Tag Archives: internet marketing

Internet Marketing Mistake #1 – Building on Shaky Ground

Posted on by
2
Don't Build Your Web Business on a Shaky Foundation

Don’t Build Your Web Business on a Shaky Foundation

Image by kconners at morguefile.com

When I first started trying to figure out a way to develop an income online, I was pretty naive. I made lots of mistakes.

But thankfully, I didn’t make what many consider to be internet marketing mistake #1. That is building your content marketing on sites that you don’t own.

Beware Web 2.0 Sites

If you’re just getting started today it will be tempting to take advantage of building your content on web 2.0 sites… Facebook, HubPages, Squidoo, Blogger.com, WordPress.com, etc. You can avoid having to spend the money for hosting a site and maintaining it. Heck, you can even avoid springing for a domain registration (or even knowing what that is).

This is especially attractive if you aren’t technically minded. But it is a mistake. “Big mistake. Huge!” (thanks Julia 8=)

Don’t get me wrong. There are advantages to using social media sites. They can really help you spread your message and engage with potential customers or even JV partners.

But you can’t build your business with them as a foundation… and you are building a business, right?

Shaky Ground

While it is tempting to build your content empire using these wonderful tools, it is important to remember something…

You Don’t Own It!

When you write an amazing article and post it to HubPages or EzineArticles or Facebook, you don’t own the site that your article is on. They could fold up shop (not likely with the big guns soon, but possible). Or (more likely) they could change their rules or even decide that the existing rules need to be interpreted differently.

Suddenly, your account is downgraded or even banned. Your articles are gone (you did make backups first, right? I thought not). Your content empire crumbles to the ground, as does any income you had from it.

This kind of thing has happened to people on YouTube — including some big name IM people you may recognize. I’ve seen it happen to people on Twitter and Facebook and many other platforms. Blogger.com has been known to shut down entire blogs with no explanation and no appeal.

I’ve even had this happen to me. That’s right, poor little me!

My Sob Story

My story involves HubPages, and while I didn’t get my account blocked, I had a hub that I had written blocked due to links to bad neighbourhoods (well, they spelled it neighborhoods but I’m not gonna knock the improper spelling used by Americans 8=) This happened right after Penguin hit and shook up the article directories.

The thing is, all the links were to my own site! Not this one of course, but still. I run a site called ToxicHabits where I have subsites (using WordPress MultiSite) for various health and personal development topics. One of those sites is related to time management.

So, being the good little SEO link builder that I am, I wanted to write an article on HubPages that linked back to my site where I share tips on managing time better and promote my book on time management (<blatant_plug>it’s a great book, you seriously need to get it now</blatant_plug>).

Because the site promotes an ebook, HubPages has decided that it is a bad neighbourhood. Even if you link to a site that sells ebooks then your site is a bad heighbourhood. Ouch! Don’t link to Amazon people!

I had to question them several times to determine that this was what they meant, and when the dust had settled I needed to remove several other hubs that linked to some of my other sites for the same reason.

Needless to say, I don’t do a lot of writing at HubPages anymore. I still write there once in a blue moon for fun, and it is possible to make a bit of coin with their revenue sharing. But as a link building resource they are not viable for me.

Can you imagine if I had built my entire business on HubPages?

Forsaking your own web properties and building your business on other platforms has been likened to sharecropping or even fuedalism. Leasing land and turning the bulk of your revenue back in to the landlord who doesn’t really care about you as long as the revenue continues to flow.

If you want to read more about this concept, Sonia Simone of Copyblogger has an excellent article about this. Nick Carr at Rough Type wrote about the sharecropper concept 6 years ago.

 The Foundation of Your Business

Now, my story wasn’t as sad as some. HubPages was a small part of the content web that I’m weaving. A very small part. Most of what I do is based on domains that I own.

And your business should be built on a foundation that you own as well. It is great to have the extras that web 2.0 platforms provide. But they are the window dressing, not the bricks.

