-07:00

One big way people find you is by typing in search terms in a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, so it is important that you set up your site in such a manner as to facilitate the search engines not only finding you, but in accurately defining your site’s subject matter.

People used to get very inventive in this regard, to the point of being deceptive. Running a blog, on the other hand, helps take care of this important function almost automatically. Over time, the many, many words you write in your blog help the search engine robots understand what you are all about more and more accurately. This is because key words and key phrases are repeated naturally in the flow of writing, without you having to contrive awkward sentences that contain keywords.

But you can still refine this. One way is to pay attention to the titles of your posts. Make them short and pithy and descriptive of what your post is about. I have a tendency to get cute, as if I were writing chapter titles in a book. When you are dealing with a robot, don’t get cute. Be simple and straightforward.

There are whole industries which have sprung up on the subject of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM.) That’s how important it is. If you are in business on the internet, keep the search engine robots always in your mind as you work on your site. Make working with search engines second nature.

Making money with your blog

2007-12-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

By now you have discovered that building traffic to your blog is the main thing you need to concentrate on. Odds are, if you are successful in your efforts to drive traffic to your website, you will make money. You can have the most beatiful website in the world, and you can have it perfectly monetized and strategically set up, but no merchandise will move out the door if you don’t have customers. Fact of life.

We have had several posts about how to bring traffic to your internet store, and of course there are more things you can do that we haven’t talked about yet. But let’s go back for a moment and summarize some of the main points you need to be taking action on in order to build your traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO.)
Advertising on pay per click services.
Getting important successful sites to link to you.
Using other blogs and forums to get your site exposure.
Working to build repeat business.

Let’s briefly go over each of these points, so you are clear about what each step means.

Site setup and monetization

2007-12-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

1. Choose the type of internet business you want to set up.

Do you want to sell physical things and then ship that merchandise to your customers?

Or do you want to sell other people’s products for a commission, while also selling advertising space on your website?

2. Set up your “store”--your website. Choose a webhost who is reliable and who offers everything you will need, at a reasonable price. How you answered number one, above, will determine how your website will look.

If you are selling actual physical merchandise from your website, then your website will look like a mail order catalog, and it will have a way for customers to pay.

If, instead, you want to be a commissioned salesperson for other businesses, then your website will consist of product reviews and a method to direct the partially sold customer to the real merchant’s website. You will also most likely display at least a few pay-per-click advertisements on your website.

3. Putting things on your website that people can read, look at, click on, and so forth, is called monetizing your website. When visitors to your website can read about things, look at things, click on things, and take other actions which will bring you an income, then your site is monetized.

All of these things take effort, research, and merchandising skills on your part, but these things are the easy part. The hard part comes next: getting potential customers to look at your stuff.

Take action

2007-12-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

The best-written self-help book in the world won’t help you get rich unless you put the information into action instead of just putting it back on the bookshelf. Similarly, you can read 50 blogs a day that explain how people are making money on the internet, but just reading them will not put a single dollar in your pocket.

Many people seem addicted to learning how to do things. They have inquisitive minds. They are good thinkers. They know how to analyze. But they don’t seem to make any money. Don’t let yourself fall into that trap. It is so important that you DO something, however small, to get the ball rolling. Knowledge is just potential until you put it into action.

I’m not saying you should jump right in over your head without having a plan. Not at all. Just don’t wait until your plan is perfect. It never will be. The trouble with analyzers is that they are really planners at heart. They see their job as one of figuring things out and finding out how things work. I speak from personal knowledge and experience here. Many thinkers believe they are procrastinators, that putting things off is their problem in life. It isn’t. It’s just that once they have figured out how to do the thing, their job is finished. They then abandon the project and go on to the next problem or area of interest.

Be sure to include in your business plan a list of actual sequential steps you need to take in order to implement your system. Make sure the first step is something you can do right now, this very minute. Then put that system to work as an actual real-world monetization program.

If research scientists and inventors never shared their discoveries with others, what good would any of them be? Don't just think and plan. Do something.

Your blog's theme

2007-12-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

After you decide upon a subject you are interested in, go ahead and start researching that subject on the Web and blogging about your findings. At the same time, begin working on your main website. This is the website whose domain name you own and is the place where you will be displaying your product reviews and product pictures.

Is it absolutely necessary to have two websites working in tandem like that?--both a blog and a “regular” website? Of course not. You can do it all with a blog alone if you are careful to keep it simple and straightforward. But if you choose to do it that way, please blog from your own website with your own domain name. You will be taken more seriously than if you “sub-blog” from a free blogging service, such as Google (blogspot) or the free version of Wordpress. Not that you can’t use Wordpress software and templates, for example, just do it from your own official website if you possibly can, instead of one of their free blogs.

Of course, even a free blog from Blogspot or Wordpress is better than doing nothing. Get up and get going! Get started today! But normally you will be using the free blogging services as “funnel sites” for your primary business sites. Nothing against Blogspot or Wordpress, obviously--I use them myself and they offer a great service. It’s just that you have more control over your destiny when you have your own “real” website.

Choosing affiliate partners

2007-12-01T15:15:00.002-07:00

I would recommend that you first make a list of your personal interests. This is because you will tend to do a better job talking about products or subjects that you personally care about and find interesting.

This holds true not just with with the advertisors you affiliate yourself with, but also with the theme of your website itself and your blog for that website. To be successful, and to have fun doing it, please consider working with some subject you like. So start by making a short list of your personal interests. Golf? Antiques? Travel? Whatever.

Your blog should be about this subject. Share your thoughts and discoveries about that subject. Explore that subject and talk about it on your blog. Make the design theme of your main website along the same lines as that subject so that the interface between the blog and the store website is smooth and natural.

Finally, it will then be a natural step to choose advertisers to be affiliated with which offer products and services that have something to do with that main subject. You will be attracting visitors who are searching for information about that subject--that’s why I think it is a mistake to try and blog about more than one subject on one blog, or even to try and sell more than one major category of products on one website store.

Of course you have more than one interest. That’s because you are such an inquisitive and interesting person. Just make sure you have a separate blog (and website store) for each subject you want to talk about.

Choosing affiliate partners

2007-12-01T15:15:00.000-07:00

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2007

Choosing affiliate partners
I would recommend that you first make a list of your personal interests. This is because you will tend to do a better job talking about products or subjects that you personally care about and find interesting.

