Neil Shearing’s Internet Marketing Strategies

I’ve written hundreds of articles about making money online, working from home and all aspects of running a home based business in the past ten years, many of which are sitting mothballed on my computers or web server. From time to time I’ll be digging some out and posting them here just to give them an airing and get rid of the cobwebs. Obviously I’ll post the ones that are still relevant. I won’t be posting the ones about how great and innovative x.com is. (they were bought out by PayPal in March 2000 , in case you were wondering) Boy do I feel old!

My good online friend Dr Mani (who has been known to visit this blog!) told me he “lost” his list of contacts recently. Since having a good list is of primary importance to doing business online, Mani has been forced into desperate action. He’s offering over $200 dollars worth of his own original info-products for just ten dollars in order to rebuild his lists.

Mani knows he’s making a crazy offer here, but he really wants people to take his products at such a low, low price. I think he said it’s for a very limited time only, so if you’re interested, click here to check it out. You’ll then be able to get your hands on all these original product for a total of just $10…

1. Info-Product Profit Blueprint

This report outlines a step by step process you can implement in ANY niche market - and use to create your first info-product quickly… in just weeks, if not days!  Price: $27

2. Hot Email Headlines

A collection of 40+ attention-grabbing email headlines guaranteed to get your emails opened and read. Price: $9.95

3. Hot Email Sales Letters

A set of 23 tested and proven email sales letters that you can model and base your email promotions and solo ads upon. Price: $27

4. List Builder Profits

A unique technique to build your list fast - and even profit as you do it - by tapping into OTHER people’s lists, ethically and with mutual profit! Price: $47

5. Forum Fortunes

Some novel twists that will let you maximize the impact from any time you spend posting on forums and participating in online discussions. Price: $5

6. How To Track Ads

A basic primer on setting up ad tracking systems that let you see exactly where your advertising dollars are being spent - and calculating your return on investment. Price: $5

7. Ezines ‘r’ EZ

A 7-day email tutorial to plan, create, publish and promote your email newsletter - and get your first subscribers - quickly and easily, starting from scratch.  Price: $24.97

8. Instant Upsell Generator

A useful online tool to help you craft an ‘upsell’ webpage to complement your info-product sale, and boost your profits effortlessly. Price: $27

9. Content Profit Secrets

How to use keyword-loaded content-rich websites to attract search engine traffic and visitors to your new website - and profit maximally from your content. Price: $27

10. Refund Profit Secrets

How to turn ‘lost’ sales into continuing income streams - easily! Price: $8.50

Click here for full details.

As some of you will know, I highly respect Paul Smithson who created the XSitePro software that helps people with no HTML knowledge build superb professional websites quickly and easily. Paul demonstrated the software to me in my house last year and I was blown away by it. It’s incredibly well designed and the sites you build with it are purposely search engine optimized so that you have a better chance of all your pages ranking highly.

Paul has just let me know that the suite of eleven help movies and tutorials created just for XSitePro users are being made available free to charge to everyone. If you’ve ever wondered how good the software is, and if it would suit you, check out these videos and you’ll see exactly why I rave about this software.

I jumped the gun with my previous post containing a picture of the Affiliate Classroom product, the Affiliate Manager and had to censor myself!

(you could say I gave you a world exclusive for a short time while the uncensored image was up!)

Now I’m officially allowed to show you this quality product in all its glory… sitting on my kitchen worktop…

(click to enlarge)

I’m still working my way through this huge package… it’s a tour-de-force of information about starting an affiliate program, managing affiliates and finding and recruiting super affiliates. There’s also a huge amount of additional information such as categorized links for every topic relating to affiliates you can think of. A great resource. You can find out more, and get a free report by clicking on this link.

Just yesterday I wrote about Allan Gardyne’s thoughts on staying focused. Now, I don’t know if it’s my antenna just being “tuned” to thoughts on staying focused because I’m so bad at it, but I noticed in Michael Campbell’s newsletter today he mentions the same topic in reply to a subscriber’s question about creating sites that generate Adsense revenue…

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You mention focus… which is key. It is the ONE thing, above all others, that will help you succeed. Go with
these three tools for the first three months so you don’t get distracted by other things.

1) Article Underground
2) Cheney’s AdSense Videos
3) XSite Pro

The other KEY point, is that you mention the word “work” twice, and that you “Intend to work at this 3-5 hours per day.” That’s really all it takes.

