Is there anybody still reading ?

Well you took a nice decision to stay here since the ebook I want you to check is completely free. Yep, FREE, (if you want to send me some cash, no problem). Please allow me to introduce Amy Cheung, who creates a little buzz from a forum post entitled “How I Do Over 10K in Clickbank Sales Every Month“. It was first on the Warrior Forum but I read that from Digital Point, 2 months ago I think.

Amy decided to write an ebook, detailing her process to make ClickBank sales, using AdWords. Today, I checked one of my inbox and got an email from her, the eBook is ready ! She had her own PPC strategy and had to face some AdWords accounts getting banned by Google, but it seems she’s still doing very well, finding some new ways to have profitable campaigns.

Since the ebook is free you should really get it now, it’s a real great resource, easy to follow. You’ll learn how to create and manage your compaigns properly, how to do landing pages, use subdomains and some more. The ebook even doesn’t come alone, you’ll get examples of her campaigns, adgroups and keywords…

Just visit Amy’s blog and sign up to get the free ebook. She also added a forum to her website so you can go discuss there and share your thoughts too.

At the same time, I had to install a new blog and I saw that the automatic upgrade at HostGator was there. After one or two clicks everything was done, and no problem occured. Of course your WordPress blogs should have been installed previously via Fantastico (well, I guess…).

These instant upgrades are really saving me time. Yes, I know, a manual installation of WordPress is only 5 minutes but I’m not as skilled as many and if a simple solution is offered then I don’t see why I wouldn’t use it.

So if like me you were hesitating to upgrade or thought it was too hard, check your Fantastico installations and WordPress 2.5.1 upgrade should be there !

The Common Article Marketing Strategy, or Do-It-Yourself

Articles are content, you can write some to develop a website, and to market your website, submitting to directories to gain backlinks. This is the article marketing as we know it, or bum marketing for some. I still do article marketing and when you are in a cool niche, with not so much competition, or promoting a new product that just comes on the market then you can dominate SERPs easily.

TIP : your article includes the name of the product in the headline and body, and the domain you installed a website for the product (your landing page, or mini site, blog) includes the name of product too. If you are promoting ONE product on its ONE website this workd very well. You may have already seen some www.ProductXYZreview.com.

Article Marketing - Pay For Good Work

So I have bought the 4 Hour Work Week (still writing the review) and there is a part about outsourcing. And since writing articles may be time consuming when you are not an expert on a field, you can hire a writer and have him writing articles for you. I have found some cool writers on digitalpoint forums, they work well and they are cheap. (I also have been scammed, articles not unique and then not usable…), so ask members with good or great reputation, this is your best bet.

Here is an example that I am using right now :

I’ve found a member with a very high reputation and itrader on digitalpoint, his rates are $0.01 per word. You will find writers at 0.015 or 0.02 and even more. What you want are the backlinks, even if the articles are “small”, you will still be there. So if your writer is professional, writes a good english, that’s fine. You can ask samples to see the quality of their works.

Back to my writer and his $0.01 per word, means a 300 words article is $3. You also have to know that many article writers offer discounts if you purchase in bulk, or for more words. But for the purpose of this example I’ll keep the $3 per article. I choose 300 words because EzineArticles asks articles to be at least 250 words.

Now depending on your budget, if you want to submit one article a day, it’s 30 articles and $90. You should be able to write few resource boxes. While your writer is busy, you could have started your mini site/landing page for affiliate programs or AdSense. This means you too have some work ! Write a review of a product, or articles for AdSense.

Once your website is ready, you can start submitting all the articles, but one a day is recommended. I am not an SEO expert but I’ve read that building too much backlinks in a short period of time could make Google unhappy. I don’t know what is too much, but with one submission a day you also ensure a regular flow of content.

That’s it, if you have an affiliate program that pays $20 then, with 5 sales you are in profit. It should be easy to reach this, remember you will still get traffic after your articles are submitted, so maybe you will have a more success in the month following the article submissions. And if you choose AdSense to monetize your website, you could make $3 a day and in a month get back your investment.

