Many of you know by now that I am combining my evaluation of SENuke X with my desire to get back into the Niche Site Duel.

Of course, this is a perfect match, since you will recall that my “spin” on the niche site duel was to participate using outsourcing and automation.  Of course, that was back in August.  I got the site up and applied to the affiliate program that I wanted to use.  I even got to page one of Google for a while.

Since then, I have been completely distracted by this busy thing called “life”.  Most of you know that I have four kids, a day job and tons of other stuff going on.

Still, while doing absolutely nothing about the Niche Site Duel for months, I have been following Pat’s amazing success with his niche site duel security guard experiment.  Pat's approach is especially excellent for people who are simply looking for a place to start (getting started can be overwhelming, and Pat breaks it all down).

Where we are now

So, the site is currently sitting at 25 in Google (page 3) for “learn guitar basics”.  That was accomplished with no promotion.  It has visited page 1.  I consider all of this to be a pretty good sign.   You can see the current rankings below.

All of this has not resulted in much traffic, and the traffic has been falling month by month.  I suspect that some of this is due to buzz around the niche site duel itself falling off.  But it’s not all because of that….

As you can see from the below traffic stats, some of the hits have some from SE traffic.  Specifically, hits are coming from my keywords.  I suspect that most of this traffic came from the times when I was on page one for “learn guitar basics”.

So, the simple task in front of me is to fix up the website so that visitors have a chance to buy something, and to get to #1 for “learn guitar basics”.  For that last task, I plan to use SENuke X.

I’ll keep you posted.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

Hey there.  It's 5AM here and I am just about to head off to my day job.  I am running behind in assigning tasks to my VA for the Niche Site Duel.  In fact, we have done very little to work on the site since we put it up.  The one exception is that one VA is still rewriting the articles on the site (a few every day).  There is no real strategy there -- just trying not to spend too much money on the site all at once.

Most of the traffic on the site is probably coming from people like you who are reading about the duel and then directly typing in the URL.  So, don't be too impressed by the traffic stats below.  However, I will show the traffic so you can get a sense of what is going on.

What is interesting is that I am starting to see some traffic from organic search (but just a trickle).

And finally, I am seeing one or two clicks on affiliate links.  That is really interesting since I have not even set up the affiliate IDs correctly yet.  Man, I need to get busy here.  Of course I have no idea if these clicks are coming from real visitors.   I suspect that the visitor that was searching for Silverhill Guitar Knobs was a real visitor, however.  That is pretty neat - and it a natural effect of organic search.  You always end up ranking for stuff that you had no idea you would rank for.

That's all for now -- I really need to get on the road to work.  More on this later.

Happy to answer any and all questions about the site, the data, or the strategy.  Just leave your questions below.

Just a quick update to let you know that my niche site has made it to page one of Google.  As I show in the screen shot below, I am currently ranking number one for the term "learn guitar basics" without the quotes.  (And yes, I am logged out of iGoogle, GMail, etc).  While this result is really cool, we should not declare victory yet.  The most important reason for that is the fact that new WordPress blogs tend to "rank and tank".  What I mean by that is I fully expect rankings to fall again before they settle out on page one (hopefully in position one on page one).

But for now, it's sure fun to see the site in position #9.

Side note:  Now here is the difference between me and Pat Flynn.  I just jammed a screenshot in a post with no formatting.  I wrote the post in 7 minutes.  Pat would have clipped the below graphic with photoshop (using those cool torn edges that he always has), added a 3D shadow and circled the 9th ranking position with a red pen.  Everything Pat produces is very high quality.  You should pay attention to that, because good quality translates directly to your brand and (eventually) money.

Some errors (opportunities)

Note that in my haste to get the site up that I incorrectly specified the most important on-page factor -- the title tag.  The home page should have the title "learn guitar basics."  Instead, the page is titled "learning guitar basics."  Oops.  Looks like there was a typo in what I sent to the VA.

No worries.  Since we are using the All-in-one SEO plugin, this is very easy to change when we are ready.  I am going to leave it as is for the moment.  We'll change it during the "tank" phase.

You'll also note that the site description is defaulting to something goofy that needs to be corrected.  It is important to use the site description to call the searcher to action, compelling them to click through to the site.

More on this and other topics in the next update.

Thanks,
Mark

If you follow me on Twitter you’re probably aware that I am participating alongside Pat and Tyrone in the Niche Duel that’s being documented over at the Smart Passive Income Blog.

Now, my participation in this contest is a little bit different than Pat and Tyrone. Pat always does an amazing job of documenting everything that he does and goes into an enormous amount of detail. This niche duel is no different for Pat, he’s already done an excellent job of documenting his keyword research and progress that he’s made on his site.

In my case, I’m not able to dedicate that much time to this project, but I do think it’s incredibly valuable. So, I’ve decided to dictate some notes about my progress and have them transcribed by my awesome transcriptionist, that way you can get some information about how I’m approaching the niche site duel, but I won’t have to spend a ton of time documenting it on my blog.

My Approach to the Niche Site Duel

So, because of the fact that I’m trying to minimize the amount of time that I’m spending on the Niche Site Duel, I’ve decided to take the approach of outsourcing every possible element of the competition. And I’ve decided that the best way to document a lot of my progress is by microblogging the event over on my Facebook Fan Page. So, be sure and check the Facebook Fan Page for day to day updates, and I’ll try to post my progress on the blog every week or two so you can get a sense of how things are going in the big picture.

My first job was niche selection. When I select a niche I try to do three things. Number one, I try to find a niche that I actually think will generate some revenue and be profitable. In this case I chose the very popular guitar niche, specifically the learn to play guitar niche. I’ve noticed for some time that there are several successful products in the marketplace, both on Clickbank and elsewhere, regarding learning to play guitar, so I knew this would be an opportunity for me to play around in that niche.

Number Two, I try to pick something that I’m actually interested in. As a busy internet marketer I know that I have a higher probability of actually accomplishing tasks related to the creation of the niche site if I care about the contents. This is not a requirement in general for niche marketers, but for me personally I’ve found that I have a lot higher success rate if I pick things that I’m actually interested in.

Number three, for this particular project I wanted to make sure I chose a niche where there was a wide availability of materials for me to work with, this includes affiliate offers, blog themes, private label right materials, and other things that I would need for a completely outsourced project.

So, for my limited time commitment to this project I’ve decided to select something was easily outsourced, had a wide variety of materials available, looked like it could be profitable, and interested me enough that I could guarantee that I would participate in the project.

Keyword Research for Learn Guitar

Once I had looked around a little bit in the guitar niche and found out that there was a ton of material out there available for affiliate marketers I popped open my favorite fast keyword research tool, Micro Niche Finder. Notice that I’m making the distinction between fast keyword research and deep keyword research.
For deep keyword research once I’ve found a target keyword I prefer Market Samurai, but for fast keyword research where I’m searching across hundreds of keywords looking for a particular keyword to target I strongly prefer Micro Niche Finder. I think the user interface is a lot better for wide area searches.

So, when I put learn guitar into Micro Niche Finder the very first thing I did was ask Micro Niche Finder to find me all of the keywords that had an available dot net,, dot org, or dot com exact match domain. Now, the learn guitar niche is very crowded, so the number of domains available that exactly matched keywords returned by Micro Niche Finder was a relatively small number.

Once I had gotten a list of exact match domains I simply ordered them in decreasing order of search volume. I’m looking for a keyword that I think learn guitar prospects would be using that has a high search volume and low competition. So, starting with the keywords with highest search volume I started analyzing the competition. To make a long story short, Micro Niche Finder suggested to me that learn guitar basics was a decent keyword and it showed me that learn guitar basics dot net was available.

So, I immediately grabbed learn guitar basics dot net and continued my keyword research. In continuing the keyword research I wanted to find some additional keywords that I could target on the website that were also related to learning the guitar. I won’t go into detail about that here, except to say that for these keywords exact matches to domains are not a requirement.

So, I simply went back to Micro Niche Finder, removed the requirement for domains being available and started looking for high volume keywords with low competition. Again, the niche is very crowded, so the number of these keywords is not large. In fact, this looks like this is going to be a very challenging project from a keyword standpoint, but that’s okay, I’m up for the challenge.

Niche Site Traffic Strategy

Now I know that I’m going to be building a blog about learn guitar, and specifically the blog is going to be called Learn Guitar Basics dot net, and I know that my goal is to match offers with buyers. In fact, that’s always the goal of affiliate marketing to find some buyers and match them up to offers on the internet.