This holds true not just with with the advertisors you affiliate yourself with, but also with the theme of your website itself and your blog for that website. To be successful, and to have fun doing it, please consider working with some subject you like. So start by making a short list of your personal interests. Golf? Antiques? Travel? Whatever.

Your blog should be about this subject. Share your thoughts and discoveries about that subject. Explore that subject and talk about it on your blog. Make the design theme of your main website along the same lines as that subject so that the interface between the blog and the store website is smooth and natural.

Finally, it will then be a natural step to choose advertisers to be affiliated with which offer products and services that have something to do with that main subject. You will be attracting visitors who are searching for information about that subject--that’s why I think it is a mistake to try and blog about more than one subject on one blog, or even to try and sell more than one major category of products on one website store.

Of course you have more than one interest. That’s because you are such an inquisitive and interesting person. Just make sure you have a separate blog (and website store) for each subject you want to talk about.

Affiliate sites

2007-11-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

The first thing you need to do if you intend to set up your website for affiliate marketing is (of course) become affiliated with some good merchants. “Good” means they have attractive merchandise that will sell, they treat their customers right, and, very importantly, they pay you promptly. “Good” also means they offer a reasonable commission percentage on sales, good enough to make it worth your while.

Generally, you have two choices. You can hook up with individual merchants directly, or you can join a managed affiliate program such as Commission Junction or Linkshare. If you become a member of a managed affiliate program, you will be able to get your advertising materials all at one place, your records will be kept for you, and you will be paid by the program management company rather than by individual merchants. That is, all your commissions will be collected from all the individual merchants and you will be sent one total check each month. As this is being written, Commission Junction pays when you exceed the monthly commission minimum of $25 (otherwise it is rolled over to next month) and Linkshare sends out a check each month regardless of how small the amount might be.

If you choose to deal directly with individual merchants, then you will get a check directly from that merchant after you meet that merchant’s required minimum amount. This is often $50 but can be as high as $100. Some merchants have lower minimums, but $50 seems to be average. In all cases, your commissions continue to be rolled over from month to month until you do meet their cumulative minumum for them to cut you a check.

Affiliate programs are free to join for publishers like you. Never pay to join a program.

Affiliate marketing

2007-11-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

Many online entrepreneurs have decided that affiliate marketing is the best way to go. There are several things about affiliate marketing that are indeed attractive. The most obvious thing is that you don’t have to keep stocks of merchandise on hand or have a billing or shipping department. You don’t have to deal with complaints.

Affiliate marketing refers to the selling of other people’s products on your website. But it is more than simply setting up a website and placing a bunch of ad banners on it. I’m not sure if that ever really worked, but it sure doesn’t work now.

One thing you will still have in common with regular “store” sites that ship merchandise, is that you still are faced with the problem of getting visitors to your website. All of the things we've already discussed concerning traffic and how to get it still apply with an affiliate marketing site.

Blogs work very well, both in positioning themselves for search engine traffic as well as generating a really good repeat visitor base. Most of the monetized blogs you see are affiliate marking sites. Some make money on pay per click, such as Google Adsense, but primarily they get paid a commission for selling the products of others directly, rather than simply sending others traffic. There is money to be made with both, so don’t neglect pay per click opportunities.

More backend

2007-11-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

Backend sales are different than “point of sale complimentary add-on sales.” I just wanted to clarify that. Offering your customer something else that truly goes with the item she just bought is not rude. It is thoughtful and helpful. Especially if it was your INTENT to be thoughtful and helpful. Complimentary add-on sales is very different than going after the customer relentlessly by sending her more stuffed animal offers every three days just because she once bought a stuffed teddy bear from you.

Here’s the real test: does your action feel like you are trying desperately to squeeze one last drop of blood out of the sale? Or does it feel like a genuinely helpful act?

I do understand that many of these things probably seem puzzling to some of you hot-shot bird-of-prey internet marketers who happen to be reading this little blog, because that is not how you were taught to sell. I get it. And that’s ok. In the long run it just leaves more money for me and my “be helpful” advocates.

We are not in the business of “overcoming objections.” We are in the business of trying to be of service to our buyers.

Here’s a life-hint: whenever you tell a salesman “no” and he continues selling as if you hadn’t said anything--the way he has been taught to do--he is in the act of trying to manipulate you.

Finally, “backend” or “back end” is also a term often used to describe the things that go on to keep your site up and running. This includes the setup and restocking of your store, the maintaining of inventory, the bookkeeping, and the uploading of changes. The back end of a website is the same as the back end of a bricks and morter store, as opposed to the “front end” of the store where the customers are. Back end in this sense simply refers to the ongoing administration of your website, and has nothing to do with what we were talking about above with regard to the “hard sell.”

Backend sales

2007-11-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

Some people refer to repeat business as backend sales. I have never liked this term, and mention it only for those who have seen the term and aren’t quite sure what it means.

If someone makes a purchase from your website, you then know what kind of merchandise they are interested in--or so the theory goes--and with that information you can target your marketing to that individual more effectively.

I personally am not a believer in this internet store state-of-the-art gospel, even though many successful internet marketers swear by it. Why not?

1. Just because grandma buys a stuffed teddy bear from you doesn’t mean teddy bears are her main interest in life. Or that she is personally interested in them at all in the future.

2. Immediatly jumping on a customer when they have just paid you a compliment by making a purchase on your website is pretty tacky in my book--something a car dealer would do. Dear piece of meat, thanks for buying a car from me. Now how about life insurance? No? Then how about some undercoating spray? No? Then how about...

These are not complimentary sales. They are blood-squeezing.

Why can’t you just say “thank you” and let it go at that? Just keep sending out your attractive catalogs and helpful hints (I’m talking about your monthly newsletters) and stop beating your customer over the head. Do YOU like to be constantly “targeted” like that?--or are you so used to it you are numb to its rudeness?

By all means, do keep sales records and make notes of buying patterns. That's not what I'm talking about exactly. Doing that falls under the category of being helpful. I just don't think you should immediately make assumptions about a person's buying habits after just one sale to them. Yes, I realize Amazon does this constantly, and they are successful. I don't know. I still don't like it.

Concentrate on repeat business, and in doing things to deserve it. That’s what I say. Relax! Don’t be so hyper! Concentrate on being helpful instead of becoming a bird of prey.

