Sample Issue 2
In this issue:
1. Intro - Some waffle and a Yanik Silver ebook for you
2. The Whole Truth About Smart Pages
3. Automated SE Traffic System That Works
4. Spam Solution Or Extortion?
5. Feature Article:
"How to Promote Associate Programs With
Pay-Per-Click
Search Engines" By Marlon Sanders
6. Your Free Tools at NowSell.com
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Intro and a Yanik Silver eBook Free
Hi,
How's it going?
I've been busily trying to get several different things set up over the last few weeks. But I seem to be going through one of those phases; you know the ones - where despite your best efforts and planning, no matter what you turn your hand to, something just has to screw up somewhere along the way!
Add to that an Internet service that often won't let me online for hours at a time, and when it does takes me about 45 minutes to upload a 1MB file, only to have the connection drop just before completion, and it's a wonder I've got any hair left!
All the same, it still beats crawling out of bed at the crack of dawn and spending 2 hours or more a day fighting through traffic to get to some stuffy office ...
Truth is I just wanted you to know that it's not down to laziness that you haven't had a new issue from me for a while. ;-)
A month or so ago, Internet marketing whizz Yanik Sliver released a new ebook, Greatest Marketing Secrets. Whilst it might not make you an instant marketing genius, there's a lot of valuable info inside you should know and be making use of.
I suggest you read it right away - it's not that long, and as a Biz Bits subscriber you can download a free copy here:
http://nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=f.gmsec
Right then, there's loads of important info for you below, so I'd better shut up and let you get on ....
Talk to you soon!
All the best,
Azam
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The Whole Truth About Smart Pages
You've probably heard quite a bit by now about the Internet marketing ebook, The Whole Truth by Stephen A. Pierce.
If you've not (where on earth have you been?), you can find out more and get a copy here:
http://nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=f.wtruth
Although I don't agree with everything Stephen has to say, overall The Whole Truth is definitely well worth reading, with lots of good information I know most people will find very helpful.
But what's got everyone so excited about The Whole Truth is the "smart page" concept and the templates you get with the book to make your own.
Stephen is using his smart pages to gain high search engine rankings, and then generating huge affiliate commissions by automatically redirecting visitors directly to the sales pages of his affiliate programs.
The question on everyone's lips is, "Do smart pages really work?"
The answer is a provisional yes, depending on how competitive the keywords are that you're targeting, and how they relate to the bulk of the content already on the site. The pages employ common SEO techniques with a few additional twists. But it's the method of redirection that really makes these pages so powerful.
Beware however, that although Stephen is adamant that his smart pages are not spam and completely acceptable to the search engines, I doubt the search engines themselves share his view.
Why? Because:
- Smart pages are doorway pages created just for search engine rankings and not for surfers to read.
- The pages contain a hidden (javascript) instant redirect the SE spiders cannot follow. That means the surfer and SE see different pages, which is usually viewed as illegal cloaking.
It's true that people break these and other search engine rules everyday and get away with it. You might too. And it's a relatively quick and easy way to make some cash. Maybe even a lot as Stephen has. On the other hand, you could be the unlucky one that gets caught.
Decide for yourself, but if you like the idea, I'd do it sooner rather than later, and on a throwaway domain if possible - you just never know ...
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Automated SE Traffic System That Works
Instead of creating "smart pages," here's another way to get masses of visitors from the search engines. If you've some experience with building websites, take a look at something I've started using recently to drive search engine traffic to some of my domains.
We're talking about legitimate and highly targeted traffic here. It's a set-it-and-forget-it system you can use to increase sales of your own products, or to make a full time income from affiliate programs.
I'm not going to go into detail, but I will tell you that within two weeks of implementing this strategy on one of my domains, visitors increased by almost 50% - shooting up from around 3,000 visitors a week to well over 4,000.
And that's just with traffic sent from MSN search. Google traffic won't kick in until the engine's next update, but I'm expecting it to be even more than that from MSN, and over time for both these and other SE's to further increase the number of visitors they send.
