Plan Your Internet Success!

Transcription

Plan Your
Internet Success!
(www.planyourinternetsuccess.com)
Want to Succeed on the Internet?
There are no secrets... It has little to do with luck...
And absolutely nothing to do with finding the right guru!
FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY
DO NOT DUPLICATE OR DISTRIBUTE
This manuscript is available for free at www.planyourinternetsuccess.com
(Reproduction, distribution and/or sale of this document is strictly forbidden unless expressly
authorized in writing by the author – for information go to www.planyourinternetsuccess.com
or contact the author at info@planyourinternetsuccess.com)
“Plan Your Internet Success” is written and published by Jean Maurice Touboul.
This manuscript is copyright Jean Maurice Touboul, EnContext Media
For additional information, contact Jean at info@planyourinternetsuccess.com
Plan Your Internet Success!
To succeed on the Net you must have:
- A Plan of Action
- Common Sense
- Persistence
- Discipline
This document is free for individual use only
Manuscript available for free at www.planyourinternetsuccess.com
Preface
Being passionate about the Internet for a good 15 years now, and the revolution that
it brought along, I‟ve come across a great number of books, reports, e-books,
lessons, lectures, seminars, etc. that have all claimed to be the last thing you‟ll need
to learn about successfully making money online. No matter how good it sounds,
when I read the caption on the back of the book or review the Table of Contents or
list of seminar topics, inevitably, these books end up in a place where they will be
forgotten. And the reasons are simple: they‟re too long, too vague, outdated, or
simply stupid; and often, all of the above.
I‟ve also seen these web sites created by pseudo Internet gurus who claim to
deliver instant glories once you purchase their e-book for $9.99. Often, the home
page displays this author‟s Ferrari or Porsche and an amazing house in the
background. And, more recently, they incorporate a YouTube video with this
enthusiastic guy explaining how he‟s going to tell you all his secrets for… you
guessed it… $9.99. Of all the garbage that I‟ve seen on the Net (and there‟s a lot of
it), this is the thing that makes me mad, because this collection of easily attainable
information from a simple search on the Net is nothing more than abusing people's
naïveté and hopes, which result in bitter disappointment. By the way it does not stop
at $9.99, since the gurus will probably try to up-sell you with all kinds of junk in the
form of software that is often available for free).
As a result, I've had the desire to write a free “How To” e-book designed to help
folks who want to make a few dollars on the Net put together a plan of action for
success (or at the very minimum have a chance to succeed). I‟ve put this idea on
the backburner for quite some time and grinding my teeth each time I come across
one of those silly e-books mentioned above. However, these days, with the
economy slowing down and people struggling even more to make ends meet, I
decided that the time was right.
Manuscript available for free at:
www.planyourinternetsuccess.com
2
Copyright Jean Maurice Touboul
July 2009
I looked around at what is available to find the right format and came across
something called, “The Marketing Helper.” It's a huge collection of articles that offer
advice on pretty much anything and everything (the ultimate collection of Internet
marketing information). Incidentally, the publishers also try to up-sell you on
additional services by sending you offers and getting some payout when someone
clicks on the ads or take some kind of action. However, this collection of articles is
unbelievably long (all combined it probably would fill a 500+ page e-book), and this
is exactly what I was trying to avoid. Reviewing it, I also realized that it would be
good to offer something that is organized in stages, starting from the idea of an
online business to and development, all the way to profitability. As such, a
sequential version of how to become successful on the Net, starting with a simple
introduction and getting to more complex development stages with milestones,
would be ideal.
With that in mind, I set out to write two volumes of what I call “Plan Your Internet
Success!” that contain the basic information to set up a business online in Volume 1,
along with another manuscript (Volume 2) in the form of a work-book to solve their
own their own, and often unique, situation, and make their business profitable.
The result of this undertaking is what I offer in the following pages, and that
represents the first installment of the two-volume series.
This e-book is FREE to use (feels good writing that) for anyone who downloads it,
but under absolutely no circumstances is it for sale by anyone. And to eliminate any
possibility that this document could be used for profit, I decided to make it available
in PDF form and restrict its use to one person per copy. If you want to share this
document with someone else, there is not much I can do about it but I will not
provide any support. Instead, I would rather you send it to those whom you think
may be interested to the registration link and let them download it themselves.
The Web page to do this is “http://www.planyourinternetsuccess.com” and the
registration is very basic.
And now for the plan…
Note: For those who are curious about the decision to create two volumes, here the reasons.
Volume 1 includes all the basic elements (learning, resources and action) that anyone must do to
be successful. Volume 2 includes techniques for achieving certain goals using my experience and
my choices for accomplishing this. And, while I am confident that my methods work, it is based on
my personal preferences and choices for the products and services that I offer. As a result, while
Volume 2 explains what could work for anyone, it is based on a very specific set of circumstances
that may not apply perfectly to someone else‟s needs since this person may be facing a very
different sets of circumstances as far as product, service, goals, limitations, etc. As a result, Volume
2 also is offered along with online Live sessions that include discussions on every individual need,
but based in a group discussion where information and experience can be shared.
3
July 2009
Overview of the Manuscript and Organization
1. Find a Niche or Area of Business Where an Opportunity
Exists
2. Search for Keywords
3. Research your Competition and Learn
4. Pass your First Test
5. Choose your Domain Name
6. Design and Create a Web Site
7. Content for Web Sites
8. Select an ISP
9. Optimize your Web Site
10. Press Releases
11. How to Use Social Media
12. How to Use eZines and Blogs
13. Paid and Free Listings
4
July 2009
14. Advertising and AdWords
14A. Complement for AdWords - Critical Notes
15. Classified Ads
16. Banner Ads
17. Links Exchange
18. FFAs
19. How to Put it All Together
20. Create Affiliate Accounts
21. The Beauty and Pitfalls of Arbitrage
22. The Search for Advertisers and Higher Payout
22. Lead Generation
Additional Resources
5
July 2009
Congratulations – You’ve Finished!
What’s Next?
For additional information on this Volume or Volume 2, e-mail me at
jeanmaurice@planyourinternetsuccess.com or call me at 561-306-8300. I am
always happy to provide free advice, as long as it is within reason.
6
July 2009
Plan Your Internet Success! Volume 1 establishes the basic steps that any
Internet entrepreneur must take to ensure that his or her vision will succeed. The
idea behind this plan also is to make this manuscript a “living document”, and as
new steps, ideas, and resources are added, to send them in the form of updates to
all registered users (that is also why it is critical for you to download this manuscript
individually and not pass it on or share it).
Furthermore, this manuscript is divided in parts and sections, with each section
serving as a continuation of the previous one and each part constituting a new topic.
Furthermore, each section explains specific steps that are needed and explores the
area of business discussed, along with resources that will help the user search for
applications and solutions that are of direct use to them.
Finally, this volume is designed to help most anyone start an online business. It
covers basic information, like finding a vertical where you want to be, to creating a
Web site/business to launching your business. It will explore various opportunities
for promoting and advertising your business, and explain how to put it all together to
create the right conditions for your business to generate revenues.
7
July 2009
Part 1 includes the following sections:
1. Find an Area of Business Where an Opportunity Exists and
Define your Niche
1. Find an Area of Business where an Opportunity Exists and Define your
Niche
The first thing that we will be looking at is the type of business you should be doing.
This is an area where many gurus claim to have the secret to make a lot of money
very fast (even when you are asleep or when you‟re on vacation in Bermuda).
However, if they know something you or I do not, I would be very surprised.
Furthermore, why would anyone who knows the secret to getting rich fast sell it to
you or me for $9.99 or even $999? In pure business terms, selling something worth
millions for a mere $9.99 makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Bottom line: to succeed you must do some work and come up with an idea for a
business in which you are interested. Hopefully, it will be original but, more
importantly, something that you want to do because you care about it, not simply
because someone told you that you can make money doing it. I‟ve been around for
many years and I‟ve been an entrepreneur most of my life, but I have never come
across something that was easy and allowed me to make money doing nothing.
Business is not being on vacation in the Bermuda…it‟s hard work and you need to
be prepared for that reality.
Whatever you do, do not spend your money buying some “get rich quick” scheme.
Doing this is like going to Vegas with lots of bells and whistles with only one
outcome: you will lose your money (and I‟m not sure you‟ll even get bells and
whistles with gurus)!
8
July 2009
The reality is that there are hundreds of opportunities in this world at any given time.
A good example of this is real estate, where agents get lots of leads when the
economy is booming and people are on a buying spree for houses; meaning they‟ll
need a realtor, financing, insurance, trade workers for remodeling, etc. In a down
economy, these same people will be looking to re-finance, and will be in need of
cheaper insurance, as well as assistance with foreclosures, while others will look to
buy foreclosures because they are better off. In short, it's all a matter of timing and
intuition, as well as what you will see me mention many times in this publication:
“common sense.”
These areas of business are called verticals and to help you explore and find a
vertical you may like, professionally speaking. I listed some resources below.
Resources:
http://www.ryze.com/
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/Communications/business/gen.htm
http://www.hoovers.com/free/
http://www.ryze.com/postaddprocess.php
http://www.alibaba.com/
http://www.angeldeals.com/
http://www.atomz.com/
http://www.caycon.com/resources.php
http://buyusa.com/page/my_gtn/splash.asp
http://www.corptech.com/
http://www.harte-hanks.com/cgi-bin/inetcgi/hh/index.jsp
http://www.jayde.com/
I suggest that you look at what kind of businesses are being launched or simply
discussed. Trends come and go, and some are very quick to go, so you want to be
careful about not getting sucked into something that will fizzle tomorrow. But more
importantly, find something that you feel comfortable with. Don‟t get involved in
areas that are of no interest to you or that you would not want to be involved in
simply because someone tells you that there is a lot of money to be made. Believe
me, no matter how good it sounds, it is never easy, especially if you do not know the
business.
9
July 2009
Once you‟ve done your research and found something that you‟d like to pursue, drill
down to the very specifics of this business. Go online and into chat rooms specific to
your industry. Listen to what people are saying in the chat rooms and talk to those
who have been working in your particular industry. Learn from the failure of these
people and, as much as you can, learn from the success stories that you will read.
When you are satisfied that you‟ve found something you‟d like to get involved in, try
to find a unique angle, a very personal way to target the audience that you are
going after. In other words, try to find a core (niche) audience within this vertical
and find a product or service that matches their expectations.
For example, let‟s say that you want to generate leads for car dealers. That‟s a
business idea that has its merits, but defining what kind of cars would be even
better. For example, would you want to have leads of people who are looking for
SUVs, minivans, full-size cars or sports cars? Those are all very different
demographic targets and trying to catch them all under one lead generating
document would be very difficult. As a result, I suggest that you look for a core
audience (or niche), where there is more potential.
These niches are much more specialized and targeted and, as such, limited;
something that will result in fewer leads (for example, if, at any moment, 1000
people are shopping for a car, probably fewer than 10 percent, or under 100 people,
would be looking to buy a sports car – if you were targeting sports cars shoppers,
your potential for prospects would be only that number of buyers). However,
targeting a niche market has tremendous advantages, especially on the Internet. It
allows you to be very specific when you are creating advertisement or landing page
for your Web site.
In other words, marketing a service or product to a niche audience can be a lot
more cost efficient than targeting a broad audience.
Furthermore, the Internet allows you to create a multitude of pages and campaigns,
each targeted at a specific niche, and, as a result, you could simultaneously or over
time develop multiple niches within the same vertical.
What is important when developing different niches is to test them to get a “feel” for
what works and what doesn‟t. Based on the results of these tests, you would then
increase marketing efforts or not, and move on to another niche market.
Keep in mind that the Internet is like a gigantic mall, where you can open
specialized shops in record time and with minimum investment. So my question is
“Why not do exactly that?” One note of caution, educate yourself on the niche you
go after and never spend too much money developing your Web site or marketing it.
However, and again, above all, don't try to sell something you don‟t know anything
about or you don‟t care for. Don‟t try to sell vitamins if you don't care about vitamins
or know nothing about them. I guarantee that your chances of success would be
extremely limited.
10
July 2009
Assuming that you have located an area of business that you‟d like to pursue, the
next step (before doing anything – forget domain name or Web site style and
background color) is to make sure that there is a market on the Internet for this
business.
There are three very distinct reasons for looking at keywords to decide if your
choice is a good one and how to explore related opportunities and potential
difficulty.
1) Use keyword searches to gauge the number of searches that were conducted
daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
This is done for obvious reasons, since it will allow you to estimate how many
people are interested in the keywords or key terms associated with your business.
You obviously do not want to build a business around keywords (and by that I mean
product and/or services) that nobody is looking for on the Net.
Alternatively, never let a keyword popularity dictate the kind of business you should
be in. For example, would you want to create an X-rated or sex Web site simply
because this is one of the most commonly searched keywords on the Internet.
Your objective is to look for keywords that fit your business and make sure that the
number of searches is solid.
2) Look for keywords that are very popular and that can relate in some fashion to
your own business.
Here is a “live” example of why you should not let a keyword or key term dictate the
type of business you want: As I am writing this manuscript, I looked at AOL for its
most searched terms (they call it “Hot Terms” at http://hot.aol.com/) and I came up
with the following:
John Hughes
Steven Tyler
Rielle Hunter
'So You Think You Can Dance'
Sharon Stone
Hugh Hefner
Anna Paquin
Rihanna
'G.I. Joe'
Unemployment
11
July 2009
Most of those are related to episodes in some well known person‟s life and are
going to last for a very short time. For example, John Hughes had just died when I
was writing this, hence his name is at the top of the list (note that less than a week
later his name was gone from the top and disappeared all together from AOL
searches).
I can probably conclude the same of the other names and as I reviewed the AOL
“Hot Searches” three months later, I noted that none of the searches listed here are
on AOL top searches.
However, there is also something to be learned from these keywords. For example,
and to illustrate the concept of niche, can you make something out of the keyword
“unemployment?” Absolutely, and especially in this economy. However, there are
already hundreds of Web sites that are offering resources and solutions for people
looking for jobs, and some of them are quite dominant. Think of Monster and Hot
Jobs to name only two.
However, is there a unique angle on unemployment that you could explore? What
does an unemployed person do? Search for a job of course, but this person also
may be looking for ways to generate revenues using his or her skills. Unemployed
people may be looking to save on their grocery bills, reduce their car payment, find
a cheaper place to live, get individual insurance, get a degree, ---fill the blank--What is important is to recognize a possible opportunity when you look at keywords
that fit into your realm of interest or within the business you are trying to build.
Again, taking the example of cars, people who are buying cars not only will be
interested in insurance, but also in gas coupons, child seats, video players and
other electronic gadgets to keep the kids happy, seat covers and more. The same
applies to unemployed people who will be looking to buy their own computer after
losing their job; they may also be interested in becoming members of a job board, in
need of coupons to save additional money and any other resource that may help
them through a rough time, financially-speaking.
The bottom line is that you must open your mind to all possibilities no matter how
much of a stretch they may seem to be at first. And if you explore enough and look
carefully at all options, you may find an area of interest in many unrelated
businesses that you may be able to explore for your own. Moreover, you can find all
of this by simply looking at keywords.
3) Use these same keyword searches to evaluate the competition (and price) that
you will have to deal with if you were to bid on Google or one of the major search
engines.
One of the critical issues with keywords is to find the best possible keywords or key
terms for your business with the least possible competition. This is done in order to
ensure that you will be prepared to know how much a campaign on search engines
will cost you. Furthermore, it is very important to identify keywords, as well as key
12
July 2009
phrases, by popularity, by competing offers and by searches in order to have an
overview of what you are getting into.
Note: That being said, the type of keyword you will use for your meta tags (code
that will allow search engine to identify and classify your Web site - see SEO) and
for an SEM campaign (buying keywords on AdWords, for example) will be very
different.
Resources:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://www.google.com/sktool/#
http://searchenginewatch.com/2156041
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/?keywords=seo
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/login.html
While the first resource (wordtracker.com) will give you an idea of the volume of
search and similar terms, adwords.google.com can give you a good idea of what to
expect to pay for these keywords and key terms.
Finally, once you have a Web site, I would recommend that you open a Google
AdWords account (adwords.google.com) and set aside a small budget for testing
your idea and your creatives as well as landing pages on your Web site. However,
for now, there is no need for that as you are still in the process of building your
business on the Net.
The best and easiest way to do this is search through Google, Bing, and Yahoo! or
via directories for competitors using the keywords that you found. Take a look at the
companies listed on the first two pages, including those found in the sponsor boxes.
Review what they do well and not so well, including the “look and feel,”
presentation, style, content, navigation, etc. Make a checklist of what to do to
improve or what not to do when you come across competitors that are not doing it
right. Print out the pages of the ones that you find interesting and make notes that
will help you remember why you liked the pages or what you did not like.
See how they rank by using services like Quantcast (http://www.quantcast.com/) to
measure their success on the Net. If you are checking ranking with Alexa, be very
careful since Alexa can be skewed very easily and may not reflect reality.
13
July 2009
Another simple way to do this is to input the company‟s URL on Google or Yahoo!
and check the number of links they show; remember, the more, the better. Keep
these links in mind for later and make a note of the sites that have the most. These
Web sites may be businesses with which you may want to have your own links as
you get established.
Resources: Search:
http://www.Google.com
http://www.Bing.com
http://www.Yahoo.com
Resources – Business:
http://www.hoovers.com/free/
http://www.ryze.com/postaddprocess.php
http://www.corptech.com/
http://www.digitallook.com/
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-small-business-marketing.html
Finally, never underestimate your competition, especially on the Internet. You have
no idea what their resources may be and how well they can reach their target
audience, no matter how trivial their copy, or how poor their Web site may look to
you.