Build it right, and they will come.

Newsletter signup

2007-11-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

Before you start trying to sign people up to receive your newsletter, take some time to think it through and envision exactly what the newletter will contain. The best way is to create a sample issue and work out the problems as you develop it. Also you should begin paying closer attention to the newletters you already receive, making note of the things in them you find interesting or attractive. You can also get ideas for formatting by reading other newsletters.

When you are clear about how your newsletter will look, and what you intend to be saying, then it is time to begin advertising it on your website. Tell your visitors you have a newsletter. Create a form for them to sign up. Have an autoresponder script set up to acknowledge their signup. Some people go so far as to have them click on a verification link in the autoresponder email. This is to be doubly sure it was the real email address owner who did the signing up. Don’t hesitate to do this. Your goal is to have a nice clean list of real people who want to hear from you and who are interested in the subject you are talking about. If that list doesn’t grow as fast because of your screening procedures, then so be it.

This blog is probably not the place to get into the technical aspects of setting up a newsletter. You can readily learn the actual mechanics about doing newsletters on other specialized “how-to” websites. But do consider putting out a newsletter in an effort to create more of a personal bond with your visitor-customers. If you do it right, you won’t regret the effort it takes.

Keep in touch

2007-11-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

Keep in touch
A newsletter is not just an email filled with advertisements and sales pitches. Emails like that are called spam. Instead, a newsletter needs to contain NEWS--news about things related to the subject of your blog or other website.

With the advent of the popularity of blogs, the need to publish a newletter of some kind would seem to be diminished. After all, the news items are already being published in your blog, right? While there is a lot of current news being talked about on your daily blog, there is still room for a newsletter. The real purpose behind a newsletter is to keep in touch with your friends who read your blog, and your customers who have made a purchase from you.

In light of this, be sure and include things in the newsletter which do not appear on your blog. If your website is a store that sells merchandise that you ship out yourself, then be sure and include a few private specials in the newsletter that are not known to the general public, as well as special coupons if you use coupons in your business.

Often, rather than try and fit all this into a short email (these things DO need to be short!) some newsletter authors send only the headlines and subtitiles, or basic info and coupons, in the email itself. They then include links that will take the reader to the actual fancy newsletter, which of course is really simply a dedicated page on your main website.

Not more frequently than monthly, please.

The biggest key in making this work is, as always, finding ways to make it interesting and useful to your commercial family. Don’t send your emails to people who aren’t interested in what you are doing. You will only waste your time. The goal is to have the best list, not the longest list.

I think it was Mark Twain who admonished us not to waste our time trying to teach pigs how to sing: “You’ll waste your time and annoy the pig.”

Your visitors are hardly pigs, of course--it’s only a quote.

POSTED BY RELAX MAX AT 10:36 AM

LABELS:

Newsletters and repeat business

2007-11-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

Repeat business is so important, so precious, like a gift and a vote of confidence all rolled into one. Successful small businesses know this very well. It is their very lifeblood. If you own a business on the internet, it won’t take you long to come to realize that repeat customers and repeat visitors are like gold.

Repeat business is like an investment that deposits a dividend into your account each month. Far from being a sporadic thing, or a one-time deal, repeat business should become the very foundation of your business. It is the “base income” or “residual income” that you can depend on each month, to be supplemented by your new sales efforts. Only a fool, such as a car dealer in a large city, would depend upon one-time new business income alone, and forego almost entirely the gold mine of repeat business.

How do you get repeat visitors, repeat customers? You do it just like Mom and Pop at the neighborhood grocery store used to do. You treat people right. You get to know them as well as you can. You make them comfortable. You give them what they’re looking for. You make them part of the family. And most importantly, you treat them as respected people, even when they aren’t buying anything from you.

If you treat your visitors, customers, like a piece of meat--like car dealers do--you may end up making a one-time sale, but you’ll never see them again. When people think about their car-buying experiences, they cringe with disgust. Car dealers make you want to go home and take a shower. You feel dirty when you leave. Car dealers are the spammer equivilent of the retail world. But you knew that.

Yes, I haven’t forgotten--I’m still talking about newsletters. Honest I am.

Always looking for Google loopholes

2007-11-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

Did you ever think what might happen if Google stopped worrying about whether the search content returned was truly relevant? I mean, what would happen if some searcher typed in the words “American Civil War” into the search field, and Google simply returned all the websites that claimed to have something to do with those words? If a porn site had a meta description of American Civil War, or had those words in hypertext repeated over and over on the top three lines of their home page, then that site would be returned for the searcher’s consideration.

Ridiculous.

Of course it’s ridiculous. This illustrates the need for Google to try and verify that the actual site content is relevant to the search.

As with so many other things in this world, it is the bad apples in the barrel who spoil the good thing for the rest of us. As soon as Google tried to do something good, they were immediately confronted with cheaters and charletons and liers and other scum who were determined to do it the easiest way, the dishonest way, rather than the right way. The goal was to get search engine traffic to their sites, and they didn’t care at all how they did it.

Would you like to find out where to track down the spammers that are inundating your email with trash? My guess is that if you find a website cheating for page rank, doing all the things they can think of to “beat” Google’s search algorithm, these are the same people who also send out spam at night. They have no scruples when it comes to getting traffic to their site. Just my opinion, of course.

The next time you visit a website that proudly offers, for a price, to teach you ways to outwit Google, think of the owner of that website as a spammer. He probably is.

Wagging the dog

2007-11-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

If it weren’t so serious, it would be hilarious. Webmasters who desire to get a high Google page ranking try to comply with what Google wants them to do. If Google lets it be known that links are good, then webmasters will proceed to go out and try to get links to their websites. In a freemarket system, this process can often get creative.

Tomorrow, if Google were to decide that sites should be ranked higher if they have an animation of a black dog on a red background at the upper left hand corner of your header, what do you think would shortly happen?

And later, if Google desides that sites should be ranked lower if webmasters PAY someone to create the doggie animation, then what?

Google ranking means money. Serious money. So I am trying my best not to laugh here. On this blog you are reading right now, it is obvious that I don’t give a rat’s patoot about Google or what they think. I am free to speak my piece and kick sand in their face. Not so on some of my enterprises which turn a profit. So I do feel your pain and exasperation.

More to follow.

