Netklix Review - PPC Advertising Network & Google Adwords Alternative

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a market that is largely dominated by Google and its Adwords & Adsense programs. Any company, large or small, that is advertising online is likely sending boatloads of money Google’s way. With an extremely targeted keyword advertising system, an unmatched user interface, and a solid reputation as an industry leader, Google easily takes the lion share of the profits. But is there room for a smaller player to provide value to both PPC advertisers and publishers? Enter Netklix…

What is Netklix all about?

Netklix is a PPC advertising network that offers “low-cost online advertising opportunities to PPC advertisers and high-performing adverts to publishers”. Netklix originally started off as an affiliate network in 1999 but recently relaunched itself as a PPC network and Google Adwords/Adsense alternative. The main selling point of Netklix is that rather than forcing advertiser to generate and maintain huge lists of keywords, Netklix has a simple yet powerful “click and point” channel-based system where advertisers can easily target their ads to appropriate content.

Advertisers

Setting up an advertising account with Netklix takes just 5 minutes. You simply create your advert (headline, description text, destination URL), set your maximum CPC bid and you’re ready to go. The Netklix team then groups your site based on subject matter into one of over 400 content channels. There are no keywords to bid on or quality scores to worry about. The system is extremely simple and easy to use, but it does come with a few considerations. I’ll get into that later on in the review.

Below is a screenshot of the Netklix advertiser sign up page.

Publishers

Much like Google Adsense, Netklix allows you to place contextual ads on your website to make money online. The biggest difference however is that Netklix does not automatically use keywords to determine the relevancy of a page. Instead, publishers select one of over 400 categories to display ads from and are then hand-approved to check relevancy to those channels. In this way they’re able to target a specific niche and increase their earnings.

Below is a screenshot of the Netklix publisher sign up page.

My Thoughts on Netklix - Pros and Cons

The reason why Google Adwords/Adsense has become so popular as an advertising platform is because it effectively utilizes the power of keywords. Using it’s massive stores of computing power and endless supply of smart PhD’s, Google has found a way to efficiently connect searchers with suppliers. Keywords convey a ton of information about what a searcher is looking for, so paid search PPC is extraordinarily targeted and effective. It does however require an enormous amount of keyword research - which may be intimidating to the beginning PPC advertiser.

Netklix offers a good solution to that issue. Rather than basing its system off of keywords, Netklix uses a grouping approach. There are over 400 different categories that advertisers are grouped into and publishers can then display adverts that best match their sites. It’s simple, fast, and easy but it does come with a few problems as well. Since keywords aren’t taken into consideration, relevancy can change. For example, a World Cup advertisement might be placed in the general soccer category, but all of the sites in the soccer group might not always be the best fit to display the World Cup ad. However, the multi-level content channels mean that overall relevancy is still there.

Another consideration is that the competitive advantage available to big advertisers with time to invest in keyword research is minimized in Netklix’s category system. Unlike Google’s keyword approach where advertisers can discover new potential keywords and optimize their sites to achieve higher visibility than competitors, Netklix advertisers all have equal chances to perform. However, Netklix does take into account the popularity of each ad, as well as the advertiser’s bid when choosing which ad to display.

Final Verdict

Overall, Netklix is a good alternative to Google especially for PPC advertisers who are just getting started or looking for additional streams of targeted traffic. For publishers, Netklix is worth checking out and experimenting with especially because payouts can potentially be higher than those of Adsense. Everything needs to be tested to maximize ad revenue.

Try out Netklix and see what you think. It’ll only take 5 minutes and if you sign up before December 17, you can get $100 in free advertising. What are your thoughts on Netklix?

Posted in Reviews | 10 Comments

The Secret to Making Every Link Count For Your SEO Rankings

Link building is an ongoing struggle between two sides with different motivations. Webmasters obviously want to increase traffic and rank #1 in the search engines for their targeted keywords. Search engines on the other hand aim to neutralize webmasters’ link building efforts and return the most relevant search results pages. So as a link builder, how can you win the battle?

With Google’s emphasis on links in its ranking algorithm, links have essentially become the currency of the net. People are willing to shell out thousands of dollars for links in hopes of better rankings and higher traffic. However, Google is fighting back by weeding out “artificial” links and devaluing sites that engage in aggressive link building tactics.

Every webmaster needs to proceed with caution when attaining links. There’s always a right way to do it and a wrong way. The key is to stay under the radar and strive to appear “natural”.

How can you do this? In this article I discuss the best ways to build links naturally to prevent tripping any filters or raising any red flags.  Sure you might be able to fool the algorithm but the true test is having your links pass a human review. That should be your goal with every link you place on the web.