In this case I’ve found my buyers. They’re people that are typing in the phrase learn guitar basics. These are new people, maybe they just got a guitar, maybe they’re about to buy a guitar, who are wanting to learn how to play. So, the offer that I want to match them with, obviously, is an offer for online guitar lessons.
I looked around the internet and I found an outstanding affiliate program from a place called Guitar Tricks. Looking at the Guitar Tricks website made me want to sign up for their product, it really looks fantastic. As a guitar player myself I knew immediately that this affiliate offer was a good one because I found myself wanting to take out my own credit card and sign up for the affiliate offer.

As a matter of fact, one really good approach for promoting this offer would be for me to do exactly that and to blog about it. The problem is that approach is not really compatible with the amount of time that I have to spend on this project, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that. In any case, I’ve saved that as a note for myself in case I decide to really spend some real effort on this site.

Identifying the affiliate offer at GuitarTricks.com means that I need to consider a couple of additional keywords to target on the website. People who are considering signing up for a membership at GuitarTricks.com might type in at least two guitar tricks related keywords, and those are obviously guitar tricks review and maybe guitar tricks coupon. Additional ones that are sometimes present in the internet marketing niche are guitar tricks bonus and other kinds of things like that, but for normal people who are buying things online review and coupon are the two most sought after keywords.

Now, here’s an important lesson for you. Those keywords do not appear in the Google Adwords Tool. Micro Niche Finder and Market Samurai do not recognize guitar tricks review and guitar tricks coupon as keywords that people are searching. Why is that? The reason is that those tools are based on the Adwords database and it simply means that no one is bidding on those keywords.

However, if you go to Google and type the word guitar tricks into the search box and then hit the space bar several suggestions will pop down. Those suggestions are based on the actual search data that Google is collecting. They’re not based on the Adwords data, they’re based on the search data, and if you look at that list is presented to you when you out in the words guitar tricks, you’ll find guitar tricks coupon and guitar tricks review. That tells me that I need to target those keywords on my site.

Additionally, if you look at that list you’ll find that there are quite a few people that are trying to steal the Guitar Tricks system, because you see things like guitar tricks torrent. That makes me a little sad and reminds that whenever you have electronic products in the marketplace you need to protect the download.

Creating the Niche Website

Again, my goal in this website is to outsource everything that I possibly can. I’ve done my own keyword research, but it’s been a quick and dirty effort using Micro Niche Finder for less than an hour. If you want a really good tutorial about how the keyword research should be done, you should hop on over to Pat’s blog and look at his video about how he used Market Samurai to do keyword research for his Security Guard website. In my case however, I’ve picked quick and dirty keywords and now I need a quick and dirty website.

So, my next task was to put the search term guitar plr into Google. This returned for me a list of PLR products that are available in the guitar space. I knew I wanted three things. One, I’m looking for PLR that I can use for an autoresponder on the website. It will be very important to collect leads on this website and follow up with those leads and try to drive them to the affiliate offer. Number two, I’m looking for a blog theme and sometimes blog themes are available as PLR. Number three, I’m looking for content for the website. Again, this is an outsource project, I’m going to have some original material written, but really I want to consider PLR as the source for blog site content.

A note about PLR. I think PLR is absolutely excellent for autoresponders because there’s no search engine implications to using PLR. As long as the PLR is high quality and is in your voice and is valuable to your readers, I don’t see any problem in using it in an autoresponder. I don’t normally recommend the use of PLR for website content unless it’s completely rewritten. I’m not a big believer in the duplicate content penalty that’s often talked about by Google, but I do think you owe it to your readers to generate decent content on your own. If you do use PLR on your website, make sure it’s excellent quality and that the PLR you use is rewritten to avoid any issues with similar content outranking you for your search terms.

Having said all that, in this case I’m in a huge hurry, so I need to use PLR because I’ve committed to outsourcing as much of this as possible and moving as quickly as possible. So, lucky for me I found a complete and totally awesome guitar website theme complete with PLR content that I could buy with one click of the mouse. It cost 27 dollars and I bought it, it’s up and running at Learn Guitar Basics dot net.

Outsourcing Tasks for the Duel

Once I bought the PLR mentioned above I was able to outsource a series of tasks. The first task I outsourced was taking some of the PLR that I purchased and breaking it up into content for an autoresponder that was appropriate for beginning guitarists. The virtual assistant was able to split up the content, edit it, place a call to action to the affiliate offer at the bottom of every email, and load that content into an autoresponder over at Aweber.

Task two, I asked another one of my virtual assistants to take the PLR website and get it up and running on the domain that I had purchased. I also asked the VA to modify the site header so that it matched the domain name, to edit the footer, to take out references to the PLR and so forth and make the site somewhat visually unique.

Task three, affiliate offers. I asked the VA that works on my websites to integrate creatives from the Guitar Tricks affiliate site into the website. This meant that the virtual assistant needed to change the banner in the header, as well as place a video creative in the sidebar of the website.

Task four, I also asked the virtual assistant to integrate the autoresponder into the website so there would be a signup form in the sidebar. The sidebar will say something like, “For free beginning guitar lessons delivered straight to your inbox leave us your email and we’ll rush you your first lesson,” or something like that.

Task five, I asked my writer to go into the website and edit every PLR article on the site to change the title, very important for changing PLR, the permalink, also very important for PLR, and the text, less important but still important for using PLR on your website. This will help guarantee that my content is more unique, which can help in my search engine rankings.

To be honest with you, I’m not very worried about the impact of PLR on the search engine because I’m not trying to rank the PLR pages. I’ll be trying to rank the home page and some other pages targeted at guitar tricks related keywords, that content will be completely original and unique and will be easier to rank than the PLR content.

Task six, I asked my writer to write 10 articles around keywords that I had found in Micro Niche Finder. Among these included content for the home page around the keyword learn guitar basics and content for the affiliate offer landing pages for guitar tricks review and guitar tricks coupon.

Current Status and Next Steps

Right now I’m waiting for all those outsourced tasks to be completed. Once those tasks are completed I’ll move to some additional site set up tasks that need to be addressed. I’ll need a Twitter ID for this project, I’ll need email addresses and other set up items, I want to add an eBay and Amazon store into this blog, and so forth. We’ll talk about all of these tasks and more in a future blog post.

Once the site has been set up to my satisfaction (in about a week) I’ll need to start promoting it. For promotion I intend to use article marketing and other backlink building techniques that we’ll talk about in subsequent posts.

That’s it for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed this update, sorry it’s a little bit long winded but that’s one of the downsides to dictating posts rather than editing them. Please let me know if you have any comments, I’d be happy to answer them below. Have a great day!

Best Regards,
Mark Mason

This morning at 5AM, Josh Spaulding launched his new software, Deep Linker Pro.  Simply put, the program takes information about your website and submits your site to Web Directories.  Of course, these directories link back to your site, giving you a nice one-way back link.

This is a long review – if you want the short version, just know this:

I recommend the software.

For me, it is about 100 times less expensive than the outsourcing method that I was using just last week, and I plan to switch to it exclusively for web directory submissions.

Heads up: If you decide this software can help you and you make a purchase today, I am offering a bonus (described below) for people that purchase through my link.

Additionally, you will be able to take advantage of the introductory price (only available for a limited time).

Need more information? How about an interview with the man himself, recorded last night over Skype.  In this interview, Josh talks about why he wrote the software, what it can do, and how to best use it.

Why Do You Need Back links?

We’ve talked about this before (most recently when I offered the 62-second SEO tutorial), but let’s go over is again quickly.

Google needs to know two things in order to rank your pages.  Thing one: what is your page about?  Thing two: how important is your page compared to others?

That’s it.  If your page is about the topic (keyword phrase) that a person types into the Google search engine, and it is the most important page on that topic, it ranks #1 (and you get traffic).

And we all know that the most important thing that you can do to let Google know that your page is important is get back links to your site.  Period.

I Needed This Last Year

Last year I spent 3 weeks looking for a good fully-automated link directory submission tool.  All I could find was a mix of total junk and semi-automated tools.  Unfortunately, all of the good tools were semi-automatic only.

Quite frankly, that just did not meet my needs.  I need something that is fire and forget – and that is exactly what Deep Linker Pro is.

The stupid thing is that instead of writing the tool myself (like Josh did), I started paying people to submit links.  Right now, Deep Linker Pro supports about 600 Web Directory sites in fully automated mode.  That number will increase over time, too.  The service I was using charges about $0.10 per link (ouch).

So in my case, one run using Deep Linker Pro instead of paying for manual link submission pays for the software.  One Run.

Tuesday night I installed the software, entered the information for one of my sites, and pushed the submit button.  That took a couple minutes.  After that, I watched Jack Bauer kill bad guys on 24 and went to bed.  This morning when I woke up, the the software had submitted my site to 619 link directories. I could not believe it.

I am pretty excited about this.

