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Now this just seems ridiculous does it not?  Why would anyone ever do such a thing?  Surely no one is going to buy traffic, pay good money for it and then send people to a web page that is NOT ABOUT what they are advertising!  

That could never ever happen or could it?  

Oh it happens each and every day.  I decided to do a little experiment to see what I could show you in regard to this mistake and illustrate for you exactly how big of a mistake this really is.  I decided to look at some jewelry sites for a few reasons.  

First - Even though as I write this line I have not yet even looked one up I am almost sure in a market like jewelry many people are paying for traffic and sending it to the wrong place.  You wouldn’t want to lay down a bet with me on this would you?  

Second – Given Jewelry is expensive, I am writing this a few days before valentines day and competition is high I am positive that the bids for PPC traffic are very high and I can show you that not only are these bidders wasting money but they are wasting a ton of money.  

Third – I don’t know ANYTHING about jewelry!  I mean nothing other then I know what I like when I see it.  So I don’t have any special insider knowledge and I can honestly describe this as a pure marketer to you.  

Ok so what I am going to do is go to Yahoo and look up a jewelry term, show you where it points and then where they should point. I am then going to let you know how much that the individual is paying to send their traffic to the wrong place.  

Again I still have not yet done a search, this is going to be interesting isn’t it?  

So thinking of my wife I know she likes jewelry and I have paid attention to what TV ads get her attention and what she glances at in the stores.  (Um guys you can learn from me on this one too).  So I know she likes and would like to add to her collection…  

A three stone pendant  

Tanzanite earrings  

and a

A diamond solitaire pendent  

So that gives me three terms with which to make my point and show you a marketer spending a lot of money to waste traffic and send it to the wrong place.  

Ok so I am off to do my searches and I will be right back.  You want to bet that I won’t have to go past three stone pendent to prove my point?  I will give you 10 to one odds. (grin)  

Ok so I am back and the top 3 bidders were MSN Shopping, Bizrate and Amazon.  These are big boys who hire professionals with giant stores and they all have a three stone pendant page when I click on their ads.  

Now never mind that both MSN and Bizrate show really ugly pendants at the top of the page and have the pretty diamond ones everyone wants so low on the page I have to scroll to see them.  At least they got it right to a degree!  

But at result number four of the paid results I found an ad that read  

So where did this ad take me to when I clicked on it?  Strait to www.netaya.com now go look at that page, you will see it is the home page and no where on it do you see a three stone pendant.  If you scroll down you will find an amethyst one but if you search for three stone pendant you probably want see a page with a selection of them when you click through.  

I found this page on their site by digging around.  http://netaya.com/3stonependaprogr.html  (it took me 4 clicks to find it and I am a professional internet marketer and knew exactly where to look, not just Joe Shopper so keep that in mind), now go look at the pendant page again it is http://netaya.com/3stonependaprogr.html  

Now tell me if you wanted a three stone pendant which page would make you more likely to take a good look.  The home page or the one actually about three stone pendants.  I promise you just changing the landing page would probably increase this marketer’s conversion by two to three times what it is now.  

The next thing I did was use the Overture View Bids Tool and find out how much Netaya was paying to send traffic to the wrong place.   

Are you ready for this?  

At the time I wrote this Netaya was paying 59 cents a click to send visitors to the wrong place!  So 1000 visitors sent to the wrong place is costing them $590.00!   

Below is a screen shot of their bid on overture for the term "three stone pendant"

Why are they doing this?  

Most likely because as simple as this concept is, it escapes most people!  Now I can and (and probably will) write an entire book some day on landing page optimization but for now just get this basic fact down.  When you advertise be it online or offline always direct your visitors to a page that is about exactly what you are advertising.   

Now will this take more work when you set up your PPC campaigns?   

Yes.  Yet not that much more work.  In the example above the right landing page already exists the marketer simply needs to point the ad to it!  This requires creating an ad group just for three stone pendants and terms associated with them.  That will add a few minutes to the set up time but the return will be huge.  

