Solo Promotion - A critique of "what the pro's do"

The necessity for leverage in online promotion is that everyone starts out by themselves. 

And what prompted this is a new look at Market Samurai's "Professional SEO" article from an application viewpoint. You may want to have this article open in another window (or a separate screen, which is even better) so you can refer to it as we go.

This article makes some sense on the overview, and is why I refer people to it.

However, it doesn't really say much about the individual and their efforts to succeed or scale.
They are actually pointing out that there is a huge market in the middle between the two - since the Professional SEO firms are dealing in major corporations only, while the individual is simply working their own concept over.  And there is a scale of work which separates these two as well - one is dealing in "hundreds" of pieces of content every week, the other a single piece of content weekly.

That isn't very fair to the individual, and they don't tell you how to scale this or how to leverage your work.

Of course, these 30 days are just that - how an individual can leverage their own efforts to earn extra money online. And we've also reviewed how you can ramp your content up to many versions of the same work within a single week - unlike their example of the individual who chose hard ways to do things and later quit these in exhaustion.

Limiting Misconceptions

1. The first one is their emphasis on backlinks. And we've already covered this. You don't use bookmarks and social media to try to get backlinks. You use them to improve the social signal quality of your main and remotely-posted content.

They do cover the point that article directories are a valid way to get backlinks, all white-hat and everything. And this is where they start - pushing their incomplete project of an article publisher. (I'm sure they'll get there, eventually.)

2. And because they don't write this from the view of really getting the whole job done (just from an article marketing viewpoint) they don't really lay out a scheme or plan which the individual can use to scale their production.

So for a long time, this sat in my own mind as an isolated report. Only on finishing up this series and starting that new project did the groundwork they laid start to bear fruit.

How an individuals can scale their promotion

The idea is that the Internet is a great way to leverage all that you do. Market Samurai is a great way to leverage your time required on market research in order to get all the data you need quickly. That one-time purchase should last you years or more - since they support it with updates, and you can also recommend it as an affiliate product.

We've covered in some broad strokes how to simply get this accomplished using a central hub, remote social properties (blogs), and social signals. This type of system can also be scaled, to include other interests - so you are able to promote in several lines. This splits your time up considerably, so it may be that you want to simply start out with concentrating on a single interest and building up content on this.

What the Market Samurai guys cover about Article Directories is correct, provided you spin the content (instead of hiring people to write articles for you on a one-to-one basis) - which is covered in Day 23 - How Article Directories Could Work.

Under that workflow, you simply would take the extra hour to convert that content into a spinnable format, and plug it into Article Demon (another one-time purchase that looks to be supported well so far.)

And that additional hour, plus a submitter like Article Demon, will leverage your one hour into perhaps a hundred or more backlinks on article directories - where everyone wins.

Once your article shows up an AD, you can then bookmark it and then ping your bookmark profile RSS feed - as covered. You may wish to have that article bio spun to give links to your remote blogs instead of your hub - or in addition to it. Just depends on how you created the content for each. But it gives you more options.

As well, many of these AD's give each author an RSS feed, so that could be pinged. As time-consuming as it is, the best results would be probably to use is like a remote blog, and bookmark it/ping RSS. I have no program (yet) which will submit sites to be pinged on a delay - though I'm sure they are out there and will only take looking to find.

Press Releases

Another line of promotion we haven't talked much about is the Free Press Releases. As usual, you want to use those which are effective, and cost nothing. There is simply no good review or explanation of these in The Online Sunshine Plan. Sorry.

Press Releases are not used much, as they are often misunderstood. Mostly, they do not get picked up by news services. And have recently been plagued with spam. Results is that many have been dropped by Google News (if they were ever on it to begin with) and have had to change their operation to restore their credibility. (See http://www.bignews.biz/blog/?p=6 for an exceedingly short list, and some descriptions of why.)

Essentially, these sites are picked up by both regular web searches and also Google News. So they are similar to article directories, but give you additional exposure on a new type of search engine.

However, they are each decidedly different as to how they accept your data. And so have no programs which will submit spun copy (as the Article Directories have only recently begun to have - well, as far as decent ones.)

