Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Safelists (??)

Do any of you have any experience with lists like Lucky List or List Machine?
You see, I don't have my own mailing list yet because I haven't had a way to capture emails from anyone. I don't have my own website yet. When I will I can put in a little box where I offer something nice that's free in return for the visitors' emails. Once I have a mailing list the possibilities for actually selling anything to anyone get much broader.

So, the solution for people without lists is to sign up (for free) with one of these so called safelists.

What happens is that you agree to receive mail from other people on the safelist and you get the opportunity to send out a mailing once a week to the people under you. Aha, therein lies the catch. How to get people to sign up under you? Well, you would have to advertise the link for one of the lists somehow. Well, I haven't been successful in signing people up from a link in my signature on forums.
Anybody out there have any ideas how to get signups and succeed with these safelists?
Any advice would be welcome!!!

Oh yeah, and here is my link, in case you want to sign up under me LOL...

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Mistake

It was pointed out to me that I shouldn't have posted an affiliate link to the site where I bought the Adsense portals because I was posting about it on the Warrior Forum and from what I understood from the more experienced posters, it's really hard to make money with these Adsense sites. A site may even get banned from Google because the same content exists on other sites. This is the issue that I was concerned about when I asked about it at the forum.

So, please don't assume that the link I published in the last post means that I'm encouraging you to purchase sites like these.
I hope I have made myself clear.
Someone on the forum tried to make me out to be a liar for posting questions about these sites on the forum (and indicating that maybe I was a sucker for buying them), and then posting to the blog that what is left to do is customize them and get them running. Like I said in my post, I will work on only ONE of them to see if it's worthwhile.

Dime Sale on Adsense Sites

I've been a bit "all over the place" on the internet over the past couple of days.
I was away from my laptop for the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana (Saturday and Sunday) and when I got back my inbox was bursting at the seams. Frankly, it's always bursting at the seams. As I type I have over 500 unopened items in my inbox and I don't know if they will ever be opened.
Instead of unsubscribing to alot of stuff I let it sit in there, thinking that maybe someday I will get to it!!

Anyway, I do open some of my mails and I do find things of value sometimes!
Yesterday I found a "dime sale", where someone puts up something for sale, starting at 10 cents and the price goes up by 10 cents after every sale. For $7 I bought 5 complete Adsense sites based on niche topics. These sites came with over 2000 pages. Now, I need to customize them, buy domain names and hosting for them and get them up and running. This is an experiment for me, since I don't have my own website yet. I'll take one of the sites and see if I can generate any income from it. If it doesn't work - I'm out $7. Here is the link to the site where I got the Adsense sites. (It is kind of funny that I bought this after posting the Adsense is Dead post, but I figured it's only $7.....)

Statistics on my blog

Up until yesterday I was getting my blog statistics on a trial basis (without charge) from here
(www.mybloglog.com). They cancelled me because I don't want to pay the monthly fee for the service. So, I moved over to here (www.statcounter.com) where they give statistics for free.
If you need stats for a website or blog you can check them out.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

The Death of Adsense

When I was a beginner, I heard all about how people put up websites full of Google "Adsense" ads and make alot of money from this. These ads are context-sensitive, meaning that they are related to the content of your web page. You let Google insert ads into your site's wep page and they pay you a few cents every time someone clicks on the ads.

I have a couple of Adsense ads on the top of my blog page. I make a few measly cents every day from these ads. Some people make alot more, depending on how much traffic they get at their site.

I just read a public domain report, that exposes the reason AdSense income sucks lately, even though many would be "gurus" on the net are pushing AdSense products like never before!

The report is called The Death of Adsense.

What's really cool is this guy (Scott Boulch, a "non guru") also explains how he went from a few hundred dollars in AdSense income to over $50,000 a month after he gave up AdSense!

He's closing the doors on the reports soon, so go grab The Death of Adsense while it's still a live link.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Hosting Companies

Oh gosh.
I just had to do a quick post about hosting companies.
I was surfing around and saw an ad for a company called www.intaspace.com. I surfed in and saw that they had incredible prices for hosting with a free domain name included. I almost ordered but I asked on one of the forums I'm on and someone said to check out www.hostgator.com. I haven't purchased from them yet, but they have some really important information on their site about how not to get SCAMMED by hosting companies.