I recommend you to read the free report by Josh Spaulding, the “$5 mini site formula” (Nope, not affiliate link, it’s free). Josh explains how to make at least $5 a day with article marketing and AdSense. I enjoyed the keyword selection part and have myself experienced some great things from then. If you already have websites with AdSense, a few tricks with keywords could increase your earnings.

So even if you hire a ghost writer as I described or writes article yourself, AdSense is still a great way to earn money from your mini-site. Articles are great for long term traffic.

Articles and Selling Websites

Either you write yourself content or pay for it, you have content that you can put on your website. Just don’t copy articles from article directories to a new website and sell the website. On a website you want to sell, it’s better to have unique content.

Some people just sell websites without any marketing having been done. They are just good writers, so they build a website of say 20 pages and then sell it on forums, saying that the website is new, there is no revenue from it, but it has good keywords and if the buyer is good at SEO or marketing then it can makes good money.

That’s a good strategy, if this is on a topic where keywords pay well, or if you can recommend affiliate offers then you can have some people interested. You could even combine it with the previous strategy : having someone writing content for your website. You then sell it for more.

Or you can test how the website is doing. You will track performance and visits to the site and will have stats to provide to buyers. Then decide how much you can sell the website ofr. I’ve seen some people saying the value should be 6 months of website income, some have said 10. I can’t really say how much you should sell, but check the midascode blog for cool tips about buying and selling websites or their buying and selling website services .

Article Writing and Selling

Well everything is the title, I talked about writing articles yourself or hiring someone. This “someone” could be you, and people could ask your services. Forums are a good starting point. You can introduce your services at a very low price to get some people coming. You could even actually offer a free article to the first person who answers your offer. Don’t forget to ask people to review your work (risky if you write crap).

Be sure to know if you can write on any topic or if you are an expert on one or more specific fields.

Turn Articles Into Videos

That’s a great solution. First because if you have an article written, then you can just make a short video with only text and a little music. Second possibility, you can film yourself with your webcam or another video recorder, with you just reading your article to your audience. This is really easy and fast, your videos can just be just one minute long or less this is not a problem.

The main advantage is you can put your backlink to your website too, so if people like the video they can visit your website for more information. But you may also have seen that some YouTube videos are at the top of Google SERPs. So again : good keywords should bring you targeted traffic. Why not put your product reviews into video ?

Another place to put your articles

So unique content is good, you have written or bought it and now you have decide where to put it : on your website or blog, or submitting to article directories. There is another place for good content, and this is Squidoo. I have used it a lot. You may know Squidoo is really appreciated by Google, and you may have noticed some squidoo lenses are in the first page of Google.

It happened to me for some keywords and of course you can monetize your Squidoo pages with some affiliate programs and build backlinks from there pointing to your website. Squidoo lenses are so easy, fun and powerful for your business. Really, if you don’t have used it yet, do it. You can just put one article, then an Amazon or eBay module, a guestbook and some YouTube videos (hey why not the one you created).

Well that’s it for now. These are some strategies to market or build a website with articles, either you choose to purchase content or build it yourself, you NEED content.

So I know many people don’t like article marketing, this is very time consuming, and I can’t really say I enjoy it a lot. Of course, when you track your visits and see people coming from your articles also bought some stuff from your website then, that’s nice to see your work paid. And like anything, when you know well and like a topic it’s easy to write about it. If I had an advice it would be to write as you speak, then you may edit your article a bit to make it more professional, but you could also have your own style (maybe more for blogging).

Sometimes I am not in front of my computer and I have an idea about an article I could write, and the words just flow in my head and I can say them, this is why recently I thought about buying a voice recorder (I still didn’t have). I also like pen and paper, it’s also a way to get away from my screen.

Well that’s it, you didn’t learn anything new, sorry. I’ll try to post another article just now about articles, I just had an idea.

Why is it interesting ? Well, you may have seen some graphics that you like, maybe for a website that you will build, or for a WordPress theme, but you would have to download them and then use PhotoShop or another image editing software to identify the very specific color code at a very specific place on the graphic you see.