The Software Is Simple

The Deep Linker Pro Software is really simple to use – just what I need for “Fire and Forget Marketing”.  The application has a nice tabbed interface shown below.  The home tab bring up the “latest news” from the Deep Linker Pro site.  You manage and add your sites on the My URLs tab.  The supported directories are in one tab, and your submission history is in another tab.  There are also tabs for the log and for doing manual submissions (for sites that have Captcha).

Here you can see just how easy it is to add a site that you want to promote using Deep Linker Pro.  Josh recommends that you create a separate email address for each site you submit, just so your inbox does not get jammed up with confirmation emails.

Once you add your information for your site, you simply click “OK” and your site is added to the Deep Linker Pro software.  Don’t get confused (like I did) and hit the Add New URL button again before hitting OK.  Your information will be lost and you will have to type in that screen again.

Once you press the start submission button, you can watch as your site is submitted to 674 (and growing) web directories.  You can see here a screen shot of the process log tab a few seconds after hitting the Submit button.  Each site takes from a few to several seconds to process.

Deep Linker Pro Problems

Well, I did not run into any problems, but there are a couple of features that I would love to see added.  The good news is that Josh promises that Deep Linker Pro updates will be free!  He is not saying exactly what feature is So, that is really exciting.

Features that I would like to see added include:

• Automatic defeat of Captcha.  Some of the sites in Deep Linker Pro have Captcha.  I would like Josh to add automatic Captcha handling.  I am told that this is possible.  Josh is looking into the feasibility.
• The ability to spin content.  I would like to be able to change the title, description, tags, etc. at random to get the max SEO benefit (by making the links look more diverse).  No promises, but Josh indicates this feature is planned.
• More job control.  The ability to pause and restart the submission.  Related to that would be the ability to retry failed sites (like when a site is temporarily down, etc).  This really is not much of an issue now, but this seems like a good idea.
• Ability to export and import site information.   If my VA enters all of my sites in the software, I would like to be able to move that information from her computer to mine for safekeeping and future use.

Deep Linker Pro Bonus

Josh has already provided an awesome bonus to go with Deep Linker Pro – The Ultimate Link Building Report.

If you buy Deep Linker Pro through my link, I’ll also include a special report from Jon Leger called 1000 Visitors in 24 Hours (in addition to the bonus that Josh is offering).

In this report, Jon discloses the methods he used to generate more than 500,000 views of his videos, resulting in thousands and thousands of visitors to his sites in just 40 days!

It is an excellent companion to The Ultimate Link Building Report.

I'll also include this list of 50 social bookmarking sites that you can use to supercharge your niche websites.

You know that social bookmarking sites are fantastic places to get links -- and SEO Supercharger lists 50 great ones, sorted by Google Page rank at the time the list was compiled.

All you need to do is upload your receipt showing that you ordered through my affiliate link to my support desk http://www.masonworld.com/support  In most cases this will be a Paypal receipt or a ClickBank receipt.

Order Deep Linker Pro today.

The price is going up on April 5th, so don't delay.

Several months ago I posted that I would be working on my sales letter for Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress.  You probably remember that this was one of my very first products, and that I am always learning by doing.  Man, that first product seems like a lifetime ago.

Edit -- See my special guest post invitation to real copy writers in the post comments.

Since I was "learning" on that product I did a "toss" rather than a launch.  What I mean by a "toss" is that I did not do a full court press trying to get anyone and everyone to promote the themes.  Rather, I worked with a few friends to do an initial promotion:

• Josh Spaulding and Garry Conn promoted the themes to their lists and blogs.
• Josh featured the themes in his excellent eBook $5 Formula.
• Caroline Middlebrook featured the themes in her excellent Niche Site Video
• James Jones sent my Micro Niche Finder Video to his list

The Results Of My First Attempt

Well, I learned a lot about having a product.  I thought that you might be able to learn some stuff too.  I actually made lots of sales.  From my perspective, it was a huge success (and continues to sell).

But, as usual, there were lots of opportunities to improve.  Here are some highlights (and opportunities to improve):

• Highly targeted traffic from a list that was expected to convert at 5% or more only converted at 3.5%.  What's worse,  less targeted list traffic converted very poorly.
• Less targeted traffic from blogs in the make money online niche converted at much less than 1%
• Traffic from ClickBank affiliates was converting at a very low rate.

Increasing Sales Page Conversions

So, I decided that based on that information, that I needed to look at the sales page.  Since I am a glutton for punishment, I posted a request for feedback on and criticism of my sales page on both the Warrior Forum and Digital Point Forums.  Well, as you can imagine, I got some.  You need flame-retardant undies to withstand the comments I got.

Note to new Internet Marketers out there -- don't get your self-esteem wrapped up in your sales copy if you are going to ask for feedback on a forum.  And, be prepared to hear from people that have no idea what they are talking about.

I also got some very helpful feedback from of my very own readers.  That was awesome, and I really appreciate it when readers take the time to comment.  Here are some feedback highlights:

• Work on the headline and sub-headline. It was described by one guy on the Warrior Forum as a "confusing wreck." The great thing was that he offered me a couple of much better alternative headlines that really illustrated his point.
• Work on the copy -- let it breath. Again, a member of the Warrior Forum supplied new copy to illustrate the point.  I got similar feedback from a reader of the blog.
• Make the site look more professional. The one comment from Digital Point pointed out the fact that a website that was selling wordpress themes needed to be "very professional looking."   I agreed.  Josh actually made fun of my graphics (several times).

Taking Action

So, based on all that feedback, I changed the sales template to something more professional, I changed the headline, and I re-did the copy.  Conversions are up considerably.  You can see the new Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress sales page here and you can compare it to the old sales page.

What do you think?  Did I make it better or worse?  Time and split testing will tell (I will be making a post on how to implement split testing next week).

Let me know your thoughts.

Regards,
Mark

One of the things I love most about blogging is interacting with real people through comments.  So, if you read my blog, Thank You.

I had a really good comment on an old post that I wrote about making $5000 a month using AdSense.   I thought the comment was worth its own post.  The comment author is challenging some of the assumptions in my article based on his own experiences, and asks some good questions.  He starts off by saying that all of this "make money online" stuff is a lot easier to talk about than to actually do.  Boy, that is definately true.

Here is his full comment:

I’m doing the same from last 1 yr 2 months. It’s easy to say than doing all this. Here I prove:

1. In order to bring traffic from articles, you need to write them (time consuming activity).
2. One hr. per month is really not enough in order to promote your site for regular 100 visits traffic (link promotion, writing fresh content, publish it, ping it, social book mark it etc.)
3. On content network, adsense is paying very less money like 0.01 or 0.05 etc. so how you can make 6$ per day.

Waiting for logical answers…

I love comments like this.  This person understands that they have an issue, and they want to find the solution.  They are working through the issues.  From my point of view, the question was very intelligent.  Here is my response.

These are all EXCELLENT points. Let me take them 1 by 1.

1. This is absolutely correct. Not only do they take time, your time is worth money. When you get to the point of having some success, or when you have some money to spend, I would definately recommend outsourcing writing. You can get a 300 word article written for between $1 and $15 depending on the size of your order and the quality you want. If you have a site that will make $100/month once mature, it is easy to justify investing $100 in articles to get it started.

2. Again, your time is worth money. You can outsource. But, once a site is making money, you can often leave it alone. I have a good friend that has a 5 page site that he built 2 years ago. He has not touched it in a year. It has 6 pages and make $200/month in AdSense revenue. He spends zero hours per month promoting that site.

3. You have to select niches with high paying keywords. Examples are weight loss, travel, acne, legal advice, etc. You must not build sites with low CPC — like “sports socks” or “free cheese”. (I am being silly, but you get the idea.)

You can screen your niche ideas for CPC using a tool like the one at SpyFu.com. To see how crazy the CPC can get, check out this list of high paying keywords. http://www.spyfu.com/TopList.aspx?listId=3

Now, you are correct that you will not get paid the AdWords CPC. When estimating AdSense earnings, I assume that Google will keep 50% and the content network will result in a 60% reduction from that. So, I assume that I can get a CPC of 20% of the AdWords cost. That is a rough estimate. It means that if someone is paying $5 for a click, I will get to keep a dollar.

If you are getting $0.01 for clicks, you are either targeting a low-paying niche or your account is “smart priced” due to low conversions or low CTR.

Hope that helps.

This last point is critical.

See, if you are trying to make money from AdSense, you need to understand some basic economics.  The AdSense ad is on your site in the first place only because some business person is paying Google to get a click that will convert into a sale.   Google's gross profit is the amount that Google get's paid for the click minus the cost that takes them to get the click.

What is Google's cost to get the click?  Well, fundamentally, they need to pay for the people and machines that run AdSense, and they need to pay you for the click.  That is why they care about CTR (Click Thru Rate).  It costs them money to show the ad (computer time, bandwidth, etc).  If they have to show an ad 100 times to get one click, they are bummed.  That is why the penalize advertisers and publishers for low CTR.