1. Provide value, attract links organically
The foundation of every link building campaign is your content. Are your pages worthy of being linked to? Provide value and you’ll naturally attain links from people who will voluntarily share your content with others. This is becoming increasingly important because Google is looking to eliminate thin pages from its index. The more value you provide, the more links you’ll get. You can then be more aggressive with your link building campaigns because it’s unlikely that a human reviewer will be able to tell the difference between “real” links and “manipulated” links.

2. Vary the link anchor text
Link anchor text is extremely important for SEO and could mean the difference between ranking for a keyword and being nowhere to be found. However, there is such a thing as over-optimization and it’s better to vary the link anchor text to appear more natural. For example, if your main keyword is “apple cider”, mix up your links with keywords like “buy apple cider here”, “click here”, “apple juice”, “apples”, “the best apple cider”, etc. The probability of all of your links being exactly the same is low, so don’t give the search engines reason to be suspicious so easily.

3. Deep link to pages on your site
Again, every link building campaign should aim to mimic natural linking patterns. Most people link to deep pages on a site, not just the homepage so you should be doing the same thing. Attain links to a diverse set of pages on your site. If you have a sound internal linking structure, your entire site should benefit.

4. Get links from relevant sites
Would a site about guitar lessons link to a real estate site? Most likely not. When analyzing the link graph, search engines give more weight to links that come from the same topical neighborhood. In the guitar lessons example, a link from a music site is much more valuable than a link from an unrelated site. Keep this in mind and target links from sites that have some sort of connection to yours. It’s what search engines love.

5. Take your time - slowly build up your link profile
It’s tempting to do a rush of promotion to get as many links as possible in a short period of time. However, this will usually raise red flags to the search engines, which will then devalue many of your hard earned links. It’s better to slowly build up your link profile over the long haul. Rather than attaining 3,000 links in a day, aim for 10 high quality links per week for a year. The long term benefits will be much greater.

6. Look for similar PageRank neighborhoods
Would you be suspicious if a new site with PageRank 1 suddenly had links from PageRank 8 sites? I don’t know about you, but Google would be. Generally speaking, most sites have links from sites with similar PageRank. For example, a PageRank 4 site will likely have links from sites with PageRank 3-5. Aim for the same and reach higher as you grow bigger.

7. Minimize links from the same IP address
Thinking about interlinking all of your sites together to maximize SEO potential? Think again. Google can easily detect links that come from the same C-block of IP addresses and will discount these links accordingly. It’s probably not a good idea to interlink your sites if they’re hosted on the same server. Then again, you shouldn’t be linking unless your sites are related in some way anyway.

8. Diversify your link profile
There’s a variety of sources for links and you should tap into all of them in your link building efforts. Get links from directories, blogs, press releases, scraper sites, old resource sites, forums, news sites, etc. The more diverse your link profile, the better because everything will look a lot more natural. You can then be more aggressive in your tactics because you’ll have a solid foundation already set.

9. Buy links discretely
Buying links is a very controversial topic because Google looks very negatively at any sort of paid link. However, if done right, paid links can have a huge positive effect on your rankings and traffic. First of all, it’s important to take into account each of the points listed in this article. Always go for related sites and vary your landing pages and anchor text. Spread out your purchases and contact webmasters directly instead of going through link brokers and networks like Text Link Ads. If you do it discretely, it will be almost impossible for Google to detect what’s paid and what’s not. As for valuing links, read Aaron Wall’s article on how much a link is worth to your business.

10. Eliminate obvious footprints
If you plan on using more aggressive strategies for your link building campaigns, it’s extremely important to hide your tracks and eliminate any obvious footprints. Do everything in moderation and mix things up to prevent the search engines from detecting any patterns. For example, if you plan on passing link value through your affiliate program, don’t use obvious parameter names like “aff”. For more information, read Patrick Altoft’s article on how to make sure your affiliate program passes SEO benefits.

Bonus: Be careful when buying domains for SEO
If done right, buying up sites have tremendous SEO potential. You can buy a trusted domain and redirect to your own to benefit from all of the inbound links. You can utilize content to piggyback off of your existing site. You can even buy a site to instantaneously achieve a #1 position in Google. If you have the money, buying sites might be a great investment. However, it’s still important to stay under the radar and not make it obvious to Google what you’re doing. For example, don’t redirect to a random irrelevant site and don’t quickly change the WHOIS information. These kinds of things tell Google that ownership has changed and they’ll often reset the site’s ranking potential. For more tips on buying up sites for SEO, see the recap of the Buying Sites for SEO session at SMX Advanced 2008.