Think of it like starting a exercise or fitness program. For the first three months, you might have to drag yourself to the gym. After that, your body gets into a rhythm and you miss working out if you don’t go

Making AdSense revenue sites is a lot like that. The more you put into it, the closer you get to your goals, whether it’s having a little extra income or quitting the day job and kissing your boss goodbye.

Dreams can come true. And I wish you all the success you can dream.

With a little hard work and focus, your dreams become tomorrow’s reality. They have to… they have no choice, for you have already lived them in your mind. And tasted them with your desire. Hold your focus and you will succeed.

- - - - -

WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

Simple Visualization Eliminates Procrastination

My advice for novices… just get started. Fear, uncertainty and doubt, all melt away once you start taking action. For you intermediates facing the computer and not feeling like working today…

Look at it this way. You have a pile of 100 stones and you have to move them. Every day life piles on two more stones. If you don’t act, the next day you’ll have 102 stones to move. Imagine how big the pile will be at the end of a week, or 160 stones by the end of a month. Stay with that image in your mind… feel the pain.

Ok… here’s how to feel better. If you act on it now, and remove five stones per day, even though two get added per day, you’re down to 97 stones at the end of the day. Tomorrow 94. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to keep up with just maintenance, moving two stones per day.

Getting motivated is as simple as that little visualization. Just think of how big the pile will get and how much more there will be to do, if you don’t do something about it.

Don’t just think about it. Write it down on a sticky note and paste it to your monitor. Make a promise to yourself that you’ll do it.

Now imagine for a moment the task is complete. Imagine how good you’ll feel. Close your eyes and relax a moment, enjoying having accomplished what you promised yourself that you would achieve.

Open your eyes again. Remember how good it felt getting it done. Remember how bad it felt procrastinating over the big pile of stones. Now which way would you rather feel at the end of the day?

Procrastination leads to anxiety and fear. Taking action leads to peace and happiness. Which path will you choose for today, tomorrow… and the rest of your life?

Article by Michael Campbell of Internet Marketing Secrets
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So there you go… just work and stay focused.

Much more easily said than done.

You know, it’s no surprise that out of all the newsletters I subscribe to, and have ever subscribed to, those by Allan and Michael are the only two I look forward to getting and reading from beginning to end. Their newsletter issues are always jam-packed with quality information. Other people’s may amuse me, some people’s I learn a thing of two about marketing from, but most marketer’s emails just hype another sale. Allan and Michael really care about helping other people become successful. That’s a role model to emulate. Be successful by helping others.

Well, you have to celebrate small victories.

The whole point of this blog was to launch a new way of letting people know my up-to-the-minute tips for starting and running a successful online business from home. I think, over the past couple of months, we’ve made a good start. I’m very happy with the interaction the blog has created so far. Some of the feedback has been great. Thanks for visiting and commenting guys.

I was also using the blog as a “test bed” for blog marketing… how quickly is the blog indexed, how deeply is it spidered, is it a useful tool in a web-marketer’s armoury? I have to say, definitely. The search engines still love blogs… they visit often, spider deeply and already this blog has 164 pages indexed by Google. A blog is a very quick and easy way to get “pages” created because all you do is type and click “publish”. Not only are your thoughts/rants published to the front page of your blog, but also a separate, permanent page is created for that post… it’s a much faster way to publish pages than the old, manual HTML manipulation in Notepad I used to do.

Also, the blog-specific directories and links from other bloggers who wouldn’t be as likely to link to a webpage outside the “blogosphere” makes having a blog a very useful tool. I started a “make money online” blog over at incomemax.com yesterday to help with the spidering and indexing of that site. Although, this blog will be where my personal thoughts, opinions, hints and tips will be.

Yes, blogging is a great tool for enhancing your web presence… if used properly.

I got a result yesterday…

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Hello,

The block on your IP has been removed.

Please allow 2 hours for changes to take effect.

Outblaze Postmaster

===

I’m really happy with Outblaze. Instead of just saying “you’re email was undelivered because we think you spam”, which is what a lot of ISP’s do (especially a famous one beginning with “A” and consisting of three letters) , Outblaze sends this when it rejects an email…

    (reason: 553 Message from 216.248.199.138  rejected - see http://spamblock.outblaze.com/216.248.199.138)

When you go to that address they actually show you the evidence for the spam block. How original, and how useful! It was from the evidence I was able to see that there really was a problem and get my programmers to find it and deal with it. However, Outblaze were still blocking my outgoing email yesterday based on their spam evidence from over a month ago. So I sent them this feedback…

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Your evidence is from May 4th 2006… over a month ago. Since then I have investigated and shut down old formmail scripts which has prevented spam being sent from my server. Please see the daily volume indicator here… it’s zero…
(email included this link )

Please reconsider your spam block. Many thanks.

