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Open Ads - Open Source Ad Inventory Management
The Big List of Affiliate Marketing Events
Secret To Get On The First Page Of Google

Nice videos, John. But you seem a bit more formal than the presentations in the original Traffic Secrets.

If you haven’t seen the new Traffic Secrets 2.0 videos, you should take a look at them. This is the third video but you will also find the links to the first two videos.

The third video is about creating software such as online apps and widgets. As you know, you don’t have to be a programmer to do this. You can outsource the work. John mentions a few good tips about things to watch out for when you’re outsourcing.

Technorati Tags: Traffic Secrets 2.0

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Great news! As of a couple of days ago, Google’s External Keyword Tool now finally shows actual numbers rather than just the relative search volume.

Take a look:

You will see that the approximate search volume for the previous month and the average search volume will change if you change the keyword matching options from broad to phrase to exact match.

This data will provide more insight for internet marketers who want to assess a niche before entering it. It is also a good way to scope out new keywords for either SEO or PPC.

Another thing you can do is target a specific country’s searches. This can provide good insight if you are selling to a specific country.

Other Google tools you can use for research include their Ad Planner (ask for a beta invite), Google Trends, and Trends for Websites. Ad Planner looks like a tool that will let you research content network ad placement. There’s also speculation that someday it will get integrated into AdWords.

Technorati Tags: Google External Keyword Tool, keyword research, market research

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The Internet is a great tool for research. You can find out what people are buying and sell them what they want.

Here is a partial list of sites that I compiled as part of a larger report a while back.

Iconoculture
Iconoculture is the leader in strategic consumer advisory services, delivering consumer understanding by using our unique observational research approach. Subscribe to the Iconowatch newsletter and get consumer outlook and trends delivered to you weekly by email.

MSN City Guides
A comprehensive guide to local restaurants, entertainment, arts, travel, news, weather and services in U.S. cities. Great for looking for regional information.

AOL Search: Hot Searches
Find out what the most popular search terms are on AOL.

TrendWatching.com - Track consumer trends

Vacation Idea.com
A source for ideas in the travel niche. Find the best resorts, hotels, destinations that people are searching for. You can also create “micro” niches focusing on single regions or cities.

Zappos Trends
Up and coming brands that show the latest trends and directions in fashion. This is where you shop if you want to have something that’s different from everyone else.

Use these as a starting point for your own research. Then go dominate your niche.

Technorati Tags: market research, niche research

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I bought the original Traffic Secrets course when it first came out in August 2004. It’s no longer in the market but version 2.0 is going to be released soon. John Reese has just released a video preview of what’s coming in Traffic Secrets 2.0 and a very valuable tip in the video for a technique he calls “Results Detection”. This tip will help you determine the possibility of success in a niche market even before you start building a web site.

The whole idea is to leverage the research that others have already carried out for you.

Anyway, he can explain it better than I do, so I’ll just let you watch it.

The lifeblood of any online business is getting traffic. Without traffic, you won’t have to worry about conversions, split testing, and profits. So the ability to drive traffic to your site is supremely important.

If you have loads of traffic, then you can test a lot faster and make the necessary changes to improve your conversions. That is why PPC advertising is so effective. You can get massive amounts of traffic in a short time by purchasing it. And with that traffic, you can do all kinds of testing.

So if your sites are starving for traffic, be sure to check out TS 2.0 when it launches on July 15.

Technorati Tags: Traffic Secrets 2.0, John Reese, video preview

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The beauty of internet marketing is that every ad you place can be tracked. For example, you can track your pay-per-click (PPC) ads down to the level of the keywords that the searcher typed in to find your ad. Moving on a step further, you can track the resulting sale coming from that click. It is also important for you to know what your return on investment (ROI) is for your advertising campaign.

In the realm of newspaper or magazine classified ads, you will often find that advertisers will use a different department number for each ad. They use the same mailing address but add a different department code. In this way, they can track how different ads perform based on the inquiries they get sent to the different departments. This works also for the 800 numbers that you call to obtain more information. Companies can set up different toll-free numbers used for each ad and that is how they can track the effectiveness of different ad campaigns.

In offline advertising, it is much more expensive to set up the tracking. Imagine the costs associated with setting up different phone numbers or multiple P.O. boxes. In the online world, however, tracking becomes inexpensive as you can do it using a variety of scripts or software programs. With PPC advertising, you can easily use a simple PHP script to enable you to capture the keywords coming from a Google search referral.

Let’s take a look at another example. With many web hosting packages, you are allowed to set up multiple email addresses. You can set it up so that in each ad you use a different email address. Then when you get an email inquiry to a specific email address, you will know where that originated from. You can also set up different subdomains to use as the link in your ads. For example, if you are advertising in newsletters or e-zines, you can duplicate the same ad copy but send the readers to a separate subdomain as the URL for each ad.

