Neil Shearing’s Internet Marketing Strategies

Wow, I didn’t know I could still screw-up so badly after 10 years online. So here’s my confession. Let me know how many other marketers you see openly confessing their mistakes… I bet it’s less than the number of fingers you have on your right hand.

I promoted a program recently which I thought I could get tremendous value from. I offered a bonus monthly summary to people who joined using my affiliate link. Since then I’ve found that I don’t have the inclination to follow the wealth-building strategies… especially with my children being at home full time during their summer holidays. Actually, now that I’ve come close to paying off my second mortgage in just four years, and with my business having done over a million dollars in revenue since it was created just five years ago, I’m not really that concerned about reaching much higher.

So, I withdrew from the monthly program and apologised to the list of people who joined using my link and who wouldn’t be getting the monthly summaries. I tried to make up the lost value by offering my products, phone consultations and email consultations. I even offered to try to get the bonuses of other marketers if anyone was originally considering using a different affiliate link to the program.

The lesson here, which I’ve learned the hard way, is not to promise “future” products/services/bonuses unless you are 100% certain you can deliver. Promising something “into the future” is, quite simply, risky. Anything can happen in life. How can you ever be 100% sure you can deliver something next week, next month or next year?

Learn the easy way what I’ve learned the hard way… don’t issue promises into the future.

I seem to remember a Terry Dean article where he wrote about having a member’s site where members paid only once, upfront, for lifetime access. I think Terry said that maintaining that site and adding fresh content cost him a fortune because he wasn’t able to move on to other opportunities. He was basically working for nothing once people were members… and they expected fresh content each month. 

It’s the same principle… don’t promise “into the future”. I can’t find the exact article, but some of Terry’s articles are archived here. They’re really good… and free.   (Terry left the business several years ago, in case you were wondering)

I hope by confessing my mistake, it gives you food for thought.

It looks like we made it.

If you search Google for “Neil Shearing” with or without quotes this blog appears as the number one listing. (at least, it does for me, as I type this. With regional variations and the ever-changing Google algorithm, the results may be different when you check)

It took quite a bit longer than I anticipated (the blog began in April), but it does go to show that original content added on a frequent basis around a specific niche will get you to the top of the search engines.

No matter what the “gurus” may tell you… not matter what “tools” they sell you to help you find keywords, build pages, provide templates or host your sites… there’s still a missing “black hole” called traffic. You must have traffic to make money online. For the most part, traffic either comes from your lists, other people lists, free search engine traffic or paid search engine traffic. So why do people offer your more “stuff” to get your sites online quicker without educating you about traffic generation? Because it’s hard!

Take this example of some sites built by Andy Williams (ezSEO)

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In September 2005, I started a new website at:

http://bibliotekk.com/

This site was set up using an article site generation script, and I have done very little with it except get a couple of incoming links, and get people to add content. 

Every month I get a lot of submissions, most of which are rejected automatically because the author has not included a category.  If the author can’t be bothered, neither can I.  The site is growing at a current rate of 40-50 articles a month, and it takes me no longer than 20 minutes a month to keep updated.

Currently it has PR of just 2.  This is intentionally low, as I wanted to replicate what I see as the average  amount of effort
most beginners put into new sites, and see if it could generate an income.

The site currently has 567 articles.  That’s quite a decent sized content site, so how much traffic does it get, and how much Adsense earnings do I make from this?

The results may surprise you. 

Average monthly visitors: 300.
That means only about 10 a day.
Of those 10 a day, most are actually people visiting to submit articles.  In fact, in the last week, the site was only found via
the search engines 10 times.  That’s just over once a day. Disappointing eh?

So what about Adsense earnings?

I only put Adsense on this site on March 20, 2006. so it has been raking in the m0ney for about 5 months.  If I told you that I would not get much change from a McDonalds Big Mac, you get an idea how poorly this site has done.  At least it has almost paid for the domain fee ;o)

This is the point where most beginners would give up, thinking that making m0ney online is too difficult and does not really work. However, that is what separates successful marketers from those who fail - determination to succeed.

The next step with this site is to increase backlinks to it, and monitor traffic levels as backlinks and PR increase.  Will it make a difference?  Will the site start making a profit?  Stay tuned…

OK, a second experiment:  I used a tool to create a website out of 100% re-printable articles.  These are the articles you get from article directories like ezinearitcles.com.  The site was setup in May 2006, and currently runs to about 80 pages.  This site also has a PR 2, as I again wanted to mimic a beginners site.

Last month, this site got about 20 visitors (less than 1 a day), and didn’t make enough for the bus fair to McDonalds.

Again, a beginner would certainly throw their hands up in frustration and quit.

The next step for this site would also be to increase the backlinks.  However, in this particular case, I may scrap it
altogether and create some quality content for it instead.

So, what have we learnt here?

I would suggest there is one main lesson to be learnt from these experiments. Making m0ney from Google Adsense is not as easy as some people would have you believe.  You cannot just throw up websites built with fr.ee content, and leave them to make you money.  You need to work on the off-page factors to build incoming links, and increase traffic.

