What’s Your Wall?

wall to success in online business pictureEveryone who has ever journeyed into the unknown in a quest to achieve something is going to encounter many obstacles along the way.  That’s just a fact of life.  Without these obstacles, there would be no learning experiences to evolve from.  That would be a pretty boring way to live life when you think about it.

I remember when I was getting started in internet business, my personal brick wall was analysis paralysis.  I was so overwhelmed with information from trying to absorb it all at once, that I would just find myself endlessly looping through the forums, checking out software and pretty much accomplishing nothing for hours & days on end.

I knew that I needed to start somewhere, but by reading the posts by pseudo experts in the forums, surfing from site to site, looking at other products, etc I was really a busy guy.  So busy, in fact that I almost had myself convinced that I was actually accomplishing something.

In reality, what I was really accomplishing was nothing.  I could justify my use of time because I was “busy”.  The bottom line however, was that my bank account was still an internet virgin.  Other than picking up nuggets of info here and there, I completely wasted nearly 6 months of my life circling around in a sort of holding pattern.

I had finally reached the point where I was getting disgusted with myself and decided to take stock of myself.  What were my real goals?  Ultimately, it was freedom that I was after, but what was stopping me from getting started?  Was it the fear of failure because of the humoring chuckles I would get when telling someone that I was going to make money online?

Maybe it’s just because I needed to keep looking until I figured out what the magic secret to online succes was.  Surely succeding online only belongs to the enlightened few that have stumbled across this “secret”, right?  Nah, the so-called ‘gurus’ didn’t know squat about this stuff when starting out either.  So what was it.  What was different about them?

Well, after stepping back and reflecting a little something hit me like a wet towel across the face.

These guys just took action, grabbed their online business by the seat of the pants and went for it.  This wasn’t simply a hobby for them, it was a business!  I suddenly realized that the real reason I was spinning my wheels was simply a lack of focus!

I had to decide on ONE thing to do, and then FOCUS on it and nothing else.  This is the single most important step to getting started.  Whether affiliate marketing is your thing, or creating an info product about something, or whatever.  Don’t get caught in the opportunity chasing trap.  Decide what you want and stick with it until you make money.

In my case, I decided to make guitar tutorials as my first endeavor.  Every evening after work I dedicated my time to creating a series of videos and eventually completed them.  I kept my focus, and followed through to completion.

That was around January, 2006.  I had worked a couple months on that first tutorial, partially because of inexperience, & partially because it was a software application with embedded video & guitar tablature.

I am still making a passive income off of those tutorials to this day.  Work once, get paid forever.  It’s a great concept.  If you keep repeating this concept, you can easily visualize how this will lead to freedom.

So what’s your brick wall?  If you take a little time to sit back and confront your wall, you are likely to discover that your brick wall is not a brick wall at all.  Instead, it’s simply a door waiting for you to take the action to open it.

10 Traffic Strategies To Kick Start Your Online Business

traffic to your website pic

Whether you have your own products, or you’re an affiliate marketer, or both, we all can use traffic.

You can have the greatest website and products ever created, but if nobody is there to see it, then it serves no value to your internet business.

On the same token, targeting the right kind of traffic is essential. 50,000 visitors to your website aren’t worth much if you only make one sale from it. 500 visitors on the other hand, can be pure gold if you generate a high conversion rate from them and turn them into repeat customers.

I’m going to cover some free strategies as well as some paid strategies that may work for you.

Free Strategies

Article marketing – The obvious one of course. Submitting to article directories and Ezines will get traffic to you every time. Well, if it’s a decent article anyway. Be sure to write your article as an informative piece. Avoid writing things that have a ‘sales pitchy’ ring to it. Nothing puts up the defenses quicker that the ol’ pitchman routine.

Forums & Blogs – Offering useful comments on forums & blogs related to your market can be a great way to generate traffic. For forums, you should be a member and contribute some posts as well. Many forums will let you put your link in your signature as well. One way to find good blogs & forums is to Google for “Your Keyword” + “blog” or “Your Keyword” + “fourm”.

You can step it up a notch by adding the keywords “do follow” or “Comment Love” when searching for blogs. This will give you some link juice back to your website, by posting on “do follow” blogs.