Remember when a web surfer searches for a term they are looking for exactly what they typed, I know it might sound overly simple but if you give them that your results will be at least twice as good.  

So what have we learned today?  

First, send your visitors to a page that give them EXACTLY what they are looking for.  

Second, never take a bet from me when it relates to internet marketing!   

~ Jack Spirko

Special Announcement  

If you have been keeping track I promised this series would have eight lessons in it and we have now published all eight but during the writing of this course I realized that there were four more critical errors that most marketers make.  

Errors that are so costly I simply could not leave them out.

So I have added four more lessons that we will publish over the next four days.  Also there is going to be a special free bonus gift after that one.  I hope this alone teaches you one more fundamental of doing business, “Always try to give people more then you promised them”.

Technorati Tags: adwords, ppc, internet marketing, landing page, page optimization, online advertising, paid search, pay per click, cost per click, advertising, marketing, seo, sem

Popularity: 6% [?]

I recently discovered a service called IBackup - Online Backup and Storage that I think a lot of business owners from small to medium brick and mortar businesses to the work at home entrepreneur can all benefit from.If you work or ever have worked for a well run corporate environment you know that most companies have employees save company documents to a shared drive rather then individual PC hard drives. 

This way if one PC goes down or is damaged the files worked on by that employee are not lost.What many don’t realize is that shared drive is usually backed up to yet another drive.  This will usually happen by an automated process each night when bandwidth is not being used for daily activities. 

This way the maximum data at risk of loss is only one days worth of data.  Smart companies use an “offsite” back up meaning the data is transmitted over the internet via a secure connection.

 Why do they do this?  Well what happens if the building catches on fire and your back up drive is in the same building.  What if there is a hurricane, flood or tornado and the entire site is lost.  Now the company has not just lost their facility, they have lost their data too which is usually their most valuable asset.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could have this type of back up service for your small business and even your personal files?  I talk to small business owners all the time and whenever backing up files comes up they tend to tell me they rely on an external back up hard drive.

Such drives are a great tool and can be had for about one hundred to two hundred dollars for up to 500 Gigs of space.  But think about this; let’s say you are a small work at home business.  You have a home office and your business is like most a second income for you.  You pull onto your street and are shocked to see fire trucks and flashing lights and watch what is left of your house being soaked in water by the local Fire Department.

This is an awful tragedy and now you have a lot of hard time ahead.  This may be a time when you are really glad you have that second source of income.  However with out off site back ups not only did you loose your house, you just lost all your data as well, all your files, what may have been years and years of work and data!

Clearly that would make a bad situation worse!  With IBackup it would be one problem you would not have.  Each night while you slept those critical files would be backed up to an offsite location insuring your data was safe.

So what does a service like this cost?  Try 9.95 a month for up to 5 Gigs with pricing based on space going up from their.  Now since you won’t be backing up your stolen content off of YouTube etc, 5 gigs for most small business people is a lot of space.

For most businesses today, your data is your life and you just can’t afford to loose it.  If you are not already backing up your critical data off site I recommend you visit IBackup right away to learn more about their very affordable service.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Are you getting HDTV quality picture?

One of the most common mistakes (heck I made it at first too!) when buying an HDTV is not getting HDTV content.

Just because CBS shows CSI in HD doesn't mean you are getting High Definition.

It may look good on your TV because the quality is so much better than your old junky tv.  The picture is "upconverted" to look better than the old standard definition 480i picture. 

In order to see real HDTV you've got to have HDTV content.  From your cable company this means you have to get the HD version of CBS and tune into that channel to watch the show.  You'll notice a clearer picture and you'll also notice you can see a wider picture than you saw before. You may also notice that when commercials come on the black bars appear on the sides of your screen.  This is because most of the commercials are in regular standard definition format not HD.

Another tell-tale sign of having your tv upconverting is that suddenly everything looks a little wider than it did before.  That's because your tv is zooming in to fit everything to the wide screen.  Sometimes people prefer to watch standard tv in this format because they don't like the black bars on the side.  I don't mind them because I'm focused on the picture, not the black bars.

Do you have the black bars?

Are you watching True HD yet?