Neil Shearing, Ph.D.
www.neilshearing.com
====

…and I got the reply, above, within a couple of hours and the spam block has been lifted.

Now if only I could get that big, famous ISP to do the same.

In Allan Gardyne’s latest newsletter he talks about the struggles he has staying focused, which is a topic I’ve mentioned here recently. Allan has some great practical tips, and I’d like to share his article with you…

 ================================================
2. Here’s what I do
   …How to stay focused and achieve your goals
================================================

(The latest goal I’ve achieved is at the end of this item.)

Here’s a question “Dotdash” asked on our affiliate forum:

   “Anyone else having problems staying focused on specific tasks? I’m finding that as soon as I get settled into something like writing a page or article I get another email from someone telling me to stop what I’m doing now and pay attention to this extremely important aspect, then another one about something else important and so on.

   “It’s so easy to get distracted by things coming at you from all directions that sometimes I spend my couple of hours a night just going round in circles and not accomplishing very much.”

This sounds so familiar. Been there, done that.

Here’s how I overcame the problem.

It’s a system which works well for me - when I remember to use it…

Keep reminding yourself who’s boss of your life.

You are.

1. ALWAYS do the following: At the end of your work day, make a list of the 6 most important tasks to do the next day, in order of priority.

If it’s a large task, break it down into bite-sized chunks.

Don’t leave this list-making to the next day. Always prepare it the day before. For this system to work, you must hit the ground running every day.

2. Next day, DON’T start your day by checking for email. Don’t read newsletters, or visit news sites, or blogs, or do any of your usual favorite distractions. Start on No.1 on your priority list. Do it. Move on to item No. 2. Do it.

If possible, break your tasks into 50-minute slices. Aim to get a task done in 50 minutes, or perhaps two tasks in 50 minutes, depending on how complex they are. Setting a time limit will speed up your work, especially if you’re a perfectionist or a procrastinator.

Reward yourself with a 10-minute break. Do a few stretching exercises. Drink a glass of water - you need to keep your brain lubricated.

As you’re reading this, picture yourself actually doing this. At last, you’re getting USEFUL things done. You’re building your business. It feels good, doesn’t it?

After lunch, when you go back to work, DON’T check your emails, don’t read newsletters etc. They can wait. Carry on doing your high priority tasks. You’re the boss, remember. You’re allowed to decide what’s important.

(If you have employees or people to whom you’ve outsourced work to who are likely to need prompt answers, schedule times for answering urgent emails. Don’t allow them to interrupt your vital tasks. If you allow them, constant interruptions will spoil your creativity and slow your output.)

When you’ve completed your list of tasks, reward yourself with an enjoyable break. You’ve earned it.

Go for a walk, watch the sunset, read a chapter of a novel. Watch TV for half an hour. Chat with a friend or spouse. Do something you enjoy, and soak in the good feelings you’re having about achieving something worth while that day.

It feels good, doesn’t it?

OK. Now allow yourself to check a few emails and answer any urgent ones.

Before stopping work for the day, make a new list of the 6 most important things to do.

Stick with this system for 21 days. It seems to take 21 days to form a habit.

Keep concentrating on how GOOD it feels when you tick those items off your list. Don’t cross them off. Write them down on paper and put a big fat, satisfying red tick beside each one as you achieve it. (If you have software which enables you to tick off items on a list, that’s good, too.)

Try this system and you’ll be utterly amazed at how much you can achieve in a day, in a week, in a month.

An important part of this system is rewarding yourself when you achieve your goals. For example, take your spouse or a friend out to dinner to reward yourself for having achieved your first day where you get 100 visitors a day, 500 visitors a day, 1,000 visitors a day, etc.

Plan special rewards for when you finish a special report, write your first 20 articles for a new website, have your first $100
day, $500 day, $1,000 day, whatever.

When you buy your first investment shares, when you buy your first property, etc., ALWAYS celebrate.

This is really important. Always enjoy your successes.

You deserve them.

I admit I get distracted from this system occasionally and then have to prod myself back to it. I’m a bit of a rebel and don’t like taking orders from anyone - not even myself.

On days when I do follow the system my productivity is hugely better than on the days when I’m disobedient.

