Saturday, September 27th, 2008
There are a few things that every affiliate marketer or aspiring affiliate will need to start making his or her first dollar in affiliate marketing.
From my conversations with a lot of my subscribers, it appears that most affiliates feel too overwhelmed by the information overload. They get swarmed by all the experienced internet marketers’ emails throwing them into all directions.
Frankly, there is nothing wrong with the offers and methods taught by the internet marketers. The only problem is for a newbie, that is too much to digest.
Right here, I offer a few simple steps to start making your first dollar in affiliate marketing. If you own a list or membership site that has many newbie affiliates, perhaps you might want them to read this post.
The idea is to stay focused on a single plan and take mass action!
1. Choose Your Product
One affiliate program for a start!
While this sounds basic, the truth is, many get sucked into different affiliate programs and end up distracted!
Start with ClickBank if you are new. All you need to do is register. Approval is instant and you go for to the Marketplace to choose a good product to promote.
People will tell you to go for low competition products, ie products that few affiliates are promoting or not selling in large volumes. That’s not quite true. For me, I find from my experience in niche marketing that the hot sellers sell much better.
The reasons are simple: The hot sellers are proven to sell, ie high conversion rates. Secondly, the market is much larger!
Take a look at the Gravity. This is a single parameter that tells you how many affiliates have made at least 1 sale over the past 30 days. Not the exact number though but a good estimate. Go for at least 30 to 50.
2. Create Your Sales Funnel
By that, this is the conduit of getting visitors to your sales page. Some will advocate direct linking, in other words, sending your visitors immediately to your sales page.
This works at times. But I have only seen successful models if you use targeted paid advertising. For example, buying banners ads, text link ads, etc at Ad Networks. Unless you are an experienced marketer or have deep pockets to test different advertising avenues, this option can be very expensive! Not quite suitable for newbies.
However, it is often much better if you put your prospect through a sales funnel for the purpose of educating and preselling your prospect. Conversions are much higher!
What kind of sales funnels can you create?
a. A content website that talks about the particular market you are in.
b. A blog using free blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress is great!
c. A name squeeze page that allows you to capture the name and email address of your visitor. This allows you to follow up with him or her for at least 7 times to condition him to buy from you. Offer great content or a free report as a bait!
d. A forum signature can become your direct sales funnel. Create a catchy forum signature like this “Copy The Secrets A Newbie Used To Get A $3212 PayCheck Every Month!”. The simple way to do it is to use the headline of the product you are selling and modify it.
A case study here. If I am promoting Google Manipulator, I may actually create a signature from its headline.
Headline:
“Underground Marketer Banks $57,100 In Profit From Free Google Search Traffic And How You Too Could Easily And Effortlessly Blow Past Anyone And Everyone In Your Niche And Hit The Jackpot Using The Exact Same Simple As 1-2-3 Methods”
Signature:
“Learn How I Bank $57,100 In Profits From Free Traffic Using A Simple A-B-C Blueprint!”
3. Traffic Driving
The third part is in driving traffic to your sales funnel. This is the most challenging for most internet marketers. If you do have a budget, you can resort to PPC, ideally Google Adwords.
But if you are on a tight budget, free traffic driving techniques can also deliver a punch.
Some of the most effective and simple traffic driving methods here:
a. Article marketing – I swear by its effectiveness. After all, this is the single traffic technique that gets me well over 1000,000 visitors over a year period. Hint: Use EzineArticles.
Read my other blog posts on article marketing tips and techniques to maximize your efforts.
b. Forum marketing – Spend time contributing to at least 10 forums in your target niche. This will get you a good reputation and trust. The selling point is in your forum signature. People do make their first sales there.
c. Classified advertisements – Go to the free classified advertisement websites like Craigslist, EPage, BackPage and USFreeads. These places allow you to post a classified ad. Look for the appropriate places to post your ad.
d. Create a free report and give it away – This method is a more advanced one which I hesitated to share. Nonetheless, if you feel you are experienced to do it, go ahead and create a report with your affiliate links embedded in the report.
Give it to anyone you meet, post it to free ebook directories, or participate in a giveaway.
e. Social bookmarking at top sites like StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and Digg.
f. List building – this is a lengthy process but you will be able to build a long-term business in the niche you are targeting. All gurus built their successes from their own lists or piggybacking others’ lists.
There are other more advanced techniques, but I shall stop here. By following these methods and duplicating it all over and over again, you will find yourself not only making the first sale, but many sales. You just got yourself a proven business model!
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, Buzz Marketing, Forum Marketing, Free Money Making Methods, General, Giveaway Events, Google Adwords, Joint Venture, Online Marketing Learning, Pay Per Click, Product Reviews, SEO, Social Bookmarking, Web Traffic | 1 Comment »
Monday, August 18th, 2008
Wow! It has been more than a month since I last posted. So where was I? In case you are wondering if I went missing forever, I have not. The last month was busy and I was away in Japan for about 2 weeks on holidays. It was quite cooling in Hokkaido and the lavender fields were beautiful! Tokyo’s weather was quite terrible – it was hot! But my wife and I had a great time at DisneySea.