Long tail & Web 2.0 – Google for keywords in your market. Find out what results come up and form long tail keywords out of them. If you’re an affiliate for Sanyo LCD TVs for example, then a long tail keyword could be something like “Sanyo DP46848 LCD TV”.

Somebody searching for this term already knows what they want. They’ve done their research and they are ready to buy.

Make some Squidoo lenses which tells the visitor briefly how great this television is. Include a link to your blog. If you don’t have a blog, create one. Even blogger or wordpress.com is ok.

Take advantage of all the different types of web 2.0 sites. Propeller, StumbleUpon, twitter. Link everything in a circular fashion back to your blog post (or affiliate landing page if appropriate).

Remember, for these types of visitors, they are already in “buy” mode. Don’t try to sell them again with a review or worse yet, a sales page. Instead, direct them straight out to Amazon, or wherever, via your affiliate link and snatch the sale.

Paid Strategies

PPC (Pay Per Click) – Google Adwords is the first that most people are familiar with. If you are using Adwords with marginal results, try some targeted placements ads via the content network. Find some high traffic websites in the Google content network related to your market and target your ad directly at the visitors who are on that site. For example, a Google ad for Widget.com could look something like this – “Hey Widget.com readers, check out why everyone wants the mighty widget wizard”. Be careful to specify web pages that are very targeted to your product, otherwise you’ll burn through your daily spending limit in minutes with nothing to show for it.

A lot of people don’t consider the Google alternatives either. Don’t be so quick to write them off.Yahoo for example, in my own experience will often convert at a higher rate than Google. Less traffic, and clicks, but with much higher conversions in many cases. It’s always worked very well for me.

ClickRiver.com is the PPC network for Amazon. This can really pay off too if you do it right. Know the authors & titles of the books in your target market so that you can also use them for your keywords to get your ads to show up in the best converting areas.

Press Releases – Surprisingly, Many people underestimate the power of press releases. Between a web 2.0 strategy and press releases, you can really nail some pretty lucrative markets with very little investment.

PRWeb is the best in my opinion for doing press releases. Start out with the $80 option to get the standard visibility. If you’re already profiting, try the $140 option which includes the social media visibility.

There are sources for submitting free press releases too, but they’re not all that effective compared to PRWeb.

Banner Ads – Banner advertising can work pretty well, especially if you have your own product. Don’t have any banners & you’re not artistic? You can go out to http://www.20dollarbanners.com and have a great looking banner custom created for… you guessed it, $20.

eBay Classified Ads – For $19.95 / mo. You can stick a classified ad on eBay. This could work well for some markets. Remember too that ebay-ers are the buying type of visitor.

Facebook – Facebook offers paid advertising as well. One cool thing about Facebook is that your ads are targeted by demographics. Facebook can be especially good for CPA type offers.

Offline advertising - Believe it or not, offline advertising can be very effective. This is another largely ignored area. You could rent a mailing list & send post cards with your online info with link to your store or products. Also, you can run classified ads, magazine ads in an article format, radio ads, or even have someone distribute flyers & business cards. There are many possibilities in offline marketing.

Buy an existing site with some ranking & traffic. Sometimes you can simply find a website that someone hasn’t done much with, but it has some age and some traffic. Email the owner and offer them $50 or $100 bucks. You might be surprised.

You can also check out the domain auctions at GoDaddy.com.

In any paid strategy, be sure to keep track of how much your cost is to acquire a sale or lead. Google analytics is decent for tracking and it’s free. The bottom line, if you’re making a profit – its good, otherwise its bad. In which case you need to either change your strategy or find a better market.

There’s one other essential element to making these strategies work. Taking action! You have to get out there and do it.

Try mixing different paid with the free strategies for maximum impact. If you’re strapped for cash, use the free strategies and then expand into some paid options.

Once you find something that generates a profit, even a small one, then it’s time to scale up and run with it! This is when marketing gets to be really fun. So my advice? Go out there, and have some fun!

48 Hour Special

As promised, I am now offering a 48 hour special on Xingla Pro 3.

This is the latest version of Xingla Pro which is a high powered Blog Carnival Submission tool.

If you have a blog and you want to crank up your traffic, plus increase your search engine ranking, then submitting to blog carnivals should be a part of your online strategy.

If you’ve submitted your posts to blog carnivals, you know how time consuming it is.  You also know the benefits as well.  That’s why you either outsource it or put up with doing it yourself.

