Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

In my previous post I introduced and discussed the importance of the website traffic monitor AlexaRank. Whether you value your Alexa traffic ranking or not there are definite advantages to having a high AlexRank. Many webmasters and business folk look at the AlexaRank as a reasonable representation of a site’s traffic. If you are selling advertising from your site the more “proof” you can demonstrate of your traffic - and in AlexaRank’s case it is an independent valuation of your traffic, which adds credibility - the more likely advertisers will come knocking at your door willing to give you some of their ad budget.

Make More Money From Text Links

It’s well known that many text link brokers, such as Text-Link-Ads.com (aff), factor in AlexaRank when determining the price to charge advertisers for links on your site or blog. The higher you raise your AlexaRank the more you potentially can earn, and this reason alone is enough to pay attention to methods to increase your AlexaRank.

An AlexaRank Experiment

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Or…EzineArticles.com Review

Regular readers of my blogs know I’ve been testing article marketing using the article distribution and repository service from Ezine Articles. Ezine Articles allows writers to publish articles that include a special area at the end called a resource box. In the resource box the author leaves a link or two along with a couple of sentences. Other webmasters and publishers are allowed to reprint the article on their own websites, newsletters or blogs, as long as they keep the resource box intact.

You can see an example of one of my articles with the resource box here - http://ezinearticles.com/?id=141082 - note the photo isn’t usually part of the resource box, you only see it when you view the article at Ezine Articles.

The idea from the writer’s point of view is that you can increase your exposure by having your content reproduced around the Internet. Your are rewarded with one-way incoming links from the resource box, you don’t have to reciprocate as you would with link exchanges, which in theory should reward you with better search engine rankings.

From a publisher’s point of view it’s free content. If you are struggling to keep a regular email newsletter going reprinting articles can be a fantastic way to reduce your workload. You can also use the content to populate a blog, website or any publication as long as you follow the reproduction rules.

My Article Marketing Test

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I just finished listening to epipod 16 (yes it is a lame term, but if I can help it become mainstream we can all be lame together along with Alan and Andrew) from The Marketer’s Podcast. Alan and Andrew are two marketers from Australia and their podcast is one of the only shows I listen to on a regular basis, usually when I go for walks in the afternoon. The 16th show featured an interview with the CEO of a search engine services company, called SLI-Systems, which specialises in providing internal search for websites.

The main point to take away from the podcast is the value of internal search as a market research tool. Take for example this blog. It has a search box in the top right corner that no doubt is used to find specific content hidden away in the archives in this blog. I have no idea which search terms are being pumped into that search box. If I did I would have a nice list of keywords that people come searching for when visiting my blog. I complain about lacking a definition of my niche and knowing which search terms, i.e. the needs of my visitors, would go a long way towards helping me further refine my niche(s).

Apply this to e-commerce sites and you have a powerful tool for researching what your website visitors are looking for. Based on internal search data you can ensure the products your visitors are most often searching for are available from the front page of your site. Take this a step further and you can use internal search data for creating pay per click advertising campaigns, refining your keyword lists and providing inspiration for new keyword campaigns. It’s clear that if you have enough content on a website you can benefit from internal search data, it’s just as good as external search data (although different) and anything you can do to help pinpoint exactly what your customers want is valuable. Plus of course from the user experience a good search engine helps with website usability for your visitors as well.

I have a little experience with internal search service providers and listening to this podcast has made me wonder whether there is plugin for WordPress that allows you to collect data on the searches taking place using the WordPress search function. I have experience with one free service called Atomz that I installed on MTGParadise.com and is still functioning, albeit with text ads supporting it now. The Atomz free service allows you to place an internal search function on your site but it will only index a certain number of pages with the free service, you have to upgrade for it to index your full site (at least that was the deal a few years ago). It does provide a list of the keyword phrases users are searching so it can provide the data you need as an online marketer and it’s reasonably easy to install, at least for webmaster-types.

Google also has widely popular internal search service, which provides a copy-and-paste solution to have Google index based internal search on a domain and a pay-for enterprise option for companies of any size. I am not that familiar with Google’s offerings since I’ve only briefly dabbled with it back when I was working as a web designer for the University of Queensland, but as far as I know it does not provide any keyword feedback. No doubt you will also find countless free and almost free scripts out there that will provide some form of internal search and the other big players like Yahoo! and MSN also have internal search related offerings. The most important thing is that the search works well for visitors and provides you with the necessary keyword data.

