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I'll Take You By The Hand and I'll Show You The Exact Results of All the Internet Marketing Strategies and Tactics That I Personally Test and Use Every Single Month...

Little Known Link Building Tactics

by John on April 10th, 2009 in Search Engine Optimisation

No matter how good your blog or website, you need links from other relevant sites to generate traffic.

How do you get to any website or blog? You click a link! So, the more links you can get to your site, the more likely people will click them. The trick is to position those links on sites where your target audience hangs out. Not only will you get relevant traffic, you'll also demonstrate to the search engines that those sites are confident enough in the quality and relevance to link to you.

When link building I strongly recommend that you have an end in mind and you use a natural link building strategy. A site that suddenly gets thousands of links overnight will almost certainly be flagged as unusual. Whereas a site that incrementally grows in link popularity over time in a natural way will be undoubtedly accepted without question.

Natural links will come from a variety of sources:

  • Article Directories
  • Press Releases
  • Relevant Blogs
  • Forums
  • Directories
  • Authority sites
  • Bookmarking Sites
  • Social Networking sites

Natural links will also come from sites with a broad range of "rank". So it's important that you don't focus all your attention of getting links from sites with high page rank. While a site with a high PR will afford you greater benefit, it's important that you spread your link building efforts over sites with lower page rank too.

One of the most important link building aspects to remember is that incoming links shouldn't all focus on your home page. Natural links will point to pages deep within your web site.

One of the single best link building tips I can give you is to get what I would describe as piggyback links......{+}

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Payment Buttons – The Test Results

by John on March 27th, 2009 in Testing & Tracking

If you've done even just a small amount of online shopping, I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that you've seen a lot of alternative payment buttons.

Some of the more common ones include the text: "Purchase Now", "Buy Now", "Add to Cart", "Download Now" and many more.

Not only is there such a wide range of alternative texts, you'll also see buttons in every colour of the rainbow! Speaking of colour, what does the colour red suggest to you? It is usually associated with danger or the need to stop, so why would you choose red for a payment button? I can tell you that red buttons are among the worst performers.

Having tested a diverse range of text and colour combinations, I can confirm that the optimum results were achieved with blue, green and grey buttons that were compatible with the design of the site. Good conversions were obtained from buttons with the text "Add to Cart", although there is another choice of text that outperformed all others.. ...{+}

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Testing A New Offer With PPC Traffic

by John on March 24th, 2009 in Pay Per Click

When launching a new product, or when promoting a new offer as an affiliate, it's important to be sure that you will make a profit. After all there's no point in driving traffic to a product that will result in you making a loss.

When testing a new product, or affiliate offer, I much prefer to use targeted PPC (Pay Per Click) traffic. PPC offers a fast and economical solution, it allows you to manage the process and it also allows you to test individual keyword phrases. And, I'll explain later why your choice of keyword phases is critically important during the initial testing phrase.

When setting up a PPC campaign you have a couple of choices. You can direct the traffic directly to the sales page, you can send traffic to a squeeze page or you can set up a specific landing page to pre-sell the offer.

My own preference is to drive traffic to a squeeze page.

Sending traffic directly to the offer page, or even a pre-selling landing page, is a one shot deal. The visitor either buys the product or they don't. However, driving traffic to a squeeze page gives you the opportunity to communicate with the visitor for as long as they remain subscribed to your list.

Anyway, here's why it's critically important to choose your keyword phrases with precision.. ...{+}

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Four Email Subject Line Tactics

by John on March 10th, 2009 in Email Marketing

Keep your emails focused on a single topic. If you must publish emails with multiple topics, emphasise the most compelling or time sensitive one in your subject line.

Use numbers to grab the readers attention. For example, "Only 18 Copies Left," "Top 10 Traffic Tips," "5 Green Things to Do Today," "7 Reasons To Start A Blog," etc. When used to support your content and call to action, numbers can add greatly to your open rate.

Create a sense of urgency by using terms such as "RSVP," "Today," "This Weekend Only," and phrases such as "only a few" and "strictly limited". However, avoid using the word "free" - it does tend to trigger the spam filters.

It's important to maintain contact with your readers even when you may not have a specific message or promotion to send out. In those circumstances you can link your subject to a seasonal event. For example Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and National holidays. Similarly you can link to a current news item with your niche - such as "Interest Rates Rise For Bloggers"

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Building Your Twitter Network

by John on March 9th, 2009 in Social Marketing

Twitter is becoming more and more popular as it moves into mainstream awareness. You can virtually guarantee a boost in growth when you see celebrities jumping on board.