Did you know that this is also the perfect tool if you have a blog carnival submission service?  Oh, you don’t offer a service to your customers?  Well this could be the perfect time to start one.   Most people are looking for a monthly recurring income or membership model.   This tool can make it a reality if you use it.

Or you can continue to dream about how great your online business will be ‘someday’.  Someday when you feel confident enough to do something.  Someday when that perfect system comes sailing in on a silver platter…  Surrrre.

Of course you know that ‘someday’ will NEVER happen if you just sit around and keep waiting for it.  If you’re a ‘someday’ person, this product isn’t for you.

Xingla Pro is for anyone who is serious about monetizing their internet business.

You can get Xingla Pro 3 for only $75 until Thursday at 5:30pm EST (which is GMT -5) January 8th.   After that the price will increase to $147.

That’s nearly half price and remember, upgrades are always FREE to Xingla Pro customers, even if it’s a major upgrade.  You never have to pay again for the latest version!  Did you ever see Bill Gates do that?

The link at the end of this post is only for my blog readers.  If you go out to the Xingla Pro website, you will need to come back here to get the discount.

For the next 48 hours, you can get Xingla Pro here:

http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00ZGQ7KH

Submitting to Blog Carnivals Can Be Painful

pic from www.halfpixel.comLast year when I first started submitting to blog carnivals, I often wondered if it was worth it to go through all the tedious work of looking through the list of several hundred blog carivals to find the ones relevant to my blog post.

To be effective, the best way was to start at the beginning of the drop down list and scan through each listing until you find a blog carnival relevant to your subject matter.  Select it, fill out the form and click Submit.  Then repeat the process until you’ve made it all the way through the list.  Usually, it took me about an hour to do the whole list.  I kept coming back because the results were really making a difference.

The problem was that since I didn’t want to outsource it (outsourcing time consuming tasks is good by the way), I would have to muster up the ambition and time to do it.  That didn’t always work out so well.

I finally reached the point where I thought to myself “there MUST be a better way, Ugggh!”

When looking for a solution for this problem, I made the most logical move… I Googled it.  I searched for “blog carnival submitters” and a zillion variations of it.  I found a number of blog carnival submission services & some weren’t half bad.  Robert Phillips was way up there on my personal list.  I was pretty surprised that there was no software to handle this task though.  Heck, even if I had a submission service, I would find this very handy!

Well, being that programming is one of my favorite past times (I know, I’m a geek), and making money is another, I did the next logical thing… created my own blog carnival submitter!  Anyone following my blog for a while is likely familiar with Xingla Pro.

This is my favorite piece of software that I have written and I’m quite proud of it.  Today I just officially released version 3.

Xingla Pro 3 has some exciting new features that weren’t available before.

For example, Xingla Pro 3 now has a Quick Finder search feature.  Before, you still had to troll through the entire drop down box to build your list.  By saving your list, you still saved a ton of time with Xingla Pro 2, but I was still haunted by the tedious process of building the list itself.

Now with the Quick Finder, you can type in a keyword relating to the type of carnival you are looking for and it will list out all the available blog carnivals for that keyword!  Then you can simply select and add to your new list, or your current one.  Yesterday, I built a list of 23 carnivals relating to “internet business” and “making money” in under a minute.

The next thing that I felt the new Xingla needed was some way to let you know when you had dead carnivals in your list.  Blog carnivals come & go, and before you know it, you have a list speckled with dead blog carnivals.  You might think you have a list of 30 but maybe only 22 of them are still active.

This is where the “Check Inactives” feature comes into play.  Now you can simply click a button and it will instantly scan your list for dead carnivals.  You will then be shown a list of the dead carnivals and asked if you want to delete them.  Pretty cool stuff if I don’t say so myself.

Other new features include a smart dupe checker to warn you that a carnival already exists in your list if you happen to be modifying your list with new carnivals.

After filling out the form fields, you can now simply press the ‘Enter’ key to begin the Auto Submit process.  Previously, you had to be careful not to do this or the “Submit” button would activate from within blogcarnival.com.  Anytime I fill out online forms, just by shear reflex, I hit the ‘Enter’ button as soon as I’m ready to submit.  Adding the ability for Xingla Pro to auto submit upon detecting the ‘Enter’ key press was a natural evolutionary step.  It’s a convenient alternative to clicking the ‘Auto Submit’ button.