You can find out all you need to know here:
http://nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=f.td
Whilst there's only a small one-time fee at the moment, you can expect the price to quadruple over the coming months, before it goes off the market completely.
You see, this is one of those rare occasions where the product's creator really does use the exact same system extensively, and generates a healthy and ever increasing perpetual income for himself in doing so.
It's an income that short term profits from selling the product could never match. So to put it bluntly, he doesn't want to upset the gravy train by creating lots of competition for himself (and other users) in the most profitable search categories.
I must stress however that this is not something for complete beginners. It's not that it's hard - in fact it's fairly straightforward - but you do need to know your way around a website.
If that's you, head here:
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Spam Solution Or Extortion?
If you're using email to keep in touch with your prospects and customers, or publish an ezine or newsletter, you're no doubt finding that thanks to software like SpamAssasin and others, many of your messages are not reaching their intended recipients.
It doesn't matter that your email was requested -- single opt-in, double opt-in, even a purchase receipt or download instructions.
It may still end up in the trash. Unseen and unread.
Wonderful eh?
Now, a company called Habeas, Inc. has come up with a way to ensure that your email gets through ... for a price.
The idea is that you pay to have a special Habeas header included in all your email messages, which tells the spam filters to let your email through.
The system relies on agreements between Habeas and the different spam filter creators, fueling speculation of a conspiracy. Especially since Habeas CEO Anne Mitchell previously served as legal counsel for Mail Abuse Prevention System, a spam blacklisting organization.
A second company has already jumped on the bandwagon with its own "certified spam free" headers.
More may follow.
The very real fear is that in the not to distant future, ISP's will start relying on these special headers to determine what's wanted and what's not, and simply set their filter threshold so low that just about everything that doesn't contain them is labelled spam. The result?
Deliverable email will no longer be free.
There are a lot of issues here that I just don't have the space to go into. Thankfully, i-Cop President jl scott has been investigating matters over the last few months, and has put all the information here:
http://nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=habeas
The bottom line as I see it is that many small operators may soon find email too expensive to use as a marketing tool.
And can we really believe that any for-profit company would turn down millions in revenues from the big players when they get reported for sending spam? (And they do send it - I've had it).
Or that spammers won't figure out how to forge these headers just like they have so many others?
Yeah right ...
If all this continues, I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually come full circle. Unfortunately, before that thousands of small players may be pushed out of the marketplace, or be forced to spend money they can ill-afford on a solution the effectiveness of which gradually fades as the spam seeps back in.
What we really need is a decent spam filtering software. I mean, c'mon - a points system that records a score each time a certain word or phrase occurs? It's like something from a high school computing class assignment!
The technology is available. Artificial intelligence and data mining are two areas that spring to mind. It just needs somebody to figure out how they can give the filter away for free, yet still realize profits that make the cost of development worthwhile.
And spam filters must be controlled by the owner of the email account. You pay for the service, you should get to decide what you want to receive. Not the ISP.
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Feature Article:
"How to Promote Associate Programs
With Pay-Per-Click Search Engines"
By Marlon Sanders
For many products, pay-per-click search engines can be very good. The idea is that you decide what you're willing to pay per click through to your web site.
In fact, now that advertising prices are much cheaper than they used to be you could really clean up by using the Pay Per Click Search Engines.
It all comes down to knowing your numbers. What marketers call your metrix. We'll talk about the metrix of advertising in a moment.
If you know that you make $1.00 for every visitor to your web site, you could theoretically bid 0.75 cents per click and make money. Assuming, of course that the traffic was the same quality as your existing traffic.
Of course, I've found with advertising that is rarely the case.
The most well known of the pay-per-click engines is "Overture" at http://www.overture.com
With Overture you just pay to be listed when the search results come up. In other words, you pay for "placement".
It's relatively easy to get started. All you do is come up with a list of keywords that you want to check out, go to overture.com and in the search box on their main page just type in your first keyword.
When the results come up you'll want to look at the top right and click on "View Advertisers' Max Bids" so you can get a peek at how much everyone is paying for the keyword you're thinking about buying.
