Internet Marketing Strategies and Marketing Tips by Neil Shearing

Hmmm. John Reese’s new venture, income.com, has been creating quite a buzz recently. That tends to happen when John Reese launches something new.

But, I just found out that John (allegedly) paid $2.3 million for the domain name. Wow. That’s a whole lot of cash. I can’t be certain that John paid that amount for the domain because he hasn’t told me personally, but from comments at his blog, and this webpage we can see that the last bid was $2.3 million when the domain was auctioned in 2000.

Doing a little detective work, I’m not convinced (yet) that John bought the domain, or that he paid $2.3 million. For a start, the admin contact for the domain name is still “Choquette & Company Accounting Group Inc.” who I thought were the original owners. In addition, this page says that “Income.com is available for Sales, Lease or Partnership”. Of course, that page could be outdated. But, taken with the domain name admin details, it would lead me to believe that John has done a deal to use the domain without actually owning it.

All that’s hypothetical.

What I really want to know is, if income.com is worth $2.3 million, what’s the better domain name, incomemax.com worth?

(yes, incomemax.com is my domain name)

Google has issued some clarifications to help webmasters decrease the chances of visitors clicking on Adsense ads accidentally.

In a nushell, don’t have any drop-down navigation menus that drop-down over Adsense ads (which would risk visitors clicking the ad rather than the navigation) and try to have a border between ads and content.

Check out the official post for graphical examples.

I just got an unsolicited email promoting “Get Google Ads For Free”. I didn’t promote the product at the time of release because, well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?

But the spam got me curious. What was all the fuss about and is the product still being sold? So I did some research… checked out the sales letter and then the discussions here and here.

It’s interesting that Clickbank is still selling a product which claims to get you Google Ads for free, but in reality seems to just suggest you pay for your ads, then defray the cost of those ads through ads you place on your landing pages. That’s arbitrage, not free ads. The arbitrage idea has been around for a while, and the margins are small to non-existant.

As one guy said on the forum… “I bought it and asked for a refund, it teachs you how to sell banner space at your sites”

Doh.

There’s a dislaimer, in small print, right at the bottom of the sales letter, which says…

“the system it involves neither has anything to do with any “AdWordsâ„¢ and/or AdSenseâ„¢ credits or vouchers,” nor the direct provision by Google to the customer any direct free advertising at anytime; nor any free pay-per-click or otherwise paid-for advertising directly; but rather is a system that if applied correctly and properly and effectively, and as instructed per the author’s direction, may allow for the elimination of the burden of costs pertaining to that customer’s pay-per-click and/or otherwise paid-for advertising expense(s).”

(sarcasm on) Huh? So you mean you don’t get free ads? (end sarcasm)

So, if you don’t get “free” ads, what does this mean… at the bottom of the sales page…

“Now Google pay-per-clicks are FREE using my amazing secret!”

/sigh.

I’ve sent Clickbank this question… let’s see what they say…

“Why don’t you include a “refund” percentage for products listed in the marketplace? Adding that data would sort good products from poor ones thereby helping affiliates decide which products to promote.

Please let me know your comments. I think withholding this data is detrimental to the integrity of your marketplace.”

I just found an excellent calculator here which shows you the refund rate for a Clickbank product. It takes the info Clickbank shows you in the marketplace and does the calculation. For “Get Google Ads For Free”, affiliates should earn 75% of $67 (less the Clickbank fee), which is $45.73. But the actual earning per sale figure is $37.19. From that data the calculator suggests a refund rate of 18.67%.

Ouch. That’s almost one sale in five refunded.

In reference to “Did Your PageRank Go Up Or Down” which I mentioned on 2nd May, I heard today from Michael Campbell [a must-read newsletter for Internet entrepreneurs] that the possible sea change in PageRank may have been due to the penalizing of some high PageRank sites who passed along PageRank to other sites thereby creating a ripple effect of decreasing PageRank.

Michael’s hypothesis is that the penalized sites were passing PageRank in a manner that Google disapproved of… namely selling it.

“There was a big ripple effect. It’s what happens when big PR8 sites suddenly have their GoogleJuice (PageRank) turned off, because they were selling links.”

Michael goes on to say, “Now I don’t buy links. Never have. Never will.”

OK, that’s clear enough… be very careful if you try to buy PageRank… Google’s cracking down on it.

I can’t say I’ve *never* bought links, but I’ve only done it on a very limited scale… and I intend to keep it at that level. Perhaps that’s why my three main sites all stayed at PR5.

Just a quick plug for “A blog for bloggers“. Nicolas has done a nice job listing blog directories and how they treated his blog submissions. Doing that kind of legwork takes time, so if you’re looking for directories to submit your blog to, check out Nicolas’s site and save yourself some time and effort.