The Auto Update feature has also been improved.  I noticed that in some Windows configurations, people were not always able to update smoothly.  Now it should be a breeze for everyone.  Xingla Pro checks for updates in the background when you start the app.

Also, I’ve had numerous requests to to have an affiliate program for Xingla Pro.  As of today, Xingla Pro 3 now has an affiliate program with a 50/50 split after merchant fees.  At the moment this is a $47 payout.

Finally, Xingla no longer requires the Microsoft dotNet Framework!  I rebuilt Xingla Pro from the ground up in an entirely new programming language that is Win32, and doesn’t force its users into installing the dotNet Framework if they don’t already have it.

Some of my customers didn’t have the dotNet Framework on their machines which made for a long beastly install as it auto downloaded from Microsoft and configured itself. Afterwards, it required a restart of their PC just for good measure.  It kinda reminded me of the classic double glove slap… Wap-Bap!

Xingla Pro has a sleek new look, and my testing indicates that it’s rock stable.  If you have a blog, or are running a submission service, you should check out the video on the sales page here:

http://www.KeiferSoft.com/XinglaPro

BTW – Next week I’ll be raising the price on Xingla Pro to $147.

The Ten Commandments For a Stable Internet Business

10 Commandments for a stable INTERNET BUSINESSThe ten commandments in the Hebrew bible is something that if followed, can certainly help promote harmony in our lives and in the lives of others.  It can be considered a basic road map of principles on which to live our life.  Life doesn’t come with an owners manual, so often times we learn the laws of cause and effect the hard way.

Stick your finger in the fire and you get burned.  Guidelines for our lives can help us avoid some of those un-pleasantries by heeding the advice given by others.  The learned ones who have been down that path and have made the mistakes so you don’t have to.

Well now, I give to you the Ten Commandments of Internet Business.  There was no trip to the mountain top with a burning bush.   No golden tablets zapped out by a divine presence. Just something to help guide and keep you on the right hand path.

1. You Shall Take Action

Action is the key to everything. If there were ever a magic formula, it could be summed up in one word, ‘action’. Poverty is merely the visible manifestation of inaction.

 

2. Diversify Your Income Streams

Never depend on one source of income. Once you have a stable source of income such as from your own product, diversify into other markets. Also, add affiliate income for digital & physical products, as well as CPA to your repertoire.

 

3. Diversify Your Traffic Sources

Never depend solely on one source of traffic. SEO is great, but then you’re at the mercy of the Search Engines. Same with PPC (Pay Per Click). Add other strategies as well (Blogs, forums, articles, E-Zine advertising, banner ads, CPM, etc.).

 

4. Forsake Not Your Customers

Supporting your customers is one of the single most important elements of your business. If customer service gets to be too much of a bother for you, just start ignoring them. They’ll all go away eventually. Oh, and so will your income.

 

5. You Shall Not Offer Junk Content

The quality of your content directly reflects the quality of your products or service. Going that extra mile for good quality content will pay for itself forever. If your site is full of scraped, auto-rewritten content, then your visitor will immediately pick up on it and go elsewhere.

 

6. You Shall Not Enslave Yourself

Define your goals before you go into business. Is it more freedom that you want? If so, don’t get caught in the enslavement trap by trading your own skills for money. You’ll find yourself working 15 hour days for a paltry income. Outsource the work. Collectively, you can get thousands of hours of work accomplished in a week instead of just 60+ and killing yourself to boot. Leverage & scale = profit and more profit!

 

7. You Shall Not Bear False Info to Your Visitors

Never mis-lead your visitors with hyped up information, false promises and fake testimonials. This kind of stuff will catch up to you fast, and will ruin the one thing that you can’t fix… your reputation.

 

8. You Shall Not Spam

This one should be obvious. Not only is e-mail spamming illegal, it can get complaints filed against you that can get your domain suspended. Also, spamming the forums & blogs accomplishes little more than pissing people off.

 

9. Honor Your Mentor

If you have a mentor or marketing coach, listen to what they have to say and carryout their advice. You may sometimes think that they are wrong about some strategies, because they don’t fit comfortably into your perception of how your business should work. Just remember that he/she has already been to the mountain and back, and you are still the grasshopper preparing for the journey.