- Ben Fitts 

This is to let Technorati know I'm an author here: My Technorati Profile

Popularity: 7% [?]

This is a HUGE MISTAKE because first it does not work (especially long term) and second because even if you get lucky and get any type of result it won’t teach you anything.  

Let’s start with problem one – It Just Doesn’t Work  

You want a number one ranking for the term “Edgar Allen Poe”, so you go to Google and search for Edgar Allen Poe and find the number one web site.  You then cut and past the content from that page, steal their Meta tags and then fiddle with the text just a bit.  Now let’s take out the fact that this is in fact illegal and plagiarism and the person you copy could sue you for it.  

The cold reality is Google already has ranked that site number one and knows it is their content.  When you copy it you won’t just not rank well there is a good fact you won’t be in the top 1000 in fact you may be banished to what is called “supplemental results” and only be displayed when Google can’t find any “good sites” that match the search.  Um let me be blunt this sucks and if it happens to you, you are getting exactly what you deserve for stealing content.  

Now on to problem two – It Won’t Teach You Anything  

Can you see how this is the bigger problem?  One year from now if you stick to the principals I am providing to you in this series of articles, your personal knowledge will grow every day and you will be 1000 times better AT LEAST.  I mean that!  It is impossible to write original content, track your results, build a list, continue to educate yourself and plan projects and not exponentially increase your knowledge and abilities.  

So what is the right way to copy competitors?  

You should copy techniques!  Why you ask?  Well, because it give use the opposite result of copying content.  First it works!  Nice change for you there huh?  Second it will teach you and make you a better internet marketer.  Even better right?  

Reason One – It Works!  

When you look at a site that ranks number one and see how many times they use the term compared to their total word count, what their meta tags look like, find the places they did not do it perfect, find how many links they have you get the blue print for success.  

You can then emulate that and you will over time gain good rankings.  Further you can then analyze top competitors for highly competitive terms and then use that information to rank less competitive terms, even terms that are totally unrelated to the site you analyzed.  

Reason Two – It will train you to be a better marketer.  

This is pure gold by copying effective techniques and watching the results in time you will be able to roll out new projects with that knowledge driving your choices from day one.  You will get better at what you do every day and learn to apply the most successful techniques of many different marketers adding your own unique contributions, combinations and niches.  In short when you copy technique and bring your own knowledge and talent to it you become an expert.

So make sure you copy techniques and not content.  Doing so will make you an expert and a success.  Copying content at its' best just won’t work and at its worse could cost you your business if you copy the wrong guy with the right lawyer.

 ~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, seo, sem, plagerism, web copy, copy writing, search marketing, search engine marketing, meta tags,   web site marketing, online marketing

Popularity: 6% [?]

As our readers have noticed back in January we started adding paid postings to our blog and introduced a disclosure policy to keep everything above board.  I have been asked a few times if there is any money in actually doing PayPerPost advertising which is the primary source of our sponsored posting.

Well, here are the facts; in January I did about 16 blog ads for PayPerPost, which have resulted in about 135 dollars in revenue for our blog.  Each post took me about 7 minutes on average to complete or 7 x 16 = 112 minutes so round it up to 2 hours.  We come out to about 65 dollars an hour.

Nothing like my consulting rate mind you but that is really good money for doing something I should be doing anyway (keeping my blog active with interesting things).

I have also seen no reduction in our blog traffic or popularity.  In fact the opposite was the result.  Our Technorati rank went from about 150,000 (pathetic) to about 24,000 respectable.  Our traffic went up by about 200% and over all there has only been one “sniper comment” about the sponsored posts from one individual with a clear axe to grind.

So clearly I have found sponsored blogging to be a great additional source of revenue and material with very little down side.  On the other side of things I have also spent some money on the other side of things as an advertiser and the SEO results have been exceptional as well.  I can tell you my opinion is that while good for the blogger the advertiser has an even better resource.  I have taken one of my sites from page three on google to page one (top 4 result) for one of the most competitive terms in telecom in about 10 days, that is a hell of a result.