So, the money they pay you is the amount they got for the click minus their cost and profit (basically).  This means that if you want to get good money from your niche site using AdSense, you need to target high-paying keywords.

What do you think about AdSense?  Are you having any luck making money with it?

Photo: photo credit: purpleslog

I am working on a project over at Coaching With Josh where I am building an AdSense mini-site and documenting my progress day by day.  I am also taking feedback and answering questions as I go.

We just started selecting a niche today, and I posted over a hundred niche site ideas in the Coaching With Josh Forums.

I thought you might like a peek at a few of them:

• Holiday Games & Activities
• Kitchen Remodeling
• Moving house
• New Years Eve Party Planning
• Online Dating
• Parenting skills
• Pregnancy
• Real Estate
• Thanksgiving Party Articles
• Wart Removal
• Wedding Games & Activities
• Craigslist
• Feng-shui
• Formula D Racing
• International Airports
• Myspace
• New Air Travel Rules
• Re-Financing
• Renting A House Or Apartment
• Sports Coaching
• Supercross Racing
• Tattoos
• Vitamins and Supplements
• Astrology
• Auto Responders
• Backyard Activities

Have a great day!

Regards,
Mark

I hope you had a great week, especially if you were somewhere in the world where you were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with your family. I am personally stuffed to the rim with turkey and other traditional holiday food -- it's back to the gym for me on Monday.

I just got off the phone with Internet guru Aaron Abber. He had to call me because I am at my parents house with no high speed internet access (yikes) -- so I am sending this through my laptop via cell phone (a neat trick).

I have been told again and again that it takes days for a new site to get noticed by the internet and that it takes weeks or even months to get a new site ranked well on Google. After that, many people will tell you that it takes months to make money on line. In many cases, that is all completely true.

But it's not true in every case... especially if you know what you are doing.

To prove it, I agreed to let Aaron guest post on my blog so you could see just how Aaron Abber and Joe Swopes have just blown these ideas out of the water, and made some serious cash in the process.

This is a guest post by Aaron Abber of http://www.ListedInstantly.com. Aaron is a niche marketing pioneer, having earned over $323,165.05 in niche marketing alone. Visit http://www.ListedInstantly.com for more tips and tricks to make your niche sites profitable.

Derrick and I had been friends online for about a year. We both owned internet businesses and were discussing our biggest triumphs and failures online. I guess I was feeling a little cocky and I made an offhand comment: “I'll bet I could start from scratch on a Friday morning and make $10,000.00 by Monday.”

As soon as I said it I knew it was a mistake. Derrick immediately called me on it: “Prove it! Prove that you can start from scratch—without using your email list or your existing site—and make $10,000.00 by Monday.”

So, with under Derrick's watchful eye, I started on the next Friday morning at 8am. To say I was nervous was an understatement.

I took all day Friday preparing a new website then launched it at 5pm. By Monday (evening—he hadn't given me a time so I stretched it out as far as I could) I had $8,516.25 in sales. Not $10,000.00, but a nice chunk of change.

(To see a screenshot of my merchant account, go to http://www.ListedInstantly.com )

Now I'm not trying to tell you that anyone can start out from zero and make $8,000.00 in a weekend. What I am telling you is this: You won't know how much you can make until you try. What if you only made $1,000 this weekend? Or $500.00? or even $100.00? Is that such a bed thing?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

To get a complete plan on how you can imitate my success, go to:

http://www.ListedInstantly.com

I have been working with niche sites with Firepow a lot over the last month, and many of my niche sites are monetized with AdSense.  So, I have had AdSense on the brain lately.  As it happens, a valued customer of Niche AdSense Themes contacted me this weekend.  He may choose to reveal himself in the comments, but in case he doesn't, let's just call him George.  George had just gotten a generic email from Google, and wanted some help figuring out what he had done wrong.  Here is an excerpt:

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently
displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our
policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies
on pages such as mycustomerswebsite.com.

Publishers may not place Google ads on pages that violate
Google’s webmaster quality guidelines
(http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35
769#quality). While we've included the following excerpts from
these guidelines, we recommend that you take the time to review
them in their entirety.

The problem is, this email went on to discuss the webmaster guidelines generically, but never indicated what George had done wrong.  His site was not on a forbidden topic, and was not "black hat site."  It was mostly legitimately republished content -- but that content was republished with permission.

Now, getting ads pulled from your site is not the same as getting banned from AdSense.  George's other sites are OK at the moment.  Oddly, the site was de-indexed by Google at the same time.  This is a more severe action, and suggests that the search engine people are talking directly to the AdSense people.

Anyway, the bottom line is, we are not sure what happened exactly.

Usually, AdSense advice is blunt -- "don't click on your own ads".  In my research this weekend, I was reminded of five more subtle things that you need to keep in mind when building sites for AdSense.  Here they are, in no particular order.

Make It About Google's Customer

Ultimately, Google search cares about getting the user a great search result so that the next time the user needs a search engine, they will choose Google.  It is all about Google's market share.  If they put spam at the top of their search results, people will eventually look for a better search engine.

So, if you do something to trick Google to rank your content so that you can make a buck -- that is OK.  Have fun.  Lots of "black hat" guys make a lot more money on the internet than I do.  Business is business.  As long as what you do is legal, you can make your own decisions.  Google is not the law.  But, don't ever forget that they do own the search engine and they answer to Google share holders.  So don't be upset if they yank your listings.  It is their search engine, after all.

Same goes for AdSense.  Always remember that the customer for AdSense is the advertiser -- not you, and not the person who clicks on the ad.  If your content does not generate clicks, or if clicks coming from your site do not increase revenue for the advertiser (Google's customer), you should expect Google to address that.  They do that by paying per click, smart pricing, and banning some sites from AdSense.

Create Some Unique Content

As I mentioned above, Google Search is about the searching user.  If your content is 100% duplicated content from elsewhere on the web, why would Google want to show it?  If they can figure out where it is, they will prefer to show the original content (all things being equal).   However, it is not clear to me that AdSense should care about duplicate content.  There is some hard-to-understand language in the Webmaster Guidelines about duplicate content, but I personally believe that passage refers to mirror sites and not PLR and other "duplicate content."

As I mentioned above, George had a lot of duplicate content.  While it is possible that this got his site banned from AdSense, I really don't think that was the reason.  Still, good unique content is a valuable defense against getting your site banned.

Be Careful About Competing Ads

While it is not clear what ads are OK, be careful about putting ads on your site that "look like" Google Ads.  Google is sensitive about protecting their brand, and will ban your site.

George did have competing ads on that site, and those ads had a footer encouraging people to refresh to get"fresh ads."  We are not sure if this matters to Google or not, but I think it might.  This is my best guess as to why George's site got banned.

Be Careful About Ad Placement

The AdSense ads on George's site are highly optimized to maximize click-through.  One concern we had is that Google gets upset if you try to "trick" the user and make them think that they are clicking on something other than an ad.

Because of this, one thing that people debate a lot is how close ads can be to page titles.  For example, let's say you have a page with the title "Used Cars For Sale" and right below that title you have an AdSense block that makes it seem that the AdSense ads are actually cars for sale on your site.

You can interpret Google's guidelines in such a way as to conclude this violates their TOS.   While I am sure you can violate their TOS this way, I don't think this is an issue with George's site.  However, it is something to keep in mind.

Make Sure You Have A Privacy Policy (and Disclaimers)

As of about last April, Google started requiring a privacy policy.  Make sure you have one on every page that serves AdSense Ads.  I also recommend a disclaimer, although this is not required by Google.  Fortunately, this was not an issue for George -- he did a bang-up job here.

The Bottom Line

Here is the real bottom line -- Google can pull your site for any reason or no reason at all.  So, my strong recommendation is that you do not put all of your eggs in one basket here.  Diversify with other affiliate offers and your own products.  You'll be glad you did.

Regards,
Mark

P.S. -- I know the title said three tips -- I got carried away and inclided five or six.  Sorry about that.

Hey -- hope you are having a great day, and are enjoying my daily post frenzy that I started on Thursday with my post on the importance of lists.    I'll be posting daily for the next few days (possibly longer) and then it will be back to my normal 3 posts per week (Monday, Wed Friday).  We'll see how that goes in November.  So much to do, and so little time.