While I have my own personal Twitter account with around 6,000 followers at the time of writing. I have also been testing niche networking by setting up accounts to target specific groups based on keyword searches.

Although it's to early to report accurate recommendations, I can share with you some specific tactics that enabled me to grow the number of followers quite quickly and to generate a reasonable level of earnings from my efforts.

As you'll probably already know, I'm a big fan of automation and the first thing I'm going to suggest is that you invest in the Twitter Friend Adder. It's a desktop application that allows you to find followers on the basis of a keyword search and it will also identify other people's followers.

Now, some people may think that it's a "black hat" tool. However, if used responsibly I think it's a great time saver.

Let's just take a moment... There's an unwritten expectation that the rules of reciprocation apply to Twitter. That is.. there's an expectation that if you follow someone, they will reciprocate and follow you.

So, if you were to use Twitter Friend Adder to find a follow 100 people, you'd expect that those 100 people would in turn follow you. It doesn't always work out like that. In my experience you can expect around 80% of the people that you follow to reciprocate.

So let's discuss how to automate the next steps..

If you haven't already got a Tweet Later account, then sign up right now. Inside your dashboard you'll see an "Account" tab in the right hand sidebar and when you click that you can add, edit and configure the settings for each of your twitter accounts.

When you add or edit your account you'll see that there's a "Optional Automation" where you can set an Automatic welcome message. I suggest that you simply say "Thanks you for following me. Click here to learn more.. [add your link here]"

Of course you should have a dedicated Twitter landing page where you they can download a free report.

There's something else that you must include on your landing page......{+}

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The Three Stages Of Buying

by John on March 2nd, 2009 in Internet Marketing

Although impulse purchases are not unknown, the majority of people who make a purchase go through a series of stages within the entire buying process.

Many buying decisions don't even start out as such, they begin with the identification of a problem and initiate the need for more information about that problem. Having researched the problem, most people then move on to looking for suitable solutions within a range of parameters that are specific to their situation. Having reviewed their options they then move on to making a choice and completing a purchase.

The question is..

Does your marketing funnel provide the best response at each stage in the process?

Watch the video below to learn how you can dramatically increase you success.....{+}

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Testimonials With A Twist

by John on February 20th, 2009 in Traffic Tactics

Giving testimonials for other people's products and services can be a great way of driving traffic to your website. Most website owners will display your name and your website address as a live link below your testimonial.

The vast majority of hosting services provide you with statistics showing how many people visit your site and studying those statistics will pinpoint the sources of your traffic. when studying my stats I notice around 50-60 visitors each week from just one testimonial on a fairly popular website. This may not seem a lot, but multiply that by several relevant sites and it can prove to be an excellent source of targeted traffic which is, of course, free.

If you need a little help in learning how to write testimonials are more likely to be used, then take a look at websites which allow customers, and others, to post reviews. For example go to Amazon.com and select a category which is relevant to your niche, then select the bestselling books in that category. For each of the most popular books check out the user reviews, looking especially to those reviews where a high proportion of those people found the review helpful.

Now read those reviews and pay attention to the type of  jargon that is used, look at how the best reviews are presented and the style of writing. Use those reviews as a template for your testimonials. Please do not copy the reviews, simply use them as a model on which to base your own impression of a product or service for which you are providing a testimonial.

Your testimonial is much more likely to be used if you provide examples of specific results, rather than writing generalisations. For example:

"Following John's List Building Master Class enabled me to increase my subscriber optin rate from 8% to an incredible 33% in just two weeks."

OK, now on to the twist.....{+}

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Don’t Create Your Product Until You Know It Will Sell!

by John on February 18th, 2009 in Product Creation

If I had a dollar for everyone who had told me about the great idea they had for a product, how they'd invested lots of time and hard earned cash in development, only to discover it wouldn't sell.. I'd be incredibly rich!

My response to these folks is simple.. Don't spend a penny on product development until you've tested the market. In fact, don't develop anything until you know what your customers really want.

Here's my proven approach to validating an idea that you think might have potential..

1. Consider your idea in terms of benefits. List every single way that you think your target market would benefit from your product.