Overall I have to say PayPerPost rocks and even though this post itself was sponsored I would advise both bloggers and advertisers that they are quickly becoming one of the best resources for side revenue and marketing available today.

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: payperpost, sem, seo, blogging, blogger, blog, link building, paid blogging, paid to blog

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Again we are back to a mistake I made in the beginning.  If forced to put a dollar figure on how much money this one cost me over my first three years I would say WELL OVER 100,000 Dollars easily.  I tell you that because again I want you to learn from my early mistakes so you don’t have to make them.  

So again let’s go to two ways our marketer with an authors site could do business one the wrong way and the other the right way.  That by the way is not opinion it is fact!  At least if your goal is to make money online it is fact.  

The wrong way – Our Marketer appears to do it all right on the surface.  In time the site looks good has excellent navigation, visitors can find what they are looking for, etc.  People email our marketer and tell her how wonderful the site is, how they love the same author etc.  She even sells quite a few books via Amazon.com or what ever affiliate program she is in.  In fact after all her expenses the site makes money every month.  

HOW THE HECK CAN THAT BE WRONG?

The right way – Our Marketer does the exact same thing as above but adds the following steps.  First she creates a opt in form and puts it on her site in fact on every page there is some call to join her email list and get “Ten things You Never Knew about Edgar Allen Poe” or some other report that will be delivered over a few days. She doesn’t send emails each day the follow up system at Aweber does it for her.  She also adds contextual ads to her site (Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher) so if anyone clicks on them she also earns money.  

Keeping with yesterday’s lesson she tracks everything and knows the value of each visitor.  She also adds a forum to her site to further build relationships among her visitors and creates a community.  She adds a blog about her readings and you guessed it she puts Google or Yahoo ads in the forum and on her blog.  She keeps an eye out for cool items her visitors will like and news they would like and blends both news and sales copy in email messages to her list.  She takes her value per visitor (VPV), and buys all the traffic she can find for less then that value which brings her new profitable traffic each and every day.

So with the wrong way there is only one action that a visitor can take that would be considered a success and it is.  

• The visitor clicks an affiliate link and buys a copy of a book she is selling.  

On to the right way the visitor can take many actions one would call a conversion or at least a positive out come.  

• The visitor clicks an affiliate link and buys a copy of a book she is selling.  

• The visitor joins her email list (long term this is almost always worth more then one sale). 

• The visitor clicks and adsense ad or yahoo ad and generates revenue.

• The visitor becomes a fan of her blog and returns often to read it.  

• The visitor posts in her forum and makes friends with other visitors and begins to visit often.  

Now you tell me

• Which site is making its’ visitors worth the most per visit?   

• Which one will produce more money?  

• Which marketer is going to be able to bid more with PPC campaigns and which one is doing the most to develop long term business?   

• Oh one last question which is going to create more leverage in the future when the marketer rolls out a new project in a new niche?  

So make sure that as you plan sites and projects you are including as many positive outcomes as possible for your visitors. Most people simply don’t buy on the first visit and if you don’t allow for additional positive outcomes you are generally sending away 97-98 our of every 100 visitors.   

Think about that and always make sure you are maximizing the revenue from your web sites.  

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, seo, sem, search engine marketing, internet marketing, online marketing

Popularity: 6% [?]

As many of our readers know we are currently developing a Internet marketing and seo training course known as Marketing ICE.  I thought I would share one of our preliminary free lessons with our readers.  This is a pretty simple video that shows you how to use the new Blogger's (formally Blogger Beta) features to quickly change your blogs look and feel.  We have a whole series of more then 12 free videos coming that will be available in our free members area.  So if you like the video be sure to sign up to find out as soon as launch the beta version of the training course.

Hope you enjoyed the video,

~Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: blogger, google, google bloger, blog, blogging, blogger beta, video blogging, seo training, seo video, internet marketing

Popularity: 12% [?]

If I had to pick one and only one thing that could almost by itself be the separator of successful and unsuccessful Internet Marketers it would be tracking everything you can possibly track.  If you are tracking your results you can't help but learn to do it better.  What’s funny is this is the one thing that most people fail to do properly!  I guess that isn’t funny, in fact it is a little sad for those folks.   