So there is no real value in getting these only as backlinks. They simply take too much time to implement. You are going to have to spin the content and then also hand-copy/paste it into their particular fields. Some allow internal links within the body copy, some allow images. So it's no walk in the park.

But, like article directories, once you have spun copy, it's simpler to post to several of them, which will mean keyword-rich backlinks on authoritative sites. And - who knows - maybe a reporter will actually read it and call you up (or more likely email) for more information...

In order to find these, the simplest way to test this for yourself is to take a list of "top" or "best" free press release sites and then do a search of Google News to see which ones have pages indexed there. In the search box, type "site:" followed immediately by the domain name (no space between or "http://"). This will show you the top dogs of Google News.

If you cross-compare this with lists of such "best" free press release sites, then you'll get a short list to distribute to.

I spent a couple hours this afternoon (in between interruptions) and culled a short list for you (again, this will change, so isn't final - and I'm sure I missed a few.) And when I was done, I remembered and pulled up an older list I had and cross-compared. (And you'll also see that their Alexa rank has no relation to what Google thinks of them.) Again, these counts change all the time. What was interesting is that the top dogs gained quite a bit on average and the bottom feeders either dropped, or dropped out completely.

URL	Alexa Rank	Pages on Google News
prweb.com	2,469	24,600
prnewswire.com	2,915	23,300
businesswire.com	4,951	12,500
live-pr.com	24,157	9,720
mynewsdesk.com	12,156	7,420
pr.com	8,492	3,770
SBWire.com	16,376	3,180
mediapost.com	4,502	1,150
your-story.org	42,303	688
PRUrgent.Com	17,479	547
betanews.com	5,442	363
PRLeap.com	43,629	314
DirectionsMag.Com	19,834	236
ClickPress.com	12,498	130
free-press-release-center.info	19,260	96
openpr.com	17,098	89
ecommwire.com	29,673	35
MediaSyndicate.Com	446,193	30
NewsWireToday.com	23,797	6

New format? Not so much...

How these would fit into your promotion system is similar to what you already have:

• Hub
• remote-blogs, slideshare.net, video sites, podcast sites, article directories, press releases
• social bookmarking
• pinging RSS feeds of bookmarks
  

Using these doesn't fit every model. My own instance is moving to writing and publishing short stories. So for every short story, I could author a press release - and by illustrating these stories would be able to create all the rest of the content. However, article directories would probably be best suited for a non-fiction treatment or analysis of what the story meant. So it's 2 additional pieces of content needed for the press releases and article directories. Regular content could be simply spun in order to fit it into article directory posting, but may not be newsworthy.

(Does that 2 additional pieces of content put me over the top? Personally, I don't think it's unmanageable right now.  Getting into the inspired flow, illustrating a short story to bring it to life will be a lot more work. But there is method to this madness as well - all that content can be republished ever again, but that's another story.)

Now note that you can ping the RSS feeds of the article directories and (some) press release sites. And so cut down on your bookmarking work, which is pretty one-on-one in its execution. However, the real effective use of pinging is to do the bookmark feeds. So you may want to get your bookmarking done simply, as the RSS feeds would be cumulative for the bookmarks you do via that feed - once per week should be plenty.

Freebies: I did find some pdf's which cover more the style and use of press releases. "New Rules of PR", and "News Releases". And don't forget the "Article Re-Writer" as a free download (right-click and "save as").

And, as usual: Wishing you Good Luck in Everything You Do.

Day 29 - Wrap Up and Review

Well, here we are - the next-to-last post in this series.

Bittersweet and all that.

So we are going to summarize what has been talked about.

Summary - it's all logical

Online promotion follows a few very basic and very simple rules.

The Internet is built and continues to expand based on valuable content and speed. The increasing social use of it has only built and expanded those two principles.

In order to earn income online, in this model, you need to be able to regularly produce fresh content. So the idea is that you've been writing or commenting daily as we've been going along. (And I've set an example of how this can actually be done. Sure I started a couple of days ahead, but if you try this yourself, you'll see how much discipline it takes.)

