Internet Marketing Trip

Today, I’m going to talk about an internet marketing guru. No don’t go, wait ! A real guru, yeah, a king with a crown on his head and all.

Name : Dean Hunt

If you don’t know him, then I could call you “sucker”, but I didn’t in July too. At this time I read a thread at DigitalPoint forums entitled “Buzz Marketing Case Study Part 1″. It hooked me, Dean then added a part 2 and 3, that I’ll talk about later.

For those who wonder what is buzz marketing, I think he defines it better than me, in an interview he gave to Carl Ocab. What ? You don’t know Carl Ocab ? Sorry but this time : Sucker !

“Buzz Marketing is the art and science of standing out from the crowd, being talked about and being remembered. Or in other words… it is the ability to create a buzz about a service or product.”

Why is it so interesting ? Traffic for FREE, with only words for weapons, and those can make a killing (marketing speaking of course). Maybe you already read somewhere that writing something controversial attracts people attention. It suggests interest but also creates people opinion. That’s what buzz marketing is about : make people talk about you or your company.

Okay, now where’s the free stuff ?

Dean uses Social Bookmarking websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious to generate traffic. From his experiences (the buzz marketing 101, 202, 303), he made a Case Study that you can download for free : Web Traffic Orgasm. As you can see there is a book coming soon. If the Case Study gives you some clues, the book will bring you secrets.

Want more ?

Dean interviewed 14 of the top 30 StumbleUpon users. Yes, you can dowload that for free too. I guess you never thought about getting your buzz marketing Christmas gift in advance, so go thank Dean for his efforts, have a good read and start creating some buzz.

This is being discussed a little everywhere on the blogosphere, so I thought it was my turn. GoogleLady is actually running a case study to make money online in three months, with Amazon affiliate program. Everyone can follow her footprints or just read for inspiration.

I actually am thinking to reproduce her efforts since I just re-apply to Amazon associates, but also because I just started a new blog where I add content every day, but haven’t yet started any promotion, except some links from Yahoo! Answers.

Here is where the case study started : Make to Money Online In 3 Month . She now is in her 5th week and already achieved what we can call a success : 1 month later, almost $1500 for November, and the wesbite is still not ranked well in search engines.

What’s interesting in this case study is that not only she almost teaches people for free how to make money online, but do it with a brand new website. New domain, no traffic and no backlinks at the start of the case study, only $100 to invest.

So if affiliate marketing is something you want to start, with a low budget, then I recommend you visit her blog, and start to read. She gives you tips and resources all the way.

Congrats, Lady, I wish you all the best for this future website. You could even stop your case study, you proved how to make money in one month.

My prediction for the end of December ? It will be over $2,000, and maybe reach the $3,000. Christmas is coming, and there will be lots of sale everywhere, her new website being around coupons, she will profit from returning traffic and new one with word of mouth. Plus she can add more merchants to promote, so it’s more choice for visitors.

Today, still on the way to improve a new website (actually, powered by WordPress) and add content to it, I applied to few more merchants affiliate programs, at LinkShare.com. LinkShare is quite a big network network, with some great offers from merchants like Apple, Toshiba, Toys’R'Us, FootLocker and many more.

When you apply you are :

Beign automatically rejected is something I can understand, only if the merchant don’t want anymore affiliates, but I think the affiliate program shouldn’t be first available for application. It’s a waste of time for affiliates to look at conditions if they don’t need any more affiliates.

But there are other reasons that can make your application denied. So as I said at the beginning of this post, I applied to few merchants, some approved me instantly, and others approved me after a few hours. Some also reviewed me and rejected me, here are the reasons.

Actually, these are the possible reasons, they won’t tell you the exact one, you will have to find out yourself.
* inability to access web site – Wrong, I use HostGator as a web hosting, and they have a 99.9% uptime, I doubt they get the 0.1% downtime. I worked on the website today and everything was fine.
* web site not yet live – Wrong, site is live, perectly running, new content.
* traffic levels too low – Of course, the website is brand new.
* inappropriate material on site – Do they talk about pornography, racism, illegal stuff ? Nothing like this on my website.
* content not relevant to merchant – Content is exactly relevant to merchant, their offer IS the topic.
* merchant not adding any new affiliates at this point – already mentioned, I can understand that although the application shouldn’t be available)

So, the only thing I was rejected is because the website is brand new and traffic is not high enough. But, if all merchants acted like this, then I would never have something to offer ! Or I would just have to build all the traffic, but no link to any offer, no money.