How are you building links to your site? Are you thinking like Google and considering the implications of your actions? Every link counts and it’s important for you to stay under the radar and aim for a “natural” link profile. What are your experiences building links? Have you ever been penalized for being too aggressive and raising up red flags? Share your stories by leaving a comment below!

Posted in Articles, Link Building, SEO | 59 Comments

How to Ignite Viral Marketing Campaigns For Your Site

I’m helping to promote the search marketing company I work for at SES Chicago this week and today I had the chance to attend a session called “Igniting Viral Campaigns”. The topic is especially interesting to me because I frequently brainstorm new creative projects that I can promote using social media. Not only is viral marketing usually more cost-efficient (compared to throwing money at advertising), but it has the potential to bring in a huge influx of links and exposure that does wonders if you’re building a brand.

I’ve had a few successes with viral marketing campaigns, namely my crazy contest promotion and my IM Top Blogs list. Both have been extremely effective in building my readership here at Winning the Web.

Chris Winfield of 10e20, Jennifer Laylock of Search Engine Guide, and Fionn Downhill of Elixir Interactive led the conference session and shared some great tips on how to launch viral campaigns. Here are some of the main takeaways.

Why viral marketing?

78% of people trust recommendations from other consumers - which is no surprise. Word-of-mouth marketing works extremely well and viral campaigns are key. The social web is very powerful because your target audience can easily be reached online. 7 out of 10 Americans use the Internet for news and everything is shifting to the Internet. TV news loses 1 million viewers per year and newspaper circulation is down 10% since 2001. Not only that but the majority of journalists are online as well. 97% of them find news sources online, 79% find story ideas on news wires, and 72% read blogs.

Clearly there is a huge opportunity to market your business online and you can tap into the power of word-of-mouth by launching a successful viral campaign. But how?

The basic elements of a viral campaign

• Free products and services
• Effortless transfer to others
• Scales easily from small to very large
• Exploits common motivations, behaviors, and emotions
• Utilizes existing communication networks
• Takes advantage of others’ resources

Examples of good viral content

• Lists, example: The ten commandments have worked for ages
• How-to content and guides
• Surveys, example: 25 best colleges for nerds
• Best-of resources, grab other content and compile like the IM Top Blogs list
• Tools, example: calculator for specific niches
• Videos, example: Will It Blend video series
• Widgets
• Quizzes and badges

Viral content promotion tips

• Use forums and groups to seed the content. Use the Big Boards forum rankings to look for the biggest and most active forums.
• Use social media and news sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and del.icio.us for their ability to influence and attain links and eyeballs.
• Some additional strategies for promotion: blogs, forums, RSS feeds, social bookmarking and tagging, press releases, photo directories and images, social media sites, videos, podcasts, article marketing, ezines and newsletters, white papers, Wikipedia.

Viral marketing guidelines

• Always have clear goals and objectives. Some of the metrics you might use to determine the success of a campaign are subscribers, social bookmarks, comments, links, conversions, etc.
• Promote great content only. If you push sub-par work, it could affect your efforts later on.
• Contribute to the communities. Don’t just intrude on social media sites expecting to reap the benefits. Participate in the conversation and you will be rewarded. Give a little and get some back.
• Have good hosting and be ready. A successful viral marketing campaign is sure to drive a ton of traffic - enough to take down your servers if you’re not prepared.
• You can’t control viral marketing but you can enable it. Keep trying again and again. Most viral efforts don’t take off but every try improves your marketing. The majority of companies will fail 8 to 12 times before finding success with viral campaigns.

Have you launched any successful viral campaigns on your website? What was the key ingredient in making it work? How many tries did it take to get there? Share your stories in the comments below.

I’ll be attending a few more sessions at SES Chicago and blogging about it here. They should be pretty good so stay tuned.

Posted in Articles, Internet Marketing, Social Media | 40 Comments

How to Hire the Best Blogger For Your Site - Easy 9 Step Process

There may come a time in running your online business when you want to adopt the publisher model and outsource your content development. This includes your articles, your blogs, and even your sales copy. In a previous post, I talked about my success finding great programmers and designers on Elance and oDesk. Unfortunately, the search for bloggers and writers is a completely different animal and needs to be approached differently.

In this article, I’m going to share with you my experiences hiring bloggers and writers for my iPhone blog. It’s been a long and hard process but I’ve finally found an incredible writer who goes above and beyond what’s required. Not only that, but we have similar interests (it’s almost uncanny) and we’ve agreed to work on additional projects as partners. Sure, a lot of it was luck, but looking back I think there is an effective way to find the perfect bloggers and writers for your business.