Overall, it was an enjoyable trip and now that I am back, it is time to get back to posting more good stuff for you guys.
I am going to post a quick keyword tip here for all bum marketers and practically all internet marketers. Keyword research as you know by now is a must. Whether you are using it for Pay-Per-Click aka Google Adwords or for SEO and bum marketing, it is the one most critical component.
Google’s external keyword tool is now an improved version, providing approximate monthly search counts for any keyword you search. Here’s the link to the free keyword tool.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Previously, there are no figures and you probably have to second guess what the search volume toolbar means for each individual word.
If you are a bum marketer looking for a quick keyword to target, the search volumes should give you a good idea of the traffic each keyword will attract. Also, if you notice that the advertiser competition is high, ie a full bar, chances are it is profitable for the advertisers.
This should pass the first litmus test. Then, I will go to Google.com to run a search using “keyword” and allintitle: keyword.
If both shows a low result, probably in the range of lower than 5,000 for “keyword” and 1,000 for allintitle: keyword, then I will target this for bum marketing with articles at EzineArticles, Squidoo and HubPages.
But there is more to Google’s keyword tool. Notice that there is a small section on the left hand that says “Results are tailored to”. Try to fiddle with the drop-down menu, it will give you a good grasp of how much traffic each keyword is attracting from different countries in the world.
This should be useful for PPC marketers who are targeting geographically. Even for bum marketers, you can try to plan your content to contain keywords for those specific countries. For example, if you notice that a keyword looks promising with decent search volumes in Canada, perhaps you can mention about “Canada” in your article content and title to draw some relevance to it. So, for illustration’s purpose, say the keyword is “make money online”, you can try creating content based on the keyword “make money online in Canada”.
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, Buzz Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic, keyword research | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
It has been about 2 weeks since I last posted. Well, I am back after getting all busy with creating and semi-automating my network of blogs. Yes, I do own tons of blogs and with my new projects coming up soon, I got to set certain systems in place to take care of the content management as well as link and traffic building of my blog empire.
Ok, back to this post. Here are some cool and free keyword competition analyzers you can use to conduct a search for “low competition keyword phrases”. Now, “low competition keyword phrases” are much sought after for a few reasons.
Firstly, if you are an article marketer or bum marketer, using such keywords will get you ranking in top placements in the search engines really fast.
Secondly, if you are using PPC, targeting a specific long tail, low competition keyword phrase for your keyword, landing page content, ad title and ad content will bring down the cost of your ads really fast. But be mindful to target low competition keyword phrases with some decent amount of searches. Otherwise, you will be wasting time building a landing page and optimizing it around the keyword.
Which are these free keyword competition analyzers?
1. WordTracker’s Cool Google Trends Feature
You may be familiar with WordTracker but did you know that you can combine the power of the free keyword competition checker with Google trends?
Say I want to check out the keyword competitiveness of “working from home”. I will go to
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends
Take a look at this screenshot.
Next, I will click on the little icon on the right column that says “Niche summary for working from home”.
It will bring me to this screen that shows the Google competition and the actual number of visitors from the No.1 website in Google.
Powerful, right? Within a few minutes, one can easily find some long tail low competition keywords to target. Now to the second free keyword competition analyzing tool.
2. SEO For FireFox Plugin
Yes, this is an add-on for your SEO browser.
Download it from
http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html
Install it and run the tool. See the screenshot below when I try to check if the keyword “working from home” is worth targeting.
It pretty much tells you a great deal about the sites that are ranking well for the keyword “working from home”. If you see most of them with a high PR and tons of backlinks, this is a good sign that you should avoid it!
But if the sites that are ranking well for the keyword phrase are all low PR pages with small number of backlinks, the keyword phrase could just be the low competition keyword phrase you are looking for!
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, keyword research | 1 Comment »
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
Have you heard of GistWeb? If not, this is the latest free tool developed by Jonathan Leger. Jon has been pumping out many free and paid software that are useful for marketers especially affiliate marketers. This online tool is intended for people who find content research a chore.
Any affiliate marketer alive would know that writing good quality unique content is the lifeline of content publishing. Your blogs and websites need content to improve readership. Your article marketing efforts need unique content to capture the attention of the search engines to achieve good rankings.
But the trouble is, to create unique content, there are only 2 main ways. Either you write it yourself which takes tons of time and a lot of brain juice and creativity or you pay for your content.
Writing everything yourself can be time-consuming. It takes time to conduct research for the information and organize them properly before you can write a good blog post or article.
Another way is to hire someone to write for you. This may help you to get away from writing your own content, but getting somebody to write unique content for you can cost a lot of money. This is especially so if you own a lot of websites and blogs, monetized for Adsense or affiliate programs.
GistWeb.com is able to overcome both sets of problems – cost and time. Firstly, it is a free service anyone can use. Secondly, it takes only a minute for it to work.
What can GistWeb do for you?
It pulls out the gist of search results, organize them nicely into summaries of different lengths. You simply input the keyword you are interested to research on and it will go searching the web for related information. You can use the short, medium or long summary as you wish.
While it takes a little time to organize the content a bit, you will realize that it is a really cool tool to conduct online research for useful information.
