Wanna Be A Big Time Marketer? Let’s Trade Links
Posted by Mitch on May 23, 2008
I’ve started to notice more and more why the master internet marketers are, well, master internet marketers. I think I’ve always known it, or at least for the past 3 or 4 years I’ve known it, but I’ve never talked about it until now.
Just asking, but how many folks got at least one letter from someone whom you subscribe to about Stompernet in the last few days? How about two? I received it four time from four different folks.
This is number one, and it actually fits a pattern, because when Joel Comm’s latest Adsense book came out, I got that email from multiple people also. The master internet marketers all know each other in some way. Maybe they’ve met at conventions, or maybe they’ve just set up joint ventures with each other through one of the many JV sites out there. Those whose lists might not be as big but have a big following through their blogs also get into the game. Tonight, for instance, I’ve already seen 4 or 5 references on blogs and through email to this site called timetogiveback.org; I’m not linking to it, but you can check it out if you wish because it just might be as worthy a cause as it purports to be.
It would make sense because we can then move onto number two; each of these folks has a large mailing list, so it behooves them to spread the wealth. I would be willing to bet that the top 10 internet marketers have access to at least 10 million email addresses. Man, what a powerful list something like that has to be, right? Those who make their money through their blogs also have to be feeling pretty good; one of the blogs I follow mentioned that they average 1.5 million visitors a month; wow!
Number three, each of these folks knows how to write their own copy, in their own style, when jumping on the bandwagon. The Rich Jerk, for instance, obviously has his own insulting style that still gets people to buy stuff from him. Armand Moran has a much more subtle style, as does Alica Seba; these folks are just good.
I’m not griping, by the way. I want to be them, of sorts. Heck, any of us who are hoping to make money on the internet want to be like them. We want people to come to our sites, read what we have to say, think we’re geniuses, then buy something from us so we can live to write another day.
What the rest of us are missing are big numbers. That’s because we haven’t yet learned the art of networking with each other so that we can grow like the big time folks have done. We don’t like to each other’s blogs as much; we don’t communicate with each other when sending out our products to our meager listings. We haven’t quite figured out how to set up our own JV’s, as it were. We’re the wishers of the bunch, not even classified as pretenders to the throne.
You know, I read one blog where the writer said he decided to concentrate his first year on getting as many visitors to his blog as he possibly could. I think that’s what I want to do with this blog. I want a lot of readers and visitors. I want people to come look at my stuff, and continue coming back because they think I’m relevant. Who doesn’t want that, right?
There are many ways to do this, of course, and one of those ways is to link to other blogs and have people link back. So, this is an open call; I want to trade some relevant links with other bloggers. What’s relevant? Well, here you go; there are two things to think about. One, who are your normal readers? Two, what do you like to read? Put both of those together, and there you go. Take a look at my blogroll to see who I’ve linked to thus far, and take a look at five or more posts I’ve made on this blog to see what it’s about. I’d do the same for you, as I do it anyway. I’m sure we’ll find compatibility, and we can help each other grow.
Yeah, it sounds a little bit like begging; hey, we do what we do, right? Hey, I ain’t too proud to beg sometimes. And, since I said that, let me share TLC’s version of those words:
No Pop-Ups From Me
Posted by Mitch on May 21, 2008
On Michael Fortin’s blog, he recently wrote a post called Customers Won’t Discount Your Dishonesty, and it’s a very good read, something I agree with wholeheartedly.
Though he’s basically talking about internet tricks such as when you try to leave having a pop up window stop you with a discounted offer, I believe it applies to so many different types of companies, and I for one don’t like it, and, he’s right, you lose respect for them. I remember when my wife and I first moved into this house and we thought we needed new windows. This guy came to the house and was here for 3 hours, first measuring the windows, then supposedly doing all the calculations he had to do so that he could talk to us further. He then dropped the price on us; $36,000. I actually laughed out loud, which is so unlike me, but it was more than 1/3rd of what we’d paid for the house.
He left, but three days later we got a call offering the same package for $16,000; one again we said no. Then four days later we were offered the same package for $9,000. At that point I told the person that I didn’t want their company calling me anymore because I didn’t trust them. A couple years later, my wife contacted one of the big home improvement chains and asked someone to come look at our windows. This guy gave us a quote where most of our windows came to $70 each, with the big bay window coming to $1,000 on its own; I could understand that, as it’s a different style. We didn’t go for that one, but we did replace a lot of the other windows, at a very affordable price.
