Tag: internet marketing

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Paid Tools Product Reviews Tools

All I Want for Christmas Are Long Tail Keywords – Keyword Researcher Review

Yeah Christmas or whatever you choose to celebrate or not in this happy/stressful/profitable time of the year!  I think its fair to say that 2011 has been a bit of an up and down year in terms of Internet Marketing, maybe I’m just bloody lucky, but really all the bad stuff that’s happened to me has been thanks to the TOS changes with HubPages plus nervous clients. 

Google has been, interesting, but the most interesting thing, and totally bloody irritating part, are their continuing moves to restrict access to their goldmine of data known as the Google keywords tool.

For a long time using the tool direct doesn’t give you real long tail keywords – you only get to about 3 or 4 words: a real long term is longer than that. Its very, very focussed, its not in Google’s best interest to reveal those because a) PPC advertisers would save a fortune only bidding on very specific terms and b) evil affiliate marketers would make way too much money. 

Google’s changes to their API TOS has meant than some previously good tools have gone away – and I am sure I’m not the only one who has found I miss my long-tail search tools 🙁  

But nature abhorrs a vacuum – well Internet Marketers do anyways – so when a tool is lost, and the whinging is loud-  something else pops up to fill its place! 

However because its Christmas – here are three two (third one coming in a day or so – the developer is just sorting out his landing page, and this is getting too long anyways) rather cool ways to work around Grumpy Google: 

Tony’s Keyword Researcher Review 

Easily get all the long-tails that Google provides through “auto-suggest” – really quick way to build out a site or an article.

This cool little tool is based on Google suggest – you know the annoying pop-up that you get when you start typing a query into Google. Its not the only tool that does this – (scrapebox.com is the common one) – but I like this tool a lot more: very, very easy to use, just watch the videos at Keyword Researcher and get on with it! I’ve been doing this for a while and Tony has some different wrinkles I’d not thought of… 

Google doesn’t say how many searchers need to be looking for a phrase before it pops up into auto-suggest, but we can all assume its probably more than a few. 

Now this tool won’t give you the competition figures, but it will give you a pretty long list of suggestions – and you can continue your investigations from there.  

Nice Features: 

  • easy and intuitive to use – doesn’t try to be overly fancy;
  • free download and trial (does everything the paid version does but only on the first 1/2 of the alphabet) 
  • one-time cost and cheap! 

Watch Out For: 

  • the tool is installed on your PC and its scrapping Google results – you’ll get banned (plus anyone else using the same IP) – its not big deal – the tool will point this out to you – wait 15 minutes – try again. 
  • this won’t give you competition or difficulty for your keyword phrase – doesn’t pretend to.  To get these you will need to put the terms through another tool: Google Adwords, Keyword Strategy, or Neale’s No Results Report (review coming this week) – would all work! 

Good For: 

Want some variation on your core keyword – for sub-headings? Want to build out a site? Looking for a few easy pages to rank on Wizzley?  

That evil, self-serving affiliate link again: Keyword Researcher – even if you don’t buy – check out the vids they are worth listening to! 

Tool number two for today (hell a girl’s gotta get her commissions up you know!) is 

Amazon Gold Mine Review 

Provides new lists each week of Amazon products based on their price/popularity/discount/top ratings and lots of reviews. In other words – the products you want to the affiliate for! Also provides a “bargain basement bin” for very cheap products – which I don’t use – but might even save you the fee if you are in the US! 

Lets be upfront – I’m not the world’s most successful Amazon affiliate, I’ve only recently started focussing on it, but I’ve sold enough random products over the years to be constantly amazed at what does actually sell on there (thank you whoever you are who decided to buy $300 worth of textbook and maths teaching guides, and the guy who bought not one, but two $500+ woodworking tools!) And no I am in neither of those niches! That’s the power of amazon-  get the customer to click through on your 99c e-book and suddenly they will remember they need to do thousands of dollars of Xmas shopping – all on your commission! 

Nice Features:

  • the last six week’s reports are available in the membership area – you don’t have to rush to download them. In fact maybe its all the reports since you became a member? Anyways I’m pretty sure on subscription you get the last 3! 
  • sorted by department – so its easy to find your niche. 