Well, I know this is a bit confused, so if you don’t know about this soft, visit Instant Eyedropper website, the tutorial explains it all, with pictures. Click and hold the left button from the taskbar icon and drag the mouse on your screen to get any color code. Best of all this very light software is free.

You want to know how I had to use it ? No ? Hey I write what I want ! It may save you a precious time and keep your eyes healthy (I said I write what I want).

Today, I wanted to add some AdSense to a new website I just created. As many of you know, it is a good thing to blend your ads colors with your theme colors (background, links, text). If you coded your theme you may remember the colors you used for your theme. But if like me, you just downloaded the theme then you would have to explore the CSS file to know the exact background color code, the exact link color code, etc.

Some CSS files are confusing and you often see more than 3 color codes in the CSS code. After several trials, it seems I didn’t identify the color code for the background so, I open a new tab and use a very useful website : Google. I found Instant Eyedropper and in few seconds I manage to identify all the color codes I needed to create the perfect pallette and have my ads blend.

So that’s it people, I hope I helped someone, I surely helped myself.

So I suppose I chose the one with the most recent buzz, that seems to inspire many internet marketers, and I knew it was more targeted to internet activities. I ordered The 4 Hour Work Week from Amazon, actually La Semaine De 4 heures in French, by Timothy Ferris.

Now when I’ll receive it I will have to take the time to read it, then I’ll give you my opinion on it, and I may even write my review in English and French.

Blogging about other blogs. Well I know, this is not adding something really new, because you will go to the blog post and read it, I will not really say something about it that you can’t get from the original post. But anyway, blogging about other blogs allow you some networking and maybe one day when I’ll have something interesting published, I’d also get some backlinks.

To get back to the Blind Internet Entrepreneur Matt Watson, and he built a system for horse racing. Check the FP System website to learn more about it. No there is no affiliate link here, because I don’t see any affiliate signup there (otherwise I would of course put one, hmmm). It costs £97, yep that’s around $200 or 150 Euros. But this is not a clickbank product with 8 weeks money back guarantee. You get a 12 month money back guarantee, or one year, or 365 days.

So lesson of the day ? Blog about other blogs, other websites when you get something from them. If it brings you some information, motivation, inspiration, it may help others too. And you may even get thanked for sharing.

However this is not something I want, and this blog should live. The truth is I am busy, very busy, think “Work” and lot of it. And I know Iam too busy because I am not really organized. I end up with tons of tasks at the same time because I don’t stay focus on the work to do. And I don’t do tasks in the right order.

An example, I try an idea for one website and it shows profitable, I should stick with it and develop it to be even more profitable. But instead I could create on another website and try something else. Well, at least I know my flaws and I know I’m not alone in this case.

Here in my “Write Post” section of Wordpress, I can see 3 drafts, I think the topic I wanted to cover were already all over the web so I didn’t publish them. Sometimes I also all the words in my head to write a good article, but they come when I’m already making something else. I should grab a voice recorder, it saves time and you actually speak more naturally than you write.

But there is some hope, after all, I’m blogging now. I have to learn about time management or self improvement, and focus on my goals. I thought about reading books like Getting Things Done, or The 4 Hour Work Week (that has been translated in French !). Maybe I could plan more my work.

As regarding updating this blog, maybe I should write about every little things I do, and the ideas I get from these things could be useful for others.

 Well thanks for reading this useless post I’ll do better next time (I’ll try), and if you have any thoughts, advices, anything, feel free to leave a comment.

Yes, that’s like that. In short, from the invitations I received from the various blogs I’m subscribed to, you will have the opportunity to meet the big names, while other marketing seminars only let gurus meet between each others. This time there is a room for you.

Well, of course this 3 days seminar will just cost you… $3495. What a gift ! As other seminar sales letter will say, it could be the most profitable days of your life. $3495 for 3 days in Los Angeles, if you are in Europe like me, or anywhere except Los Angeles, you of course need to pay for your plane trip.

What I want to say ? They say : It’s for non-gurus, okay, but it’s still for successful people who have money to invest into just 3 days. Yeah it could be the most profitable days of our lives… until the next seminar, or the next launch of a big marketing strategy that is worth few hundreds or few thousands too.