Some of these guys are obviously making a lot of sales, otherwise they wouldn’t persist in using the tactic. Personally, when I’m ready to leave, that’s that, and if I see a pop up window, it just irritates me to no end. But when I see the pop up window has a discounted price, well, I start worrying even a little bit more about the product, and I wonder about the old bait and switch; why didn’t they just offer it at that price to begin with, right?
Well, no matter. I will guarantee you that I won’t have any of those types of tricks on this blog. Just your average everyday rant, rave, or affiliate marketing link; no tricks.
Let’s Talk About Commission Junction
Posted by Mitch on May 20, 2008
As you’ve noticed easily enough, with most of my posts I have some sort of affiliate link or product at the end of each one of them. Most of them come from Commission Junction, and that’s who I’m going to talk about this evening.
Commission Junction is one of the largest big name affiliate programs out there. There may be affiliate programs that have more products, but Commission Junction deals with some of the biggest name companies and personalities. For instance, I’m an affiliate marketer for products from companies such as 1&1 Hosting, Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Crayola, GoDaddy, Kodak, NBC/Universal and Time Warner Cable. They have almost 2,200 different companies that people can do advertising for, including the one at the end of this post.
Now, here’s the thing I’ve noticed about affiliate marketing thus far; I haven’t quite figured out what to do with it. I know we’re not really supposed to talk about things we haven’t done well yet, but so be it; the fourth wall is down, and I’m now George Burns talking to the audience.
I haven’t made a lot of money through CJ, their nickname. I’ve made some, enough so that I even got a check once. Truthfully, you don’t have to sell a lot of product in order to make some money. However, you have to sell some, and it would seem to be much harder than just putting up a link of some kind that looks pretty, possibly flashes, and hoping people will click on it. I know this because I check the statistics, and I see very few clicks on these bad boys ever. As a matter of fact, almost all the money I’ve made has come through 1&1, which probably means someone who knows me needed hosting and decided to help me out a little bit; thanks friends!
For one of my sites, I’ve created pages that highlight some of the products, and tried to show a nice range of prices. On another site, I’ve put a couple of products on one side of each page, hoping the picture might entice someone to click on a product to see what else a site might have. And here, as well as on other sites, I’ve posted the affiliate links with the company name, figuring one of them might click with someone one day.
Of course, sometimes CJ, or their affiliates, don’t help me much. For instance, companies are known to move around their images, and of course sometimes they discontinue a product, or a link. It’s easy to always check the links on your own website, but I don’t go around testing the links to the products on a regular basis because I don’t want to skew the numbers that tell me how many people are checking stuff out; not like it’d be all that many anyway.
Still, I can’t say any of this is Commission Junction’s fault. I know there’s a formula somewhere, and I’m going to keep trying to figure it out. However, I will say that CJ has some wonderful companies it represents, and if you’re a true affiliate marketer, and know better than me what you’re doing, you should check them out.
Stop Blogging? The List
Posted by Mitch on May 19, 2008
On a blog called Problogger, written by Darren Rowse, on a post called Should I Stop Blogging, he listed 20 questions people should think about if they’re trying to decide whether they should stop blogging or not. I decided, instead of either copying his whole list here, which would be theft, or writing a comment on his blog, which would get lost in the volume of “good stuff here” posts, I’d comment on a few of his points here instead.
Most of his commenters liked #3, “Am I getting personal satisfaction from posting?”. I think this is key, because if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, and it feels more like work than fun, then either your quality is going to suffer or the frequency of your writing is going to decrease, probably both. Iknow many people who get into blogging because they believe it’s critical for their business, rather than their yearn for having something to say. No one likes working at a bad job; don’t create one for yourself.
I think #4 is important also, “How Many Posts Did I write in the Last Month?” If you’re trying to write one post a week just to keep up, that’s fine, but if you only had one post in the last month, and you’re dreading having to write another one just to have something down on paper, you’re probably of the mindset that this is something you don’t want to do. The only way to bring people to your blog is to have new content; without it, you won’t build up any loyalty at all. And, if you’re not looking to build loyalty, then why did you start the blog in the first place? You can’t even say you did it so you’d have a place to talk about your business or anything else because you’re not using it at all.
