Storytelling your way to a great product

Never forget you are a storyteller. If you are a good storyteller, you will create an excellent product. Your ability to arrange the facts into a story and add a storyteller's character to the plot is what seperates a excellent product from a good collection of research. When you lose sight of storytelling, you lose sight of your reader and your ability to convey information.

Links are Precious and Content is King

I remember the day when I first got my SLIP account working and I was on the Internet. There really wasn't much to see. In a short time I learned about Mosaic and I was intrigued with what could happen. Never did I dream we would be where we are today. The technology was rapidly absorbed by everyone.

It brings me to the topic of where search has lead us. For such a long time now, every underhanded trick in the book to fool the search engines has been used. But for the last year or so all the search engines have gotten smarter about their content. They are looking for content that other people find appealing. It has become of extreme importance to create new and fresh content that others link to.

Building link farms are a thing of the past. It's going to be the new ideas that build real content that people link to that will succeed for the foreseeable future.

Internet Marketing Plan

Most companies undervalue the need for a complete Internet Marketing Plan. When I talk to people about Internet Marketing, there is always someone who says, I know how to do that, it's Seach Engine Optimization. Well, that's only half the story friends. There is much more to an Internet Marketing Plan.

Getting New Visitors

• Search Engine Optimization


• Pay Per Click (PPC)


• Blog Commenting


• Article Submission


• Press Releases


• Forum Posting


• Linking Strategy

Keeping Old Visitors - Retention

• Making your site sticky


• Unique Selling Proposition


• Creating content


• Forums


• Newsletter


• Email marketing


• Podcasting


• Interactive tools your provide

Measure, Measure, Measure

• Web Log Analysis


• PPC Analysis


• Channel Tracking


• Click-Thru Tracking


• Conversion Tracking

Conversions

• Web Site Usability


• A/B testing


• Testing the sales copy


• Email Squeeze pages


• Testing your message to your market


• Tracking conversions


• PPC


• Up-sell planning


• Cross-sell planning

Creating an auto blog

Did you know that you can email to your blogger account and auto post the emails into your blog? Well you can.

Did you also know that Google offers an excellent service that will email you new web pages or news items related to a keyword or phrase?

Can you imagine how easy it would be to just have Google email your blogger account with new web pages and news items related to your blog?

Without any work on your part, you can create an auto blog that is on topic and relevant.

Outsourcing to India and China

I've been reading a book called "the world is flat" it talks about outsourcing to India and China. You may be asking what this has to do with Internet marketing. My answer would be everything.

This book lends importance for people to find new occupations that are not commodity jobs. You can really make Internet Marketing your primary occupation. I am a firm believer in multiple streams of income and becoming well-versed in Internet marketing could be the income stream looking for.

I recommend that you read this book, "the world is flat" it makes some interesting points, but at times it goes off into crazy thoughts about 9/11.

I worked in an organization, were we did a lot of outsourcing to India. I can say that it's a lot different than most people would realize. Did you know that a lot of people working from India are actually working here in the states. They are being put up in homes with five or ten to a home. They can't even afford to buy lunch so their employer subsidizes their pay in order for them to eat.

I'm not saying that I am a firm believer that outsourcing to India is the way to go. But I think it is a lot different than most people realize and I recommend you read a much this book as a good starter.

Marketing your product or service on the web

All long-term web site traffic begins and ends with great content on your web site. Sure, there are lots of ways to trick the search engines and people into getting to your web site. But if you really want to build long-term relationships and long-term traffic to your web site. You really need to focus on creating original quality content. Good content is key to long-term web site traffic.

Of course, building quality content takes time. Everyone's looking for a way around building quality content, because it takes so much time. But one thing to keep in mind, is that you can build your web site over time. Don't get caught up in analysis paralysis. You don't need the perfect web site when you first start. It's more important to get started gradually and build pages one at a time. Walking a mile begins with the first step. It's important to be persistent and keep building your content.

There are lots of ways to build content for your web site. Some of these ways are short-term strategies and some of them are long-term strategies. Anytime you use a short-term strategy, don't use your primary domain name. Use peripheral domains that feed the primary domain.

Short-term strategies for web site traffic.

