Neil Shearing’s Internet Marketing Strategies

A few months back I promoted Liz Sherwood’s AdGold member’s site where she does all the research for TWELVE niche Adsense sites each month and then sends that research out to members every month on CD-ROM with an accompanying booklet. The research for each site contains 20 original, keyword-optimized articles for each niche, graphic headers, introductions, conclusions, website templates, keyword lists, customized autoresponders, recommended affiliate links and much more.

In short, you get everything you need to build twelve sites for automatic revenue each month.

Liz has just re-opened the doors to 73 new members (at the time of writing) and I expect this new offer to sell out quickly. If you’re interested in getting the hardest parts of generating quality sites done for you, click on this link for more details.

Have you seen this handy tool?

http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_prediction

It predicts your PageRank for your pages/sites. I’m not sure how they do it, but they calculate that this blog has a predicted PageRank of 5 (rounded up from 4.8). Not bad for something I started just a few weeks ago!

If you missed out on the “blog and ping” wave, like I did, you’ll want to keep a very close eye on the new groundswell called “tag and ping”. This will be huge… in fact, it already is. Check out this link and sign up for more information.

I’ve had a “sneak peek” at the course and I’m very impressed. A few years ago you could slap up a blog and get it indexed by the search engines almost immediately. In fact, I did the Google Gatecrash report on it. I slapped up a blog at blogger.com and got it indexed within 48 hours… I also got a site of mine refreshed in the Google index because the blog linked to it. And natually, the on-topic link from the blog to the main site didn’t do it any harm.

Fast forward a few years and the whole “blog and ping” phenomenon has died down… mainly because it’s not as effective anymore. However, blogs ARE effective communication tools, and the quality blogs still get frequent search engine crawls and high pagerank. Having a blog and using it to communicate to your visitors AND point the search engines to your sites is still an effective marketing method. Anyone can get a blog… just sign up for free at blogger.com.

So, to the new system… tag and ping… what’s it all about?

Well, in a nutshell, how do search engines know what topic each separate blog post is about? They don’t. I’ve blogged about everything from my hedge to my articles to my local beach! That makes blogs difficult to categorize. So… someone smart said that people should use “tags” (like nametags… simple identifying keywords) to let search engines know what the separate posts are about. For example, I would tag my hedge post as “neil shearing, hedge, escallonia”. There are now a whole breed of new search engines crawling blogs and categorizing the posts based on these tags. Want an example? Check out this page…

http://www.technorati.com/blogs/http://www.neilshearing.com

On that page you’ll see the information Technorati has compiled about this blog. When I did my last post, I included the tag “page rank”… and if you search Technorati tags for “page rank” my post appears at the top, at the time of writing. Having this blog listed at Technorati and similar sites is a great way to get “authority” links pointing to this blog. Note, this doesn’t work for “regular” websites, so you’ll need to grab a blog and begin categorizing your posts using tags to benefit.

Technorati is only one site indexing these tags and trying to better categorize all the millions of daily blog posts. By using tags to let them know what your posts are about, you’ll get links and targetted traffic to your blog, and from your blog to your main sites.

This is just a brief overview of “tag and ping”, and I haven’t even touched on “social bookmarking” which has the power to get quality links to your site almost immediately. For an easy-to-understand explanation on these topics, I suggest you head over to this site and sign up for notification of the product release in a few days.

Watch out… here comes the tag…

Tag: tag

I was doing a bit of research about blogs today because of a new product I was asked to review. (I’m still reviewing it, so won’t give any half-baked opinions on it yet… stay tuned). Anyways, I found this site… http://www.britblog.com/

It lists British blogs. Well, heck, I’ll have a link on there please.

So, I filled out the form, confirmed my email address and, within a few hours, my listing appears on a PR6 page…

http://www.britblog.com/new/

Sweet!

Now I know you may not be able to get listed on BritBlog… most of my readers are not in Britain. But the point is that you only need to do a little searching to find great places to get high quality links. After all, I stumbled across Britblog. I wasn’t even looking for sites to list my blog on!

By the way, some people will say, “well, that’s only a PR6 page because it’s the newest listings and you’ll soon drop off that page”. True! So I get a PR6 link for a while and the permanent link to this blog is on a PR4 page… still not bad to my mind. This is the PR4 page…

http://www.britblog.com/directory/category/internet_5.html

:-)

Tag: page rank 

Well, my 15-day trial with Cloudmark is up. They filtered out 1,425 spam emails from a total of 2,868 checked… so half my email is spam… sounds about right!