To this end, #13 fits right in: “Is the blog giving energy to or taking energy away from me?” If it’s a great effort to continue blogging, your energy levels have to diminish whenever you start thinking it’s time to write something. Sure, there are a few times when I’m just not feeling it as I start writing for one reason or another, but usually before I start writing, I’m fully engaged because I’ve just thought of something I’d really like to address in some fashion. I almost always feel a major sense of accomplishment once I’ve hit “publish”, and that gives me a nice boost.
The final question, 18 on his list, is a good one: “Do I have anything original and useful to say on my topic?” This one is more subjective, because it’s not as much about whether you have enough content but rather if you have enough content, AND are you willing to use your personality to help get your points across. If I wanted to, I could just post all sorts of written text, mine and that of other people, and become that kind of source for information. But how entertaining and engaging is that? If someone is writing on the failed merger between Microsoft and Yahoo, for instance, it’s not anything new because a lot of people wrote about it. However, your perspective and passion on the topic, as well as your words, offers your readers something that they can’t get from reading the same exact news story from multiple sources. Of course this goes back to step one of my blog writing series, where I said people should think about what they want to write on their blogs, but not set too fine a line on what it is they can address, otherwise it stifles the process. We all want to share and entertain, but we have to be ready at times to give a little bit of ourselves and let our personality come through. If you’re just going through the emotions, it’s like a bad marriage; it will be found out eventually.
Anyway, those are my favorite points of his post. I hope you check out the rest of it to see where you believe you may fit on that scale. Good luck.
How Much Can You Write?
Posted by Mitch on May 19, 2008
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of blogs, but the ones I’ve really been studying have been the ones talking about building up traffic to your blog. Lucky for me, I came upon a blog by a guy named Steve Pavlina, and this guy has great content.
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As a matter of fact, he wrote this post on how to How To Build A High Traffic Website (or Blog), and I have to admit that it was not only fascinating reading, but also a major departure from what many other people say about building traffic, or making money with your blog, which he has also written about.
Anyway, in the post, he gives his top ten ways of generating traffic, and the first 8 talk about writing. This post is long; as a matter of fact, one of his point is that in order to give great value, you have to write longer posts so you’re not wasting anyone’s time. Some of his posts are extremely long; I don’t think I could conceive of writing posts of 5,000 - 7,500 words on a regular basis, but I can easily see the value in writing longer posts. At the same time, from my perspective, I feel the need to entertain a little bit and show a bit of my personality, which is why I will post a superfluous video from time to time, or maybe a link to something funny or different (like this; it’ll make you feel good).
Still, all his points make a lot of sense. He makes a lot of money off his blog, and probably doesn’t advertise as much as one might think. Of course, he makes money from the rest of his website also, which I believe you should check out also, but he still shows just how much he cares for his visitors with the things he writes; it’s easily a blog I follow, and I’ve added it to my blogroll also.
Because I’d love you to go read what he wrote, I’m not going to list all 10 of his points here, but I am going to list the top 3 because I believe they’re important enough to reinforce:
1. Create Valuable Content
2. Create Original Content
3. Create Timeless Content
Man, it doesn’t get better than that, does it? So I thought about this blog some more, and I feel pretty good about it for the most part. I think the mixture of long pieces (like my blog series) with some of the fun stuff works well for me, because, as another of his points will say, though I’m not quoting it, you have to be true to yourself and show people what you’re about.
Still, it does beg the question just how much could you write, on a consistent basis, if your living depended on it. If that’s all I had, I could easily do it. After all, I’m writing every day. This is one of three blogs I have, one of 9 websites I have, and I also write two newsletters of my own and three other newsletters. I’ve written one real book and an ebook, and have 4 or 5 others started. So, I could write easily enough. But consistently putting out articles of the number of words I mentioned earlier,… hmmm,…
I’d love to know what most of you think about this one. If you go to Steve’s blog and read the entire post, you can’t write it there because he doesn’t take comments; he has so much traffic that it got to him, and he decided to turn it off. But he leaves it open for trackbacks, and there’s enough of them to show us all that people like his stuff. But you can tell me here; I won’t mind.
Thoughts About Facebook
Posted by Mitch on May 17, 2008
On my Reviews of Everything site, I wrote a review on Facebook, around the same time they started advertising.
Now I’m more months into it, and I’m still wondering about the overall value of Facebook as a true social networking site. Here’s my issue; there’s not much networking going on at all, let alone socializing. The site is replete with groups that either are set up to recruit people to become friends with, or groups whose overall purpose is to satiate their lascivious tendencies (go look that one up; not a word I get to use often).