By now, you have a business idea and you‟ve done your research on keywords.
You have a sense of who your competition is and you may even feel good about
what you know. This means you are ready to move to the next step.
However, before you continue, you MUST ask yourself a few questions:
14
July 2009
a) Is this a really solid idea? Put your plan down for a full day (or even two) and then
pick it up and re-read your notes, research, etc. Does it still make sense? Does it
feel like it is missing something? Be thorough.
b) Are the keywords that you found well-searched and is the cost reasonable
considering your potential margins? If you are going to build a Web site that offers
electronics to your visitors, and you intend to get your money from commissions that
you will get as a publisher, you may be up for a big disappointment. With a
commission of one to three percent and an average purchase of $75, do the math.
You‟ll need a bundle of customers and keywords will cost you a fortune. There is no
way you‟ll make it.
This is a huge topic - one that is specific to your business - which we‟ll cover in
greater detail in Volume 2. However, you must have a sound plan, something that
has enough margins built in to make it profitable.
c) Is your competition the type of company or entity that you can take on? If you are
trying to go after a market that is cornered by Apple, for example, you better have a
unique product and lots of resources.
If all checks out positively, then I suggest that you go over all the details once more
and make sure that you eliminate any elements of wishful thinking.
Finally, I would suggest that you take the time to write a short pitch (a couple of
paragraphs) about your plan for your business and present it to someone who has
never heard it before. If you need to explain what it is you just presented to them
then, in all probability, your idea is not clear and you need to go back to the drawing
board.
Alternatively, if your idea is understood, then listen to any questions that are asked
and do not dismiss any criticism, no matter how trivial or “uneducated” they may
seem. I‟ve seen too many people, including myself, make this mistake and pay
dearly for it.
In conclusion, do as much research and get as much feedback as you can.
Remember that this is by far the least expensive (and often free aspect of putting
together a business), so take advantage of it as much as you can.
Ready to continue? Go to the next part...
15
July 2009
Sections in Part 2 include:
5. Select a Domain Name
6. Design and Create a Web site
7. Content for Web sites
8. Select an ISP
5. Select a Domain Name
The first thing you should understand with the selection of a domain name is that
the most obvious ones have usually been taken. As a result, try to be original and
come up with something unique. While domain names will have an impact on your
business, it is more as a result of its identity and recognition than its description of
what you do. Take, for example, Amazon.com: would you associate this name with
books and products being sold online?
With this in mind, don‟t try to do too many things with your domain name, such as
using keywords. I‟ve come to the conclusion that so much is at play when it comes
to SEO that the domain name plays a small role. However, a catchy name that is
attractive, easy to spell and remember can be a great asset.
Here is an example of what not to do: I created a Web site titled “search-engineoptimization-professionals.com” that included all the keywords that I needed.
However, I quickly realized that this name was way too long and too complicated
(Not to mention the “s” at the end and to cover myself; I selected two domain names
one with the “s” at the end and one without the “s”). But no matter what I did, it was
all pointless since many people did exactly the same thing (including keywords and
“-“ in their domain names) and Google started penalizing Web sites with domain
names including a “-“ in the body of the name.
Bottom line, find something that is easy to remember and spell.
Another thing that you may consider is the extension (.com, .net, .TV, .org, etc.). I
personally like to stay conservative in this area and usually go with the traditional
“.com” and in some instances will also get “.net.”
16
July 2009
Finally, as a personal preference, I do not recommend that people buy their domain
name through their hosting company.
I personally use GoDaddy because I have many domains and GoDaddy offers a
platform that enables me to manage my domains relatively easily.
The most important aspect of this platform is that it enables me to re-direct the DNS
(also called Nameserver) very easily and, as a result, should I need to switch my
ISP to do this very quickly and easily. There are no specific rules to follow when it
comes to domain management and I do not endorse GoDaddy.
Resources:
http://www.godaddy.com
http://www.buydomains.com/
http://www.sedo.com/main.php3?language=us
http://www.register.com/
Regardless of what you decide for your domain name, keep in mind that a domain
name costs less than $8 annually and if you hesitate between two domain names,
buy both of them! Who knows, you may have some variations and testing them may
indicate that one is doing better than the other because of the way it reads or
sound, its spelling, etc.
A couple of years ago, someone suggested that I create a wine site and I went
ahead and purchased a few domain names. I came up with what I thought would be
an original idea and that was to target California wines and “personalize” these
domain names.
I first got obvious names that were available, including www.mycaliforniawinery.com
and www.buy-california-wine.com (yes, at the time the “-“ was still working).
However, I was not satisfied and created these personalized domain names that
included
the
concept
of
“my
corner”
(domains
names
became
mycaliforniawinecorner.com, myredwinecorner.com, mychardonnaycorner.com,
etc.). I must have spent $80 as I tried to corner all wine types (cabernetcorner.com,
sauvigoncorner.com, etc.), but by the end of the first year, nothing came of it and I
had to abandon most of them. Sure it was a loss of $80, but it could have worked
and it did for another concept that involved travel destinations. What I learned with
the wine Web sites allowed me to do something that is generating revenues today.
17
July 2009
In conclusion, I encourage people to play with domain names and experiment. You
may have five or even 10 misses, but it only takes one to more than pay for all the
other ones.
Finally, keep in mind that if you want to brand a name, what I describe above, with
many domain names exploiting one area of business, will not work. This approach is
ideally suited for what is known as “mini sites” or what I call “Web site clusters” to try
to catch as much traffic as possible using very targeted areas of a vertical.
Similar results may be achieved using sub-domains. For example, if you are using a
domain name called “mydomain.com” with the URL “www.mydomain.com,” a subdomain
would
read
something
like
“product1.mydomain.com”
or
“service1.mydomain.com,” etc. This approach is not very SEO friendly but it is not
terribly important, in my opinion, since natural searches have become so
competitive today.
A good example for using a sub-domain is when you are trying to target geographic
areas. For example, assuming that I would want to offer my services to potential
clients in Chicago, I could create a sub-domain called chicago.jtouboul.com and
create a completely customized page for that market. The difference between this
and creating a Chicago folder within your Web site (for example
www.jtouboul.com/chicago/file.php) is that the sub domain becomes a domain within
your main domain and is a top level page, as opposed to including files one level
down, and it has its advantages.
However, don‟t worry about these details for now, since there are many options, and
I suggest that you keep it simple. At a minimum, secure a few domains that you
think will work for you.
6. Create a Web site
Some people spend a fortune on this, which is not very smart unless there is an
absolute need to have a very specific look and feel to create an image or ambiance.
Most people on the Internet do not seem to care much about Web design, if you
believe what you see. Amazon, Yahoo!, and Google are not exactly the most
attractive sites on the Net, yet they seem to work just fine for the people who use
them and that is the key. They work because they accomplish exactly what they set
out to do: deliver on their audience‟s expectations! If anything, look at Google.com
(www.google.com) below.
18
July 2009
Can you imagine less than that? Yet, Google commands close to 70 percent of the
all Web searches. And, in my opinion, it works because this page is all about
searching and nothing more. Are the results that Google delivers better than Yahoo!
or Bing (MSN)? Frankly, I am not sure that most people can tell, but Google does
not try to get you involved with everything and anything as Yahoo! does
(www.yahoo.com) (illustrated below).
19
July 2009
It seems that Microsoft has learned that lesson and is doing what Google does with
its newest home page (www.bing.com), and that is to focus on its core business,
search.
The lesson here is that you want to start with a simple, highly-focused Web site, and
then you can take it from there. There are plenty of sources for free templates and I
encourage you to take them into consideration.
For those interested, I have made available free templates and other resources at
www.planyourinternetsuccess.com/resources.html and I encourage you to check
them out.
The only issue with templates, or any Web site for that matter, is to ensure that it is
W3 Compliant (W3C – www.w3c.com). This ensures that most search engine
spiders will be able to recognize and “read” your Web pages properly. The way to
tell if your template or page is compliant is to look at the very first line of code on the
index page (index.html or index.php) and note if the compliance statement is
provided as shown below:
20
July 2009
Where I believe your money would be better spent is on a program that allows you
to properly manage your Web site. There are free ones (open source) like Joomla,
Drupal, Magnolia, as well as paid ones that are often specialized solutions, such as
Salesforce, but be aware that these solutions cost a bundle.
I personally use neither and rely on Macromedia Dreamweaver and my knowledge
of HTML programming, as well as the assistance of a PHP programmer when I
need it, since I like 100 percent control over my Web sites. As a result, I recommend
this approach, as well as a basic understanding and ability to program in HTML.
What is critical is to focus on learning the basics of building and maintaining a Web
site, and not allow yourself to get bogged down with too many details. While it is not
the easiest route to take, you always want to be able to understand what a Web site
designer or programmer is talking about.
Resources:
http://allwebcodesign.com/
http://www.templatetuning.com/
http://www.flash-template-design.com/
http://www.dreamlinestudio.com/
http://www.oswd.org/
http://www.zerodollartemplates.com/
http://www.webmastersplaza.com/
http://www.dreamlinestudio.com/
http://watson.addy.com/
http://www.whitegyr.com/flash-templates.htm
http://www.freeflashsites.com/
21
July 2009
http://www.templatepark.com/
http://www.bizweb2000.com/
http://www.roopletheme.com/
http://drupal.org/
Finally, you must have noticed that some Web sites show a small icon next to their
domain name. If you want to create something like this, it is relatively easy. Simply
create a logo (keep in mind that since it is tiny, it should be something easy to
recognize, like a letter) and go to http://www.favicon.cc/ and follow the instructions.
You‟ll be surprised to see how easy it is to do.
However, whatever you decide to do, do not waste too much time re-inventing the
wheel on this one. What you need is a simple, easy-to navigate Web site that is
attractive and pleasing to the eye, fun and, above all, has something relevant to say
(see below).
7. Create Content for your Web sites
This is probably the most extensive and most interesting subject of all as far as I am
concerned.
Many people think that they are great at writing content. With this false sense of
confidence in mind, they go on to write long missives about their Web sites and
businesses; thereby, losing the point, let alone the attention of the visitor.
Others read a few SEO articles about content and learn that the key is to include as
many keywords as possible. So they load their text with so much stuff that it
becomes a weird concoction of words that barely make any sense.
Yet, others who may have tried both approaches and failed hire a Web copy writer
to do all of the above. Or worse, they pay for some automated text generation via a
distribution system or publisher.
In my opinion, the secret of great content for a Web site starts with something that
has been around for centuries and that is very common in all newspapers, TV
shows, etc. It‟s a simple headline… if you have a great headline that grabs the
visitor‟s attention, you already have done half the job.
How does it work for a Web site? Simple: capture the description of your Web site in
a few words. In other words, whatever made you decide to start this business in
Step 1 should now be explained in a few words in your headline.
For example, if you are selling used technical manuals online because no one else
does, your headline may read: “The Only Place on the Internet for Used Tech
Manuals”
22
July 2009
No matter what your business may be, you must encapsulate what you do in a very
short statement. This statement should be situated in a prominent place on your
index page (I suggest doing similar things with the other pages).
You may find some excellent examples of headlines in Web sites that specialize in
publishing articles and writing.
Here are some resources:
http://www.articlehub.com/
http://www.articlecity.com/
http://www.articlehub.com/Marketing/
http://rdf.dmoz.org/
http://w.moreover.com/
http://www.advertisingknowhow.com/members/articles.php
http://www.magnet4web.com/content/affiliate-marketing/what-is-affiliate-marketingand-how-do-i-get-started.php
Once you have your headline, it‟s time to write some content. The content should
explain your product or service, what you offer, detail any relevant case studies,
provide white papers, etc.
In all instances, I suggest that you write or have someone write articles that are
easy to read, not too long and that include calls for action, such as signing up for a
newsletter, clicking on something to get more information, etc.
What I also recommend is to limit your index page to teasers that will tell viewers
about an article and give the outline of what is in it, but requests that the visitor
clicks on “read more” or “read full article” to see the rest. This has many advantages
and that includes putting more items on your index page, expanding the size of your
Web site to many pages, allowing you to show various aspects of your services or
products on each page.
Tip --- In the event that you need content in a hurry, as a temporary solution,
Wikipedia allows you to use its content as long as it is recognized as
originating from and credited to Wikipedia.
Finally, while this is not directly related to content, don‟t forget to check the option to
add a search capability to your Web site. This can only add value, especially when a
Web site has many pages, products, etc. Here are some free and paid search
solutions that you can use.
23
July 2009
Additional Resources:
http://www.freefind.com/
http://www.fusionbot.com/
http://www.spiderline.com/
http://www.phpdig.net/
http://www.atomz.com/
8. Select an ISP
There are literally thousands of Internet Solution Providers (ISP) today, and all offer
similar things (more or less) presented in different packages and under different
names.
However, there are three main options for users like you and me, and they include:
a) Shared Hosting – You, along with hundreds of others, are hosted on the same
machine(s), same hard drive and the applications that you can use are limited to
what is available on that machine.
b) VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting – This is much more flexible than the shared
hosting, since you have your own “virtual” drive within a server. This option gives
you access to much more as far as applications, adding domains, IP addresses, etc.
Furthermore, with some ISP, you get basic admin support.
c) Dedicated Server – A server (machine) is dedicated to you and only you, and the
admin support is a bit more advanced. In this instance, you may upload any
application you want and do pretty much whatever you want with your server.
The obvious difference between the three is cost, since a shared hosting can cost
as little as $5 monthly, while you would be hard-pressed to find a dedicated server
at less than $100 monthly.
The deciding factor here is what type of Web site you are planning to have. If your
Web site consists of a few pages with some content and a few links to an advertiser
or an advertising network then the first option is more than enough for you.
Alternatively, if you are going to run a database and need to install some apps, such
as a shopping cart, to run your business, then the VPS solution or a dedicated
server is for you. The big difference between the two is bandwidth and
maintenance, and this is when you need to make a decision between VPS or
dedicated machine.
24
July 2009
I recommend that if you need a shopping cart and database capability, start with a
VPS and take it from there. Some VPS servers allow you tremendous capacity and
have pretty much all the apps that you would want to run your business, so it is my
preferred choice. Additionally, assuming that you outgrow the VPS, there are ways
to transition to a dedicated server that enable you to do this very smoothly.
Resources: ISPs that I like and use
http://www.jumpline.com
http://www.hostgator.com/
http://www.serverintellect.com/
http://www.hypermart.net/
Regardless of where you decide to host your site, I would suggest that you make
sure that you can upload your files via FTP (File Transfer protocol) or SSH (secure
transfer) and get an FTP solution and always backup your Web site‟s files. This will
allow you to switch to another ISP provider if you are not happy with the one you
first selected*
Finally, if you do not have the budget for a VPS and decide to go to a shared
hosting, but worry about your shopping cart or the lack of it, there are solutions. You
can look for payment solutions that offer external links to shopping carts like PayPal,
for example. The integration is relatively simple and while this is not the most
elegant or inexpensive way to deal with purchases, it works well and is secure.
Furthermore, PayPal is well established and that is something that may offer an
added level of comfort for buyers who are conscious of security on the Internet.
* This is another reason why I personally register my domain with a registration
provider that is independent of my ISP.
Ready to continue? Go to the next part...
25
July 2009
Part 3 includes the following sections:
9. Optimize your Web site
10. Press Releases
11. How to Use Social Media
12. How to Use eZines and Blogs
9. Optimize your Web site
A statement that I once read somewhere applies nicely here… “Congratulations on
your brand new Web site. Nice design, great content, nice links… Great! Now
What?”
The only thing I would change in this statement is “So What” or “So What – Who
Cares?”
The reality is that having a great Web site on the Internet does not in itself achieve
anything. It‟s like opening a great looking store in the desert. No matter how great it
looks, no one is likely to come. And if you are not convinced, consider these stats:
Number of Web sites worldwide: 190 million
Number of Web site created every year: 25 million
Those are staggering numbers and even if a tiny percentage is competing for the
same space as you are, your competition is tremendous.
However, if done right, this is also the “fun” part of working on the Internet and
promoting your own property. In my opinion, there is nothing more exhilarating than
promoting your own Web site (especially if you put it in the middle of the desert) and
take it to a point when you can look back and say “I did this.”
26
July 2009
Tip: This is also an area of the business where gurus will charge you a
fortune for telling you what is readily available for free on the Net. It is also
where people who are not ready, but are impatient take the SEM (Search
Engine Marketing – pay per click route to get customers). I can only tell you
that those folks at Google AdWords are waiting for you with a big smile (and I
mean a “really big smile”).
Before you do anything and spend your money unnecessarily, there are a few things
that you should do on your own to ensure that your Web site is optimized and that it
will be “seen” and indexed as it should be by spiders and search engines.
I‟d like to make a very short pause here to explain what I mean by “seen.” In case
you do not know this, search engines index Web sites by sending a spider or
crawler that “reads” the code on your index page and other Web pages that are
linked to it. This information is collected and used along with other criteria to index
your site in a category and rank it based on the keywords, links, content, etc. Each
search engine and directory has some kind of algorithm that enables this process to
be automated and put your Web site in a location within the hundreds of thousands
of Web sites indexed. Some of the algorithms are very simple, while others are quite
complex and change from time to time.
Assuming now that you found keywords that best represent your business and
came up with your one paragraph pitch, as discussed in Part 2, the idea in
optimizing your Web site is to use these elements and some basic code that will be
inserted in pages of your site. This will ensure that a crawler can categorize your
business as it should be and that you‟ll be indexed accordingly.
