Friday, October 27, 2006

Article Submitters and General Article Tips

Writing articles has been a popular trend lately. Some people hate it, while others love it. There are a few downsides to watch out for, but writing articles might be very beneficial to you if you give it a try.

The idea behind submitting your articles for others to post is for a few reasons. First, if the article is written well and provides useful information, it will make you appear to be an expert in your field. If you have enough articles on the same topic, your name will start to be associated with your niche more. This not only makes people listen to you more, but you're more likely to become a trusted expert and have people listening to you (even when you're selling them your own products or services).

The other reason behind this is for free incoming traffic. When you submit your article, you are usually allowed to place your name, e-mail, and often a link to your website. Some individuals who see your link will click on it for more information and be brought to your website. When you submit your article to even just a few article directories, you have the possibility of dozens to even hundreds of other sites, ezines, and so forth posting your article as well. This creates even more free traffic, and it can even help with the search engine optimization of your site (increases your chances of getting indexed in the search engines).

One thing to be careful here is that if you post your own article on your own site, be sure to make it different than the articles that you distribute freely. Google and other search engines can penalize you for duplicate content, which can hurt your search engine rankings. Since some of the sites that you are submitting it to might be viewed as more important (and visited by the google bot more often), they'll sometimes get the "credit" of having it first, which will make it appear to the search engines that you took your own article from them! If you create a similar but different article for your own site, the chances of this happening are less likely.

Another thing to keep in mind is that some article directories allow any site to take your article freely. If your article ends up on the wrong site that Google or other search engines don't like (perhaps they are banned), some SEO experts say that your site can be penalized for having the same content, or for having that site linked to you. On top of that, some article directories will even edit your article to the point of adding their own links within your article, or even deleting the links that you already had in it! This even ignores the chances that individual sites will do this to you as well. The end result is that you have to be careful of who you submit your articles to.

Some SEO experts feel that giving out articles is ridiculous, as you can build up your own content if you kept them all to yourself. I agree with that to a point, and I feel that some sites are better off keeping all the content to themselves. However, if the site isn't doing well traffic wise with other methods, I think it might be much more helpful to actually try articles. It all depends on your niche and your plan of action of how you're trying to get free visitors to your site.

In the end, it's up to you to figure out which route you want to go. Please feel free to post any relevant comments here as well!

If you want a free article submitter, or if you want to join our weekly newsletter with free downloads for useful tools, simply join up using the form located on the right navigation bar. We will be offering weekly downloads and will include an archive of all the downloads soon.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Adwords and Adsense Not Working For You?

Having troubles with Adwords or Adsense? Or still thinking about whether either of these are right for you? This is the article for you to read! Both of these services are great for some, but they can be disasters for others.

Let's start with Adwords. If you don't know already, Google Adwords is basically a pay-per-click system that Google has set up. Sites pay to have their small ads shown either on the Google search or on sites that elect to have Adsense on them (not only does Google get paid per click, but they pass some of that onto sites that allow them to put their ads there too). It can be a lifesaver for some sites, but a huge disaster for others. Somes sites who are unable to get ranked high in the search engines (either due to their own SEO downfalls or a field that's too competitive) are able to create ads that can appear in the first page of results either on the top or the right-hand side of the results page. Interested individuals can then click on their ad and proceed to see their website or sales page. Clicks can cost anywhere from 1 penny to $50 per click (yes, you heard me right, some competitive keywords go for $10 to $50 a click).

Adwords is a little more complicated than some might think, but the "basic" idea is that the more competitive a keyword is, the more money you have to pay per click. This isn't totally true, as the amount you have to pay is also determined by how how popular and relevant your site is to the keyword (they check both your site and see how many visitors click on your ad on given search terms, how long they stay on your site, etc.). The more relevant and more click throughs your site gets, the cheaper your pay-per-clicks are.

Even so, you can go through a lot of money before you find your "sweet zone," which might not even end up being that profitable at all. There are a few ways around this, though.

Although having some money to play around with to find out what ads appear more popular (thus resulting in higher click throughs and lower pay-per-click costs) is the best way for some sites, there are even better ways for those on a much smaller budget. You can look for less common keywords where you'll get higher placement for a lot less money. You can do this by either being more specific or by finding keywords that are less popular but still somewhat related to what you are selling.