They recommend going to www.internic.net and checking out the domain name of the company you are interested in going with (using the WHOIS function). Well, I entered checked out intaspace.com and you wouldn't believe it - their domain name is about to expire on September 22 2006!!!!!!! Can you imagine?
Just to give you an idea, Godaddy is registered till about 2012 or something. Well, that bit of information really saved me, didn't it?????

Another thing recommended is to check out the support of the hosting company by just calling their number and seeing if you get any response.......

Again, don't whip out that credit card just because you see a good deal. If it looks too good to be true, it usually is.....

Domain Names and Such

Today, I am busy deciding where to purchase my first domain name. Also, I am investing thought in what to call it. This is because, although I love having a blog, I feel that it is important for me to put up my first site already.

I found an interesting article about domain names and would like to share it with you:

How My Internet Business Improved When I Got My Own Domain Name
by Donovan Baldwin


Many people seeking to start internet business often ask themselves, "Why should I get my own domain name when there are plenty of free web hosting services around?" Or they might say, "I have joined an affiliate program, and they provided me a great looking website. What do I need my own domain name for?"
I'm not going to knock free hosting, because that's how I got started in internet marketing. The sites I created with free hosting services made money for me, and many are several years old and still making money for me. However, there are several benefits that I learned about when I got my own domain names.

1. The sites were neater and less distracting. A free hosting service will normally support its operations, at least in part, by putting banners on a site or by having popups, or both. Not only does this detract from the general appearance of the site, but it may cause visitors to your website to leave quickly and it may disguise your internet business in the sea of advertising which surrounds it. When I got my own domain name, all the clutter disappeared and my internet business became the only focus of the site.

2. I was able to improve the visibility of my internet business to the internet surfer when I got my own domain name. This actually improves visibility in more than one way.
First, I was able to pick domain names that reflected the thrust or intent of my internet business. For example, if a surfer is looking for travel agencies in New York City, the URL’s newyorkcitytravelagency.xxx or nycitytravel.xxx are more likely to catch the eye than iwouldreallyliketogetyourtravelbusiness.xxx.
Second, many successful internet businesses have used a ploy of catching the surfer's eye with a funny or slightly unusual name that sticks even though it doesn't exactly express the message. Don't believe me? How about PayPal.com, eBay.com, Google.com, or even NoDiet4Me.com?

3. I was able to improve my search engine visibility, ranking, and results when I got my own domain name. Not only was having a domain name that reflected my internet business area of interest valuable insofar as the human surfer's eye was concerned, but it could improve my search engine ranking as well. This is invaluable, because a properly selected domain name can both reflect the interest of the human while better meeting the requirements of the search engine.
Just for an example, if my internet business is selling free web hosting, having the domain webhosting.xxx may be good, but freewebhosting.xxx is going to be even better. If someone is seeking free web hosting, freewebhosting.xxx is probably going to catch their eye because it is exactly what they are looking for. Also, if they search for "free web hosting", there is a chance that if I have done a good job of optimizing my website, the search engine they use will add my domain name into the factors it considers while fulfilling the request and will show my domain name first.

4. I was better able to market affiliate programs when I got my own domain name. When I started out in internet marketing all I knew how to do was join affiliate programs. If you have ever seen the links provided by many of these affiliate programs, you probably were appalled and wondered how anyone could ever use one of THOSE links to attract attention. They are full of question marks and strange codes, and they tend to be excessively long and often don't say anything about the business that is being promoted.
Once I got my own domain names, I was able to redirect visitors to the affiliate site while using a perfectly sensible sounding, and looking, domain name. I was able to put recognizable and rational sounding domain names on business cards, which would have been impossible with the affiliate link. I was also able to design information sites under my own domain name which carried links to the affiliate site.

NOTE: Many affiliate links have other problems than just being ugly or unwieldy. If you have an affiliate link that looks like bobsbarbecue.xxx/?affiliate=joan or bobsbarbecue.xxx/afid=1234, some search engines will only recognize the root domain, that is, bobsbarbecue.xxx, and ignore everything else.