Try out GistWeb today to conduct your content research and start churning out unique content as fast as lightning!
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, General, Online Marketing Learning | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
By now, you would have heard of Ewen Chia or for that matter his latest Working from Home Secret Report. He is my fellow countryman, friend and someone whom I do respect a lot. Why?
Partly because I have known how hard he worked his way to today’s status as the Secret Weapon of Super Affiliates. But largely because he often over deliver on his products. Do not expect B.S from this guy.
This is the man behind successful products like AutoPilot Profits and Secret Affiliate Weapon. These reports continue to sell well on ClickBank. But I am still curious to know how this new system works and whether he can live up to my expectations.
But what exactly is Ewen Chia’s Working from Home System about? 15th April is the first day of the pre-launch to announce the arrival of this new income system.
Well, I downloaded his free report titled “HOW TO GET RICH FROM HOME IN JUST 5 SIMPLE STEPS!” or you can watch his video here:
Watch the video at Ewen Chia’s Working from Home website now!
After watching the video and reading through the 5 simple steps to get rich from home on the internet, I must say that it is still refreshing as ever. You can download the report for free without opting in to any list. So go ahead and do so.
In his 5 steps report, he covers the essential 5 steps to start making real money online fast.
1. Finding a Rabid Marketing With Huge Growing Demand
This is good old wisdom but most affiliates miss this out completely. Ewen Chia advocates in his free report that any online marketer should find a market that has ready buyers and a continuous need to consume.
The golfing and the “work from home” niches fit in the bill nicely. Rather than to sell to a market that will only buy from you once, for example, how to get rid of cockroaches, why not sell golf balls, golf equipment, golf memberships in the golf market or sell “traffic building”, “Google Adwords”, “make money online” reports and memberships to the “working from home” market?
Of course, this step involves doing some keyword research.
2. Finding an Excellent Product as a Solution to People’s Problems
In the free report, he points out the need to focus on 1 product rather than 100 of products. Just 1 excellent product is good enough. Quite frankly, I do not fully agree with him. The reason is simple – never put all your eggs in one basket no matter how good the product is.
But he does point out in this report at Workingfromhome.com that it is important for the affiliate program to pay the affiliates well. At least 50% commissions are reasonable for a digital product. This point, I fully agree.
Another gold nugget of advice which I always tell my subscribers is this, make sure the affiliate program comes with a complete set of affiliate tools such as emails, banner ads, PPC keywords, classified ads etc. I am so glad Ewen did that in his report from Working from Home.
3. Complete Sales Funnel
Kudos to him on this point about complete sales funnel. This is something that I often find missing in most make money online books I buy. A complete sales funnel does not only sell the prospect on the upfront, but it has an up-sell and a backend.
Simply put, earning a $25 per sale from a $50 product should never be your end in mind.
A complete sales funnel will allow you the affiliate earn on the upfront, up-sell and backend. Sad to say, many affiliate marketing programs perform poorly in this.
On the contrary, any product that does provide the complete sales funnel to its affiliates is likely to be a winner for a long time to come.
4. Focus on Money Making Activities
This is a practical thinking tip and I like that because I am a firm believer in this. In the report on “5 simple steps to get rich from home on the internet”, he talks about focusing on money making activities, ie those things that will get you more sales.
Well he does not explicitly mention about what are the money making activities, I can translate that to activities like website promotion ie article marketing, PPC, comment posting, forum marketing, etc and website/blog creation activities or even getting JV partners.
His Mini-Day tips is simple but trust me, many people do not really implement that. It took me some time to convince my online marketing student to do that.
5. Be Proactive
Wow! This is such a SIMPLE step but the trouble is, many folks are just too bogged down by distractions.
Remember, knowledge has no value until it is acted upon.
So, even taking a little action on what you have learnt will put you in a better income position. Massive action will really let you quit your day job, work from home and get rich from home on the internet.
This free report is a good read. Do watch the video and download it to read up the details.
By the way, Ewen Chia’s Working from Home Secret Report will be launched on the 21st April. You will read about it here!
This 50-page no-fluff report will probably be the key to make real money online fast, quit the rat race and replacing your income with the internet in 30 days or lesser.
Within the Working from Home Secret Report, you will discover 3 proven and easy ways to earn cash within 30 days.
Within the report, expect to:
See proof of how Ewen Chia went from $0 to 5 figure with a Brand New Website In 30 Days
Learn the 4 simple stages of all successful online businesses
Discover how to pick a profitable market to sell your products within minutes with free tools only. Also, you will be able to find rapid markets with ready cash to spend.
Learn how to leverage one top website to start your business without any website of your own and start earning in a week.
Master the art of spying on the hot sellers and “stealing” the profits for yourself.
See Ewen show you how he made his first million bucks and how you can copy him and let somebody do all the grunt work for you!
Discover how to create simple ONE-page websites that outsell the super gurus. You will also receive some examples so that you can copy for your own success.
Learn 4 easy methods to get hot buyers ready to buy whatever you are selling to them. And 3 of these methods are totally free of charge.
Learn the exact step by step method of creating and selling your own product within 7 days.