You need to know your passion and/or purpose in order to succeed at anything. And this can be found by simply narrowing down to what keeps you fascinated, what makes you happy (brings you peace) and/or you could talk about endlessly as long as someone would listen.

Whether its a blog or a site, the point is to have a platform where you can add valuable, original content regularly. This is your base, your Hub.

Most people dread market research because they aren't following their own purpose line and don't have the needed tools. Try Market Samurai, or their free Domain Samurai as a starter.

Sales Funnels are used to provide a valuable channel of products to the lead, customer, and client. They start off small (or free) and eventually wind up at big-ticket items, preferably those which are consumable or subscription-based.

Search Engines, at their bottom line, depend on what words you describe your pages with. Google has a SEO Starter Guide (a free download) which tells you exactly what they are looking for. There are just a few (5) online SEO points to take care of, mainly.

While there are many forms of content Google now provides, it's not all that difficult to create all of them. There are 3 basic types of writing styles required for Internet marketing and promotion to the 3 basic types of Internet users.

I recommend affiliate programs when you are just starting out, as you can learn the ropes without an immediate huge investment. I also give you a list of criteria you can use to evaluate any you find that may align to your core purpose.

The biggest effort in marketing is in building a list so you can send out sequential emails with an autoresponder. This is as more people use email than surf the Internet. Email is also a personal and captive audience (as long as you keep them interested enough to not opt-out.)

Writing a web page is simple - you write like you talk. It's key that you know the 3 types of writing and post these where they will be accepted.

Social media isn't for backlinks. It's to show the authority and trust your backlinks have. Understand this and avoid the "Google Slap".

Set up your Google profile and a badge on your main site/hub. Share links to your hub on your Google+ profile. Create a Google+ page for each main product or service you offer. Plug in Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to every site and social property you create. The more you connect with Google, the easier it will be to rank well.

You can publish one essay several ways on the Internet so it can show up in several places on page 1 of Google.

A key point is using Slideshare and videos from that same content.

I don't recommend Squidoo or Hubpages, or even article directories, unless you really know how to get your time investment back in leads.

Building mini-nets from free/remote blogs and similar social properties (videos, pdf hosting, podcast hosting) and then bookmarking and pinging those bookmark profile RSS feeds it the simply and effective secret sauce which prompted this series.

It's possible to get Article Directories to work if you effectively spin the content (by hand) and use Article Demon to publish them to several hundred (or more) AD's. It will still take hours initially, but the program takes the mind-numbing repetition out of it.

You need to be using ranktracking and analytics to have definitive understanding of how effective you are - and where you still need to improve.

Network marketing is a logical extension of Affiliate marketing and providing you have a good program with lots of upline support, you can build extensive residual income from downline sales. I list several places to train in this area.

Ebay and Craigslist can be key sources of ready buyers if approached effectively.

The Natural Laws of Marketing are the same which pervade all of Life's activities on this planet. Knowing this can markedly assist your success from here on out - in any field you attempt.

I give you a list of tools and courses for use and reference. (All in addition to the numerous freebies you've received daily...)

- - - -

As I can (I'm pre-loading these and so don't have all the links), I'll come back to give you the daily links to these summary paragraphs.

Good luck with all this.

See you one last time, tomorrow.

Day 26 - Ebay and Craigslist: getting buyers to find you

The biggest scam I fell for was in researching eBay...

(And funny enough, when I was getting my refund - and they found out how good I was at blogging and how much I knew about earning income online - he asked, well why did you sign up, then? Answer was: I just wanted to find out how eBay worked. Which left him quiet. He knew I had overpaid for that simple knowledge.)

Ebay and Craigslist by themselves only get a short mention in the book (page 264-265). But the best way to learn what I know about Ebay is to do a search on the digital version of The Online Sunshine Plan and simply read before and after every time I mention eBay. My examples tell you volumes about how this system works.

Not your grandfather's eBay...