2. Choose what you believe to be the top three benefits and write a single headline for each of your three primary benefits. Then turn that headline into a question.

3. Set up three landing pages each with the headline and a short survey with a maximum of five questions. My "Survey Cash Machine" script (Free for Premium Members) was designed for product surveys.

Your questions should be designed to discover if the respondent would be willing to buy the product, the format in which the product should be provided and the price that they would be willing to pay.

4. Set up a split test with AdTestPro (Free for Premium Members) or a similar script to deliver the three pages and then use a Pay Per Click service such as Adwords to drive targeted traffic to your landing page.

5. After they have completed the survey, ask them to opt-in to an early bird notification list to qualify for a special pre-launch discount.

6. After they have confirmed their subscription, send them to a relevant One-Time-Offer. If you don't have an OTO, send them to a presell page for a competitive product through your affiliate link.

7. When you have enough data, analyse the results to uncover the features and benefits that your target audience are willing to pay for. Then create your product to that specification. (Don't get carried away and over-engineer the solution - stick to what your potential customers have asked for)

Important: This is the point of no return. Do not under any circumstances go ahead with any product development unless and until you know with absolute certainty that there's a real demand for a product and that people will be willing to spend cash for it. Remember, you job is to solve people's problems and deliver the solutions to those problems as benefits.

8. Before you launch your product to the public, set up basic pre-launch sales copy with a conditional offer. Notify your survey list that they can get a discount on condition that they test/use the product and give you a review and/or a testimonial.

9. Bring your sales copy up to standard, add your testimonials and launch your product.

By following the above strategy, you won't need to create your product until you already know the exact features that it should include, precisely how it should be positioned and you'll have a small list to kick start your initial launch.

By monetising the back end of your survey, you'll also generate profits even before you create your product.  And, if your survey demonstrates that your product is a no-go, you'll probably at least break even on your PPC costs.

Download links:...{+}

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Measure What’s Important

by John on February 17th, 2009 in Internet Marketing

Way back in 1978 I worked for the British Bata Shoe Company as a Factory Manager running a footwear manufacturing operation which employed almost 2,000 people and had a business turnover of around £14Million (Approximately $20M at today's exchange rate).

My boss and mentor, Roland Hockney, was the Manufacturing Director and he taught me a number of very important lessons. One of those lessons was to pay attention to what was important through measurement.

My performance was judged on a number of factors, or Key Performance Indicators (KPI's).

I made damned sure I had all the up to date numbers at hand at all times because I could guarantee that Roland's questions would always be about the stuff that I should be paying attention to. Yes, I was accountable for meeting profit targets, quality standards, keeping costs within budget and all the usual financial measurements. But Roland also made sure that I was also aware of health and safety, absenteeism, discipline and grievance statistics because he knew that they were an excellent indicator of morale.

The real lesson for me was that I was totally focused on the things that really mattered to the business. I paid attention to the things that I knew were measured and I had very clear objectives and priorities.

Roland was a great boss and mentor and I owe much of my success today to what he taught me over 30 years ago; because I continue to measure what's important.

Let me share with you the Key Performance Indicators that I pay attention to.....{+}

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How Well Do You Know Your Niche’s Demographic?

by John on February 13th, 2009 in Market Research, Pay Per Click

Sometimes the cost of PPC traffic is just far too expensive to make it worthwhile entering a specific niche market. When I do my niche research analysis, and see inflated PPC costs, I occasionally wonder just how my competitors can afford to buy traffic a such a high price. Either they are taking a long term view on the lifetime value of the customer, they know something I don't, or they've miscalculated the break even point!

Let me take a moment to explain how I calculate my break even point; and then we can move on to why understanding your niche's demographic can save you a lot of money and tap into targeted traffic at a much lower cost..

For example, let's say that we're promoting a £279 product with a 10% affiliate commision. That means each sale will generate £27.90 and, if the sales letter is converting at the typical 2%, our income per visitor will be: (£27.90 x 2)/100 = £0.558. So our PPC breakeven point is 56 pence and anything less than that will earn us a profit.

Now, when I see my competitors paying 56 pence per click and above, my decision is easy. I'm going to leave them to it and move on to my "Plan B" where I'll target the same audience but I'll attack the market from a completely different direction based on my in-depth knowledge of the demographics.

Plan B requires a little "out of the box" thinking. Let me explain.. ...{+}

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