What should you be building your business on? That’s a great question. I’m glad you asked. Here are 4 major building blocks you need for a strong foundation

Block 1 – Domain

First of all, you need to have your own domain(s). No more mygreatsite.wordpress.com or thebestsite.blogger.com. Get a domain that is relevant to you and/or your business. SEO experts will tell you to have your keywords in there, and it can’t hurt.

Notice that this site is listmarketingadventure.com. I chose that because that is what I’m about here… learning how to make list marketing and related technologies work. See the keyword listmarketing in there?

To get a domain registration, you’ll need to go to a registrar and sign up for it. Find a domain name that you like and see if it is available. You’ll need to register for a year (you can register for up to 10, but I’d advise against that).

And make sure that you set up an email account with that domain! I can’t understand people who go out and purchase a domain and still promote their ISP email on their site and business card. It is very unprofessional. Not to mention the trouble you have when you change ISP.

A hotmail or gmail account is a little better, but it doesn’t look as good as bill@listmarketingadventure.com now, does it?!

And you can forward your domain email to your gmail or hotmail if you want, so there’s no excuse not to publish your domain email to the world. Except that it will get spammed of course 8=(

Block 2 – Hosting

While it is possible to get your domain pointing to a free site like WordPress.com, Blogger.com, etc. you just don’t want to be doing that.

First, they restrict what you can do on their site in many ways:

  • Limited plugins
  • Limited themes
  • Limited monetization options
  • Terms of Service that change over time (or simply have a change in interpretation or enforcement)

But most of all, you don’t own it.

So bite the bullet and pay for a hosting plan. You can get one as cheap as $4/month. If you have multiple domains, you can get very cost effective plans that allow multiple domains in one account. You can even resell your hosting to clients and cover your hosting costs!

Get a good hosting plan for your business and don’t look back.

Block 3 – Platform

Now you need to decide what software platform you want to build your site on. You could roll your own using HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and the rest of the web technologies. I started out that way — being a programmer in another life and all.

But quickly I realized that spending time or money on the nuts and bolts didn’t allow me to do what I really wanted… write.

So I looked into platforms. XOOPs, Joomla, Drupal, Sugar and WordPress were ones that I investigated. I actually put together a site using XOOPs as a test. I liked it. I built a site on WordPress and I really liked it. I tried Drupal for another. It was okay, but I kept coming back to WordPress.

And I’m convinced that for 99.99% of the web sites that are out there, WordPress is the best platform to develop them in. It has a strong base, lots of plugins and themes to work with and tons of great people to help out when you get over your head.

So, unless you are familiar with one of the other platforms already, or have a developer that knows how to work with it, install a free copy of WordPress on your new domain and start building your content.

Block 4 – Autoresponder

The final brick in your foundation is your email list. You’ve probably heard it hundreds of times “The money is in the list!”

Well, the fact is that despite all the hoopla around Twitter, Facebook, etc. the giants of online marketing still use email as their main interaction tool. So should you.

And you need to have a secure way to manage your lists (notice that is plural). The best way to do this is to use an autoresponder service. There are so many benefits:

  • multiple lists so you can have lists for specific sub-niches
  • segmentation of lists so you can target emails to parts of the list
  • tracking stats
  • autoresponder series (an automatic sequence of messages when people sign up)
  • signup forms
  • high delivery rates

The last one is probably the most important one of all. If you have your own list management software on your site (or worse still, just collect email addresses in Outlook) then you’re probably ending up in spam filters all over the internet rather than inboxes.

The major players in the autoresponder industry work very hard to ensure delivery, achieving in excess of 97% deliverability rates. You’d be lucky to see 50% doing it yourself.

Now You Can Play in the Web 2.0

Now that your foundation is strong, you can go about building your content empire. Have lots of great, useful and fun content on your own site. Then spread your web throughout the internet, always linking back to your home base.

Bring people from Facebook back to your site and onto your list. Tweet about your latest and greatest content (not exclusively — don’t be a social media dork) and build your followers. Write articles for EzineArticles, HubPages and Squidoo. Have your satellite sites at Blogger.com or WordPress.com. Entertain and teach with your YouTube channel.