Let me tell you they are the people driving up bid costs on competitive PPC terms on Google and Yahoo for 2-3 weeks who then disappear never to be seen again.  They are the ones sure that you can’t make money with PPC or that they must be victims of click fraud (when PPC can be and often is an almost fool proof method to make money).  

Side Note:  I recently read a report that said of the major Fortune 1000 companies buying traffic online over 40% we not tracking conversion or effectively tracking ROI.  IN THE FORTUNE 1000!  I'm sorry but to me that is an example of having more money then brains and if I were a stock holder in one of those companies I would damn sure want an explanation from someone!  

Many of them justified this by stating it was their intention to gain branding recognition rather then traditional e-Commerce but even more of them (65%) stated they were not tracking the "impact on branding".  Again to me this is just people with more money then brains!

Let me give you three key reasons you need to track EVERYTHING you can possibly track.  

One – Done right as you begin to get traffic, over time your visitors 
will SHOW YOU easy to rank key words that you can then 
develop specific content for.   

Let me explain that one because it can be gold all by itself.  Many tracking programs will show you your last 100 or even more visitors including the referring url.  And that will tell you exactly what that one individual clicked on, how long he was at your site and what page he left from.   

It is that referring URL you are most interested in because many time it will be a Google, MSN or Yahoo result.  Now let’s go back to our marketer doing a books site. Say he chooses James Kavanaugh and makes a section about Kavanaugh.  He chooses some terms like “James Kavanaugh”, “Book by James Kavanaugh”, etc.  He however does not come up with the term “the collected works of James Kavanaugh”.  

Now he views his tracking and sees that someone searched for that term (“the collected works of James Kavanaugh”) and visited his site.  He check the referring Google url and discovers he is ranked #9 for that phrase even though he never tried.   

WOW think about that!  A top ten rank for a term he never optimized for!  So now he simply makes a new page titled, you guessed it, “the collected works of James Kavanaugh”.  And he actually tries to rank for that term this time, gets a few link, etc.  Odds are he will easily pull off #1 or #2 across all three search engines.   

Why?  He tracked his results, that’s why.  

So Just how effective is this simple technique over time?  Judge for yourself here is a screen shot of the traffic to just one of my many sites.  I won't tell you the name of this site BUT it is in one of the most highly competitive markets on the planet right now.  Markets dominated by multi million dollar corporations and chased by more then a million affiliate marketers.

The important thing to note is 100% of the traffic you can see in the graph below is from organic results.  I have never paid for a single click to this site.  While I fully optimized this site the growth you see below is almost 100% from the technique of tracking my traffic and making pages for terms that I found by tracking my results.

Note that in the above graphic February was only half over!  I also know 2500 unique visitors may not seem impressive compared to sites with 1000 a day right?  Well, again it is about the market this site is in.  PPC traffic in this sites niche is going for well over a 4 dollars a click cost right now!  So some of my competitors are buying those 2500 visitors for more then $10,000.00 while I get them for the cost of my web space and domain name!  So yes I would say this technique works!

Two – With out tracking you will never know your value per visitor (VPV)  

Let me be very clear about this because if you don’t get it odds are your will always pay more for traffic then it is worth and you just can’t get ahead that way.  Let's again use two hypothetical marketers to illustrate this more clearly.

• Marketer One – Does not track his results fully, sees it as a bother and taking to much of his time.  He goes and sets up a PPC campaign, picks high traffic words, bids at least to be in the top 5 and waits for the money to roll in.  Five days later he is out 500 dollars and made two sales for 200 in profit.  Clearly he is loosing money problem is he really does not know how much, probably made some sales from other methods, he is bleeding money and sooner or later will simply quit the PPC game.  