Google knows best

2007-11-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

We can see that Google has begun a pardigm shift from simply being a search engine that seeks to return relevant content to their searcher-user, to a sort of gatekeeper-ranker. Dare we say “censor?” Of course. How could you NOT say that Google is censoring the content that the searcher sees? Of course, they would probably prefer to call it something like Advanced Algorithm Filtering Service. Be that as it may, when you search for something and Google returns not only relevant content, but only the relevant content they want you to see, that is the dictionary definition of censorship.

The purpose of this post is not really to badger Google about being a big bad censor, but rather trying to clarify the question, “What is Google?” They are no longer a search engine, but are now a rating service as well. That’s really good news for those of you who can’t decide for yourselves, or don’t want to be bothered. Type in some search words, get some content returned to you that Google wants you to see. Choose from among the choices that Google presents to you. No problem.

To be continued.

Playing favorites

2007-11-17T19:02:00.000-07:00

If you are a search engine, and your goal is to return the most relevant content to your users, what do you do when many, many equally good websites are returned? You might say the only fair thing to do is rotate those top, equally good and equally relevant websites. That would be fair. What Google chose to do, however, was to extend their criteria—lengthen their list of things they feel make one site “better” than another similar site, more relevant, somehow, than another similar site.

Now, the searcher doesn’t really care, or think about, all this rating foolishness. If they are presented with a dozen or so sites that seem to meet their search criteria, they are happy. They choose one of the very good and relevant sites that Google presents to them, and visit a few of those sites. Fine. But they seldom visit number 312 or number 869, which might have really been the best sites for them to visit.

So Google’s list of virtuous things webmasters ought to be doing got longer. And one of the things they came up with was links. That’s right, links. Google reasoned that if many other websites linked to this one website, it must really be good. It must be better than websites who had fewer links to their sites. It must be incredibly better than websites who had no links coming in to them at all.

Why?

Why would that be true?

Why would the most popular websites necessarily be “better” or “more relevant” to the searcher’s question than less popular websites?

To be continued.

Finding relevancy

2007-11-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

When you look in the telephone yellow pages, certain businesses are shown more prominently than others. This is because the advertisers pay more to be shown larger or more creatively. This has nothing at all to do with the actual value or quality of the advertiser. The advertiser with the smallest line ad in the yellow pages might turn out to be the very best choice. With the telephone yellow pages, then, it’s all about money and nothing else.

What Google is trying to do is very different from the above yellow pages example. Here we are not talking about the paid advertising that Google sells, but rather the free search engine service that Google provides in order to get eyes for its advertisers.

In this regard, Google has an ongoing quest to find ways to return the most relevant content, the most relevant websites about the search subject, to their user-searcher. This is admirable. This is exactly what Google should be doing. The problem arises when a search of a million websites on a particular subject turns up ten thousand sites that are particularly relevant to the search words, and maybe a thousand sites that are really really what the searcher asked for. Now what?

Well, at that point you of course show the searcher the names of all of the thousand really relevant websites. Indeed, you show them the whole million websites, for that matter. The question then becomes in what order do you show the thousand relevant sites? When you have a thousand sites, or certainly several hundred sites, that equally meet your search criteria, and you can only show about a half-dozen on the first page above the fold, which do you choose to be placed in that hugely favored position?

More to follow.

What is Google’s purpose?

2007-11-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

Without looking up their official bio, my memory tells me that Google began as one of the early attempts to index the web. The purpose of indexing the web is the same as the purpose for indexing anything else: to point the user toward content they want to look at. That’s why libraries have card catalogs and that’s why big textbooks have those tiny word pages in the back.

The indexing function, or cataloging function, of the internet is considerably more sophisticated today, and is performed by something called a search engine rather than an indexer.The desired result is still to try to take the user to the place he wants to go, or give him the information he wants to see, just do a better job of it.

With so many new websites springing up, traditional indexing really wasn’t feasible for very long. Hence the development of search engines. (Both Google and Yahoo still offer traditional “directories” to the web, though. and If you have the time and patience to drill down through their hierarchy, have at it.)

The trouble is, along with more sophisticated methods came the opportunity to additionally try to tell people what Google thought was “good” content and what they thought was poorer or “less apropos” content. This was under the guise of “providing users with the most relevant content” rather than just providing a list of possibilities and letting the user decide what he wanted to investigate further. Kind of like a librarian recommending a particular book instead of simply pointing you to the section of the library where books on that subject might be found.

More to follow.

The key is already inside you

2007-11-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

Did you do the web surfing experiment? If so, did you come up with a list of general subjects that you seem to be quite interested in? You can use this information as clues to what you should be writing about as well as how your site might be monetized.

For example, you might have found yourself searching sites about sewing or about woodworking. Or you might have looked at a lot of sports sites, baseball in particular. To me, this means that you might be happy joining those particular crowds. You might be happy writing about those subjects. Do try and make the niche as narrow as possible so as to somewhat limit the competition for the same readers.

And monetization? That should be pretty obvious: send people to sports sites, baseball sites, sewing sites, crafts sites, woodworking sites. Sell, on commission, products that you are interested in yourself: sports products and equipment, baseball fanware and memorabilia; sewing patterns and fabrics, woodworking books. You get it. If you are interested in the subject yourself, it should be pretty easy to write reviews for the products you are trying to sell, as well as blogging about the latest information regarding the subject.

Your blog should be fun for you, not work. Start out on the right foot by not trying to write about something you don’t personally care about. That’s too hard to do.

That's interesting

2007-11-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

Although your main writing focus will be on the niche subject that you are interested in, what your blog is about, don’t forget that your primary goal is writing in a manner that brings visitors to your site, and creates long-term readers who come back again and again.

If you have something you want to share, and it doesn’t really have anything to do with the niche subject of your blog, go ahead and write about it anyway. People will visit your site because it is informative and has useful information, but they also visit because your writing is interesting and entertaining—regardless of the subject of the post.

Are you traveling, or on vacation, blogging by email from your laptop? Share your experiences along the way with your readers. If it has something to do with your niche subject, fine. If not, also fine.

Writing about your niche subject every single day is not your goal. Making your blog interesting is your goal.

Take it slower

2007-11-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of blogs about making money on the internet. I’m sure you do too. I am always looking for new ideas, and always trying to imitate success. Anyway, one of the most common things I see is the advice to take this blogging business more slowly. Take time to get your feet wet and learn. Writing is the most important thing in the beginning. You need to attach yourself to a subject you like and begin writing about it. That's the advice I see coming from the big boys and girls in the blogging world.