When I checked the spam folder they added to my Outlook(tm) application I could see all the usual rubbish emails…

… promising to make my male part bigger with pills, patches (!)

… phishing for my bank/PayPal details

… telling me it’s not too late to buy/sell this particular stock

… all the other garbage.

… but next-to-no false positives… only about one or two per hundred “spams” detected.

Cloudmark say I’ve saved 3 hours from using their plugin for the 15 days. Hmmm. Perhaps.

They also say that those three hours are worth a total of $79.17 to me. What rubbish!

If you offered me three hours of quality time I’d pay you $500 per hour… so that’s $1,500. Don’t tell me what my three hours is worth without asking me what value I place on an hour of my time.

Anyways, that’s all beside the point. The point is that the tool is incredibly valuable to me, I’m very happy with it, and I’ve signed up at $39.95 per year. At just over $3 per month, that’s great value. (you can also pay monthly if you wish… at $3.99 per month)

If you want to try it, click this link to get your free 15-day trial download. If it works for you, please use this referral code… eaa76 … when you purchase and I’ll get a free month. Thanks.

(why they couldn’t just let me use a direct affiliate link instead of a clunky “referral code” system I don’t know)

I got this email from Google today with regards to their Adsense program…

We’re writing to let you know about a coming change to the appearance of your Google ads. Your ads currently display the default Google colour palette, Seaside (formerly known as Mother Earth). In the near future, we plan to update the default palette to Open Air, a new palette containing the same set of colours, but without the blue border. We’ve found that many publishers prefer the cleaner look of this palette and have also seen that a blended colour palette performs better for them — attracting user interest while still maintaining the distinction between ads and content with the ‘Ads by Google’ label.

Please note that this change will only affect your ad units where your ad code does not specify colours.*  For all other units, your colour selections will be retained.

Hmmm, what on Earth is that about? Sorry for the pun! I’m not sure, but at least they spell “colour” the right way.

/runs and hides.

Today I purchased a new piece of software at my local computer store because I’d heard good things about it and I wanted to test it and find out whether it worked as well as I’d been led to believe.  I was absolutely blown away!  This new tool I’m using is fantastic!  It’s going to revolutionise the way I write articles, reports, blog posts and ebooks.  It also works for answering e-mails and technical support tickets.  In fact, anything that I would normally type I can now do about 10 times faster.  I’m using this new tool in addition to one I was already using to increase my productivity.  The two tools being used together are like using dynamite to mine instead of picks and shovels.

I know this post is a bit of a teaser but I want to do more research and more thorough tests on these tools working together before I let you know exactly what I’m doing.  So far, though, I am very, very impressed!

The reason I’m so excited is that there are a lot of people who prefer receiving their information as articles, reports and ebooks instead of watching movies online or paying a fortune for physical products to be delivered to them.  There’s still a huge amount of life left in creating informational products, articles and reports online for people to read, download at their leisure and print off.  In fact it’s what my business is built around, and the only problem I had with creating lots and lots of reports, articles, and ebooks was the time it took me to create them.  Now it seems as though I’ll be able to create those reports, articles and ebooks in about a 10th of the time it took me before.  I’m very excited about the possibility of sharing my information much more easily than ever before!

1: Sterling Valentine did five figures on day one and six figures within four days. Not bad for someone virtually unknown until the build up to his product. He also broke into the Alexa top-1000 most visited sites. I have to say, though, it seems like Michael Cheney’s launch was bigger!

2: Yesterday was best-ever Adsense day… again… based on more clicks not traffic. If I earned what I made yesterday for a whole year, it’d be over $30,000 hands-free income. Thanks Michael.

3: It’s gone quiet! After Michael’s launch and Sterling’s launch, there’s a lull. Who’s next? What will be the next hot product? Will it be yours?

Actually, it’s interesting (to me) that the Internet marketing business moves forward in lots of little jumps… as a whole and in my own business the product launches are intense periods of activity followed by slow periods where I can take time off and relax more. Sometimes I wish there were more consistency… but on the other hand, the excitement of the action periods is a lot of fun.   

When people say they’re “ambitious”, does it mean anything? Ambition without action is totally worthless, right? What people should say, if they really are “go-getters” is that they have “drive“. People with drive have ambition, determination and take action. I remember in one of Jim Edwards‘ products he basically said achieving your goals came down to “taking massive action”. I can’t argue with that.

