Entries Tagged 'Internet Marketing' ↓

John Reese wrote a great post today in response to an attack on him by a couple of bloggers regarding twitter. Basically what happened is John sent out an email to his email list encouraging them to follow him on Twitter. A blogger who received the email predicted that this was a “Pending Sign of the Twitter Apocalypse“. Another blogger over at Mashable responded to the first post by speculating whether Twitter was vulnerable to marketer attacks. Both posts implied that John was some sort of sleazy “ebook salesman” who was looking to exploit or “attack” twitter by spamming links to his products and that by encouraging other to do the same he would be responsible for introducing a lot of pollution to twitter, which could lead to its demise.

John Reese then responded with a post of his own defending himself and other internet marketers. Before I go on, I want to distinguish between the types of internet marketers I’m talking about, because the label “Internet Marketer” can be applied to many different groups although many people may fall into several different groups. The internet marketers I’m referring to belong to the type of marketers that teach internet marketing to others, have huge opt-in email lists, usually use squeeze pages and long sales pages to sell their products, but actually sell legitimate products that have provided real value to their customers. Some of them sell ebooks, but some of them don’t. Also included in this group could be those who have learned from these gurus or use the same strategies but have made their money in other niches.

I do find it somewhat amusing that it has only been fairly recently (within the last year or so) that many of these internet marketing guru types have really started to look into the whole social media thing, although many of the top social media sites have been around for several years already. My guess is it’s because they were busy making money while the early adapters of these social media sites were building the community around these sites. It is only now that these social media sites are going more mainstream and the value of the networks on these sites are rapidly growing that these internet marketers have taken notice. Since the industry is a pretty close knit one word has been spreading.

I don’t think this is cause for alarm, however. The nature of social media lends itself well to the idea of permission marketing. Those who are interested in a given topic or are looking for a certain product or service actually want to be marketed to, because they want to find a solution to their needs and wants. But users have the option to opt-in or opt-out of any given marketing message. As John stated in his post:

Last Time I Checked Twitter Used A ‘Voluntary’ Messaging System
And completely aside from the points I just made, Twitter works by having users opt to follow other users — and they only see their tweets after they have voluntarily chosen to follow that person.

Marketers who are too pushy or spammy will mostly be ignored and in the long run will not succeed. Internet marketers who market their products to the social networks online actually add value to the networks, because they are offering solutions. These internet marketers are coming not to spam the networks but to participate and add value.

These internet marketing gurus know the permission marketing game well. Many have been successful with email marketing, which is the epitome of permission marketing. Prospects must first give permission to be marketed to by providing their email. If the marketer creates too much noise and not enough value, subscribers will opt-out. Social media is different than email marketing in many ways, but the idea that you have to provide real value in order to be listened to for any extended period of time still applies, and the smart marketers know this.

Social media is too big for any serious internet marketer to ignore. I believe that its rise in popularity will encourage more transparency among internet marketers and will ultimately be good for both the internet marketing industry and the social media websites they use. Marketers who just hide behind a sales page won’t be as successful as those that engage and interact with their audience and build real relationships with their customers and prospects. The honest internet marketers who have helped thousands of people with their online business will continue to succeed by leveraging social media. The scammers and spammers won’t last because there will be an easily accessible public record of their dishonesty. As more of these internet marketing gurus begin to use social media more often, through participation on the social media sites, blogging, live web casts, and other similar social activities a public record will be created for anyone to evaluate and it will become more clear who has real value to offer and who is just hyping up a bunch of B.S.

It is unfortunate that John, who is one of the honest ones, got misclassified, but this whole story is a great example of the power of social media. Since John was actively involved in both Twitter and blogging he was able to defend his reputation and make a statement. I think we can all look forward to more public discourse from John and many other of the top internet marketing gurus.

I first heard about AGLOCO about a month ago but didn’t really look into it further. However, yesterday I did a little research and decided it was worth at least joining and trying out. From my understanding, AGLOCO will make money through advertisers, but instead of keeping all the profits for themselves they will share it with their users based on how much they surf the internet. At the moment they are in a sort of prelaunch phase, so they aren’t paying out yet, just building up their community in preparation for the launch of their viewbar. From the reviews I’ve read I can tell you this company is legitimate and judging by how fast they have grown even before they have launched their viewbar they will likely have a very large network in a very short amount of time (They have a goal to reach 10 Million members by July 1).