Let me give you a few examples. Let's say that you are selling TV's. Instead of buying expensive keywords like "electronics," "televisions," or even "LCD tv," you could bid on keywords like "Sony LCD VS1000" or whatever other product you are selling. If that wasn't specific enough, you could even search for less popular key terms that are related like "bad pixels in LCD tvs" or "plasma tv vs lcd tv" or even "LCD tv's vs plasma tv's" and so forth. Now I picked a fairly broad topic (tv's), so the results here might even be a bit more inflated than normal, but the same concept can work in any category to bring down the costs a ton. Even in golfing, for instance, if you were selling golf clubs, you could ad keywords like "iron golf clubs" or "'some brand name' golf clubs."

Another technique is to set a low bid amount (say maybe 5 to 10 cents per click) but use hundreds of keywords. There are tons of tools out there to look up relevant keywords. Both Yahoo Overture and Google Adwords offer these tools as well, but any internet search will present even more options for you free of charge. This way, even if your ad shows up in spot 139 on "tv," it might appear in the #1 spot for less used keywords and still result in some great traffic coming your way.

Another tip, which I'd be very careful with (if used wrong, it could hurt), is to be straight forward in your ads. If you are selling something for $200 and people click on your ad thinking that it might be free, you could be in for some very bad results (and wasted money). If you are giving away something free (and if you aren't, do it!), make sure that you say that. If you are just trying to sell something, then you can perhaps put a price on your ad. Even though this could result in less clicks, the people that do click on it will most likely be aware that it's not for free and that they will have to pay something, so you're not wasting your money on irrelevant clicks.

You do have to be careful with this depending on the keyword, as you don't want to be so blunt that you scare away potential buyers as well. This is more relevant to information products or services than actual consumer products, as everyone knows that you have to pay money for an LCD tv. They don't all know that your great website tools are $200 and not free.

Your sales page is also a huge deal with this type of marketing as well, as you really want to catch the attention of your visitors before you lose them. Let them immediately see why your site is the best for what you are selling, or try to offer them a freebie if they sign up for your mailing list (to catch them later). There are tons of techniques on how to make a sales page better, but I won't spend too much time on this (perhaps I'll do another review of good techniques for this later).

Another thing that makes a huge difference with Adwords is what type of business you are promoting. If you are trying to promote a vet clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota, Adwords could be a great way to go (although it probably wouldn't be terribly hard to get ranked in the search engines with some good keywords here if you got some SEO done on your website). Not only could you have the settings to only display your ad to people within a certain distance of your clinic, but you could also ad more unique search terms like "vet clinics st. paul MI," which would almost certainly place your ad in the #1 or #2 spot.

Now if your business is an internet based one (like website marketing), you have a much harder situation and should definitely pay close attention to the tips in this article.

With that said, just be careful with Adwords and make sure that you are using it in a smart way. Make sure that your sales page is a good one and that customers who click on your link are clearly interested in what you have to offer for the price. And make sure that your ad and offer stand out more than your competitors (with still being realistic).

Now that we got over Adwords, it is easier to talk about Adsense, which is basically the opposite. Adsense is a service by Google that allows you to get paid when you have a block of ads on your site from Google each time someone clicks on it (be careful that you don't click on it yourself or use other similar techniques, as you can lose all of your money and be banned). This can be great for some sites, yet horrible for others.

If you already have a ton of traffic and relevant content, it might not be a bad idea to give it a try. For instance, a popular web forum that isn't making much money might start making a lot more by implementing Adsense. When relevant topics are brought up, some relevant ads might be displayed as well. Depending on the ad, you could get anything from a penny to several bucks (although think nickels and dimes for most of them). This sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Not necessarily...

First, if you don't have much traffic, you're pretty much screwed here. Then if you also have very little to no content, people probably aren't going to want to even click on your ads as they'll simply appear to be spam. Lastly, Google ads in the wrong places or even anywhere on some sites might appear like a desperate attempt to make some money, which could turn away potential customers. I actually don't use Adsense that much at all (I have a few spots for it on one site of mine), as I don't want to trash up the site with it ... and I make a lot more money with other techniques.

Unless you are doing this extremely well on a very well established website, don't expect to take in more than a few dollars a month (if that). Even more so, don't buy any of those "pre-done" websites filled with Adsense that claim to bring you thousands of dollars. Not only will you probably never get ranked in the top search engines (the only way for people to see those pages realistically), but you'll never make much more than a few cents with them. Think about it, if it was that easy to get clicks, why would advertisers waste so much money on that? And why would packages like this sell for only a few dollars? I've seen some packages ranging from $1 to $100 that sell hundreds to thousands of these pre-filled Adsense pages for you. Don't spend a dime on them as they are all crap. No one will ever see them, and no one will ever click on them.

