Monthly Archives: May 2012

Marketing on Social Media Sites For The Nay Sayers

The other day, I was reading some internet marketing blogs. I came across a few different blog posts about social networking on myspace and facebook. This is usually nothing to write home about but in these posts, the author was saying that these don’t work.

It just so happens, one of these blog authors requested me as a friend on myspace. Again nothing new here except for the approach. This person (I will call him “Andrew”) introduced himself, claimed to be a member of one of the programs I speak of on my profile. Andrew wrote that he was a member of the company and didn’t make any money using the techniques. He then went on to say it was a scam.

What happened next blew my mind. After this bashing of the company (that I have been very successful with) He offered me another program!

I didn’t know “Andrew” from the man on the moon. He comes to my page, attacks the company I work with, and then expects me to join him… Wow. What a way to build trust.

I found out that he was the author of one of the blogs I spoke on earlier because of the links at the end of the message he sent me. I realized why he was unable to make any money.

Marketing on myspace or any other social network is quite simple.

  1. First build a friend list in a specific niche by joining groups. Then add them to your friends. While on their profile READ IT. You can find out what they are into and what they are about. You don’t want to be on a network trying to promote affiliate programs to an affiliate marketer. They are doing the same thing you are, so chances are they will not buy from you. Unless you have something that is of value to them.
  2. Second you have to socialize. What I mean by this is, find out what they are into, and get to know them. Do this to build trust. Write blogs about your niche and invite them to read them. Get them to a squeeze page with a link in the blog post. Make sure you offer value first program last.
  3. Do not send messages to people about your business or affiliate program until you are sure your “friends” want them. The easiest way to do this is with a squeeze/capture page.
  4. Make videos and post them to these sites. Put your affiliate links at the bottom of the video screen. There are even programs that allow you to put your link on other people videos. You can then put these videos in your blog post with in the networks.

That is all it takes. You can build a great income easily by networking, and offering value. That is really all it takes. I feel the reason these bloggers had issues making money on social networking sites is because they don’t know how to network or how to turn their “friends” into leads. They do not follow the steps outlined above.

Source: network marketing

Getting backlinks with the “Leger Backlink Family”

When it comes to building links automatically or semi-automatically Jonathan Leger is the guy to look at.
When I first heard of him he just had developed a product called 3WayLinks.net.

With 3WayLinks.net. you get a minimum of 250 backlinks to your domain’s homepage with three keyphrases split 60%, 30% and 10% per website entered, for up to 50 websites. These links come from sites with all types of themes and relevancies, with a wide range of page ranks (PR, my highest incoming link is from a PR5 site, but I guess there might be pages with even higher PR in the system). Backlinks are all targeted at the website in general, not to inner pages. If your site is PR 4+, it doesn’t  count in the quota, so you can actually have more than 50 domains.

It is quite easy to use if you are running wordpress, because you can then use the 3waylinks wordpress plugin I wrote.

With MyWaylinks.net you get to choose which sites send you backlinks. At least, you get to ask for, and generally get backlinks from sites of your choosing, with PR’s of at least 1. That means that your links are of high relevancy and higher PR (in general, compared to 3waylinks or 1waylinks).

You can direct these links to any website you choose, including subdomains and inner pages. Your links are not limited to the sites you submit and register with MyWaylinks.net. (Great for getting new sites indexed fast!)

You also control the sites to which you give backlinks. They apply, you review, then approve or reject.

3WayLinks.net is a more highly automated process; you set it and forget it, until you add another website. It is also more broad and less specific in its linking. You get a lot of links but of generally low to medium quality.

MyWaylinks.net requires more setup time in that you will need to search the database of participants to find sites that you would like to receive backlinks from. Once the links are set up there is no more to be done. At that point it is set and forget also. The same for backlinks you give to other sites. In fact, you do not have to give backlinks to anyone if you don’t want to. There is a marketplace among members where quota needed to “pay” for backlinks to your site can be bought and sold on a member-to-member auction bid basis.

Currently you get 25 quota points upon signup. Getting backlinks costs 1 quota point per PR point (PR 1 links cost you 1 quota point, Pr4 links cost you 4 quota points, etc.) You receive 3 quota points per PR point of your site. If someone asks for a link from your PR3 website and you accept, you get 3×3=9 quota points.

So far, this has proven to be very worthwhile. One good thing is that links get crawled quickly (since all sites registered are PR1 or higher) and you see results in 2-5 days. Another is that those links from relevant sites REALLY move you up the ranking scale fast in Google… It’s nice to see those large jumps!

O.k. now we have covered the oldest child of the Leger Backlink Family(3WayLinks.net) and the youngest (MyWaylinks.net) – but there are two more:

There is DirLinks.net, which is actually some sort of completely different looking twin of 3WayLinks.net, that means it is part of the package.

It creates a directory with links to up to 1000 of the participating sites, again in a 3waylinks style. It gives you more links than 3waylinks and allows for links to inner pages – so it is the perfect addition to 3waylinks although it lives a little bit under the shadow of 3WL.

And last but not least, there is 1WayLinks.net:

A system that allows to post up to 250 blog articles with 3  in content links each, has the capability of spinning text and links and that makes it the most versatile tool Jon has ever created. For every new helper blog you add to the system you get an additional 50 post each month. That makes it an endless supply of high quality links. You can point your links to any site you like (given it adheres to the somewhat strict content rules of all Leger systems)

1WayLinks.net has become one of my main work horses because of it’s reliability and and endless supply of quality links!