A number of things are important for a crawler to properly “read” your pages, but two
are absolutely critical in my view and they include the meta tags and the HTML
validation.
Meta Tags
These are a set of information about your Web site that is created to give crawlers
information about your site, including title, description, keywords as well as
language, etc.
A great deal of information goes into the meta tags to inform crawlers on what your
Web site is about, and below is what you will typically see for meta tags (note that
the “meta name” may already be inserted at the very top of your Web page). In red,
you will find instruction as far as the information that you will need to add.
(complete meta tags are on the next page)
27
July 2009
<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy for Linux (vers 6 November 2007),
see www.w3.org">
<title>REPLACE WITH YOUR TITLE HERE INCLUDING ONE OR TWO OF YOUR TOP KEYWORDS
</title>
<meta name="description" content="DESCRIBE WHAT YOUR WEB SITE DOES AND USE 3-4 OF
YOUR TOP KEYWORDS INCLUDING THE ONE IN THE TITLE. KEEP IT SHORT">
<meta name="keywords" content="14-15 KEYWORDS AND KEY TERMS MAX, SEPARATED BY
COMAS">
<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
<meta name="generator" content="Meta Tag Maker">
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="20 days">
<meta name="robots" content="ALL">
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">
<meta name="rating" content="General">
<meta name="copyright" content="INSERT YOUR WEB SITE NAME HERE">
<meta name="author" content="INSERT YOUR WEB SITE NAME HERE ">
<meta http-equiv="reply-to" content="CREATE AND USE A YAHOO OR GMAIL EMAIL ADDRESS
AND INSERT HERE">
<meta name="language" content="English">
<meta name="doc-type" content="Web Page">
<meta name="doc-class" content="Living Document">
<meta name="doc-rights" content="Public">
<meta name="classification" content="Internet Services">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
These Meta Tags are typically placed right after the start of the header <head> but
before the end of the header </head>
They can be created in notepad, and then transferred on your Web page as a block
and the procedure should be very easy to handle for anyone, especially if you are
using software like Dreamweaver.
I invite you to use the meta tags sample and replace the information in red with your
own.
HTML Validation
Once this is done, then you must run the HTML validation to ensure that your Web
site satisfies W3C specification for your type of Web site. Ideally you want to get a
perfect score but it is sometimes hard to do and the idea is to eliminate the most
obvious errors. The validation tool allows you to get a corrected version of the code
and if you do I suggest that you first test it by saving it as index1.html or .php or
whatever.
28
July 2009
Other Important Optimization Considerations
Other optimization steps that you will need to do include:
Alternate name for images on every page of your Web site.
If you pay close attention to the code for all images on your Web site, you will see
that there is something that reads as follows “alt=”” .” This option is given to each
image in case the image does not display. It is meant as an alternate to the image
(hence “alt”) and is what you would see should an image is missing. For SEO
purposes, this offers a great opportunity to insert keywords in the alternate name.
My rule is to be as true as possible to the purpose of this image. To illustrate this,
the “alt text” for an image of a button that leads to a specific product page would be
alt=”product_name button” for example. As you can see, I have inserted what may
be a great keyword into the alternate text.
Here is another example: <img src="images/sample.gif" alt="sample image"
class="right" /> where “sample image” should be replaced by something that
describe your image and hopefully contains a keyword.
Replacing or adding a description that includes a keyword to the “alt=” text for
images is critical from an optimization point of view, since crawlers read this
information and take it into consideration. However, you must be aware that
exaggerating keywords in “alt=” text could work to your detriment and you should be
careful not to repeat the same two or three keywords in all the Alt text.
However, the number of keywords and their repetition is something that you will be
able to measure with tools that assess your keyword density and correct if need be
(more on that later in this manuscript).
In case you are not familiar with code (and I strongly suggest that you do familiarize
yourself), tools such as Dreamweaver will allow you to select an image (any image
on your site) and see its values at the bottom of the screen. One of the values that
you will see is the alternate name (alt=).
However, assuming your content is relevant and focused on the quality of the
writing, and contains your top keywords and key terms there are still many other
important factors that will play a role in your indexing.
And just to give you an idea of the places where keywords can play a role, I copied
a relevant part of a list from a tool that analyzes keyword density below.
1. Keyword use in document title
2. Keyword use in body text
3. Keyword use in H1 headline texts
29
July 2009
4. Keyword use in domain name
5. Keyword use in page URL
6. Keyword use in H2-H6 headline texts
7. Keyword use in IMG ALT attributes
8. Keyword use in bold body text
9. Keyword use in same domain link texts
10. Keyword use in outbound link texts
11. Keyword use in same domain link URLs
12. Keyword use in outbound link URLs
13. Keyword use in meta description
14. Keyword use in meta keywords
15. Keyword use in the first sentence of the body text
16. Keyword use in HTML comments
As you can see, there are many places where keywords can play a critical role.
However, while it is important to be aware of this it does not make sense to spend a
huge amount of time or money worrying about this issue at this juncture (unless
your Web site has been “live” for quite some time).
Finally, one other task that I highly recommend you do is to create a site map that
will list all the pages on your site. This site map should be contained on a simple
page directly linked to your home page. Depending on the complexity of your site,
you may want to simply create one yourself or use site map tools.
Resources: Meta Tags Generators and Web Page Analyzer
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
http://www.searchengineforums.com/
Resources: HTML Validation (W3C Validation)
http://validator.w3.org/
30
July 2009
There are other things that you could do, such as checking the keyword density or
simulating a crawler from Google or one from Yahoo!, etc. and optimize for best
results, but I would suggest that you optimize for Google to begin with. You will
always have the opportunity to tweak later on.
Here are some resources in case you want to check it out:
http://www.seobench.com/keyword-density-analyzer/ This is a keyword density
analyzer that will check your keyword count. (Make sure that your keywords appear
on top of the list. It does not have to be perfect.)
http://www.dead-links.com/ This is a link crawler and link checker that will list all
your pages and let you know if you have broken links.
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/site-link-analyzer/ Same as dead-links.com, but
check out the other tools that they have. You may find something that may be good
for you.
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ This will help you create a site map and even allow
you to download an almost ready-to-go HTML page.
And here are more resources for information on various aspects of optimization for
your Web site and SEO in general:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/
http://www.seochat.com/
http://www.searchengineforums.com/
http://www.bluehatseo.com/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/
http://searchenginewatch.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://seoblackhat.com/
http://www.seo-scoop.com/
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/
31
July 2009
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/
http://www.jimworld.com/
http://www.jimworld.com/apps/wp.forums/action::thread/thread::50/forum::marketing
-101/
http://www.searchengine-news.com/
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
http://www.wowdirectory.com/resources.php
http://dmoz.org/erz/index.html
As you will see, if you explore some of the links that I‟ve listed, there are a number
of options available and action that can be taken to improve positioning and SEO in
general. For example, creating a “robot text,” assigning a Google validation
number, etc. But you can drive yourself mad trying to do it all, so I suggest you wait
and focus on the most important tasks first and then go back and fine tune. In other
words, if you have your meta tags in place and have a good keyword density
between code and content, you are almost there. You may not be on page one or
even 50 of Google, but if you‟ve been categorized properly, you‟re well on your way
to gravitate toward page one.
Once you have gotten the basics down, it is time to submit to the main search
engines, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN, as well as many others (here is a link to a
list - http://www.execfocus.net/enhance_submission_list.htm). Note that some
software can help you do this quite easily, particularly when using a program such
as IBP (link below).
Be very careful to do all of this correctly or have the right people do it for you. Do not
be tempted by the cheap guarantees out there that promise optimization and
submission to thousands of search engines. Not only is it a waste of time in most
instances, it may be harmful to your campaign and overall success. And once the
damage is done, it takes months to correct.
For the “do-it-yourself” crowd, I suggest the IBP software that does all of the above
and more. Check it out at http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/!
32
July 2009
10. Write a Press Release and Distribute
As a matter of principle, I believe that you simply cannot launch a business or Web
site-- let alone both -- without broadcasting it as loud as possible. One of the best
ways to do this is via press releases.
A press release packs tremendous power in the age of super-fast communication
and the Internet, since it crosses the boundaries of traditional and new media very
“naturally.” Press release teasers and story clips are the umbilical cord of many
news organizations that are understaffed and depend upon information from the
outside world.
However, the sheer number of press releases and teasers that are distributed daily
makes it imperative to have something that stands out and catches the readers‟
attention. After all, this job is given to junior members or trainees who are asked to
scan hundreds of submissions and have a limited time to do this.
As a result, when writing (or contracting for the writing of) a press release, you must
keep in mind that you have very little time to capture your reader‟s imagination. I
estimate that you have the attention of the reader for the length of the subject line,
and if you have a great subject line, one or two sentences past that.
No matter what, you must write one or more press releases about your site, as well
as what I call teasers, or short announcements that highlight everything that is great
about your site, your product, and your business, in a very concise way. The press
release itself will be longer with more details, a few quotes, etc. My approach is to
send the teaser first and then send the press release. This is a trick of the trade that
I learned in testing some different approaches, and it works well if done properly
and within the right time frame.
Regardless, a press release should have detailed information on your product, any
aspects of your business and anything that could be interesting to a reader. Above
all, the writing should be sharp and entertaining.
Finally, make sure that you have a link to your Web site on the press release. It
should mention the name of your business, and also include your URL and a link to
your home page.
Press releases are submitted via organizations such as PRWeb but, more
importantly, they should be distributed to the media (newspaper, magazines, radio,
TV, Internet, etc.) directly. This is, after all, the objective of press release beyond
“silly” reasons, such as SEO.
Finally, post your press release on your Web site and link it to your index page or
prominent page via a “press” or “in the news” button.
33
July 2009
Resources:
http://www.prweb.com
http://www.clickpress.com
http://www.webwire.com/
http://www.emediawire.com
http://www.businesswire.com
http://www.prwebdirect.com http://www.theopenpress.com
http://www.free-press-release.com
http://www.pressbox.co.uk
http://www.i-newswire.com/
http://www.pr9.net
http://www.pr-inside.com
http://www.newswire.ca/
http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com
http://www.marketwire.com
http://www.urlwire.com/
http://www.prurgent.com
http://www.prleap.com
http://www.prnewswire.com
http://www.prfree.com/
http://www.openpress.com/
http://www.softpressrelease.com
If there is only one thing that you do after launching a Web site, it sould be the
publishing of a press release across the Internet and directly to newspapers and
magazines that specialize in your space.
While there are no guarantees that it will pay off, this is by far the most effective and
inexpensive way to get noticed.
34
July 2009
11. Social Media
Social media and social bookmarking are relatively new phenomenon and are both
very exciting ways in which to market yourself, your product or service, as well as
your Web site. And while this is very hard to control and ignite, when people notice
what you are offering and start sharing, social networks can work miracles.
To be successful in social media, spend a good amount of time writing, updating
and maintaining your blogs and articles. I believe that you can almost never overdo
it in social media and the most successful people (the ones who are noted the most)
are prolific writers and spend a good deal of time doing this every day.
There is nothing that you cannot share, including things such as bookmarks that you
like, ideas for cooking, dancing, having fun, getting deals, etc. Simply try to use
whatever you come across in the context of your business without over doing it.
People can see through disingenuous offers.
Resources: Social Media
http://www.twitter.com
http://www.blogs.com
http://www.blogger.com
http://www.linkin.com
http://www.facebook.com
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.myspace.com
Resources: Social Bookmarking
http://del.icio.us/
http://www.digg.com/
http://www.blinklist.com/
http://ma.gnolia.com/
http://www.furl.net/
http://www.diigo.com/
http://www.complore.com/
http://gamingtags.com/
http://indiagram.com/index.php
http://www.goesby.com/
35
July 2009
http://teachershare.org/openig/
http://www.chaamp.com/
http://www.a1-webmarks.com/
http://www.tektag.com/
http://www.bookmark.it/
http://www.wirefan.com/
http://www.linkatopia.com/
http://www.optimiz.us/
http://www.web20toolbar.com/
http://www.tallstreet.com/
Additional Resources: Social Media Profiles
http://www.meetup.com
http://www.tribe.com
http://www.ryze.com/
http://www.livejournal.com
http://www.linkedin.com/
http://www.friendster.com/
Make sure that you mention your site and give anecdotes, updates or write about
events, news, new articles (see Write Articles for eZines and Blogs, below) every
time you have the opportunity to do that.
12. Write Articles for eZines, Blogs and Other Web Posting Destinations
If you like writing, you may be able to achieve the best marketing of your Web site
all by yourself. The idea is to literally spread the word and get some traction by
writing articles, comments, reviews, blogs, opinions, etc. in as many places as
possible.
First, create a blog and write a few relevant articles to have some content, postings,
etc. Then, list it on the search engines. Do the same for Ezine and any other forum
where you are able to create content that is relevant and interesting to that
destination. What is again critical with blogs and postings is to have one or more
links to your Web site in anything that you publish. However, do not create content
for the sake of creating content. Try to respect the forum or posting destination
where you are providing your input by staying within context with the subject matter
36
July 2009
discussed and following the rules.
Once you have written a few articles or have three or four posts, submit it to the
search engines as you would do for a Web site. It's that simple. However, you must
maintain your blog by continually adding new or updated content.
Of course, the idea is to get people within the network or Web/blog to read what you
have produced, so pay particular attention to your post title and description.
Resources:
http://wordpress.com/
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.a1articles.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.searchwarp.com
http://www.isnare.com/
http://www.amazines.com
http://www.articledepot.co.uk
http://www.articledashboard.com
http://www.easyarticles.com
http://www.articlebin.com
http://www.articlebeach.com
http://www.articlehub.com
http://www.articlegarden.com
http://www.articlesphere.com
http://www.articlealley.com
http://www.articlesfactory.com
http://www.articlewise.com
http://www.articlegeek.com
37
July 2009
Some people may tell you that it is worth listing yourself in the Yahoo! directory,
Yellow Pages, or one of the directories that charge a fee for listing your Web site. I
am frankly not a big fan of these directories, but I must admit that in some instances
I‟ve seen some good things coming out of a listing on the Yahoo! directory. As a
result, this is the only fee directory that I always consider when listing a Web site.
It‟s not cheap at close to $300 per year, but it may be worth it for a new Web site.
As far as free listings, there is one directory that you must submit to and that is
dmoz. Dmoz is managed by humans, who are supposed to review and select the
best site within a category. Unfortunately, there have been reports of editors who
give preferential treatment to their buddies at the expense of other sites that may be
better suited for a given listing. I am not sure how widespread this is, but I still think
that dmoz is one of the best listings you can get. Make sure that you find the right
category and sub-category, since dmoz offers many and is a real maze when it
comes to finding your way around.
As for the other free listings, there are hundreds of directories. Some are legitimate
and offer some value. Some are not so legitimate; since they are designed to sell
you something (they should not be confused with FFA (Free for All).
Regardless, these directories have their value and you can find services that offer to
list your site to as many as 2500 or 3000 directories for as little as $50 or $60. The
submissions are legitimate (I use such a service and receive very detailed
submission reports), but the results vary greatly depending on time of submission,
your placement when your Web site was submitted, etc.
Resources:
Listings on Paid Directories
http://dir.yahoo.com/ ($299)
http://botw.org/ ($99.95)
http://www.goguides.org ($69)
http://www.yellowpages.com/
http://www.business.com/
http://www.joeant.com/
http://www.jayde.com/ (also free listing)
Listings for All Other Directories: A Sample List
http://www.dmoz.org
http://www.femina.com
38
July 2009
http://www.gogreece.com
http://www.worldhot.com/
http://www.123india.com
http://www.elib.org
http://www.ezilon.com
http://www.epooch.com
http://www.christiansunite.com
http://www.toronto1.biz
http://www.canadianeh.com
http://www.aardvark.co.za
http://www.nzs.com/
http://www.aigam.com
http://www.lii.org/pub/htdocs/home.htm
http://www.sacentral.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm
There are too many to list (around 3,000 as mentioned above), so if you need a
referral or help with this, send me an email and I‟ll give you a list or help you submit
to those free directories.
Ready to continue? Go to the next part …
39
July 2009
14. CPC Advertising and AdWords
14A. Complement of Information for AdWords
15. Classified Ads
16. Banner Ads
17. Links Exchange
18. Other Options – from FFAs to Affiliate Marketing
14. CPC Web Advertising and AdWords
I was planning to make a short stop here and combine advertising and banner
exchange, but these are two very different topics that need to be treated in very
different ways. Furthermore, I believe that the topic of Web advertising on the Net is
very often brushed aside as too expensive or at the other end of the spectrum,
“over-sold” by gurus as an easy way to make money doing what is called
“arbitrage.”
As a result, instead of doing a short overview, I‟ve decided to spend some time
reviewing advertising on the Net. The focus is on Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
and Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising typical of search engines as is AdWords. As a
matter of fact, I will use AdWords in particular, as well as keyword advertisement (I
will address keyword advertisement on Facebook and the other social network in
another issue) to review this topic, since it is a popular way to advertise today. This
fact is a result of various changes on the Internet including:
- Searches are a fact of life and most (if not all) people search for something using
one or several search engines
- Sponsored listings that are presented to users at the result of a search are
common practice and quite successful.
40
July 2009
- Advertising on the Net, and on search engines in particular, has become a
necessity for Web site entrepreneurs, if they want to offer their products or services
to potential buyers at the most opportune moment.
- Keyword-based advertising can be a blessing in disguise if you know how to use it
and how to manage your spending and advertising methods.
