Neil Shearing’s Internet Marketing Strategies

“As per your question, I have found in the database that your first “neilshearing” campaign was set up on 2001-06-19″.

There aren’t many services I stick with for five years, but I wanted to acknowledge the great service and support from the guys at GetResponse. Over the past five years there have been several times when I’ve needed support and on almost every occassion they’ve gone above and beyond what I needed. I still use Getresponse for all of my lists (except for my affiliates) and highly recommend them to anyone wanting a quality autoresponder service.

Thanks GetResponse.

Five years and counting.

—> In this post the examples are fictitious. This information may not be construed as advice of any kind. If you plan to do anything similar to what I mention in this post, it is entirely at your risk. Consult an expert in financial advice if you require advice. Only you know your personal circumstances. Do your own calculations for risk vs reward and decide for yourself if you can use the banks free money to help you get out of debt.

In my crusade to wipe out debt (and I most certainly DO include mortgage debt in my thinking, not just “unsecured debt” such as credit cards, loans and overdrafts), I’ve been using a tactic to spend the bank’s money to save me cash.

One day, out of the blue, a credit card company sent me checks which I could use at a balance transfer rate of 0%. I hadn’t used the card before, so I guess they wanted to motivate me to use it. Zero percent APR is, effectively, free money. So I looked for the catch… they can’t really be giving me free money, can they? It turns out that the “catch” is the fee levied on balance transfers. In my case it was 2% of the amount transferred, or a £35 maximum. As I wanted to transfer a large amount, the £35 seemed like a good deal. The 0% APR offer lasted for six months, so I had to be sure I could pay off the debt after 6 months, or face hefty interest bills.

So I went close to the limit of the unused card by transferring money from it to my mortgage. I incurred a £35 one-off fee, but the money was saved me much more than that each month on my mortgage. After six months I paid off half the card and transferred the rest of the balance to a new 0% card. OK, so the transfer incurred another fee of £50, but this time the 0% APR rate is for 12 months.

Some things to note:

1: Pay off the card before the 0% APR rate expires or you’ll most likely get hit with interest at a much higher rate than your mortgage. It’s best to know you can pay off the card before starting the balance transfer process. You can leave the money you will use to pay off the card in a high-interest savings account or, if you have a flexible mortgage, withdraw the credit card cash when the time comes to pay off the credit card.

2: Watch out for cards that don’t limit the 2% transfer fee. If the 2% is unlimited, moving a lot of money could generate a hefty fee thereby making the whole process pointless.

3: Do the calculations in advance. How much will the fee be? How much interest will be saved per month. How many months does the interest-free offer last? How much will be saved in total?

4: Earned interest or saved interest? Some people take this “free money” and put it in a high interest account. I guess that’s feasible, but the interest you earn will be taxed. It may be better to use the free money to pay off a debt. For example, earning £100 in a high interest account may generate £80 after tax. Whereas putting the money on a mortgage and thereby avoiding £100 in mortgage payments, effectively earns £100.

5: Covering yourself. Any insurance policies for mortgage repayments may not cover credit card repayments should anything go horribly wrong.  

As long as you know what you’re doing, and you keep some careful records, this is a great way to use free money from the banks to temporarily pay off a chunk of your mortgage.

Following on from my record-breaking Adsense day on July 27th, the month of July is in record territory with a few days to spare. That’s three consecutive months of record-breaking because May was a record, so was June and now July will be a new record. If you’re hoping to increase your Adsense checks month on month, stay tuned to this blog where I’ll be revealing some tactics behind the month on month improvements.

July 27th was yet another all-time Adsense record for me. When lots of other publishers are suffering, with auto-content sites being dumped from search engine results all the time, how do you consistently grow an Adsense income stream?

… by using the tools I’ve mentioned over the past few months… AdGold and Article Underground. There are 122 places left in AdGold as I write this, and Article Underground is closed because phase two sold out… that’s 700 happy members of Article Underground and no places left.

But, there’s good news if you haven’t yet got your place at Article Underground. Let me quote an email I just got from Mike Liebner….

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

“With the waiting list swelling in size, as well as a few well placed pokes from marketing partners I have decided to offer a 3rd set of articles and a brand new Phase 3 membership. The membership will be open to the public on August 11, 2006.

There will be a brand new set of 400 articles bringing the total to three sets with 1,200 articles total for the savvy of you to play with!

I know several people have already expressed an interest in the 3rd set and I will be offering existing members a special offer when the brand new Phase Three set is released. I’ll notify you by email of the deal.

Now, as most of you guys already know from my adding Phase Two, adding a new phase of articles brings you benefits.

Allow me to summarize:

* 400 more articles means you’ll be getting a choice from among 3 sets, making it easier for you to get the articles you want.

* With 3 sets of articles - 1,200 total - you have the option of even more excellent AU content to use on your web pages.

* When article sets are released (on the 16th) and while supplies last, I will offer an up sell to a 2 pack or 3 pack, but when each article set hits 350 downloads it will be retired. Articles will never be sold to or downloaded by more than 350 members.

