Archive for August, 2006
Banned By Google?
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, PPC, SEO Tuesday, 22 August 2006 15:06 4 Comments
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the Google “slap” at affiliates. I receive several Internet Marketing newsletters and all they can talk about are the new Google rules.
It’s all very scary to me because, even though I’ve been doing Internet Marketing for over five years, I still feel like a newbie when it comes to the search engines and how they rank pages.
I search for my URL and my name every now and then to see how many times I’m listed in the results. I mostly do this to see where my articles are ending up, and to make sure no one is stealing my web pages. (And, yes, I still get a kick out of seeing my name in print!)
I recently discovered a few easy ways to tell if a site has been penalized or banned by Google that I want to share with you.
(Note: YouTypedThis.com refers to the URL you typed in to do your search)
- Do a search for your exact URL on Google. If you get the following response: “Sorry, no information is available for the URL YouTypedThis.com.”, then you’ve been penalized. This is Google’s kiss of death � it means you’ve been banned!
- Another message you might see is “Find web pages that contain the term YouTypedThis.com.” This is a little better, you haven’t been dropped from the index, but your rank has probably been lowered.
- This one: “If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking the following link: YouTypedThis.com” means that your site is not in the index, but it hasn’t been dropped or banned.
There is also a way to find out if you have suffered a duplicate content penalty. You will get an “omitted results” message when you search. To find out if this happened do the following:
Copy an exact and unique phrase from your page, without punctuation. Place quotes around it, and then insert it into a Google search box.
After you do the search, if your page doesn’t show in the results, check the bottom for a phrase similar to this “Repeat the search with the omitted results included.”
If your page shows up somewhere in the “omitted results,” then you’ve received a duplicate content penalty (which is still better than getting banned).
Hopefully you will not see any of the above, but at least now you are armed with the knowledge to fight back if you do.
Blogging for Fun and Profit
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Blog Marketing Saturday, 19 August 2006 20:09 5 Comments
Many people (including me) believe that blogging is one of the best ways to make money these days. And it may be true.
Blogging is often much more personal than other kinds of information on a website. You write a blog post like you are actually talking to a person; giving people real advice and information. These people become your “friends” and return to your blog over and over.
However, you can’t just stop at blogging. If you want to make money at it, you still need to treat it like a business. Here are a few things you might want to consider adding to your arsenal of blogging tools.
You should already know the basics, even if you’re just blogging for fun. Put Google AdSense ads on your sidebar. Also, include affiliate links inside your content, and randomly include an affiliate banner or two at the end of your posts.
The most important thing, and the one that is most overlooked, is to find other blogs that are similar to yours and leave comments. Most bloggers love it when people comment on their blog. It shows them that somebody is reading what they write and is interested in the subject.
When you make an informative comment, the blog owner, as well as the readers, may click through to your site and begin reading your blog. Don’t just post a sentence and then add your link. No one will click on it, and if the blog is moderated, it might just be deleted. By adding comments, your post also gets you an incoming link to your blog that helps you get search engine traffic.
This method may take some time to become profitable. People will continue reading your blog, they will send their friends, and you will get more people linking to you. Ultimately, that helps lead to good rankings.
The best case scenario is that the other blog owner will write articles that trackback to your blog, or reference you in one of his or her blog posts. That will help make a GREAT day of traffic for you, and � sooner or later � a profitable one too!
Creative Ideas for Niche Marketing
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Niches Wednesday, 16 August 2006 09:30 1 Comment
There seems to be an increase in the number of people selling “niche” information: How to find niches, how to profit from them, etc. They would have you believe that a niche is a secret thing that only they know about, but they will let you in on their little secret… for a small fee.
So, what really is a niche? In biology, it’s the separate ecological position of an organism within a community. Distinguishing itself and occupying the niche helps it survive better. In marketing, it’s pretty much the same thing.
Simply stated, a niche is a high-demand, low competition market. Once you’ve found one, you try to occupy it more or less alone. Otherwise “low competition” would quickly become “much competition.
But did you know that you could create a niche for just about any product or service? Here are a couple of tips on how to do that:
Offer a product or service with mass appeal to a micro market � The idea here is to dig for keywords and concepts that match a large potential population with a product they will badly want. Then, build your website like it was created just for them. Make it personal and intimate.
For example, you might offer a product for balding golfers. By doing this you narrow down the niche to a selected group, and your customer feels like he or she is getting the personal attention they deserve. Customers will think they have run across a site that was created especially for them, by someone who understands their exact problems.
