Posted by Aerion Miles on March 30, 2010 under Website Traffic | 
Many people have researched how to make their businesses more profitable online, but have been left with the question “What is RSS.”
Everybody says how great it is, and how it will help your business. Unfortunately they have not been to forth coming with what it actually is.
An RSS feed is very much like a text only version of your website, that can be displayed in any number of locations. You can take this text only version and quickly and easily submit it to feed aggregators.
Feed aggregators are like libraries for these feeds. People can go to these online RSS feed libraries and subscribe to them. Many people like to subscribe to a blogs feed for the purposes of keeping up with what is going on with a company or person.
As a business you can create an RSS feed easily for any blog, and then post this feed to the aggregators. The RSS feed will automatically update on the aggregators website, in real time.
So what is the advantage, what is RSS, and how does it help.
Well as we have these RSS feeds aggregated in multiple locations, every time we update our website, each aggregated feed will also automatically update.
By putting links in our blog, we not only give the link juice from that one link, but also from every updated feed that mimics it.
Also it should be noted that RSS feeds always have links back to the original source they are drawn from. These are effectively back links, and as you may know, back links increase our chances of showing up higher in the search engine results.
Hopefully by this stage your question, what is RSS and how can it help my business, is starting to seem like one you are very glad you asked.
There are a vast number of RSS feed aggregators available for you to submit your feeds to. Each one will count as yet another back link, and will also helping to promote anything you link to.
I recommend cross linking to different posts within your blog. This will give you many back links via the RSS feeds pointing to your individual blog posts.
By having these links to actual blog posts within your RSS feed, you will help to funnel any readers back to your actual website.
So now you maybe wondering how this can help you if you do not have an accompanying blog for your website. You may ask, what is RSS for if you don’t have a blog.
Many people assume that RSS is a function purely for a blog, but in fact this is not true. There are now many online internet services, that will create an RSS feed of your static website.
The advantage of creating a feed for a static website is obvious. You will be able to have all the advantages of an RSS feed, even though you don’t have a blog.
While this approach is an effective way to promote your business online, I think it is more effective, to not only create and submit feeds from your main website. But also to have an accompanying blog where you can answer your customers questions, and also to generate even more link juice back to your main website.
Hopefully this article has put the question, what is RSS, finally to rest. Now you know how it can help your business, I highly recommend you get to work creating feeds, and aggregating them.
Posted by Aerion Miles on March 28, 2010 under Pay Per Click |
Google Adwords is the advertising company owned by Google. They have several different advertising option, and knowing which is right for you is key to your success.
Many people have wasted thousands of dollars on Google Adwords, simply through misunderstanding what was happening with their money.
Firstly you have both text ads and picture ads, but for the purpose of this article we shall ignore picture ads.
Picture ads on Google Adwords are very expensive, and should only be used by very large companies, who probably know more about Adwords than me.
However if your doing Google Adwords text ads then you need to choose whether you want to choose to pay for clicks or for impressions. It is always best to start of paying for clicks, and don’t change to impressions unless it looks more cost effective in your Google Adwords statistics.
CPC is the name given to bidding for clicks, while CPM is where you pay for impressions per thousand.
Google Adwords adverts are shown along the side of Googles search results. They are also shown in what is known as content placements. A content placement for a Google Adwords advert, could include your ad being shown on a blogger blog, or even in Gmail.
Whichever you are using, your success or failure will largely depend upon your choice of keywords.
A great tip to reduce your Google Adwords cost, is to use creative keywords. Remember that you are choosing which keywords you want to bid on, and the cost involved in each click is directly proportionate to the competition.
If you pick a keyword for your niche that only a few other people are bidding on, it will be very cheap to get traffic. Obviously the longer your keywords are, and the more obscure the less people will be searching for this term.
The best compromise is to bid on the cheap keywords that not many people are searching for, but use ten times the keywords.
If you can get very cheap clicks, but using longer keywords results in less searches so less clicks, well then you simply use ten times the long keywords. This way you still get lots of traffic, but at a far cheaper rate. This is an example of using Google Adwords the way it is supposed to be used.
I’ll give you a short list of terms here, that you can add to the front of your keywords. This should result in much cheaper traffic, but as I said, just keep adding these cheap Google Adwords streams, until the traffic is sufficient.