Sometimes I wonder just how much more I could have achieved if I’d followed this system more consistently.

But it is working…

Joanna and I have just bought another apartment with water views.

It’s what you might call a “lifestyle investment” rather than a strictly business-minded investment. All thanks to affiliate
marketing.

We haven’t moved in yet. I’ll show you some photos another day.

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For those of you who don’t know, Allan runs associateprograms.com , one of the first ever ”affiliate directories” which he started in 1998… just a few short months after I registered my scamfreezone.com domain. Allan has written his very highly regarded newsletter throughout the 8 years he’s been running associateprograms.com and the latest issue is number 290. It’s a great achievement to have provided such high quality information over such a long period of time.

Interestingly, while I was always more product-orientated, Allan always stuck with earning his online income through affiliate programs. He has a few other sites in addition to associateprograms.com such as…

http://www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com
http://www.LifetimeCustomers.com
http://www.LifetimeCommissions.com
http://www.KeywordWorkshop.com

Allan is the only high profile Internet marketer I know of who earns his income only through affiliate income. If you want to learn about making money as an affiliate, his is the first site I’d suggest you visit and the first newsletter I’d suggest you sign up for.

Many thanks to Yaro of http://www.blogtrafficking.com who pointed out these interesting tools/subjects in recent comments. I felt they deserved a separate blog post…

1: Bloglines.com is a really popular web-based feedreader…

2: To add RSS subscribe links in your blog sidebar, try this link to generate a list. (I’ve added the links to the sidebar for this blog. I’ve taken down the stats link… I didn’t find it particularly useful.

3: A $900,000+ Adsense check? (for two months earnings)

Take a look at the check by clicking here. Apparently the plentyoffish.com site serves 500 million page views per month, but only earns $1 effective earnings per 1,000 impressions through Adsense. With that very low eCPM, it’s a good job he’s getting huge volumes of traffic consistently… the site is just outside the top 500 most visited online according to Alexa… and has an incredible 2.6 million pages indexed in Google… and has 12,000+ links to it according to MSN.

Although the story has its detractors… there simply has to be a lot of money made from a “free” “dating” website getting enormous traffic… about half a mill per month??

I was contacted yesterday by Jason James of Uncut Marketing who said…

“I’m launching a product soon using a lot of the methods from your Rollout Secrets as well as some ideas from Michael Cheney. I’ll let you know how it goes and be sure to give you a testimonial when I am successful. More information at the blog in case you want to track the progress.”

Naturally, I checked out the blog and noticed that there was an affiliate competition. The top prize was going to be a home cinema system. I asked Jason if it would work here in the UK, and we agreed that it probably wouldn’t. I don’t know how many super affiliates are outside the USA, but if you want them to work with you it’s important to at least offer a prize they’d be able to use in their home country. My personal experience is that lots of “top prizes” are worthless to me because they’re electronic and, without a big, heavy step down transformer, won’t work in England. (I’m not sure about other countries). In those cases, I simply don’t bother doing any promotions… not only is the prize worthless to me, but I get a little upset that the “top prize” is something I can’t use…

So, being the nice guy that he is, Jason took my comments on board and has switched the top prize to $1,000 with almost another $1,000 to be shared between the runners-up. Well done Jason!

It was interesting to me that Jason said “a lot of my affiliates are in the UK”… so changing the prize could very well net him a lot more publicity, traffic, signups and sales from those affiliates and potentially ones in other countries who would not have been interested in the home cinema system.

I had an interesting “chat” (well, email exchange) with Jason James today about prizes for affiliate competitions. Seeing as it’s 10.30pm here, I’ll have to do a full write up tomorrow. What do you mean, bloggers never sleep? This one does!

I got an email from someone asking for help. He’s not making many sales via Clickbank and his Adsense earnings are falling. In his email he said…

“Then and only then, when the clickbank sales start slowly increasing is one able to take a breather and study the theory, but not until.”

So, distilling the essence of that quote it means… “I want to make money BEFORE I know how to do what it takes to make money”.

I’m sorry, I know I’m being harsh, and when money concerns are of paramount importance, it DOES seem to be more important to make some money than to understand how the money is made… but it can’t be done that way.

If you start an offline business with the attitude of making a few bucks and then learning the “theory” you’re going to go bankrupt with massive debts. The online world is no different, except that the “cost of entry” is much less, so you could fail with smaller debts… but you’ll still fail.