October Was A Crazy Month

If you have been following my over the last month, you know I am working on three main projects at the moment.  It can be a bit confusing at times, so I wanted to update you on the status:

1. Build 30 quality "AdSense sites" in a variety of niches. This whole thing was motivated by my post about how to make $5000/month on line.  Now, I am calling these AdSense sites, but, in reality I have decided to add a variety of monetization options including eBay links (using the phpBay bay plugin), some ads through the PepperJam affiliate network and other affiliate offers.  Instead of 30 "AdSense sites," this will result in 30 "mini-authority" sites.    I call them "mini-Authority" because they will not have high frequency original content.  Rather, there will be a mix of content from a variety of sources presented in a useful way.  Status:  all 30 domains are purchased and up and running.  About 15 sites are actually running and some are generating a little revenue. I think I sould be able to "finish" them and drip back to 1 hour of work per site per month by December.  We'll see.
2. Full evaluation of Firepow. In building these sites, I realized that Firepow might be just the tool that I need to make this happen.  I have been helping Andrew's team beta-test Blog Import into Firepow (which is working for me in most cases).   Now that that is complete, I plan to get back to blogging about Firepow late next week.  Don't forget that I have arranged for a $300 Firepow discount for you if you cannot wait for my complete review and recommendation.
3. Build my email list using $7 Secrets. This is the big distraction for me at the moment.  I was so impressed with Josh Spaulding's New Age Email Marketing report, that I decided to move the management of my email lists to his "formula."  Part of that experiment involves growing the list, and that means I needed to write a great ebook to offer for sale for $7 as recommended in $7 Secrets.  That eBook is complete, and will launch Tuesday here on MasonWorld.com. If you have not read Josh's report, I recommend it (it is only $7, as you might expect).

So, that is what is going on at the moment.

Hope that clears things up a bit.

By the way, things are likely to get worse before they get better.

I have learned a lot of tricks building these 30 sites (and others before them), and before the end of the year, I will be launching a new Niche Site Building service. If you are interested, you can see the current sales copy at http://www.nichesitenow.com.

Also, am hoping to do a PPC experiment with one of my internet marketing buddies before the end of the year.  As you may remember, I purchased Commission Blueprint, and I am itching to try out PPC.

So, hang in there -- lots of stuff to come before the end of the year.

Thanks,
Mark

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been looking at FirePow as I work on building out my niche sites.

One of the things that I immediately started hearing from people was concern about the price of the FirePow subscription.

I talked to Andrew Hanson about the cost, and he immediately reminded me that it was about return on investment (ROI).  His argument is, quite simply, that you can make your money back many times over by using the tools in FirePow to create a blog empire.

"I get that," I said.  "But money is money." It's fine to say that in the near future, FirePow will pay for itself, but it is still expensive.  It still costs money RIGHT NOW.

So, Andrew responded by offering a discount coupon for MasonWorld.com readers.  For now, if you sign up for FirePow using my link, you can get a whopping $25/month off of your bill.  That's right -- I am offering you a $300/year discount on Firepow.

Use FirePow discount coupon code "mason".

Andrew did not say how long he would be able to offer that deal, and I have not finished my evaluation -- but I did not want to wait.  If you were considering FirePow anyway, I wanted you to have the discount now.

Regards,
Mark

P.S.  I am very impressed with FirePow so far.  If you have questions about FirePow, feel free to ask them here.

For those of you that are interested in building niche sites for AdSense revenue, I wanted to let you know that I will be moving my focus back to niche site creation for the month of October.  My goal in October will be to end the month with 30 niche AdSense sites up and running and promoted.

I got motivated to do this after finally getting a look inside FirePow.  This is a really cool tool that should make it possible to create and promote niche blogs quickly.

I'll be doing lots of the following in October:

• Niche keyword research
• Buying domain names
• Setting up niche blogs
• Creating content
• Outsourcing content creation
• Article Marketing
• Social media promotion
• etc.

Some of the 30 blogs will be brand new, and some will be brought back to life (like the Elvis Blog).  My old readers will remember that one.  Others will live on domains that I have already purchased that are currently idle.

I'll try to report my progress as I move along.

My plan is to get to 30 blogs up and generating AdSense revenue and stay there for a while, touching 1 blog a day each month for about an hour.  On Monday, I'll post some additional information on my October Blog Blitz.

Let me know if you have any questions about niche blogging and I will try to answer them in October.

Thanks,
Mark

I have been working on sales copy a lot lately, so I thought I would post a useful summary of the 15 most important elements of a sales page. This list is adapted from an excellent two-hour lecture presented as part of Aaron Aaber's free mentoring course over at FullTiltBlogging.com.  The audio lecture and the presentation slides are available for download as one the member benefits at LifeFoc.us (Aaron's membership site). In this post, I'll be telling you what the sales page items are. If you want to know how to implement them effectively, you have to talk to someone like Aaron (I am just learning - albeit quickly).

15 Key Sales Letter Components

First, you need to get the prospect's attention. If you cannot command your visitor's attention, they are not going to read your sales copy, and they will not buy. If a qualified prospect does not buy, you have failed. It is as simple as that, and the headline section is critical because almost every legitimate prospect that visits your site will take time to scan the headline. The pre-headline, headline and sub-headline work together with the attention device to get your prospect to read on below the fold. You want to grab their attention, promise them something, or encourage them to read further.

• Pre-Headline. This is that little sentence or two at the top of the sales letter prior to the headline. It is usually a statement that draws the reader to the headline (or motivates the headline in some way). This part is optional.
• Headline. Big font. Often red. Hard to miss. This component is critical to capture attention. Think front page of the New York Times. Note that this headline is almost always in quotes.
• Sub-Headline. Again an optional part that comes after the headline and can serve as the punchline to the headline.Attention Device. Simply put, the purpose of the attention device is to get your reader to read the rest of the copy. It can be part of the headline or stand alone. Often, it comes in the form of a warning, a statistic or an implied story (the story is usually delivered in the body copy below the fold).

So, here is an example:

Ready to finally build your own AdSense Empire using WordPress?

"Warning: The Amazing New Niche Site Themes For WordPress
Will Cause Your Puny AdSense Earnings To Soar"

You May Need To Hire A New Accountant.

Anyway, you get the idea. I am not the best copy writer in the world, but above you can see a pre-headline, a headline, a sub-headline and an attention device in the headline.

The Body Of The Sales Letter

The body of the sales letter needs to breathe and flow. You need to draw your prospect along as they read -- make them want to get to the next part. Tell stories. Break up paragraphs. Seduce your reader.

• Introduction.  Let the prospect know why you are and establish credibility. You can be an expert or have relevant experience documented here. I like the way Jon Leger does this -- he simply lists the great products he has launched before.
• Statement of Problem. If you have a product, you need to be solving a problem with that product, or you will not sell it. Simple as that. Why does your prospect need your product? If they do not know that they need your product, you will have to educate them here.
• Destroying the Old Method.  Take down existing solutions so the prospect can see your solution as the uniquely best option.
• Value Building (Bonuses and Testimonials). Prospects buy when the value excedes the price. What is the value of your product and bonuses. Testimonials can help to show value (and also to reduce risk). There are many ways to build value.
• Price Drop. This is almost a cliche in Internet Marketing, and is done incorrectly most of the time (including in my own sales letters). Aaron has some proprietary and very unique views on how to do this properly. Out of respect to Aaron, I will not reveal them here. Suffice it to say that you need to do more than cross out a wild price of $1997 and put $27 next to it.
• Why This is So Cheap.  Make sure that your deep discount is well justified, otherwise your prospect will think there is a catch. For example, if I offer you a brand-new iPod for $10, you will assume it is stolen.
• Reason for Offer. Why are you making this particular offer today. Urgency can go here (Act Now!)

Getting The Order

OK -- finally it is time for the sale. Just a few things left to do.

• Risk Reversal.  You need to offer an iron-clad money-back guarantee. Convince the prospect that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
• Closing.  You must ask for the sale. Call to action is a critical part of any sales letter. Do not leave the prospect guessing what you want them to do.
• PS.  Use the PS to target people who skipped the sales copy and headed to the bottom of the page to see the price. Summarize the offer and call them to action right there in the PS.

Next Steps

Writing sales copy is probably the most challenging part of Internet Marketing. Each of the 15 items above can be expanded into a full course, so I am really only scratching the surface here. Again, thanks to Aaron Abber for allowing me to summarize one of the many cool courses that you get as a member of LifeFoc.us.

Do you have any questions about sales letter copy? Drop a comment and ask me. If I cannot answer, I will ask Aaron to drop by and pontificate.

Regards,
Mark

Last week was an exciting week. My neighborhood was hit by a tornado that knocked out power and satellite, I celebrated a birthday (I feel old) and I was kidnapped by my wife and taken to an exotic hotel location without my laptop. Working on Internet Marketing without electricity, an internet connection or a laptop is really challenging. Luckily, my BlackBerry was not impacted by this weekends events, so I was able to stay connected.

