Ever since we decided to produce some videos, I've been racking my brain for ideas.
The finished products will probably end up on a site about conversion secrets, so I was looking for ideas on that subject.
However, I think that information on a wider subject is still appropriate.
For example, if I produce a video describing how to improve your rank in Google, it doesn't necessarily improve conversion, but it should improve sales.
So I'm going to produce a video about using the Google Webmaster tools - specifically about using a Google Sitemap.
I've already proved to myself that using a sitemap on a live site is worthwhile. The GoogleBots have started visiting one of my sites every day since I provided a sitemap.
And as I have a Google Sitemap creator program in the pipeline, there's a classic opportunity for follow-on sales.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Into the unknown - video production
Video is everywhere now. The advent of sites such as YouTube has made video publishing the latest thing.
Some of my Internet Marketing friends and I are getting together to produce a bundle of Internet Marketing training videos. This will consist of a varied selection of narrated Powerpoint-style presentations, Screen-captured video demonstrating how to do something, or simple discussions and presentations.
Most of us have never done anything like it before, so we're all jumping into the unknown.
Hopefully, the result will be an excellent collection of hints, tips and other useful information which we can put together as a bundle and market as a joint effort.
It could be the start of something big.
Some of my Internet Marketing friends and I are getting together to produce a bundle of Internet Marketing training videos. This will consist of a varied selection of narrated Powerpoint-style presentations, Screen-captured video demonstrating how to do something, or simple discussions and presentations.
Most of us have never done anything like it before, so we're all jumping into the unknown.
Hopefully, the result will be an excellent collection of hints, tips and other useful information which we can put together as a bundle and market as a joint effort.
It could be the start of something big.
Friday, November 23, 2007
ClickBank meets AdSense
If you cast your eyes to the left-hand column of this blog, you'll see a section called "Ways to make money".
Under that section, you will see a list of titles and brief descriptions. They are actually advertisments similar to those "Ads by Google" ones you see on most web pages (including this one).
The difference with these adverts are that they are for products being sold via the ClickBank affiliate program.
They are displayed on this site (and some of my other sites) by a script that I wrote myself, which I've called CBIntuition. It selects all the ClickBank products that contain a pre-defined keyword, and then chooses up to 5 of them at random to display on the page.
The advantage of this is that many ClickBank products pay huge commissions on sales - up to 75% for some products.
The script is still under development, so it's not yet available to purchase, but it should be some time in December 2007.
The ad display script works just fine. I'm now working on an admin and configuration script. Installation will be very simple - simply copy it to your host.
The most difficult part of this script is keeping the ClickBank marketplace database up-to-date. This changes almost daily, so it should really be updated at least weekly.
I'm working on another script to do as much of that as is possible.
The script will be available from my software store, Dryice Computing, where you can find out more details.
Under that section, you will see a list of titles and brief descriptions. They are actually advertisments similar to those "Ads by Google" ones you see on most web pages (including this one).
The difference with these adverts are that they are for products being sold via the ClickBank affiliate program.
They are displayed on this site (and some of my other sites) by a script that I wrote myself, which I've called CBIntuition. It selects all the ClickBank products that contain a pre-defined keyword, and then chooses up to 5 of them at random to display on the page.
The advantage of this is that many ClickBank products pay huge commissions on sales - up to 75% for some products.
The script is still under development, so it's not yet available to purchase, but it should be some time in December 2007.
The ad display script works just fine. I'm now working on an admin and configuration script. Installation will be very simple - simply copy it to your host.
The most difficult part of this script is keeping the ClickBank marketplace database up-to-date. This changes almost daily, so it should really be updated at least weekly.
I'm working on another script to do as much of that as is possible.
The script will be available from my software store, Dryice Computing, where you can find out more details.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Caveat emptor (buyer beware)
When I set up my ebook site, The Cafetorium, I purchased the eStore script and a bundle of ebooks and software packages.
I set up the eStore, loaded in the product database, which consisted of all the ebooks and software in the bundle. Then I set it to work.
Yesterday I received an email from the owner of an eBook saying that they had never issued that eBook with resale rights of any kind.
Of course I removed the eBook from my inventory immediately and explained that I had received it in a bundle of stock for an eBook site.
So the old phrase, "caveat emptor" or "buyer beware" raises its head again.