Watch Out For

  • to be up front – you can do this yourself – at least the basic query – by using some clever stuff in Google – for me – I can’t be arsed  the easy format and the tagging of which products are “NEW” on the list each week – is worth it for me! 
  • its a monthly subscription – not a huge amount of money – but yeah its money- a pain. Take a note of the sub date and remember to cancel in Paypal if you are not using it – or you have enough results for now. 
  • there’s an up-sell of some AMAZING affiliate system on the front page – I know nothing about it and don’t recommend it – all I know about Amazon I’ve learned from Dave from ZenDuck

Good For 

The criteria for product selection means that its easy for anyone to write a review – so I’m using the list to develop ideas for Wizzley for a new niche. Basically I can try a product related niche out – see if it ranks easily in Wizzley and build out a site later if it works out (and use Wizzley for the backlinks). 

Yeah and here’s that evil self-serving link again: Amazing Gold Mine – or take the criteria they use and develop your own queries! 

THE BIT AT THE BOTTOM YOU SHOULD READ!

I’ve found a cool wrinkle on the hubpages fiasco – but I don’t want to shoot my foot here – I will be saying something to subscribers later this week – so sign up OK – that’s the honking bit form just below here – that one -the big one you can’t miss! 

Categories
Passive Income

Passive Income Online – How Much Does It Cost To Start

Passive income – to my way of thinking is the best income to have. Why? Because I’m bloody idle that’s why!

Labradors have the right idea! Oh and because I know its possible to. My partner and I own several rental properties in New Zealand, we bought them several years ago and every month we get paid the income from them. Is it passive income – sure it is – we’ve never met our tenants, we don’t mow lawns, we don’t take calls about broken toilets at 2am – my property manager does.  Property investment can be as active or as passive as you want to make it – but you have to pay someone to do the work for you.

Property investment is not risk free either. Our rental properties are exposed to interest rate risks, tenant availability, natural disasters, property manager going bad etc etc. If we’d borrowed the amount the bank was prepared to lend us a few years ago we would be in a nasty position now.

Making passive income online, to my way of thinking is a much better thing than making passive income from property investment. Why? The risks are lower much lower. The investment required is much lower. It’s not zero though – this is what I think it takes to start making passive income online.

BTW I am not talking about working from home jobs here or freelancing – that’s not passive income – if you are unclear about the difference check out my analysis of what’s the difference between passive income and work at home jobs.

Personal Attributes

  • be teachable – that’s it really if you can take on new attitudes and learn new skills – you’ll make it. That’s it really I listed a long list of skills I’d developed working online, previously – but if you are teachable none of this will be an issue.

How Much Money Do You Need

  • if you don’t have a reliable computer you need one. You don’t need anything fancy though and my 4 year old 14″ laptop does just fine.
  • you need a fast broadband or cable internet connection. I really don’t think you can do this with dial-up though some may disagree, the time you waste on a slow connection more than justifies the cost of a faster one IMHO
  • you need enough money to support yourself for the first 12 months and enough to subsidise your expenses (assuming you want to live about the poverty line ) for the next 12 months. Or a helpful spouse/partner/SO who will do same.

That’s it so basically the right attitude and 18 months worth of living expenses. That’s a pretty low cost entry point for a business. If you can’t afford the time without cash coming in you can always start part-time while working a “real” job

But you say – what about special software? what about hosting ? what about domains? what about paying for links? what about  mentoring programs? what about e-books?

What Software Do You Need to Earn Passive Income?

The first software I  bought for this business was Dreamweaver its a very nice piece fo software and I used it to build my first site- nice software does the job – but so does WordPress and its free.

I use OpenOffice to write in and often a simple text editor called Q10 – both free.

Yes I use other tools – I use SEOElite, Keyword Elite for research and other services and tools to create links for me – but you don’t actually need any of them.

Do I need Domains and Hosting

Nope – but I would probably pay for them before I paid for software.  I buy domain names from time to time – like this one, I have a reseller hosting plan with Hostgator which I recommend.