Wow, “How To Get Rich” was an absolute corker of a book… [amazon UK - amazon USA] …a step-by-step guide to making money by Felix Dennis who’s one of Britain’s most successful self-made millionaires. His estimated wealth is £750 million (approx $1.5 billion) according to the 2007 Times Rich List… good enough for 95th position. Although, in the book, Dennis says he doesn’t understand where they get their figures from and that even he doesn’t know exactly how much he’s worth because of the complexity involved in estimating it.

quote… “That is why so many rich people distrust the ‘rich lists’ and league tables of wealth published every so often in newspapers and magazines. We know that if we cannot calculate our true net worth, and if our paid armies of accountants cannot agree upon a figure, then compilers of lists and financial journalists certainly cannot do so with any real accuracy” [page 4].

Felix Dennis is primarily a magazine publisher. He privately owns Dennis Publishing Ltd… a UK company which publishes a range of successful magazines and has a turnover of over £200 million ($400 million per year). If you’re a Brit, you may recognize some of these titles… MacUser, Maxim, Auto Express, Computer Shopper, PC Pro and Viz. There’s also Dennis Publishing USA which has recently been put up for sale.

In his book, Dennis takes you through what it takes to get rich. It’s a great read… not only does he tell you the “nuts and bolts” of getting rich such as how to get capital, how to delegate, how to find a market, how to retain control, but he also analyzes what it takes as a person. Basically, you have to have an unyielding desire to become rich and an ability to overcome fear. Just getting out there and “doing it”. He seems to believe that most people have neither the desire nor the drive to become rich, even if they say they do… which sounds about right to me. How many people really have the killer instinct needed to compete in the capitalistic jungle… to claim the huge piles of cash needed to become rich?

But there’s much more to the book than just how to get rich. Dennis talks about his brush with Legionnaire’s disease, which almost killed him but also made him clean up his act and stop wasting his new-found money (and life) on drugs, alcohol and “expensive” women.

He has certainly amassed a huge fortune… but there’s a real sense of melancholy about the book. For someone so driven to be their own boss and become rich, there’s the inevitable question of what to do once you’ve “made it”. Especially when you have no wife or children to spend time with and share life with. Dennis indulged in drugs, booze and expensive ladies until the Legionnaire’s incident. Since then he’s taken to writing poetry and also devotes resources to planting a forest in England (the Forest of Dennis).

Dennis claims to have written “How To Get Rich” at special library/office cottage near his house on the island of Mustique. I think he said it took him eight weeks to write. In the book he mentions a local cat coming into his house and feeding it milk and smoked salmon. The impression you get is that Dennis is isolated in his hideaway recounting his swashbuckling adventures at getting rich to us and the stray cat. Quite a few times he says he would swap all the riches he has for the chance to turn back time to when he was younger. In fact, he also says he would change what he did and earn his first 10-20 million by the age of 35, then sell up and start writing poetry and planting trees.

This strikes a chord with me. I’ll be 35 later this year. I may not have made 10-20 million, but I don’t really want to. I work for myself. I don’t answer to a boss. I basically earn what I want each year from my Internet business. I could grow the business, hire people, expand and try to make millions… but it would take time away from doing what I want to do right now… spending time with my wife and kids.

I’ll give you an example. I was reading Dennis’ book in my office at home today when my daughter walked in. This was about 2pm. She wanted to show me a leaflet which had been put through the door. We had a chat about it, then we fed the goldfish in my office. She’s 4 years old and almost ready to start school. When she does, I’ll miss her… so I’m enjoying the time right now when we can have fun together during the day.

Why would I want to work harder pursuing more money? What could it get me that I don’t have already? I’ve almost paid off my second mortgage in just five years. I live in a wonderful part of England. I work from home, working the hours I choose. I get to read books at home during the day with a cup of tea and my feet up. I’m at home during the day when my daughter wants to see me. My commute is a 10 second walk to my office. Most of my income at the moment comes from passive sources so I get to spend lots of quality time with my wife and children. Everyone says kids grow up so fast. Well, I’m making sure I spend as much time as possible with them while they’re young.

Dennis explains in his book that having lots of money actually brings a host of added responsibilities and worries… you have the job of looking after it, minimizing taxes on it, taking security precautions for your houses and loved ones, managing the people you hire to maintain your houses and gardens, family fights about money, jealous neighbours, fear of losing all your cash.

All that sounds too much like being famous to me… and that’s something I definitely never wanted. Lots of people say they want fame… just look at PopIdol, PopStars, Big Brother and all the other TV shows that attempt to make “celebrities” from “nobodies”. Yuck. They never seem to get anything more than their allotted 15 seconds of “fame”. Then there are the real celebrities, hounded from morning to night by the press and everyone wanting to know what they ate for breakfast. A true nightmare.