Originally, it was an auction site. Now, it's either a clearance rack for the Big Box stores, or it's for limted, higher-priced collectibles. Those are the only two types of sellers really earning income online via eBay sales. Mostly the community which supported eBay has moved on, as has the management which created it. There are little niche communities there - and that's about it.

The 3rd way to earn online income via eBay is discussed in my book on page  265. You simply offer a small unique product, such as self-burned CD's for a cheap price and then use that to collect names of buyers who might be interested in similar products (your sales funnel). They are qualified leads already, since you only get their email when they bought something from you.

CD's can cost you less than 2 bucks to make and ship to any client in the U.S. If you use a service like Kunaki.com, you can then have professionally made CD's which you can dropship, or simply ship yourself.  There are also companies which will do short runs for you and print a nice color image on top in stacks of 100 or so, which would bring the price per unit below making them yourself (and having to print out and then paste on the label).

While I don't suggest it, eBay has a "store" where you can offer your products. Of course, this means you have routine sales high enough that you can absorb that overhead.

What eBay is great for is market research. You can take any type or kind of product and search for what people are buying, as well as what their price points are.

I was looking though my material to see what I could give you, but only found books what were 10 years old now. So these are to dated to be any good (an eternity has passed in Internet time). I'd suggest instead that you visit http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/index.html to get the current data.

And Terapeak still exists as a way to do market research. Their resource page (as linked) will tell you if it's a service you need to invest in. Of course, you have a 7-day trial period, but that might not be enough to really get your market researched.

Another tool is WorldWideBrands - which was built to help people dropship, especially on eBay. But they can help you with Yahoo and Amazon stores as well. If you click on Seller Resources, you'll get their whole library of data on the various ways to sell your products. I like (and have bought) this service, because it's a one-time investment which gives you access to continuing product and marketing research.

Linked on their resource page as well are newsletters from people like Skip McGrath, who has been selling on eBay nearly since it started. That link takes you to his tools page where you can find all the latest and proven tools.

Craigslist - free classified ads

King of classifieds. And right up front, this is where my next research is taking me. Like ebay, this is where buyers find you instead of the other way around.

The trick with this is in writing the ads. You're going to need 4 things:

1. A product or service people actually want
2. A landing or sales page for conversions
3. Decently written ad
4. Places to post that ad

We've already covered finding a product that is valuable.

As to creating your landing page and ad copy, again, I'd suggest you study the ads which others are writing for you to see what they are using. Those at Magnetic Sponsoring and Peak Potentials (T. Harv Eker's group) are quite good, as this is all they do. Sign up as an ambassador (affiliate) for free at https://www.peakambassador.com/

As for places to post your ad, consider this short list from quickregister.net:

1. http://www.craigslist.org- The grandaddy of classified ads sites.

2. http://www.backpage.com The second busiest classified site after Craigslist. This is where all the escort ads went after Craigslist took down their erotic ads section due to pressure from 17 Attorney Generals. Not so with Village Voice owned Backpage.com. They told the attorney generals they were just fine with their erotic ads section thank you. Those guys at the Village Voice have major cohones!

3. http://www.gumtree.com Weird name but this site is one of the busiest classifieds sites out there. This high traffic classifieds site is focused on UK ads.

4. http://www.oodle.com This serious classified site has partnerships with ForRent.com in the US and Autotrader UK.

5. http://www.ebayclassifieds.com The official classifieds site for Ebay.

6. http://www.olx.com This board has a presence in most countries and can be read in English or Spanish.

7. http://www.usfreeads.com A popular US focused site with a large business opportunity and pet section.

8. http://www.classifiedads.com Classifieds focused on the English speaking world. US, UK, AU, and India.

9. http://www.inetgiant.com A green board not only in color but in their ads. They have a well represented area for green products. The board is pretty much translated in most languages. I checked their Lithuanian board. No ads there yet. Do you want to be the first?

10. http://adpost.com Solid board with presences in the United States, Singapore,Canada,Malaysia, United Kingdom, Philippines, Ireland, Australia, India, Indonesia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

And that should get you started in this area.