Another way to attract a niche market is to create a buzz for your product using some sort of viral marketing report or a free giveaway. You may have seen the free giveaway type of marketing in jewelry promotions. All you have to do is give up your name, email and address and they will send you a beautiful diamond ring (worth at least $150!).
Along this same line, you could offer consumers a chance to enter a drawing for a $50 gift certificate, if they buy a certain amount of your product.
All you need for this type of promotion are some great headlines and a few catchy PPC ads. In your ad, make sure to tell people that they can pass this offer onto their friends and family.
You’ll soon have a buzz going that will spread itself around, and in a very short time, you will have a large subscriber list of people interested in a specific niche. Then you can sell other related items to the list.
It just doesn’t get any better than that!
Article Writing – How To Pick Your Topic
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing Saturday, 12 August 2006 16:18 1 Comment
You put a lot of thought into deciding what niche to cover. Which you choose will help you pick an article topic. Choose a subject that has a lot of interest, and a targeted niche audience. It helps if it’s a subject you have some knowledge of and are passionate about.
Take a look at what you know and what you do for hobbies. Do you fix pinball machines or garden? Pinpoint at least three areas that you know something about and just start writing. Don’t worry too much at first if the articles aren’t great. You’ll improve.
Check out article distribution sites, such as ezine @rticles and see what others are writing about. You’ll find dozens of topics with hundreds of examples to follow.
Blog sites are also an excellent way to get new ideas.
Search Technorati or use Google’s blogsearch site for some interesting blogs. You’ll find an endless stream of ideas for things that you can elaborate on in your own articles.
Once you have decided on a niche, do a little more research to make sure there is competition in that market. If there is no one else marketing or writing about the same thing, chances are it is a proven loser. (But, hey maybe you have the next big thing!)
Search Google, Yahoo!, and MSN to find web sites that could be your competition before settling on your niche. Make a note of these sites for future reference. You may want to ask the owners if they would like to use your article in their ezine site.
Here’s a helpful free keyword tool from Good Keywords to find out how many searches are being performed on your keywords. WordTracker is also a good tool for researching. It costs a little bit, but if you’re doing research on a lot of keywords, it might be worth the price to get extra keyword ideas.
As you can see, it’s not that hard to find a subject to write about. Bookmark all the sites you find where you can get good ideas, and start writing!
Is the Squeeze Page Dying?
Posted by Ryan Hall, AC Forum Moderator in Affiliate Marketing, Design, E-mail Marketing Friday, 11 August 2006 21:53 5 Comments
This is the first of several “Q & A” posts that I will be making. In each one, I take a question asked on the Affiliate Classroom’s Private Members Forum, and answer it here.
In my opinion people are getting tired of squeeze pages. I don’t give my email address anymore unless the site is owned by some big name, or it has shown me a glimpse of something so exciting that I would like to see or have, or there is a huge buzz on the net about a product.
Otherwise, I hit the back button. Again, a personal opinion, but if you want to sell something to me, you need to make it easier for me to get into your site. Remember, there is another marketer a URL away who would sell me the same thing without any hassle… A member.
I think this Affiliate Classroom member is right, to an extent.
The majority of people interested in the “Make Money Online” market do seem to be getting tired of squeeze pages. For those who may not know the term, a squeeze page is one placed only to get the name and email address of a visitor.
I, for one, avoid most such pages, (unless they are owned by someone I trust). I just read the HTML code and find out where I’d land after I gave my info. Then I go directly to the page.
However…
The “Make Money Online” market is really the only market that is aware of how squeeze pages are used, or even what a squeeze page is.
In fact, my average opt-in rate in a Non-”Make Money Online”?related market is about 70%. Compare that to the overall average for the �MMO� market, (3-4%) and you see the vast difference.
There are a few things still to be said however.
First, however tired of the squeeze page the market may be, you can still use it to achieve good results. As an example, whenever I promote one �MMO� related service in a certain way, I regularly get a 20%+ opt-in rate for the squeeze page.
Second, the reason that squeeze pages are becoming less popular, is that many new (and some not-so-new) marketers are using them improperly. They take your email because you are interested in a certain topic. But then they take that and promote EVERYTHING to you.
That turns people off.
And when they’ve had it happen to them three or four times, do you think they are likely to give out their information?
Third, there are other markets out there that are not saturated with squeeze pages, and that unscrupulous people have not begun to take advantage of. There are several other markets I am interested in online, and I still readily give my name and email to those markets. I know I won’t be spammed and taken advantage of there.
Yet.