I’d like to have any opinion about that matter, of course, I could re-apply when the website gets more traffic. But don’t you think that as long as a website is relevant to the merchants offer, then it should be approved.

If I only have 1 visitor a day, but this one visitor buys something, it is one sale a day for me, but for the merchant too. If my content is as good as a website getting loads of traffic, then it should convert the same, shouldn’t it ?

Yesterday, I posted here about article marketing. The articles you write have to be published of course, so you have to submit them to article directories. I only use 5 of them (there are hundreds).

You can submit one article to each of them, but search engines penalize duplicate content. That means they won’t index the page where they find the same content. That’s why I only submit to this short list :

Ezine Articles
Go Articles
Content Desk
Article Alley
Article Dashboard

Browse these websites and you’ll see how are written articles. Nothing very difficult, be sure to include a link to your website in the resource box. I know Ezine Articles ask articles have to be 250 words. This is quite short, but if you could do more that’s great. 500 is enough.

I’d also recommend that the articles you submit to article directories are different from the ones on your website

I don’t know if it’s a generality, but I have the feeling that when you do the promotion work for a merchant, trying your best t increase their sales, you should get some consideration.

Some merchants know that from a long time, and some seem to don’t care about you and. You see, I currently have a nice money-maker page that has just generated more than $1,000 in a week. This is a great achievement and I am very happy with that. The best part is I didn’t use any advertising method, so it’s pure profit, no cost.

But I’m quite frustrated with the lack of communication from the merchant. I don’t mean I want to receive congratulations, I know some are earning much more in a day. So here is the story.

The page I am talking about promotes only one product, and sometimes I receive some potential customers few questions. I always do my best to keep them happy and it seems one has been very happy with the product and, sent me an email asking to buy 50 items.

Yes, 50 ! I receive a $20 commission on the product so it could be a $1,000 more in my pocket. So what’s wrong you ask ? The  customer wants a discount for such a high order and I understand that, this is perfectly normal.

Above all, it’s a win-win-win situation, for the customer who gets a discount, for the seller who makes a huge sale and for me who get the commission. Also, this big order could be renewed by the customer, so the merchant has everything to gain.

Of course, I’m an affiliate, I don’t set prices, so I emailed the merchant to know if they could make a special deal just this time. I submitted this request through the affiliate network members area 2 days ago : no answer. So I did it again today, directly from the merchant sales page, and I’m still waiting.

You see, I can understand they need some time to see how big the discount they could make, and build a special link or something. But, I am waiting an answer, and the customer too. They could just send a message, saying they well received my request and will contact me soon. They didn’t.

To merchants : if you read this, and if you know sometimes you don’t give so much important to your affiliates, please check your stats and learn how much you could be losing without affiliates. Of course, you are running a serious business, and so are lot of affiliates.

I can’t understand why some people want so much a bad reputation…

A lot of people write articles to market their websites and get sales from the products they’re promoting. Having articles published on multiple articles directories give you free backlinks. Free SEO, Free advertising, free exposure.

Your articles can be reprinted in full by others. “In full” means with your links to your website. You not only get backlinks from free content websites, but also from others website, that are supposed to be in your niche, related to your website topic.

Writing is one of the most time consuming job for any webmaster/internet marketer. It’s also called content creation.

Of course if you are an AdWords guru, who only pays 1 cent to generate $1,000 a day, you don’t have to spend time to write articles (AdWords gurus don’t read this anyway). But article marketing is proven to be an effective way of driving traffic for free. And traffic = sales.

Well If you know really well your product, why only write only one article about it ? Why don’t you write 3 articles for it ? Go in details, talk about one specific benefit of the use of the product and tell the world how wonderful, useful, fast, easy this is. Tell why, tell your experience. Then do the same with another benefit.

It’s an important copywriting rule : write about benefits not about features. Features are characteristics of the product. Benefits are the advantage it brings to the customer. Focus on the customer, put yourself in their shoes. Now, how do you feel (shoes are too small) ? What do you expect ?

You can also create an article about how you get this or that result. (“How to” articles work good).
Why you shouldn’t use the product this or that way ? Do’s and Don’t.
Who this product will not be useful to ? Know the target.
What is the problem your product is solving ? You can talk only about the problem first without mentioning the product name. Then do the recommendation and say you solved it with it.