Only later should you begin to monetize your site, they say. Work on being a good writer and getting people to come to your site for the writing you do and the information you provide. Later, monetization will become a natural transition. At least that’s the way many of the very successful bloggers say they did it. They began blogging because they loved it and because they felt they had something to say. Only later, after the audience was fairly large did the money-making part begin.

I think that is most likely true. It is like taking the time to get an education before your go out into the working world to earn a living. It is frustrating to make yourself wait when you want to start making money right now, but, really, how can you do it without the audience? Also, there is something about starting a blog for the primary purpose of making money that people seem to pick up on, and the feeling turns them off.

Consider starting a “pure” blog when you first start out. That is, just write about something you are really interested in. Build up a readership following over a few months. Then, if you still want to, that is the time to slowly make the moves toward monetization. If you don’t love to investigate things and write reports about them, this may not be the right job for you anyway.

Surfing for passion

2007-11-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

If all you ever had to do was surf the internet, what sites would you look for?

There are all kinds of books written about right livelihood and how to find your true passion. It occurs to me that surfing the internet might be the latest modern-day way to find your passion instead of reading self-help books for clues.

I can’t imagine anyone surfing the internet looking for sites on subjects they don’t care about. Try an experiment: make a list or log of the general subjects of the sites you visit, or of the subjects of the searches you find yourself running frequently.

The results will probably not surprise you—we all know what we like and want much more clearly than we think we do. But the list should also serve as a guide to what subjects you are are most interested in, even passionate about.

What does this have to do with making money on the internet with a blog? Simple. You make money by finding ways to attract a lot of readers to your site. You attract readers, in large part, by good writing. Interesting and entertaining writing. Writing about a subject you are passionate about will be interesting and entertaining without even conciously trying.

Try the experiment.

Speaking of pictures...

2007-11-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

The webpages of successful bloggers always seem to be covered with pictures. A picture goes a long way when you are trying to describe something. A picture is worth a thousand words. A picture explains like nothing else can.

This is not only true in situations where you are blogging “off topic” about some personal trip or event you have taken. Pictures which illustrate and support the writing in your “regular” posts really create more interest with your viewers. At least they do with me.

As for me, I'm going to start taking my own advice about pictures. I've been concentrating only on writing too much.

Great bloggers get personal

2007-11-09T21:56:00.001-07:00

Successful bloggers take time off from writing about their niche subject from time to time, to blog about personal subjects. They put up lots of pictures. After a while, you start to get to know who they are, who the person is behind the writing on the website.

Posting lots of pictures increases the bond, the personality of the site. And anything that can bring the readers and the blogger closer together is a good thing.

So, if you are looking to find ways to increase your traffic, always be looking for ways to get more personal with your readers, and find ways to increase your rapport with them.

Posting visuals is one good way to do that.

It's not against the law to have fun

2007-11-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Another thing you will notice if you visit several of the “superblogs” every day is that these bloggers are constantly working on projects that will somehow get ther readers to interact with the site. They concoct contests and giveaways and various competitions, and they ask their readers to participate in these.

As a recent example, I noticed that John Chow and ShoeMoney had a friendly competition going on throughout the month of October to see which one of them could increase their RSS feed readership members the most. Ok, that’s kind of silly (not for them, of course, but for their site visitors. I mean, it is obvious what Chow and Shoe get out of it, but why would their blog readers care about signing up? Most of them read both sites regularly anyway.) But that’s not the point. It was just fun for the readers to get involved, to interact. To be asked to DO something.

The event or contest or whatever doesn’t have to be that big of a production, or cost you anything. It just has to have some semblance of fun or excitement about it, and it must somehow get the readers involved in the process.

Are YOU asking your readers to interact with you and the others? What have you asked them to do lately?

Have a conversation

2007-11-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

Successful bloggers always respect their readers.They treat them as equals, as friends; they don’t try to talk down to them. They value their comments, their input. Blogging is s two-way street. The content must be interesting, of course, but it is the comments that are often even more entertaining and enlightening.

Do everything you can to encourage your visitors to comment. You will get a lot of visitors who stop by and just lurk in the shadows. Think of ways to include these people and make them feel comfortable enough to make a comment to a post.

Think of things you can do and say to make your visitors feel at home on your site. If you can get them involved, if you can get them to participate in the conversation, they are almost sure to return again and maybe even become a regular reader.

Always keep your readers foremost in your mind when you write. Try to write in such a way so as to draw them into the subject. Ask questions. Lots of questions. After all, you don’t know it all.

Do you?

Try not to write as if you were on a platform giving a speech to an audience. Instead, pretend you are sitting in a circle, just having a conversation. Give your opinion. Then ask for their views. It is surprising how many blog posts seem like sermons instead of conversations. I am guilty of being like that—I get so enthusiastic about what I am saying, I forget to shut up every once and a while and listen to others.

I think if you can find a way to turn your blog into more of a conversation, you will be on the right track of making some good friends of your visitors.

Making the connection

2007-11-06T18:32:00.000-07:00

What are some of the things the “superbloggers” do to connect with their readers?

I’m not sure you could get an immediate cut-and-dried answer if you were to ask that question directly to the big-time bloggers, face to face. That’s because, first of all, we are talking about something that is very subtle. Gaining that certain raport with your readers is not usually some tangible list of things you set out to do “on purpose.” It’s more of a personality thing, a compatibility thing. I think it has a lot to do with how you treat people in real life on a daily basis.

If you have a genuine passion for your blogging niche subject, it comes through in your writing. If you are, instead, pandering to your audience, I think that comes through loud and clear as well.

So the first thing that successful bloggers seem to have in common is that they are truly passionate about what they are talking about. They are not just writing a “report” on some subject or event. Even if they ARE writing an occasional report, their own personality is infused in the words they write, and that makes it interesting to the readers.

Bottom line? Bloggers who are successful on a large scale are honest with their readers.

Secret lives of successful bloggers

2007-11-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

Is there a big secret?

There must be. There has to be. There is. You have suspected this for a long time now, but let’s finally get it out in the open:

“There is more to blogging than just writing a lot of stuff and setting up your blog to suit the search engines.”

There. I said it. I feel better already.