- Google AdWords and the tools that are offered via this application are great for
collecting tons of intelligence and using it to better understand your potential
customer and what it will take to get their attention.
- Google AdWords and most SEM solutions suck for affiliates who work with
networks such as Clickbank, CJ, Linkshare, etc., and make a commission based on
sales --- unless you know how to cherry pick offers and manage traffic generated by
clicks.
- PPC advertising can work if you have the right formula of service or product and
play the game smartly.
First, let‟s set the scene for search today: You may not like it but Google, Yahoo!
and MSN provide most of the searches on the Internet, with Google being the
dominant figure (nothing new here).
Here are the official numbers per Nielsen for searches in 2009.
Google: 64.0%
Yahoo!: 16.3%
MSN: 9.9%
If my math is correct, this represents more than over 90 percent of all searches on
the Net.
If you are an information junkie and want to know how the other 10 percent is split,
here it is.
AOL: 3.7%
Ask: 2.1%
My Web Search: 0.7%
Comcast Search: 0.5%
Yellow Pages: 0.4%
Next Tag: 0.3%
Dogpile: 0.2%
This demonstrates one thing to me (and, I hope, to you as well), Google is the
dominant search engine.
41
July 2009
This also implies that Google is most representative of most every users and
searches, and, as a result, is very accurate as far as what users search for and how
they search. As a result, Google can provide you with the best intelligence on your
potential customers‟ search habits.
Of course, you can now open an AdWords account and start spending your hard
earned money on very expensive keywords and key terms and probably not
generate enough revenues to pay for it, let alone make a profit.
So, how does one use Google to gather information without spending a fortune?
Based on most online marketing doctrines, a pay per click (PPC - also called Cost
per Click - CPC) advertising campaign has two very distinctive goals that include:
1) To ensure that an ad (text typically, but also banner ads in the network) is
positioned on the search engines to attract potential customers and trigger an action
and/or increase sales
2) Expose a company brand on the Internet and/or use name recognition to appeal
to shoppers who have the tendency to trust and shop at name-brand online stores
(a network like Google Content Partners or Networks like Commission Junction,
Linkshare, etc. are a good examples of those).
For the sake of keeping this plan simple at this level, we will look at what is probably
the most impressive ad network of them all: Google AdWords.
The first rule of understanding AdWords is that no matter what you think, you must
realize that Google Ad Network (the bid system where people bid for keywords on a
CPC or CPA basis or partner contents) is designed to make as much money as
possible for one entity: Google. By playing you against your competitors, AdWords‟
bottom line is its own profit margin based on clients‟ size, reputation, history,
spending, etc. Hence, the basic principal of AdWords, where people believe that the
more you pay, the better your position, is not always correct.
And while the AdWords worked relatively well for most everyone at some point in
time, it no longer works when keyword bids are as much as $9, $15 or even a
whopping $30 per click. FYI, just a few years ago, the average keyword on Google
was $0.54.
This reality should tell any marketer to re-evaluate the way he/she uses Google
AdWords (and the other SEM solutions for that matter). My advice is, first and
foremost, advertising on the Net using SEM should be used to:
1) Initially gather information on what/how information is being searched and the
cost of keywords, hence a campaign.
2) To give you the opportunity to analyze this information to find the best way to
42
July 2009
“monetize” your services or products based on what others in your vertical are
spending.
As far as branding, I am of the opinion that when it comes to PPC, branding is
nothing more than a “residual” effect, and brand recognition will be minimally
enhance if at all. However, you may have an advantage if you already have an
established name. If your plan is to brand, then look into networks like CJ or other
CPA networks or something like AdWords content sites and make sure that you
have banners and creatives that give your product and company justice.
So the question is “How to Use AdWords?” to get maximum bang for your buck?”
At this juncture, your goal should be to use AdWords to gather information with
minimal expenditures.
The first thing you need to do is to create a campaign for each product and/or
service (and business if you are launching multiple) that you have and then create
buckets of key terms using keyword software.
I personally recommend using a combination of two or three solutions to search for
the best keywords and they include:
First: Wordtracker (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/) to find the keywords that
works for you
Second: AdWords keyword tool
(https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal)
Third: Use a software or solution that provides you with a KEI ranking for keywords.
KEI stands for “Keyword Efficiency Index” and uses a simple formula that attributes
a value to a keyword, based on its popularity and competing Web sites that feature
this keyword.
As a result, very popular keywords often will have a low KEI rating since the
competition for these keywords is fierce, hence not so good, since bidding on these
keywords is probably very high. The goal in looking at KEI is to identify keywords
and key terms that are searched, but for which the competition is not so fierce and,
as a result bid price is low.
I personally use IBP, an all-in-one software that allows me to test HTML, find
keywords, calculate KEI, submit sites, evaluate a Web site‟s ranking, and much
more. If you are interested, check it out at http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/
To illustrate the three steps that I explain above, I created screen shots that show
the steps that I would follow using first Wordtracker, then AdWords keyword tool and
finally IBP.
43
July 2009
Looking for keywords related to a theme such as “marketing” and marketing as it
relates to the Internet in particular, I first use Wordtracker to find keyword in these
themes as shown on screen shot 1:
WordTracker Screen shot 1
The result that I get already is giving me a lot of potentially good keywords and key
terms. However, since “marketing” is a high level keyword (after all what kind of
marketing are we talking about), the keywords that are listed in the result become
what I call a “bucket.” The idea of a bucket is to group together keywords that
address specific area of the business you are targeting.
In my example, these buckets would be “Internet Marketing,” “Search Engine
Marketing,” “Network Marketing,” “Web site marketing,” etc.
Now, by clicking on these keywords, I am able to drill down and find keywords that
are specifically related to each bucket.
44
July 2009
For example, clicking on "Internet Marketing" would result in the following:
WordTracker Screen Shot 2
This result is my first bucket of keywords that I titled “Internet Marketing” based on
the keyword that I selected to explore one level up (as shown on screen shot 1).
The same approach is taken with the other high level keywords that were obtained
at the first level of search (screen shot 1: “Search Engine Marketing,” “Network
Marketing,” “Web site marketing,” etc.)
45
July 2009
However, what I suggest is to organize keywords in some kind of buckets system.
Buckets are, for all intents and purposes, a way to better define your vertical by
specialized keywords and key terms.
The top level one is “Marketing,” but it is a very big topic so I need to better define
what I call specialized-verticals like “Internet Marketing,” “Search Engine Marketing,”
etc. All of them derive from my main vertical, but allow me to be more specific in the
type of marketing I am going to target.
The importance of these buckets is that eventually they will become your ad group
on AdWords, and that alone will allow you to be much more efficient in the way you
use AdWords.
Using my example, when I‟m finished with this exercise I will have a top level
vertical called “Advertising” that will translate into my campaign on AdWords and
buckets like “Internet Marketing” that will become my ad group on AdWords. As a
result, my AdWords account will look something like this:
Campaign: My Advertising Campaign
Ad Group 1: Internet Marketing
Keyword 1: internet marketing
Keyword 2: internet marketing marketing
Keyword 3: internet marketing services
Etc.
Group 2: Search Engine Marketing
Keyword 1:
Keyword 2:
Keyword 3:
Etc.
Now, you may think that you are ready to roll, but before you spend a dime, there
are two things that you must do (as explained in the preceding pages). You must
check the AdWords Keywords tool and evaluate the KEI of each keyword.
The AdWords keyword tool is quite simple and allows you to find keywords in the
same vertical that you entered as shown in the screen shot below.
46
July 2009
AdWords Keywords Tool Screen Shot
As you can see AdWords gives you a number of options for keywords that you may
or may not have already found on WordTracker, and there is nothing wrong in
adding new ones to your list of keywords.
However, stay in the spirit of your bucket, and don‟t add keywords that are not
directly related to that bucket. Since, in this example, I am set to find “Internet
marketing” related keywords only, I would stay away from keywords that are not
directly related such as “market research” (listed in that same result under
“Additional Keywords to Consider”). In this case, assuming that “market research” is
a keyword that I could use, I would put it in a different bucket or create a new
bucket.
47
July 2009
A good example of that are the key terms “search engine optimization” and “SEO.”
These two terms stand for the exact same thing, but if you pay attention, you will
note that people search using the term SEO (or SEO associated with another word)
as well as search engine optimization. And even though SEO stands for search
engine optimization, there are enough searches under these two terms to make
space for a bucket dedicated to each one. As a result, in this instance, I would
create an ad group called “SEO”, along with one called “search engine
optimization”.
Finally, while you must pay attention to the bar that indicates the competitiveness of
these keywords; do not be alarmed since our next and last step will be to review the
popularity and KEI of these keywords, something that will define how we bid.
Tip: The blue bar that you see on AdWords can be a very useful item that
can help you find out how much the price of the top bid is for any given
keyword at a given moment. This is something that is explained later on in
this document, so keep on reading.
As mentioned previously, the KEI is something that can be obtained using various
online solutions or software. For the sake of this example, I will show you how it
works using the IBP software (next page).
48
July 2009
IBP Keywords and KEI Results Screen Shot
IBP, or similar software, can provide you with the ability to confirm from an
independent source (other than Google) the number of searches for a keyword as
well as the number of competing offers relatives to this keyword and, finally, a KEI
value. The KEI is nothing more than a simple formula that reads as follows:
With SV = Search Volume and C = Competition
Using this formula, you can calculate the KEI of each keyword yourself as per the
example below (using Wordtracker and Google Search – simply enter the keyword
on the search box and look at the number of result you get):
49
July 2009
Keyword
internet marketing
Daily Searches
Monthly Searches Offers
KEI
1484
44520 136,000,000
14.57
A more advanced formula is also used for calculating the KEI, and that formula uses
the relevance of a keyword. The formula reads as follows:
With SV and C based on the same values and with R = relevance
Relevance is something that is defined by the user and typically has three to four
variants, as follows:
1 = Excellent Relevancy
2 = Good Relevancy
3 = Limited Relevancy
4 = Poor Relevancy*
* Note that in this case the KEI = 0 – some formula have only three relevancy
values, but I find “poor” to be almost irrelevant keywords
As a result, your own calculation using the same example of keyword (Internet
marketing) will look like the following:
Keyword
internet marketing
Daily Searches
Monthly Searches Offers
KEI
KEIr
1484
44520 136,000,000
14.57
14.57
Note that the KEI and KEIr are identical in this case, because the keyword selected
(“Internet marketing”) is very relevant. However, the KEIr will start moving down as
50
July 2009
relevancy changes as shown in the example below since in this example “Dallas
Internet marketing” has limited relevancy and, as a result its value is only 3:
Keyword
Daily Searches Monthly Searches Offers
KEI
KEIr
internet marketing
1484
44520 136,000,000
14.57
14.57
Dallas Internet Marketing
165
4950
3,950,000
6.2
2.06
Note, however, that I decided in this example to give a relevancy value of three to
“Dallas Internet marketing.” Of course this would not be true if I were targeting the
Dallas market. Should this be the case, my relevancy value for Dallas would be 1 or
2 depending on the importance of this key term in my campaign.
This leads me to point out to the importance of keyword relevancy and the fact that
keywords‟ relevance is a judgment call based on your campaign‟s goals.
Go get it
You are now ready to start with AdWords, and the first thing you will need to do is to
create a campaign budget and set the type of campaign you want to run (search or
content) and other targeting factors. Here are some recommendations:
- Set a low daily budget with limited time for the campaign to run (you can always
extend it) and time during the day when you want it to run. Again, remember that
the goal of this initial campaign is to gather intelligence on keyword popularity and
pricing, competition, etc. This should be viewed as an R&D project.
- Create your first ad group and set a cost per click at $0.35 for search content.
Again, nothing to worry about you can always change it.
- Create one or more ads for each group (I suggest two to three per group) using
your main keyword in the header (for example “Internet marketing expert” for the
ads corresponding to the Internet marketing group). Look at other Web advertisers
who offer the same service as you by searching Google. No matter what, do not
copy what is done. Create your own ad, something that reflects who you are.
- Some people may recommend that you create ad groups that target search,
network content and managed content. I personally like to segregate between
search and managed content and create two sets of campaigns. However, this is
applicable when I am actively generating clicks and leads. For the sake of this
“exercise,” I suggest that you focus on search and opt for “network content” with a
very low PPC for the latter: set it at $0.15, or less, just to get is going and see what
you get. As far as managed content, feel free to start if you think you can manage it
all.
51
July 2009
An example: for an online campaign that I run on AdWords I have for one campaign,
22 ad groups, 63 ads and 480 keywords. It‟s a lot of work, but it is worth it if you
want to make money on search engine marketing and Google AdWords in
particular.
Once you have launched your campaign, you will very quickly see something
happening, and that is the infamous “below first page bid” on some of your
keywords. Nothing to worry about since the goal here is to find out how much it
costs to be on the first page (but not in order to be there).
Tip: Don‟t be intimidated by high keyword prices to be on page one. For
example, some keywords in the Internet marketing space go for as much as
$20 per click for something like “email marketing software” (I guess email
marketing software companies have a very high margin or a high lifetime
value for their customers). Regardless, the top position on AdWords is not
something you want to target, so no worries.
Tip: To better manage your campaign(s), I suggest that you download a
Google campaign management tool called “AdWords Editor.” It comes with
great features and allows you to manipulate things much faster than if you
were online. (http://www.google.com/intl/en/adwordseditor/index.html)
Now, the game begins. Using your KEI software or own calculation look at your
keywords with the highest KEI. Those are the keywords that may not generate great
traffic, but that are the most cost effective in getting visitors. I usually increase my
bids for those to be in a decent position. Not necessarily page one, but close
enough, and as long as it is within my daily budget.
During an actual campaign, one of the most critical aspects of AdWords is its
“network placement” and “managed placement.” I continually adjust my “managed
placement” and often pay as much as my PPC average for search, but set my
network placement maximum to a very low number. I also slash out Web sites from
my managed placement that are generating clicks, but not producing conversion.
As you do the above, you will notice within a relatively short period of time that
some buckets/groups show significant impressions and some don‟t. This may be the
result of a bid that is too low or the keywords simply do not create much traffic and
this is part of the game.
If would increase your PPC for search, remember to change in small increments.
In the same manner, if you change your PPC for a specific keyword, do not be
tempted to double or triple how much you are willing to pay. Do it in increments and
do it often.
Within a couple of weeks of this (I usually do this for three weeks and spend one to
two hours per day reviewing and adjusting), you will see an emerging “picture” of
52
July 2009
what is going on in your space including “hot” keywords based on searches, ads
that perform well, keywords and messages that combine to convert well, etc. Your
spending for these two or three weeks may be $200-$300, but the intelligence that
you will gather is worth 10 to 20 times that amount.
Why? Because you now have a great “picture” of what works for your campaign as
far as keywords and ads. Equipped with this information you will be able to create
campaigns on Yahoo!, MSN, Miva, AOL, Ask and all the other search engines, while
minimizing your time tweaking your campaigns. Sure, there may be some different
results for the same keyword on Google and AOL, but is it worth spending an entire
day figuring this out? I‟ve always believed and continue to believe that when it‟s all
said and done, Internet marketing is a numbers game and that once you find what
works on Google, it probably will work 90 percent of the time on Yahoo! or MSN.
This approach will allow you to minimize the time spent managing campaigns, while
expanding very rapidly.
With this information, you also will be able to better target directories if you want to
advertise on them. You will be able to better target your email campaign thanks to a
better understanding of what works in your message and the key terms to which
people are more receptive. And this applies to both the subject line and your email
message.
While all this is time consuming, it is by far one of the most critical parts of your plan
to succeed, so stay focused and do it right.
14A. Complement Information for AdWords
I realized after completing Volume 1 that my introduction to Google AdWords did not
have enough depth. After all, since Volume 1 is designed to help you prepare your
business, I did not intend for users to create and launch full blown campaigns on
AdWords. However, talking to people who have reviewed Volume 1, I realized that I
underestimated the tendency in all of us to want results as soon as possible. As a
result, readers who tried this approach started expanding their budgets and running
actual campaigns. As a result, I have received comments and questions on Google
AdWords campaigns that beg for the following additions.
Keyword Search
How can you find out the top bid for any given keyword? Google provides
advertisers with a great option to search for keywords, and, as explained above to
see the number of competing sites and bidders. However the Google bar system
does not indicate the top price for keywords. That being said, there are ways to find
out how much your competitors are paying thanks to a small aberration in Google
Keyword search interface.
53
July 2009
Here how it works: go to the “keyword tool” and input one of your keywords. The
keyword tool should return a number of rows listing at first the keyword that you
selected, and then a column containing the “competition bar,” “local search volume,”
“global search volume” and the “add” button. By simply highlighting and copying the
line corresponding to this keyword you will be able to see the top bid for that
keyword as shown below.
As shown in the example, simply highlight and copy the entire row that contains
your keyword and paste on your “notepad” as shown below.
You will note that something new will appear following the keyword name. Typically,
something like one and three, followed by a price such as $6.32, as shown in this
example, and then followed by the number of searches, or the words “not enough
data.”
What you are looking at is the top payout for the top position (one and three) on
Google for that particular keyword. In this instance it is $6.32.
How can this help you? It will give you an idea right from the beginning of how much
people are willing to pay for the keyword(s) in which you are interested.
54
July 2009
Tip: Something that is important to realize with keywords is that while you
may be using 500 keywords in your campaign, only a handful will get most of
the traffic, since they are the ones that most people have the tendency to use
when searching for your product or service.
