Internet Marketing Ideas

As the new year approaches I thought I would share with you some Internet Marketing ideas that you can use in 2006. Whether you have an existing business online or you’re thinking of starting one, these ideas should help to get your creative juices flowing and provide you with some solid business advice to get you headed in the right direction. Edit: Although 2006 is almost over and it’s soon to be 2007 these ideas are timeless and should kick-start any business no matter what time or year it is.

• If you don’t currently have a business you can easily start making money online by becoming an affiliate. You can set up a basic web page, place affiliate links on it with reviews or advice, and start advertising it on Google Adwords. Yes, this is basic and simple, but if you have never done it it’s a great way to get started with low risk. Everyone is an expert on something, find a niche that you know something about and build a simple one page site on it then begin marketing with Adwords. The instant traffic will allow you to determine what works and what doesn’t giving you instant feedback to learn from. Make sure to read my Top Ten Adwords Tips.
• Collect those emails! One of my biggest goals for the 2006 year is to collect more email addresses for my business. Following up with email subscribers is one of the easiest ways to make steady consistent, ever increasing sales. It’s completely exponential, the more email addresses you have, the more people you can market to, the bigger your backlog of emails becomes, and the more sales you make! This is also one of the most neglected aspects of online marketing that I see. So even if you already have subscription boxes on all your sites, make a goal to add 5 more quality follow up messages every month. Watch your income soar!
• Trying to get your website noticed in the Search Engines? Then you need to master the art of inbound links. Inbound links are any links from another website that lead to yours. The more quality inbound links your site has the better it will rank in the search engines. Although this isn’t the only factor, it’s the most important and most neglected. Don’t buy links, and you should only get links on websites that are relevant to your site. You can get links in several ways, the best way is to either trade them or to give away an article to a site that has your link in it. Why not make a goal to get 20 fresh inbound links to your website every month for 2006. Imagine, you will have 240 quality inbound links to your site by the end of the year. And as quickly as 2005 flew by, 2007 will be here before we know it.
• Seek advice. Yes, the best way to get fresh ideas for your online business is to seek fresh advice from others. Just like you are doing now, take time to read an ebook or two, participate in forums, and even get some consulting if needed. It’s amazing the Internet marketing ideas I not only provide, but also discover and share while doing consulting for others. Remember, you can stand on the shoulders of giants when you choose to learn from those at the top. You decrease your learning curve and can usually skip several steps by learning from and avoiding the mistakes others have made.

So I hope this gives you just a few practical ideas and advice for you to implement in the New Year. Remember, ideas and advice are everywhere, what matters is taking action on that advice, learning from it, and taking more action.

Marketing With Miles Update

Just an update for those of you who are coming to the website. I have been working hard on finishing the site but since the Holidays are here I will be taking much needed time off. Although I can hardly keep away from blogging!! Thanks to all of you who have reported broken links, I will be fixing those soon. As I await the release of WordPress 2.0 I am holding off on installing some of the plugins as they could cause problems when I upgrade. I already have 14 WordPress Plugins being used on this site, so hopefully an upgrade will not cause too many headaches. Thus, if you see a broken link or function, that is most likely the reason.

If you want to trade links just drop me a line. I will also be doing some interviews of successful Internet marketers. If you think you qualify email me and I will interview you for the website. I am just looking of those who are making a living off the internet, you don’t have to be a millionaire yet or anything. Anyway, happy holidays to you all!!

Free Keyword Research Site for Adwords, Overture

Icame across this great website and thought those of you who market with Overture, Google Adwords, or other Pay Per Click programs may like it. Basically, it’s an easy way to do some great keyword research. You type in a word or phrase and it will show you the top Google Listings, the Overture Searches, Google Max Bid, Number of Google Ads, and much more all in one simple to view window.

I actually use this site quite a bit when I am researching different niches to see whether there is a market for the niche and what kind of interest and products are available for the topic.

Adword Accelerator

Just got an email about a new program today called Adword Accelerator. This tool is for those who use Google Adwords and want to discover new words to place bids on based on certain criteria. It can help you find out what words have low competition and low costs-per-click as well as many other factors.

Although I haven’t tested this product I may be giving it a try soon. It’s extremely powerful in telling you tons of useful information about keywords. The cost is $27.95 a month, which isn’t a bad deal if you are going to use it a lot or only want to use it for a month.

Here are just a few of the benefits…

• You can automatically discover actual broad, phrase and exact match keyword variations from Google’s system, along with position, click and cost-per-day estimates.
• Find out how many ads are displayed for each word, PLUS how many ads actually use the keyword in their ad. If you find ads that are not using the keyword in their ad you may have a found a good word to bid on and get a high CTR by adding the keyword to the ad. (Ads with the keyword phrase in them get higher CTR usually.)
• Research actual misspelled keywords that AdWords advertisers are bidding on in Google.

It seems as of now you can only use the keyword lists that it creates for you instead of importing your own. This is the only drawback I can see as I would rather import my own list of keyword phrases from WordTracker.

They also have several videos you can watch that demonstrate many aspects of how Adword Accelerator works.