In summary:

3WL – 240 or so basic links per website entered, up to 50 websites.
MWL– high quality links on a link exchange basis
1WL – Lots and lots of low quality links. Great for Google, Yahoo not so much.
DirLinks – Lots of links of med. to low quality. Works well as “Steroids” for 3WL; kicks backlink counts way up beyond 3WL’s 250 or so count.

So if you you are looking to expand your linking efforts, have a look at one of these – or do it like I do and use all of them in the field where each of them has it’s specific strengths.

Top 3 reasons it pays to be a product vendor.

Most people who get into business online start off either building web sites for AdSense revenue or being an affiliate of other people’s products. That’s a reasonable way to begin, since there’s less work, less responsibility, and probably most important for people starting out, less risk involved.

But the truth is that there’s simply less earning potential in AdSense sites or being an affiliate when compared to creating and selling your own product online.

There are three major benefits of being a product owner over being the a site publisher or affiliate.

1. More earning ability than affiliate commissions, both initially and after the sale.

As an AdSense publisher, you get paid once when a visitor clicks an ad. As an affiliate, you get paid once when the visitor buys the product you link to. That’s usually where it ends.

As a product owner, you have a lot more opportunities to profit. When a visitor becomes a customer, then you have the most valuable asset any business can have: a customer! It’s ten times easier to sell to a happy customer a second, third and fourth time than to convert a visitor into a customer.

I’ve got customers who’ve told me that they buy my products without even reading the sales page! They buy first and then read over the benefits. “My credit card loves you” was the exact words of a loyal long-time customer of mine.

The obvious financial rewards aside, as a product owner you also have the ability to tweak things about your site to make it convert better – modify headlines, wording in the sales page, incentives, price. As an affiliate you can’t change any of those things about the product you’re trying to sell, even if you have a good idea of what would make the product sell better.

2. Greater growth potential as you recruit affiliates.

As an affiliate or AdSense publisher, you’re limited to your own ability to create growth in your business. It’s usually not cost-effective to have other people do the work for you. For example, you can setup a Pay-Per-Click campaign to sell the products, but you have to pay for every click, which cuts into your profit margin. You can’t go out and recruit others to sell the product for you, either.

As an affiliate or publisher you’re usually just a one-man show. As fast as your fingers can type is as fast as you can put up articles or web sites that drive traffic to your affiliate links. There’s no way to leverage other people’s work.

As a product owner, however, you don’t have these limitations. Beyond sending an email to my list, I do no outside advertising of my products. I know that if I have a good product that it will be found in the PayDotCom or ClickBank marketplace by affiliates eager to sell the product. I know a portion of my my initial customer base will also look into becoming affiliates for the product.

After I create a product I just sit back and let the affiliates do all the work! They run all of the Pay-Per-Click campaigns, they write blog posts and do search engine optimization for their web sites and Squidoo pages, they write articles and reviews and submit them to directories. I don’t have to do any real promotional work at all. In my mind that makes it a lot easier to be a product owner than an affiliate.

Let me give you an example of how much traffic affiliates can drive to your site. For just one of my products, Instant Article Wizard, I had more than 42,000 unique visitors in June of 2008. Of that 42,000, only about 2,500 came from search engines. The rest came from the work done by my affiliates. Searching for the phrase “instant article wizard” in Google returns about 118,000 results – of which only half a dozen or so belong to me.

Do you have any idea what it would cost to drive that kind of traffic with AdWords? Even at only 50 cents a click that’s $21,000 for one month’s worth of traffic! The reality is that you probably couldn’t find enough keywords to get that kind of traffic out of PPC, not without paying huge per-click prices.

Even at 50% commission, affiliates are by far the cheapest form of advertising for the volume of traffic you can get from them.

3. The money is in the list.

The third major benefit of being a product owner is that even if the visitor does not buy immediately, you have the chance to get them onto you mailing list with the offer of a free gift or some specialized information. Afterward you can follow up with more teaching and coaching until they reach the point of trust where they’re ready to buy.

As an affiliate, it’s usually a now-or-never deal. Either they convert and make you a few dollars right now, or they’re lost forever. You don’t suffer from this shortcoming as a product owner. You can grow your list and teach them and win their trust over weeks or months, and in time they will help build your bottom line by becoming a customer.

As an example: I have a core set of about 5,000 people on my 50,000+ email list that are my real buyers. They’re the folks who read every email I send, leave comments on my blog posts, and have bought at least some of my products. Every so often a “lurker” on my list – a person who, up until now, has only been feeding off of the information I give out – has enough trust in me to become a member of my core list.

It takes time to build someone up to that point of trust, and affiliates don’t have the luxury of that time. Only product owners do.

So why isn’t every one a vendor?

If being a product owner is so great, why isn’t everybody a product owner? Because there’s more risk in putting time, money and effort into creating a product. If it doesn’t take off, you’re left holding the bill. As an affiliate, if your efforts don’t pay off, you’re still holding the bill, it’s just usually a lot smaller bill.

Being an affiliate also means less responsibility: no customer support, no follow-ups. You make a few dollars and you go on your merry way.

I think it’s a good idea to start off as an affiliate, but you’ll hit a ceiling where you won’t be able to go any further. When you hit that ceiling, it’s time to move on to becoming a product owner.

Please leave your thoughts and questions in a comment below.

Source: product creation