 

10. You Are Commanded To Prosper

Sometimes it seems that society has made ‘rich’ a dirty word. It’s OK to be wealthy. Don’t settle for a mediocre existence. Think big! Don’t limit your ambitions to making just enough to pay your bills with a little left over at the end of the day. Be set for life. Our cup was not meant to be empty, or simply to be filled. It is meant to be continuously running over with all the prosperity, joy and good health that the universe has to offer.

 

Don’t miss out on the wonderful things that surround us in life. Follow these guidelines for your Internet business, and success will be yours for the taking.

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Some Info on Link Cloaking & AmazingCloaker 5

Best Affilliate Link CloakerAmazingCloaker 5 has now been released.  If you are a current owner of AmazingCloaker, the upgrade is free and automatic of course.

There’s a lot of improvements in AmazingCloaker 5.  One of my main motivations for AC-5 was to get rid of the requirement for the Microsoft dotNet Framework.  I’ve found that many people who purchased AmazingCloaker didn’t have the latest version of the dotNet Framework and it was pain to have to upgrade or install the latest version.  This was automatic during the install, but could make for a long install and restarting the computer.

AmazingCloaker 5 eliminates the need for the dotNet Framework, and now for those without the Framework at all, AmazingCloaker will install, because it has been redesigned in an entirely new programming language.

It is much more streamlined in design, and uses a fraction of the resources without compromising the great features that the AmazingCloaker is known for.

One of the most powerful features that the AmazingCloaker is known for is the embedded cookie feature.  You can create an embedded cookie and add it to your affiliate review or landing page. Your visitor will be cookied with your affiliate info, even if they don’t click your affiliate link.

What this means is that if they bypass your link, or simply don’t bother to check out the product, but then think about it and buy the product directly from the vendor, say a week later… You still get credit for the sale even though your link was never physically clicked.

And why not? You still took the time to put up your review page and educate the visitor on the benefits of the product, so why not receive the credit that’s due? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how quickly that these recovered conversions can add up.

Link cloaking helps keep your affiliate info hidden so that people can’t simply replace your affiliate ID with their own.  This is called link hi-jacking because your affiliate link has now become their affiliate link on their own purchase.  They are reimbursed the affiliate commission, allowing them to get the product at a discount, and at your expense.

Link cloaking isn’t all about security.  Most readers simply won’t trust a review of a product with an affiliate link.  This is because the visitor naturally assumes that the review is biased because you want them to click your link.  Credibility is reduced and they may either move on, or bypass your link… just because.

A cloaked link looks natural.  This is because it is pointing to a redirect page which still resides on your own website.

If you’d like to know more about how link cloaking works, it’s covered in the AmazingCloaker Help file.

You can get it here:

http://www.amazingcloaker.com/AmazingCloaker_help.pdf

You can see the video of the AmazingCloaker’s features here:

http://www.AmazingCloaker.com

Erasing Limiting Beliefs

Erasing Limiting Beliefs by George LutzEvery once in a while, a book or ebook comes along that stands out and makes you go “whoa!”.  These are the times when those defining memories are created through self revelations about yourself and the universe around you.

There’s many good books out there that tease you with bits of wisdom and useful philosophies that can help you down the road to enlightenment and self improvement.

More often than not, however, we are left a little short changed and wondering why the techniques outlined don’t quite live up to our expectations when we apply them to our own lives.

This is usually the case because, as warm and fuzzy as some books can make you feel about changing your life, they just don’t address the core beliefs that you may hold.

This is where Self-Transformation Beyond Belief, by George Lutz really stands out as one of the finest self transformation ebooks that I have ever come across.   The title really nails it.

In this book, you really get down to the very core of what it is that defines us.  We are defined by our beliefs.  Think about it…  we literally are our beliefs and memories.

Not all of our beliefs are good beliefs, yet we hold them because we misinterpreted or made a judgment on some aspect of an experience, which was then filed into our unconscious mind.

This limiting belief now has become a part of who we are, and all the positive affirmations in the world to change it aren’t really going to help, because deep down inside we still hold that core belief as being true.