After experimenting with keywords for a week or so, you should already have
a good picture of which keywords are generating traffic and exposure to your
ads and which are marginal. Needless to say, your focus should be on the
top 20 or 30 keywords (or 100, if you are lucky to have that many generating
significant traffic).
Keyword Options
Google AdWords, like many of the other search engines and ad networks, offers the
option to target your keywords, according to search behavior.
Options that Google gives are as follows:
Exact match (keyword is contained in brackets like this: [keyword])
Phrase match (keyword is contained in quotes like this: “keyword”)
Broad match (keyword is not contained in anything like this: keyword)
Negative keyword (keyword is preceded by a minus sign like this: -keyword)
By now, you should know how Google defines these keywords, but if you don‟t know
look at this page:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6100
What does that do for you? It all depends on your service or product. For example,
taking something like “coupons,” if you offer any and every coupon under the sun
you may want to go broad. However, if you are offering “printable coupons,” you
may want to limit the generic term “coupons” to an exact search.
On the other hand, does it matter if your ad is very specific? Or would it make sense
to have a generic ad and have very specific keywords that are set as exact
matches? Confused? No worries…
What all this means is that you have to experiment and set goals and see how your
campaigns, ad groups and ads perform. This is not something that is done
overnight, but if you give it time and if you are disciplined about it you will get better
performance and, eventually, great results. And remember that what you learn on
Google AdWords will be transferable (to a large extent) to Microsoft Bing, Yahoo!,
MIVA, Admob, 7Search, etc. So, it is worth the time and effort.
55
July 2009
Geographic Targeting
Targeting may or may not be a critical issue for you. For example, are you targeting
the world or the U.S., or certain part of the country? As a matter of fact, are you
targeting audiences in specific areas of the country such as part of New York or
California, and so on. If this is the case, narrow your targeting as much as you can
or create buckets based on your targeting as well.
Don‟t be afraid to overdo it, since you will be able to go back and change the
parameters of your targeting.
No matter what, make sure that you set this to match your business strategy and its
limitations, if any,. Otherwise, you will be wasting valuable dollars on traffic and
clicks that you cannot service.
Demographics Targeting
Google allows you to target specific languages. Take advantage of it if you are
targeting specific geographical areas, such as the U.S. For example, if you are
offering coupons from electronic retailers that are targeting Latin speakers, then you
should certainly select “Spanish” as a language targeted.
You have an opportunity to show your ads to Spanish speakers searching Google.
And since Google looks at the IP address of the user to define where this person is
located, then ads for a Latin music store in L.A., for example, that target Spanish
speakers will be shown when Google detects someone coming from Puerto Rico or
has selected Spanish as its primary language.
Networks and Devices
AdWords gives its customers the ability to select how ads will be shown. Options
include everything that is included in the Google arsenal and gives the opportunity
to select where you want to show your ads.
You can select “Google Search” and if you select that option, then you opt for
Google Search‟s partners, such as DMOZ, and all search engines that use DMOZ
for indexing Web sites. Google Search is the bread and butter of Google and as
such is the most expensive way to display your ads. Based on my experience,
selecting Search Partners does not really affect the overall result and this is
something that I always select.
You can select content and within content, you have the option to select the entire
content network that Google uses or you can handpick your own content network.
The content network can produce huge amounts of impressions, but the number of
click-though and conversion is not that great. I usually set my bid at about 50-65
percent lower than my search bid – For example, if I set my default bids for search
at $0.50, I would set the default bid for content at $0.25-0.30, and sometimes lower.
56
July 2009
Alternatively, if I opt for placements that I select myself, I often will set my bid higher
than the search default. As an example if my search bid is for $0.50, I would set the
bid for selected placements at $0.65-$0.75, and sometimes higher.
In this same area of AdWords, Google gives you the opportunity to select the type of
devices where your ads will be delivered. The options are computers and/or
iPhones.
Obviously, if you do not have a Web site or lead generation form that allows access
via mobile devices, it is pointless to select that option.
Bidding and Budget
This is by far the most critical area for an advertiser, since it can be very tempting to
set your budget too high or too low and spend too much too fast or not enough and
be marginalized by the Google optimizer.
You also may be tempted to select the automated bid or, when you‟ve been “live” for
a while, switch to CPA (when it is offered as an option), thinking that you will get a
better ROI and more safety on how you spend your money. (After all, CPA stands
for cost per action.) Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions or any simple
answers and CPA with Google AdWords does not mean this (If you want to run a
CPA campaign, check out CJ or other CPA networks. These are much better
options.)
My suggestion is to start with a low budget and lower-end bids. If you‟ve done your
homework and looked at the keyword tools and followed the instructions I gave you
in the preceding section, you should have an idea of how much the top advertisers
are paying for the top keywords.
Once you‟ve done this, put your thinking cap on and decide how much you can
afford to spend. Keep in mind that on a good day, as much as 10-20 percent of the
clicks you pay for will not even see your page (this will be explored in Volume 2). Of
the 80-90 percent remaining, only a fraction will convert into anything and you
should be conservative and assume that if you are selling or offering something with
a great price, supported by a seamless shopping cart and inexpensive and speedy
delivery, you will be happy to convert a 5 percent to 15 percent of click through. In
other words, for 100 clicks that you will pay Google for, you‟ll average four to 12
conversions. Do the math and make sure that you know how much you can afford to
pay in order to make a profit. On the other hand, if you look at it from the
perspective of the cost for acquiring a customer, then you may want to look at the
value of your customer over time and budget accordingly.
Also keep in mind that 60-80 percent of your keywords will be set at a relatively low
bid amount, since they will only generate minimum traffic in your vertical and people
will not bid high for those. As a result, set your default bid at the low end of your
bidding price.
57
July 2009
If in doubt, set the default to $0.35 for example. Once you have uploaded your
keywords, AdWords will automatically show you which keywords bids are good and
which ones are below what they call “below first page bid” and will even give you a
price that you must pay to get on page one.
Once this is available, you will be able to adjust as needed. But please be very
careful how much you bid and don‟t make the mistake of believing that all your
keywords should be on page one. Take the time to see how things develop with
impressions before you adjust. Also know that the page one bid is an average and
varies from hour to hour.
As far as budget, set a budget that is as low as you can get it based on keyword
costs and see how things perform. You always will have the opportunity to go back
and change your daily budget.
Ad Delivery Type
AdWords give you two settings that allow you to show ads in any position or to have
them automatically managed for maximum exposure. I never liked the automated
options on Google (or any other ad network for that matter – remember that they are
created to make money for themselves, not you). As a result I always set this to
“show ads in any position”
Another option in this area is delivery method that you can select as “evenly” or “as
quickly as possible.” Frankly, you will have to experiment with this functionality to
see which one performs best for you. I always leave this setting to “evenly” since I
manage the time of delivery for my ads.
Time Delivery
This is what Google calls “advance settings,” as if the start and end date is an
advance feature. Typically, you don‟t have to worry about the end date since you
can "pause" a campaign or an ad group at any time.
The next option that is available is to decide what day and time you want your ads
to appear. I recommend that you set this to when you believe those people who are
looking for what you have to offer are searching and, of course, based on your
location (EST, CST, PST, GMT, etc). This takes some common sense and
experimenting.
The final two settings are for ad rotation and capping, and I personally recommend
having ads served evenly and not set a cap on impressions (at least when you
launch a campaign).
58
July 2009
Campaigns, Ad Groups
There are many ways to set campaigns, ad groups and ads and I recommend that
you start with a simple plan, and when you have time to experiment to go to more
complex settings. For example I‟ve experimented with specialized ad groups and
got some interesting results. I‟ve created ad groups and ads using the exact same
keywords and setting each group to use all the keywords with variation as far a
keyword options (exact, phrase, broad).
For example, I had some successes with ad groups that specialized in the way
keywords were handled (exact, phrase or broad).
Here‟s how it worked: I created a first ad group that had keywords set to “exact.” I
then created another ad group with the same keywords, but this time these
keywords were set to “broad.” Finally, I created a third ad group with, once more,
the same keywords. But this time, all keywords in this ad group were set to “phrase
match.” Set your bids at different levels with the lowest for the “broad” and the
highest for “exact.” Ads should be somewhat different, since it may be possible for
two of your ads to be displayed on the same page, each being associated with one
of these specialized ad groups.
Another approach that I‟ve seen, and with which I experimented with some degree
of success, especially when trying to control cost, is to set “search” campaigns” vs.
“content campaigns”.
In this instance I would create the exact same campaign but one would be set for
search exclusively and the other targeted at content sites on the Google network.
For the “content campaign” I would create ad group corresponding to “buckets” of
content theme following AdWords own themes as shown below (next page).
59
July 2009
This approach takes quite a bit of work, but once it is set, it runs by itself and I find
the rewards to be quite good and worth the time.
Tip: Using the desktop “AdWords Editor” makes creating additional content
campaigns quite easy for most anyone and this is something that is covered
in more details and during “live” sessions in Volume 2/Workbook.
Tracking
Google provides advertisers with the possibility of tracking conversions on their sites
and be able to not only see how many clicks and conversions occurred but, more
importantly, to see how many landing page conversions turned into some kind of
action on a second, third page or fourth page all the way to the “thank you” page.
60
July 2009
Analytics as basic as what Google offers are indispensible tools for an advertiser,
and you must integrate it into all your pages and campaigns. The task of creating
and copying the code onto pages of Web sites may be daunting to some, but this is
an absolute must and something that is easy to do. However, for those of you who
are afraid of touching your page‟s code, we will cover this in live sessions in Volume
2. Regardless, there is also no need to be intimidated by this task, since including
this code is a matter of copy and paste and Google instructions are simple and to
the point.
Tracking is now available on pretty much all ad networks and they will allow you to
evaluate your success or lack of it. As a result, no matter which network you use,
utilize the available tracking code.
To better track some of my campaigns, I also create different landing pages,
something that allows me to track specific ads or campaigns with more precision
and better evaluate networks. These pages are identical (unless there are reasons
to change the look and feel – targeted at men vs. women for example) and are only
differentiated by their name. For example:
http:///www.mysite.com/google_Campaign1.htm (target men for example)
http:///www.mysite.com/google_Campaign2.htm (target women)
http:///www.mysite.com/yahoo.htm (dedicated to leads generated by Yahoo network)
http:///www.mysite.com/msn.htm (dedicated to leads generated by MSN network)
A/B Testing and Ads
A/B testing is by far the best way to improve the performance of your ads and of
your overall campaign. This is an exercise that should never stop since things are
never static on the Net and adjustments are constantly needed to adapt to new
trends or changes.
A/B testing is, for all intent and purposes, the ability to pin two ads against each
other and, by a process of elimination, come up with the best one (or group of ads).
What kind of ads should you run? Google, like most anyone else, gives you the
opportunity to create text ads, banner ads, offer coupons options, etc. The answer
is simple: try them all. However, critical to your success is the cleverness of your
ads and copy. You must either have the time and talent to write some solid ads and
create appealing banners or you must find someone who do that. When I say find
someone, I do not mean outsource to the cheapest banner designer that you can
find. Rather, I mean find someone with whom you can work and who understands
what you are shooting for and who can deliver solid and witty copy. In the same
manner, find someone else who can create original creatives that take full
advantage of the copy.
61
July 2009
Finally, don‟t assume anything when you create an ad. Research your audience by
going to social networks and see what people are talking about and how they talk to
each other. If this is your audience, you want to make sure that you speak their
language and talk about something they care about.
Final Observations
Google is not in the business of delivering a service to please you or me, but rather
to please its CFO, CEO, president, chairman, and, ultimately, its investors and stock
holders. In short, Google is not here to help you make money, but to make the most
money at your expense and at the expense of the other advertisers using the
network.
As a result, no matter what you do to outsmart your competitors, Google will
outsmart you and everyone else who is advertising on its platform since this is
GOOGLE‟s platform.
In short, no matter how smart you think you are, Google, and the other ad networks
where you are thinking of advertising will outsmart you. They are in charge and you
are playing by their rules and on their own turf. People are not using AdWords
because this is the best way to expose products or services. People choose Google
AdWords because of necessity.
This is something that you have to recognize going into this game and the sooner
you understand the dynamic the better.
15. Classified Ads
For selling products or services to people, classified ads are a possible channel;
however, do not expect tremendous traction unless it is highly specialized. What the
classifieds may be good for is to target very regional audiences as well as help you
with your own natural position in search engines.
Resources:
http://www.usfreeads.com/
http://www.webcosmo.com/
http://www.classifiedads.com/
http://www.global-free-classified-ads.com/
http://www.freeadvertisingforum.com/
http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites
http://www.beatyourprice.com/
62
July 2009
16. Banner Exchange
There are many places that offer banner exchange and the rules vary. Regardless,
there is nothing great to be expected from banner exchange but free exposure is
free exposure.
There are only two rules that I would follow:
1
Do not waste your time exchanging banners with a site that has dozens of
pages dedicated to banners buried deep inside the site. Most people don‟t
intentionally go to a page to look for banners (and crawlers do not go past two or
three levels as explained later). The only possible exception is for a banner page
that has a high ranking, in which case it falls more into the link exchange category.
2
Always include a call for action on a banner. For example, “Click Here,” Click
to Visit,” “Click Here for Great Deals on…,” etc. Finally, the prettier the banner, the
more people thinks it‟s an image and do not think of clicking on it, so be careful.
Resources:
I do not have any resources on this one and suggest that you do a search on
Google and see what is available.
17. Link Exchange
The same as what I explained in “banner exchange” applies here. The only
difference is that I suggest that you link with Web sites that offer something
complementing your offer. In other words do not link simply for the sake of linking
no matter the PR of the other site. Link with sites that complement what you have
to offer.
Finally, be aware that most crawlers are set to go no more than two or three levels
down on any Web site. So if the link you are offered is on level four or five of
another site, your chances of benefitting from the exposure is low regardless of the
PR (home page PR is PR for that page and not necessarily for the Web site as a
hole).
Resources:
There are some decent link programs that can help you find other Web sites and
link with them relatively easily. The following are a few good ones that I suggest you
investigate:
http://www.linkmarket.net/
http://www.linkleads.com/
63
July 2009
http://www.infowizards.com/
http://www.linktraders.org/
http://www.linkexchanged.com/
http://www.linkexchangeit.com/
http://www.linkpartners.com/
http://www.123exchangelinks.com/
http://www.links-pal.com/
http://www.ads4links.com/
http://www.spocka.com/
http://links-for-you.com/
http://www.webmaster-link-exchange.com/
http://www.hotscripts.com/category/remotely-hosted/link-indexing/
18. Other Options – From FFAs to Affiliate Marketing
FFA was a great way to get some (and I mean “some”) traffic and, more importantly,
backlinks for very little investment in time and money. However, search engines
started penalizing links in FFA and this trend died a quiet death.
That being said, it‟s another of those marketing tools that died, but not completely,
and something that maybe worth looking into, for those of you who have a solid
stomach and if you have the time and patience to do it.
There are two ways to deal with FFA
FFA Posting: Very poor results. I‟d say a waste of time, but if you have the
time, why not?
FFA Hosting: A bit more hope of getting visitors, but watch out for complaints
from e-mail that you send and that will be regarded as spam even if these people
have agreed to receive it.
By the way, here‟s a quote I saw on a Web site that I think sums it all up: “FFA
hosting and posting is a war zone. No doubt about it. But if you know how to play
the game on both ends, you can win the war.”
64
July 2009
Resources:
www.hightraffic.net/freelinks/lpm/links.shtml
www.adomania.com/ffan/
www.mweffa.com/
www.pridelinks.com/
www.100ffa.com/
www.hightraffic.net/links/automate/links.shtml
www.ffafarm.com/veretekk/freshleads/links.html
www.maxban.com/
www.postive.com/LP/links.html
www.troinfo.com/links/links.htm
www.ffacash.com/cgi-bin/post.cgi?mybizpages-Business
www.freeemail123.net/
www.smallbizffa.net/ffa.pl?250
ffa.trafficwave.net
www.freeads2000.com/
www.hbb.nu/
www.hits2u.com/
www.multilinks.net/ffagold.shtml
www.1host4profit.com/ffa.html
Affiliate Marketing is better explained below under the section “Commission Based
Marketing”
Ready for more? Go to the next part
65
July 2009
19. How to Put It Together
20. Arbitrage and Affiliate Marketing (includes what Gurus don’t tell you)
22. Basic Optimizations to Achieve Higher Conversions
22. Lead Generations, Sales Referrals and the Search for Higher Pay Out
19. Put It Together
By now (and if you followed the steps that I explained in parts one through four),
one of two things may be happening for you:
1)
You understand the overall concept and are ready to dive in and
explore the infinite possibilities that marketing on the Internet offer.
or
2)
You are somewhat overwhelmed or intimidated by the information
and the options that are available and are unsure about how to proceed.
If you fall in category 1) read on as we now enter a new level of marketing on the
Internet, and explore how to turn an idea into a really successful business by
utilizing all the levers available to you.
If, on the other hand, you fall into category 2) do not despair, the Internet can be
overwhelming to most anyone, including people who, like myself, have done it for
years. I suggest that you re-read the high points in the previous pages and limit
yourself to a couple of resources to simplify managing the information that you need
to absorb.
The objective of this first volume on Internet success is to give a Net entrepreneur
enough information to get started and put you in a place that will ensure that you
avoid obvious mistakes and, hope, prepare you to succeed.
If you are afraid of screwing up something, don‟t worry… you will, as I have done
and most Internet entrepreneurs do, no matter how good or experienced they they
are.