As always, you can find the clues to the “secret” things that successful bloggers do by simply reading their blogs on a regular basis. Perhaps you have had a sneaking suspicion all along that these people were doing something you weren’t doing. You were right. If you don’t have tons of traffic, you were right: they ARE doing something you aren’t doing. Or at least you are not doing it as well as they are.

Some things are hard to explain, hard to define. On the one hand, you have what I call the “mechanics” of running a blog: things like good and interesting and helpful writing; good monetization techniques; advertising; commenting on other people’s blogs, and so forth. On the surface it seems like you are doing every single thing that the “big boys and girls” are doing on their blogs. That must not be true.

Like I said, it’s hard to put this intangible thing into words. But at the heart of the matter is the fact that the really successfull bloggers have found a way, somehow, to CONNECT with their readers. They are on the same wavelength, the same side of the street. They have discovered what their readers are looking for, and they give it to them.

For the next few posts, let’s explore that “secret” in more detail.

Britney Spears and your blog

2007-11-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

I heard on the evening news today that Britney Spears has a monthy income of over $700,000 now. Her biggest expenses are two mortgages for $50,000 a month. I guess I was surprised when I heard this, because I still haven’t been able to get over the belief that high earnings is somehow tied to high value, or high usefulness to other people. If you compare the fairness of this to the wages of coal miners or schoolteachers or field laborors, it might make you crazy, so don’t compare.

This is not meant to be a slam against Britney Spears, because people make money in relation to the perceived value others see in them, plain and simple. Fairness doesn’t enter into the earnings equation. Britney is no exception. She earns what people perceive her value to them is. Put another way, it isn’t the noteriety, it’s the publicity.

What does all this have to do with your blog?

Self-promotion. Public relations. Publicity. That’s how Britney gets traffic, and that is how YOU are going to have to get traffic. You must not only do what you do well, you must attract attention to what you are doing. Some people think Britney Spears is a singer. Maybe she thinks so, too. She can sing, but first and foremost, she is an entertainer, and she has learned how to draw attention to what she does.

I am not saying that you need to do outrageous things to get your blog URL on TV or in the newspapers, but you DO need to go out and drum up some publicity. If you want to have a lot of people visit your website, this publicity activity must be ongoing.

If you are smart enough to write good stuff every day, then you are smart enough to be inventive. Again, go out and get them!

Why do you have a blog?

2007-11-02T17:28:00.000-06:00

Did you create your blog as a way to make money? Or did you blog for quite a while before you began to monetize your site? If you were never able to make money at it, would you still blog?

Speaking for myself, I think I would still blog even if I made no money at all from it. At least I know I would still write—I can’t remember a time when I didn’t write or keep a journal of some kind.

Another main interest of mine is photography. It occurs to me that the two (photography and writing) are very much related. At least they are for me. Both let me capture thoughts and examples of the world around me. Both let me analyze things and learn about things. Both are records of a sort—little snippets of time that I can refer back to and improve upon, edit, from time to time.

I hope you blog because you love to blog. Of course, I also hope you are beginning to make some money doing it, too. There is no better feeling than to do something you would probably do for free, but make money doing it.

In order to make money with your blog, there are many things you need to constantly pay attention to. But at the same time, try not to lose the joy of writing about things, the joy that probably brought you to blogging in the first place.

I won’t.

Go out and get them!

2007-11-01T12:46:00.000-06:00

I know you’re a good writer. Your blog is beautiful and well-laid-out. It is interesting and entertaining. You’ve got something to say, and it shows! Your blog is clear and properly monetized. So what’s the problem?

The problem is you are all alone.

You are writing classic stuff for nobody but yourself. No traffic. No visitors. No readers. Nada. No wonder you’re discouraged. Who needs this? You can walk downtown and get ignored with less work.

Psst. Listen.

GO OUT AND GET THEM! Stop sitting there staring at the screen and waiting for them to show up. DO SOMETHING! Hello?

Let me be more specific. Search the web for people who are interested in the niche subject you are blogging about. There are hundreds and hundreds of “communites” out there. Forums. Chat rooms. Kindred blogs. More than you could ever peruse and exhaust in a lifetime.

GO GET INVOLVED! Yes. I’m shouting at you. It’s called “networking.” It’s like asking someone to dance instead of just sitting there at the party. Get out there and expose yourself to your fellow bloggers. No, not that way. I mean get out there and talk to them. Ask questions. Answer questions. Make comments. Get a virtual life. Invite people home (to your website, that is.)

The choice is yours. You can continue blogging to the wind, or you can get out there and start dragging them back to your site! Why not?

Why not today?

What the heck is RSS?

2007-10-31T17:39:00.000-06:00

The most simple answer is that RSS is a technology that allows you to keep up with what’s happening on your favorite website without actually visiting and reading that website everyday (or 10 times a day.)

It used to be that if you liked a particular website you “bookmarked” it or put it in your “favorites”. That made it easier for you to quickly visit that site again, without having to manually type in the site’s address. How quaint.

Now all you have to do is open a free RSS feedreader account (Google Reader, for example.) You give it a list of your favorite sites you want to keep track of and you get notified everytime one of them updates. All you have to do is check your Reader account every once in a while. It’s as easy as checking your email (and no mail to answer.)

More and more websites (especially blogs) are offering RSS feed subscriptions. It’s easy to subscribe to them. They’ll love you for it too, because bloggers really like to have regular readers. So look for the (usually) orange RSS feed link and click on it if you find the site interesting and want to be kept up-to-date.

Google: can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em

2007-10-30T09:22:00.000-06:00

If you ask internet travelers who or what Google is, chances are they will simply say that Google is a search engine. They use Google to find things on the internet. True. To an internet entrepreneur, however, Google is much more than that.

A lot of people who are trying to eke out a living on the internet these days, trying to make a buck doing something they love to do, have begun to think of Google as some sort of mysterious internet god, on whose good graces their internet livelihood depends. Indeed, Google itself has lately seemed to fancy itself as some sort of supreme arbiter of all things internet: Google giveth, and Google taketh away, or so they seem to think.

Here’s the truth: Google is a website. You have a website. I have a website. Google has a website. Google earns a living by selling something on the internet. So do you and I. And all of us, Google included, live or die on the internet depending on whether people do or do not visit our websites.

