Are domain names really important?

Commission Blueprint video 5 speaks about choosing appropriate domain names for your Adwords campaign, and places to both register your domains and also to get ideas.  He gives four places to get ideas for useful domains names.  Steve’s comments are interesting and maybe counter-intuitive.  Some of them, anyway.  And I’m really pleased he suggests NameCheap as a place to register them.  They are excellent.

There is a very popular domain registrar that’s often recommended by marketers that should never be used.

Steve also talks about web hosting.  All great advice in general.

Are you beginning to see how complete this course is?  And great value for the money, in my opinion.

Real advice from people who walk the talk, and that’s becoming more rare in this business.

Keywords are the lifeblood of all Internet Marketing! (You may quote me!)

All online activity involves searching for products and information based on keywords and key phrases (or tags as they’re often called).  If you’re looking for something in any search engine, you have to type in the term or phrase describing the thing you’re after.  The more specific the search term is, the more focussed and specific the results will be.  The converse is also true.  If I do a search for “golf” in Google, at the time of writing there are 619 million results.  That’s 619 with six zeros.  A lot!  The results are very general as well, especially on the early pages.

If I type in nike golf clubs, there are 537,000 listings.  They are much more specific.  If I put those three words in quotation marks: “nike golf clubs”, then I get 106,000 listings.  Very focussed and specific.  The quotation marks tell Google that I wanted results for exactly “nike golf clubs”.  All three words together exactly as shown.  Without the quotes, I get results for all three words separately, and in any order as well.

Commission Blueprint spends quite a bit of time talking about keywords.  Video 4 is in 3 parts and covers methods of generating a list of keywords to consider.

Our aim is to sell our product (in this case a Clickbank affiliate product) using Google’s Adwords pay per click advertising system.  We need to find keywords and keyphrases people are actually using to search for products in our marketplace.  We’d love lots of people to view our advert and click on our sales page.  But we also want them to be people actually interested, as each click costs us money.  We then have to make sure that the profit we make on the product is higher than we pay Google for the clicks.

Commission Blueprint describes two main methods of generating appropriate keyword lists.  One uses paid products, the other uses methods that are free.  The expected cost per click and traffic is then calculated, so we know where we stand.  Some assumptions are then made for conversion rates, and the data is put into the provided formula.  Immediately we can see whether the campaign is likely to be profitable. neat as !

The information presented in video 4 is incredibly useful to anyone using adwords, whether or not they’re using this blueprint.

Tags: Commission Blueprint

The best way to online success is to follow a blueprint that’s been proven to work.  Commission Blueprint is exactly that.

Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey have been quietly making large sums of money from affiliate products sourced from Clickbank, and marketing them using Google Adwords.  Commission Blueprint describes their method succinctly, and in a way that’s easily reproducible.

In a series of 14 high-quality videos, Steve explains and demonstrates their system in a step-by-step method that anyone can follow.  The first couple of videos are an introduction to Commission Blueprint, and how to get the most out of the product.

Video 3 describes the process they use to choose what products to market.  This is a vital part of the process, and one most marketers don’t do.  They provide a formula that identifies a potentially successful product before any commitment to time or money is made.  A lot of products can’t possibly succeed using PPC (pay per click) marketing, as the cost of clicks is too high for the commission paid on the product.  A simple method for choosing initial products to consider using Clickbank data is presented.  A more rigorous formula can then be applied to these.

Imagine how much more successful you could be by simply eliminating products that just can’t work.  Instead of wasting money and effort on Adwords campaigns that are doomed to failure, you concentrate on those that have a good chance of being profitable.  The method is one they have used over time, and proven to be pretty accurate.

This process alone is worth the whole cost of the product, in my opinion.  Imagine online success!

Tags: Commission Blueprint, Imagine Online Success

I’ve always said that the way to achieve success online is to follow a proven method or blueprint.

“It’s easy when you follow a plan.”  Why reinvent the wheel?  Look at what’s working, and essentially do the same thing.  Then improve on the formula and set yourself ahead of the pack.

Affiliate Marketing isn’t new.  You sell someone else’s product for a share in the proceeds.  You find a product that you like, that fits into your “sales funnel”,  has proven itself to be popular, and has an affiliate program associated with it.  You market that product, and part of the proceeds of the sale is returned to you. You don’t have to create a product or do any support.  All you do is market it, and get paid.  It’s by far the quickest and easiest way to generate an online income.

You can market the product in any of the many ways possible.  Article marketing.  SEO.  Adwords.  Social Networks.  Etc.

The quickest way to see results is undoubtedly Adwords.  You can set up a campaign and have Google display your adverts in 15 minutes or less.  Amazing  really.

Just one problem.  It’s possible to lose a lot of money on adwords.  ( shhhhh .. I speak from experience!)

