New 1and1 Hosting Promo

1and1 Hosting has a new promo going on for 25% off. 1and1 is one of my favorite hosts, especially for beginners because not only are they well established, but they also have perhaps the cheapest prices for the value that they offer. They should have just about everything you'd ever need, and I've used them as one of my hosts for quite some time. I've never found a cheaper web host that offers as much, especially multiple domain name hosting, for so cheap.

So I just thought I'd do a quick post to mention that this deal is currently going on. So instead of getting an excellent package at $5/month with free domain names, you can now get it for even less with this 25% off deal. Check them out!

The Age of Keyword Stuffing is Over -- Welcome LSI

I've been working on writing a new guide that explains a few ranking tricks (especially on Google). Since it deals a little with LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing, I thought I'd do a brief post here about it since it's been gaining in popularity lately.

LSI essentially means that the days of keyword stuffing are over. SEO experts in the past used to think that a certain percentage of a particular keyword was optimal if you wanted to get ranked for it. For instance, they might say that you'd need to use a particular phrase 5% of the time throughout your page. Sometimes it's very hard to do this without it appearing to be unnatural, which it is. Hardly anyone in real writing repeats the same phrases over and over again.

Real sites with real content appear more natural, and Google wants these to rank higher. As a result, they try to look at how often related keywords appear throughout the page too. For instance, the keyword "Christmas" might be associated with Santa, Christmas trees, Christmas Eve, Santa Claus, presents, etc. Or "World War II" might be associated with WWII, WW2, World War 2, Nazis, Hitler, Axis, Allies, Normandy Invasion, etc.

So instead of using the term "World War II" over and over again, you want to use it less but substitute in other terms for it and use other related keywords throughout your webpages or articles.

There are a variety of cool tools to help you with this. One such tool is this LSI keyword lookup tool -- it will offer you other terms that are found to be related to the terms you look up.

You can also go to Google and do any search, but add the ~ symbol before your search and you'll notice that Google will put related keywords in bold AND you'll get some slightly different results.

So to sum it up, pretty soon keyword stuffing will be a BIG no no (it already is, but even more so now). I've seen a few neat tools come out to help with LSI, but you should also keep in mind that it applies to more than just keywords on your page. It also applies to anchor text being used that's linking to your site and so forth. I have a much more thorough guide in the works that exploits some of these tricks, but more on that later.

But to put things in simple terms, the more natural you write, the better in the long run ... although keeping a little LSI in mind certainly might help.

Offline Advertising in Online World

Many people seem to forget that you can advertise your website(s)/niche(s) outside of the internet too. Newspaper classifieds are one of the easiest ways to do this, and it can work for a variety of niches. On top of that, they're often very cheap (free to $50 for most decent size papers).

To emphasize this strategy a bit more, I will be implementing a few strategies in a live example this week to show how powerful it can be. I'll not only provide you free tips on how to grab attention, draw in customers, and make sales, but I'll also provide you with my exact results.

Instead of lecturing about how the offline world is often overlooked by online businesses (and ironically, offline businesses usually overlook online marketing), I decided to do a live example with a budget of not more than $50 to $60 -- something most people should be able to afford.

Stay tuned! And sorry for the lack of updates -- I just celebrated my daughter's 3rd birthday, so I'll get back to the marketing tips and updates over the next few days.

Adsense, prepare to die!

Most people who know me know that I'm not a huge fan of Adsense. Why give your traffic to your competitors for pennies when they can profit from them? I've always loved affiliate marketing far more than Adsense, but there will be some interesting changes in the coming months that may very well all but kill Adsense how we see it today.

Google is currently testing a beta version of their CPA system, or cost-per-action. This can be anything from cost-per-sale to per-lead or a wide range of other things (like page views, other actions, etc.). In the past, some Adwords advertisers have been very hesitant with content bids (bidding to have your ad show up on other websites -- not on the Google search, which is known as search bids) due to things like click fraud, low conversions and so forth.

Personally, I rarely use content bids, and when I do, I never pay more than a penny for it -- it just isn't worth it. Google's new CPA may change all of that. You can't sign up for it yet, but I'm guessing that in the coming months you just might be able to.

Advertising through CPA or having other CPA ads on your site will almost certainly be more profitable for everyone (except those using click fraud and the like).

Unlike what others say, this certainly WON'T be the death of normal affiliate marketing, as other affiliate programs are still the best way to get specific affiliates, post links, etc. Google's CPA will most likely just be an easy way for anyone to sign up for CPA and immediately get ads displayed.

This still might not be the best idea if you want to specifically promote only certain products, as you don't want your competitors to advertise on your site still. However, for basic content pages, I have a feeling that this might be an end to the normal use of Adsense as we know it today.

I've been preaching affiliate marketing over Adsense for a long time, but I think that this will really prove my point once it comes out and we start hearing testimonies back. Remember I said this months from now.

Be realistic and you will make money and get great products

One common trait I see in people failing online (and spending way more than they should) is with having too high of expectations -- not only with their own projects, but when buying tools as well.

Being realistic is the key to success. If you have plans for a great new product, how realistic is it that it will sell for what you want it to sell for? How realistic is it that you'll be able to get enough traffic? It doesn't just pop up out of nowhere. How easily can it be done on your budget? Can you even afford it?

If you're looking to buy a new tool, what are your expectations of it? Have you read any reviews on it (real reviews, not affiliates trying to make a quick sale and offer nothing but praise)? Do you really need it? Is it realistically going to help you?

And lastly, there's no such thing as a quick button to success. You can't buy a $100/month service that automatically makes "spam-like" webpages expecting to make hundreds of thousands from it. True success does require some work. There are plenty of tools that can help you along the way, but you have to be realistic about it all.

If you think you need a new research tool to help with something you need, great! But don't expect that you don't need to do at least some work on your own.