I’m certainly not a prude, but there are only be so much of this sort of thing before one gets bored. I’ve created two groups of my own there. One is for support of people who have diabetes, as I do, and the other is for people to post their blogs and talk about blogging in general. On one of the groups, I have maybe 25 people who’ve signed up, but mainly it’s just me talking and posting links to news about things related to diabetes. I can’t get a conversation going to save my soul. On the other group, some people are finally sharing their blogs, but no one wants to talk about anything, only to share their blog. On that group I don’t necessarily mind so much, as I love looking at new blogs, but I can’t believe people would join these groups, then have nothing to say.
I only have one friend on Facebook who’s actually found a group that has people who have real conversations, and it’s more of a group that does the same work as she does, so of course they’re talking shop. I’d love to join a group in one of the industries I’m a part of myself, but every group I looked at had no one talking to anyone, only a lot of people posting links to try to sell something.
Frankly, if this is what social networking is about online I’m kind of depressed. There was more conversation back in the old BBS bulletin board days; how many of you remember that? Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster, Black Planet, Izania,… nope, so far I’m not all that impressed.
Of course, I’m not leaving Facebook any time soon, because of only one thing; that Scrabulous thing, the game that’s actually Scrabble. Now that I can’t get enough of, and if that’s all I have, then so be it. It’s not overly social either, but at least it’s fun.
CBS Buys CNET; “No” Joy
Posted by Mitch on May 15, 2008
It was announced earlier today that CBS is buying CNET, one of the top internet media companies in the world, for $1.8 billion dollars, ending a potential hostile takeover from some outside investors.
At first glance, this deal doesn’t make any sense to me. It would seem that CBS has learned nothing from the failed AOL/Time Warner merger of the past or any of the other television media companies that have bought online companies before. The two mediums don’t even seem all that compatible, though I’m sure someone would beg to differ.
The purchase at this price comes from the same people who, a year ago, claimed that they weren’t going to spend big money on online companies, and balked at purchasing YouTube for the same amount of money. That one would have made more sense to me already being a video masterpiece, especially with the vast reserves that CBS has to have at its disposal. Instead, they’re buying a company that, while I’ve loved going to their site and reading their reviews and recommendations on both software and hardware products, has hit some hard times, recently announcing layoffs to come.
Of course, this isn’t their first foray into buying other companies, as they also picked up last.fm for around $280 million, but that one also makes sense, being another media company where CBS has vast reserves and many clients it could promote.
Frankly, I’m not sure I like where all of this is going. Big companies are buying up a lot of these independents and suddenly the thing that made them unique is gone. I still lament Dell buying Alienware and taking away what Alienware stood for, turning it into a milksop version of its former hip and wild self and allowing companies such as Falcon Northwest to replace them. Specialization that we have all enjoyed is going away, and very soon, like AM radio, it’s going to seem like we’re all listening to the same thing everywhere we go.
But don’t get me wrong; if someone offers me a million dollars for any of my websites, I’d sell in a heartbeat!
The Truth Behind The Oil Crisis
Posted by Mitch on May 14, 2008
I’m not usually a conspiracy theory kind of guy, but sometimes a guy comes along with a delivery and a message that’s just so compelling that you want to share it.
Lindsey Williams is the author of the book “The No-Energy Crisis“, and he seems to have been an inadvertent insider, of sorts, on some of the conversations about oil and it’s future way back in the early 70’s, around the time that the Alaskan pipeline was just starting to make a name for itself. He’s a former preacher who undertook a goal of becoming a counselor for the men who worked on the pipeline, and was invited to become a non paid board member, where he heard some of the most amazing stuff. It bothered him greatly, and thus he’s made it his crusade to tell the world, or at least the United States, what’s going on, and offers his own opinion as to what needs to be done about it, but why it won’t be done.
I was fascinated by it, and I have to admit that parts of it are hard to swallow. But he’s got some proof, and that’s more than most conspiracy theorists have, so everyone can watch this and make up their own minds. It’s kind of long, so either watch it in chunks, or watch just the first five minutes and make a decision off that. But if you actually make it through the whole thing, well, it will give you lots of stuff to think about.
As a teaser, there’s supposedly a good chance that, before it’s all over, we could see gas prices between $6 and $8 a gallon; that’s worth watching this bad boy.
Do You Avoid Scams?