If you find yourself in the same position, just remove the item from sale. Don't bother arguing about it. I still have around 200 products in my store so I'm not going to lose out by having my stock list reduced by one.
(Actually I never sold any copies of the product in question, and I doubt whether I would have sold many in the future)
I set up the eStore, loaded in the product database, which consisted of all the ebooks and software in the bundle. Then I set it to work.
Yesterday I received an email from the owner of an eBook saying that they had never issued that eBook with resale rights of any kind.
Of course I removed the eBook from my inventory immediately and explained that I had received it in a bundle of stock for an eBook site.
So the old phrase, "caveat emptor" or "buyer beware" raises its head again.
If you find yourself in the same position, just remove the item from sale. Don't bother arguing about it. I still have around 200 products in my store so I'm not going to lose out by having my stock list reduced by one.
(Actually I never sold any copies of the product in question, and I doubt whether I would have sold many in the future)
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Incoming links
There are two main forms of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
The first is known as on-page SEO. This basically means adjusting your content to make it search-engine friendly. It's all about using keywords in the domain name, the title, description and body text. Get the ratio of keywords to other text too high and you get penalised for "keyword stuffing". Get the ratio too low and you lose out on relevancy.
The second is known as off-page SEO. This is a lot more difficult to achieve because it's basically about other sites having relevant links to your site.
It is preferable if these links are one-way, otherwise you get accused of simply trading links specifically for SEO purposes.
Last night I discovered that one of my sites, Dryice Computing, has 14 incoming links. I knew about one or two of them, but the others were somewhat of a surprise. However, 10 of the links were all from sub-domains of the same site, so it probably only counts as 1 link in Google's eyes.
There are several factors to consider when getting incoming links set up. The first is that the linking site is on a different C-Class IP address. This is to make sure that the site owner is not simply linking in from all his other sites.
The next factor is relevancy. The site that links to yours must have some relevancy in terms of content. If your site sells dog biscuits, it's no use having links in from a company that makes radiators.
Another important factor is Google PageRank. If you can get links in from a high-ranking page, your own PageRank will grow.
The site that links to my site 10 times has a Google PageRank of 5, which means it carries a lot of weight.
It will be interesting to see if my site's PageRank grows from its lowly 0 as a result of these links.
The first is known as on-page SEO. This basically means adjusting your content to make it search-engine friendly. It's all about using keywords in the domain name, the title, description and body text. Get the ratio of keywords to other text too high and you get penalised for "keyword stuffing". Get the ratio too low and you lose out on relevancy.
The second is known as off-page SEO. This is a lot more difficult to achieve because it's basically about other sites having relevant links to your site.
It is preferable if these links are one-way, otherwise you get accused of simply trading links specifically for SEO purposes.
Last night I discovered that one of my sites, Dryice Computing, has 14 incoming links. I knew about one or two of them, but the others were somewhat of a surprise. However, 10 of the links were all from sub-domains of the same site, so it probably only counts as 1 link in Google's eyes.
There are several factors to consider when getting incoming links set up. The first is that the linking site is on a different C-Class IP address. This is to make sure that the site owner is not simply linking in from all his other sites.
The next factor is relevancy. The site that links to yours must have some relevancy in terms of content. If your site sells dog biscuits, it's no use having links in from a company that makes radiators.
Another important factor is Google PageRank. If you can get links in from a high-ranking page, your own PageRank will grow.
The site that links to my site 10 times has a Google PageRank of 5, which means it carries a lot of weight.
It will be interesting to see if my site's PageRank grows from its lowly 0 as a result of these links.
Keeping Google-friendly
Whenever I change or update any of my websites, I always go to Google's webmaster tools to keep everything up to date.
It's a site worth visiting anyway because if you use Google sitemaps, you really need to ensure that they are up to date. If they are not, Google reports an error and stops indexing the site. You then need to update the sitemap and re-submit it.
When you do that, it can take a while for Google to go and check the site out again, but you really mustn't forget to go and look at the results. If there are still errors, your site's changes won't be updated in Google's database.
Google likes sites with Google sitemaps, so it's worth investing the time to create one. However, creating one by hand is not a lot of fun and prone to error unless you really like writing XML.
There are plenty of tools out there for generating Google sitemaps.
Another advantage of using Google sitemaps is that submitting your sitemap to Google is a much faster way of getting your site indexed by Google than simply by submitting its URL.
You can visit Google's webmaster pages at http://www.google.com/webmasters.