All of the Web 2.0 platforms are where you cast your net. But don’t forget to bring them home and make them comfortable.

Integrity Marketing – Is This The Internet You Want?

Posted on by
7

encourage integrityI had a very disturbing experience yesterday. And it got me to thinking about the state of things on the internet, in particular, marketing on the internet.

And I boiled my concerns down to one basic question:

Is this the Internet that you want?

We think about the internet as being some intricate web of information and entertainment that is out there. But we need to take a step back and realize one very important fact.

We are the internet.

More than any other medium in recent history, individuals like you and me have a say in what goes on in here. We write the news. We create the stories. We build the relationships.

So if the internet is a sorry mess, who do we blame for that? Google? Microsoft? Q?

A Bitter Taste

The experience I referred to in my opening paragraph was a bit disconcerting. It was a site the promised traffic. And we all know that traffic is the life blood of earning a living online. It was recommended by someone who’s list I’ve been on for a long time. Someone who I have a certain level of trust in. Well, had might be a more appropriate way to phrase that.

So I signed up, even though they wanted a phone number. What the heck for? I hate to admit it, but 999-999-9999 is not really my phone number 8=)

Immediately I’m presented with a garishly coloured site. Tiny text crammed everywhere. A chat screen in the middle and two live video feeds — one of which is someone calling out my name. “Watch the video and then come back here” they said.

Very off putting to say the least. I watched the sales presentation for their upgrade. Apparently this presentation was a recording of one of the top guys, but not the founder. I found the presentation to be okay. I felt comfortable with the guy presenting.

But afterwards, the video calling out my name, trying to get me to sign up. I haven’t even seen what the site is about and already they’re pestering me to upgrade. When I was balking at jumping on this fantastic offer, the founder himself (in another video window) jumped in to talk to me.

Things went downhill pretty fast from there. Apparently I’m a loser because I won’t jump in with both feet simply because he says so! Looking around, doing some due diligence on the site (which turned up bad when I did do it) makes me a loser. I don’t know if these guys are a scam (I doubt it) but they are definitely overly hyped. And their tactics could use a breath mint.

Well, I’m pretty happy being a loser if that’s what he thinks I am. But unfortunately, because of sites like this, we’re all losers. We lose the trust of people out there because of charlatans and high pressure hucksters.

I’ve seen this type of sales pressure in the offline world before. Usually with scams masquerading as the next big MLM opportunity.

What Can We Do?

That’s the next question. I hope that you are with me in wanting to have an internet that you’d be proud to have your kids visit. But the next step is how do we do it?

I don’t have any quick fixes or pat answers for you. I’m hoping that we can all dig together and come up with some ideas. Here are some general ones to think on:

  • Don’t be part of the problem. Make sure you don’t act dishonestly and don’t promote anyone who does.
  • Educate your friends and family. Help them to know what a scam looks like. Help them to learn how to filter out the hype. Show them where to find marketers of integrity.
  • Spread the message. Write blog posts about integrity. Teach people how to use scarcity without lying about it. Help them understand the power of building and maintaining trust.

Fight the Bad

Do we need a way to call the bad guys out on the carpet? I don’t know if that has any affect. There are several sites that have reviews of the offending site, pointing out their flaws. But people are still promoting and signing up to it.

One thing I like to do is send a private email to someone when the do something I think hurts their integrity. I don’t do it every time and many will either ignore you or attack you (I’ve experienced both). But some will realize you’re only trying to help them. And they may even change their tactics.

Support the Good

One way that I have found to support good marketers is through IMTrustWorthy. I don’t know if it will be the answer to the problems of trust and integrity, but it is a step in the right direction.

Becoming a member gives you the right to put a badge on your site, like the one you see in my sidebar (check out the site by clicking my badge if you’re interested in learning more). But it isn’t just a badge. It actually links back to my profile on the site. And other members of the site have the right to rate me and even make comments. It’s kind of like StumbleUpon for marketers.

I’m sure that there will be imitators and those that put up fake badges. And there is always the risk that the site will be gamed by unscrupulous marketers. But it is a start.