Below are my tips for finding the best writers possible.

1. Use the Problogger job board
What I like about the Problogger job board is that everyone who keeps up with it is most likely already familiar with blogging and online media. Otherwise, they wouldn’t know about the Problogger site, right? On the other hand, if you list a blogging job on Craigslist, you’ll probably receive a lot of inquiries from unqualified candidates who have never written on a blog. A listing on Problogger is $50 for 30 days, but it’s money well spent.

As an example, my listing for an iPhone blogger is here: iPhone Blogger with Attitude

2. Write a clear description to pique interest
Your job listing should accomplish a couple things: find the right candidates (with topics, responsibilities, and experience) and get the right candidates interested (with pay, schedule, workload, and benefits). Be sure to include important details about the job such as job title, description, responsibilities (number of articles per month), pay, and benefits. Having a clear and descriptive listing will weed out uninterested and unqualified candidates and will create a better search experience for you.

3. Make them prove themselves
The key to finding the best writers for your job is to make candidates prove themselves from the get go. Ask them to email you back with previous writing samples and a paragraph with reasons why they would be a good fit for the job. Also, feel free to ask questions that reveal personality and knowledge about the topic. The more information you can get about your candidates, the better.

4. Promote on other sites as well
In addition to listing your job on the Problogger Job Boards, advertise your opening on other niche sites in your industry. For example, if you’re looking for PC gaming bloggers, spread the word on related blogs, forums, and job boards. It might not hurt to also get your listing up on the mainstream sites like Craigslist.

5. Followup to gauge interest
Once candidates contact you letting you know that they’re interested and ready to get started, reply back with a few questions. Can they meet the requirements set forth in the listing? What are their strengths? What kind of ideas do they have for this project and what can they offer to make it a success? From there, you’ll get a much better understanding of what the candidates have to offer. Sure, a resume or past writing samples are great, but they’re not true indicators of how bad they want the job. My current iPhone blog writer replied back to me with a 2 page essay about how badly he wanted the job and all of his ideas and strengths. He even offered to do video reviews on his new HD camcorder. Bingo!

6. Hire writers to try them out
By now you should have plenty of applications to choose from. Cut the list down to 5 of your favorite candidates. Rather than limiting yourself to just 1 or 2 writers, hire all 5 to try them out. It might be expensive in the beginning but it’ll save you a lot of money in the long run. Unless you try out writers and experience their work first hand, you may be missing out on great partnership opportunities or getting into the wrong ones. Don’t let this happen to you.

7. Lay out specific terms and instructions
After bringing on your team of writers, you want to make sure that you have a solid contract in place. If you want to take a look at the one I used for my iPhone site, feel free to contact me and ask. Provide everything the bloggers need to get started including Wordpress logins, schedules, post ideas, and instructions. Be clear in what you want but leave room for the writers to be creative and to offer up their own suggestions. The last thing that you want to do is create a bunch of robots who can’t function without you. That would defeat the whole point of outsourcing.

8. Provide ongoing training
Don’t just tell your writers what to do and leave it at that. Provide honest feedback and ongoing support on how to do the job better. Not only will you develop real relationships with your writers but you’ll also get a sense of their work ethic, their willingness to learn, and their personality. Of course the more you train your staff, the better work you’ll get as well. Encourage your writers and utilize their strengths rather than just pointing out weaknesses.

9. Assessment time
After a month or so of working with your writers, it’s time to decide who you want to keep and what kind of role they will play in your business. Look at who’s keeping up with your requirements or even going beyond them and who’s been good to work with while responding well to feedback. Ultimately, you want to keep the ones you like and let the others go.

When dealing with my writers for iPhone Nuts, I originally had 4 on board: a freelancer who blogged for a popular tech blog, a school teacher who was just getting started blogging, a college student who had a blog and was fanatical about the iPhone, and another guy who loved writing and media in general. On paper, all of these writers were great. They had fantastic credentials and writing samples and wrote great posts in their own style. However, it wasn’t until I tried them all out first hand that I realized who was the right person for the job. Many of them flaked and didn’t hold their end of the bargain. It’s usually the person who’s the most passionate about the subject that wins out. Can you guess who won the job?