When you are able to track the efforts of all your advertising, you can sit down at the end of the month and figure out which campaigns are generating the best ROI. You can then scale up those campaigns or tweak them to try to maximize your profits. If you are not tracking, then you are simply flying blind and you are depending more on chance. Start tracking your advertising efforts today.

Technorati Tags: tracking advertising, tracking and testing

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I have seen the question being asked so many times by people who are new to affiliate marketing - “What are the best products to promote as an affiliate?” The answer to this question may be found by starting with examining yourself.

What I mean is that you should ask yourself what types of markets you are most familiar with.

Is it dating, dieting products, music, electronic gadgets or something else? Go through a list of your hobbies and what you enjoy doing as a starting point.

The reason I brought up this point is because in order to be successful in affiliate marketing, it is better to inform rather than to sell. Sometimes you will hear the word “presell” being used and what it means is simply informing the potential customer about the pros and cons of the product so that they can make an educated decision. If you come across as trying to push the sale, most of the time you will turn the potential customers away.

Now I am not just referring to ClickBank products that have high commissions. Admittedly, many people are drawn to the products on ClickBank that have high gravity and high commissions. There are many affiliates who have succeeded with independent affiliate programs and physical products as well.

Providing information to the potential customer is one reason why review type web sites work well. When a visitor comes to a review site, they will see different products that can potentially solve their problem. You are offering the a choice between several products in the same niche. At the same time, they can find rankings for the products and the advantages or disadvantages of each one. Think about how Amazon incorporates their customer reviews. How many times have you gone to Amazon and read the reviews before you decided to make a purchase?

People are looking for information online before they make a purchase. What you want to do is to intercept them in the process. That is why it is important to be familiar with the products that you are going to be promoting. If you don’t come across as a reliable source of information, the chances of getting the sale will be lowered.

If the niche you choose is something you are familiar with, you will have an easier time writing about the products and you will also know the terms that are commonly used in that niche. That is not to say that you cannot be successful even if you are not an expert in a particular market. You can join forces with other people to come up with a joint project or hire a writer who is well-versed in the subject.

The best reviews usually come from someone who has used the product themselves and can vouch for all its strengths and expose its shortcomings. This is why I am amazed by all the copycat product reviews especially in the “make money online” niche that I see. If you just copy what everyone else is doing you will not succeed. Also, please don’t cut and paste the product reviews that the vendor gives you. Try to come up with something of your own.

The old saying goes that “familiarity breeds contempt” but in affiliate marketing, “familiarity breeds success!”

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, promoting affiliate products, preselling

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What is one of the most precious resources you have as an entrepreneur?

If you answered “time” then we’re on the same wavelength.

Everybody gets 24 hours a day no matter how rich or poor you are. The thing about those 24 hours per day is that we can’t spend all of them working. We have to sleep, eat, exercise and take care of our bodies. We need to spend time with our families and friends. So…we can allow ourselves just so many work hours each day. Since our working time is limited that means that we must be efficient with our work. We can’t waste time on unnecessary details or on tasks that others can do.

When you shave a few minutes here and a few minutes there, you will make more efficient use of your allotted work hours. Here are a few suggestions and in the interest of saving your time (and mine), I’ll keep this brief and to the point.

Email accounts. Let’s face it - as online entrepreneurs, email can be a huge distraction especially when your business grows to the point where you receive hundreds of emails a day. If you don’t want to hire a virtual assistant just to sift through your emails, here’s what you can do. If you have multiple email accounts, checking each and every email account more than once a day can be a huge time sucking activity. One thing you can do is to have all of the email that comes to all of your various email accounts forwarded to a central account. Something with lots of storage like Gmail would be a good candidate. One email account takes a lot less time than several and you can still maintain all of your various email addresses.

Always remember to cut down on the time spent reading and answering emails that are not going to add to your bottom line.

Prioritize your day. Do whatever it takes to set some goals for the day. Some people like to make lists. Others write down what they have to do on Post-It notes. Having a list of things you want to accomplish for the day will help you sort out and prioritize the important things that need to be done first.

Focus on building your business. Remember the 80/20 principle? Find out what your 20% is and focus on those activities. Don’t waste too much time checking your stats or lurking in forums. Those activities don’t always help you grow your business. Don’t get me wrong. Forums are a great place to meet people and network with others who share your same goals. And relationships that you form with other entrepreneurs are a valuable asset. However, you’ll need to strike a healthy balance so that you don’t end up neglecting the things that will prop up your bottom line now.

Outsource. Since you can’t clone yourself, the next best thing is to outsource some of the tasks that take up your time. Depending on your business model, outsourcing can work wonders to get you more of your time back. Things you can outsource include writing (articles, press releases, etc.) book keeping, PPC management, web design, article submission, and SEO, to name a few. Outsourcing doesn’t just mean that you farm out the menial tasks to others. You also outsource because others are better at certain tasks than you are. This will leave you to focus and develop your core competencies.

You will be really surprised at how much of your day that you waste if you keep a record of how you spend your time over the course of several days.

[tags]time management, solo entrepreneurs[\tags]

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