If you’ve ever tried positive affirmations to reverse a negative belief, you know the feeling of what I’m talking about.  It’s the feeling that you would get trying to convince yourself that the sky is really green when you know it to be blue.

This ebook shows you how to get beyond those limiting beliefs once and for all.  Not to simply mask your limiting beliefs, but to ERASE and replace them!  This is the only true way to self-transformation, and take it from me, it works!

The stunning revelations that you gain through this ebook will forever change the way you see the world around you.  For the skeptic,  George Lutz backs up these concepts with quantum physics.  Science is only now beginning to see the profound interconnection with your physical universe and the divine.  George does a wonderful job at explaining these concepts in a language that you & I can understand.

I had the honor of crossing paths with George Lutz via this magical medium of the internet nearly two years ago.  George is an extremely fascinating, kind and enlightened soul.  He is a retired CEO of a technology related company.

George has had many highs as well as low points in his lifetime.  Depression was a condition in which he had to battle with for a good many years.  About 7 years ago, George’s life went through an amazing transformation.

Never again to deal with the devastating effects of depression and an unfulfilled life that can come as a result of being a slave to your own limiting beliefs.  Realizing that no obstacle can’t be overcome, including illnesses & disease.  These of course, are also manifestations of negative and conflicting beliefs.

His fascination with quantum physics, the universe, and what it is exactly that makes us tick inside, all seemed to combine to form a life changing experience.  An experience so profound, that now he must share this with the world.

This is a must read for anyone who truly wants live their lives to the fullest.  You can take control of your destiny! Don’t ever settle for having destiny control you.

Self-Transformation Beyond Belief is something that can forever change your life.  I would never waste your time or mine writing about this if I didn’t truly believe in this myself.  What’s more, after reading this ebook, you’ll almost feel guilty that you only paid $29.97 for this!

Do yourself a favor, if you want the most out of life, take a quick assessment of yourself.  Are you not completely satisfied with where your are in life? Do you seem to always end up in bad relationships? Loaded down with debt? Maybe your internet business is in the tank.

We all have some aspect in our lives that could use a makeover.  Take a time out from what you’re doing right now and pick up a copy of this amazing ebook.  You can get it here:

http://www.eraselimitingbeliefs.com

As you can see, this is not an affiliate link, and I don’t get a dime from the sales of this book.  I believe in George and the power of my own experiences with this wonderful ebook. The treasures that I have gained from this ebook are truly priceless.

I would like you to experience the power of George Lutz’s words as well.  Self-transformation in your own life is just a click away.

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Is Article Marketing Worth It?

Article Writing to get traffic A lot of marketers on that quest for the traffic holy grail will search high & low for the best free traffic technique for their internet business. It seems that all the ebooks, videos, audios, that cover free traffic techniques generally all have one thing in common. You’ll always find that article submissions are the primary answer in virtually every “traffic secret” out there.

Article marketing has been rehashed in a million different ways in a million different products. Those marketers who don’t like to write probably find this irritating. So why is article marketing always covered? Because it works!

The trick to article marketing is how you approach it. Firstly, its important to understand what article submissions actually accomplish for your website. Articles should provide value to the reader. In return for peaking the reader’s interest, the reader will likely click your link in the resource box of the article and check out your website.

Articles provide one way links to your site. These links also add up to boosting your search engine rankings as well. These backlinks in many cases can provide more value in the long term than the immediate surge in traffic.

One important point that most people overlook is that article marketing has a cumulative effect. Many will submit one or two articles, get a few visitors, and soon decide that the few visitors they got aren’t really worth the time and effort. Suppose you went against your instincts and stuck it out longer?

Every time your articles are submitted, they end up in article directories and eZines, depending where you submit your articles. These articles are copied by webmasters and can be legally used on their sites to provide content so long as they leave the complete article intact including your resource box containing your back link.

Not only do people use & post your articles, but even the scraper sites also will tend to grab your articles for their junk Adsense websites. Even though these are junk sites, wasting space & irritating searchers, it’s still a backlink albeit, a lightweight one.

The point is that the more articles you submit, the more that you may be replicated around the net. Many worry about Google’s “duplicate content penalty”. I think that the dupe content thing is way over rated. Duplicate content is everywhere. Duplicate content may get less weight than the original, but an actual penalty on your website? I don’t think so.  The dupes simply don’t carry as much backlink value to your site.