• Marketer Two – Tracks everything, puts tracking into place on every web page, on his email list conversion, on his contextual ads, etc.  One month into his project he has had exactly 1134 visitors, based on things like sales, advertising revenue, leads he got into his mailing list, etc.  Marketer Two determines his Value Per Visitor (VPV) is $1.00.  He then decides he wants at least a 40% return so he never bids higher then 60 cents.  He does not care who is at the top for some term with 7 million searches he focus his efforts on finding good traffic terms for 60 cents or less.  Result for Marketer Two – He can not loose money!  

Three – If you don’t track everything then you simply can’t maximize contextual advertising.  

You have probably heard of Google Adsense, if not you should check it out.  Simply put it is a program where you add some simple HTML code to your web pages and Google Ads are displayed on your site.   If a visitor clicks on them you make some money.  It could be 10 cents or it could be a dollar or more per click.

The price is based on the key words displayed on your page and how much people are bidding on them.  Well guess what you can track almost everything with Adsense!  Of course most people do not.  I create “channels” for every major page or at least group of pages I ad this code to.  I can then see how much I make per click and how many clicks I get for every thousand visitors.  With this alone I know that a page is worth say 10 dollars per thousand visitors JUST IN ADSENSE REVENUE.  Nice thing to KNOW huh?  

This allows me to change the lay out of the ads or their appearance and KNOW which way works best.  Or to take down Google Adsense and put up Yahoo Publisher ads instead and MEASURE which one makes more money.  I saw people in forums like crazy saying “Yahoo pays better, switch to Yahoo”.  Being cautious I did not switch wholesale, instead I tested different pages and found out.  

One some pages for some niches Yahoo paid over two time MORE!  

However,  

On other pages for other niches Yahoo paid almost two times LESS!  

You can guess what I did right?  Went through and TESTED my highest money earners for a few days and then went with the winner.  End result my contextual ad revenue went up 76% from December 1, 2005 to January 31, 2006.  

All I can say is USE every tracking metric you can possibly find!  I have always done tracking and in spite of the fact that I made almost all the mistakes I outline in this course it was probably tracking that kept me in the game long enough to figure it out.  

Going back to the first reason of having your visitors tell you what terms they are searching for.  A lot of hosting comes with some pretty fancy tracking, makes nice reports, etc. but it often DOES NOT SHOW YOU INDIVIDUAL VISITORS and EXACTLY what terms they searched for.  That alone is what will give you a growing list of terms to build pages for.  I know of three great free tracking tools that do this for you.  

They are  

Google Analytics - One of the most advanced tracking tools available

Site Meter  - The free version shows your last 100 visitors

Active Meter  - The free version shows your last 150 visitors

In the game of Internet marketing what you or I think means nothing and can get your killed by the competition.  It is KNOWING that guides good decisions and the only way to KNOW is to track and measure.    

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: analytics, google, tracking software, sitemeter, activemeter, google analytics, internet marketing, web marketing, web analysis, metrics, site metrics, ppc, organic search, seo, sem

More on Tracking and Google Analytics

• The Need for Web Analytics Part 1
• The Need for Web Analytics Part 2
• The Need for Web Analytics Part 3
• Reporting is now up-to-date
• Tracking Google Check Out Sales Part 1
• Tracking Google Check Out Sales Part 2
• Absolute vs Unique Visitors

Popularity: 7% [?]

Remember our first lesson was making sure you always developed a plan for each project you choose to start.  There is probably nothing more important then setting priority when it comes to the planning process.  If you don’t set priority to each task make a list and rank the action items in order of importance you will never actually do your tasks in the right order.   

This will at a minimum make your projects take longer to complete, often it will result in skipping critical steps that will hurt your ROI (return of investment) and many times it is actually the death nail in killing projects that simply never get completed.  

So how do you set priority?  The process is simply a matter of first writing down all the steps you need to accomplish to finish the project, second being honest with yourself about which ones most need to be done first, third creating phases and assigning groups of tasks to each phase and finally identifying any sub tasks for each main task and prioritizing them.  

Good lord but isn’t that a mouth full!  Ok well, lets use a small project to break it down to a real world example.   