Update May 19th 2008: Adword Accelerator Ver. 3.0 has just been released. Watch videos and get details here.

HTML Code to Text Ratio – SEO

Here is something I never really considered much before, and that is a pages HTML Code to Text ratio. Meaning, how much of your web page is html markup and how much is actual text that the Search Engines will read. This is important because Search Engines will only read and index the actual text of a page and they will only go so far into a page to read either HTML or Text. If your page is mainly HTML code then there’s a good chance the Search Engines won’t read all of your text.

So what is the perfect ratio? Well, the more the better. This site sits currently at about 31% which is not bad at all when compared to most sites. The reason this site has a high ratio is because most of it uses CSS. It also adheres to W3C Standards which means that the code is clean and can be easily spidered by the Search Engines. Sometimes if a Search Engine spider encounters invalid HTML markup it will leave the page.

I found a great tool you can use to get your ratio here. How much your ratio weighs in your overall rankings may never be known. But it is another factor to consider when building and optimizing websites for the Search Engines.

Here are a few other sites with related info. on this topic…

• HTML to Text Ratio
• Coding Forum Thread on HTML to Text Ratio
• A calculator to find your ratio of HTML to text on your webpage.

The Biggest Mistake Your Website Could Make

Every day I receive emails from people asking for help with their website. People want guidance with everything from Pay Per Click Advertising to increasing their bottom line. Yet, one of the most common, consistent, and worst mistakes I see people make with their website is a lack of focus. I see a website like this everyday in one form or another. Many people build sites thinking if they place enough things to buy on it someone will buy something. Well, they don’t, and that is why they eventually end up asking for help.

Here’s an example of a site I see often in the Internet marketing industry. You have probably seen this site too, let’s hope it’s not yours. It’s called “Something Official and Big Sounding Website” or “Money, Gold, Riches, Income, Work From Home, Cash for Life, Website”. When you visit the site there is NO clear focus, NO clear statement telling the visitor exactly what the site is about. There is anywhere from 10 to 50 ebooks and opportunities on all sorts of different things. No clear headline, no site title telling the visitor where they are or what the site is about.

Warning! If this is your website ditch it immediately, it’s going NOWHERE!

Your website should have laser like precision and focus. It should only be focused on one specific niche, if you have more than one sub topic in a niche it should be categorized and organized accordingly. The site can have several sources of revenue, but they should all relate to one thing, the specific visitor your website is built for.

Before you even start your website you should know exactly who your visitor is and what they want. These two simple elements can have a drastic impact on your website performance. You should also know one key important thing… What it is you want your visitor to do!

So let’s repeat this again, build your site for your VISITOR. Don’t just slap products on your pages because they have high affiliate commissions or you found some more banners to place on it. No, no, no, no, NO! Focus on your visitor, know what you want from them, and only give them what they want, no more, no less.

As you can see, this site is focused at people who are marketing online, work on the Internet, want to learn and stay updated with Internet marketing strategies, have some kind of experience marketing online already, currently have a website or blog, and are primarily single, solo entrepreneurs. Pretty exact isn’t it? Therefore, this site is organized, built, and written only for my distinct type of visitor.

Even though these people all obviously want to make money I do not place ads for “Get Paid for Survey” sites, or other half related things on this site. Everything is directed, focused, and built around that one specific target visitor. Who is your target visitor?

How many RSS Buttons are too many?

Feedster, My Yahoo, AOL, Bloglines, Pluck, Rojo, Google. It’s slowly happening. The RSS button options on the side of blogs is slowly growing larger and larger. Like the Blob, it’s taking over entire blogs, sites, and possibly the world! Okay, maybe an exaggeration, but I think you get my point. There are just so many different ways to sign up and read RSS feeds that for blog owners it’s getting near impossible to accommodate everyone with an easy one-click solution.

Today I spent 3 hours setting up my RSS page. (Edit: I have since done away with the RSS page in exchange for the simplicity of a few buttons on the right hand column.) I decided not to clutter up every page of my blog with funky buttons for every RSS service under the sun, so I have dedicated an separate page for it. As you can see, the list is quite extensive and always growing larger. Since I am using FeedBurner I will be able to track which RSS readers are most popular with my subscribers and will eventually only accommodate the 10 most popular.

There is a great tool that I have been using to create these buttons over at TwisterMC. Yet, even on his page there are over 20 different RSS buttons you can use and 8 different ways to bookmark a page.

So what do I suggest? Well, I first off recommend using FeedBurner as it will allow you to track what the most popular RSS readers your subscribers are using. Then, either set up a dedicated page like I have done for several RSS buttons, or only offer the top 5 or so on the side of your blog. In my opinion having too many is a waste of space, tacky, and bad for the overall design of most blogs.

Here are a few other websites related to this topic…

• Free RSS Button Graphic Tool
• Why Are RSS Feed Buttons Orange?
• Great article on placement of your RSS Feed Buttons.

