Internet Marketing Strategies and Marketing Tips by Neil Shearing

Which is it?

Well, my personal results show that my Adsense income is doing just fine. Last month was a record, this month is slightly down. Hey ho. No big shakes. That’s why I didn’t mention the report, “Adsense is Dead” where that guy was paying people 50 cents per referred subscriber… so everyone was talking about it. Well, duh. Send 1,000 people to download the report, earn $500. Not bad for sending an email broadcast. I think the guy owes about $17,000 for the 34,000 people who signed up… or numbers in that ballpark, I haven’t researched the precise number.

Anywho, Joel Comm has written a report on the dead/alive debate… Joel being in the “very much alive” camp and claiming to earn $23,000 in Adsense earnings last month (he’s got me beat! lol). Check out the “alive” side of the story… but please consider people’s reasons for trying to influence you as to alive or dead before making up your own mind.

With my ankle-biters running around, I don’t get to “do” seminars. But, if you love them, then you may want to check out the RPM summit (Research, Publish, Market) that the guys from Content Desk are holding in Las Vegas. It’ll be about building Authority Sites… powerful websites that pass the test of time and are not “here today, gone with the next SE algo change”.

(I have an “authority site” and I find it really interesting that Google seems to have the site “tagged” as an authority site. When Google does a big update, it sees to throw everything out, then immediately add back in the authority sites and then decides which other sites to add back in. If you don’t have an authority site, you may well get left out in the cold without your site doing anything wrong… it just wasn’t seen as valuable enough. I tell you, having an authority site is a very sweet place to be)

If you can’t make it to Vegas, check out a free report from the Content Desk guys on authority sites here. 

You know, I don’t really like the Internet marketing hype. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been online for a decade. I was selling ebooks before they were called ebooks… my first sale was in 1997. Aye, I’m that old.

So, as the hype reaches ever more intensity… with endless “salting” of your contacts (making them “thirsty” for the product), with ever increasing pre-pre launches and weeks if not months of “anticipation” followed by incredible “buy now, or the sky falls in” tactics and launch day server overloads and 10 emails per hour hawking the same product… I’m not interested.

I promote genuine products that offer true value for money. Either my own, or other people’s. Who needs 12 DVD’s that cost $1997 to explain a concept you should be able to write down on one side of a piece of paper?

In the past, as a Ph.D. student, I had to read some of the most complex scientific arguments relating to cancer. Some of the methodologies would scramble my brain and I’d have to read the science paper two or three times to really understand what happened. But, the information was concise. It was boiled down to bare bones. No need to ramble on for months stressing the same point in twenty different ways…. “here, see how I said the same thing at this seminar, that seminar, another seminar… read the transcripts… review the slides… in a printable PDF, as a screen-viewable PDF, in shorthand… in German… whatever… as long as the final product is a big box I can sell for $1,997, it’s all good!”

Heck, that boils my blood.

I’m proud to get comments like this regularly in my inbox…”Neil you are one of the few top level marketer’s I allow to make offers.  I appreciate not having to wade through bull.”  

So I’m going to get to work on a series of free or low-price, step-by-step explanations of Internet marketing topics.

Some people will always buy the hyped products… but enough is enough. Someone needs to offer quality information at a sensible price.

That’s why I’m staying “in the game”… as an alternative to the hype-o-rama.

My friend Dr. Mani (the childrens heart surgeon) has released a new report showing you how to use Squidoo to market yourself, your blogs, your websites, your products… anything.

Squidoo is a “Web2.0″ site (like Digg.com, Flickr and Del.icio.us) and is based on the belief that humans can review and organize the web better than search engines. The Web2.0 concept seems, to me, synonymous with the “social bookmarking” phenomenon. Seth Godin started Squidoo, which allows people to create free “lenses” that focus on specific topics and act as pointers to all the information online pertaining to that topic. So, lenses are not full of content, they’re full of links to on-topic content with appropriate comments from the “Lensemaster”.

If you’re into the social bookmarking, digging, tagging, web2.0 phenomenon, then Squidoo may be for you… in which case, Dr. Mani’s Squidoo Marketing Secrets may be of interest. Check it out.

There are a few more days left on my 80% commission event for my Desktop Spider software.

Just sign up as an affiliate and earn 80% on all Spider sales until the end of September.

Out of the blue I got this testimonial this morning…

“I purchased the Desktop Spider several years ago from you.  It’s a fantastic tool and I use it all the time.  Thanks again!”