Posted by Mitch on May 14, 2008
I was talking to a friend of mine last night in Australia and he was telling me how he once fell for an online scam where he thought he was getting a list of companies that would pay him to do surveys for them, and of course he got nothing of the sort. He was out $40, and had no recourse in getting his money back because the people went through some hidden source in setting up their chopping cart.
I told him that often in my adult life I’ve been tempted to do something that just didn’t quite sound right, and in every instance except one I didn’t follow through. The first time I did follow through was right out of college, where a friend and I paid some guy $20 to become wholesale marketers, and realized within hours that it wasn’t the job for us. For our troubles, we got to each keep one thing the company was selling, with my “gift” being a backgammon set that I still love to this day, so I feel as though I got my money’s worth out of it.
Also back in the day, I was trying to be a big time songwriter. I’d spend hours writing songs of all sorts, some I thought were pretty good, some I knew were just for me. I did research at the library for publishers I could send some of my music to, and I did. I even entered song contests, and had one of my songs finish in the top 600 out of 35,000 songs, so I felt pretty good about that.
But I also got contacted by a lot of people who said they wanted to record my song and put it on a record and market it to publishers and radio stations, which sounded pretty good. However, they all wanted me to pay for it, for someone else to record my music, and that didn’t sound right. The books I was researching at the library all said if someone asked you to pay for something instead of them offering you money, it was probably a scam. The pull was strong, I have to admit, but in the end I didn’t go that route, and I feel pretty secure about it.
Most of us are inundated with the latest and greatest thing online on a daily basis, and some of it sounds quite intriguing. Just a few weeks ago a friend of mine kind of ambushed me into a phone conversation with this other guy to start marketing online travel services, and it was “only” going to cost me $500 to join in. I still consider the guy a friend, but I was disappointed because I didn’t see that coming, though, after he asked me if I’d watch a couple of videos and if he could call me back and ask about it I will admit the Spidey senses did kick up.
I don’t go for glitzy presentations, video or written. If I get through the first 3 paragraphs of something, or into the second minute, and I haven’t been told what the product or pitch is, I leave. There are so many people marketing MLM products and services, and let’s face the truth, most of them aren’t getting by with that stuff. But they purchase it, try to push it as hard as they can, usually to their family and friends first, then they get beaten down by the resistance and bail out. It’s not that the products or the services are always scams, but the prospects they dole out to you as far as telling you how much money you can make is unrealistic.
Internet marketing isn’t easy; I’ll tell you that one right up front. Heck, regular marketing isn’t easy. Even if you’re an exclusive, where no one else does exactly what you do, there’s a world of competition out there doing something similar enough to make it hard for you to break through. So, any time someone else comes along and says you’re going to make a world of easy money if you just do this, or pay for that,… take a second minute to think it over with your non-greedy mind.
Now, books might be something different, because I’ve purchased a lot of ebooks and have learned a lot. I talked recently about the Joel Comm Adsense Secrets book, which I think is a pretty good book, and for the price I paid, it was a great book. The most I’ve ever spent on an online book was $40, and I thought it was worth every penny. But before I’ve purchased every book, I’ve done my research online, because I don’t just buy into the hype of something. I need to find at least two or three reviews before I’ll pull the trigger, and I don’t mean ads that look like reviews either. If everyone took a little bit of time in checking some of these things out first, we’d all be a whole lot happier.
Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m not still going to pitch a product or two at you; I am marketing on the internet after all. 
Meme - Passion Quilt
Posted by Mitch on May 13, 2008
Today I’m Going To Have Fun
I really do believe in the power of self motivation, but I also believe it’s hard to do on a consistent basis. The above is a mantra I created for myself some years ago, which I originally had taped to my computer. Once I changed my office around that didn’t work anymore, so my wife put it in a black frame, then put it on the wall next to my desk at eye level, so it’s the first thing I see every time I get ready to sit down at my desk. Why not create something for yourself like it.
This “passion quilt” thing seems to go way back, as people post a picture, title it, then send it on to 5 other folks while also giving the person that sent it to them some props. I figured I’d play along; I can be a good sport,… sometimes.
- Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
- Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry (as I’m doing here.
- Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.
So, now I have to tag 5 people; hmmm, I think I’ll go with:
Josh Shear
Ivo Jackson
Sue Tosto
Kristen Andrews
Krystal Thomas
And there we go!
I'm Just Sharing is a blog about sharing my thoughts about internet marketing and other things. Read, enjoy, and buy! :-)