Over the weekend, I was able to get started in Josh Spaulding's coaching program. Josh is an article marketing and SEO expert (currently ranking on page 1 in Google for make money online), and a really nice guy. When I first got started in Internet Marketing, I became interested in Adsense, and quickly learned that there were guys like Garry Conn that had as many as 100 blogs -- many of which were making money from Adsense. In my research on this topic, I ran across Josh's eBook called Article Marketing Domination and his free eBook Easy SEO. Recently, Josh published another free eBook: $5 Mini-Site Formula. This book was about exactly what I wanted (needed) to know when I started last November.

The MasonWorld Roadmap

Reviewing that eBook has made me rethink the 2008 Roadmap for the MasonWorld Internet Empire. Basically, I have been thinking about what I want to get out of my Internet Marketing hobby. I started this effort in Nov 2007 with some similar goals, but I am continuing to refine them (December seems like an internet lifetime ago).

On this pass of goal setting, I came up with several key overriding concepts:

• Have fun. This is easy, since I am facinated with the internet and technology
• Learn something. This easy. I knew nothing about internet marketing when I started.
• Add some value. Whatever I do, I am not really interested in just "taking" and leaving nothing behind. A good example is this website. At the end of 2008, I would like to be able to point to this site as a valuable resource that people can use.
• Generate revenue. I actually struggled with this. I am not really in this for the money since I have a great day job (as I have mentioned a thousand times). Still, it seems like the measure of success in Internet Marketing is revenue. So, I am making this the lowest priority goal

Of course, there are some constraints:

• Limited time. I am only allowing myself a coupleof hours a day (max) to work at this hobby. My family and my real job come first (in that order).
• Limited funds. I could choose to spend $4700 on an eCourse or something like that. I am sure I could get great results that way. But, I am determined to do this the "hard" way on a limited budget.
• White Hat. I am still not interested in Black Hat techniques. However, I do see that sometimes it is a little hard to tell the Gray stuff from the White stuff.

With this as a framework, that left me with the question of what to try to accomplish in 2008.

Approaches and Goals for 2008

I am currently planning to have the following completed by the end of 2008. Of course, I plan to blog about everything that I learn in the mean time.

• Grow the MasonWorld.com Internet-Based Marketing blog
  • Post 3 times per week about my Internet Marketing experience
  • Grow RSS readership through great content generation
  • Grow email opt-ins through bonus content
  • Add a modest monthly podcast
  • Build a valuable brand with great content that people want to read
• Build three niche information sites
  • Launch 3 new sites with the $5 per day formula
  • Use article marketing to promote the sites
  • Use the Coaching With Josh resources to achieve $5/day in Adsense revenue
  • Work with a great developer to build a killer niche site WP template
  • Consider a plan to grow those sites to something more in 2009
• Build 3 Affiliate Product sites
  • Launch 3 new/existing sites (Elvis will be one of them)
  • Use article marketing to promote the sites
  • Consider a plan to grow those sites to something more in 2009
• Create my very own information product
  • Identify a niche (IM may be the first one)
  • Create an information product (Niche site case study how-to maybe?)
  • Promote and sell the product (or give it away)
• Create and release one report for Butterfly Reports

That's already way too much for 2008, given that I am working on this part time.

So, tonight I am planning on working on article marketing for my new niche sites using Article Post Robot. I bought this tool several weeks ago. I will post about my progress on Wednesday (my next scheduled post).

Best regards,
Mark

Sometimes things just come together.

Just a few hours ago -- earlier today -- I was talking about how I wanted to focus on my niche sites and other key parts of my long term business plan. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere comes the announcement of Josh Spaulding's newly launched private coaching forum. Manna from Heaven.

OK, I admit. It was not out of nowhere. He mentioned it in a blog comment on his blog a few days ago and I have been pestering him about it every day since then. Also, note that manna does not just fall from heaven, but instead it is described as coming with the frost and dew, during the wet seasons. But that is not as exciting for a blog post...where was I?

Oh, yes...

Josh is the author of several important eBooks including Article Marketing Domination (one of my favorite eBooks), has just announced a new private coaching forum. It looks awesome!

I was able to register successfully, but Josh is only taking 100 members initially. The registration is insanely inexpensive (I'd call it cheap), there is no affiliate program, there is no 17 page sales letter, and there are no wild bonuses.

I've known Josh for a while online. He's very helpful and generous in his normal day-to-day dealings with people. I can only imagine what a paid coaching experience will be like with him. I'm pumped.

As an aside, I have met several really cool people in the last few months. (You people know who you are). To those cool people I have yet to meet, know that I am looking forward to it.

Regards,

Mark

Note (added 5/16/08): when this post was written, there was no affiliate program.  On 5/16/08 I added my affiliate link to this post.  I strongly endorse the coaching program as a great value and I continue to get a lot from the program.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the problem of being a "Jack of All Trades and a Master of None." In that post, I talked about how challenging I found it to work on Internet Marketing (IM) part time. IM can be all-consuming. I complained in that post that I had not actually "finished" anything. That post was written at 32,000 feet over the pacific ocean on the way to Hong Kong and eventually to Singapore. I guess the air in the passenger cabin must have been thin, because in the same post where I was complaing about how busy I was, I also argued that I should buckle down and increase my post frequency. Go figure.

Garry Conn Warns of Blogger's Demise

Last night, Garry Conn brought all of this back into focus for me with his outstanding post entitled "Is Making Money Blogging Killing You?" In his post, Garry argues that blogging for dollars is a cut-throat competiton, and that it can totally consume you. He compares the blogging mindset to six-man chess, and argues that this 24-hour-a-day competitive lifestyle can impact your relationships, your health, and your mental state. I often say "Blogging Ate My Brain." I think that is what Garry is talking about. To make matters worse, I am not making money blogging. I am not trying to build a blogging empire. I have other plans, and the blog (which I love) is just a small part of the revenue strategy. So, why in the world do I want to redouble my blogging efforts? Answer -- I don't.

Really, Garry makes the strongest of two arguments for a reduced post frequency on MasonWorld.com. Garry's argument is that when you are building readership, you need to allow enough time for people to find your post. Based on my experience on this blog, that is at least two days. The other strong argument has to do with my long term business plan for my internet marketing hobby. Long term, I am interested in getting onto the information marketing end of the internet marketing business. Josh Spaulding warned in a post about information products last November that you need to be careful not to spend too much time blogging when your business plan tell you to work on other things.

MasonWorld Business Plan

So, what is my "business plan?" Well, I plan to have this blog as a resource for people coming after me. It is a journal of my experience. It is not intended to be a big profit center. I am experimenting with four "niche super-sites." The public example of these is the "Elvis Site." These niche super-sites are sites that are more than just MFA (made-for-adsense) sites. They are inteded to contain valuable information, market affiliate products, have user formus, etc. I intend to create and market information products (although I have not identified my ultimate niche yet). I can say that I find viral reports interesting, and I have been checking out Butterfly Reports. I am not sure where that will lead. What I really want is a solid product like Article Marketing Domination -- but not necessarily in the IM niche.

Ultimately, Garry Conn is right on the money -- If you are not careful, blogging will kill you and your business plan.

New Post Frequency

So, effective immediately I am changing my post frequency to Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I will try to post in the morning on those days. In the mean time, I am planning on increasing my efforts on other core businesses. That will give me even more to write about -- which will be great. Look for those musings here in the coming weeks.

Best regards,
Mark

Last week, I updated you on my Niche Super-Site Project, History of Elvis. My strategy of going after long-tail keywords paid off, and I demonstrated a front page ranking for history of elvis using link directory submissions. (It is important to remember that there are links from this site to the Elvis site as well). This organic search engine ranking is starting to "pay off." In the last 30 days, most of the traffic to the site has come from search engines as seen below:

It is interesting to note that 15 searches in the last 30 days came from AOL and MSN. I never pay attention to those engines, but I have heard it said that the people using AOL and MSN are generally less computer saavy and have higher conversion rates than their Google bretheren.

What are people searching for?

In any case, it is not surprising to see that the google searches are hitting for history of elvis. As of this writing, I have moved up from the number 10 spot to the number 7 spot. Other search terms that are starting to hit include some products:

This is cool, because you will recall that I enabled this site with and eBay store using phpBay and other affiliate products using PopShops. This probably means that I need to revisit my keword strategy. As it turns out, Elvis is not a great niche for Adsense revenue because the amount of money you can get from each cleck is low.

Value of Elvis clicks

As you can see on spyfu.com, this is not a great niche if you are going after PPC revenue.

So, no one will get rich collecting money from Adsense on this one.

Next Up, Article Marketing

In my next post on Elvis, I'll talk about Article Marketing. After reading Article Marketing Domination, buying a copy of Article Post Robot and outsourcing the creation of 20 Elvis articles on Scriptlance, I am ready to roll!