So why don’t people do it? Why do so few take action? Is it a lack of drive? Is it because they have too many other pressures like spouses, children and jobs that take up all of their time? Do they make excuses and sit in front of the TV watching “brainless” shows? (I know I do… sometimes)

Conversely, what is it that drives people? Is it the desire to build a legacy? Is it the desire to help people? Is it the desire to make money for themselves? Is it the desire to retire early? Is it simply a total aversion to working for someone else? Is it the desire to provide security for their dependants? Is it a significant other pushing them each day? Is it the fact that they feel time pressures more than other people and take action “before it’s too late”? After all, no-one is guaranteed a tomorrow. Do some people intutively understand that more than others and react to it?

Probably for different people it’s a combination of all those factors… and more I haven’t identified.

Which is your driving factor? Is it primarily one of the above? All of the above? Some other factor?

Something has to motivate you, drive you, push you to take action. Without taking action, nothing happens.

Some other comments…

“So let me ask you… what are you doing after work today? Are you going to watch TV or work towards quitting the day job and gaining your freedom? One road is dull and predictable, the other is full of fun and adventure. Which path will you choose?” (Michael Campbell)

“I missed Seinfeld on Thursday nights but it was sure worth it. And now I’m catching all the re-runs anyway! ” (Jim Daniels)

“Get this… after watching the videos I made the changes Cheney suggested. My clicks went up 372% and my revenues went up 283% in less than a week.” Michael Campbell, quoted from his newsletter and blog.

Yes, Michael Campbell’s referring to the Adsense suggestions/tweaks/tips from Michael Cheney that I’ve been talking about for a few weeks now. It’s like a “lightbulb moment” for your Adsense earnings when you see doubling or trebling of clicks, clickthrough percentages and earnings. I won’t say you heard it here first…. but I was one of the first to mention Michael Cheney’s Adsense Videos!

For several months covering the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006 my automatic addition of new customers names and email addresses to my customer list as GetResponse wasn’t working. When I found that out, I gathered up all the details and asked GetResponse to add the missing people into the list… which they did.

GetResponse added the missing customers to the list as if they’d made their purchase on the day they were added to the list… which caused me a problem because the next day several thousand people got an email message from me saying, “did you get your order OK”? Naturally, I got a ton of replies saying “I didn’t order anything yesterday, what happened”? I had to do a damage-limitation email to the people on that list who had been added within the last 48 hours saying, “I just want to apologise for a little technical gremlin who’s causing some confusion. There were no additional sales and you haven’t bought anything you didn’t know about. ”.

All that happened about two weeks. What’s interesting is that I send further follow-up messages including one which asks, “So how did I do”? It’s a survey asking people how well the order process went, how well the product delivery went and so on. Overnight I just got a few dozen replies to that survey from the people who were imported into the list about 2 weeks ago. Those people had purchased from me in the past six months, but not recently… so the responses I got were more about me and my business than about specific products they’d bought.

The results were incredibly positive.

Here are just a sample of the comments…

> 6: Would You Recommend The Product You Bought From
>   Me To A Friend?
>
>  [ x ] Yes
>  [  ] Maybe
>  [  ] No
>
> Reasons?
>  [  x]Easy to order and helpful programs that most people can use

> 6: Would You Recommend The Product You Bought From
>    Me To A Friend?
>
>   [x ] Yes
>   [  ] Maybe
>   [  ] No
>
> Reasons?
>   [ x] A very concise guide to internet business success

> 6: Would You Recommend The Product You Bought From
>    Me To A Friend?
>
>   [ x ] Yes
>   [  ] Maybe
>   [  ] No
>
> Reasons?
>   [ Because you offer quality, valuable products. You’re not the type of person ( in my opinion ) that will sell any type of junk just to make a few bucks like a lot of other people do. In other works, I Trust You!]
 

> 6: Would You Recommend The Product You Bought From
>   Me To A Friend?
>
>  [X  ] Yes
>  [  ] Maybe
>  [  ] No
>
> Reasons?
>  [ You are well known and respected on the internet & your products have valuable information ]
 

> 6: Would You Recommend The Product You Bought From
>    Me To A Friend?
>   [x  ] Yes
>   [  ] Maybe
>   [  ] No
>
> Reasons?
>   [x  ]
> I trust you and believe you are an  honest marketer who only recommends products that will help enhance the lives of others. You are a person that tells the truth as you see it, one cannot ask for more than that. 

It’s not exactly a scientific survey, but I’m happy with the feedback.