If you’re really worried about duplicate content, you can always use software like Artemis Pro, or an article spinner which will automatically re-write your article multiple times. These techniques can certainly add weight to your back links, especially if you spin your resource box as well.

Article submitters can get your articles out to many sites in a fraction of the time. A good article submitter can be loaded with quality sites such as ezinearticles.com. EZines are more likely to be read by quality readers and are always the premium picks for traffic & revenue generating articles.

So, to ask the question again. Is article marketing really worth it? Absolutely! Whether writing them yourself or outsourcing, each new article adds up.  Start building your traffic equity today and make article submissions a part of your business system.

Beef Up Your Conversions For Free

Here’s a talking head video featuring me and my scary lighting showing you how to really crank up your conversions by creating web pages that optimize themselves.

In case you don’t like watching videos, here’s a transcript of the video:

Hello, Jack Keifer here with a tip on beefing your conversion rates on your web sites with self-optimizing webpages.

So how does a web page optimize itself?  
With a testing techique called Multi-Variate testing.

Multi-variate testing is done with software designed to allow you to automatically test different versions of various sections of your webpage.

Let me clarify this a little using one of my websites as an example.

Here at AmazingCloaker.com you’re looking at the headline portion of my web page.

Your headline is that critical element to get your visitors to stay beyond that 3 second event horizon.

Usually a visitor will hit their back button within 3 seconds if you don’t peak their interest somehow.

See why the headline is so important?  
Anyway,
The sales page is made of of different components like the Headline, sub heading, bullet list, main body, guarantee, call to action and buy button, to name a few.

Scrolling down, we move through the different sections of the sales letter.

With multi-variate software, we can create different versions of each of these sections and test which combinations of these versions give the best conversion rates.

Everytime one version of a section scores higher conversions, it is tested against other sections of the web page more often.

Every time you make a sale, your web page is constantly refining and improving itself.

I’m going to clear my cookies here and refresh my web page.  This will cause a slightly different version to load.

Ok, here we have a new version of the page.
The headline stayed the same.
Scrolling down the page there are various paragraphs that are slightly changed.

Not too big a difference here.

Let’s refresh this page again and see if we get more dramatic results.

First, I’ll clear my cookies, and then we’ll just hit the refresh button again.

Ok, looks like we still have the same headline.
That could mean that this particular headline is creating better conversions.

Interesting… here we are now seeing extra graphics relating to the AmazingCloaker.

Testing these graphics against nothingness is also a variable.  
Sometimes less is more in a sales page,
so always consider testing something against having nothing in its place as well.

Ok, let’s do this one more time.
Clear the cookies again…

Ok, this time the headline has changed.  
This headline was scoring pretty high in the beginning of my testing.
Scrolling down, there are additional changes that you would note in various sections of the page.
Looks like the extra graphics are gone again in this version, so its possible that the extra graphics are actually scoring lower and that “nothingness” is winning out.

Ok, so the next question you’re going to ask is
“What software did you use and how much did it cost you?”

Well, that’s a great question.
So how does FREE sound?

That’s right, I simply used a free tool compliments of Google called “Google Web Optimizer”.

Just go out to www.google.com/analytics
and log in using your Adwords credentials.

If you don’t already have a google account, you can sign up here as well.

Ok, let’s get logged in.

In Google web optimizer, you create what are called “experiments”, which are the multivariate tests that you setup for your website.

As you can see here I have a few experiments showing, but only one is active.  
The other two are abandoned first attempts while I figured out how to use it.

Here are the current stats for each section of my web page that I have set up for testing.

Each section here shows what percentage of the time they were used when a sale was made.

Pretty useful when you want a quick overview of what is working and what isn’t.

This way you can continue giving the non producing areas additional tweaking to get every thing up to peak performance.

There’s literally thousands of combinations that your website will display automatically when visitors come to your site.

Ok, Now let’s take a look at my conversion stats for the month of July.

I started this around July 5th so my conversion rates are showing for just over a month.  
To track your sales, you set up what are called “goals” and then paste some javascript into your thank you page.

I forgot to add in my Goal Values, so they are showing zero… d’oh!

Normally you would put in your net profit here and then it will calculate your visitor value if I understand it correctly.

Let’s take a closer look at the stats so far.