Many affiliate pages don't actually have anything of interest to a search engine, such as titles, Meta tags, or content. This gets into another area, website design and search engine optimization, and that's outside the scope of this article. However, having your own domain, even a free one, can allow you to more effectively promote the affiliate program you have joined.
Finally, most affiliate pages look exactly alike, so you have no way to stand out from the crowd even if the page is fantastically designed and optimized to the max. However, if I get my own domain name, I can either redirect to the affiliate page, but use my own title and meta tags (and even content), or I can create a page of my own which leads visitors to the affiliate page through anchor text and other linking or lead building techniques. (Which are ALSO subjects of interest in their own right).

5. Once I got my own domain name, I was able to begin branding myself and some of my internet business sites and interests. Since I write articles like this all the time which carry links to various internet businesses with which I am involved, I have been able to create a brand name of sorts and have been able to interlink these sites, interests, and articles, thus creating a more visible internet image.

Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and network marketing professional. A graduate of the University Of West Florida (1973) with a BA in accounting, he is a member of Mensa and has held several managerial positions. After retiring from the U. S. Army in 1995, he became interested in internet marketing and developed various online businesses. He has been writing poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently publishes articles on his own websites and for use by other webmasters. Learn one way to get your own domain name.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Donovan_Baldwin

Sunday, September 17, 2006

The Rich Jerk - Product Review

Hello Folks.

Today I am going to post a review of TheRich Jerk. For those of you who don't know, he's the character whose shtick is basically that he tells everyone how lazy and rich he is while putting everyone else down.

The Rich Jerk's book The Rich Jerk provided a very pleasant surprise. I fully expected to be turned off by his annoying attitude and language after reading his site. Instead, I discovered a book which is very well written. No marketing hype or fluff. Just pure information about how to succeed as an internet marketer. The Rich Jerk (actor, Kelly Felix, if you must know…) has such an obnoxious website, that I was sure his book would be equally obnoxious. Not so. This book is absolutely loaded with valuable information that would take years to implement. It is written in a very blunt and amusing manner. The Rich Jerk does not talk down to his readers like I was sure he would. He just tells it like it is. He is one smart cookie.

Topics Covered

He covers topics such as how to create an affiliate website that sells like crazy, creating ppc (pay per click) strategies that kill your competition (including Google Adsense and Adwords), search engine optimization strategies, creating and selling your own information product, ebay and more. He gives examples of websites that have earned him $1 million each. He recommends other online ventures. He also has an entire chapter geared toward the beginner. There is stuff in this book that I had never encountered in the other books I've bought.

The book is absolutely loaded with information and it is not surprising that it is one of the MOST successful e-books on the web.

Is it for Beginners?

I'm not sure that I would recommend it to complete newcomers, though. I would recommend having just a bit of background before diving into the Rich Jerk's Book. I read it after having just a few months of experience on the web and I was able to appreciate it much more than I would have had I read it straight out when I started internet marketing.

Negatives

One thing I was not too crazy about in the book is that The Rich Jerk recommends things like "promising the world and then under-delivering". He recommends trying to appear as an "unbiased 3rd party" and then recommending only the products you are promoting. As a person who was burned by a site like that when I was newbie, I am particularly bothered by that idea! He recommends certain "black hat techniques" and explains how to use them.
These are the things that bothered me in the book.

That being said, there is still a wealth of valuable and important information in there. You can just disregard all the unethical stuff. You may make less money, but at least you'll be able to live with yourself!!!

In case you're interested, The Rich Jerk has made an unbelievable amount of money from the techniques he teaches in his book. He really is rich and, yeah, I think he really is an unethical jerk. But so what? I can simply take what I want from the book and leave the rest!

Is the Book Worth the Money?

Is this book worth the money? Absolutely. You can make the money back very quickly if you follow the Rich Jerk's advice. Also, there is a 90 day money-back guarantee. I say "Go for it". You won't regret it.
The Rich Jerk

P.S. I have bought books that I've been very sorry about and have wanted to return. This book is a winner.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Search Engine Optimization

We all know that putting up a great site is not enough. We need to have visitors at the site.
That's where search engine optimization (seo) comes in. We need to choose the right keywords for the site. I don't know anything (really) about that stuff yet because I'm just not there yet. Don't have my site up yet and it's one thing at a time.