Talk to you soon.

Best regards,

Mark

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If you've been in internet marketing more that twenty minutes, then you've heard of Mike Filsame. He is the famous author of the Butterfly Marketing Effect, which he claims is the most profitable eBook ever sold. Mike is the undisputed King of viral marketing and has been for the past several years. But I believe he just started his own dethroning by letting us all in on it.

Today in my inbox, I got a marketing email from Mike. He is rolling out his latest project -- a viral membership site called Butterfly Reports. Currently he is working with Rod Beckwith who has been around as long as Mike has and is the genius behind this cool new Butterfly Reports site, and many other sites.The idea is very simple. Members will receive new viral reports each month (the number of reports you receive depends on your membership level).

These viral reports, available in different niches, are branded with your name and website, and contain affiliate links. Some of the affiliate links are set to your affiliate ID, and some are set to "Mike and Rod's affiliate ID." The percentage of links in the report that point back to you also depends on your membership level (Silver, Gold or Platinum).

One you get a report, you can use it however you wish. You can give it away, send it to your list, blog about it, whatever. The idea is to get it to as many people as possible.

Here is the cool thing -- the Silver level is free (one report per month). So, I signed up just to have a look. Of course, this is what Mike is counting on. Using a free offer, he is able to move me down the funnel. After I accepted the free offer, there was an upsell opportunity for $1. I took that too. Filsame blows my mind -- and I was really curious. Along with the free monthly report, you also get a free high quality ecover graphic to go with it. How cool is that?

Just a reminder under the heading of full disclosure: if you sign up using my link and end up paying Mike money, I get a referral fee.

Once you log in to the site, you are offered your first viral report that is actually about the site. More genius. It's a perfect first report since it promotes the site itself, which has an affiliate program (I am using affiliate links in this article from that report).

The report itself is very nice. Entitled Turning One Into A Million, it is basically a training document for the site and the viral marketing method itself. You can download the report here. Note that some of the links in the report are branded to my affiliate ID, and some are branded back to Mike. The more you pay Mike, the higher your percentage of links.

In another twist, you can also submit reports to this site to be included in their database.  in that case, you could write a report and have thousands of people promoting it for you.  Like the above example, you would get a percentage of the affiliate links pointing back to your Clickbank and  PayDotCom accounts.

I think this is really cool. Check it out for yourself and decide what you think. The Silver level is free. After you do, please come back here and let me know what you think.

Best regards,

Mark

Several months ago, I started a case study of the Elvis Niche. I built a site, added content, and demonstrated that I could rank for a very long tail keyword with no competition. As I mentioned in that post, I felt like there was no stopping me after I ranked for “Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie”, and I announced my intention to attack higher competition phrases — “elvis presley collectibles” (74 searches per day), the “life of elvis presley” (226 searches per day) and “elvis presley history of” (4383 searches per day). My plan for ranking was to use Link Directories and Article Marketing.

Well, I have not started my article marketing, but I am accumulating backlinks

Backlinks Make The Difference

Because of this post series on niche sites, I have quite a few backlinks for terms similar to "history of elvis" and history of elvis presley or "elvis presley history of". A quick check of Google shows that we are magically on the front page! Woo hoo!

Obviously, the next goal is to move up the page.

Using Link Directories - OK or Not?

Sometimes, you learn as you go along based on the advice that you get. One guy that I trust recommended that I use free link directory submissions as a way to get backlinks. When these directories are new (and free), they have very low page rank. Once they get older, the page rank may increase, making the link more valuable. This takes a long time.

I tried to figure out if this was "white hat." According to Google's Webmaster Guidelines, they recommend:

Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Now, free link directories are not exactly "industry specific expert sites," but it is pretty clear that Google does not consider all link directories to be bad. When these directories are new (and free), they have very low page rank. Once they get older, the page rank may increase, making the link more valuable. So, I'd be interested in your comments regarding the acceptability of free link directory submission (and the effectiveness).

Next step is article marketing as described in Article Marketing Domination.  I've hired someone on ScriptLance to write some content for the site, and I'll be writing about that experience in a future post.

Thanks, Mark

Be sure and check out these related posts.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

There has been a cool contest going on over at Caroline Middlebrook's blog. I really like her stuff, so I am playing along. From an internet marketing standpoint, this is very clever. This contest causes you to do two things -- dig through all of Caroline's old content and create links to that content. This is a really great example of what is called "linkbait." Caroline has basically set up a contest that generates deep links back to her site. This will improve the value that Google places on her content as Google considers inbound links as "votes" for the importance of stuff. What's cool about this contest is that it is pretty classy.

If you are interested in participating, the contest ends soon (tomorrow UK time).

If you are reading my post -- no cheating. You have to find the eggs yourself (he he).

This is my favorite egg location: Caroline's Case Study of a Niche WordPress Site

You should read these posts anyway:

Twitter-Stumbleupon Deadly Combo
My Favorite eBook: Zen to Done

Doubling Subscribers to You Blog
Stats, Stats and More Stats
Keywords Will Set You Free

Others include:

101 CSS Galleries Backlinks

Focus or Deversify
Grow Your Twitter Audience
Caroline Who?

Cats Need Pagerank Too
Embedding Youtube in Your Posts
Blog HTML Validation
About Caroline
Niche Site Creation with WordPress

Warrior Forum Tour (great post)
Do Follow Please

Thanks to all the Stumblers

Pointless Blog Posts
Products that Sell (like teaching)
Building Assets, Skills, Wealth, Happiness and Harmony
Marketing Email Lists
IM Ebooks
PLR Content

Writing Ebooks Is Not So Easy
Ebook Project, Torrent File
Yaro Rocks!
Link Lovin
The Prize -- Email Course Project

Successful Blogging Secrets - Where's Your Head?

Regards,

Mark

One of the biggest challenges for me personally working on Internet Marketing part time is focus. As a part time Internet Marketer, I have a very limited amount of time to spend on tasks related to my new hobby. In fact, I try not to spend more than a couple of hours a day on Internet Marketing related activities. When I started out, my goal was to demonstrate that I could make some money on the Internet -- inspired by a segment I saw on the Today Show.

Since that time, I have started several blogs, a link directory, a couple of niche sites, some forums, switched blogging platforms, switched hosting companies, done some business/administrative tasks, read books, listened to podcasts, read and commented on blogs, studied marketing, joined countless affiliate programs, hired writers, won contests, built a mailing list, made friends, hired programmers, purchased software, written php code, changed blog themes many times, chatted on GTalk, and hung out on forums. The one thing that I have not done much of is make money. Go figure.

Speaking of distractions, I am writing this post on a plane bound for Hong Kong using ecto, which I mentioned earlier this week. I think this software is a keeper -- but I have not quite made up my mind. (Too bad they don't have an affiliate program). It does have some limitations that are annoying, however, For example, you cannot add a category or contol the post slug.  My friend Garry Conn likes Blogdesk.  I need to check that out.

Back to my story.  Don't get me wrong. I am having a blast, and I have learned a ton. The problems are that I haven't really finished anything - and the learning is not well documented. As it happens, my wife will tell you that this "unfinished project thing" also happens around the house. Great at starting projects; less great at finishing them. So, I thought it would be interesting to list all the current projects that I have underway or in my mind and see if I could prioritize them. Once again taking a page out of Caroline Middlebrook's book, I going to create a Projects page to document all of this so I can keep it straight in my own mind.

Another thing that I plan to do is increase my post frequency on this blog by making sure that I document what I did that day. After all, the value that I am trying to provide is an account of my experience. I am not trying to claim that I can teach people how to make $4B on the Internet this week. I'll categorize the posts by project. So watch for the post count to go up in the coming weeks.

So, what are all these current projects about? I'll work on a list tonight and post it tomorrow.

Best regards,

Mark

Well, it's early morning in Singapore. What a beautiful city. I woke up this morning to one of those confusing moments where you are not sure what city you are in, but you are positive you are not home. I hate that.

Last night as I was leaving Hong Kong, I got a message from Josh Spaulding that he had just released his new eBook called $5 Mini-Site Formula. At 17 pages, it's an easy read. That's one of the great things about Josh -- he gets straight to the point. In the book, he makes a couple of critical points about how to build a niche site that will generate at least $5 per day in Adsense revenue:

• Pick a niche that has high pay per click revenue
• Pick long tail keywords that you can rank for
• Build a simple site
• Market with article marketing.

This is great timing. Of course, I have been working on my series about Elvis and Niche Super-Sites. My site violates Josh's premise about high-paying Adsense ads, but it's spot-on with the rest of his book. Actually, the Elvis niche was picked at random, but I do hope to generate some affiliate revenue one I can get traffic there. I have hired a writer to write articles for that site -- and I need to post about that process too.