Another way that we can support one another is to speak up for one another. If you see someone doing something impressive, tweet it, plus it, blog about it.

The Challenge

So here’s a challenge. How are you making the web a better place? How are you setting the example of an integrity marketer?

Share your story in the comments or write a post at your blog and let me know. I’ll add links to this post as they come in.

Integrity Marketing – Using Alternate Identities

Posted on by
Reply

Mask of FlameOne controversial feature of the internet is that it makes anonymity very easy. You can create many alternate identities and slip from one to another with ease.

Like everything, this has a good side and a dark side.

Alternate Identities in the Real World

Secret identities are nothing new. Writers (pseudonyms), movie stars and musicians (stage names) and superheroes (alter egos) have used alternate identities for centuries. So have spies and con artists. They can be used to protect the innocent, provide privacy or hide evil intent.

Pseudonyms, stage names, etc. are alternate identities that are designed to protect the privacy of an author or present a more marketable brand. I’ve written several stories for children and I hope to have them published under a pseudonym to make them more fun and entertaining.

Online Identities

And there is a place in Internet Marketing for alternate identities as well.

There are many marketers who use pseudonyms to set up niche web sites so that their competition doesn’t know and to make it easier to flip the site if they so choose. It is also used if you want to create a different brand in one niche.

I’ve read work by a lady freelancer who uses a male pseudonym to overcome gender bias for her business (a real life Remington Steele for those of you old enough to remember that show) — it was amazing how much better her business did when clients thought she was a man.

The important thing is that the identity is not intended to defraud anyone (although the female/male thing is close to the line). They are merely used to protect identity and/or for branding purposes.

The Dark Side of Alternate Identities

But the dark side of alternate identities lurks everywhere.

The obvious problem is the con artists who create an identity, run a campaign, pocket as much cash as they can and bail. Then they create a new identity and start again. They sell crappy products, ignore refund and support requests and sometimes don’t even deliver the product.

But there is a more subtle use that many marketers fall prey to — multiple Facebook/Twitter/Email/{insert your favourite here} accounts. It seems innocent enough, but the intent is to defraud and I think that you need to think twice about doing something like this.

Don’t get me wrong — I have several Twitter and email accounts. This is allowed and I’m not using them to defraud. What I’m talking about is setting up multiple accounts and false identities for driving traffic by creating false social proof.

The way it works is this (I’ll use Facebook as an example).

  1. Create 10 gmail accounts.
  2. Create a Facebook account for each one.
  3. Have them “friend” 5,000 people (the maximum allowed on Facebook).
  4. Have them Like and promote your fan page(s).

I’ve seen several How To Rock Facebook type reports recommend a variation on this technique. One actually suggested setting up accounts for your relatives who aren’t interested in Facebook for this!

The problem here is that you are using the alternate identities (false email accounts as well) in a dishonest way. You’re pretending to be someone who hasn’t got a commercial interest in the fan page. That is a lie. It is dishonest. The reports even go so far as to misrepresent yourself when trying to make friends.

The same technique is used in many social media sites, including bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg. I have read reports recommending that you set up 30 or more accounts and use varying subsets to bookmark and vote on your blog posts or whatever.

The intent is to create a false social proof. I imagine that there are those who post multiple comments on their own blogs or have several accounts in forums for the same purpose.

The problem is that this is creating a falsehood — intentionally. Not something that a practitioner of Integrity Marketing wants to do.

What About You?

Do you use alternate identities in your marketing? Do you use them honestly, or you ever been tempted to use these techniques? The problem is that they work until you get caught.

Please share your experiences in the comments. I’d love to hear what you’re going through.

Integrity Marketing – Honesty in Internet Marketing

Posted on by
Reply

Solution of a mazeThere seems to be a growing number of people who are getting fed up with the lack of integrity in internet marketing — me included.

With the scope of the internet and the ease of changing identities, it is quite simple to use tactics that are less than honest without getting caught. A marketer can milk as much money from unsuspecting consumers as possible. Then they can move on to a new identity and run another campaign.