What interests me the most as an internet marketer is their referral program. Not only can you earn money from your own surfing, but you can also earn money from the surfing that your referrals do and even on down to the surfing your referrals referrals do, to a total of five levels deep. In this sense that makes AGLOCO a network marketing company. I am not usually a big fan of network marketing because it seems most of these companies sell their products for a lot more than they are actually worth, but AGLOCO is not even selling a product, you make money simply by referring people to the network. AGLOCO is actually giving away money, not taking it as most network marketing companies.

As an AGLOCO member myself, I obviously would like you to join also through my referral link, but I am willing to offer some bonuses as an incentive to join my network. Since, I just signed up yesterday I am not really sure what to offer as bonuses, but here is what I can think of so far…

• Free Internet Marketing Tips: As I start to promote AGLOCO, I will share my experiences with my network so you can use the exact same marketing tactics I use to grow your own network. I will give very specific instructions for what is working the most effectively, so even if you have no marketing experience you can still be successful just by copying what I am doing. You can also share these tips with your own network.

• Free Referrals: Every once and a while I will pick one of my direct referrals at random and start promoting AGLOCO using their link instead of mine. So if you get chosen I could give you a lot of free referrals. I will give preference to those who joined my network early on. So if you join within the next few day I can pretty much guarantee you that I will choose your link within a couple weeks and get you some free referrals. In fact, I may even stop promoting my own referral link after a while and just promote the links of my direct referrals as a way to reward those who joined me early on.
  

• Free Bonus products: I will give away free eBooks and software that I have rights to and allow my network to share the same products with their network.
  

If you have any more ideas please suggest them. Since this company is fairly new this is a great chance to get in on something big before everyone else hears about it. Please check out AGLOCO and join my network, so I can start helping you build your network in preparation for the viewbar launch.

http://www.agloco.com/r/BBBV1362

Update: Since AGLOCO doesn’t give contact information for those who sign-up using your referral link please subscribe to my blog feed to take advantage of the free internet marketing tips and bonus products I suggested offering above. I will be providing these to my blog readers.

A discussion going on on several blogs about whether Digg should be included in Google’s search results has got me thinking about the value that Digg provides to internet users outside of the Digg community. To my understanding the basic argument against Digg being listed in Google’s search results is that Digg provides no new content (except for discussion) and therefore should not be listed above the original articles that are linked to on Digg.

First of all, I don’t think Digg’s prevalence in search engine results will change, but the question still remains as to whether Digg really deserves to rank higher than some of the articles it links to. After all Digg is just acting as a middleman to the actual content that searchers are looking for. Shouldn’t the original articles be the ones to be listed instead of a Digg page that just provides a brief summary of the article and requires users to click once more to actually read the article? Digg provides a valuable service to its users by pointing users to quality content ranked by their voting system, but Does Digg provide any real value to outsiders who stumble across Digg while searching on Google or to publishers whose articles may receive less Quality Traffic Supply because Digg may have “stolen” their spot in the SERPs?

I actually do believe that Digg provides value to both Google searchers and publishers when Digg acts as a middleman when it is listed in the SERPs. If it weren’t for Digg many good articles would go unnoticed to search engine users because the articles come from sites with a relatively low authority in Google’s eyes. Such good articles could be submitted to Digg, reach the homepage if it were interesting enough, and receive several links to both the Digg story page and the original article. It is likely that the Digg story page would rank higher in the SERPs even when the original article does not rank at all. So all the traffic from Google that goes first to that Digg page then to the article is traffic that the publisher would not have received otherwise. At the same time users who click through to the Digg page can see a brief summary of the article as well as a some discussion of the article which can help them better judge whether it is worth their time to read the actual article. So in a way Digg acts as a voice of authority which vouches for the quality of less authoritative sites.

There are hundreds of ways to promote a business online. I come across new ways to advertise and promote a business online almost every week. However, to simplify things I recommend you first consider doing the following things to get the most bang for your buck.

1. Do some basic Search Engine Optimization
Search engines can bring in a huge amount of highly targeted “free” traffic to your website. You can just launch your website and hope you get listed in Google, but with some SEO knowledge and some effort you can almost guarantee that you will get traffic from search engines. My article Three Steps to Search Engine Traffic outlines a pretty straightforward SEO strategy to follow. While it isn’t really too hard to learn the basics of SEO, it is important to remember that the most important factor in SEO is backlinks, which could take a bit more knowledge and some creativity to obtain in a cost effective manner. Knowing how to do SEO and having the creativity and resources to carry out a plan are two separate things. If you have the budget, hiring an outside SEO firm or an SEO expert in house would be a good investment.