Discover the technique of pricing your product. Yes, you will learn the psychological reason for why certain price points will automatically click within the buyers.
Know the fastest and simplest way to accept credit cards online without paying a single cent until someone buys a product from you. No sales, no need to pay!
What is the price of Ewen Chia’s Working from Home Secret Report?
$9.97!
I will let out a little secret here:
On top of the report, the Work from Home Secret Report all comes with bonuses like:
Bonus 1:
The “Instant Income System” which is an income system with a complete sales funnel that lets you earn up to $156.77.
Bonus 2:
“How To ‘Steal’ Other People’s Work And Get Rich”(Retail Value: $67). Within this report, you will:
Find out how the Web 2.0 phenomenon can help you ramp up your earnings quickly.
Discover 4 killer “pre-sell” page secrets that will beat out the competition
Learn How to Find Excellent Affiliate Programs to Promote
Sounds like a lot to me. Before he takes down the report and video from the Working from Home website, go check it out.
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, Buzz Marketing, Forum Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, Product Reviews, SEO, Social Bookmarking, Web Traffic | 51 Comments »
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
iContent Robot is the latest content writing software to appear on the market. If you have gone to take a look at the sales page of iContentRobot.com, you will see some interesting videos.
I have been using all kinds of article writing, rewriting and spinning software. Instant Article Wizard 2.0 (and Version 1.0), Content Assistant, JetSpinner, Unique Article Wizard, Content Spooler and what have you. Every one of these is good but none comes close enough to the speed, ease of use and uniqueness of content created using iContent Robot.
For one moment, I would consider Instant Article Wizard 2.0 as King of Article Writing Software. But it seems that it has met a strong contender in iContent Robot.
What does the article creation robot do for you?
It generates unique versions of a topic based on a keyword. For example, you can key in “Make Money Online”, and click on the “Regenerate Content” button for a new version to appear. All well within 3 seconds.
As an illustration, I am going to show you 3 unique versions of an article on “Acne Skin Care” I just created. Do not let your jaw drop. In case you begin to suspect I did some master touch-up, my reply is NO. These are taken straight from the software.
Remember, click, regenerate, copy and paste. That’s all I did. Don’t blink your eyes.
3 Sample Unique Articles Created by iContent Robot
Version No.1
If you are one of the people who suffer with acne (Zits) then you are well aware of the distress and problems it causes; but there are now many treatments available which can help the condition so it is more bearable. A great deal of money is being spent researching the condition; now, some of these skin conditions are gradually being conquered. We can classify acne skin care products into 3 broad categories: Internet or Drugstore: Treatment that helps prevents condition Over-the-counter, Prescription only: Requires visit to doctor
The preventative products are formulated to treat the skin in an effort to prevent acne from arising like skin cleansers and makeup removers. Many people use products similar to this every day as part of their skin care regime irrespective of whether or not they have the condition.
Other acne skin care products like skin cleansers are more specific about their job, they ensure the facial pores (and other areas) remain free of oil. Excess oil needs to be stopped from clogging the pores as this oil make it easier for bacteria to grow, exacerbating the condition.
Exfoliation skin peels have proved quite effective as a skin care treatment and at controlling the problem. There are now more and more of these types of products available over the counter. Dead skin cells and other atmospheric pollutants are removed cleaning the pores which reduce the chance of any bacterial growth.
There are specialized acne skin care products available over-the-counter, they do not require the need of a prescription. Products that contain the chemical benzoyl peroxide and the naturally occurring salicylic acid are used in vanishing creams. They work by removing the excess oil from the skin and halt the growth of acne.
Although benzoyl peroxide works well, it is possible you may have a reaction, it is suggested that any benzoyl peroxide skin care product should not contain the active ingredient at more than 5.5 percent. You might have to try a few different creams or lotions before you find the acne skin care product that is effective for you’re skin. If nothing you try seems to work, you should contact a dermatologist.
There are benefits of seeing your doctor or dermatologist; they can prescribe you with a prescription for treatments not available over the counter, for example a course of antibiotics. In some case your doctor may suggest the pustules are drained of harmful contents under local anesthetic, this is a minor procedure which if carried out by yourself could result in skin damage.
Your doctor could prescribe a hormone-based treatment to treat your skin problem. Hormonal changes are known to cause acne and such skin care treatments are sometimes known to be effective. Constant research has paid off, and whilst they cannot cure the condition, it is becoming easier to treat.
Version No.2
The psychological harm acne or Zits causes it’s many sufferers should not be underestimated; fortunately treatments are improving all the time. It is not surprising then that a great deal of money has been spent on skin care treatment development; as a result there are a variety of new products available to help prevent and treat skin conditions. We can classify acne skin care products into 3 broad categories: Preventative: Creams, lotions etc. to help cleanse and tone the skin. Over-the-counter and Prescription only: Requires visit to doctor
The preventative products are formulated to treat the skin in an effort to prevent acne from arising like skin cleansers and makeup removers. Whilst many sufferers use these products there are even more people who just want to keep their skin clean and conditioned.