In the resource box you are able to put your website url. Well, if you are allowed multiple links, put the product page url + your website url, using the right keywords as anchor text. Remember that if people are reading your article to then end, you may convinced them and get their interest.

So if you don’t want your readers to search for the product page once on your website, put the link to the product page on your website, in your resource box. Plus, this is a cool SEO trick, you get a deep link. (Check if the article directory is allowing this).

It’s easy to understand that if you have many products to promote, you can multiply the number of articles. And so, the number of backlinks.

I’ll tell you more in the next post about how to write good articles.

My previous post pointed you to the article on SelfMadeMinds article about minisites and how to make money online from them. If you read it, you noticed there was a link to http://www.minisites.co.uk.

Well I just put the link here if you zapped it, this site is just a quick definition and real minisite example.

I’ll have some minisites ready soon that I’ll show you here.

Okay, so I studied a lot, read a lot, and what I knew is still true : you have to work hard. Working hard is creating content for me, and for you too I guess. This is the hard part. From the DigitalPoint forums, I came to a website : Self Made Minds. Two guys are behind this website, they are sharing their experience and telling how they’re doing and also reporting their earnings (this is the fun part).

I really recommend you read their blog, it’s cool and simple explained and also full of ideas.

They of course built several websites, one of them is Coolest Gadgets, and it earns more than 10,000 a month, mainly about adsense. Again AdSense is for CONTENT websites. But, I also read a post on their site telling about “minisites” making maximum money, and showing us a minisite example.

Here is the post : Mini Sites don’t always make mini money.  All you need is a good idea, work on it, buy a domain and host your files, make some SEO.

Your goal first would be to make $1 a day for this one website. Then, how many websites can you create ? What if all your websites earn now $2 a day… Okay you understand. And don’t forget that with time you may have more ideas to add to each of your minisites.

Now, you have to do some brainstorming. I took a pen and paper and wrote down every topic I was sure I can write about. I have more than 50, and I’m sure you can easily do it too, even more. Then start writing. This is not so hard to write content for these websites, this could be the same process if you had to write articles and submit them to articles directories, to increase your backlinks for your main websites.

If you need ideas, visit forums, blogs, read articles about a topic and rewrite everything you think useful with your own words. You may also want to add links. What are the best websites for these topics ? Just use Google and find what are the top sites.

Even if building new minisites will not consume so much time, you also have to keep working on your main websites. So build your network of mini websites and make them profitable, but keep adding content to your bigger money makers.

When you want to blog for money, you have to be relevant to your topic and keep adding content as often as possible. If you want your visitors to come back, you have to give them something new to read, otherwise they may think you stopped your blog, or even you just don’t take your blog as seriously as they would like to.

You will make money from your visitors. You know the more content you have, the better. Search engines will love you, but you would also want that your visitors love you too. So keep reading, researching and learning from others, but then share, get to work.

You should create a work routine. If you have multiple sites/blogs, you know you have to update them all. Are you ready to do this ? Are you organized enough ? So be sure the topics you chose really interest yourself. Think about the time you will spend each day for each of your tasks. For Example :

1. Researching something to write about : 30 minutes
2. Writing* : 30 minutes.

Then you know that if you have 5 websites to update, it will take you 5 hours. Or multiply your efforts on the same website (FOCUS !). Then do something else (a bit of seo ? forums posting ? commenting on other blogs ?).

Make a step by step plan you would follow each day. (step 1, step 2, step 3…)

What about your old posts ? Is there something you can add ? Maybe something you wrote 2 month agos is not true today, or changed.

This applied to any writing job. If you’re into article marketing, then you may sometimes ask yourself what to write.

*yeah, rewriting actually…

Hi everyone, and welcome to IMTRIP.com.

This is a brand new blog about internet marketing (yeah, another one). Internet marketing is my job, actually it involves more than one job, but I love that.

I’ve been officially into internet marketing since september now, but I’ve learnt about it for some years and already have some websites running (hey I needed to know what works before launching my home business).

I could define internet marketing as a way to make money online at home, but to make money, it requires some preparation, optimization, writing, testing, trials (and errors) and this blog is just all about that. I’ll put there my thoughts, ideas and experiences during my internet marketing trip and maybe you’ll find something useful here.

I will certainly make mistakes (not only grammar or spelling ones), but I suppose I will learn from them, so would you like to learn with me ?