BUT I do know that SEO is important and I have to read up on it so that I can and will excel when it's time!

I found a good, FREE course by Brad Callen on this topic.
Here is the link:
http://www.seoelite.com/7DaysToMassiveWebsiteTraffic.htm
I promise you that this one is more worthwhile than the last free course I sent you to....

If you're not ready you can sign up and download them to save every time they come in the mail. People pay alot of money for this information and here it is for free.

Till next time...

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Free Internet Marketing Courses

Today I am going to do something mean. I am going to say something not nice about a fellow internet marketer.
Remember 2 days ago I gave you a link to some free internet marketing courses by Cody Moya?
Well, DON'T BOTHER.

I signed up for the "course" and all I've been getting is some measly little emails with nothing more substantive than "fluff". Very disappointing, to say the least.

Especially in this day and age when there is so much material out there on the web which is FREE. I'm talking about good quality material from gurus like Jim Daniels, Perry Marshall and that great link I gave you to Travis Sago's Bum Marketing articles and videos. You don't have to pay through the nose today if you are a beginner and want to get your feet wet. Surf around ALOT before you pull out your credit card. And if you do decide to make a purchase, don't do it the first time you land on a site. Bookmark it and come back.
I came back at least 4 times before I bought Holly Mann's book. When I finally did buy it, I wasn't sorry.

It's so easy to empty out your bank account on e-books and such. Don't be tempted.
I bought another book this week for $30 but I didn't do it until I was really acquainted with the author from one of the forums. I read what he wrote and I started to trust him. That's what made me buy his book.
Stay tuned for my product review...

Monday, September 11, 2006

Musings about websites, internet and making money

I was just thinking today about how despite the fact that I've been in the Information Technology field forever and a day, I knew so little about the internet a few short months ago. I surfed around for recipes, medical information and lots of other things. My company had a website where we would see company-wide information. I paid bills via the internet, watched movies on YouTube and did all kinds of things.

But, I hadn't a clue to what is actually going on out there. I could never understand, for example, why someone would send out emails with jokes every day.

Helloooooooo. Earth to Dena. It finally dawned on me after a couple of months of surfing around and learning how to earn money. It's all about MONEY. I couldn't figure out why someone would put up a site with almost no content on it and the content that was there was such garbage. Now I finally understand. They put up sites with lots of Google ads in order to make money from Google Adsense. The content doesn't matter to some of these people who are out to make a buck. There are SO many low quality websites out there.

The funny thing is that there are zillions of people like me out there in the real world (and even in IT companies like where I worked) that haven't a clue that you can make money on the internet. These people surf around and don't know that when they click on a Google Adsense ad, that the owner of the site makes money. Or, that when they go shopping on the web that there are people out there making money from affiliate programs.

It's so bizarre. When I tell people at my old IT company that I want to make a living from the internet, they ask me "But how?". These are people that sell millions of dollars worth of software a year.

Go figure.

Maybe this means that the window of opportunity to earn money via the internet is still open and will be for a while...

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Oooooooops

Oops. I'm sorry. I gave you the wrong link for the videos.
Thanks, Roy, for pointing that out to me!!!
Here's the right one: www.convertlinks.com
Dena

Good Videos

Hey, check out this site and watch the FREE videos by Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon.
They are really worthwhile. www.convertlinks.com

They appear to be real experts in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which is all about bringing traffic to your site. They have one website that brings in $16,000 EVERY DAY. One of their videos shows you different techniques they use on that site. They claim that natural search (free, through search engines) is much more worthwhile than paid search.

Another video covers stuff like how to increase coversion rates. A conversion rate is the % of people who actually buy. If you get 100 people at your site in one day and 2 people buy then the conversion rate is 2%. They provide ideas on how to increase conversion rates.

Other topics covered:

How to control your customers click activity by guiding them to specific areas on your page with the controlled use of images and text
The BBB (Better business Bureau) - Is it a scam or will it increase sales?
Do you need to answer your phone to make money?
Hollywood-Style SEO.
Turning 8 keywords into 8,000 RELEVANT keyword phrases
And more...