But, if you know the little tricks and twists, it possible to make substantial, regular income.

Ok, how do we find affiliate programs?  Well, lots of ways, but the quickest and simplest is to use Clickbank.  Clickbank has thousands of products you can sell as an affiliate by simply joining.  And it’s free. Wonderful!

So, it’s possible in the space of an hour or so, to join Clickbank, choose a product to market, set up an adwords campaign, and make some profit in the next 24 hours.

It’s also possible to flop.  The difference?  A blueprint proven to work.

Commission Blueprint!

Tags: Commission Blueprint

Imagine online success using Adwords?

There are marketers making really good money driving instant, qualified traffic to their websites or landing pages using Google’s Adwords.

There are marketers who have lost money using Adwords and given up, complaining about the “Google Slap”.

And there are many, many marketers who are still hanging on, perhaps making a small amount of money each month.  Better some than none, for sure.  But how do the really successful people make the huge sums we’d all like?

Firstly, is it worthwhile even contemplating using Adwords?  If so many marketers are just barely breaking even,  might it be better to use some other medium for getting traffic?  Well, for a lot of people, it might be.  John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0 mentions many different traffic sources to consider.

But here’s what John says on CD 8: “If you’re going to do just one thing in this entire course, then I want you to at least just master Google Adwords …”

Wow!  That’s good enough for me.  He then goes on to explain why.  He also says: ” … in order to maximize the profit you make from Adwords, it takes work.”    Gee, that has to suck.

Okay, so what we want is a reproducible, money-making system or blueprint or business plan that is proven to work with Google Adwords.  We need to minimise the amount of trial and error and testing we have to do.  We want something that’s already proven to work in principle, so our efforts go into profit-producing activities, not into reinventing the wheel.

Ta da!

I’ve found just such a product.  I’ll tell you what it is tomorrow.  Prepare to be impressed.

Tags: Google Adwords, Traffic Secrets 2.0

In the last post, we suggested that online success was directly proportional to how much of the Internet you owned.

If you accept that, then you can increase your on-line income by building more sites.  But most marketers hate building web pages, or just don’t know how.  It’s actually not all that hard building web pages if you are well organised and plan the whole site before you start.

But it is boring and incredibly time-consuming.  And unless pages are structured well, making changes and doing updates can involve a fair amount of repetitive work.

I’ve been evaluating a software product that makes the job so much easier.  I must say: I’m impressed.

As Google is clever at detecting sites made with automated software and often penalises them, I’ve always looked at such software with suspicion.  This package is different, though.

There are no standard templates included.  Deliberately.  Therefore your site is likely to look quite different to John’s.  Or Juli’s.  Hence no discernible “footprint” to attract the wrath of Google.  There is a great deal of flexibility as to the layout, and what’s included.  The package is easy to use.  It’s inexpensive.  It’s very clever.

I’m planning on doing a complete adsense/affiliate site design on video to show just how simple and versatile this program is.

You’ll love it !

Tags: Imagine Online Success, Virtual Real Estate

In Traffic Secrets 2, John Reese says: “If you want more traffic, you need to own more of the Internet.”

And that makes a lot of sense.  Actually, everything John says makes a lot of sense! Think about it … if you have a one-page website amongst the billions that exit, what are the chances of getting a big slice of the available traffic?  Common sense suggests your chances are slim.  Even if you uber-optimise that one page for one search term, you can only get a tiny percentage of the available traffic.  But imagine having hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages.  All optimised for different search terms.  Your percentage of the world’s indexed web pages are higher, and so will your traffic be.

How many web pages are indexed by the search engines?  Billions!  In August 2005, Yahoo said on their search blog: “for those who are curious this update includes just over 19.2 billion web documents, 1.6 billion images, and over 50 million audio and video files.”  Wow!  And that was 3 years ago.  Google used to mention the number of pages they have indexed on their home page, but both Google and Yahoo stopped doing that since 2005.  Exactly how many pages are indexed today is anyone’s guess, but I’d be thinking at least two or three times the 2005 figure.  The number of multi-media files would be astronomically higher, however.

So, imagine online success? - build more websites, own more virtual real-estate.

Oh, that’s easy.  You just buy up those adsense sites containing several hundred pages with content, and slap them up on a cheap host.  Right?

Wrong !

Very, very wrong!

Why?  Because that’s what everyone else does.  Google doesn’t display lots of duplicate content, and the chances of your site actually being displayed and attracting traffic is slight.  Moreover, Google is clever enough to recognise website “footprints”.  Pages made with automatic generator software, and/or sold in bulk have a distinctive pattern to their code that Google can recognise.  Google’s main aim is to provide fresh, quality results and content to humans searching the Internet using it’s search engine.  Hundreds of old, identical websites just don’t cut it.  Period.

Ok, so what to do ?

Stay tuned!