66
July 2009
There are too many channels, too many verticals, too many variables and too many
options for anyone to be able to keep on top of it all. The objective with this
manuscript is to provide you with enough information and know-how to minimize the
damages when you will screw up (and you will).
However, for those of you who fall into category 1 (and 2 for that matter), by now
you should have:
1) A good domain name and a Web site that has good content and that is optimized.
2) These elements should reside on a server at one of the ISPs that provides
reliable service at a decent price.
3) You should have created a press release and articles and all of them should be
posted at various specialized Web sites and broadcasted via your accounts on
social networks, where you have connected with friends and relatives (and anyone
else for that matter).
4) You should be familiar with Google AdWords and have experimented with some
keyword bids. You should understand bids for search vs. content and managed
content vs. automated content. Your curiosity has probably made you explore the
concept of broad, exact and phrase matches for keywords. If you‟ve gone ahead
and bid quite a bit, you may have seen the option to do some CPA. Be very
careful…
When you have done all the above, you should be ready for the next chapter, and
equipped to continue your voyage in the depth of success.
Our first venture in being truly successful will start with affiliate marketing and how
to explore and make the most of it.
20. Arbitrage and Commission Based Marketing
Arbitrage Based Marketing
You may have heard of the term
“arbitrage” from the financial market
and it applies in the same manner to
the Internet. However, a short
explanation is in order, in case you are
not familiar with this word. “Arbitrage”
can be summed up in a very short
sentence: “it is the “art” of buying low
and selling high.”
67
July 2009
You probably can think of many ways to arbitrage. For example click arbitrage is
one of the best examples and entails buying clicks for “x” dollar, and re-selling those
clicks at “x+y” dollars, hence making a profit for each click sold.
Sounds simple enough, doesn‟t it? Pseudo Internet marketing gurus have made a
killing (and I mean it) convincing people that this was is easy as one, two, three. In
reality, arbitrage is an “art” that very few people have been able to master, let alone
become rich at it. This does not mean that you cannot be successful at doing this,
but to be successful you must be focused on this game 24/7 and constantly hunt for
the best deals and know how to negotiate your way into profitability.
The reasons for this are very simple. Click traffic has become very expensive and,
as mentioned in preceding sections, unless you have a great margin, it has become
very difficult to make a profit (hence, the advantage of niche markets).
More often than not, companies and people in the arbitrage space are buying traffic
on a CPM or CPC basis and re-selling it on a CPA basis, a game that can be as
lucrative as it can be risky. Imagine paying Google AdWords, for example, $1 per
click and re-selling this traffic at a $10 CPA… One must have a minimum of 10
percent conversion just to pay for Google, let alone for any overheads, employees,
etc.
The same is true (with just a little more flexibility as far as pricing) when you buy
CPM or CPC from e-mailers, survey sites, list management companies, etc.
So what to do?
The tendency for many Web entrepreneurs is to look for cheap traffic, and if you
were to conduct a search for “cheap traffic,” you would probably come across many
offers. You‟d see something like a $10 offer for 10,000 visitors guaranteed, or
digging a little deeper, you may find a sale offer for 1,000,000 email addresses for
anywhere from $25 to $300 (probably both prices for the same list too).
These offers are very often what I term “garbage offers.”. For example, e-mail lists
that are offered for sale were harvested through “not so legal” means, and sold
thousands of times. By the time they come to you, most e-mail addresses are
probably dead, since these e-mails were bombarded with so many scam offers. And
even assuming that you had your hand on a legitimate list, what could you do? The
infrastructure to send 1,000,000 emails is complex and requires servers, specialized
software, all of it running in the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
The other option that you will see is to buy 10,000 visitors “guaranteed.” At best,
this is completely untargeted traffic that comes from dead domains that have been
re-directed to you. In the best case scenario, you may buy the worst possible
remnant traffic that no one else wants to buy.
This is all grim, and, as I mentioned, the kind of stuff that gurus do not want you to
know about when they try to convince you to buy their e-books or services.
However, you MUST be prepared and in order to do that, you MUST know what you
68
July 2009
are dealing with and be realistic about offers that sound too good to be true.
Like so many others, I‟ve made all the mistakes that I probably could make trying to
find cheap traffic and you should learn from this experience. But most of all, apply
this simple logic: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! And please, do not
make the mistake of thinking that you know better or that Guru John Doe knows the
secret of Internet traffic... 99.99 percent of the time this is simply not true.
With this in mind, there are ways to make some money in arbitrage, but it requires
work/research, common sense, and focus.
As demonstrated in the example of a $1 click that could be re-sold on a CPA basis
for $10 that is not realistic, could this work if you could resell these clicks for a $20
or $30 dollar CPA? Probably, but getting a $20-$30 dollar CPA is not easy. And even
assuming that we could find one of those, the conversions would probably be low,
since in all likeliness it involves a credit card conversion.
Okay then, would it be plausible to assume that we could buy clicks at $0.45 and
resell this traffic on a CPA basis for $15? Sounds more plausible? It is. Just check
out the math.
I‟m going to use as an example an actual test for a free survey that I am running on
various search engines with Google as my reference. After a short test, my average
cost for clicks is averaging $0.50 per click (CPC). So far, this has been a typical
Google campaign with a conversion of around 10.3 percent on the average (the
best conversions I have so far are 20 percent, while the worst stand at .05 percent I even have one that run at a dismal 0.0% on one of the top 50 ad networks… so
much for that!)
So far, the cost for this test is $193.40 for 386 clicks and 304 conversions according
to Google. In reality, these 386 clicks resulted in only 41 actions, which consisted of
a submission of information containing at minimum the following:
Name (first and last)
Age
E-mail address
State of Residence (US and Canada only)
Level of Education
Type of Housing
Type of Vehicle
Place of Employment
In other words, the information described here has cost me $4.11 for each person
who submitted it. This is obviously much higher than the $0.45 premise that I set up.
So far, this is quite straightforward and simple math and someone reading this could
say “So what?” and walk away... But wait… Did you ask the real question and are
you putting your creative hat on? This is when work and research will pay off and
when common sense and straight thinking comes into play in order to figure out
69
July 2009
how to monetize these actions.
In this “live” example, to cover my cost of $4.11, as well as make some money to
pay for my overhead and (I hope) make a profit, I need to make substantially more
than the $4.11. By the way, my test went on to cover other networks and channels
of marketing with various results and costs that went down to $3.50 per submission
and probably could go down substantially lower, but I will keep $4.11 for this
example.
Furthermore, I will have to account for a portion of this information not being valid (I
assume 10 percent) and, more importantly, come to terms with the fact that, no
matter what, a number of these people will never generate money or will opt out (I
typically assume half). In other words, my cost is suddenly rising from a steep $4.11
per submission to an atrocious $9 per submission.
Based on this, to break even and make a profit, I will have to make at least $20 from
each submission.
How can I do that? Well, let‟s take it one step at the time and look at one of the
most obvious options: affiliate networks and what is known as “commission-based
marketing.”
Commission Based Marketing
Commission-based marketing is not
comparable to arbitraging since it
involves a payout (typically on a CPA
basis) that an advertiser makes to
what is called an affiliate. For
example, if an advertiser is selling
shoes at $50 and an affiliate sends a
buyer who will spend this money the
affiliate would then get a percentage
of the sale. Simple as that…
In theory for an advertiser, affiliate marketing is one of the best way to market
product since the advertiser pays only when an action (sale, lead, etc) is taken by a
consumer. Hence the CPA (cost per action) model is by far the most cost efficient
way to sell products and services, and acquire customers. However affiliate
marketing is often poorly understood by advertisers and poorly represented by CPA
networks. As a result, many companies that have affiliate marketing programs are
bitterly disappointed by the results. The reason for this is that affiliate marketing is
based on establishing relationships with affiliates, and that in order to do this
successfully, companies must dedicate the “men–power” to succeed but often don‟t.
70
July 2009
Simply joining a CPA network, no matter how reputable it may be, does not insure
the success of an affiliate marketing program unless this CPA network offers to
actively recruit affiliates on behalf of the advertiser. And when this is offered it is
often done at a price.
Notwithstanding the above, affiliate marketing is by far one of the most cost effective
ways to acquire customers., However an advertiser must invest in its program by
investing in its affiliates and the people who manage the program.
From a publisher/affiliate perspective, the beauty of affiliate-based marketing is that
an affiliate does not have merchandise, inventory, shopping carts, or pretty much
anything. The affiliate makes his money from the percentage (or fee) that is paid to
him in the form of commission or finder‟s fee.
In some instances, the pay is based on other form of actions, such as a lead, the
submission of an email address or, in some cases, as little as the submission of a
zip code (known as “zip submits”). Of course, each one has a different price tag, but
curiously enough if you look around you will find zip submits that pay as much as
$0.75, which may sound a bit crazy, but if you can monetize what comes with it, why
not (remember it‟s a numbers‟ game.)?
Now, imagine for a moment that you were able to locate great offers that pay $20
per lead. I can tell that you‟re already smiling because you know that profit is at
hand.
And on this note, let‟s move on to our next section and become an affiliate and try to
locate these “juicy” offers that may yield the kind of results that we must have to be
successful.
At this juncture, you have learned how to spend money on
Web design, ISP, advertising, directory listings, etc., so it is
time to start learning how you can make money. Affiliate
marketing is the easiest way to start understanding how
you can create affiliations that will drive traffic from your
Web site to an advertiser‟s Web site and use someone‟s
else‟s platform to track and account for each impressions,
clicks and conversion and take care of paying you.
A short history lesson first: affiliate marketing started with Amazon in the mid „90s,
when Amazon realized that many people could tell others about Web site
purchasing books for cheap at the site. The great idea that Amazon had was to
create a simple interface where people could come and grab a banner and code,
put it on their Web page, tell others, and get a commission on the sales that were
made by the people who were referred by these “affiliates‟” Web sites. Barnes &
Noble hired a company to do the same shortly after and the race was on.
71
July 2009
In the late 90s, I was an executive with Commission Junction (CJ) and we launched
the first ASP-based affiliate platform that offered both advertisers and publishers a
place where they could exchange banners and get paid for traffic. I believe that one
of the reasons for the success of CJ was that we were the first ASP affiliate
marketing network, and, as a result, were able to offer much faster integration to
merchants at very reasonable prices. The other critical factor to the success of CJ
(and I believe it was even more important) was the perception by affiliates that CJ
cared about them and that they would get paid for their work. Indeed this was, and
to some degree continues to be, one of the most dismal aspects of this industry.
Advertisers and merchants will try to avoid paying for leads or sales when they can
or try to get away from their obligations by being dishonest with small (and not so
small) affiliates.
Unfortunately, while advances in tracking have made things much better today,
abuses by some advertisers and so-called brokers or merchants continues to be a
real problem. At the same token, abuses by publishers also is flagrant and is
estimated to be as high as 20-25 percent of all traffic generated by affiliates and
search engines for their clients. I believe that anyone who is running a campaign on
the search engines will attest to that fact.
With this in mind, it is critical for an affiliate to work with reputable companies. The
good thing is that there are many these days with some of the biggest ones
including the following networks:
Linkshare
Commission Junction (CJ)
Google Affiliate Network
Azoogle
Shareasale
Clickbank
There are a great number of affiliate networks, and I try to keep an up-to-date list at
one of my Web sites, www.affiliate-marketing-solution.com. I invite you to check it
out.
For the purpose of this example, I went to Azoogle to look at some of its most recent
offers and came up with the following:
Several “Video Professor” offers ranging from $66-$72– Action requires a user to
give personal information and provide a credit card.
A $72.00 offer from “Discover Card” – Action requires that a user complete required
fields on an application page and successfully create a new credit card profile (in
other word submit credit card information).
A “Snoring Solution” offered at $32 – Action requires user to enter valid credit card.
You probably see a pattern in these examples, and it shows that some kind of
72
July 2009
purchase must be made, or at the very minimum credit card information is to be
added. However, Azoogle also offers “leads” deals paying from $1.25 to $10 per
lead depending on the complexity of the lead that is required. For example, I
selected the following:
An insurance company paying $4.25 per lead when a visitor provides information in
five required fields on page one.
I also found a $1.25 or $1.64 for a “makeup survey” as well as a milk survey on
page one or page two - submit, respectively.
What does this all mean? It means that all is not as cut and dry as some people
would like you to think. It‟s not because you have a site with some smart content
and that you‟ve managed to get some traffic that you will convert this traffic into
buyers, leads or clicks, especially if your traffic is what I call transient traffic. In other
words, traffic (or eyeballs as it used to be called) is made up of people who are
reading something or looking at some pictures on your Web site and then move on.
To really take advantage of traffic, you must find a way to have these visitors want
to take an action. As a result, the question that you must ask yourself is: “Is my site
geared to make visitors take action?” If you answer “Yes” then great. If you answer
“No,” then you must ask yourself “What can I do to make visitors to my Web site
want to take an action?”
Here is an example of someone who used his thinking cap, along with some basic
math, and came up with a simple solution and made some money online.
This was a few years back when I was at CJ, and we were watching an
entrepreneur in Asia whom I called “Hong Kong T”. Honk Kong T offered a free Tshirt to anyone coming to his site and registering with basic information including email and physical address.
His traffic and conversions built up to something quite substantial within a very short
time, and we decided to keep an eye on him, fearing that it was some kind of scam.
However, people who came to the Hong Kong T Web site and registered received
their T-shirt (he may have charged a couple of dollars for shipping), but nothing
fraudulent was going on and he kept his account in the black.
What we realized within a short amount of time is that Hong Kong T collected
information from the people who came to his site to get a T-shirt (in order to qualify,
one had to leave a first and last name, their e-mail and physical address, as well as
a telephone number and other basic info). Equipped with this information Hong
Kong T would promote advertisers‟ offers to these people. The advertisers were
from within the CJ pool and “Hong Kong T” would send offers to his T-shirt
customers on a regular basis and generated revenues this way. I suspect that he
also sent promotions via snail mail as well, since he had their address and provided
these people‟s telephone numbers to telemarketers. The numbers were not huge at
the beginning, but slowly they grew into a sizable chunk of money and a very nice
profit for Hong Kong T.
73
July 2009
Furthermore, we figured that he must have done the same thing using offers from
our competitors using Linkshare, Be-Free (defunct now as it was absorbed by CJ)
as well as promoting other advertisers or merchants.
In short Hong Kong T found a way to acquire customers who gave him their
information for the price of a T-shirt and a small commission to an affiliate along with
the CJ‟s fees (all combined these amounted to no more than $3-$4 per submission).
In exchange Hong Kong T turned around and sold this information as leads or used
them for his own mailings and e-mailing system and generated a minimum of $15$20 per user, or a cool $12-$16 per customer. Not bad!
However, I also hope that, aside from the anecdote, you do see that this is very
much the same principle as the example I gave you in the preceding chapter. If you
recall, I was describing how I got users for $3.50-$4 per submission and finding
offers to push to these people in order to generate revenues and cover the
acquisition cost along with my overhead. Does that mean that giving away T-shirts
for free is the solution? Maybe if you have the model to support it. What this
example is set to illustrate is that using your imagination, you can find ways to
create traction and action on your site and get people to do something and, as a
result, general immediate or potential revenues for you.
Interestingly enough, the “game” has not changed much since what we did eight or
nine years ago. What has changed, however, is the way we manage this
information, the ease with which we can now program Web sites, optimize
database, serve images. As a result, we must be smarter and much more
sophisticated. A few Web pages with just text or lists won‟t do anymore. You need to
have something engaging that has the ability to optimize by user, IP, location, time
or all the above.
22. Basic Optimization to Achieve Higher Conversions
No matter what you do, you must test, experiment and optimize at all time. This is
one of the very few things that you can do at no expense, and it is critical to your
success.
For example, try various combinations and approaches when you send offers to
people who have registered on your Web site.
For example, if you are offering content that appeals to men, make sure to use
offers, images, and a tone that appeals to men. Apply the same principle for
women, teenagers, 30-somethings, baby boomers, etc. Tailor your message to your
audience‟s need and expectations.
When you look at verticals and want to appeal to both sexes, you may consider
tailoring this appeal differently for men and women by creating messages, banners
as well as pages of your Web site that are specifically targeted at each of the sexes.
74
July 2009
To go back to the car example, a call of action via a banner such as “Need a car for
the growing family?” would draw people who, in all likeliness have children. Make
certain that the landing page and other Web pages corresponding to your
demographics are specifically designed to their expectations with, for example, the
latest in minivans or SUVs, as well as safety features for children, cost per mile,
insurance rebate if it applies, additional family services or dealers‟ offers, etc.
The idea behind all this is to “qualify” and “funnel” (an expression that you may have
seen in the online marketing circuits) as much traffic as possible toward specific
areas of a Web site that is designed to answer the needs and expectation of your
target audience.
You can find examples of what I mean on the Internet if you look at online stores
such as Amazon, Barnes &Noble and others. I It all comes down to the following:
Ideally three pages and as few clicks as possible that consist of the following:
Home Page: Must be Attractive and Funnel Potential Buyers to
Customized Areas of your Web Site
Product Page: Show Product in its Best Light with Option to Review
Specs or Information and Make it Irresistible
Action Page: Turn Excitement from Potential Buyer into Action (Not
Necessarily a Sale)
Examples of this can be seen at some of the most popular computer companies‟
Web sites as shown below:
Pretending to be shopping online for a computer (not sure of the type) and looking
at three major brands, I Googled these major computer brands, conducting a basic
search using a combination of keywords as follows: ”name_of_company” followed
by the keyword “computer.” This was used in all three instances to be fair to these
brands as far as what page would show up.