More specialized cleaners are designed in the same way as acne skin care products; they clean out the pores to help stop sebum or oil which clogs up the pores. These products prevent the oil from getting trapped in pores and can hamper the growth of bacteria, this can lead to the bad skin condition.
This type of skin care treatment also includes those which exfoliate such as skin peels. These can be bought over the counter or on the internet. They work by reducing oil plus other contaminants from the skin and in the pores; this can reduce harmful bacteria and stop their chance of growth.
There are specialized acne skin care products available over-the-counter, they do not require the need of a prescription. Skin care products have been formulated to extract the excess oil that bacteria need to promote the development of acne. These products have benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid as ingredients which the bacterium reacts badly too.
It is preferable when you first start using this type of product to keep the concentration of it low, around 5.5 percent is best. You can always try a cleaner or cream containing alpha hydroxy acid if this doesn’t work. You might have to try a few different creams or lotions before you find the acne skin care product that is effective for you’re skin. If nothing you try seems to work, you should contact a dermatologist.
Only doctors or skin care specialists can prescribe some medications, including the use of antibiotics and certain ointments. Under certain circumstances, having the infected material removed from the pores under a local anesthetic may be suggested by your dermatologist. This is something you should never attempt yourself.
Your doctor may even suggest a course of hormone therapy as a skin care treatment. Hormone changes are sometimes responsible for acne and can be very effective when used under prescription. With all the treatments available, tackling acne is not that difficult as there are many new products available to help.
Version No.3
If you are one of the people who suffer with acne (Zits) then you are well aware of the distress and problems it causes; Fortunately, skin care treatments are plentiful. Research into the causes, and possible treatments, for the condition is ongoing; as a consequence, many of these new treatments are very affective. Despite the number of acne skin care products currently available on the market, they are broadly categorized into three distinctly separate groups: Internet or Drugstore: Treatment that helps prevents condition; Those available at a drugstore or over-the-counter and Prescription: Issued for specialized medication from a doctor etc.
The preventative products are formulated to treat the skin in an effort to prevent acne from arising like skin cleansers and makeup removers. Whilst many sufferers use these products there are even more people who just want to keep their skin clean and conditioned.
Some of these products are designed to act like an acne skin care product and act against the causes of this complaint. They work by limiting the production of sebum/oil and prevent clogging of skin pores. These products prevent the oil from getting trapped in pores and can hamper the growth of bacteria, this can lead to the bad skin condition.
General skin care treatments also include special exfoliation products like skin peels. This type of peel helps reduce the chance of oil clogging up the pores as well as removing other skin impurities; this can reduce the bacterium growth on your skin.
There is a huge market for these types of acne skin care products as they don’t require a consultation with a dermatologist. These include products like vanishing creams which extract the excess oil from the skin. Most of these are based on benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid, both of which are the enemies of bacteria (and hence acne).
You should start with a product that has lower concentration of benzoyl peroxide (e.g. 5%) and see how your skin responds. Alpha-hydroxy-acid based moisturizers are also popular as a skin care regime. Because we all have different types of skin, more than one type of acne skin care product may need to be tried. This is quite normal, however, if it is proving to be a problem then consult with your doctor, or skin care specialist.
On-prescription treatments are prescribed by a dermatologist and can include ointments that can be applied on the affected area or oral antibiotics or just any topical ointment. In some case your doctor may suggest the pustules are drained of harmful contents under local anaesthetics, this is a minor procedure which if carried out by yourself could result in skin damage.
An alternative that has been shown to work well is hormone therapy. Studies have shown that hormones can cause acne and skin care treatments that are hormone based have proved to be effective in many cases. With all the treatments available, tackling acne is not that difficult as there are many new products available to help.
Are you impressed? I am! Normally, it would cost me about $5 per article if I outsource my writing. It can cost even more depending on the quality and length of article. A simple rewrite from the original would have easily cost about $3.
With iContent Robot, you can create unlimited versions without costing you a single dime!
Some Advantages of iContentRobot.com Over Other Article Creation Software & Content Sources like PLR or Ghostwriters:
1. Super Fast – It takes only 3 seconds to create a completely unique version.
2. Unlimited Versions – You can create unlimited articles and they all look different and unique. No one else will have the same content as what you created with iContent Robot.
3. No Preparation Required – Most article spinning software requires some form of preparation such as creating several seed articles.
4. Latent Semantic Index Friendly – Content created is LSI friendly. If you understand about Google’s new rules about LSI content relevance, then you will see that the content is created following Google’s rules.
5. SEO Optimized – Each unique article is created with SEO in mind for ranking in the search engines.
6. Non-Spammy – A lot of poor quality article creation software produce spammy articles that are an eye-sore to human beings. This is quite unlike the quality content created by iContent Robot.
7. Economical – I wanted to call the tool cheap but that sounds very devaluing for a cool tool like this. For $67, it is not even enough for me to buy more than 13 hand-written articles by a cheap writer. It is also much cheaper than most PLR membership sites I use or come across (most offer a fixed number of articles each month shared by hundreds of people…hardly unique at all).
What I Do Not Like About iContent Robot:
While the unique versions are highly readable, what I do not like is the topics listed for this first month. iContent Robot’s creater Mo Latif pointed out that users are allowed to choose what topic they want their service to write about for the next month.