One month should be more than enough time to get through the assessment period. It’s never fun letting people go, but it’s a necessity if you’re running a business. First check with the writers you’d like to keep and make sure they’re in it for the long term. Once you have that confirmed, gently let the others know that you no longer need their services. In most cases, they’ll understand but never put anyone down as it could come back to bite you later on. If you’re interested in more advice on how to let people go, be sure to read Guy Kawasaki’s guide on the art of the layoff.

Have you found any quality writers or bloggers for your business? What do you do to find the best?

Posted in Articles, Blogging | 51 Comments

Become a Blogger - A Roadmap for the Beginning Blogger

Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur’s Journey is at it again with yet another blogging project. After relaunching his Blog Mastermind course a couple months back, he has teamed up with a guy named Gideon Shalwick to start up Become a Blogger, a site that offers “free tutorials to create your own blog”. There are 10 free videos on there that describe in detail how you can set up your first blog - from configuring Wordpress to utilizing RSS feeds. If you’re a beginner and don’t have a blog yet, this site is a good place to get started.

Yaro and Gideon also offer a free 72 page report called “The Roadmap To Become A Blogger”. This document goes into greater depth about how to achieve blogging success by utilizing “X-factors”, the special techniques that differentiate the successful blogs. Furthermore, the roadmap separates the blogging journey into 5 milestones: discover your passion, discover the need, test your market, focus your efforts, and start making money. The report is worth checking out, even if you’re a more experienced blogger. Download it at Become a Blogger.

Of course, all of this free stuff comes in preparation of a premium coaching program that is set to launch on Thursday December 4, 2008 at 4pm. The price point is supposed to be low, so it may be a useful resource for beginners.

How is Become a Blogger different from Yaro’s Blog Mastermind? Become a Blogger uses much more video and tutorials rather than plain text. Video as a learning platform is tough to beat and coupled with Yaro’s expertise, this program is sure to be a hit. I enjoyed Blog Mastermind, but Become a Blogger should be even better - especially for newbies.

Posted in Blogging, Reviews | 20 Comments

inLinks Review - An Arrow to Google’s Achilles’ Heel?

Everyone knows that paid links expose a gaping hole in Google’s search algorithm. Many marketers have been able to take advantage of this weakness by buying up paid links and artificially increasing their rankings in the search engines. Google has since declared war on paid links and has been actively working to eliminate link brokers and severely devalue sites that sell links.

MediaWhiz, the company behind Text Link Ads, has launched another link product named . Unlike Text Link Ads, which places lists of paid links in sidebar widgets, inLinks automatically converts keywords held within content to links. Not only are these links harder to detect, but they also pass on more value because they are held in the actual content of the page. Location does matter.

There has been a ton of hoopla and controversy about this new product in the past week. Clearly, inLinks is against Google’s policy on buying and selling links and Google engineer Matt Cutts has gone as far as to say that use of the platform could be in violation of FTC guidelines (a scare tactic of course). Shoemoney rightfully responds by pointing out the hypocrisy of Google.

Nevertheless, there are differing views on how effective buying links through inLinks will be. The links are harder to detect because of their stealthy location and because publishers have editorial control over which sites they’d like to accept and and reject (the more relevant the better). However, there are still quite a few flaws with the system that may cause inLinks to fail as it grows bigger and bigger.

Ultimately, your decision on whether or not to use inLinks depends on your risk tolerance. How much do you have to gain vs. to lose? If you don’t currently have rankings (nothing to lose) or if you already have an authority site with a strong brand and diverse link profile (difficult to penalize), inLinks might be worth a try. A #1 ranking in Google for your targeted keywords could mean more than a 100% increase in traffic.

Below is a screen shot of how the inLinks system works. Basically, you search for a targeted keyword and it returns a list of available inventory that includes snippets, homepage and post PageRank, Alexa rank, post date, and price per month.

Tip: inLinks tries to keep their inventory a secret, but it’s actually pretty easy to see exactly where your link will be placed. Simply select all of the snippets and view your shopping cart. You should then see post titles associated with each item. From there, do a Google search for each of titles. You’ll often come across the publisher page which you can cross reference with the listed PageRank and Alexa rank.

inLinks definitely is not the safest route to take in advertising your site. However, it could potentially boost up your search rankings, at least in the short term. Do you have the stomach to try out ? Use coupon code 100free to get $100 of free links.