Web search as a component of online market research can be a powerful tool for any web business. Besides the obvious end usability benefits, the data collected directly from your visitors is invaluable, acting similar to a survey, offering real time feedback direct from your audience. Best of all you don’t have to tempt your visitors with prizes or free giveaways to encourage participation - internal search is driven by consumer wants - which is perfect for commerce.

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In my previous article discussing how to build email lists I made mention of the technique known as the namesqueeze. The namesqueeze is a method online marketers use to subscribe targeted prospects to their email lists by forcing visitors to a website to join a list or subscribe to a newsletter before they gain access to the main site content. A few readers made comment about the namesqueeze technique, noting that they dislike it and will usually leave a website rather than supply their email address to enter the website. I tend to agree that I do not like the technique looking from the eyes of a web surfer, it annoys me, however I have on several times submitted to the namesqueeze and most often when I find the sales copy really compelling – it’s seems to offer the scratch to my itch – and of course it’s an emotionally compelling choice, which truly good sales copy can elicit.

Another common gripe I hear often and experience myself is the hatred of the long sales page. I’m sure you have come across one of these. They require at least ten or more full screen scrolls to reach the bottom of the page, they are littered with large text, giant red headings, many testimonials with pictures of smiling people, lots of tick arrows listing all the amazing things the product will do for you if you decide to buy. I hear complaints about the multiple “P.S.” and “P.P.S”s at the end of sales letters, that it’s annoying when a webpage audio starts talking to you automatically without requesting it and that ultimately, sales letters are just too painful so no one must be silly enough to read them all the way through, let alone make a purchase.

Now I could explain to you why the long sales letter works. I could note that often people scroll to the end of the letter and read the “P.S.”s first hence they are very important. I could describe how testimonials are the social proofing necessary to convert a sale or how automatic audio has been proven to increase opt-ins. But my goal with this article is not to educate you in online marketing techniques. I want you to get into the marketer’s mindset and out of the consumer’s mindset. Then I want you to switch back to the consumer mindset and finally do something completely new, I want you to think outside of the online marketing box.

A Marketer’s Dilemma

Here’s a problem from my point of view. As a person interested in online marketing I visit a lot of sales pages and look at them through the eyes of a marketer. I don’t read most of them, I scan and take note of the marketing techniques they are using. Because I’m overexposed to these techniques the long sales letter is probably not going to be a good tool to sell to me, at least not as good as it has been in the past. However I don’t think the same could be said about the general marketplace since techniques within the long sales letter draw on marketing methods that have been proven to work over and over long before the Internet was created. I’m not saying I won’t be impacted by a long sales letter when I fit right into the niche they are targeting, I’m just saying that it takes more, a lot more, to convince me to make a purchase. Some of you reading this article are probably the same.

As marketer I must remind myself that I am not my client. If I want to maximize my return I need to consider all the tricks in the book, regardless of my personal preferences or assumptions as a consumer, and see what my target market tells me. If the market responds better to automatic audio and large fonts then am I crazy if I choose not to use them because I personally don’t like them. This is what marketers will tell you, you must get into the marketer mindset and respond only to what the market tells you. Nothing else matters. If - and this is an important if - your goal is to maximize return as a marketer you must be prepared to leave all your subjective personal preferences behind and become a statistics machine that cares only about the numbers.

Once you are in that mindset your next step is to attempt to become your customer. By entering the consumer mindset you can develop your marketing toolbox based on the expected behaviors and desires of your target buyer. This is of course very closely tied into the marketer’s mindset since as a marketer you test your consumer mindset assumptions using marketing mindset methods (are you confused yet?). A skilled marketer can make use of both mindsets simultaneously.

However, and this is an attitude you are not going to hear from almost any other online marketer because it goes against the definition of marketing, if you have set yourself goals that don’t necessarily demand maximization of return, then you can be more selective with how you sell. Let me explain.

If you choose to apply your own personal preference when marketing, to not to use large fonts, or hyperbole copy, or even avoid the sales letter altogether, because you don’t like these methods or it’s “not the type of marketing you want to use,” you must be prepared to experience a lower return and response rate. You must be prepared to under-optimize, to not care solely on profit maximization. By choosing not to implement certain sales techniques you are going against the grain. You might be labeled stupid. You might not make as much money, however you might feel better for not being yet another person with a webpage that reads like a late night infomercial (although would you feel even better with more sales?).

Choose To Be Different

I’d like to put forward the argument that by not committing to certain accepted marketing “best practices” and worse still, to not even test these methods out of personal principle (what kind of a marketer are you!) that you may force yourself to think out of the box and come up with unique and innovative marketing tools. You might fall flat on your face too.