Most of the marketing strategy Josh describes is a condensed version of his Article Marketing Domination eBook (which I recommend).  I'm using that method to promote the Elvis site. One thing that Josh does a good job of in the $5 eBook is describe how to select a niche using free tools.  "Free" is a really important issue for people who are getting started -- you can waste a lot of money buying stuff you don't need. I personally have been using Micro Niche Finder to accomplish what Josh describes, but the free tools he mentions to find long tail keywords work great too.

So, Josh's report has motivated me to start start another niche project and report on it here. I am thinking about the credit card niche. Stay tuned.

Best regards,
Mark

So much has been going on in the last few weeks. Most obviously, I was able to convince Garry Conn to redesign my blog and create this killer custom theme just form me. Garry is a great guy, and he knows a heck of a lot about niche IM. On top of that, he is pretty handy at php, CSS and graphics. If you need someone you can trust to work on your blog for a fair price, I can honestly recommend him unconditionally. I am still turning some knobs and adjusting some dials (most notably, Aweber), but I could not be happier with the new look (and the amazing service from Garry).

Turning my attention back to Elvis Presley

Now that the new theme is up, I simply cannot believe that my plan to document my creation of a Niche Super-Site started on February 4th. Man, time flies when you are having fun with part-time Internet Marketing. In case you missed the press frenzy in early February (LOL), I am quite literally taking a page out of Caroline Middlebrook's free eBook and documenting my experience of trying to create a niche site. I picked a random topic (Elvis Presley), and so far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site
• Adding Adsense
• Adding Amazon Omakase Widget
• Adding a favicon
• Testing the Long Tail Keyword (1) (2) and (3)

At the end of the long-tail keyword test, we were able to declare victory because I now rank on page one of Google for the killer MMO phrase "Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie.” This shows that on-page SEO works to get listed for a search term. The problem is that where you rank for that term depends on your off-page SEO. For more on this, I recommend the free EasySEO eBook from Josh Spaulding. As I mentioned in my previous post, with “Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie” under our belt, it is now time to attack higher competition phrases -- “elvis presley collectibles" (74 searches per day), the "life of elvis presley" (226 searches per day) and "elvis presley history of" (4383 searches per day).

Simple plan for niche market SEO

Simply put, my strategy is to create a landing page for Elvis Presley collectibles and another for Life of Elvis Presley. I'll write good SEO copy and pay attention to details like making sure the keywords appear in the title tag, headers, beginning of the article, exerpt, etc. Basically, I will simply do all of the things that are documented in the free EasySEO eBook. Once those pages are complete, I plan to use the variation on Bum (article) Marketing taught in Josh's Article Marketing Domination (AMD). If you are not familiar with article marketing, the basic idea is to write articles about your niche containing your keywords. At the end of the article, you include links back to your site for your keywords. You submit the article to article directories. These directories are well indexed, and they allow you people to copy your article, propagating your links. (Note that you do not put these articles on your own site).

In Article Marketing Domination, Josh outlines some key steps for article marketing, including

• Creating effective articles
• Creating an effective signature block
• Submission strategies

So, I plan to put this to the test starting in a few days. The problem is, I need some articles. I am not sure I have lots of Elvis Articles in me (this is why it is useful to choose a niche you really care about).

Buying Articles

Article marketing is the perfect place to use a writer for hire (ghost writer). I was able to hire a lady on ScriptLance to write 20 300 word articles about Elvis for $70 ($3.50 per article). ScriptLance is neat because your job goes out for bids, and you can select from the people that respond. This writer has a BA liberal arts and is US based. The $70 is held in escrow until I am happy. Now, I might not always want to spend $70 on a marketing -- but this is an experiment...

So, we'll see how it goes. The traffic data for HistoryOfElvis.com is contaminated by this case study, so it may be hard to judge. Again, we'll see.

Topics remaining on my list for this niche super-site series include the following:

• eZineArticles Content
• Write your own content
• Set up AA404 plugin
• Set up a pseudo-link-directory as pillar content
• Remember to back up your data.
• Comment Kahuna
• Secure WordPress
• Other marketing ideas
• The 50 site checklist
• Others…

Best regards,

Mark

%RELATEDPOSTS%

I have mentioned how much I like Caroline Middlebrook's blog before. Caroline's eBook on building niche sites in WordPress inspired my current "Niche Super-Site case study." It's inspiring to watch her progress because she is doing what I want to do -- having success making money on line without going down the "snake oil path." A lot of people refer to Caroline as "the honest blogger," and that is about the highest compliment that can be paid in my book.

So, I was surprised and excited to hear that Caroline is finally working on an email-based StumbleUpon course that will result in her building an email mailing list. I was surprised because she has resisted this in the past. She finally settled on this project because it focus on delivering valuable free content, and not on selling. In fact, she has no definite plans to sell any specific products right now. For now she is happy to add value and learn about building lists. The press was stunned and amazed, and as you can see here, the story was instantly picked up by Net Money Daily.

I also said I was excited. I was excited because I have wanted to start working on my own list. Jay and Sterling over at Internet Business Mastery are always talking about the value of lists. Like Caroline, they focus on real businesses (not snake oil). They also happen to have the best Internet Marketing Podcast on the internet. Anyway, as usual I will be able to leverage off of Caroline's excellent work. This is great for me. As a part-time internet entrepreneur, I need all the help via mentoring I can get.

See, even though this is not Caroline's focus at this time, mailing list are important for sales. I heard once (from Sterling?) that studies show that it takes an average of 7 contacts before someone buys something. The cool thing here is that Caroline is not all about money - and she will build a list of people that know that about her. I expect that if she tries to sell me something from the list, it will be something that she really believes in. Why? Because that is her behavior. So, let's forget about internet marketing for a minute. What if one day Caroline's becomes aware of someone in her community that needs some help? She can use her list to ask for some help. It's permission marketing. People on your list have given you permission to talk to them. Lists are powerful -- they are the asset in an internet marketing operation.

Now the cool thing is that Caroline is introducing the project as a contest. The winner gets the privilege of having Caroline use their Aweber Affiliate ID to sign up for Aweber's excellent mailing list management service. This is an excellent prize as the affiliate commission is paid each month for the life of the subscription. Very cool. Aweber is really supposed to be the best, and if it's good enough for Yaro Starak, it's good enough for me.

So, I knew right away, I had to try to win.

But, Caroline has thousands of readers. No telling how many entries there will be. It's all very brilliant really -- a viral contest about mailing list to get mailing list opt-ins. I love it. Anyway, I was immediately worried. See, Caroline lives in the UK, and I live in the US. I was scared to death that she might still be pissed about that whole taxation without representation - tea party thing. Then I thought that maybe she is already over that. Phew. (God save the Queen and all that).

So, I settled on a multi-part entry. Here is my entry to Caroline's email course project contest in multiple parts:

1. Appeal to her European heritage. I've never been to Stratford-upon-Avon, but I suspect quoting William Shakespeare could have some positive effect. As it happens, much like Nostradamus, Shakespeare predicted the arrival of Web 2.0. "Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast." Of course he was talking about the dangers of quick love in Romeo and Juliet -- or was he?
2. Buy her a word. I actually bought the word stumble from The Big Word Project and pointed it at yet to be defined page on her site. (Caroline, you need to make a landing page. You now own the word "stumble". This is a big responsibility). The Big Word Project allows you to purchase a word from their list to represent a site. That site will then represent stumble in their list and when people click on it, they will be taken to Caroline's site. The project is aimed at changing definitions and creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.
3. Write poetry. Women love poetry. I wrote a haiku:

Web two-point-oh comes

In it's wake, some will stumble.

Some will be stumbled.

4. Digg and Stumble her contest announcement. OK, that was shameless, I know. But, I did it. I'm not proud, but I did it. I really want to win. I need to win. Winning is everything.
5. Find a cool graphic for my post. Boy, I sure did that. The above "stumbling down the stairs" graphic is from All Sux dot Com. I have given them a backlink, so hopefully they wont be pissed that I used their graphic without permission.
6. Long sales letter. Caroline loves long sales letters. I suspect she will be using a lot of long sales letters in her email list. I could add testimonials and yellow highlighting. There could be bonus video and free ebooks if she picks me. It could be a limited time offer. I would win for sure then. Strike that. Just kidding Caroline.
7. Redesign my blog.  Sure, it's a big expense and a lot of work.  But if I really expect to win this contest, I need to go all out.  So, a blog redesign may be just the ticket!

8. Call on a higher power. Looks like some local advertising might be just what I need to win.

That about does it for my entry. If you like my entry, please leave a comment here for Caroline to see, stumble it, and then go visit her blog. Note that I reserve the right to augment my entry before the deadline...never know what the competition will bring.

Thanks,
Mark