This part is not clear. I wonder how the arrangement will be like.
Members vote for what topic they want?
Or they will create articles based on the topics requested by individual member?
Or they have a point system where everyone can make a fixed number of requests on choice of topic each month?
This is important to me personally because I do not own websites on all these topics. Those who own and build lots of Adsense websites are the first ones to gain from this software. You can create tons of content to attract traffic from the search engines and with 50 topics to choose from, that is a lot of websites you can build for Adsense income!
The possibilities of using iContent Robot is great. You can use the content to post it on your websites/blogs or submit the articles to article directories or any site that accepts your content for traffic.
Or, you can create a full report on the topic and sell it. You can even consider reselling the articles.
Of course, using the service iContent Robot itself does cost you some money. For a start, the doors are just open not long ago for the first 500 exclusive members at $67. After that, the price will increase. At the time of this writing, over 400 memberships have been sold.
Make a sale or two with the articles created and it would have paid fully for the fee.
Take a look at iContentRobot and see how it works.
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, Buzz Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, Product Reviews, SEO, Web Traffic | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 24th, 2008
It has been more than a week since I last posted my Buzz marketing article. I hope you like my previous post on the “10 Step Guide to Become the Most Broke Affiliate Marketer in 2008”. My girlfriend sure had a good laugh after reading it. Read on to know what exactly is Buzz Marketing.
If you had not read it, you can read it here.
10 Step Guide to Become the Most Broke Affiliate Marketer in 2008
There are 2 main reasons why I wrote that article.
Firstly, to share with readers like you about the common problems many affiliate marketers are caught up in. Some are innocent mistakes, others are totally blind to them and keep repeating these mistakes. The result is a waste of precious time, the loss of sales and subscribers.
Secondly, I created the article as a simple experiment on the concept of Buzz Marketing. You see, Buzz Marketing is another form of article marketing, powered by the buzz of Web 2.0 media.
Recently, I got to read about Buzz Marketing by an under-the-radar marketer called Dean Hunt.
What do Bum Marketers normally do with their articles?
A lot of the bum marketers simply do some proper keyword research for long tail keywords, slap a piece of article together and then submit it to EzineArticles or Squidoo. That’s it! They leave it to chance for the article to rank well in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
The trouble is, they are shortchanging the bum marketing method. How about combining the power of bum marketing method with a twist of Web 2.0 BUZZ? This is truly powerful BUZZ Marketing!
How to Combine Buzz Marketing with the BUM Marketing Method?
1. Create an article using the bum marketing method but write the title in a really eye-catching manner.
Notice that for my “10 Step Guide to Become the Most Broke Affiliate Marketer in 2008”, I could have written in the same old same old method of “10 Step Guide to Become the Most Successful Affiliate Marketer in 2008”.
There are tons of similar articles you can find. Titles like “Top Ways to Sell More”, “How to Be A Super Guru” and so on are pretty common. So how do you get people interested at all if you plan to write in the same manner?
Some tips to create a good and catchy title for your Buzz Marketing article:
a. Go for a negative angle. Notice that people love to read bad news. That is why bad news always sells so well. Read the newspapers and magazines to understand.
b. Use simple to understand keywords in your title. Try not to be bombastic. Go for simple to understand English. This will ensure your readers can understand and will read your article.
c. Use lists in your title. It has been proven that numbers and figures attract the readers’ attention much better. Instead of “Tips to Be the Most Attractive Guy in School”, go for “10 Killer Tips to Be the Most Loved Guy in School”. See what the small change can do.
2. Submit your article to Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com. Digg and StumbleUpon are 2 of the most popular Web 2.0 Social Bookmarking Sites. There are millions of readers and even journalists hang out there for fresh news and gossips.
3. Use an attractive graphic when you post to Digg and StumbleUpon. Pictures speak a thousand words. It is true. With a nice graphic, people will pay more attention to your article.
You may think, well, you only got 3 Diggs for your article. So what’s the big deal?
Did I fail in my BUZZ Marketing experiment? The answer is NO! On the contrary, after I wrote the article “10 Step Guide to Become the Most Broke Affiliate Marketer in 2008”, my web stats are showing that I am getting at least 100 – 150 more visitors daily. And I am receiving well over 200 links from StumbleUpon!
So go ahead, use Buzz Marketing and combine it with the Bum Marketing method. Experience the combined power and traffic avalanche from the search engines and the Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites. And if you like this, do Digg my posts. 
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, Buzz Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Social Bookmarking, Web Traffic | No Comments »
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Are you a successful bum marketer? Whether you are a newbie trying your hand on bum marketing or you are a battle harden expert in the bum marketing method, there are some bum marketing secrets and tips here that might prove useful to you.
Assuming that you are working on the correct niche and product, these are some bum marketing tips and secrets that will give your bum marketing method a tremendous boost! I personally have used these to get my articles and lens on Page 1 at Top 3.
Bum Marketing Secret 1
This is the single MOST important factor that decides if the bum marketing method is a success or failure for you!
And it is …..UNIQUE QUALITY CONTENT…If you guessed it correctly, you are smart but sorry, there is no prize for you.