So there you have it, both Adwords and Adsense can work for some sites, but don't think that they will instantly make you thousands of dollars overnight from scratch. You do have to put some time into your investments.

My original ebook goes into detail about Adwords as well, and my new ebook "The Secret to Making Money Online" has a small section that can help the new technique that I discovered as well. Check them out at www.iwantpennies.com.

Feel free to post about relevant experiences with either of these.

Friday, October 20, 2006

About Paying For MLM E-mail Leads

One of the biggest schemes out there are websites that sell e-mail leads (oftem MLM ones, which are ones seeking to start their own at home business opportunity). There are some bad ones and then there are some really bad ones. My advice to you is to stay away from them all, as they really won't get you anywhere. But read on to hear my reasons why and how some are even worse than others.

MLM e-mail leads are basically huge lists of e-mails, phone numbers, names, etc. of people that are sold by the thousands by some companies that specialize in such lists. Some of these companies set up deals with other webmasters to get new prospectives to sign up from their websites, whereas others actually give new prospectives an incentive to sign up (either money or free offers). Even worse, some of these sites actually pay other sites to re-use their own mailing lists. I'm going to tell you why they're all bad.

When sites pay other sites to re-use their mailing lists only to resell them, that means that the individuals on that list not only have probably been contacted by dozens of other companies, but that they may have even signed up several months to several years ago. Even if the lists aren't re-used, another common method of these companies is to give new prospectives an incentive to sign up (such as "if you sign up for 20 offers, you'll get $1"). This means that they'll sign up for anything even if they have no interest in what you are selling, which means that their e-mails are basically worthless.

Some of the more respectable sites that sell MLM leads only to two or three individuals once, and most of the leads from the more respectable sites are often a lot fresher (the sign-ups probably happened several hours to 30 or 60 days ago). These are 100 times better than the ones described above, yet I still am not recommending that you get them. Why? It's simple...

Even if you find a service that offers decently priced leads to only a select few others (or even exclusively to you), these leads did not ask you directly to contact them. Not only is that pushing you closer to being a spammer, but you're probably going to have a very low response rate as well. How many spam e-mails do you get a day? How many of those do you read? Probably few if any (and I hopefully won't have to open those viagra spam e-mails in 20 years from now!). Even if they selected to receive more information in general, they probably weren't expecting it from you.

Take me for example, I run a few different mailing lists, and every single one is double opt-in. That means that not only do you have to request the information initially, but that you also have to click on a confirmation link in a confirmation e-mail that you'll receive. This assures me that you are the original person who requested the information, you're not some computer bot program, and that you actually do receive e-mails and opened at least one of my e-mails. Even with this double opt-in method, which is vastly superior to single opt-in methods (even though you might lose half of the people who sign up, simply because they really aren't interested enough in your stuff to click your confirmation link and just wanted to see if they could maybe get the freebies without confirming), you still won't get a very high percent of sales from it or even people reading it. Of the main two lists that I run (this one on making money online and another one that's related to marriages), both have made me money, but it's not uncommon for only a third to half of the people to even read the e-mail. Then it's not that uncommon to only get a small percent of those even clicking on anything in it.

And this might seem even more astonishing for the mailing list on marriages, as it doesn't sell a thing itself and offers tips and advice that they requested -- often even giving away things for free (much like my free downloads on my making money online newsletter). But don't worry -- that's part of it.

Okay, so back to my point. If the percents aren't even astounding for these methods when people double opt-in to get the exact same newsletter that they requested, then you don't want to even think what the results might be for e-mails sent to people that haven't requested you to do so.

I had a friend who bought over 1 million e-mail leads for a few hundred dollars. The deal sounded great to him -- if he just got a few people out of 1 million to sign up, he'd make his money back plus some. Guess what? Of 1 million e-mail leads, only around 200 of them even read it. Of that, only a select few even clicked on a link to check out his site. And guess what? Not a single one resulted in a sale or even a free sign up to his newsletter.