The result was a typical Google list from which I clicked on the first listing showing
the company name in the Web address (as in www.company_name.com/whatever).
The result of this click on the listing is what you see below with, in all instances the
company‟s home Page.
The questions that I asked before apply here: get They are a) Is the page
attractive and b) Does it funnel potential buyers to the right place?
75
July 2009
Brand 1:
76
July 2009
Brand 2
Brand 3
77
July 2009
Let‟s try to answer the first question (attractive home page)?
a) Attractiveness of the Web site: It is fair to say that all three companies have a
well thought through and beautifully designed Web site, and while Brand 1 uses a
more “product-oriented” page, its home page is excellent.
Ok, let‟s look at the site‟s ability to funnel potential customers?
b) Easily funnel customers: This is where I believe there are some dramatic
differences between these three sites that will probably impact the way people act.
Let‟s take a closer look at the three approaches:
Brand 1 offers a promotion for a printer, but we don‟t care since we are looking for a
computer. Right underneath this promotion, we are presented with the option to
select products with for option laptop, desktop, etc. Bingo!
Brand 2 offers an immediate selection for a visitor to make between business and
home computers with search options underneath each. This is a great approach
but, in my opinion it has a disadvantage vis-à-vis Brand 1, since it adds one click to
my search. After all, I will have to click on home or business first before being
presented with computers to select from. On the other hand, if I were looking for a
business computer, this approach may be more effective. As a result, let‟s call it a
draw between Brand 1 and 2.
Brand 3 offers… hmmmm… There is nothing in terms of selection for the type of
computer that I would like to see. No laptop, no desktop icon or list to select from. I
am not sure how I am going to find what I want unless I click on computers, or via
the search. In my view, this is a mistake that guarantees that unless someone
comes to the site with the express purpose of buying this brand‟s computer, it has a
tremendous disadvantage when compared to brand 1 or Band 2.
Some observations before we continue:
In this example, I used brands that are well known and with tremendous name
recognition and gigantic marketing budgets that ensure that they are seen
everywhere it counts and beyond. And while you may think that this does not apply
to you, a sole entrepreneur with limited (or no) budget, think again. Here is why:
imagine for a moment that Brands 1, 2 and 3 offered the exact same product.
Which one would you select? Based on my experience, Brand 1 or 2 would be
favored by a small margin compared to 3. And no matter how small this margin
maybe, it adds up and end up making the difference between success and failure.
Note that Brand 2 is a very well known company with a very active business
division. This probably is why it decided to go with offering an option for a home
system or business system.
78
July 2009
We can continue this exercise and go to page two and three of these sites, but I
believe that by now you should get a sense of what I am trying to demonstrate. You
must be extremely aware of what you show and what you do to make visitors take
some kind of action. Their questions or needs to go beyond the page they are on
should be intuitive. If someone has to look for a button or something to take him to
another page where he may find what he‟s are looking for, chances are this person
will be gone before you know it. And you must do all this in such a way that it
appears natural and conductive to helping your visitors find what they want when
they want.
Last note: Another obvious observation here is that the more you know about your
visitors, the better you will be able to tailor your Web sites, pages, offers, etc. For
example, do you target by gender, age, Zip code, car driven, habitat, etc.? There
are hundreds of variables that you may want to take into consideration, depending
on the offer you want to promote and the way you want to approach the design of
you pages.
Unfortunately, there is no one single formula for all and this is why the workbooks in
Volume 2 and the online seminars that are offered are critical. During this time, we
will look at every entrepreneur‟s Web site problem and, as a group (or individually),
help each other solve these problems via constructive criticism and brain storming.
While this is very challenging for some, it is an irreplaceable and invaluable
approach to making your Web site and business the best it can be, and complete
the best possible plan of action that will insure your success.
22. Lead Generations, Sales Referral and the Search for Higher Payout
Once you have optimized your Web site and other Web pages you will be able to
create “action pages.”
These action pages are critical because they are the most difficult pages to get
visitors to go to and probably the pages with the most drop-out. Typical examples of
this page include:
a) A page where a banner or text invites visitors to click, and be taken to an online
store where they will be able to buy something. In exchange for this you, the
affiliate, will get a commission.
b) A product link and shopping cart allowing the affiliate (or advertiser) to sell his or
her product. This is done in order to better manage visitors‟ requests and offer
exactly what they are looking for as opposed to a simple company banner. This can
come as a “product feed” and is delivered to your site in many ways and allows you
to “keep” your visitors within your site until they click on “check out.”
79
July 2009
c) A “registration page” that you host on your Web site (it is pulled from another Web
site, in some instances) and where visitors provide information in exchange for
getting something such as a newsletter, updates, offers, software, gifts, incentives,
etc.
Those are three examples of action pages and we are going to explore in greater
detail below each of the options.
Option a) - In this instance, the goal is to complement the content of a Web site
with ads (text, banner, etc.) or simple text links that are relevant (in context) with the
topic covered and that will generate clicks. The hope here is that some of these
clicks will generate sales or actions at an advertiser‟s Web site that will convert into
a commission or a payment to you upon completion by the visitor of a required
action (lead, email submit, etc.). This is probably the easiest way to set up revenue
streams for a Web entrepreneur, since banners and text ads are available in great
numbers and from many affiliate marketing network or company programs. Lists of
networks are available from www.affiliate-marketing-solution.com.
However, these types of links are by far the least interesting options, and the
reasons for this are simple. As soon as one of your visitors clicks on a banner on
one of your pages, you have no idea what happens to this person. He or she may
land on an outdated or old page of an advertiser, or worse, get an error from the
network indicating that the advertiser has been de-activated.
But even if this person lands on the advertiser or merchant‟s Web site, you have no
control over how well this store is designed, how fast it will display the merchandise
advertised or how well it performs. It may be a very slow Web site that takes forever
to load pages, or that has a horribly complicated shopping cart. If so, your visitors
will drop out and you will lose any hope of getting a commission.
Additionally, some online merchants have been known to be somewhat reluctant at
paying commissions and unless you work with a reputable merchant or affiliate
network like CJ or Linkshare, you may be in for a surprise.
Advertisers or merchants may only pay commissions for the first time buyer, so if
someone comes back through your Web site and orders something again, you will
not get any commission.
Finally, while your visitors may actually go through your site to an online store, make
a purchase and the commission is credited, you may end up getting nothing
because some smart affiliate has placed an affiliate cookie on your visitor‟s
computer that override yours when the visitor reach the “Thank You” page. Cookie
hijacking is supposed to have been eradicated, but I saw an example of this not so
long ago, so beware.
80
July 2009
Option b) – In this approach, while the concept is similar to option a), the affiliate
features the product that this advertiser or merchant sells on his Web site.
This is accomplished in a number of ways and the easiest include a short code
snippet that you put on your page which “pulls” the product that is offered from this
merchant onto your Web page.
The advantage over banners and text ads is that you show merchandise and you
control how the merchandise is found by a visitor and to a lesser degree how it is
displayed. I say “to a lesser degree” because the customization provided by the
advertiser may be limited to specific colors and size as well as displays. Regardless,
this is a great advantage when compared to banner and text ads, since it shows
specific products.
As a result, the risk of losing a visitor is somewhat minimized. Alternatively,
problems may still arise when visitors click on products and are taken to the
shopping cart of an advertiser that may have a totally different look and feel (to say
nothing of domain name).
Option c) - In this instance, you are (to some degree) master of your destiny and
can manage how and what your visitors will see throughout their experience on your
Web site.
The goal here is to have a registration page where the visitor gives you permission
to pass on his or her information to a third party. The benefits are tremendous since
you not only will pass on this information but, more importantly, you will retain this
information as well for your own usage.
A few notes of warning:
If you pass on your visitor (client) information to a company that will turn around
and sell it to anyone ready to pay a few pennies, this e-mail address soon will be
burnt and unusable for any future offers that you may want to send. Some
companies don‟t care for this approach, since they estimate that they can squeeze
the maximum amount of money on someone‟s information within the first few days
of acquiring this information. However, the trend today is in acquiring quality leads
(and I personally believe that this is the right approach) in order to monetize a
customer over much longer periods of time.
As a result, I would highly recommend that you provide leads knowing how this lead
will be used and if it will be re-sold or shared with others and to check to ensure that
your trust is not being abused.
By the way, if you do what is called a co-registration, you will need some
programming skills or assistance to capture users‟ information and pass it on to the
company with whom you share this visitor‟s registration. Co-registration is the
typical form that you see on, for example, an educational Web site or job board and
which offers to provide you with information on various online universities. Users fill
out the information and click the submit button, but stay on the same Web site.
81
July 2009
In the background, code has been created to capture this information and send it to
the online university you selected either in real time or via timed batches. This is a
lead, and in this example, the job board receives a payment.
Again the beauty of option c) is to allow you to 1) control the environment at all
times, 2) capture your visitor‟s information and 3) keep your visitor within your Web
site.
Finally, be careful of incentives, such as freebies for your visitor if he/she clicks on
an offer of fill out a form, since many advertisers do not allow incentivized offers.
In conclusion, while the lead is the best option, as far as I am concerned, all three
options should be used depending on how your Web site is laid out and what you
are trying to do within each page. As a matter of fact, you should consider these
options even if you are an advertiser and only offer products or services on your
Web site. However, when and where these are used is critical.
When Web pages are content-oriented and include information about specific
products, you should include links to that product within your Web site or, if need be,
to another advertiser‟s page (always try to keep your visitors on your Web site,
though). You may want to include banners for offers that are relevant or
complement your own offers. That approach is also fine, but keep in mind that it
costs you to bring visitors to your Web site and you do not want to send them away
for a few pennies.
No matter what, you should always have a form for your visitors to fill out. This form
may be associated with an offer of an online degree or simply to receive your
newsletter, email, etc. Regardless of what it is, provide this option on as many
pages as you can (and, if possible, on all pages).
Ready for more? Go to the next part...
82
July 2009
While creating this document, I came across a number of very good resources that
complement quite well with what I discussed in the preceding paragraphs.
These resources complement those resources that I list in my previous pages quite
well, and also offer some very nice alternatives.
Resources Covered (Read all or click on the resource of your choice to go
directly its details):
1 Page Rank Resources
2 Linking Resources
3 Keyword Resources
4 Site Map
5 Search Engine Resources
6 HTML Resources
7 HTML Resources
8 Domain Related
9 Web Stats Resources
10 Google Specific Resources
11 Web Site Design and Tools
12 Keywords (Additional Resources)
13 Newsletters and Articles
14 ISAPI Rewrites
15 Link Exchange
16 Search Engine Submissions
17 Miscellaneous Resources
I hope you'll appreciate this list and find it useful.
RESOURCES
Page Rank
1) Rank Checker (Ranking Tool - http://www.iwebtool.com/rank) - Get an overview
of your Web site's ranking.
2) Page Rank Lookup (PageRank Lookup - SEO Tools - Search Engine
Optimization, Google Optimization - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pageranklookup/) - Check the page rank for a Web site.
83
July 2009
3) Google PageRank Prediction (PageRank Prediction - Predict Page Rank
Predictor - http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_prediction) - Check predicted PR of a
site.
4) Multi-Rank Checker (Rank Checker - http://www.iwebtool.com/multirank) - View
your Google PageRank and Alexa ranking in bulk.
5) PageRank Checker (PageRank Checker - Check Your Google Page Rank http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker) - View your Google PageRank on
different Google servers.
Links Related
1) Reciprocal Link Check (Reciprocal Link Checker http://www.webconfs.com/reciprocal-link-checker.php) - Check whether your link
partners are linking back to your Web site.
2) Link Popularity Checker (LinkWorth | LinkQuote - Text Link Quote http://www.linkworth.com/link_popularity.php) - A popularity score given to a Web
site based on inbound links.
3) LinkPrice Lookup (LinkWorth | LinkQuote - Text Link Quote http://www.linkworth.com/tools/price-quote.php) - Check the price of your link.
4) Link Price Calculator (Link Price Calculator - http://www.webconfs.com/linkvalue.php) - Another tool for checking the price of links.
5) Link Checker (http://www.ranks.nl/cgi-bin/ranksnl/tools/checklink.pl) - Check your
links to see if they are still valid or not.
6) Link Popularity (Link Popularity - SEO Tools - Search Engine Optimization,
Google Optimization - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/link-popularity/) - Checks
the total number of Web pages that link to a Web site.
7) Link Price Calculator (Link Price Calculator - SEO Tools - Search Engine
Optimization, Google Optimization - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/link-price/) Help to determine the approximate amount you should be paying (or charging) per
month for a text link (ad) from each and every page of the specified Web site.
8) Site Link Analyzer (Site Link Analyzer - SEO Tools - Search Engine Optimization,
Google Optimization - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/site-link-analyzer/) Analyze a given Web page and return a table of data containing columns of
outbound links and their associated anchor text.
9) URL Rewriting (URL Rewriting - SEO Tools - Search Engine Optimization,
Google Optimization - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/url-rewriting/) - Convert
dynamic URLs into static looking HTML URLs.
84
July 2009
10) Link Extractor (Link Extractor - http://www.iwebtool.com/link_extractor) - Extract
links from a specific Web page.
11) Link Shortener (Link Shortener - Short/Shortcut Link - Hits Counter http://www.iwebtool.com/link_shortener) - Shorten a Web address.
12) Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer (http://www.webconfs.comURLnchor-textanalysis.php - http://www.webconfs.comurlnchor-text-analysis.php/) - Check link text
used by your backlinks to link to your Web site.
Keyword related
1) Keyword Verification (Search Engine Placement Check - Marketleap Search
Engine Verification Tool - http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm) - Checks to
see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific
keyword.
2) Keyword Density Analyzer (Mark Horrell - Keyword density analyser http://www.markhorrell.com/tools/density.asp) - Another SEO tools for keywords.
3) Keyword Cloud (Keyword Cloud - SEO Tools - Search Engine Optimization,
Google Optimization - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-cloud/) - A visual
representation of keywords used on a Web site.
4) Keyword Density (Keyword Density - SEO Tools - Search Engine Optimization,
Google Optimization - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/) Another SEO tool for checking keyword density.
5) Keyword Difficulty Check (Keyword Difficulty Check - SEO Tools - Search Engine
Optimization, Google Optimization - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyworddifficulty/) - See how difficult it would be to rank for specific keywords or phrases.
6) Keyword Optimizer (Keyword Optimizer - SEO Tools - Search Engine
Optimization, Google Optimization - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keywordoptimizer/) - Optimizer your keywords with this tool.
7) Keyword Suggestion (Keyword Suggestion Tool http://www.iwebtool.com/keyword_suggestion) - Find related keywords matching
your search.
Site Map
1) XML-Sitemaps (Create your Google Sitemap Online - XML Sitemaps Generator
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/) - Build your site map online (XML, ROR, Text,
HTML).
85
July 2009
2) GsiteCrawler (Google Sitemap Generator for Windows: GsiteCrawler http://gsitecrawler.com/) - Google (and Yahoo!) Sitemap Generator for Windows.
3) Validate XML Sitemap (Google XML Sitemap Validator - XML Sitemaps
Generator - http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html) - Search
Engine Optimization Tool for validating your XML sitemaps.
Search Engines
1) Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) - Tells you everything about
your visitors.
2) Google Banned Checker (http://www.iwebtool.com/google_banned) - Check
whether a site is banned by Google or not.
3) Search Engine Bot Simulator (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/se-botsimulator.html) - SEO tool to simulate search engine parsing of Web pages and
display discovered links.
4) Indexed pages (http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/indexed-pages/) - Check the
number of indexed pages for your blog.
5) Spider Simulator (http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/spider-simulator/) Simulates a search engine by displaying the contents of a Web page.
6) Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker (http://www.seochat.com/seotools/redirect-check/) - Checks the exact HTTP headers that a web server is
sending with an HTTP response.
7) Search Engine Position (http://www.iwebtool.com/search_engine_position) Locate your search listings on Google and Yahoo!
8) Search Listings Preview (http://www.iwebtool.com/search_listings_preview) Preview your Web site on Google, MSN and Yahoo! Search.
HTML Resources
1) HTML Encrypt (http://www.iwebtool.com/html_encrypter) - Hide your HTML
source code.
2) HTML Optimizer (http://www.iwebtool.com/html_optimizer) - Optimize and clean
your HTML source code.
3) HTTP Headers (http://www.iwebtool.com/http_headers) - Extract the HTTP
headers of a web page.
4) HTTP Headers Viewer (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/http-headers-viewer.html) Check HTTP headers for any specific URL.
86
July 2009
5) Meta-tags Extractor (http://www.iwebtool.com/metatags_extractor) - Extract metatags information from a Web page.
6) Meta Tags Generator (http://www.iwebtool.com/metatags_generator) - Generate
and configure your meta tags.
7) META Analyzer (http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/meta-analyzer/) - Analyze a
Web site's meta tags.
8) Meta Tag Generator (http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/meta-tag-generator/) Help you to generate meta tags.
9) Source Code Viewer (http://www.iwebtool.com/code_viewer) - View the source
code of a page.
Domain Related
1) Alexa Traffic Rank (http://www.iwebtool.comURLlexa_traffic_rank) - View and
compare Alexa Ranking graphs.
2) Domain Age Tool (http://www.webconfs.com/domain-age.php) - Find out the age
of your competitors‟ domains.
3) Domain Stats Tool (http://www.webconfs.com/domain-stats.php) - Get all kind of
statistics of your competitors‟ domains.
4) Domain Availability (http://www.iwebtool.com/domain_availability) - Check the
availability of domains.