* The blogs - more article announcements means more web pages for the blogs to get indexed, resulting in more PageRank being generated which makes each of our links more valuable.

* Community - while the forum is already thriving, it will be even more exciting with more people to set up custom link exchanges, new member announcement blogs and other possible ventures.

I want to thank everybody for helping make AU such a great place. I will do my best to make sure all of you continue to be satisfied long into the future!

Best wishes for happy and fruitful article marketing! As always I welcome your comments and suggestions.”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

I know for a fact that Mike wants this third set to be completely sold very quickly… he’s pulling out all the stops to do it. If you want to grab a place as it become available, sign up for the notification list at: Article Underground

I’ll be releasing a new product in September to help you boost your Adsense check month on month. It’ll be great fun. If you already have an Adgold membership and an Article Underground place, you’ll be in the perfect position to use my new service to the full.

Over the last few days I’ve been mentioning and promoting Rich Schefren heavily. I was impressed with his Manifesto ebook, his Missing Chapter follow-up and the 90-minute online seminar (all of which are online here). Not only was his material impressive, but his marketing of it was top-notch too. (if you want to see how to market a product, review the blog posts… you’ll see a great rollout unfold)

I signed up for the 12-month coaching course and encouraged anyone else suffering from business overload to do so too. I think about 500 people signed up… I’m not sure of the actual number). I was happy to recognize several of the names who signed up… they were established marketers whom I’ve done business with in the past and are people I hope would benefit most from what Rich is going to teach… methods for building your business using process mapping, mind mapping, outsourcers and project managers to do what your business does now, but more efficiently and with the benefit of scale (leverage).

I have to admit, Rich’s ideas hit me from left field. I hadn’t ever thought much about using a team of outsourcers to take a product from idea to finished item. I had never realized that I needed project management skills. I have used outsourcers in the past, but on a task-by-task basis… what Rich called outtasking, as compared to true outsourcing.

However, reviewing and promoting Rich’s stuff WAS a departure from the day-to-day running of my business. I now want to return to that, while bearing in mind the concepts that Rich explained. Naturally, having signed up to a 12-month program with Rich, my business won’t undergo a revolution… it will be an evolution of the way I do business.

So, let’s get back to the business of making money online. If you’re following Rich’s program, you’ll no doubt see where to employ his concepts.

It was about 80F here today (27C)… so we all went to the local woods, running around in the shade… lovely.

Then went to a park and ran around for an hour… as well as running in the garden for a bit… all in an attempt to wear our kids out. It didn’t work.

Where DO five year old boys get their energy from??

I feel like this…

 :-)

I’ve been trying to coordinate the additional PDF bonus I promised people who signed up for Rich Schefren’s coaching. It’s not been easy. For some reason some settings in my GetResponse account had been altered. Their tech support were responsive and seem to have fixed it quickly, but it’s never fun when a tried and tested component of your business changes on you. I’ve also been fielding several questions about the program and why I recommend it… busy, busy, busy.

On top of that, I’ve been trying to finish my Super Affiliate Ebook. It’s almost there… almost! I’ll have to get some nice graphics done, then I’ll let you download it for free. That’s why I’m on blogging-lite at the moment.

I’ve invested in my business. I’ve joined Rich Schefren’s coaching system. I believe Rich will take my business to the next level with *more* success achieved while working *less*.

I want to invite you to join me. Sign up for the program and together we’ll learn more than any of us will learn separately.

Click here… http://www.2jump2.com/x.php?36v

I’ll digest what Rich sends us and once a month I’ll email you a PDF with the details of what I found to be most interesting and most valuable. Consider it your cheat sheet! This will be a fun journey for all of us.
http://www.2jump2.com/x.php?36v

There’s no need to send me your proof of joining. I can see from the payment receipts I get that some of you are already signed up. I’ll contact you personally with further details about my extra bonus for you.

I’m taking this journey. I’m signed up. Join me!

Click here… http://www.2jump2.com/x.php?36v

Don’t delay. There are less than 800 places left as I write this, and the sales letter will only be up for two days whether or not Rich sells out.

Did you like the 90 minute movie by Rich Schefren?

Wasn’t it incredible?

If you’re available at 9PM Eastern, tonight, Monday 24th July, check this out… it’s how to get a seat on a no-cost teleseminar by Rich…
http://www.2jump2.com/x.php?36v

I think there are only 500 seats available, so if you want to hear Rich live click on the link, note the telephone number and call in EARLY.

Rich will be revealing how you can learn from him even though the 150 coaching club places were sold out in just over 2 hours (yes, at $5,000 per place!)

This alternative way to learn from him will be much more affordable.