Posted in Link Building, Reviews, SEO | 20 Comments

How to Build Black Friday Frenzy into Your Online Business

As you may know, today is Black Friday in the US, usually the busiest retail shopping day of the year where many companies put up exclusive deals and sales. It’s not uncommon to see hordes of people lined up in front of malls and electronics stores to bust through doors and snatch up the latest gadgets and holiday gifts before it’s too late. Last year I experienced the mania first-hand when I camped outside a Circuit City to buy a new LCD HDTV. Sure it was a great deal, but was it really worth it? The line stretched hundreds of feet with crazy people who were willing to pull all-nighters waiting in the freezing cold up until the break of dawn. It was a great experience (although I’d never do it again) but if you think about it, it’s pretty insane. These rabid people wait in line for hours on end, just to save a few bucks on some new toys.

From a business standpoint, an event like this is simply amazing. Customers are basically waiting to hand you money! If you’re smart, you should be analyzing Black Friday deals and look to incorporate the same ideas that will create frenzied customers of your own.

Below are some of the main components of Black Friday shopping that make the event so profitable and successful.

• Value - Most importantly, what’s the value? Without eye-popping deals that people find worthwhile, no one will show up.
• Time-limited - Black Friday is just one day a year, so people have to be sure they show up. Otherwise they miss out on all the good deals and savings for the holiday season.
• Competition - Everyone knows that Black Friday attracts tons of shoppers to all stores. That kind of social proof attracts even more people because people in general are followers.
• Hype - Advertisers run tons of ads to build up hype and to get people talking about what’s happening on Black Friday. Shopping forums and blogs usually generate a lot of buzz around this time of year.
• Scarcity - Stores only have so much inventory - which encourages shoppers to get in early and seal the deal.
• Anticipation - Most stores open earlier on Black Friday to increase sales. Not only that, but advertising launch time and featured deals builds anticipation that will attract customers.
• Exclusivity - Everyone wants to be “cool” and getting a good deal brings exclusivity to customers. In some cases, my guess is that “leaked ads” are intentional to build exclusivity and anticipation.

Will you be shopping this Black Friday? How can you incorporate the above components into your business to attract rabid buyers to your business?

Posted in Articles, Internet Marketing | 12 Comments

Give and You Shall Receive - A Classic Example in Internet Marketing

First of all, I want to wish everyone in the US a happy Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for living in an amazing country with freedoms and luxuries we take for granted everyday. Many of us are also blessed to have wonderful friends, family, careers, and businesses. A simple “thank you” to loved ones, partners, and coworkers goes a long way. And oh yeah, thanks for reading this blog!

On a related note, today I want to go over with you the tried and true saying “give and you shall receive”. I’m a firm believer that everything comes back full circle and that every action has some sort of a reaction. Genuinely give to others and they’ll reciprocate. It’s as simple as that.

I was recently reminded of this law of human nature by Corey Salzano of Tactical Technique. It all started when QuadZilla of SEO Blackhat commented on my IM Top Blogs list saying that “the badge is rather ugly” and should be redesigned by an artist. Corey saw the comment and immediately posted a few new designs on his blog. Not only that but he also got in touch with me and sent the psd files for me to work with. Below are the before and after pics for the badge as well as for the header. I’ll be using Corey’s design for the new badge. Thanks Corey!

If you’re looking for interface or logo design work, get in touch with Corey at corey.salzano [at] gmail [dot] com. Corey did me a nice favor with the redesign and the least I can do is repay him with a link and an endorsement.

The “give and receive” philosophy works in almost all situations - especially in business. For example, the Unique Blog Designs team provided customized Wordpress themes to top bloggers like John Chow and Shoemoney. Sure, you might say that UBD left money on the table by offering free services, but those 2 blogs sent them a huge wave of new business they would not otherwise have been able to attain. Neil Patel of ACS SEO did something similar by offering free Internet marketing services to the top 100 Technorati blogs. Many of them saw exceptional results and gave ACS a free link in return - which of course helped ACS to gain more exposure and new business. Give and you shall receive.

Are you struggling to grow your online business? It might be because you’re simply not giving enough. Here are a few action items that may help you to change your mindset and see more success. It’s a give and take world, people.

• Want more links to your site? Try linking out more yourself.
• Review products and services that you like. You may get one in return.
• Look for opportunities to help others. Be involved in the community and step up when there’s a need.
• Answer questions on forums.
• Write blog posts that strive to help others solve a problem.
• Provide free work or services. It’s a great way to get noticed and build up your portfolio.
• Mentor an eager newbie.
• Promote other people in your niche who you admire. Do you think anyone can miss a glowing recommendation like this?

What are you doing in your business to give? Can you think of anything you can do this holiday season?

Posted in Articles, Internet Marketing | 19 Comments

Win a Free Pass to Elite Retreat 2009 - I Dare You!