You could argue that developing unique and innovative marketing methods is just part of what being a marketer is about. Perhaps the best and revolutionary marketing methods were developed because the inventive marketer was sick of seeing the same sales pitch copied and pasted into each different niche. The market may have become saturated and the only path to success was to be different. The end result thus turns out to be a greater return than was possible from any of the standard marketing methods, and in time the new innovation becomes the norm (and the cycle repeats). In essence the end result was exactly what marketing is about – maximization of return – the marketer though may have just set out to be different.

Creative Marketing

Is it possible to be a creative marketer purely for creativity’s sake? A marketer that wants to use marketing as a medium of expression, to be different, yes – still to make money – but focused more on creativity than profit maximization. People may argue that choosing to be creative IS really choosing to maximize profits. Others may not call this marketing at all, since the goal is not aligned with income maximization. Maybe it’s “branding” or “advertising” or “art”?

I didn’t write this article to suggest that you don’t use proven techniques. I don’t suggest you attempt to make a stand by using only new marketing methods because of “principle”. You might go bankrupt, and I don’t want to see that. Most online marketers do really well simply copying methods that other marketer’s have developed. Why try and reinvent the wheel when the wheel has proven to work time and time again. You can still enjoy tremendous financial success and personal satisfaction without ever being a creative marketer. Perhaps creative marketing is an oxymoron - is marketing more science than art afterall?

The purpose of this article is simply to remember that innovation comes from people that choose not to follow the crowd. In marketing and in business that is a hard thing to do because you risk reducing your income. For those that perhaps have aligned their goals away from profit maximization, or have already reached financial security but still enjoy marketing, the opportunity exists to do something different and the first step is to think differently.

Yaro Starak
Online Marketer

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Entrepreneur’s Journey conducted an experiment to test how much traffic the Million Dollar Homepage (MDH) could bring in by purchasing the basic advertisement (100×100 pixels).

Our ad (this little ) was placed in the top left corner area on October 5th. You can read the full details about this experiment and the MDH in my previous post - The Million Dollar Homepage.

Advertising Results

I can now report back to you that the MDH experiment ad performed very badly. At this point in time the traffic from the site totals about 30-40 visits and that’s for the last four days. The case study on the MDH site reported more than 500 new visitors per day for the same period of time so you have to wonder what went wrong with our experiment.

I think I know why it didn’t perform well - the MDH is now crowded. When that case study was tested the site wasn’t nearly as crowded with ads as it was when the Entrepreneur’s Journey advertisement went up. In the period it took to raise the funds to buy the advertisement close to $100,000 in new pixel square purchases were made on MDH making the above the fold area very busy. A 100×100 advertisement just doesn’t stand out anymore. I was hoping that the small size of our ad shouldn’t have mattered too much due to the sheer amount of traffic coming through to the site. We only needed a very small sliver of it to get some reasonable results, just as the case study reported.

Perhaps I made a mistake by positioning the ad as far to the top left as I could given that area is the most crowded space. In fact it would be interesting to place another ad somewhere else on the site where the competition for eyeballs isn’t so tough and see how the results compare. But we won’t be doing that, I think it’s best to leave this experiment as it is and report that buying a 100×100 block on the MDH is now a waste of time. You might get better results from a larger square but to be honest if you have a spare $1000 in your wallet for advertising I would spend it on more targeted traffic than what the MDH would bring through for your money.

Smarter Online Marketing

On the same day that our MDH advertisement went live I published this article, PageRank Explained - Keeping SEO Simple, on Entrepreneur’s Journey. The posting of this article turned out to be a much more effective marketing tool than an advertisement on MDH and offers a great comparison study of online marketing.

During the same period that I reported above for the MDH advertisement, the PageRank Explained article brought in over 1000 new direct referrals (visitors), a handful of PageRank 7 backlinks (these are damn valuable) as well as lots of PageRank 6 and 5 backlinks and accounted for the first 1000+ unique visitors day. Previously Entrepreneur’s Journey averaged about 500 unique visitors per day and after this article there were a few days spiking over 1000 (as high as 1400 so far). Things will settle down over the next few days no doubt but clearly this result was a lot more successful than a MDH advertisement.

A Secret Formula?

Let me explain how this happens and how you can replicate it on your website or blog. There is no guarantee or secret formula for a result like this, but if a combination of variables come together the effects can be amazing as your article spreads like wildfire over the web generating lots of backlinks and traffic. I will break down the important variables for you.