But you don’t need any of it – you can create money making sites of free hosts such as blogger.com

But How you ask – well for that you will have to buy the e-book – but because you are my valued reader I’ll give it to you for a special price…Well I’m a beginner at this so I’m not going to tell you.

Instead I can point you over to Frank Carr’s blog and check out his post on how to earn online cash with a niche blog. His method is not original, in fact its similar to how Grizz makes money with Adsense – but it works – its not sexy, it may be differnet from what the A-listers tell you about list building – but it works. Oh and it won’t cost you any money either! And Frank doesn’t even want to collect your email address – and neither do I!

Photo Credit

Categories
Marketing Search Engines

Google Reveals SEO Secrets

Google has just released their Search Engine Optimization Guide. Yes the big G itself is finally prepared to answer the most FAQ out there ” How do I get my site to rank in Google?”

Its a pretty scary document: well scary if you are in the business of scamming people out of good money by pretending that SEO is hard to do – its anything but. In fact I suspect none of what is in this guide is new. Its just been finally collected all together in one place so that people can actually find it – now that’s an idea!

The report is fairly simple to understand for anyone who has the rudiments of how a website is setup. The bottom line is excellent for anyone who wants to make money as an online writer because as usual the bottom line is that a website which is attractive and useful for readers will also attract the search engines. Get your headings right and make sure you correctly anchor your backlinks and Google will notice.

I wrote an extended review of Googles SEO Guide an how it applies to HubPages here: SEO How to Do It by Google

One item the Google SEO Guide mentions in passing is that blogging about newsworthy or unique content will get you ranked. That certainly seems to be happening to me on my Australia News blog

Categories
HubPages Online Business Rants

Making Money On-line for Beginners

Sometimes I struggle as to where I should publish. I guess I am not a pure internet marketer because sometimes I just have to write about a topic! This weekend its been around the subject of making money on-line. Yes I know its idiotic to try and rank for that term. Yes I know I run the risk of just repeating the same old. I still had to try. So I did and you know I think it came out all right. There is nothing original per se. I am following the big three as usual as detailed in my original Internet Marketing and Hubpages article.

In the end I ended up publishing not one but two hubs, over 3600 words for goodness sake! On a revenue site that I only get 60% of the Adsense, Amazon, eBay, Kontera impressions – why did I do that. Well two simple reasons really:

  • I’m starting to see more and more new people arriving at HubPages, publishing a couple of hubs and then going to the forums and asking what’s wrong I only made 5c in Adsense! I can see this trend continuing. HubPages seems to be winning the race with Squidoo and is attracting more and more people who not only want to write they want to make money online . I know the feeling its what attracted me too. But with the worsening economic crises in the US (and hubpages are predominantly American) I expect more and more people will be looking for ways to make money in a recession I would like them to find the right sources of advice before they get scammed or give up. Although I may not be able to rank for the terms in google search I certainly can in hubpages: I can get my hubs to the first page of “hot hubs” or for a specific search really quite easily by writing good content.

    Fans
    Originally uploaded by John Charlton
  • Again a couple of times recently I have seen people do “so long and thanks for the fish” posts as they depart hubpages for bigger things. Sometimes full-time paid work work so fair enough. But also sometimes because they need to concentrate on developing their own websites you know. I’ve thought about it myself but there is one thing that keeps me publishing useful stuff on HubPages: my fans! Why abandon that list? Sure its not the most focussed list on the internet but on the other I am sometimes surprised at the quality of the people who leave me comments finding my hubs useful, often soon after the hub was published: meaning that they were notified by the email.

Yeah I know celebrity is fickle! No its not that, honest 🙂 . When you become someone’s fan at hubpages you get an email every time that person publishes a new hub (you can turn it off but that’s the default). So every time I publish on hubpages 599 people (as at the time of writing) get told – is that a list or what? Now some of them are beginners: but some are not. I got a number of sign-ups to Article Marketing Automation from my hubpage review.

So if you are not already a member of hubpages get signed up and become my 600th fan: if that spot is taken its OK I will be accepting 601, 602 etc as well! Of course if you do sign up via my any of the links in this post I will get 10% of your earnings: but from the hubpages.com share. To be honest it amounts to bugger all but that’s because most people sign up and either publish nothing or just one hub! Drop me a comment here if you do sign-up and I will become your fan too!