Page randomization and cross-domain linking

This strategy involves randomizing the content of your web page so the search engine spiders think that the web page is actually unique. This is not a long-term strategy for building web site traffic, because the pages actually would appear the same humans, but they would appear different to search engine web spiders. If humans do not find the content viable they're not going to continue to link to it or read it and they are not going to tell their friends about it.

Another thing you might want to do is incorporate cross domain linking. Search engines will rank your page higher if they think other people are linking to you. Fortunately for you, some search engines don't realize who actually owns the domain names or where they are hosted. Which means that you can own several different domain names all hosted at the same location that link to each other.

The search engines will think that the web pages are actually valuable because people are linking to them. But they don't take into account, who actually owns the domains that are linking to the pages. However, this strategy doesn't work for all search engines. Some search engines are smart enough to actually go and look up the whois information on your web site and determined that you are actually linking to yourself.

For detailed explanation of page randomization and cross domain linking. You need to read my book "How to Make Money with Internet Affiliate Programs" available from my web site http://www.ChrisClark.com

Blog commenting to achieve higher ranking

The strategy involves the creation of links from other places back to your web site. Search engines think that if people link to you that your content is valuable. The advantage of using blogs, that is that most blogs allow you to leave comments. This allows you to actually modify the content within someone's web site aka blog. This strategy will work for anywhere you can change the content of someone's web site. The idea here is to go into their web site and leave comments and within the comments leave a link back to your web site. The creation of many links back to your web site, should cause it to achieve higher ranking because it looks like other people are linking to you.

Participate in forums to achieve higher ranking

This strategy is very similar to the blog commenting strategy. The idea is pretty much the same. In most forums they allow you to create a profile for yourself. In this profile, you're usually allowed to create a signature line that will be at the bottom of all your posts. Ideally you would like to have a signature line that includes a link back your web site. Whenever you reply to a post, your signature is attached and that includes a link to your web site. This allows you to actively participate in forums and at the same time increase the ranking of your web site.

If you participate in forums that relate to your topic of interest, you may be able to kill two birds with one stone with this strategy. By working in forums, you can get new ideas, and you can create articles and expand upon the ideas. Forms are a great source of information just look for questions that people have that remain unanswered. Using forms, you can find topics of interest. Take these back to your web site and create lots of web pages on your site by simply answering the questions that people ask.

Automated page generation

There are many programs out there that allow you to create automated web pages. A lot of these programs deal around the topic of article creation and randomization of the article content by using things such as a thesaurus. There are other programs that incorporate things such as Web scraping, were they take your search engine keywords and I go out and scrape search engine results to pull back text that is associated with your topic. Some of these programs incorporate things such as automated Adsense incorporation and Amazon search results for products.

The quantity and quality vary in these type of applications. There are some that are pretty advanced which allow you to take an originally created article; modify some of the words and phrases within the article; and generate randomized versions of the pages that are human readable.

Article generation programs, I think are pretty cool. In fact have written one recently that I'll be releasing soon.

There are other programs however, that just really create pages that are total nonsense. They don't look human readable, and they look like they were generated by a program. A lot of people can achieve high rankings with his pages, but that's very short-lived. So short-lived, in fact that it's almost useless effort.

Press Releases

All the press releases can really be a long-term strategy. The particular life of any one press release in generating traffic to your web site is usually pretty short. Usually within a very quick timeframe a press release will either get picked up or not. This can generate large amounts of traffic to your web site. If you optimize your press releases to really focus on keywords and phrases that relate to the content of your web site, press releases can be very effective in generating visitors to your web pages. A lot of times you may even be picked up by one of the primary news networks. A highly recommend a good press release strategy for any web site that has a product or service that they're selling. The key to creating good effective press releases is to focus on newsworthy content. If your press release looks like an advertisement it will more than likely make it no further than the circular file. Make sure that when you release a press release it is in fact, newsworthy.

Submission of articles

Create a new unique articles that relates to the content of your web site. Make sure that you include a resource box at the bottom of your article that uniquely identifies you and a link back to your web site. The idea here is very similar to the blogging and forums strategy. What we are trying to accomplish is to get your articles picked up by other web sites. You want to use some type of posting service that will post your article to hundreds or thousands of sites at once.