As an example you can use the keyword:
Marlon Sanders
Type that into the search box and you'll see the first nine results are from paid advertisers.
Please don't click the links in the search results. Copy the URL from the results and paste that into a new browser if you want to see the site.
When we click the link to see the max bids Overture shows us the top 3 people are paying anywhere from $1.00 per click to $0.21. Of course these bids change all the time. That's just what I am seeing today as I write this.
With some other keywords like "hosting", the cost can be around $7.00 a click! It all depends on how much the advertisers are willing to pay. I'm sure they're watching their conversions closely and probably wouldn't continue to pay that unless they were profitable though.
If you're interested in promoting your favorite associate programs in the Pay Per Click Search Engines it's easy to get started.
Just go to overture.com and access the advertisers center.
Overture has created some pretty good demos to show you how their service works so you can watch those. Or, you can just go to the main page and type in a search term to see who's bidding on it and what they are paying "per click".
Anyway, a lot of my friends bid a nickel to a dime on keywords. In the old days, you could bid a penny or two but the minimum now is $0.05 "per click".
(Per click means that anytime someone types in the same keywords you are bidding on and actually clicks your link, you pay the amount you've bid. Unless they click and visit your site you don't have to pay anything.)
I'm told by those who specialize in this form of paid advertising that the most important thing is to be on the first page of search results. What I learned is that it takes patience and experimentation to get profitable although you can get listed in the #1, #2 or #3 spot very easily if you're willing to pay to be there.
What you do is bid on all the logical words. Then, you watch your clicks like a hawk and see what converts and what doesn't.
Next you cut out the bad words. You probably won't be profitable until you cut out the words that generate a lot of clicks but no sales. Those are the dead wood that cost you money but don't make you money.
To make sure you know which keywords are converting you'll want to use some sort of ad tracking service. If you don't you'll never know which keywords are making you money and which are draining your balance.
Overture isn't the only "Pay Per Click Search Engine".
You can hunt down the other pay per click search engines by typing "pay per click" in google.com
I know I tried advertising on Findwhat, Kanoodle and some others. I got clicks but my clicks didn't convert.
I told my friend John Keel about this. He's a "pay-perclick" guru. John told me I just didn't know what I was doing! He says you have to refine the results. The bottom line is, you have to learn what you're doing and become an expert.
That's what you'll find with many of these methods. Whatever you do, you need to become an expert at it. That expertise is your competitive advantage. I don't know of any way to make money where you just click a button and forget about it.
I've seen methods like that before. But if they're that easy, in a heartbeat everyone else finds out about them, starts clicking the same button and the market is saturated overnight.
The path to profit is gaining specialized knowledge and information. What does that mean? That means becoming an expert. Buying "how to" products. Learning what you're doing. Becoming better at it than the next guy.
What Jon taught me is that the words you bid on have vastly different conversion ratios. What often happens is that you bid on a word that gives you high clicks and almost no sales. That will screw up your numbers really fast.
So you track everything and kick out the words that don't produce. You have to tweak and prune. You do that and you'll soon be profitable!
The price of profit is study and experimentation. Everybody I know who makes money in this business makes it by working at it.
For example, I ran across this helpful stat:
43% of all clicks go to the number 1
16% to the number 2 spot
9% to third result.
If that is true, then it gives you important information for your bidding!
You'll find out about all the little tricks. For example, Overture has a spreadsheet where you can bid on your words in mass. Submit a whole bunch of words all at once. That's pretty cool.
You can also use their "Keyword Suggestion Tool". Just type in your word and Overture will suggest other words for you that are similar.
Once you know how much you're making from an associate program on a dollars-per-click basis, you theoretically should be able to buy lots of traffic and make money.
The only hang up with that theory is your conversions. First of all, your sponsor's conversions will fluctuate within a range due to random variation. Some days and weeks you will convert more due to pure random chance and influences.
What's more, all traffic is not created equal. You can convert a high percentage of visitors to sales from one source of traffic and a low percentage from another source.
Traffic quality is everything.
Every now and then we get an email from an associate who says he/she sent us lots of "hits" or "clicks" and didn't make a sale. They want to know why.