I guess, ultimately, it all comes down to defining what you want from life… then going after it until you succeed. If it’s fame or a huge pile of cash, good luck to you. Personally, my goals are simple… freedom from a boss, freedom from debt and enjoying what I have, right now.

If you want to amass your own fortune, do yourself a huge favour and read Felix Dennis’ “How To Get Rich”. It’s a wonderful book by someone who can tell you from experience how to do it… in plain English, with a warm and witty writing style… and he won’t upsell you a DVD course or board game on “How To Really Get Rich” afterwards.

Check out this shocking information, hot off the press, from Tradedoubler, a UK affiliate network…

—
The Currys program will therefore end on the TradeDoubler network on 30th May 2007.

Until this date TradeDoubler has been instructed by DSG to change the commission structure on the Currys programs to:

1% on General Sales and
1% on Reserve and Collect Sales

These changes in commission are effective immediately.
—

Currys has been a merchant under the Tradedoubler program for SIX YEARS.

Now we learn that Dixon’s Stores Group (who own Dixons, Currys and, I think, PCworld) decided to “put their affiliate business out to tender” (according to Tradedoubler) and, “effective immediately” the commissions drop to 1% (wow, a STONKING 1%!) to be followed by the end of the Curry’s program (at Tradedoubler) on 30th May 2007.

Wow. An immediate slashing of commissions and four weeks notice that the program will end!

I had seriously considered a business driving PPC traffic to Curry’s products. I think, depending on volume, the affiliate commission was up to 4%.

I’m so glad I didn’t waste my time and effort writing effective PPC ads, designing and building quality landing pages and earning commissions that, despite a 6-year track record, went up in smoke “effective immediately”!

Edit: I just checked the Tradedoubler merchant area and they’re still listing the old info. Depending on volume, you could’ve been earning 3.5% commission… so affiliates earning that would see their commissions shrink by 2/3rds immediately and the program closing in 4 weeks.

Tradedoubler say they’re aim is to “re-pitch for the business and we will do all we can to ensure we win the business back”.

Ha. Good luck with that, guys. And if you do win the account back, good luck getting any affiliates to sign up again.

… today at noon EST… and you can try it for 30-days for a dollar.

Not a bad deal.

I don’t know if they’ve lowered the full membership price of $797 per month or not, but if you get a month’s access for a buck, you’ve saved $796.

Interesting changes made by Microsoft to their Adcenter (their equivalent of Google’s Adwords).

– Microsoft may use matching criteria other than keyword searches
to display your advertisements.

– Microsoft may display your advertisements on its network of
advertising channels operated by the Microsoft network of
participating websites and other distribution outlets.

What the heck does “matching criteria other than keyword searches” mean?

I’ll have to look further into that. I’m not sure what they could mean… they’re going to use some kind of Mind-meld interface to read the thoughts of MSN users? “You typed doggie biscuits but we think you meant to type doggie treats. Here are the ads you would’ve seen if you typed what you were actually thinking about“.

And, the second note… MSN will show your ads on their network of sites… like Google shows Adwords ads on sites displaying Adsense.

Good idea, that.

Microsoft. Reading your mind. And Googles.

(hmmm, perhaps point one leads to two. After all, if Microsoft is going to show your ads on other people’s sites, they have to show ads that haven’t been triggered by a keyword search. Instead, the ads will be triggered on websites with content that matches your ads.)

Either way, it’s interesting that there’s no opt-out. I guess you either accept the conditions or take your business elsewhere.

Hey, it doesn’t matter anyway, really, does it?

We all like to keep track of certain “metrics”, be they PageRank, Alexa Ranking, Daily Site Visitors, EPC, CPM and other alphabet soup.

But, the only one that really matters, from a business perspective, is profit.

Yes, Google may deign to let us know the PageRank for our pages every few months. (even though they, naturally, update their internal pagerank scores much more often than that)

Yes, if you sell links on your sites based on the site’s PageRank, you may find your site’s PageRank directly relates to your profits, which makes it a more important number to you.

But, in general, it isn’t a hugely important number to most people. You can make a fortune without PageRank… just ask anyone who has put up a salesletter for a new product, emailed their lists and made a huge amount of money from sales of the new product… without any PageRank at all. Or someone who earns money buying clicks then sending them to other sites… click flippers. They don’t need PageRank.

Almost all my sites stayed at PageRank 5, so the latest toolbar export didn’t have me jumping up and down.

Apparently a lot of sites saw their PageRank fall. I’ve also heard, from personal communication, of sites rising in PageRank.

So there were winners, losers and people unaffected.

Sounds about right to me.

Now… let’s look at profits instead, shall we?