As you can see, I didn’t put much effort into traffic generation this month, but my converation rates are pretty decent.

My average conversion rate for the month is calculating at 4.37%

Let’s click on the more detailed chart.

Here you can see that I started july at 4.50% and the multivariate testing has cranked my current standing to 9%.

Not too shabby if I don’t say so myself.

With an impressive 9% conversion rate, I could confidently employ paid traffic strategies, if I chose to do so.

Just as an FYI, there are premium multivariate software packages packed with other great features as well for getting even greater accuracy.

For example, I’ve used for quite some time, a product called KaizenTrack.

It’s a little pricey… around $500 that last time I checked, but well worth it.

Another excellent multivariate software is “MuVar“, created by James Brausch.  
Right now, MuVar is only selling for $100!  This is because MuVar 2008 is about to be discontinued.

From what I’ve read, MuVar is a kick-butt multivariate software, and it will even calculate your visitor value for you as well.

Well, now there’s no excuse for not tracking your results.

Testing and refining are vital components to getting the most out of your internet business.

If you ignore this step, you’re leaving thousands on the table in lost income.

Besides that, how would any potential JV partner take you seriously if you didn’t even know your own conversion rates for your products?

Also remember, that you don’t have to have your own product line to use this.

If you’re an affiliate marketer, you should be testing your affiliate landing pages as well.

So if you’re not testing your pages, what are you waiting for?
Jump out to google.com/analytics and get started now.

Copywriting The Right Way Vs The Scary Way

I was perusing Terry Dean’s online business blog today and happened across a hilarious post called “Do You Have HyperCopyitis? “  It’s not only funny, but it really drives home a point that is so prevalent in copywriting all over the net.

In a very witty way, Terry points out how such an overwhelming number of sales letters are so hyped up that it’s pathetic.  For example, the typical Paypal or Clickbank statements showing thousands of dollars a minute being cranked out because of their super secret system.  Yeah right… I always suspect, whether right or wrong, that those kinds of images are Photoshopped.

Other typical things like the yellow highlighter in every other paragraph, the eighty kazillion exclamation points scattered throughout the copy, and the endless run-on sentences which exhaust your breath, much like the one you’re reading now. :P

The main point, I believe, that Terry is making in his post is that many copywriters, or those of us who write our own copy, fail to connect with our target audience.

These hyped up sales letters have all the “cool” emotional trigger words, the neat little graphics, the fancy buy button with the cool check box (Yes Jack! Count me in!!!) next to it.  You can hype your product to sound like the biggest thing since sliced bread, but are you really relating to your prospect, or just shouting at him… Buy! Buy! Buy it nowwww!!!

Suppose instead of talking at your visitors, we connected with them instead?  Hmmm.  Imagine  empathizing with your visitors instead.  Gently and indirectly persuading them that your product is just the perfect fit to solve the problem they have.  Not because you jammed your offer down their throat, but because they drew their own conclusions based on how you connected with them.   Because you kept them hanging on to your every word, as one paragraph leads to the next, guiding them down a pathway straight to the buy button.

Terry Dean has interviewed Shaune Clarke, a copywriter who emotionally connects with his audience without gimmicks, exaggeration, or swipe files, as Terry puts it.

What’s even more amazing to me is that Terry Dean has done a 70 minute interview with Shaune Clarke revealing some of his most valued secrets.  This is an amazing interview which is in mp3 format AND transcribed into a .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) file as well, so that you can refer to either format!

How much you ask?  Only $10… You know I jumped on this one!  Terry Dean is known as one of the good guys & when you buy from Terry, you’ll always get amazing value.  This is easily the best $10 I’ve ever spent and you can bet I’ll be modifying my own web copy to test the results.

Edit Update - Terry Dean informed me (in this post’s comments) that the Interview with Shaune Clarke is now at $15.  As I elaborated in my follow-up comment,  this is $15 well spent many times over.  Even if you have to skip that pizza & coke with your buddies, or pawn that guitar, get this valuable information now.  The price may go up again soon.

Don’t let the affiliate link at the end of the post fool you.  I was really inspired by & believe in this product.  In fact, if you don’t wish to use my affiliate link, then simply go out to http://www.terrydean.org and buy it direct.

If you want to find out more about this, just click on my semi-blatant affiliate link now.