My First Check from Yahoo! Publisher Network

First checks are always the best! Today I received my first check from Yahoo! Publisher Network, (YPN for short). I have been testing their system out slowly on some of my websites and have been a bit reluctant to change over more of my websites until I actually received a check and tested it all out. I can say that YPN has been very supportive and easy to use, see the post about the call I received from them. Although their system is a bit behind Google Adsense in content matching, I believe that they will soon catch up.

It seems that YPN pays a bit higher on many terms than Google does. I believe there is much money to be made using both and I will continue to test each one separately on a per site basis. This allows me to use whichever one is paying more. Isn’t competition great? Hopefully a strong competitor like YPN will lead to higher Adsense earnings per click. I also hope it leads to better Adsense support. Basically, unless you are making 10K a month with Adsense you will likely never get to talk to a real person. I hope this changes as it would be nice to have some communication with them.

Speaking of live support, before I received my check it showed in my YPN statistics that the check was not sent due to a wrong state. I quickly called the YPN support telephone number, didn’t even have to wait on hold to speak to a real live person. They told me that there was a simple interface error and that my check had been sent. Google could easily set up support like this for Adsense, until then I will be leaning toward YPN as my primary contextual advertiser when the difference in earnings is not significant.

Below is a copy of the check I received. For security I have blocked some of the information out.

Increase Your Google Adsense CTR

There are many tweaks and factors you can use to increase your Google Adsense click through rate or CTR. Some of these factors include color, placement, and ad size. I once purchased an e-book called Triple Your Adsense CTR in Three Easy Steps. The writer of the e-book had tested out various colors and ad sizes and tracked them to determine which ones performed the best. Although I cannot reveal the results of his testing, I can say that the conclusion was to make your ads look less like ads and blend them into your website. This makes perfect sense when you think about it. Blending ads into your sites help prevent banner blindness and also gives your site a cleaner balanced look. Although sometimes making your Adsense ads stand out just a bit while still making them look like part of your site can increase CTR as well.

As you glance around this site you will see where and how I have placed my Adsense ads. I don’t use borders and I blend them into the site as much as I can, matching the colors to my site. Since Adsense does not allow its publishers to change the font size of the ads I just change my website’s fonts to match them. This makes the ads blend into my site almost seamlessly. The font sizes vary slightly depending on the size of ad you use, so you will want to place your ads on your site first before choosing your site’s font size and style.

On this site I don’t use the Adsense text links because I don’t feel for my target visitor they are as effective as the standard Adsense ads. My guess is that over time text link ads will get less and less responsive as more people realize they are ads. Just as most people choose not to watch only commercials when they watch T.V., people will rarely click on a link just to see ads. Since this site targets savvy Internet marketers, many of the visitors already recognize Adsense text link ads and will choose not to click on them. I personally never click on text links because I know I am just going to see a page of ads, whereas when I spot a regular Adsense ad, if I read it and I am curious I usually still click on it. I actually find myself clicking on standard Adsense ads quite a bit even though I know they are ads. Not on my own websites of course.

As for other sites, I use text link ads all the time. Although their earnings potential isn’t as great as standard Adsense ads since the visitor has to click twice (once on the link, then once on the ad), they still add to my potential income from Adsense and help my overall earnings. I also find that in less marketing savvy niches they seem to fair much better.

Overall the best way to increase your CTR is by testing. Google allows you to individually track different ad sizes and placements using “channels”. If you haven’t already started using them then I suggest you start immediately. You can easily increase your CTR once you begin to learn what works and what doesn’t for your specific site.

Personally, I use a combination on most sites of different sizes of ads and use the maximum amount that Google will allow. My testing has shown that I make more money when the visitor has more choices of ads to click on.

However, you shouldn’t do something just because I say it works for me. Your Adsense CTR will always be different depending on your website, your market, and how the visitors are arriving at your page. But if you track, test, and try new things you should be able to increase your CTR.

James Martell Affiliate Handbook

If you are at all interested in making income online from affiliate programs then I highly recommend the James Martell Affiliate Handbook. This book covers everything on how to start, build, and run a profitable content driven website. For beginners or experts James holds nothing back when he shows you how to use both contextual advertising as well as affiliate programs to make large profits online.

I personally purchased this book about a year ago. As I read through the book I learned exactly how he builds his cash generating websites and his special “Keyword Formula” which is worth the price of the book alone. I have used his formula and many of the tactics in his book to great success. The book covers not only the formula and how to structure your website, but also the importance of getting people to link to your site including other important factors you will want to consider. I must say that I was surprised how professional and easy to follow everything was, so well in fact that someone completely new to computers would be able to comprehend most all of it.

If anyone asks how they can start an online business I refer them to this Manual. James has a plethora of successful students who by following the guidelines in his book have made thousands of dollars. The income figures you see on the right are from James’ site and show you just how much he earns in a single month, just from ONE of his more popular affiliate partnerships.

What I like even more than the book is his constant updates through his bi-monthly audio newsletter called the Affiliate Buzz. When you purchase the book you can also choose to purchase a subscription to the Affiliate Buzz which covers updates and topics related to the manual as well as additional marketing news and even personal inspiration from James himself.

I suggest to anyone who is interested in or involved with affiliate marketing to get this book, I highly recommend it.