Tags: Imagine Online Success, Internet Marketing, Traffic Secrets 2.0, Virtual Real Estate, web traffic

It arrived a few days ago!

Yes, the much-awaited Traffic Secrets 2.0 physical course from John Reese.

Imagine Online Success?  Then you absolutely must get John’s course if you don’t already have it.

The box contains : 12 video CDs - very nicely produced;  an enormous printed and bound 373-page training guide;  a spiral-bound workbook; and several blueprints.

But that’s only the beginning.  There’s a members-only forum that’s already amazingly active, and piles of on-line resources.  You also get a down-loadable copy of John’s previous Traffic Secrets 1 course that sold for $1000 4 years ago.

Whereas a lot of marketers today are using continuity programs to guarantee continuous residual income, John is providing life-time free upgrades for the one, initial purchase price.  Interesting.

I’ve had a quick look at the content, and I’m impressed — but more on the program later.

Tags: Imagine Online Success, online marketing, Traffic Secrets 2.0, web traffic

Membership sites and continuity programs have been around a long time.  Well before the Internet was.

Years ago, I was a member of a Record of the Month Club.  Back in the days when records were made of vinyl, they were played on a turntable with a needle running in physical grooves in the record, and spun at 78 rpm.  Yeah, I’m old!

Every month they’d send me an LP (record) in my chosen music genre and bill me.  I could keep it and pay, send it back and not pay, cancel at any time, etc.  As part of the membership, I’d also get a monthly catalogue of all the albums they had available, and could buy them at a discount.  I thought it was great.

You can probably think of something similar you’re in, have been in, or that your parents were members of.  Book of the Month Club, recipe cards, craft cards, Reader’s Digest, magazine subscriptions, even gym membership.

It’s a great concept.  For members, there has to be some benefit or perceived benefit.  “Get a pack of 25 full colour recipe cards each month that build into a complete library.  Get your free plastic storage box in month 3, and a complete cross-referenced index in month 5″.  By paying a small monthly fee, members get a complete, simple to use recipe system on cards.  Notice the extra free benefits at month 3 and 5.  That’s designed to keep members enrolled.

For the company involved, it’s great too.  They make the sale once, then all they have to do is keep the customer interested enough to stay a  member.  Each month, they make money. Ka-ching! They don’t have to find new customers each month. And that’s why they are also called Continuity Programs.  Everyone wins.

Naturally, this very successful off-line marketing concept has also found its way into Internet Marketing.

A while ago, all the major marketers were singing the praises of membership sites and continuity programs, and either setting them up themselves, or selling software to set up your own.  Many didn’t survive.  There’s a right and wrong way to set up such sites, and I’ll talk about that in a future post.

By the same token, many did very well, and have produced a substantial and consistent income.  It might be something to consider to differentiate you in your chosen niche.

Some people also made huge amounts of money by selling their successful sites.  More on that later, too.

There is one other huge benefit for the owner of a membership site or continuity program: a captive audience to whom you can offer other products, programs, and services.  They already know you, trust you, and like you — they will certainly open your mail.  Response rates are far better than marketing to the usual e-mail lists.  Imagine online success?  Consider membership sites!

Next post I’ll talk about Forced Continuity Programs.  Are they ethical?

Tags: continuity programs, forced continuity programs, Imagine Online Success, Internet Marketing, Membership Sites

So, what’s news in Internet marketing?

Perhaps arguably one of the most significant events has been the release of John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0 system.

On August 17, 2004, John Reese made Internet Marketing history by pulling in over $1,000,000 in sales in less than 24 hours for the launch of a new product - and he did it without spending anything on advertising! In the intervening 4 years, a lot has changed.  Traffic Secrets 2.0 has therefore been eagerly awaited by Internet marketers. Me included!  I’ll have a lot more to say later - John surprised me on a number of counts.

One trend I’ve noticed over the past few months is the use of “forced continuity programs” by a number of leading marketers.  Frankly, it’s disturbing.  Some are upfront about what they’re doing; but some aren’t.  The wording of some of the sales letters are misleading, some are downright sneaky.  To his credit, one well-known marketer changed his sales letter to make the situation much clearer — I’m guessing after getting negative feedback from clients and other marketers.

I’ll explain exactly what these programs are in future posts, and my personal experience with a few of them.

One interesting thing though.   A handful of the top marketers all released products with forced continuity at about the same time.  It’s as if they all got together and came up with a new plan to rip everyone off.

I’ve noticed another trend too.  And it’s s good one!

Before many of the bigger launches, as part of the pre-launch … instead of just teasing in a sales letter, or creating artificial scarcity, marketers are actually giving away really useful free information.  Usually in the form of one or more videos.  Neat.

I’ll talk about membership sites and continuity programs next time.

Tags: continuity programs, Internet Marketing, Membership Sites