While you heard about “unique content” a thousand times, many people only focus on making it “unique” but fail to realize the “quality” part.
Rehashing poorly written PLR articles, or rewriting articles that you copied from EzineArticles, Article City and so on is not going to give you unique quality content. Garbage begets garbage.
Read my post on “7 Killer Tips to Create Unique Content in 15 Minutes” for some inspiration on how to prepare your articles.
Sometimes, sitting down and consolidating useful information from different sources like the internet, newspapers, books, and so on as material for your article writing can be a worthwhile investment.
Bum Marketing Secret 2
The next most important ingredient to make your bum marketing article work wonders for you is the keyword competitiveness.
For the best effect and potential to rank Top 3 in Google,
Go for a keyphrase that has low to moderate searches (at least 300 – 1000 according to WordTracker) and less than 200,000 in the search results (the lower the better).
Note: If the search count is too low, you may rank No.1 but still get peanuts for traffic.
Bum Marketing Secret 3
Another key ingredient is the keyword density. I said this before. Get a keyword density of around 1.5% and if you follow Secret 1 also, your EzineArticles article or Squidoo will stand a solid chance to be the Champion, First Runner-up or Second Runner-up for your keyword in Google.
Bum Marketing Secret 4
This is similar to Secret 2. Many people think that the more articles they submit, the more traffic they get. This is a half truth.
If you have a choice, go for quality in your articles rather than quantity. But if you can find both, great!
Over time, you will realize that only articles of excellent content and information will reign in the top Google search results.
I have experimented with hundreds of articles and lens over the past 1 year. Normally, I will write and submit a number of articles targeting the same keyword as a test. These are done using different methods like researching and writing my article, copying and rewriting articles taken from article directories and PLR membership sites and paying others to write.
At the end of the day, only Quality Content has the staying power! Some of my articles continue to reign in top spots without any shake up for an entire year!
Bum Marketing Secret 5
This is my favourite trick. I call it an ACE card for all professional cash pumping affiliates!
Did you know that your EzineArticles article or Squidoo lens is a web page?
So if it is a web page, it follows the basic principles of SEO. Good SEO practice tells you that you need good backlinking to your site.
Many people fail to realize that backlinking can be done not only to their websites but to their EzineArticles articles, Squidoo Lens and HubPages as well!
So go ahead and post your link in forums, blog comments, social bookmarking sites and wherever you can do so without spamming around!
Read my buddy Dylan Loh’s secrets for a successful bum marketing blueprint.
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
What are the most important or must-have bum marketing tools in your arsenal?
I talked about the bum marketing method in my previous post. Today, I want to spend some time to talk about the essential bum marketing tools that I use quite often.
1. Brainstorming for Niches and Products
In brainstorming for ideas or niches to target for my bum marketing efforts, there is one place you will love to go to.
CB Engine – it is quite simply one of the best tools to find hot products to promote. I like the feature that lets you filter off the search results according to your preference such as minimum commissions and commission payout percentage and so on. Personally, if the commission payout is lower than $20 per sale, I will ditch it.
From here, you can also get to see which are the market movers and what are the most popular topics. With the pro version, you get a full set of cool tools to use as a ClickBank affiliate.
One word of advice here – the “make money online” market is one where the buyers tend to be very well-informed! It may not be that easy to make money out of them.
While it is also such a huge market where tons of products are sold, it is not recommended for the newbie bum marketer. Target the other niche markets using your bum marketing method.
2. Keyword Research Tools
Once you decide on a market to target, it is time to do proper keyword research. A lot of people get this wrong by focusing on keyword research first before looking at the market’s profitability.
Some tools I use frequently include:
a. Google’s very own keyword research tool
This is a free tool to find long tail keywords. But it is not the best since you cannot figure out what is the exact search count.
b. Keyword Elite
If you have money, invest in Keyword Elite. It is one of the most powerful keyword research software I use to find the right keywords to target for the bum marketing method. This is hands-down one of the best bum marketing tools!
c. NicheBot
NicheBot is a super dynamo when it comes to churning out laser-targeted keywords for your bum marketing articles. I use the paid version which gives me detailed run downs on what are the exact keywords people are searching.
This bum marketing tool also suggests which “Jackpot” keywords you can use to dominate any niche market you are in. These are keywords and keyphrase where there is almost zero competition! This is perfect for my bum marketing method.
It is meant for more elaborate keyword research and ideal for PPC campaigns as well.
3. Writing Content for Bum Marketing Articles
I used to write all my articles for bum marketing traffic. But with a network of 50 over blogs, it can be extremely challenging to write all my content.
There are some tools and services that make things really simple for me.
a. Instant Article Wizard
This is my baby for the bum marketing method. The reason why I say that it is a tool made for bum marketers is because in the whole bum marketing strategy, pumping out articles fast is the key to win the game! And that is what Instant Article Wizard does.
Oh, do not simply slap an article together with the search. Well you can and chances are the article is highly readable, but I expect a lot out of my articles.
So I will normally use it to do my content research. Find all the necessary data and information and then write an original article altogether.
b. Hiring GhostWriters
Ghostwriters are so important if you intend to run a successful business. Outsource your writing to good writers. Pay them well enough and you are never in lack of quality unique content.