Keyword Extensions:
- How To
- Review
- Reviews
- What is
- Where can I get
- How can I get
- Where are
- What is (keyword) for
- What can I do with a
- Cheap
- Honest review of
- Buy
- (keyword) buy now
- (keyword) free
- (keyword) lessons
- (keyword) blog
- (keyword) review
- (keyword) tips
- (keyword) method
- (keyword) reviews
By adding these simple extenders to your keywords you will massively reduce the cost involved. The trick is to get lots of different cheap keywords going, as opposed to one or two expensive ones.
Hopefully these tips will give you the help you need for your Google Adwords campaigns.
Posted by Aerion Miles on under Misc |
So you have probably heard about the dreaded FTC guidelines and how they have come to end the marketing world’s chances, am I right? Well I think we need to look at what they are actually saying and not saying, and see if we can make any sense out of the FTC guidelines.
To start with we have the issue of testimonials on products. Under the FTC guidelines you cannot just receive a testimonial and put it on your website. What you need to do if you want a testimonial on your website, is to keep all the persons details in case you are ever checked to see if it is a real testimonial. Worse yet is the fact you are actually supposed to show the persons email address according to some readings.
You see the problem at the moment is that not only do most of the people using the internet not have a clue what the FTC guidelines actually are, it appears the FTC themselves are just as bewildered.
If you are going to use testimonials on your website or blog you clearly need the person’s name and city written under the testimonial, but I wouldn’t show their email as you could also get in trouble for that due to privacy laws.
Now on to affiliate matters, and here at least it is far more clear cut.
If you are promoting something as an affiliate, then you need to add a disclaimer to the website or email that makes this known. This will have a huge effect on review websites.
For a number of years people have been building review websites. On a website of this type the web master will claim he is giving an honest review but actually is just trying to make an affiliate sale. The problem is that people have been tricked into buying a product because they thought others had already found it useful. Well this was never going to last, and now the FTC guidelines say that if you want to promote it, then you need a clear unmissable disclaimer saying you are trying to promote it for a commission.
But how much can they actually do??
Well it seems not a lot, because when asked by a consortium of bloggers recently they replied that there was no cause for panic, and at this stage they are just trying to educate people.
They even went so far as to say they don’t have nearly enough people able to monitor the internet, and if the FTC guidelines were to be enforced at this point, it would only be because they had received specific complaints.
I would not celebrate their ineffectiveness too soon. I suspect it will just be a matter of time until they have an automatic software running, that can locate people breaking the FTC guidelines and send an automated email. Their real problem is the fact they can only do anything about websites from US territory, and this doesn’t really clean up the internet so much as give American web masters a disadvantage.
What do you think. Are they doing the right think or not. And if not what would you suggest they do differently.
Posted by Aerion Miles on March 16, 2010 under Getting Started, Misc |
For anyone questioning whether or not the mindset you have while doing a task is actually important, this article will be for you. We will be looking at this issue in-depth, as this could be the difference between success and failure for many of you.
To start with we could look at the mindset of any successful business person, and you will immediately see, they did not count failure as an option. The problem is, that it is hard to know whether they succeeded because of this mindset, or whether it is a direct result of the success they have had.
Obviously a person will feel optimistic and enthusiastic after their plans succeed, but what were they like before they succeeded. This is an argument I have several times, so we are going to look at this, and try and work out the truth.
If at the start of their career, a now successful person had not believed they would succeed. I suspect they would not have tried to succeed. However some people do make a half hearted attempt, and it really is these people we are talking about.
All the big success stories you hear, are from people who have achieved big things. They did not necessarily have an easy time, but they did have a plan to reach for the top, and in their case it worked.
I would theorize that had they not had a 100% belief that they would succeed, then their basic mindset would not have allowed them to try something so large.
They would have instead attempted to make just enough and hoped it would work. And of course with this mindset, they would have doomed themselves from the start.
If you totally believe you will succeed, then hard work is not hard work, it is merely a means to an end. If however you just hope to make enough to survive till next week, you already have sowed the seeds of your failure. If you work without belief, you will not work hard, at least this has been by my observations.