It's a site worth visiting anyway because if you use Google sitemaps, you really need to ensure that they are up to date. If they are not, Google reports an error and stops indexing the site. You then need to update the sitemap and re-submit it.
When you do that, it can take a while for Google to go and check the site out again, but you really mustn't forget to go and look at the results. If there are still errors, your site's changes won't be updated in Google's database.
Google likes sites with Google sitemaps, so it's worth investing the time to create one. However, creating one by hand is not a lot of fun and prone to error unless you really like writing XML.
There are plenty of tools out there for generating Google sitemaps.
Another advantage of using Google sitemaps is that submitting your sitemap to Google is a much faster way of getting your site indexed by Google than simply by submitting its URL.
You can visit Google's webmaster pages at http://www.google.com/webmasters.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Bum Marketing
One method of marketing that I've read about numerous times is the publishing of articles on article sites.
The main reason for doing this is to create high-ranking links to your sales site, which is good in SEO terms. The same principle is used by posting on forums, adding a link to your website in the signature.
Another advantage of this method is that anyone reading the article or the post could actually click through to the sales page.
So when I heard about Bum Marketing, I thought that it was just somebody churning out the same old stuff with a new name.
In reality, that's true to some extent, but it takes it a little further by explaining how to do it properly.
In a nutshell, you target phrases containing a number of keywords that render a relativly small number of results in a search engine.
Let's say you are selling Albanian sausages, either directly or as an affiliate.
Rather than choosing one or two keywords, you go for complete phrases, such as "how to knit an Albanian sausage warmer".
Basically, you publish a number of articles relating to that subject and at the end, you include a link to your sales site (or your affiliate link).
The article sites all have a high Google PageRank, so the inlinks to your site are quite valuable. The article sites are also indexed quite often by the search engines, so your site can get a good placing in the search results.
The bottom line for this method when used for selling ClickBank products as an affiliate is that an article can earn you in the region of $20 per month.
The idea then is to write a new article every day for 3 months (90 days), so that your 90 articles earn you a revenue of $1800 per month.
That sounds good to me - that's equivalent to my mortgage payments. I'd love to be able to cover that simply by writing an article per day.
I read another ebook which described an accelerated version of the Bum Marketing method. Basically you churn out 5 articles an hour for a month. All very well if you have that sort of free time, but you have to look at it realistically.
I quite enjoy writing, so I think that once I've got into the swing of things, I could knock out a new article during my lunch break every day. A couple more in the evenings would bring my daily total to 3 articles. So I'd get my 90 articles in the space of a month.
So let's give it a try. I'll keep you posted with the results.
The main reason for doing this is to create high-ranking links to your sales site, which is good in SEO terms. The same principle is used by posting on forums, adding a link to your website in the signature.
Another advantage of this method is that anyone reading the article or the post could actually click through to the sales page.
So when I heard about Bum Marketing, I thought that it was just somebody churning out the same old stuff with a new name.
In reality, that's true to some extent, but it takes it a little further by explaining how to do it properly.
In a nutshell, you target phrases containing a number of keywords that render a relativly small number of results in a search engine.
Let's say you are selling Albanian sausages, either directly or as an affiliate.
Rather than choosing one or two keywords, you go for complete phrases, such as "how to knit an Albanian sausage warmer".
Basically, you publish a number of articles relating to that subject and at the end, you include a link to your sales site (or your affiliate link).
The article sites all have a high Google PageRank, so the inlinks to your site are quite valuable. The article sites are also indexed quite often by the search engines, so your site can get a good placing in the search results.
The bottom line for this method when used for selling ClickBank products as an affiliate is that an article can earn you in the region of $20 per month.
The idea then is to write a new article every day for 3 months (90 days), so that your 90 articles earn you a revenue of $1800 per month.
That sounds good to me - that's equivalent to my mortgage payments. I'd love to be able to cover that simply by writing an article per day.
I read another ebook which described an accelerated version of the Bum Marketing method. Basically you churn out 5 articles an hour for a month. All very well if you have that sort of free time, but you have to look at it realistically.
I quite enjoy writing, so I think that once I've got into the swing of things, I could knock out a new article during my lunch break every day. A couple more in the evenings would bring my daily total to 3 articles. So I'd get my 90 articles in the space of a month.
So let's give it a try. I'll keep you posted with the results.
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