I might add that the videos are entertaining. This guy, Andy Jenkins, is funny and he also delivers the material in a clear manner. No "um", "er", "ahem" etc.

Here is the link: www.convertlinks.com.
Enjoy!!!

p.s. Here is a FREE internet marketing course I came across by Cody Moya. I haven't done it yet but it's free and there is an opportunity to make money by providing it to others for free.
Free Internet Marketing Courses

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Affiliate Marketing 101

It's after 11:00 at night and I have had the absolute hardest day at home with my family.
But I will not go to sleep without posting something to my blog, so here it is.
Affiliate Marketing. What's it all about?
I sure didn't know until after I bought Holly Mann's book which is really geared towards beginners Breathrough Money-Making Secrets Revealed
.
As a matter of fact, I didn't know much of anything till I started to go through all the topics in the book!
Affiliate marketing is the way to get started, even before you have a website or a product of your own to sell.

Basically, we are talking about selling someone else's products and collecting a commission on them. You can do this even if you do not have a web site yet.
The way to do this is to open up an account with Clickbank (www.clickbank.com).
Clickbank is the "middleman" who has listings of vendors and products that you can be an affiliate for. You sign up with Clickbank and get a free account. Then, you browse through their 10,000 products and choose which ones you want to promote. Then, Clickbank gives you the url that you need to send potential customers to. When a person clicks on that url and winds up making a purchase, you get your % of commission. The actual percentage is listed in Clickbank with the listing of the product. If you are not familiar with Clickbank go on over and check it out. Even if a person does not purchase right away but within a certain amount of time (I think maybe 3 months??? Please correct me if I'm wrong) you get your commission because Clickbank keeps track of who referred the customer (with cookies).

Here is an excellent guide to affiliate marketing which you can download for free. (There is alot of free stuff available on the net!)
Have a look.
Free Affiliate Course from SBI
That's it for today....G'night

Monday, September 04, 2006

Wow. This stuff sure is confusing.
It seems like there is so much to know if you want to succeed in internet marketing. There's putting up a site. There's making sure you get traffic to your site. There's capturing leads so that you get a proper mailing list going. Then, there's having an autoresponder and the need to send out quality emails to keep your potential customers happy and willing to keep receiving them. There's Search Engine Optimization, without which you won't get visitors to your site the FREE way.

Then there is paid for advertising like with Google's Adwords. That's really scary stuff. You can go broke bidding on keywords if you don't know what you're doing. Of course, there are plenty of programs advertised on the internet that teach you how to use paid advertising, but they also cost money.

Let's break it down for a minute.
I want to sell something. Either my own product or someone else's product. So, if I want to start out selling other people's products I can become an "affiliate" for one or more products. Once I am an affiliate I get a url which I can use to send people to if they want to buy one of these products. If the person clicks on the link and makes a purchase either that time or within a few months (I'm not sure how many) I get a commission on their purchase. The amount of the commission depends on the conditions that the merchant offers.

Now, there are ways to promote these affiliate links without having a site, but, quite honestly, I find that it's hard to get anywhere (really) without one.

So, the next step is to build a web site. More on that next time.....
Dena

Friday, September 01, 2006

Article Writing for Internet Success

I am in a bit of a rush right now but I just wanted to tell you that writing articles is a very important thing to do in the world of internet. When you get to the point of having something you want to sell (we'll cover that another time), one of the best ways to promote it is to write articles about it. You can submit these articles to the many different article sites.

How does this help you sell? Well, you make sure to integrate into your signature at the bottom of the article the url (web site address) of the site you want potential customers to come to. Thus, your article helped you "pre-sell" the customer and helped you achieve credibility in the customer's eyes and when the customer clicks your link he/she may be more ready to buy.

Another thing - Search engines love to see new content on your web site. So, constantly adding new articles is a great way to get FREE traffic to your site. Sure, you can buy articles or even software that generates articles, but you still have to do some writing.

There are oodles and oodles of ebooks and information on the web about article writing.
One thing is for sure, in order to make it on the internet, you have to be willing to write.

Check out this Free little course on "Bum Marketing" - writing articles to earn $$$$:
http://clicks.aweber.com/z/ct/?hTUUBnGDTNIz4wT5u8FMRg

Have a great weekend.
Dena