March 2007 archive
It’s 1030am and on the sidelines of Jo Han Mok’s Warp Speed Internet Marketing workshop:
I was looking through my blog and got tagged by Dawud Miracle for the Goal Setting meme originally started by Alex Shalman and have gone through eMom Wendy Piersall (winner of the recent Elite Retreat ticket)
Having taught life skills and goal setting specifically, I’ve noticed that many don’t include the following criteria: goals have to be:
- Specific: Include a measurement, so you’ll know when you’ve achieved it (a net worth of $x million, rather than merely “really rich!”)
- Time Specific: You need a timeframe. Theoretically we could all be millionaires, even if we’re earning just $1,000 a month. The problem is that at that rate, you might need to work till 305 years to achieve it. So goals don’t mean much without the time factor.
- Realistic: I use a “reality check” factor. If you’re a complete computer idiot, and you’re gunning for $1 million in your first year in Internet Marketing and you can spend 30 minutes a week on this. You might get slammed hard against the wall when you meet Mr Reality.
There’re other criteria too, but I’ll spare you the gory details.
So here’re my goals: (more…)
Linkbaiting on social networks like MyBlogLog, MySpace and BumpZEE is common, especially when Internet Marketers use pictures of bikini-clad women as their avatar.
While there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the practice, I feel that it sets up expectations that the blogger or website owner will have to deliver on once the visitor lands on your page.
If you can keep your readers happy, you’ve laid the foundation for a successful and low cost (possibly free) traffic generation model.
The sad reality is that more than 90% of the sites using such techniques have average (and usually sub-standard) poor content.
At best, this is gimmicky in my opinion and best used for one-off, throwaway adsense-oriented traffic.
But if you’re a serious Internet Marketer in this for the long haul, you’d do much better to build your brand, which means either using your photograph, or an image which represents your online presence.
Iconic Avatars: Michael “GrayWolf” Gray, Jim Kukral, Rasheed Ali, Robyn Tippins, Todd “StuntDubl” Malicoat, Shawn Collins, Chris “Drinkbait” Hooley, Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker.
Credibility and reputation are essential to your long term success, and being consistent in your online branding build rapport with your visitors. Consistent branding will bring you (more…)
Is this you?
I’ve had the chance to talk to a number of aspiring Internet Marketers (aspiring because they haven’t started yet) over the past couple of weeks and frankly, I’m shocked at some of the expectations.
“I want you to set up an online business, which will make me lots of money on a long term basis, and I don’t have to do anything. Oh yeah, and I’m not willing to pay you much for it”
I don’t know about you, but some people are seriously out of touch with reality…
If there are expectations that someone would spent time and resources creating online businesses which generate huge, long term income and do it on the cheap, there is a major disconnect with reality.
And we’re not even talking about the 15 minute worth of setup for niche research, traffic gen and monetization efforts Kris Jones alluded to during Elite Retreat which I mentioned in “PepperJam’s Kris Jones Dishes Out Super Affiliate Marketing Tips” yesterday.
The expectations I am talking about are to have a complete, turnkey, self-sustaining business where all they have to do is to sit back and count their profits every day.
If you’ve every had these thoughts, or even worse still harbor them, please note, you could be setting yourself up for business suicide if these are your thoughts about Internet Marketing.
There’s an adage that goes:
If you do nothing, nothing will happen.
If you do something, something will happen.
“Something” may not always be what you want, or even what you expect, but “something” goes beyond earning your first $10 off an affiliate marketing, CPA or adsense campaign.
“Something” often translates into cold hard experience, which goes beyond what any ebook, system, seminar, workshop or coaching program can give you.
Obviously it’s helpful if you’ve (more…)
I had a blast at Affiliate Summit West this past January (though it seems like a year ago…) and besides meeting up with luminaries like Shoemoney, Scott Jangro, Shawn Collins, the enigmatic e-book “crusade” Jon F of WickedFire, PlanetAndrea, a major highlight was meeting PepperJam head honcho Kris Jones in the flesh.
PepperJam head honcho Kris Jones and Andrew Wee at Affiliate Summit West, Jan 2007
If you’ve been reading the PepperJamBlog for any length of time, you’d discover a treasure trove of information and can bump up your Internet Marketing efforts.
In his latest post “Affiliate Marketing – Thinking Outside the Box“, Kris dishes out the dirt on how he recently executed a campaign grossing $30,000 in sales, netting $15,000 in profit. And while some Super Affiliates may net six or seven figures in income per month, consider that Kris spent 15 minutes setting up this campaign.
So Kris has made a killing off UGG Boots.
How would he further enhance his efforts? (more…)
New bloggers take note, you will for the most part be invisible unless you list yourself on the relevant directories and you’ll soon see a surge in traffic headed to your blog.
Blogging newbies might try submitting their blogs to the search engines and perhaps the Dmoz open directory project.
For the biggest bang for your buck, however, you’d likely want to google for “blog directory” and “rss directory” and list the high authority directories. Though it can be a somewhat mindnumbing process to submit the same data over and over again, it will result in sustained and long term traffic if done correctly.
Once accepted, you will have a backlink (with possible Google Pagerank of 3 or higher) helping you rank in the search engines for your keywords and key phrases.
One of my favorite directories continues to be Blog Explosion which incorporate various fun elements (which generate traffic too).
For details, you can read the earlier post: Explode your blog traffic with Blog Explosion
Take heed affiliate marketers! I’ve noticed that a few high profile product owners have implemented some practices which could potentially be detrimental to your affiliate marketing efforts.
I’d typically recommend looking for high converting affiliate programs for newer Internet Marketers.
After all, while you’re getting your feet wet, you might like to focus on traffic generation and your marketing efforts (the conversion has a lot to deal with the product owners sales/landing page) and rather than get into the thick of product development immediately, you can sell someone’s product first (ie. affiliate marketing).
So if a product owner has switched their sales pages to an opt-in page, it could have major implications for your marketing efforts.
An opt-in page is designed to help build the product owner’s list.
Ostensibly an opt-in page consists of:
- A catchy headline
- 5-7 bullets
- A form for you to fill in your name and email address
Seems simple.
Here’s an example of an opt-in page, Rick Raddatz’s Wednesday Minute (it’s got a funny video on it).
A sales page looks like what you’d see at the Secret Blog Weapon sales page. It’s much longer and pushes for the sale (which is what will continue to keep you in Internet Marketing) (more…)