In April of 2008, I had the privilege of attending the Elite Retreat Internet marketing conference held in San Francisco. Best of all, I went for free (normally $5,000) because of a sweet contest held by John Chow and Rocket Profit. You can read my review of the event here: Elite Retreat Review - Is It Really Worth $5,000?

Well guess what? Elite Retreat is coming again in 2009 and there’s another chance for you to win a free pass - this time sponsored by Pepperjam Network (founder Kris Jones is a speaker at the upcoming event). Elite Retreat 2009 will be held February 18-20 at The Hotel Vitale in San Francisco, CA. Speakers include Jeremy Schoemaker, Neil Patel, Gary Vaynerchuk, Andy Liu, Chris Winfield, Stephan Spencer, and Kristopher Jones. An absolute all-star lineup if you ask me.

So here’s how you can win a free pass to Elite Retreat including hotel or flight. The Pepperjam Network affiliate to generate the most commissions between now (11/25/08) and December 31, 2008 on any or all of the following PJN offers will win the contest.

The eligible offers are:

1. Vital Acai Lead Generation Offer (Lead payout $28.50)
2. Celebrity Sexy Pout (Lead Payout $35)
3. Celebrity Sext Body (Lead Payout $35)
4. Celebrity Sexy Teeth (Lead Payout $35)
5. EZLoss Brazilian Weight Loss (Lead Payout $32.00)
6. Video Professor (Lead Payout $58)
7. Alibaba (Lead Payout $3)
8. MetaboFire™ (Lead Payout $25)
9. Total Gym Direct (Up to 11% Payout)
10. Google Gold Mine (Lead Payout $19)

Contest Rules

• Total commissions will be defined by affiliate’s performance in any one or all offers mentioned above.
• Total commissions include only approved transactions and fraud will not be tolerated.
• Affiliate must send an e-mail to contest [at] pepperjamnetwork [dot] com with PJN username and password in order to participate.
• Past sales / transactions will not be included. Commissions begin to accumulate for purposes of this contest upon receipt of e-mail from participant.
• Participants will receive an additional 5% commission bonus on top of regular payouts (see above). For instance, if the affiliate generates $20,000 in commission they will receive a $1,000 BONUS.

Last year I had to write an article about how I would promote a Rocket Profit affiliate offer. Honestly, there wasn’t much competition and I easily took the win along with Zac Johnson. This time around, I expect there to be a lot more competition with some super affiliates taking part. This is a great opportunity for you to promote some quality affiliate offers, earn a nice bonus from Pepperjam, and possibly get a free ride to a premier Internet marketing conference.

Will you be participating? I know that I am. Maybe I can win 2 years in a row.

Be sure to sign up as a Pepperjam Network affiliate now.

Posted in Conferences, Contests | 11 Comments

16 Ideas For Free Products That Will Double Your Subscribers & Leads

One of the best ways to gain new leads for your blog or website is to come up with a free product of some sort. It can be anything from a free ebook to a free t-shirt depending on your specific niche. What you then want to do is offer your free product to interested users who will opt in to your email list to get it. You can easily set this up using Feedburner RSS by Email or an email list service like Aweber. People respond extremely well to incentives so this is a very effective method to significantly increase your subscriber base. If you don’t offer a free product for new signups, you’re leaving a lot of quality leads on the table.

So now you understand the benefit of free products for new leads, but what do you possibly have to offer? The most important thing to remember is that people seek value. If users have nothing to gain from your product, they won’t opt in to your list to get it - even if it’s free. Understand your users and what they want. Then create something that they simply cannot resist.

Below are some ideas for free products and incentives to get you started:

1. Collection of your best blog posts
If you own a blog, offering an e-book that contains your best articles is a good way to increase your subscriber base and to showcase your best content. Much of your top work is buried in the archives of your blog, so a collection would help to increase exposure and attract new readers. John Chow offers a “Make Money Online” ebook which is simply just a mashup of his past posts but it has single-handedly brought him thousands of new subscribers to his email list.

2. Detailed how-to guides for your industry
The main advantage of creating a how-to guide for your industry is that it becomes the face and anchor of your site. People initially read your guide and develop a relationship with you and your site as a result. For example, Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur’s Journey offers the Blog Profits Blueprint to visitors who subscribe to his email list.  It’s a great guide for newbie bloggers that feeds new leads into his Blog Mastermind membership program and keeps people coming back to read articles on his blog. Caroline Middlebrook does something similar with her Bloggers Bible.

If you do decide to create a comprehensive guide, be sure to make it interesting with a catchy title. For example, headlines like “Ultimate Guide to Black Friday Shopping” or “How to Save 50% on Black Friday” would work well for a shopping site.