Leads can range in price from one penny each to several dollars each, but my advice is to keep your money and try to offer people incentives to sign up for your own newsletter or mailing list directly, as even if it takes longer, you'll get much better results in the long run (these things take time). This is especially true if you run a niche specific mailing list (such as arts and crafts, marriages, sports, etc.), where it's virtually impossible to find many good leads other than from your own site or similar sites willing to partner with you.

If my advice isn't enough to keep you away, you might want to check out several of the top autoresponders out there, because they won't even accept 3rd party lists. They won't even allow you to send confirmation e-mails to them. This is because they result in very high spam complaints, which the respectable autoresponders don't want to deal with because they can get everyone in trouble and risk future e-mails from you to anyone being blocked (as in no more e-mails sent to any Yahoo, AOL, Google, Charter, etc. account). There is a reason why they don't allow them. Any autoresponder that does probably has horrible deliverability rates themselves and would therefore be a huge ripoff.

Don't get me wrong, you do want to build up your own list of leads so that you can contact them again in the future when new products or new offers come about (or to release your newsletters to). However, you want to do this the smart way by giving them an incentive to sign up directly from your own site (perhaps a free ebook, or several lessons or tips sent to their e-mail, etc.). It might not be as exciting initially as sending out 1 million e-mail leads overnight, but you'll definitely get more responses and make a ton more money in the future (and you won't get the spam complaints or the empty wallet from paying for those leads).

To check out our relevant article on autoresponders, where we talk a bit about why they are important, why you need one, and which ones are the best, click here.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The Big Secret to Making Money Online

My new ebook, The Big Secret To Making Money Online, has recently been released. Prior to this release, I allowed several individuals to use the advice in this guide to offer me their opinions of it. Everyone was amazed at how straightforward and easy it is to make money online.

Other guides talk about using Adsense, Adwords, or affiliate programs to make fortunes. That's simply not really true any more. Although it is possible for some sites to make money with these, you really have to have well established websites and fairly large budgets to really get anywhere. Adsense is only good on sites with a ton of traffic, and even then, why should you be directing your visitors to your competitor's websites? Websites made just for Adsense are jokes, as who wants to go to a site JUST to see Adsense links - they'll leave in a second. And if you try getting those pages ranked in search engines, you probably know by now that it's nearly impossible.

As for Adwords, it's a great way for some sites to make money, but it's not like you can be an affiliate of anything and make money off of it. If it really was that easy, then why wouldn't the original website owner or product owner do Adwords just himself? They would theoretically make more, as they wouldn't have to pay you commission. The reason they don't do it is because they'll pay too much in advertising costs for it to be profitable. That's why they get others to do it for them by offering 50% commission (more or less). It entices you to advertise their product even without a website. They end up getting free traffic and a few extra sales, whereas you end up getting only a cut of the profits and have all of your advertising costs. Most people find that they actually end up losing more money than they make!

Even using Clickbank and other sites where you can easily sign up to be an affiliate aren't always that profitable. They key here is getting traffic to your site to advertise your offer(s). Don't get me wrong, as some larger sites can make a lot of money with such techniques, but I know that the majority of people that come to me don't have a huge site or a huge budget.

That's why I'm selling my new ebook. It creates zero competition for me, but it's a great way for you to make instant cash and for me to profit a little on the side as well. I use this technique to make thousands, and I know that it works. However, I'm tapping only 1/1,000,000,000,000 of what I potentially could, which is why no one will ever be in competition. It would be impossible for anyone (even an entire huge company) to tap much at all. You don't need to. Even tapping what I do makes me thousands upon thousands of dollars.

You won't be a millionnaire overnight, but you will learn how to start making a great second income and potentially turn that into your primary income once you follow my guide and learn the strings. It's so easy!

I'll show you how you don't have to spend a dime to make hundreds of dollars. In fact, even if you do end up using a budget to try to increase your profits even more, you'll be spending a few bucks for every hundred or so dollars that you take in.

I can't explain too much more, as this is really a great technique that very few people know about. No other guide that I know of talks about this.

I'm selling a handful of copies to the public (as long as they promise NOT to tell anyone the secret) at www.iwantpennies.com, so grab yours today.

As always, I stand by my products 100%. If you aren't completely satisfied, just ask for a refund and I'll be more than happy to provide you with one. Unlike other sites and guides, I'm more than happy to personally respond to any of my visitors in a prompt manner. Feel free to drop me an e-mail at info@iwantpennies.com to tell me a bit about yourself and I'd be more than happy to see how I can help you.