• Write content
• Get a domain name
• Get some server space
• Put some initial content on the first page even if it is just some text from an article directory or wikipedia or some of your old content.
• Put the domain on the server
• Get some widget pictures and widget related pictures
• Make a basic site outline to define the structure
• Publish the site
• Get at least a few links to the site
• Get many optimized high quality links
• Optimize the content on the pages and do good meta tags
• Format the content into web pages
• Tune up and make the site pretty

First – Get a domain name if this is a completely new site instead of an addition to an old one.  Reason (if the site is new there is a time delay to get it listed in the search engines and get it ranked and you can’t do either until you at least have a domain name)  

Second – Get some server space (if you don’t have it already) for the same reason mentioned above.  You need to get the domain up and active.  For that you need hosting space.  

Third -  Put the domain on the new server (the reason should be obvious based on the first and second step)  

Fourth - Put some initial content on the first page even if it is just some some of your old content. (again this is about getting a brand new site indexed, you might as well start that process while you are building the site it won’t hurt you that’s for sure.)  

Fifth – Get a few links to the site (You can do this in seconds, just make a few forum posts, perhaps post an article to a directory with a link, if you have other sites give yourself a few links.  Again this is just to get your site indexed.  NEVER bother to submit a new site to the search engines, links on sites that are already indexed work faster and much better.)  

Sixth - Make a basic site outline to define the structure (This will be your basic outline the site may and probably will grow beyond it.  However you will have to decide what you want to convey that is NEEDED to launch the site and start it on its mission.  Make a simple outline of those sections and make notes on it, also make sure you plan the structure for future growth if the site is destined to become big some day. Don’t bother to write content until you make this outline.)

Seventh – Write the content for the site.  (Most people start this before the rest but look you now know what to write to get the core of the site done, your site is already getting spidered and gaining age while you work.  Isn’t this a much better way?)  

Eighth – Format the content into Web Pages (After you write your content you can go ahead and set up your basic web site with the page format.  Drop in your text and your site is basically fleshed out.  To save time I almost always use a template for a site if it will be anything more then the most basic type of web page.)  

Ninth – Publish the site.  (Sure it isn’t done but you are going to keep making changes and when the spiders come back they will see change occurring and that gets them interested so they will come back often during your modifications.  Again you want to get the site indexed and more important you now want all those new sub pages indexed too.)  

Tenth - Get some widget pictures and widget related pictures (So many people start here but search engine could care less about pictures except for image tags.  Instead you got the pages up and found by Google, MSN and Yahoo, now find some photos and art work to add, just don’t over do it.)  

Eleventh - Optimize the content on the pages and do good meta tags (Alright now go through each page and pick a few targeted key words to get into the copy, title tag and other meta tags.  You only did the images first so you can alt tag them during this step.)  

Twelfth - Tune up and make the site to make it pretty.  (OK now you have time to play with that image and see if it looks better on the left or right side of the page.  Decide to take out a bullet point or what have you.  This is the polishing phase of your site.)  

Thirteenth -  Ok now you need to get a lot of really good optimized links.  Nice thing is since you started out with getting the new domain into Google it is probably in now.  Many link exchanges and web masters won’t link to you until you are at least in Google.  

Now you may not totally agree with my priority list above and like I said a full plan is longer specifically a full product launch where the site is only one part of the whole plan but I just wanted to help make sense out of how and why you have to do this.  

Now let’s say like most internet markers you have a full time job, a family life, personal obligations, etc.  You do your internet marketing part time and that may only be 10 hours a week or may be 20 but it sure isn’t 40-60 right?      

So what happens when you get time to work?  Most check emails, read forum posts, get a bit of news, research that next new toy they have to have and check up on other stuff.  During this time they actually do some work too.  In the end if they “work” 20 hours a week 10-15 max are actually work hours.  

Hey that’s OK too!  This is supposed to be a business but it should not be too much like work or why the heck would we do it?  The key is let’s go back to building this new site and we are on day one and you get that one real hour to work.  What do you do?  Step one, two may be three as well.  

Now you finish up and a day later you get your time to work again you are right back to your schedule and knock out four five and six.  Any time you stop if you have a priority list you know exactly where to start the next time you get back to your project.