I had a great chat with Fabian Lim today (of Adwords Empire fame). He was in Singapore (I think he said he was in a McDonalds!) and I was sat at my computer here in England. We used Skype to have a chat about my test Adwords campaign. Being a total Skype newbie, I was using my desktop microphone and monitor speakers, so the quality wasn’t great (and, hey, why are there always screaming kids at McDonalds?) but I managed to get some great tips from Fabian about improving my campaign and thinking about my keywords totally differently.

When I crack this Adwords (PPC) system, I’m going to reveal all in a free report… stay tuned.

By the way, if you sell something in dollars (like an ebook) but live in the UK, you have to exchange dollars for pounds before you can spend them, which is a nightmare at the moment due to the bad exchange rate. However, if you buy Adwords clicks in dollars, but earn commissions in British pounds… the exchange rate is in your favour. How sneaky is that?

Phew!

I’ve put Fabian’s knowledge and expertise to work for me. I’m building an Adwords Empire!

Well, actually, I think I’ve only laid the first brick… and I’ll see if it’s a profitable brick before going on to build an empire.

The process is really interesting… but not for the faint-hearted. I had to install scripts that made use of a mySQL database (wooo-hooo, techie stuff). The scripts allow me to track how many people click on my landing page (the page between the click on the Adwords ad and the merchant’s site) as well as the keywords people used in their Google search.

Of course, I also needed a landing page… fortunately, Fabian includes templates with the Adwords Empire product (as well as 6 explanatory DVD’s and the scripts)… so I edited the template to reflect what the Adwords ad was about, and what the product I was selling was about, adding the tracking link code and the code to capture the keywords, and uploaded it all.

I used Nichebot (which comes with Keyword Avalance) to generate a nice little list of about 600 keywords, which counted as about 1,800 when I’d bid on the “broad, exact and phrase” matches separately.

Are you following this at the back, there will be questions later!

So, with keywords, two ads written (to be split-test by Google), a landing page with keyword tracking code and click tracking code, as well as Google Analytics code (just for fun!), an account with an affiliate network and a product to promote, it’s all ready to rumble.

Now, let’s see if this works before I go broke paying for clicks!

It’s nice to know you’re appreciated, isn’t it? When people say you’re products have helped them…

Unlike most of the get rich quick nonsense you see in the Internet marketing world, my Internet Success Blueprint ebook is not highly priced, it’s not a flash in the pan, it’s a real, genuine explanation of how to create and sell ebooks. I’ve been selling ebooks since before they were called ebooks, so I know a thing or two about the subject. (the first version of Internet Success Blueprint was released in 1997 if you’re wondering)

Here’s some feedback I just got about Internet Success Blueprint…

“I was very pleased with the product and very impressed at the value for money. I have purchased a few products that were poor to say the least. I particularly liked how I could follow you as you performed on your computer step by step. I am just starting out and need as much help as I can get.”

Reason for recommending it to a friend: “Quality and value for money”.

Here’s the link: Internet Success Blueprint

From Robert Blackstone comes a really useful script called Instant Site Comments. In a similar way to blog comments and forum posts it makes pages on your site “sticky” by letting people add their own comments.

Say, for instance, you have a site composed of PLR articles on Ferrari sports cars which you’ve put together and hosted in the hopes of getting some traffic and Adsense revenue. Well, with Robert’s script you can now let people add their own comments to your article pages.

Here are the advantages…

1: People like leaving comments… it provides basic interactivity and a way for them to add to the site. (who doesn’t like being asked for their opinion? It makes you feel important, right?) So people are likely to read more articles… perhaps link to your site… perhaps stay longer and click on an ad… perhaps bookmark the site to return again later.

2: The search engines will see more unique content on your pages and hopefully give them a nice ranking boost. Your pages with comments will not be identical to other people’s page who used the same PLR articles.

3: Your pages are no longer static, but get changed every time a comment is left. I personally think that having frequently updated pages will get you a big search engine ranking boost. After all, frequent updates are why search engines love blogs and news sites…

Check out the script here. There are full instructions for getting it running on your server, and Robert is a good guy who wil help you get set up. He’s also behind ebook niches which I’ve mentioned before as a top-quality service.

How about this for an interesting clause from a well known affiliate network…

“Please note that if you earn commission whilst under consideration there will be two outcomes; if you are accepted you can keep the commission generated, however if you are denied the commission will be removed from your account.”

Oh, OK. So I can go ahead and promote a merchant whose affiliate program I’ve applied for while they consider my application, but if they turn me down, I get no commission regardless of the number of sales I may have generated.

Wow. That’s a good one.