What you're hoping is someone will pick up your article and find it valuable and post it on their web site, including your resource box of course, with an active link back your web site. You want to achieve lots of sites around the Internet who post your content. Obviously you want their site in some way to relate to your content, because they are posting your article. This would generate lots of on topic links back to your web site which are highly valuable.

Long-term strategies for web site traffic

SEO Copywriting

I think this is really an area where people are making it out to be a lot more complex than it really is. It's just fancy few words for people who generate content that's really geared toward search engines, plain and simple. A lot of people would lead you to believe that there's some sort of voodoo magic involved. There really is not anything to it.

Good copywriting is all that's involved with a focus on the SEO aspects of what a search engine is looking for. There are a lot of people who specialize around the strategy of SEO copywriting, but really this is something you can do yourself. You don't need a so-called expert. If you just focus the content of particular pages on a specific word or phrase that relates to your product or service, you will do just fine. I would highly recommend that you use something like the http://www.ranks.nl keyword prominance and density tools to review your web pages before submitting them to the search engines.

Link building

There are some great tools out there for Link building. The general idea is the same as some of the other short-term strategies. Ideally you're looking for on-topic links from other notable web sites back to your web site. Creating and managing these links over time, will allow you to create a higher ranking in search engines because it will look like you're content is valuable to others. There are other very popular programs like http://www.seoelite.com that allow you to do some of this in an automated fashion.

Pay Per Click

Although pay per click can be a very effective short-term strategy, it really is a very effective long-term strategy. Anytime you're using a pay per click strategy, it is very important to measure everything. You want to measure:

• How many people click on your pay per click link.


• How many people make it to your web site and load the page successfully.


• How many people clicked through your sales page to your product order form.


• How many people actually complete a sale.

Measuring is critical to long-term success. Another thing that you need to master is keyword and phrase management. Wordtracker offers a very popular service for the research for keywords and phrases related to your web site.

Mini-Courses/Newsletters/Email Marketing, yada, yada, yada

I sort of categorize all this stuff together, because really it is maintaining and building an email list overtime. All of these efforts really are geared around offering some free content that gets people to sign up for your e-mail list. Over time, you'll build a relationship with these individuals which will result in sales. As you provide them content they realize that you are a knowledgeable expert. They will build a relationship with you, which will be long-lasting and financially rewarding. For this aspect of my business. I currently use the popular http://www.aweber.com autoresponder e-mail list management system.

Blogging

One of the greatest ways to create content is the concept of blogging. Blogging is a quick and easy way to add original fresh content to your web site. There are many services out there geared around blogging some will even allow you to send pictures and audio to your blog remotely from your mobile phone. Wordpress and Blogger seem to be the big players.

Podcasting

Podcasting is relatively new in the space is really being sorted out right now. But it is very effective mechanism for delivering multimedia content. Google has recently jumped on the bandwagon allowing people to upload video content, which can be free or can be for pay. The whole idea around podcasting is offer audio, video or some type of multimedia content that is regularly updated and provided as an RSS feed. I use the open source audio program called http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ for creating my podcasts.

Adding a forum to your web site

Although we mention forums as a short-term way to build traffic to your web site. They can also be a long-term way to build traffic your web site. The more pages you can get on your web site that are on topic and content rich, the better. I can't think of a better way to create good content than to get people talking about topics.

Ideally you'd like to have a forum where you don't offer signatures, because each link you let someone create from your web site to theirs also brings the page rank down for those individual pages on your site, in essence you are placing a vote of their site by linking to it. So what would be ideal is to have a mechanism for people to post to your forum, but not allow them to have an HTML link in their signature to their web site.

How long should I guarantee my product

My answer is 30 days.

You need to offer a 30 days Money-Back "No Questions Asked" Guarantee. If for ANY reason you feel the product does not exceed your expectations, return it anytime within 30 days. Just email me at with your email address and order number and I will promptly refund your money.

As a business owner, you want to make sure you have all your obligations covered. If you offer a 90 day guarantee or 1 year guarantee. You are saying, I will repay all the money I have received in the last 90 days or 1 year to every customer.

You are not saying, "Well, only about 5% ever return anything, so I'm ok saying 1 year, I'll plan for a 5% return rate."

I think that is unrealistic. If it's a guarantee, you need to be prepared to accept "in total" all the transactions returned at once.