$5 for an article is quite reasonable. I often use GetaFreeLancer and DP Forums for my content writing needs.
4. Submitting the Bum Marketing Articles
Article directories are my main battlegrounds to charge up profits from the bum marketing method.
I rely heavily on article submission software and article submission services.
Article Post Robot is the ultimate well-invested tool I found. It has earned me many fold the one-time price I paid for it. With one click, my article is distributed to over 400 article directories including EzineArticles. So far, this is the only tool that can post to the correct article category.
Read this review about Article Post Robot to understand what it can do for you.
The next are the article submission services, Unique Article Wizard and JetSubmitter. Both are hands-free services that distribute my articles to well over hundreds of article directories. Read about these two services at this article submission service review site.
I love UAW more simply because it also posts my articles onto their network of blogs. So far, I have seen quite a number of my articles that are posted on blogs ranking Top 10 in Google. I consider this my secret weapon among the bum marketing tools I own.
I hope I did not miss out on any tool that is useful for bum marketing. Feel free to post your comments about your arsenal of bum marketing tools here.
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, General, Online Marketing Learning, Product Reviews, SEO, Web Traffic | 5 Comments »
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
The Bum marketing Method – has it died? For all those who have been marketing for at least a few months should be quite familiar with the bum marketing method or what is commonly called bum marketing. For the entire 2007, it was a hot topic.
Today, while everyone is talking about Web 2.0, I want to share a little bit about what bum marketing really is and whether you still can make any money with it.
Just What Is Bum Marketing?
In one sentence, this form of marketing makes use of high traffic, search engine favored sites like EzineArticles, Squidoo, HubPages etc to channel traffic to the affiliate sales page and make sales.
Traditional SEO is challenging and for newbies, it can be a daunting task. To rank a web page in the search engine can take months and there is no guarantee at all.
With the bum marketing method, even newbies can take an article from nothing to Top 10 in Google. So, do you want to be a bum marketer?
Bum Marketing Explained
There are a few key elements to make this whole bum marketing method profitable for you.
1. A Profitable Niche
2. Long Tail Keywords
3. Website that Gets Google Love
4. Target Website (Optional)
Finding a Profitable Niche
Not all niches are profitable. Forget what some “gurus” say about using your favorite hobbies or interests as your target niche. While you may be a “professor” in your favorite subject, it can prove to be ultra unprofitable when it is not something sellable!
Popular niches like weight loss and dog training may be competitive, but these are also topics with a hot and huge market ready to buy. All you need to do is to narrow down your niches. This is the key to success with the bum marketing method.
Here’s a Quick 2 minute Litmus Test to find Profitable Niches for Bum Marketing:
1. Search ClickBank’s marketplace. Now, ClickBank has 10,000s of products and has a wide network of affiliates marketing the products. The reason why we want to look at this is simple. If the product is selling well and their affiliates are making money, then it is worthwhile for us to copy! It does not take you more than a few seconds to see what is hot!
In each category, find the top 10 most sellable products, these are broad niches you can dig deeper into. Pick one or two niches. For example, “weight loss”.
2. Hop over to Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool and do a quick keyword search on the broad term “weight loss”. There you will find all the related keywords to weight loss. You probably will be able to see some trends here. For instance, many are searching for quick ways to lose weight, weight loss pills, and weight loss diets.
So, from the broad niche of “weight loss”, we have managed to find 3 narrower niches to target!
3. Finally, Google the 3 narrower niches “quick weight loss”, “weight loss pills” and “weight loss diets”. Take a look on the right and see how many Google ads are there.
Chances are the one with the most ads is the most profitable! Otherwise, they will not promote and pay so much for the ads right?
I did cover about Long Tail keywords or Long Tails in my earlier post. If you missed it, you can read it here.
“Using Long Tail Keywords for Article Writing”
Compile a list of 10 to 20 long tail keywords. These are what we will create unique content around.
If you are not great at writing, or find it daunting to write 10 to 20 articles based on the keywords, use Instant Article Wizard. You can easily write one unique article within 10 minutes!
Using EzineArticles and Squidoo for the Bum Marketing Method
Using the articles, go and post it to EzineArticles or Squidoo. EzineArticles does not allow you to link directly to an affiliate sales page but Squidoo does.
If you are using Squidoo, then feel free to slap your content with your affiliate links throughout your content. But for EzineArticles, it works best if you could simply create a 1-page website or a blog from Blogger.com and WordPress.com embedded with your affiliate links.
One trick here, is to link to the Squidoo lens from your EzineArticles article!
If you follow my instructions on how to select the right long tail keywords and article writing techniques, then it will not take long for you to start seeing traffic and sales coming in within 1 or 2 weeks if not days.
The magic is in the ranking of your EzineArticles article and Squidoo lens in the search engines for your target keywords. My friend teaches you the exact steps to writing an article that gets ranked Top 10 in Google! See how he does it.
In my next post, I shall reveal some powerful bum marketing secrets to help you supercharge your traffic and sales!
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | 5 Comments »