Something that I find funny is that you often see two types of people in internet marketing -- those who think that everything can be automated (like spam pages) for quick success and those who think that everything needs to be done the long and hard way. The truth is that there's a happy medium.

You can buy tools that will automate some parts of your business and make your life much easier, but the most successful businesses and websites do require at least some work. If you go into the market realizing this, you'll save a small fortune on bogus tools that make big claims with little to back them up.

You also won't jump from one "big thing" to the next "big thing," as you have to realize that success does take work. You're only setting yourself up for failure if you have too high of expectations. When you set your expectations right, you'll find a much clearer path.

I hope my rant has helped some of you -- hopefully saved some of you some money as well. I have some interesting products that I'm currently reviewing that do just this -- automate SOME parts of the harder work but still require work on your end. I'll give you more on that later!

Aweber vs GetResponse

There are a ton of reviews of autoresponders like Aweber and GetResponse. Most of these reviews are outdated or extremely bias. I did an old review of autoreponders right here, but I've been noticing a lot of talk of Aweber vs Getresponse lately ... so I thought I'd address it.

As I've stated before, both of these autoresponders are excellent choices that are very reasonably priced. You can't go wrong with either of them. There are very few differences, and they're both constantly updating.

Many people have asked why so many gurus recommend Aweber while I lean a bit towards GetResponse. The problem is that most of the gurus have been around for awhile and several years ago, things were a different story.

Although GetResponse is a bit cheaper now (both for smaller and larger lists), it used to actually be the more expensive one for larger lists. Hence, why so many individuals with large lists probably didn't like it as much. Both also had minor differences. What Aweber once lacked, GetResponse would have. What GetResponse once lacked, Aweber would have. Most of these limitations that you read about on other reviews no longer exist, as both are constantly updating to better systems.

The one thing I've noticed with GetResponse is that they're always adding neat features that aren't really a necessity, but can definitely add a lot of value over time. Even recently I saw that they were going to be adding video and audio features soon. I probably won't be using these features, but it's again a nice little addition and shows that they are always making new additions.

Aweber certainly has their own features that they constantly work on too, but I believe that GetResponse often has a slight edge. Although again, both are very comparable. If you look outside of these two autoresponders, there are huge differences in the quality of the autoresponder, which is why for right now I'm not addressing other autoresponders within this price range.

I also won't go into autoresponder scripts that are one-time fees (often hosted on your own website or on your desktop), as I don't recommend those at all unless you have an extremely small list and want to risk having your site shut down (one spam accusation can go a long way). Hosted autoresponders like Aweber and GetResponse deal with these things for you, so there's not really much of a risk involved. If you get accused of such things with your own script, you're essentially screwed. If you get accused with a hosted script like GetResponse or Aweber, you don't even have to deal with it.

People often argue that Aweber claims to have a higher deliverability rate. To that I say, according to who? According to them is the answer. To be honest, it's essentially impossible to get anything even close to a 99% deliverability rate if you take every factor into account. When you test such things, you can decide on what factors you want to take into account. If you get rid of all the factors that hurt you, you can give yourself an amazing deliverability rate.

GetResponse doesn't publicly post their deliverability rates because of this reason -- anyone can claim a high rate based on their own studies. An independent study by a 3rd party for larger autoresponder companies (who deal with larger customers like big chain stores and so forth with HUGE lists) found that with all factors taken into consideration, you won't get higher than an 85% deliverability rate.

Think about it, if a mailbox is full, if someone has their spam filters set differently, etc., your e-mail won't get delivered into their inbox regardless of the autoresponder you use. It also depends greatly on how you write your messages. If you have a poorly written message that sets off spam filters, your message won't get through. If you use the same autoresponder and write another message, you might get through without any worries.

I don't think it's bad that Aweber claims their deliverability rate is so high; I just think that you have to realize that they are the ones claiming it and not a 3rd party. GetResponse could do the same thing, but it would be silly in my opinion because it's a bit misleading.

Another thing I like about GetResponse is that they have extra features, such as their service where you can buy "real" leads (not fake ones or crappy ones from other such services). With GetResponse's lead service, people actually opt-in to your offer, which is ideal. It's not just a list that is resold to you.

Because of this, you won't get all the leads instantly, but you will get them over time. To get the best out of this service, it's probably a good idea to have them set on double opt-in, so if they don't opt-in, you don't have to pay (this will give you a more responsive list).

So just to reassure everyone again, I still stand by my original review of Aweber vs GetResponse. Both are great services that you'll be happy with, but GetResponse is a little cheaper for both smaller lists and larger lists. They also have a few extra features that Aweber doesn't have, even though all of the really important features are covered by both of them extremely well.

In the end, you'll probably be more than happy with either service.

Simple tip for affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing has become pretty popular as an "easy" way to make money online without having a product, or sometimes even without having a website. Even so, it is a lot harder than it seems. However, there are plenty of tips to help along the way. I'll cover some other tips in the future, but I want to focus on one quick, easy, and very effective tip.

Contact the affiliate manager(s) or website/product owners for whatever products you might be trying to sell as an affiliate. You'd be surprised at how much extra help you can get from them. After all, they make money from you too, right?

Even multi-million to multi-billion dollar companies can have some really nice affiliate managers that will often take the time to e-mail you back. Sometimes you might even be able to work out some exclusive deals between the two of you. I certainly have before, and let me tell you, it can definitely make you stand out from the crowd of affiliates.

After I've established a relationship with them, I often will get a few exclusive deals or insider information from them just because they know I'm in contact with them. This can give me a huge edge over others.

Even if you only deal with Clickbank products and so forth, the same rules apply. Try talking to them and seeing what you can work out. You might find some sweet deals from just spending a few minutes of your time writing an e-mail.