First, write a good article. Okay, it’s not quite as simple as this, it’s even simpler! What I mean by this is that the basic, simple articles, with tips and advice - the practical stuff on mainstream topics - have the best chance of being picked up and circulated online. If you read over PageRank Explained you will see that it covers the basics, offers some practical advice that is simple and digestible. None of what I wrote was rocket science but it was presented in an easy to understand manner.

Get a big site to link to your article. This part is a little harder but is a key factor. I’m pretty sure I have Roger Johansson from 456 Berea Street, a fellow 9ruler, to thank for the success of my article. He made a small post about it that opened up the floodgates. He obviously has a massive audience on his site alone (his site is a PageRank 7 and has been successful online for a few years now) and his attention brought in many more links from other bloggers and helped to get the article into the Del.icio.us popular list.

The point here is that network effects are absolutely vital and one of the best ways to get a network effect happening is to have a popular site link to one of your articles. You have probably heard of Slashdot, the most popular site for news on IT related matters. The site is massive. The traffic the site gets is even massive-er. The site has so much traffic pulling power that there is a term used whenever a site receives a link from Slashdot - “You have been Slashdotted“. Darren from Problogger was recently Slashdotted for a second time, bringing in over 40,000 visitors in under 48 hours. That’s some traffic power!

Network Effects

So how can you benefit from network effects after writing an article that you think deserves some attention? There are no guarantees however there are things you can to do encourage network effects.

1. You can be blunt about it and directly email the large sites mentioning your article and hope they will read it, find it interesting and then post about it. This is a risky practice because you don’t want to become annoying, pestering other sites about your work to the point where they ignore you. You also better be damn confident that what you have written is good because you are not going to be selling your article to a warm prospect if you are some random stranger with a blog no one knows about that just emailed out of the blue.

   You need to keep it casual and in fact it’s probably better to not start off talking about your article and instead foster a long term relationship with other bloggers so when the time comes and you do write a fantastic article you only need to contact your mates for some extra exposure. Of course as with most relationships it should be give and take so be prepared to return the favour now and then as well.

2. Comment and link to a lot of other bloggers. What is the golden rule to get a person’s attention? Pay some attention to them! The same rule applies online. If you comment on a lot of other blogs and websites, and when I say comment I mean intelligent, conversation participation comments (express your opinion folks, it’s not hard), not spammer “look at my website, it’s ace!” comments, then you open up the doors for other people to get to know you and your site. Write some content on your blog that mentions some of the big blogs and you may just get the attention of the author. The more bloggers that know you, that track you through RSS, the more likely you will get a link back when your brand new article goes up.
3. Consistently write good original content articles. This requires a lot of work and I can vouch for it because this is what I aim to do with my blog writing. Many bloggers write news-bite sized articles, with daily updates made up of links and a little commentary. There is nothing wrong with this practice and many very successful blogs use this strategy. However if you want to encourage incoming links nothing works better then a new and original article. If you can keep writing these on a regular basis your blog will build up a great database of solid content and slowly your blog will build a loyal audience. People will know as a thought provoking author writing original ideas and interesting commentary.

As your audience expands each new article you write will be exposed to more people and this is when exponential effects can occur, and it’s a beautiful thing. For example my first significant successful article was probably Making Money From Your Website Using Advertising published in May of this year. Now back then I probably had about 50 daily readers and that article might have brought in another 25-50 over the next month as readers linked to it, forwarded it, etc., increasing my traffic. This continued happening as I wrote each new original article, however since each time my base traffic figures were increased the amount of exposure each new article brought in was greater as well, increasing proportionately to the amount of current readers I had. Just last week my current 500 or so daily readers helped to bring another 500 readers for my latest article.

This is not a science and the numbers will never be consistent but I think you can see my point. The bigger you get the better each new article will perform for you, provided you keep writing good stuff - that’s the hard part and deservedly the best writers get the most attention if they stick to it over time.

Successful Online Marketing

The clear answer to successful online marketing is that content is king. We know this. Looking at the big picture content maybe the most important ingredient but without consistency content is not a long term strategy. If you do not continue to produce fresh content then you won’t build on your efforts in the past. You must commit to building an audience using each new piece of content as a building block placed on the previous piece of content. Only by doing this as a long term strategy can you hope to build and retain an audience that will keep coming back.

Best of all this type of audience doesn’t cost anything but time and energy, which, if you are working on something you enjoy, will be a pleasurable activity that you undertake with enthusiasm. Your readers pay you with attention in exchange for entertainment. Unlike Pay-Per-Click or paid advertising, the audience doesn’t stop coming when you run out of cash for clicks.

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