The mindset in fact becomes the reality, as without the channel for future success to arrive by, it stopped in its tracks. Your mindset truly is the means by which you allow your future to happen.
Once you understand that, it becomes time to change your mindset, and to allow a different set of possibilities to unfold.
I will try and refrain from delving into the law of attraction, or indeed quantum mechanics. However you should be aware that it is now widely excepted by the scientific community, that thought alone can put pressure on the reality around it.
Sounds crazy doesn’t it, but you may have heard of the quantum computer. The incredible things they are achieving in this field are entirely made by a machine attempting to copy the human brains electro-magnetic field. So you could say, how come a quantum computer operating as a mere facsimile of a human mind, can do things a real human mind can’t.
A recent example was when a tiny particle was sent two second backwards through time, to the partner machine. When asked why a human mind with the same fields of energy could not perform the same task, the scientist running the experiment said, “Probably because we know we cant” and smiled.
So one answer could be the mindset. Seriously a computer could not know doubt or hesitation. Could it be that these things alone, are truly all that hold us back from our real potential. Without fear, doubt or hesitation having any place within your mindset, what do you think you could achieve?
Posted by Aerion Miles on March 12, 2010 under Pay Per Click, Website Traffic |
If you have a PPC campaign currently running I’m sure you’re wondering about the negative keywords section. A negative keyword, is a keyword which if entered will stop your keywords from showing up in the result.
The advantage of this type of keyword in your PPC campaign is that it can help you to eliminate wasted clicks from people who just want something for nothing. Many people will search across the Internet looking for a free version of something which they know they will eventually have to buy. The unfortunate effect of this is that because this type of surfing is so prevalent you can waste lots of money advertising to people that have no intention of buying anything.
In any type of PPC campaign your main interest should be your ROI (Return on Investment) and if there is a way to reduce the amount of clicks you pay for between sales, then this certainly needs to be investigated.
I found that in most PPC campaigns adding the keyword “free” and “free download” to my negative keywords list, caused a noticeable increase in my conversion rate.
In case you’re wondering what a conversion rate is, it is the name we give to the amount of clicks divided by the amount of sales we made. A large part of improving your PPC campaign revolves around various methods of boosting your conversion ratio, and while there are many different methods you can use I urge you not to neglect the negative keywords.
Another thing to consider when setting up a PPC campaign is that Google Adwords are not the only advertising company online, though they may pretend they are.
Another great company advertising via a PPC campaign is Bidvertiser, though their effectiveness will depend largely upon the niche you are in. Overture is another provider of the PPC campaigns service, and many people consider them better than Google Adwords, though I think it really depends upon the niche you are in.
When trying to compile a list of negative keywords to add to your PPC campaign, I suggest you look at the other websites competing for your main keywords. What you should try and do, is discover what the free alternative is to what you are selling, and make sure that those people are not coming through to your website via your PPC campaign.
Sometimes I have found it very effective to add my competitors name to my negative keyword list. The reason this has been the case, is that they were looking for a particular product, and finding that I was not selling it, moved on after costing me one click. By adding my competitors name to my negative keyword list, I found in some cases my PPC campaigns conversions improved dramatically. Though in other PPC campaigns it turned out that my main buying traffic had actually been looking for a competitor’s product and instead decided to buy mine. By blocking those keywords I had blocked my buying traffic.
The route to go with this will depend upon the niche you are in, but I advise testing as you could be leaving money on the table.
Posted by Aerion Miles on March 11, 2010 under Website Traffic |
I’ve been doing some testing with solo ads, to see whether they are actually as good as sending an e-mail to my own list or not. So far it’s looking very good, so I thought I’d write down what I’ve learned so far and share it with you.
You may be aware that it takes a long time to build up a good-sized mailing list, and that in spite of what many people may say, it really is not that easy to do.
That’s where solo ads come in, as you can send an e-mail or advert to someone else’s list, and possibly even use this to build your own list. There are many types of solo ads, so it is important to make sure you choose the right one for your campaign.
There are many companies that offer solo ads to their lists. These include traffic exchanges, e-zines, and sometimes you can even pay an individual to send your advert to their list, if the list is of sufficient size.