Here’s the way to do it… use your current debts to concentrate your mind… focus on how money is made online… where money is made online… after you’ve learned the “theory” go and do what’s necessary to make your own money online. If you know how to sail a ship before you set sail you’ll have a much, much better chance of not sinking!

If you want to succeed online, please, learn about the topic… even if it’s from free newsletters, reports and articles. Read the runes. See how other people are making money and model your business on them. Start out small, feed on your own little successes. Build momentum.

I didn’t get my $12,400+ affiliate check the day after I started my online business. It took a long time to build to a check that size. I do remember my first ever check. It’s dated July 1997 and is for $45.40. I carry a copy of it in my wallet.

To go back to my nautical references… you know the saying, “learning the ropes”? I believe that comes from studying models of boats, especially the rigging and how the sails worked before stepping foot on a real boat. Fast forward a few hundred years and the same applies to making money online… you have to “learn the ropes” first.

Check out this phenomenal product…

Click the graphic for a larger version.

Wow. I always knew there was a large gap in the market for affiliate training materials, but what a way to fill that gap! Unlike some “big box” products that I’ve reviewed which were 95% hot air (needless to say, I didn’t recommend them), this product packs a huge punch. From the quick look I took at it before making this post, I can tell you, it’s quality. I can easily see that many months, if not years of work have gone into it.

I’ll take a closer look at the product and report my findings in a future blog post. I expect I’ll be highly recommending this product to anyone who either wants to take their affiliate business seriously, or people who want to run an affiliate program.

If you want to learn more, and pick up a quality PDF from the people behind Affiliate Classroom, click on this link.

To aid navigation of the blog, I wanted to make the header clickable so that people can easily return from separate blog post pages or comments to the main blog. I just used the instructions here and it seems to have worked nicely.

1: A question: Does anyone know why my blog says “1 comment” for posts that don’t have comments? I’m confused about that.

2: My Internet connection is holding steady at 2.5Mb. Whoopee! Want to test yours? Click here for a free test.

3: Thanks for all the positive feedback and comments on the Clickbank check. I look forward to releasing my report (free) and ebook (not too many dollars) on the subject.

4: I got a nice glossy “flyer” featuring the whole timetable of the World Cup on deluxe cardboard through my letterbox this morning… it’s very nice… I may keep it… until the end of the World Cup. So who’s it from? My local estate agent/realtor. There’s a marketing opportunity in everything! (although, it doesn’t seem to acknowledge any trademarks… but then, it doesn’t say FIFA anywhere either… I’m not sure of the legalities of that… if you click this link you’ll see the TM is quite visible. It’s actually an important point for affiliate marketers and even Adsense/Adwords users… which keywords/search terms can you use and which are “reserved”)

5: The slate is down! Yes, I actually went outside into the fresh air and survived!

I just tested this myself and it’s quite handy for reading this blog (and any others, ahem) without having to visit each blog separately.

1: Go to this page and download FeedReader

2: Install Feedreader

3: Add this blog as a new feed. Type or paste in the RSS feed link:

http://www.neilshearing.com/feed/

4: You should see all the recent posts appear like this…

…click the graphic for a larger version.

Sent in from readers…

> Is there any real, technical difference between
> a blog and a regular website

Yes. Blogs have a “hidden backend function” called
ping which lets other sites/search engines know when
a new post has been made. It’s very useful… but
doesn’t apply to “regular” websites.

> I don’t really know how to go about this blog stuff
> can u put me through a step by step process of
> earnings from it please? I’m a starter.

1: Sign up at blogger.com
2: Start blogging
3: Request Adsense for your blog.
4: Add adsense code to your blog.
5: keep blogging.
6: visitors will click on ads and you’ll earn money

> I have been looking for an RSS link for your site
> or Blog but I can’t seem to find it . Could you shoot
> me a quick answer with a the RSS Feed link, PLEASE?

Sure. This is the RSS feed for the blog…

http://www.neilshearing.com/feed/

From checking my recent server outgoing maillogs we found that someone was using my server to send spam via some insecure scripts on my machine. My server IP address was ending up on blacklists and my genuine outgoing email was having trouble getting through because of the spam going out from my server without my knowledge. We found the insecure scripts on my server and stopped them from running. It appears that we were successful because the outgoing email from my server dropped from about 5,000 per day to around zero yesterday according to this site.

If you want to know what volume of email “you” are sending out, just ask for the IP address your domain name is hosted on and plug that IP address into the search box at the top of this page.

You may be surprised to find out how much email is coming from “you”… especially if you’re on a shared IP address.