Categories
Marketing Online Business Rants

Marketing: My Struggle

Marketing and I have come a long way in the last year – its possibly one of the most important insights have got to this making money online game!


Picadilly Circus
Originally uploaded by msmail

My first degree is in science and analysis is one of my strengths. Twenty years after my first degree and I did a graduate business diploma and was horrified by some of the courses. Marketing was the worst: they had “laws” about how to sell. I remember a big argument I had with a rather shrill marketing lecturer when I challenged her contention that you sell the dream not the product. She claimed it was a law: I pointed out, correctly I believe to this day, that it was an unproven hypothesis or even just a statement, it wasn’t a law. The fact that the apple will drop from the tree is a law, that the sun will rise tomorrow at a certain time is a law: that I will buy a certain brand of toothpaste because it will help me make friends – is, to be blunt, and I was, an un-tested theory. I lost the argument though: she had the microphone and no one else in the class could understand the difference between a law and a marketing hypothesis!

That pretty much sealed my view on the marketing industry. Self-serving, lacking in rigour and a waste of space. I continued to ignore marketing and scorn it. I understand the appeal of consumer products to kids and even to those who lack the basics of life: my first car will always live in my heart – because it was my first taste of freedom! Now cars are just a form of transport: I buy the one that best fits my needs and the price I can afford to pay cash for. I am a car salesman’s nightmare 🙂

So then I decide to become an online marketer – logical right? Its taken me about a year to figure out that is what I am you see. I thought I was going to develop a website and people were going to be so impressed with my wonderful content and I would make money. How was I going to make money – well I was a little hazy on that point: but the wonderful content is still there on my over-30’s independent travel site

You see I couldn’t be a marketer, that’s as a bad as being real estate sales agent isn’t it? And remember I don’t understand marketing or think its worthwhile. Real estate I know a bit about: a lot really, more than most of the agents I have dealt with as a customer. I still use agents to help me buy property though. Why? Because the top 2% of agents that I trust are very,very good at property and know the market inside out. Sometimes they have told me to run not walk from a deal, and I have. Now they are not the agents who win the top agents awards – which are really top commission earners awards. But they are long-term agents who make a comfortable living doing it. They know their product so I turn into their repeat customer.

That’s the sort of marketer I’m going to be online. I am going to be a good and ethical one. I won’t make a $20,000/month doing it – but that was never my aim. Half that amount would see me comfortable for life. And yes you have to sell something to make a living online! That’s how you get paid ! Duh! It just took a while for me to figure it out!

Categories
Online Business Rants Search Engines

Google Censors the Internet


I wasn’t intending to write this post: this is not a political blog, but I am MAD, very mad. Google has had bad press recently in Australia particularly, and in fact our competition watch dog is currently taking Google to court over anti-competitive practice. That’s kinda a given given the size of the US-based Google. That I can live with – its business.

This however makes me mad! I posted recently about Courtney Tuttle’s keyword sniping approach which is all about creating focussed websites. Its NOT about spamming but apparently someone has reported to Court to Google and now he doesn’t even rate for his name for his main site Courtney Tuttle

So what is so dangerous about Court’s site that he shouldn’t be shown if someone searches for his name? Well Court obviously thinks its because he suggested that content wasn’t King, and that getting legitimate backlinks via articles and other means would get your content ranked.

So now Court has to backpeddle, take down his most useful posts on keyword sniping and post in effect a retraction saying he was wrong! Reminds me of the Spanish Inquisition to be honest – remember how you could get burnt at the stake for believing in the wrong form of God, well this is the internet equivalent. No his life isn’t threatened, but his livelihood certainly is, as his main business is an internet marketing consultancy with his brand built around his name.

So because of some un-named, unknown, for reasons which he doesn’t know about, suddenly his business is affected. He’s now guilty and has to prove himself innocent – all because someone is jealous or worse a business competitor can’t think of any other way competing with him!
Photo Credit: saswat