5) Domain Look-up (http://www.iwebtool.com/domain_lookup) - Retrieve a range of
information about a domain.
6) Domain “Whois” (http://www.iwebtool.com/whois) - Retrieve domain “whois”
information.
7) Instant Domain Checker (http://www.iwebtool.com/instant) - Instantly check the
availability of domains.
8) Ping Test (http://www.iwebtool.com/ping) - Check the presence of an active
connection.
9) Reverse IP/Look-up (http://www.iwebtool.com/reverse_ip) - Resolve a host to an
IP address.
10) Server Status (http://www.iwebtool.com/server_status) - Check if your Web site
is online or offline.
87
July 2009
11) Web site Speed Test (http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test) - Find out how fast
your Web site loads.
12) What Is My IP Address (http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/) - Shows your IP
address.
13) IP to City (http://www.webconfs.com/ip-to-city.php) - Determine the country, city,
latitude and longitude of an IP address.
14) Web site to Country (http://www.webconfs.com/website-to-country.php) Determine the country in which the specified Web site is hosted.
Web Stats
1) Statcounter (http://www.statcounter.com/) - Free web tracker.
2) HiStats (http://www.histats.com/) - Real time updated Web stats service.
3) Addfreestats (http://www.addfreestats.com/) - Free Web site statistics.
Google Specific
1) Reporting Spam to Google -http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
2) Use Google to search your Web site - http://www.google.com/services/free.html
3) Submit your Web site to Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html
4) Monitor Keyword Phrases - http://google.com/webalerts (This is neat to check
out; however it does not help that much.)
5) Google's Guidelines for Webmasters http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html (A must-read for new users.)
6) Facts for Webmasters - http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html
7) Having Trouble? Contact Google Directly http://www.google.com/ads/offices.html
Web site Design & Tools
1) Free forms for your Web site TFMail - http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/
2) Validate Your HTML - http://validator.w3.org/
88
July 2009
3) HTTP Error Code Meanings http://www.searchengineworld.com/val...errorcodes.htm
4) Keyword Tracking - http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
5) Link Checker - http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/...0charset=utf-8
(http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/%7Echeckout...0charset=utf-8)
6) Search Engine Relationship Chart - http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm
Bruce Clay does an excellent job of keeping this updated.
7) Link Popularity Checker (Uptime Bot) - http://www.uptimebot.com/
8) Character Counting - http://a1portal.com/freetools/charcount.htm (This is great
when optimizing your title or meta tags.)
9) Converting Hex to Dec or Is-a-Versa
http://www.hypersolutions.org/pages/hex.html#DectoHex
10) ASCII-Dec-Hex Conversion Code Chart http://www.sonofsofaman.com/misc/ascii/default.asp
11) ASCII-HTML View Conversion Chart http://a1portal.com/freetools/asciicodes.htm (This is an excellent resource when
placing ASCII code on your Web site. Remember to use the correct character
encoding.)
12) Ascii Chart in .GIF Format - http://www.jimprice.com/ascii-0-127.gif
13) Customer Focus Tool - http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm (Tells you
whether your Web site is focused on your customers or not.)
14) Dead Link Checker - http://www.dead-links.com/ (Does not crawls links within a
JavaScript frame.)
15) Adsense Simulator - http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/ (This
will give you an idea of what ads will be displayed on your Web site before you
place them.)
16) Google Page Rank Calculator http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php (This is an advanced tool for
finding out what you need to get your PR to the next level.)
18) Page Rank Finder - http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/google-pr.php (This is a
great tool to find quality Web sites with good PR for Web site exchange. This tool
only looks at the homepage not the link pages. This tool looks at 10 pages or 100
results.)
89
July 2009
19) Future Google PR - http://www.searchengineforums.com/ - This is an article that
tells you what data center your Google PR is updated on first.
20) Keyword Analysis Tool - http://www.mcdar.net/ - This tool is a must. It's quick
and easy to use.
21) Keyword Density Analyzer - http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm
22) Keyword Difficulty Checker - http://www.searchguild.com/cgi-bin/difficulty.pl (You
will need a Google API for this one.)
23) Free Google API - http://www.google.com/api
24) Rocket Rank - http://www.rocketrank.com/ - This will only check the top 20 of
the following SE's: " All The Web,” "DMOZ,” "AltaVista,” "Overture,” "Excite,” "Web
Crawler,” "HotBot,” " Lycos,” "What U Seek,” "Yahoo!"
Keyword Suggestion Tools
1) WordTracker & Overture Suggestions
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ - This is the best one of the three.
2) AdWords Suggestion - https://adwords.google.com/
3) Link Analyzer - http://www.scribbling.net/analyze-web-page-links - Analyze the
ratio of internal links vs. external links. This is a good tool when determining page
rank leakage.
4) Link Appeal - http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-appeal.shtml (Want to know
whether or not you actually want your link on that page?)
5) Link City - http://showcase.netins.net/web/phdss/linkcity/ (This place has EVERY
tool under the sun for everything you could ever possibly want.)
6) Link Reputation - http://198.68.180.60/cgi-bin/link-reputation-tool.cgi (Reveals
back links pointing to the target URL, along with a link survey for each back link.)
7) Google PR Tools - http://www.thinkbling.com/tools.php (This guy has tons of
fantastic tools. He is not as popular as some of the rest, but the tools are great.)
8) Protect Your E-mail Address http://www.fingerlakesbmw.org/main/flobfuscate.php (Obfuscates your e-mail so
spambots don't pick it up from the Internet.)
9) Digital Points Ad Network - http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/?s=2197
– This is best for use after using all of the tools and more on this page. This has
helped out the rankings faster than anything else.
90
July 2009
10) Sandbox Detection Tool - http://www.socengine.com/seo/tools/sandbox-tool.php
- Is your Web site being sandboxed?
11) Spider Simulation - http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/ - See what the
spider sees on your Web site.
12) SEO-Toys - http://seo-toys.com/ - These are some things that I had in my
favorites. Some of them are okay.
13) Multiple SEO Tools - http://www.free-seo-tools.com/ - This Web site has a
variety of misc. tools that you can use to better your search engine rankings.
14) Bot Spotter - http://sourceforge.net/projects/botspotter - This is a phenomenal
script that will track what bots hit your Web site at what times (runs on PHP enabled
Web sites).
15) Net Mechanic - http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/power_user.htm - This will
break your Web site down and alert you of any errors of which you may be
unaware.
16) Stat counter - http://www.statcounter.com/ - This will track your clients
throughout the dynamically created pages of your Web site. This is a free service.
17) Dr. HTML - http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/drhtml.html - This will test your
Web site for any errors and tell you how to fix them.
18) Page Rank Calculation - http://www.sitepronews.com/pagerank.html
Newsletters & Articles
1) Site Pro News - www.sitepronews.com
2) In Stat - http://www.instat.com/ (This offers some decent insights)
3) Page Rank Explained - http://www.webworkshop.net/
4) Search Engine Ratings and Reviews - http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/
5) Database of Robots - http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/active/html/index.html
(Ever wondered about the spiders that are out there?)
ISAPI Rewrites
1) URL "Replacer" - (Free) - http://www.motobit.com/help/
2) Mod Rewrite2 - ($39.90US) - http://www.iismods.com/url-rewrite/index.htm
91
July 2009
3) URL Rewrite - ($23 EUR) - http://www.smalig.com/url_rewrite-en.htm
Link Exchange
1) Links Manager ($20 US /mo)- http://linksmanager.com/cgibin/cook/control_panel.cgi (This is great for the beginner; however, you will need to
make major adjustments to your pages manually in order to ensure "PR" page rank
throughout. Otherwise, you will end up with 20 pages with no PR and one page with
some kind of PR.)
2) Page Rank Finder - http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/google-pr.php
3) Link Appeal - http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-appeal.shtml
Search Engine Submissions
1) Submit Express - http://www.submitexpress.com/newsletters/dec_15_00.html (A
lot of people utilize this service. I don't)
2) Alexa – http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/
3) AOL - http://search.aol.com/aolcom/add.jsp
4) DMOZ Dummies Guide - http://www.dummies-guide-to-dmoz.org
5) DMOZ Instructions - http://dmoz.org/add.html
6) DMOZ Resource Forum - http://resource-zone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=396
(This is where you go when your Web site doesn't show up in DMOZ after you have
submitted; Make sure to read the rule on how to request information).
7) ExactSeek - http://www.exactseek.com/freemember.html
8) Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html
9) Yahoo! http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request (You must have an account).
10) Yahoo! Directory Help - http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/appropriate.html
11) Yahoo! Express Submit TOS - https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/express/terms
12) Yahoo! Submit Help - http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/su...uggest-01.html
13) MSN - http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?
92
July 2009
Miscellaneous
1) FEED Validator (http://www.feedvalidator.org/) - For Atom and RSS.
2) W3C Markup Validation Service (http://validator.w3.org/) - Check for conformance
to W3C Recommendations and other standards.
3) Kontera Ads Preview (http://www.webconfs.com/kontera-preview-tool.php) Preview Kontera Ads on your Web site.
4) Online spell checker (http://www.markhorrell.com/tools/spellcheck.asp) - Simple
online spell checking tools.
5) Browser Screen Resolution Checker
(http://www.markhorrell.com/tools/browser.shtml) - Shows what your site looks like
with different screen resolutions.
6) Your Browser Details (http://www.iwebtool.com/browser_details) - View your IP
address and your browser details.
7) Anonymous Emailer (http://www.iwebtool.comURLnonymous_emailer) - Send emails to users anonymously.
8) MD5 Encrypt (http://www.iwebtool.com/md5) - Encrypt text to MD5.
9) Online Calculator (http://www.iwebtool.com/online_calculator) - A simple online
calculator.
10) ALink Reciprocal Link Checker (http://www.info-pack.com/alink/)
11) AMeta Meta Tag Editor (http://www.info-pack.com/ameta/)
12) XML Site map Maker (http://www.xmlsitemapmaker.com/)
13) RSS Feed Maker (http://www.rssfeedmaker.biz/)
14) Web Page Size Checker (http://www.info-pack.com/pagesize/)
These resources are for you to use as the need arises. Do not spend too much time
trying to understand and compare all these at once. They are tools and should be
used as such.
I suggest that you create a spreadsheet and, as you check some of these
resources, give each one with your own comments or rating. Doing this will pay off
in the long run and it will help you remember what to do by providing you with a
quick reference of each service.
93
July 2009
That’s about it for Volume 1, so what’s next?
By now, you should have enough information to get going with your Web site and
start conducting e-commerce, using whatever tools you have selected within the
preceding pages.
As explained in the beginning of this document, Volume 1 of Plan your Internet
Success! contains the knowledge that you need to do exactly that.
Volume 2 consists of workbooks that are designed for advertisers or publishers, and
address issues unique for each. It also dives into marketing and e-commerce on
the Net in much greater detail, looking at issues that are specific to individual Web
entrepreneurs. Additionally, Volume 2 provides the basis for creating complex datadriven e-commerce or content sites using CRM tools, database, and looking at
various programming languages to do this. Finally, it offers a step-by-step guide
and tasks that are directly related to your business needs and to your success.
However, since Volume 2 is not a “one size fits all” solution the format is not a
narrative as you have just experienced with Volume 1. As mentioned earlier, it is a
workbook that each individual will be able to tailor, based on his or her own personal
needs and for which specific guidance is indispensible.
Additional items that will be included in Volume 2 are:
- The real cost of CPM, CPC and/or CPA, comparing all the major networks from
Google (of course) and Yahoo! to MIVA, Chikita, 7Search, or Kanoodle (all together
we‟ll look and compare some 15-20 ad networks).
- It will address a key issue for any Internet entrepreneur, including how to drive
large amounts of traffic to your Web site and get your investment back.
- It will explain how to write email copy and find resources for writing anything from
content for your Web site or blogs to press releases and everything else.
- We‟ll look into outsourcing pretty much anything you need as well as in-sourcing
(you‟ll be surprised at how easy it is to do).
- We will also review how to use services like, data feeds for product, SSL, API,
email lists management solutions, including managed or outsourced delivery or
emails and frequency.
94
July 2009
- We will explore critical issues such as privacy rights, opt-in and double opt-in,
usage of information, CAN SPAM regulations, and all related legal, corporate and
administrative issues of which you should be aware.
- Volume 2 will explore other options for creating affiliations and selling traffic
through more complex deals that include email, lead generation, etc.
- Of critical importance, this prt of the course comes with the option to discuss oneon-one -- and in groups -- how to turn all these concepts into a successful business.
These are not pre-recorded videos that are a one-size-fits-all solution but are
tailored to address each entrepreneur‟s unique problems.
These sessions are LIVE, and are conducted in real time, one-on-one or with
people who, just like you, are looking to launch or improve their online business.
We match the people in these sessions, based on their level of knowledge and
understanding, as well as their type of business in order to avoid any conflict
between similar business models.
Equipped with the knowledge that you‟ve received so far, Volume 2, combined with
the live sessions, will provide the kind of knowledge and expertise as well as
support that can never be replaced with words on paper. This is something that I
feel is absolutely necessary to ensure your success.
My goal in offering these two courses and complementing it with live sessions is to
allow you to take your vision and turn it into a successful online business. By the
way, you don‟t have to do any of this; the Volume 2 workbook is also FREE, and
these sessions are totally optional. If you feel that you can do it all on your own and
don‟t need the live sessions, you can request a copy of Volume 2 and I will gladly
send it to you.
95
July 2009
Affiliate: A Web site owner who is affiliated to one or several advertisers and features these
advertisers products on his or her site via links. You also will see me use the word
“Publisher” in place of “affiliate.” I use them in the same way.
Advertiser: An entrepreneur who has product or services to sell and who advertises them
online via affiliates or on search engines. I also use the term merchants, since advertisers
may be an ad agency working on behalf of merchants.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Optimization of Web sites and Web pages in order to
insure that search engine spiders will identify the category of your Web site and classify you
properly and under critical keywords.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing): Typically pay-per-click for keywords on a search engine.
Crawler (also known as spider) - A script that allows search engine and directories where
you site is submitted to visit your Web site and tag and organize the information that is
available via meta tags, title, keywords, content, links, number of pages, etc.
Meta Tags - A set of code designed to provide critical information about a Web site and
Web page to a spider
CPM – Cost per thousand impressions (a $5 CPM figure means that an advertiser will pay
$5 every time his ad is called [shown] on a publisher‟s page.
CPC – Cost per click.
CPA – Cost per action (An action can be anything that is defined by an advertiser as an
action taken by a visitor – as a result, action may be as simple as requiring that users enter
their Zip codes in an input box and submit. In some cases, such as credit cards, they may
be as complex as requiring a user to apply and be qualified, and then requiring that the card
be used within a set period of time.)
CPL – Cost per Lead (a form of CPA).
Commission – A fee paid to an affiliate when a qualified action is completed by an
individual who was sent to an advertiser‟s Web site from an affiliate Web site.
Margins – The percentage or difference between your cost (all inclusive) and the sale price
of a service or product.
Domain Name – The name of your domain, as in www.mydomainname.com.
URL – Stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is used to identify domain, but more
importantly, where a resource is located.
IP Address – Stands for Internet Protocol or a unique address (usually identified as a set of
numbers, such as 202.222.103.14) for a Web site, computer or server connected to the
Internet. Note that more than one domain can share the same IP address as it is often the
96
July 2009
case for domains that are hosted by ISPs.
Sub-domain: A secondary domain that is part of a higher level domain. For example
http://US.mydomain.com is a sub domain of http://www.mydomain.com.
DNS: Stands for Domain Name Server and is the name of the server that hosts your
domain, as in ns1.nameserver.com.
ISP: Stands for Internet Service Provider and is the entity that allows most web owners to
host their sites.
Shared Server: An ISP-provided server that hosts many domains. It is shared, since it
allows a great numbers of domains to be hosted on one machine.
VPS: Stands for Virtual Private Server, which allows ISPs to create virtual space on one
server that is dedicated to one domain owner and may host one or several domains, all
owned by one person or company.
Dedicated Server: A server provided and managed by an ISP that is dedicated to one
person or company.
W3C: Stands for World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3c.org). This organization develops
specifications and guidelines to insure interoperability between browser and code for Web
pages.
Search Engine Spider: Script that permits search engines like Google to evaluate a Web
site and provide the information that will permit the search engine to index Web sites and
Web pages.
Open Source: Software and applications that are free to use or that allow users to change
the code as needed.
Dreamweaver: Software that is made by Macromedia (owned by Adobe) and
Internet Web designers to create Web sites in most languages.
allows
HTML: Stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the basis for most Web site code or
significant part of that code when Web sites use other languages, such as PHP.
PHP: Stands for Hypertext Pre-Processor, a coding language that is extremely flexible and
allows you to build dynamic Web pages and Web sites.
Shopping Cart: The software that allows a company to handle transactions and payment
via credit card, PayPal or other means.
FTP: Stands for File Transfer Protocol and is typically used to access a server and upload
or download files.
Alt text: Alternate Text added for an image which will appear if the image fails to show on a
Web page.
Site Map: A list of all the pages on a Web site. This is a critical component of SEO since it
gives the spider access to all the internal links that you have on your site.
97
July 2009

Plan Your Internet Success!

Transcription

Similar documents

these retail locations - Delcambre Direct Seafood

2016 Oakland University Website Layout Governance – for web

Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca

Google Business Photos ($) To make Google Maps even more

Google AdWords Part 1

Google Maps in the Classroom

Plan Preliminar de Mercadeo

Getty Images keyword guide