Many of the promotion methods listed below will help you obtain backlinks which will complement your SEO efforts, so it is important to consider SEO first so that you can best leverage the impact of other promotion methods.

2. Run PPC Campaigns
Running a Pay Per Click Campaign is probably the quickest way a business can start profiting from their online presence. One great thing about PPC campaigns is that you can know exactly how much profit you are making on each keyword and you can test different ad copy and get quick results. For a good introduction to Adwords, Google PPC network, check out Perry Marshall’s free course 5 Days to Success with Google AdWords.

PPC click campaigns can also complement your SEO efforts. As you find out what keywords, ad copy, and landing pages are converting the best you can adjust your SEO efforts to put a greater priority on the things that are converting the best in your PPC campaigns.

3. Start a blog
There are many benefits to blogging. It helps build a community around your business, helps with your SEO efforts (it creates more content and attracts backlinks), it can act as a “maven trap” (discussed in The Tipping Point), it empowers customers to easily spread the word about your products and business, and it can help you network with others in your industry.

4. Pay Bloggers to Review your website and/or products
Within the past six months or so many websites have launched which will help you find bloggers to write reviews. The four that I am aware of are ReviewMe, PayPerPost, Blogitive, and LoudLaunch. ReviewMe seems to be the best if you want to reach a large audience because the bloggers there tend to have a larger readership, but you will also pay a lot more per review than the other blogger review sites. PayPerPost could be a good option to increase your backlinks, but don’t expect as much traffic initially as you would from a ReviewMe Review. I have no experience with Blogitive and LoudLauch but I will be writing about them when I do.

I hope these tips help you get the most from your presence online. Feel free to contact me if you have specific questions, and check back often for more advice and tips in the future.

Aspiring entrepreneur Carolynn Duncan, has begun an experimental project where she will use only $100 to start a business in 30 days with the goal of making at least a $100 profit to start a new business the next month. In her post describing her plans on “The Hundred Dollar Business” Blog, Carolynn states that she plans to test ten core concepts that she has learned about entrepreneurship from her entrepreneurship class at BYU and from the Utah business community.

Carolynn’s business for December is a kiosk at a local mall in Provo, UT, where she is selling bundt cakes, Sign Babies, and Princess Sweet items. Since she has limited herself to only $100 in start-up capital Carolynn has had to be resourceful, such as using a consignment model so she doesn’t have to pay up front or get an investor.

So the question posed in the title of this post remains. Can a Business be Started with Only $100? I believe the answer is Yes. Carolynn has already started the business and I personally think it will be a success.

One thing I remember learning from Greg Warnock, when I was in his Junto Entrepreneurhship Program, was that a lot of money isn’t necessary to start a business. It can help, but it isn’t necessary. When you are on a tight budget you are forced to be creative and leverage the resources you have. Greg taught us that if you have a business idea that you want to pursue you should first try to test the assumptions of why you think your idea will be profitable by going out and selling. Only after you know that your idea will be profitable because you have actually seen a demand for your product first hand should you begin to invest a significant amount of money in the business. It is even possible to make a sale before you have made your product and therefor use your customers to fund your business.

Another interesting aspect of Carlynn’s experiment will be the effect that her Hundred Dollar Business Blog will have on her business. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.

I just read a free report called The Death of Internet Marketing, by Mike Filsaime
Download The Death of Internet Marketing Here

The report is pretty good, and is definitely worth the few minutes it takes to read.

The report touches on several recent developments in the internet marketing industry. It goes over opportunity seeking, the long tail, product launches and pretty much everything else you will have read around the blogosphere if you study and/or work in Internet marketing.

Is Internet marketing really dying? No, but Mike says there are too many product launches(at least in internet marketing) and the market is becoming jaded with them. Mike has a few ideas in the report on how to deal with the saturation in the market and stand out among all these products.Mike is paying out $1 for each person you refer to download the free report to a two tier level, which means you get paid for both the people you refer and the people they refer under them, so potentially Mike pays out $2 per download of his book.This is similar to what Scott Boulch did earlier this year with The Death of AdSense report that launched his Click Flipping business, although he only paid $.50 per referral.

I was curious what Mike’s motivation was for distributing this report for free. It doesn’t seem like this report is part of a specific product launch as The Death of AdSense was. It seems like the author is just using the report as a way to build a list of interested readers which he will monetize in 2007.

Download the free report: Death of Internet Marketing.