The answer is that "hits" or "click" mean nothing. Where did the traffic come from? What is the quality of the traffic? How does the traffic match or fit the program being promoted?
Those are the questions you have to answer.
In our associate program we see the traffic that comes through our site. We can see every visitor and how long they spend on our site.
We will see traffic come through from a source that is obviously some form of very poor paid advertising. The visitors will stay on the page only a few seconds and NEVER click to a page two.
It makes me wonder if the advertising the person purchased is really a computer program that generates false click throughs. Why? Because if real people were involved, by default someone would click to page two sooner or later.
So the old saying "buyer beware" holds true. Don't buy a large amount of advertising from any source until you test a small quantity and make sure the traffic is good quality.
Why There Is No Such Thing As Cost Per Impression or Cost Per Click
Let's say you send 1,000 visitors to a sponsor or affiliate program. You buy those visitors from a pay-per-click search engine for a .10 each. In
U.S. money, that is $100. Now, let's say you made two sales.
What you really paid is $50 per sale. You spent $100 to make 2 sales. So those two sales cost you $50 each. If you made 10 sales from the same traffic, your sales would have cost you $10 each.
What I'm saying is, ultimately there is no such thing as pay-per-click. All you really have is pay-per-sale. You bought traffic. You made 10 sales.
The 10 sales cost you $10 each. As long as your affiliate program pays you more than $10 per sale, then you made money.
Your goal is to double your money at bare minimum. Triple is better. So here are a few bottom line figures for you.
Assume a conversion ratio of 1/2 of 1%. That is low for some sites. High for others. But it's a good figure to use as an example. That means you make 5 sales for every 1,000 visitors you send your affiliate program or sponsor.
If you pay .10 each for those visitors or $100, and you make 5 sales, each sale costs you $20. So your affiliate program needs to be paying you a
$40 to $60 commission for those numbers to work for you.
If they're only paying you $20 a pop, then you need double the conversion. You better be converting 1% of your visitors to sales.
Let's say you're on a pay-per-click search engine and that primo top spot costs you .50 per click. What are the numbers?
For every 1000 clicks, you're going to pay U.S. $500. Let's say your program turns 10 of those clicks into buyers. You have $50 a pop invested in each sale.
If you want to double your money, you better be getting $100 per sale. To triple your money, you need $150 per sale. Either that, or you need a higher conversion percentage than 1%.
Let's say your program converts 2%. Now what are the numbers? You have 20 sales. 500 divided by 20 equals 25. Each sale costs you 25 smackers.
To double your money, you need a commission of 50 bucks a pop from your affiliate program sponsor.
Why cost per impression doesn't exist
Same story. You go to a banner advertising network and buy 10,000 impressions for the same $500. You get 1000 clicks when your banner runs.
Your cost per click was .50.
But cost-per-click means nothing. You can't bank that. You can't buy food with it. You must have sales. So you get 1,000 clicks and the same 20 sales. You're back to the same numbers as above.
The point is, in actuality, you aren't buying impressions. And you aren't buying clicks. The only thing that matters to you as an affiliate is cost-per-sale.
What if your program isn't giving you conversion rates that are profitable for you? Or they aren't paying you as high a commission as you'd like.
What do you do?
You have to try to increase your conversion ratio. The way you do that is by writing an endorsement for the product and placing it on your web site. By adding testimonials or other proof the product works. By displaying photos of the product.
You have to work on your end BEFORE the click to increase the results AFTER the click.
Perhaps you ask people to contact you if they have questions about the product. Perhaps you use one of the instant messaging systems to allow people to contact you live with their questions.
Another thing you can do is juice up the incentive to subscribe to your mailing list. That way, you can follow up with your prospective customer more than one time.
This puts the odds in your favor.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
This article courtesy of Marlon Sanders'
"Associate Program Marketing Handbook"
For 22 other ways to get more traffic and
sell more associate program products grab
your copy of the Associate Handbook today!
Click here and download it now!
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
"Inside Information Shows Exactly How Ordinary Folks Are Making Millions Online, And How You Can Too!"
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