3. A big list of [blank]
Everyone loves a good list. They’re usually interesting and easy to follow and provide a quick top-level overview of a particular subject. For webmasters looking for a new product, they’re easier to create than comprehensive guides and yet still have the potential to attract a lot of attention. The project that I’m currently working on is a big list of ideas revolving around Internet marketing. You should see it released in the next couple of weeks.

4. List of resources
Don’t have the knowledge or skills to create something on your own? Create a big list of the top resources in your niche. For example, Tamar Weinberg of Techipedia made a list of the top Internet marketing articles of 2007 and it has generated a ton of pageviews and links (including this one). Same thing with my IM Top Blogs list. You don’t necessarily have to be an expert to see success. There’s a lot of value in being a facilitator.

5. Case study
I don’t know about you, but the best way I learn new concepts is through examples. Case studies are useful because they provide real-world applications while telling a unique story. If your niche is saturated and other sites have already covered the guides and lists, writing a case study is a good way to differentiate yourself from the competition. For example, if you own a tennis e-commerce site, you can offer a free case study of your experiences with three of the most popular rackets. People love to relate to others and a case study might be just what you need to attract new visitors.

6. Other exclusive premium content
As you’ve seen in the previous examples, there are plenty of opportunities to create information products that will lure people to your site. Be creative and think of new formats that would be appropriate for your industry. Some additional ideas include ebooks, reviews, business white papers, mind maps, tutorials, manuals, rankings, catalogs, samples of paid resources, etc. What would your readers find valuable?

7. Newsletter or membership
Another effective method to gain new email subscribers is to distribute an email newsletter related to your industry and market it as premium content. Email list services like Aweber make distribution extremely easy and people are always willing to get updated information from trusted sources.

8. Interviews with industry leaders
Another method to create high-quality content without doing much work yourself is to conduct interviews with leaders and experts in your industry. You’ll benefit greatly from the name recognition and most of the content is given to you on a silver platter. Of course, most experts are difficult to get a hold of for interviews so you’ll probably have to work out some sort of deal to make it worth their while.

9. Podcasts
Audio is useful for your site because it gives you a competitive advantage and another channel for distribution of your content. Not only that, but the perceived value of a podcast is higher than that of a text article. Giving away free podcasts is a great way to increase your exposure and to establish yourself as an authority in your niche.

10. Videos
Similar to podcasts, videos are highly effective marketing tools that force viewers to drop everything and pay attention to your message. For maximum effectiveness, be sure that your videos are entertaining, informative, or both. A creative way to get people to opt in to your lists is to offer the first half of your video for free and then require users to sign up in order to watch the second half. Works like a charm because viewers are left wanting more.

11. Plugins & tools
Wordpress plugins and tools are all the rage right now. If you can create something useful that will make bloggers’ lives easier, you can bet that you’ll get a lot of attention and new signups. For example, SEO Book works this angle very well by giving away some awesome SEO tools that every marketer should use in their search marketing campaigns.

12. Themes & designs
Premium themes and skins are always high in demand because webmasters frequently search for new and unique site designs. You can leverage theme directories for more exposure and include links in your themes for SEO and traffic benefit.

13. Free samples
Do you have a paid product for sale on your site? Give away free samples or a “lite” version to attract new leads. Users are more inclined to buy something if they’re able to try it first.

14. Coupons
When I was searching for restaurants to eat at, I came across a few sites that were offering free coupons for signing up to an email list. Everyone likes getting discounts so visitors like me are more than willing to deal with emails to get a good deal. Not only that, but if customers use your coupons and like what you have to offer, they could very easily come back to do business with you at full price. The price you pay in offering coupons is well worth the number of new leads you gain.

15. Entries into contest
If you’ve followed Winning the Web for the past year, you know that a big part of my success comes from popular contests. Basically what I did was offer free chances to win big prizes by opting into an email list and/or RSS subscription. This method works extremely well and I recommend it to webmasters running any sort of promotion on their sites.

16. T-shirts & tangible goods
It’s amazing what people will do to get their hands on a t-shirt. This can be said about almost any tangible good distributed online. A free figurine, notebook, coffee mug, desk lamp, etc. For some reason, people love to get goodies in the mail, sometimes more so that expensive digital products. Shipping costs may be high, but you may find that it’s worth it to attain new leads.

After going through the list above, were you able to brainstorm new ideas for a free product you can offer on your site? What else can you give away that will catapult your email lists and leads to new levels? Start working on your irresistable offers now.

Posted in Articles, Internet Marketing | 26 Comments

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