Google’s income is derived from selling advertising. Many of us regular people try to make money selling advertising, too. We all have our methods of attracting traffic to our websites. Google’s gimmick to attract visitors to its website is that it has discovered a way to index the internet pretty well, and thus has made itself useful to internet travelers.

Unfortunately, Google’s success in being useful has put them in a position of being able to hurt some pretty good people. Over the years, Google has slowly changed from simply publishing what is essentially a dynamic “telephone” book of names and addresses, and selling some “yellow pages”-type advertsing, to thinking they have the right to establish the criteria under which all “good” businesses should operate.

There is a huge leap between simply providing an honest list of internet denizens along with a brief description of what they have to offer, to telling internet searchers whether or not this or that business is “good” or not. Worse, Google gets to define what “good” is—or so they seem to think of late.

All this seems kind of uppity until you step back and realize you are doing the same thing. So am I. We all decide what appears or does not appear on our websites. We don’t feel an obligation to be fair about it, either; our decisions are arbitrary and final. Our goal is to produce the most effective website we can produce. I think that is Google’s goal as well: not just content but relevant content. That’s what Google wants to return to their searchers.

Then again, you and I don’t have the power to affect so many people with our websites like Google does.

I read somewhere a quote by a Canadian politician which wittily, though superficially, summed up the essence of Canada’s love-hate relationship with the USA. This quote keeps popping into my mind as I sit here and try to analyze our own relationship with Google:

“When you are compelled to sleep next to an elephant, you tend to sleep with one eye open. Every time the elephant decides to roll over, it affects your life.”

It's all about information

2007-10-29T09:05:00.000-06:00

Above all else, the internet is about information. Finding information, selling information, sharing information. Make sure that some aspect of this basic fact is included in each of your blog posts.

Providing some sort of information “niche” is a great way to attract return visitors as well as first-timers. Look around the web: you will see sites that give sports scores, weather forecasts, schedules for this or that event, or just plain gossip about a particular niche topic.

The point is, if you keep hacking away at your particular niche area of interest long enough, you will begin to rank with the search engines on that subject. That’s good from a new visitor standpoint. Then, make sure your content is interesting and entertaining (or useful, if you are trying to provide a specific service) and that will help you bring them back again and again. Always be trying to build that base of “core” site visitors that form your “regular readership.”

Search the web to get ideas on what other people are doing. Find out what successful blogs are doing, even if they are not exactly in your area of interest or expertise. Don’t steal from them—simply incorporate their general ideas into your website. Variations on themes is a big part of what makes the world go ‘round.

The internet is huge. The search engines are easy to use. If you run out of ideas to try, or run out of writing ideas for your blog, then shame on you!

If you can’t fight them...

2007-10-28T10:37:00.000-06:00

I used to get upset at the supposedly honest and upright people with legitimate info-packed high-traffic blogs who allow that get-rich-quick crapola to be advertised on their websites. You’ll even see a bunch of that false advertising on Google Adsense. And then I thought about it, and I don’t get QUITE so upset anymore. If Google and others can find a way to take some bucks back from these preditors...hey! Why not?

Of course, the money to pay for that Google (and other) advertising initially came from poor suckers like you and me, but that’s our problem for being gullible, right? I don’t know. It still doesn’t seem right somehow. I guess I’m even doing it myself—at least by proxy. I run Google Adsense advertising widgets on my website, and I’m sure Google has plastered plenty of this opportunistic false advertising in them. If they haven’t already, they sure will now that the keywords for this junk has appeared in my posts. I give up. What can you do? Sometimes you feel like just joining them. For now, I’ll keep trying to resist the temptation. As much as I can. Character counts. At least for a few people. [Not Google.]

Caveat Emptor, eh?

Get rich quick on the internet

2007-10-27T10:15:00.000-06:00

Do you want to start earning more money than the world's top-paid corporate CEOs? Do you want to start earning a lot of money without doing any work? Do you want to get rich in less than 10 days? If you are in the mood for some snake oil today, here are a few Get Rich Quick claims we have seen making the rounds lately:

*****
1. The world's most fantastic false advertisement:

"The 12 Month Internet Millionaire. The Amazing Money-Making Secret Of A 28-year-old Convicted Felon Who Earns More Money Per Year Than The CEOs Of FedEx, eBay(R), Amazon, Time Warner, Apple Computer, McDonalds, Microsoft, Nike, Yahoo, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, And Goodyear Combined!"

*****
2. Meet Andreas, the Super Forex Trader. He wants to share his secret with you:

"Please let me introduce myself, my name is Andreas Kirchberger and I make an extrordinary living trading the forex market. I used to work for the Deutsche Bank as a forex advisor but i had to quit because a question kept nagging me and even haunted me in my dreams: Why should i work, sweat 8 hours a day, making other people rich, researching reports and monitoring market movements? That`s why I and 2 colleagues developed the Forex Killer, the only working forex signal generator on the market today. I`ve already made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here is a screenshot of my swiss bank account. Would you believe that all I did to generate this sum is spending a few MINUTES a day adjusting some easy BUY & SELL ORDERS???"
*****

3. This guy tells how easy it is to sell Google ads:
"I made $57,317.01 in just 87 days..."

[The 1 cent is what makes this believable.]
*****

4. And here's Michelle...advisor to corporate giants. Very believable indeed:

"My name is Michelle McAllister and I have to share my life changing story with you. I'll tell it to you straight: The CEO's of Nike...Ebay...Amazon and Walmart are tripping over their own feet to give me money! These million-dollar-a-year fat cats, know squat about their customers! So they pay 'normal' people like me to tell them the word on the street."

[Have you no shame, Michelle?]
*****

(Caution: be prepared to be bombarded by sticky and relentless popups, confusing exit choices, and audio-video headbeaters. [And, surprisingly, none of these fabulous multimillionaires have learned to spell.] Have fun, if you think this kind of thing is fun.)

These claims (and many, many more) were found at the headquarters for this kind of thing, Clickbank:

Here’s the thing: they work. They really do. They have always worked. These kinds of ads have worked for decades (centuries?) before anyone ever thought of the internet.

I don’t mean the PLANS will work. I mean the outrageous ads work for the sellers of the ebooks, because you (and me, sadly) buy them. It seems to just be human nature to want to believe there is some inside secret to easy riches.

Here's one final one for you:

*****
The Rich Jerk. Blah Blah Blah. Who Cares.
*****

Who, indeed.