So I know what some of you are thinking : I’m not taking action. That’s wrong, when you search well on the internet, you find everything, useful informations that can take your business to a next level, just apply what you learnt. Have you ever been to forums and read “don’t buy another ebook, you can learn everything here for free, just use the search function”.

I know I don’t update this blog often, but this is not the place where I’m making money, so please apologize if that’s not where you can find the most valuable informations, I’m not a guru. But I also think great things have already been written by others.

Real non-gurus can tell you this, and they are successful. And if they are successful they don’t really need another seminar. I say real non-gurus because lots of gurus define themselves as non-gurus, you know, they’re just your friends, people like you, except they just want few thousands. How to make 6 figures ? If you make a $1000 profit from 100 people in your seminar, you earned $100,000 (Okay that’s a bit simplistic).

My point is, if you have money, if you are sure this is worth it, if you are sure you can’t find something valuable on the internet for free that can bring you traffic and sales then just book your place to a seminar.

If like me, you know the website called “Google“, a kind of simple page, you enter a word and hit search, it finds something related, then you may be able to find the way to the “most profitable days of your lives”. Yes, it involves work, it always does, for any path you are choosing.

I mentioned forums, the one I visit : DigitalPoint, WickedFire. Then when you have found something you can and WANT to do, have a plan, stick to it, and do things. I’ll try to give examples of a plan in my next article.

You may don’t understand the figurre about the exchange rate, let’s make it a bit easier : currently, 1 euro = $1.51. So if you are a US citizen and wanted to travel to Europe and needs euros, you would have to buy them with your dollars. You would need $1.51 for 1 euro, or $151 for 100 euros.

In the other direction, if I want to go to the USA and need to buy dollar, the rate is $1 = 0.66 euro.

Back in 2002 when the euro was just born the equation was 1 euro = $1. So we wouldn’t really care about conversion. Today things are very different.

There is a positive point of view, if I want to buy something from USA, being a European, I would pay less than the actual cost. For example, if you need a hosting plan for your websites and choose the Swamp plan at HostGator, you would pay $12.95 a month. In euro with the 0.66 rate, you would just pay 8.54 euro a month.

If you bought that plan in 2002 (I don’t know if it existed at that time but, this is for the example), it would be 12.95 euro, so about 3.40 euro more per month.

Okay you understand now the currency rate changes influence our purchase, how much or how less we spend, but it also influence what we earn.

I earned some nice commissions and had more than $3000 (about 2000 euros) on my PayPal account. Since most of the affiliate networks I am working with are paying in USD, I have an USD bank account, here in France. So I can put all my USD commissions on this account, and then wait that the exchange rate to become better.

Remember $1 is currently 0.66 euro, let’s say suddenly  the rate jumps to 0.80 (yeah that would be very nice), I would have these $3000 = 2400 euros. I would have “earned” 400 euros without doing anything, just waiting. An if we were in 2002, then $3000 would already be 3000 euros !

Well that could happen if PayPal allowed me to transfer USD to France. You see, for PayPal, if you live in Europe, you can only receive euros. If I choose to transfer the USD, the conversion to euro is automatic, so I can only receive the funds at the current rate in my local currency.

Hopefully, some other networks pay by check or bank wire, and that’s okay for them if I provide them the right account number.

I could also wait that the exchange rate becomes higher and keep the funds on my PayPal account. Well, how long would I have to wait ? Hey I need to live too !

What’s a bit ironic is that you can open multiple balance at PayPal to receive payments in the currency you want. But in the end, when you want to transfer your funds to your bank account, you are forced to have it in your local currency.

This is not really cool from PayPal, if they send you funds coming from USA, UK, Japan, well any currency, they have these funds on their account somewhere, in the right currency, they would just have to process the transfer as they usually do, since they ask for your bank account informations.

Also, I mailed themseveral times to explain and ask for the situation, they just don’t want and say they can’t do it. What’s wrong is they automatically do the conversion, if you could choose to have no conversion made at the time of the transfer from your PayPal account that would be cool.