Can you see how much more effective this is then doing 3-4 projects at once?  Or even how much more effective it is then doing one and just working on this part or that part?  

So this was a long lesson but it was really two in one.  I did not just teach you to set a schedule I also taught you the way to plan out your next web site launch..  

Tomorrow we are going to talk about another mistake you absolutely can not afford to make under any circumstances,  

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, web marketing plan, seo, sem, search engine markeing, web devleopment, domain name, domain management, priority setting, site development

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There is nothing and I mean nothing more important then building an “opt in” list of visitors that are willing and want to hear from you.  People that give you permission to contact them from time to time, with information they want to receive.  

Optimizing web sites is extremely effective and brings in visitors on a daily basis when done properly.  Yet each time a search engine algorithm happens there are adjustments to be made and any day that huge key word you are number one on Google for could slip down to number 10 or 20 or worse.  Your list is yours, you can keep it, build it and above all maintain full control of it forever.  

Pay Per Click traffic is also very effective, I use it in many of my initiatives and it works well if you know what you are doing.  It however, must be monitored to be cost effective and no matter how good you get at it the cost of traffic is going to continue to go up, your competitors will get tougher and the low priced niche key words will continue to be found and bought.  

I will always use the above two methods to drive traffic to my sites and any good marketer is going to get a least reasonably good at both (or at least proficient in outsourcing them) if they are going to be effective yet neither have the power that a huge opt in list do.  

Before we go any further I want to reveal something to you that is painful for me to admit.  It took me years to start really doing this properly.  Recently I did the math with some very conservative estimates based on the traffic I have controlled over the past six years.  The most conservative number I can come up with is that not doing this has cost me at least 250,000 dollars of revenue.  Admitting this is hard and as you can imagine makes me feel a little ill but I felt it was necessary to really help you understand just how important this step is to your success.

Done properly an opt in list provides you with thousands of people who listen to you, see you as an authority, personally identify with you and follow your recommendations.  To do this you must honestly provide your list with good valuable information and you must honestly care about them.  If you do so they will feel it (even in an email) and you will develop their trust.  

You must never ever violate that trust, just because some new guru has a new book you could sell a thousand copies of to your list that doesn’t mean you should do it.  If the book is crap or just full of information they already know it will hurt your relationship long term.  So build a list and view your list as your friends and treat them like you would treat your next store neighbor, they are your most valuable assets and deserve nothing less.  

I hope you can tell by now that, that is how I view you as a reader of my blog!  So if you are an Internet Marketer I am going to recommend that you buy something, that is if you don’t already have it.  

Why?

Because you need it, it is in your best interest and not using one myself for my first four years online cost me thousands of dollars.  You simply need a good follow up system that allows you to build lists, send personal messages and fully automate the process.  

I recommend Aweber for a few reasons.  

• One – It is very affordable like 20 dollars a month  

• Two – It has a very high delivery rate (like 98%)

• Three – Extremely easy to use and in fact provides you with online movies that show you step by step how to do everything you need to know how to do.  (This is what made me willing to recommend them the most, support and easy to follow instructions).  

• Four -  Allows you to quickly generate opt in forms and even hover forms that are not blocked by pop ups.

Simply put it is the best follow up email system I have found at any price and it is also among the most affordable.  If you have a good follow up system then keep using it, if not then I recommend that you go and get Aweber right now.  They even have a free trial offer but at 20 dollars a month this is one tool you can’t afford to not have and not be using. 

Above all be it with Aweber, another system or software your run on your computer make sure you are building a list, offering your list members valuable information and above all no matter how much money is in it for you NEVER EVER EVER recommend, that your list members spend money on anything unless you are 100% confident in your recommendation.

Your list is your most valuable asset, never forget that and start building one today, one final note this may seem to go with out saying but as you build your list back it up AT LEAST weekly to a separate location so you never loose it.

~ Jack Spirko

To Get a Free Trial of Aweber Click Here

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, marketing, email marketing, auto responder, list building, email list marketing, follow up systems, customer relationship management, crm, relationship marketing, autoresponder

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