But what if I want to guarantee my products forever... I hear from all the gurus, you get a lower return rate if you do...

The truth is that very few will ever return anything. That's what people are counting on.

If you were to sell your business, would you want to say that "all my customers can return all my products at any time and get their money back" If I were to hear that as a buyer of your business, I would run away.

Although, it's true that most people will never return your product. And, it's also true that it makes you look good to have a guarantee forever.

To me, it's just bad business to leave yourself open-ended forever.

Now, in saying all that, I probably would give anyone there money back if they didn't like my product. Even if the guarantee period has lapsed. That's just a good business practice.

In fact, I would follow up just to get it on the record (via email) that they are a happy customer. But, the choice is mine and I am not obligated to do anything. If you guarantee it, you are obligated and you don't have a choice.

If I had an unhappy customer, I would not want to keep their money, that way, they can't badmouth you to all their friends. It's hard to make a case about how much someone sucks, when they proactively make sure you are happy and gladly proactively refund your money.

Can you imagine this conversation...

Paul:
"Well, that guy is a scammer, he emailed me to ask if I was happy, and I told him hell no, then he gave me the product for free, a free copy of his larger system and he returned my money. But then I told him that wasn't enough, I told him I wouldn't buy his products ever again and I was going to tell all my friends how much they suck. So don't buy from that scammer."

Joe:
"But you got the product for free, you got the big power system, geez I wanted that one, and you got your money back. Damn, that sounds sweet!"

Paul:
"Well, yeah, but that's not the point, That guy is a total shitweasel."

Joe:
"Man, it sounds like you got the deal of the century to me. Paul, maybe you are being unreasonable."

How to create rapid content

One thing, I use to create very rapid content is the program Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

It's an excellent program and once it gets trained to your voice, you can create content as fast as you can talk. In fact, I'm using it right now, to create this entry.

I use it quite regularly to visit forms and answer questions for other folks who are interested in Internet marketing advice. It may appear that I put a lot of effort into creating a large number of forum entries, but in actuality, I'm just talking.

But the results are remarkable. And with a few mouse clicks and a lot of talking. I can answer hundreds of questions within a couple hours.

It's really quite amazing technology. I highly recommend it for other folks who are interested in creating blogs or working quite regularly in forums.

You can even use it on your first information product. If you wish...

What is unique content to Google

I think Google probably can only recognize patterns and large amounts of text. In a past life, I created several search engine robots, and I can tell you that it is a very hard task even with very complex math to determine word proximities in large quantities. To determine patterns in sentences would be ridiculous. You really need a combination of many sentences in order to determine a large pattern. So I don't think Google is looking at small amounts of text. You have to have patterns in large blocks, if at all.

Another interesting question is who is the originator of the content. If I have a web site with 100,000 incoming links am I the authoritative source of the information. Versus the originator of the information who only has 10,000 incoming links. It's an interesting question. What is the criteria for being the originator?

With a simple program like ArticleBot. I think you can create many variations of original content, and they would all appear unique.

Affiliate Marketing is Emotional Selling

Recently I was asked to critique an affiliate web site for home loan program. Here's my response.

The best thing about being an affiliate is to get people to your web site and get them off your web site as soon as possible. You not looking for a long conversational sales letter. You are not looking for people to camp out at your web site and read for hours on end.

I think you need to create a site more centered around the emotions of why you would want to get a home loan. People don't want a loan because they want to fill out a lot of paperwork. They don't want to get a loan because they want to get a great interest rate. You may argue with me about the interest rate but trust me, read on...

People won't the results of having the loan, not the loan itself.

If I were to be the affiliate in your shoes. I would focus on creating a very nice picture of a great family with a nice smile, standing in front of their new home with nice pretty green grass and a pretty white fence. And I would say something very generic like click here to apply now.

You want to focus on the emotions of the sale. Get inside someone's head. Figure out what they're looking for. And paint a pretty picture that fulfills that emotion.

Affiliate marketing is nothing but emotional selling, and once you master the emotions of selling, You will have mastered affiliate marketing.

Read my book on how I made $189,000 with a one-page web site. It's all about affiliate marketing. It is a good story in there about emotions and creating a page for emotional selling.