Getting people to visit your website

2007-10-26T12:28:00.000-06:00

Putting product reviews on your website

2007-10-25T08:18:00.000-06:00

Setting up your blog

2007-10-24T09:16:00.000-06:00

Steering by the wake, not

2007-10-23T08:58:00.000-06:00

So you start with a plan.

Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You dont need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free

The great Paul Simon said it so well, didn’t he? He wasn’t talking about blogging, but the words still apply.What do you want to accomplish? If you were a total success today, what would your website look like and what would be happening? Start with creating a general, preliminary, mission statement or an objective. Write it down. Make it only one sentence long. State your purpose or desired end result. Start the sentence with the word “to.” It might look like this:

"To earn a living on the internet by creating an interesting blog about _________, which is properly constructed and monetized so as to attract a large readership of people who are also interested in _________."

Or, it might short and sweet, and look something like this:

"To create a blog about _________ for the purpose of interacting with like-minded people."

A textbook mission statement would be all-inclusive of the essential points and elegantly concise and direct to the point. But I ‘m not asking you to create a corporate mission statement, or even one that encompasses each and every one of your desires in one sentence. Instead, I am using this exercise as a tool to get you to start putting your thoughts on paper in such a manner as to begin to clarify, in your own mind, what you want to accomplish.

If this format is awkward for you, then just make a list of things you think you would like to accomplish with your new blog, and another list of things you think you would like to see included in the format of your blog.

Above all, don’t just start out, sink or swim, by inflicting your disjointed thoughts about life on others. Think it through. Don’t start until you can clearly explain it to yourself. Make a plan, Stan.

Steering by the wake

2007-10-22T06:09:00.000-06:00

Blogging for dollars

2007-10-21T06:00:00.000-06:00

More popup talk

2007-10-20T16:33:00.000-06:00

Balloons vs. Popups

2007-10-19T07:27:00.000-06:00

Use newsletters to build loyalty

2007-10-18T08:55:00.000-06:00

Links

2007-10-17T06:30:00.000-06:00

Advertise

2007-10-16T07:59:00.000-06:00

Blog purpose

2007-10-15T07:39:00.000-06:00

Titles of blog posts

2007-10-14T08:40:00.000-06:00

Making money with your blog

2007-10-13T09:00:00.000-06:00

Site setup and monetization

2007-10-12T07:31:00.000-06:00

Take action

2007-10-11T07:57:00.000-06:00

Developing your blog's theme

2007-10-10T11:18:00.000-06:00

Choosing affiliate partners

2007-10-09T08:54:00.000-06:00

Affiliate Sites

2007-10-08T09:05:00.000-06:00

Affiliate marketing

2007-10-07T08:09:00.000-06:00

More backend

2007-10-04T07:20:00.000-06:00

Backend sales

2007-10-03T07:28:00.000-06:00

Newsletter signup

2007-10-02T07:55:00.000-06:00

Keep in touch

2007-10-01T10:36:00.000-06:00

A newsletter is not just an email filled with advertisements and sales pitches. Emails like that are called spam. Instead, a newsletter needs to contain NEWS--news about things related to the subject of your blog or other website.

With the advent of the popularity of blogs, the need to publish a newletter of some kind would seem to be diminished. After all, the news items are already being published in your blog, right? While there is a lot of current news being talked about on your daily blog, there is still room for a newsletter. The real purpose behind a newsletter is to keep in touch with your friends who read your blog, and your customers who have made a purchase from you.

In light of this, be sure and include things in the newsletter which do not appear on your blog. If your website is a store that sells merchandise that you ship out yourself, then be sure and include a few private specials in the newsletter that are not known to the general public, as well as special coupons if you use coupons in your business.

Often, rather than try and fit all this into a short email (these things DO need to be short!) some newsletter authors send only the headlines and subtitiles, or basic info and coupons, in the email itself. They then include links that will take the reader to the actual fancy newsletter, which of course is really simply a dedicated page on your main website.

Not more frequently than monthly, please.

The biggest key in making this work is, as always, finding ways to make it interesting and useful to your commercial family. Don’t send your emails to people who aren’t interested in what you are doing. You will only waste your time. The goal is to have the best list, not the longest list.

I think it was Mark Twain who admonished us not to waste our time trying to teach pigs how to sing: “You’ll waste your time and annoy the pig.”

Your visitors are hardly pigs, of course--it’s only a quote.

Newsletters and repeat business

2007-09-30T07:04:00.000-06:00

Email marketing

2007-09-29T08:01:00.000-06:00

Email marketing. Cringe.

Don’t you hate spammers? Me too. What lowlifes. I can’t think of enough bad words to call them. They waste our time, fill up our mailboxes with trash, hijack our email addresses, cause us to spend money on antispam software that never really works. Arrrgh! I hate them!

I hope you will never be so totally rude as to impose yourself on another human being by sending out spam. If you are reading this blog, I just KNOW you have more class than that.

The point of this post is to remind you that you don’t have to be a spammer in order to use email marketing. You just have to work hard to win people’s confidence and slowly build up a legitimate list of people who really want to hear from you.

Not spam. Newsletters. Stay tuned.

Window Dressing

2007-09-28T07:46:00.000-06:00

More about the monetization of your website. That is, more about the actual setup or layout of your store’s floorplan.

One assumes you are using your main websites as more permanent “stores” of some kind, and are using your blogs as “funnel sites” to these stores. Your stores--your regular websites--probably have much more permanent content than your blogs, in that you are not making drastic changes to them frequently. Insead, you are either adding or deleting specific products, or you are freshening the wording in your sales brochures.

These website stores usually consist of either an online mailorder catalog of your products that you want to sell and ship, or they consist of colorful, interesting, and informative “brochure pages” which describe and promote the features of the products of others, one product per page. In the case of the former type, there will also be included a checkout counter.

In any case, you will want to use your blogs as a much more informal meeting place where you can sit down and have coffee with your customers and passersby. Here you can discuss the issues of the day, anything that is dear to your heart, anything at all you want to share with your friends. Obviously, the conversaton often turns to what you do for a living. It is only natural, in the process of this friendly social discourse, that you invite them to visit your store.

But the blog, in my humble opinion, is not the place for the hard sell. People are there to relax and get to know one another. Indeed, you should leave some business cards on the table of your blog, but don’t use your blog to beat people over the head.