I find it funny that more and more software is coming out to speed up site building or article writing, and I myself am going in the complete opposite direction.  I am looking for ways to guarantee the quality of the articles I write.

I have set myself a target.  I want to create articles that earn me a minimum of $1 a day (as opposed to the articles on bibliotekk.com that earn me about 0.2 cents per MONTH on average).  I have a foolproof method of creating quality content, and I can do a couple of articles within the space of 2 hours.

If I can get to my goal of $1 a day, then a 50 page sites (which could be built in a month) would make me $50 a day, or $1500 a month.  The fact that it is 100% quality content means that income is much more secure against the changing search engine algorithms.

Over the period of a year, I should be able to put 10 sites together, bringing my total income of these sites to around the
$15,000 a month mark.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  It’s not. The secret is getting to the $1 a day mark per article (on average), and that will only be done with quality content and a lot of work in getting incoming links from quality sites.

My Advice:

 * Set yourself goals, and work towards them.
 * Don’t get discouraged by “failures”.  Turn them round into successes as you have already invested too much time just to quit.
 * Don’t take shortcuts.  Quality will always win in the end.

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Good advice. Making money online isn’t easy… it never has been. I’ve always said that. I’ve also said, “it’s not easy, but it is the easiest, legitimate way to make money that I know of”.

There are very few people trying to run a business online who don’t suffer from information overload and, subsequently, paralysis from over-analysis. After all, the Internet is an incredibly easy medium to publish to. All someone has to do is visit blogger.com, sign up and start making posts. Hey presto! Instant communication of your thoughts/ideas/beliefs to every other person connected to the Internet.

The problem is that SO MUCH information is posted. I think even Google got tired of counting the pages they’d indexed (they used to put the number on their homepage, but then dropped it… perhaps they couldn’t fit the digits on the page once it went past 8 billion or whatever it was)

So… you get tons of emails, you visit tons of websites, you read huge numbers of articles, pdf, whitepapers, you listen to movies by the dozen, you participate in forums and read hundreds of posts.

What do you gain? Did you actually LEARN something new today? Something that will help you grow your online business?

Or, worse, did you read so much “stuff” that you don’t know which way to turn, or what to do next to improve your profits (or actually make ANY money online)? 

My suggestion, if you’re starting to get information overload (which leads directly to analysis paralysis), is to make a note of which sources of information contain the highest “signal to noise” ratio. It doesn’t matter if it’s free, paid or whatever. Consider how good the info is… how relevant… how actionable for YOU and YOUR business.

Everything under a certain “signal to noise” ratio is dumped. Unsubscribe.

Do it. Now.

Retain the valuable information sources and throw overboard anything which is sub-standard.

I’m going to do this first thing tomorrow morning because I really don’t need to be keeping an eye on multiple marketers… especially if they all pitch the same products. So I’ll be sorting the wheat from the chaff. You may want to do the same.

OK, I may be throwing money down the toilet with this post… (not for the first time ,pdf link), but, hey, I love you guys, so here you go…

I haven’t put together a set of bonuses for Ewen Chia’s “Super Affiliate Cloning Program”, but I know some people who have. It wouldn’t feel right for me to promote a product offering no extra bonuses when I know people are basically offering their first-borns if you buy through their link. So here you go… compare the best offer and decide for yourself which bonuses you’d like…

Louis Allport…
http://www.AllportPublishing.com/SpecialOffer.html

Cody Moya…
http://www.codymoya.com/affiliatecloning/

Anik Singal…
http://clicks.aweber.com/z/ct/?RtezX.hNU7ZKiLC.5OCQPQ

What’s in it for me? Erm… Nothing.

If you’d like Ewen’s product, compare the offers, then empty your cookies. (see this tutorial for how to do that if you’re not sure) then revisit the site you’d like the bonuses from and order using their link.

I apologise to marketers offering bonuses with Ewen’s product that I don’t know about. The three above turned up in my Inbox, so I’m mentioning them.

…. kids are home 24/7. Makes it tricky to be an Internet marketer. Hey, this is the slow time of year, right? Now I know why.

If you were trying to use the www.2jump2.com service or the www.TrafficSplitter.com service over the last 24 hours, I apologise. There was unexpected downtime which, as usual, took longer to resolve than expected. Everything’s back up and running now and, hopefully, will stay that way for a long time.

Check out our very own Word cloud for what this blog is about…

So now you know!

Allan’s giving away a quality report called, “77 Ways To Get Traffic“. I’ve printed out the report and it’s a great way of flipping pages and saying to yourself, “Oh yes, I should be doing that”! Virtually every page has a useful tip, hint or idea for generating traffic.

It’s from Allan, so it’s quality. It’s from Allan so it’s free!

(Allan, along with Michael Campbell gives out great, free, quality advice. Learn from these people and you’ll benefit immensely)

What are you waiting for? Go grab your copy… “77 Ways To Get Traffic“.

Thanks Allan!

I made an offer to my Arm Twister’s List today… did you miss it? Are you an Arm Twister?

If not, click here… 

http://www.scamfree.com/arm/