The problem is that these techniques work and many new marketers just follow them — it’s Standard Operating Procedure.

I would love to see an increase in honesty in internet marketing. If you’ve read this far I assume you would as well. So what do we do about it? I see 3 basic options at this point:

  1. Nothing. Just let it slide. Hope that karma will catch up with them.
  2. Fight back. Complain to the affiliate centers like Clickbank. Complain to the government. Write ranting posts and scathing reviews of the offending products.
  3. Educate people. Teach people what to look for when evaluating a product. Show new guys how the dirty tricks will work for a time, but bring a backlash that no one wants down the road.

I don’t think that options #1 or #2 are all that great — they lead down a road that sees more government intervention, red tape and overhead for online entrepreneurs. That being said, there will be times when the these options are valuable.

But I believe it is best to focus on option #3.

Let’s find ways to educate other marketers who may have learned some bad habits without realizing it. Let’s find ways to encourage honesty in internet marketing. Build relationships that strengthen integrity in the market.

We can also look for ways to inform the general public. Help them see through the scams, the false promises and dishonest techniques.

I know that we may not always agree on where the lines are, but it is important that we agree that the lines exist. If we don’t, then we’ll all need to find a new place to play when the governments and big business come to paint the lines for us.

I plan to write more about this subject under the title of Integrity Marketing. So watch for more posts and share your thoughts on the subject. If you’ve written on this subject I’d love to hear about it.

And don’t be afraid to disagree with me. All I ask is that you keep it civil.

Let’s get talking.

3 Ways to Use PLR Effectively

Posted on by
Reply

Pie Chart GraphicPrivate Label Rights (PLR) content is often maligned in the internet marketing circles. It seems that most people are quite polarized on the topic.

Some feel that it is the scourge of the internet.

Others see it as a shining ray of hope for the overwhelmed marketer.

Both of them are right — and wrong!

The Problem with PLR

The biggest problem with PLR today is that it is not used properly. Too many marketers grab tons of articles, ebooks, videos and just put them out there. They don’t take any care to ensure that the content is accurate. They don’t bother to correct spelling, grammar or other mistakes. They don’t take the time to make it unique and stand out.

There is also a lot of really poor PLR out there. Some is written by non-writers or non-English speakers. So when these two collide, look out!

3 Ways to Use PLR Effectively

To avoid being part of the problem you need to learn how to use PLR effectively.

1) Start with the best PLR you can afford.

The better quality the base material, the better your results will be. Also, there will be less work involved in rewriting it — and you should still rewrite it!

The best stuff will usually be content that you buy (but not always). You can sometimes find good quality PLR as a free sample or part of a membership site. When you pay for PLR, look for a couple of things:

  • Is it limited? The fewer copies that are licensed, the more valuable it is.
  • Does it allow the licensee to sell PLR? This can dilute the value as more copies get out into the wild.
  • Are there restrictions on the use that will affect your plans for it? Many licenses restrict the types of sales you can use (e.g. no auction sites). Some also restrict giving the product away.

That doesn’t mean that the really crappy stuff you’ll find isn’t valuable. It just means that it will require much more work to make it usable. In some cases, it is best to use it for inspiration as you write your own. It can give you ideas about what to write about.

2) Verify the facts.

PLR is great in that the basic research has been done for you. But you’re putting your name on this, so make sure that you double check the accuracy. Reputable creators of PLR do good research, but you still don’t want to take a chance.

3) Rewrite it.

I know I’m harping on this a bit, but this is the key. If you don’t rewrite the content then it will be the same as all the other guys out there that didn’t rewrite it. Is that where you want to be?

Make the content your own. Add your own voice to it. When people see your version they should not be able to tell that it is the same as Bob’s or Mary’s down the block. This will keep the search engines happier with your site as well since they won’t see as much duplication.

What’s Next?

There are many other things that you can do to make your PLR more effective, but these 3 will get you started on the right track.

What have your experiences been like with PLR? Share your story in the comments.

Image by miamiamia at stock.xchng