It does cost money to send solo ads but it can be very profitable if you offer is both good and highly targeted. You probably already know the importance of building a huge mailing list, and this is where Solo ads can be really useful.
First you need to create a free offer of some kind that people within a certain niche will sign up for. I suggest testing this offer until you have a good idea of the conversion rate from viewers to sign-ups, as this will make it far easier to know how responsive a solo advert will be.
If you find that one in 10 people who see your offer sign up then you know that sending solo ads to 100,000 people will probably build you a list of 10,000 people. Obviously this is a huge advantage if you can make it happen, but the reason you test your advert first is to make sure you don’t waste your money. Consider if your conversion rate was zero, then it wouldn’t matter if you sent your solo ads out to 50 million people, as you still would not get a single sign up.
Always start small when sending a solo advertisement.
However when you find it works and actually makes you money, or builds your list, then send targeted solo ads to the limit of your financial capacity.
Remember that the best way to send large solo ads, is to use the money that you have made from the last solo advert.
When you get it right, just keep cycling your money upwards and reinvesting and the sky’s the limit.
So if you have been thinking about sending solo ads I highly recommend you try them out, but make sure you do proper testing on a small scale before going completely mad at it.
The main advantage of solo ads in my opinion, is that you often only need to send one or two before you will have a list big enough that you will not need to run any more.
I do have one last word of caution before you proceed with sending solo ads and building your list.
Make absolutely sure that your auto responder company has the best rates available, when your list grows huge. You may have joined an auto responder company, because they were the cheapest and best value. However I urge you to check what their prices will be if you have 20,000 to 30,000 subscribers. Some autoresponder company’s can be ridiculously expensive when your subscriber count rises above a certain point, so just make sure you have the best deal available before being stuck with a very expensive list. Obviously you would still profit hugely from your list, but it’s always better to get the best deal available to you.
Let me know how it goes for you, and if you have any questions just leave a comment below.
Posted by Aerion Miles on March 7, 2010 under Website Traffic |
I have been doing some research on the notorious Google Buzz recently, and thought I would share what I have learned.
It is actually a whole lot better than Google have said themselves…Or maybe it’s just the way they said it that initially put me off.
Here is the bit they never told you – Free Viral advertising.
I thought that would get your attention, and it’s true. Google Buzz can be used as a great tool for viral advertising, and it does it in a way that people don’t even realize they are helping to promote your company.
First of all I better explain what Google Buzz does as some of you will not have tried it yet.
In your Gmail account you will have noticed the “Buzz” option directly under your “Inbox.”
What Google Buzz does, is correlate all the pictures, RSS feeds, tweets and everything else, and makes a mega feed. This feed will appear in the Gmail accounts of the people you have granted access to.
There are two main ways you can set your privacy options, and they are let everyone see or don’t.
What happens next is as you go about your normal business day, every time you send an email to someone Google Buzz tries to get them to look at your feed.
If they comment on your Google Buzz feed, then Google starts recommending that their Gmail contacts have a look to see what was said.
This is a just a basic run through of the process, as it is easy to understand when you are looking at it.
The problem is that Google often annoy people, so when they released Google Buzz many marketers simply refused to even look at it.
When I realized just how viral Google Buzz actually is, I had to come on here and tell you all.
I know Google are big and annoying. And yes they seem to be trying to take over the whole of the internet, but some of the things they make really are good. Take Google Analytics for example, or Adwords. Many businesses simply couldn’t function without the big G but still many resent them.
Set aside your old grudges and issues and think of an entirely free viral campaign, completely paid for and maintained on your behalf by Google. That is what Google Buzz actually is.
Will I be using Google Buzz much myself? You better believe it.
One word of caution though
If the thing you put on Google Buzz are going to be recommended to your business acquaintances and their friends, be careful of what you put there.
The best feature in my opinion is that Google Buzz actually will build you a follower list automatically, and that ain’t bad.
So that is the good news, but what about the bad.
Well Google Buzz is a great addition to your marketing, and although a little invasive in my opinion, could be a real help. With that said it does again lead you to invest more time and effort in building your business through Google.
It’s a trade off, of privacy for advertising. As a marketer I can really see the advantage, and I am using it just because it makes me more money.
What do you think??
Will you be using Google Buzz, or telling Google to Buzz off??