Don’t let your online business run you. Take control back. Click this link:
http://www.2jump2.com/x.php?36v

I just thought I’d update you on my Cloudmark anti-spam statistics…

Time saved to date (hrs)         22
Money saved to date           $440
Emails processed to date  15,215
Spam caught to date          8,091
Spam I’ve blocked to date      290

So I’ve “helped” the Cloudmark system by notifying it of 290 spams. On the other hand, it’s blocked 8,091 spams saving me 22 hours of time since May 10th… the last 10 weeks. Not bad! As for saving $440, well, it should be more like $11,000 if you ask me. At $40/year or $4/month, I think this is a phenomenal purchase.  

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. 

BTW, That means I’m getting about 200 emails per day, of which about 105 are spam. I’m guessing about 90% of the rest are automated sale receipts, support ticket notices, affiliate commission notices, mail delivery notices, vacation notices and non-spam promotions from marketers… so I get about 10 genuine personal emails per day… roughly.

Mental note: Decrease incoming email volume for an easier life.

Apparently Google are wanting to get rid of ads leading to low-quality pages. Such pages could be full of affiliate links, “squeeze pages” that try to capture email addresses without much content or pages that are intended to ”flip clicks” (by buying low-cost clicks from Adwords and flipping them by having high-paying Adsense ads on the landing pages).

Apparently Google don’t say you’re banned, they say your minimum cost per click is $5, $10 or somesuch. LOL. Same thing.

Check out the SE Roundtable posts here and here for more information. Those posts comment on Webmaster World threads, which require a subscription to access but here’s the official information from Google themselves and a long thread at Digital Point if you’re interested in more reading!

If you want a copy of Clickin It Rich or Revenge of the Mininet, check this out…

“I’m offering Clickin’ it Rich and Revenge of the Mininet for 30 more days, starting August 01 2006. As of September 01 2006 the affiliate program will be closed, and the products removed from the market.” (source)

Marketing gimmick? Not on your life. I’ve know Michael for long enough (erm, five, six years!) to know that marketing gimmicks are not his style. In fact, he took his best-selling Nothing But Net offline a few years ago, something which I haven’t seen any other marketers do.

He now gives NBN away for free. Will he do that with Clickin It Rich and Revenge of the Mininet? I don’t know. He only said he was withdrawing them “from the market”… so, if you want to risk it, I guess you could wait and see if he’ll just put the ebooks online for free. But, considering he mentioned support as an issue, and he’d still get people asking questions (probably more!) if he gave away the ebooks, I wouldn’t bank on them becoming freebies. 

Congratulations to Mike Lieber… two “sets” of 400 articles per month are all sold out at maximum membership limits of 350 people per set.

If you’d like to be notified when openings become available, click here.

I don’t know what to make of this…

I logged in to my Google Sitemaps account today and they say…

“Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Jul 15, 2006.”

Ok, so how come a post I did on 21st July is in their index?

—————————-
Neil Shearing’s Official Blog
Do you know SEO? July 21st, 2006.
This is something I think people struggle with… getting traffic to their sites. At the moment there seems to be no end of …
neilshearing.com/ - 54k - 21 Jul 2006 - Cached - Similar pages
—————————–

Does that mean Google “reads” and indexes from the RSS feed without even visiting the site?

Hmmm, interesting.

Michael Campbell made a post at his blog that I found interesting. He’s now using smArticle Composer for Adsense sites and XSitePro for affiliate revenue sites.

The use of smArticle Composer is because it gets very, very high clickthrough rates and so earns the maximum amount for the traffic each site receives. It’s also shockingly fast at building site.

I’ve built sites using smArticle Composer and I can see why the pages get lots of clicks (just check out the examples in the sales letter to see for yourself). However, the sites are very basic. Naturally you can edit the templates by hand (yeugh) or get someone else to do it for you, but the problem you’ll encounter, most likely, is that people won’t link to the site naturally.

It’s all well and good to get your own links by submitting articles or submitting to directories but real sites grow links organically because they’re useful and so people link to them as references. When sites grow links organically you won’t have to worry about maintaining your PageRank or traffic.

So the line is drawn… are you going to build Adsense sites with articles that “survive” in the search engines but don’t get organic links and only get inward links because you do the hard work of building them, or are you more attracted to building true quality sites that get links organically because other webmasters want to link to them as resource sites? 

Neither strategy can really be called “right” or “wrong”. It’s down to your own preference at the end of the day. Personally, I can see that living on the edge with a ton of sites that are “surviving” in the search engines in July 2006 may not be a good place to be in July 2007.

Hey, Phil, you sure kept that quiet!

For those of you who don’t know, Phil Wiley always gives out great advice… usually about building content sites and monetizing them with Adsense (contextual advertising) or affiliate links. The only problem with Phil is that his newsletters and blog posts are so sporadic! He should be sending us quality free information all the time, not jet-setting across the world spending his Adsense dollars.

Sign up here for Phil’s newsletter (All the secrets) and here’s the link to Phil Wiley’s blog. 

(I’ve only ever met three Internet marketer’s in real life… Declan Dunn, Phil Wiley and Paul Smithson. I guess I don’t schmooze my way around the Internet seminar circuit much)