The key point is that classifieds have the person finding you, as this type of Internet user is already a buyer. The studies I done to this date point to using classifieds for network marketing, among others. And the conversion rate for such ads is more than twice what regular Internet viewers do. Makes sense - you are pitching to people who have already decided to buy. It's just a matter of which product at this point.

- - - -

Again, plenty of freebies and homework in the above, so nothing additional from my Gringold vaults.

Tomorrow: Reviewing the Natural Laws of Marketing

Day 22 - Beginning of the end, with explantations

(Secret Sauce sub-series - finis)
Explantations is a good mis-spelling. Because we are creating a plantation of social fields which bring us different SEO-enabled crops. However, our field workers are willing and self-paid, so it's a congenial and profitable enterprise for everyone.

Today, we are covering more why's and wherefore's, most of which is dealing with Bookmarks and some about Social Updates. These two are the secret fuel ingredients which give this system so much boost.

That relationship is covered in a Search Engine Land article.

Now to understand the below, I'm going to give you a link which explains bookmarking, RSS, and pinging. 

I believe I've covered before how bookmarking was a bit hit when it became popular, and Google (for a time, anyway) was following these closely as an indicator of what was trusted and so had authority. Then, of course, the spammers started gaming the scene and Google moved on. (However, not completely, as there was recently a big slap they emposed on one network and all the players in it who depended on the "in-bound links" which were being artificially created. So know that Google is watching...)

Our basic model, which deserves repeating:

• The Internet is build on content sharing.
• The search engines (Google, mainly) model their rankings based on people's use of the Internet.
• People trust useful and regularly freshened content sites - and will visit these routinely, according to their own patterns of use. 
• The way to improve your rankings is to routinely create valuable content and let people know that it exists.

Note the emphasized part of that last sentence - that is what we are talking about today.

This is what online promotion has evolved into. And you have to promote in order to tell people about your valuable product or service. The search engines and social media are simply ways to prime the pump in order to find clients.

This was covered somewhat in The Online Sunshine Plan (starts about page 212 and goes through 222). You want to utilize search engines so your new clients can find your product (and old ones can find you when they lost your address). When you have established clients, they will be coming to your site for regular services and won't be utilizing search engines to do so. This also includes search engines built into social media.

And a review of the Promotion section of that book would probably be in order - especially since you know so much by now. (Pages 242 - 309.)

Priming the pump

Here's the point which spammers don't get (as well as a lot of SEO guru's):

You don't get down from an elephant, you get down from a duck.

The search engines can send you traffic, but they won't sell your product for you. Backlinks is just one of over 200 different indicators which Google uses to rank sites. If you are trying to get just backlinks from social media, you are going to get Google-slapped. It's just too obvious. That isn't what the social media are for.

We are going to avoid social networking like Facebook. To get anything from Facebook, you have to spend hours engaging with people directly. Just like an insurance agent will join every social club in town. Gain people's trust, and get invited to their home to do your pitch. You don't close any sale at the club-house.

This is the same point of getting people to opt-in to your list. Email continues to be the #1 use of the Internet. Barely half (and dropping) of the US is using Facebook. Hardly anyone uses their email. Reason? Over 70% of the US already uses email daily - and this is growing (much to the chagrin of the government monopoly called the U.S. Mail Service.)

So you simply let people know that they can get personal emails about the valuable service and product you provide by sending it directly to their email.

The social media can be incorporated into this promotion by leaving little tips here and there, with links.

Another Campbell book - freebie alert

Here's a PDF built from a scrape I did off a site he created: http://www.jigglingtheweb.com/ And he is a good study in what to do. He tells you some incredibly valuable stuff, then says - oops, the rest of this material you have to pay for... but you can sign up here. (Just wish he had an affiliate link.)

Sidebar:

The essentials of his Goobert (Affiliate Marketing) System is found on his newsletter post. With what you now know, you can actually improve this incredibly. And when you sign up for his newsletter (I just renewed it again) you get some more freebies (still wish he had an affiliate link...)

This "web-jiggling" really lays out the basics of what we are doing here.

First make a post to your blog. Second, submit a snippet of the post to social news sites like Digg, Reddit and Propeller.

Third, bookmark your social news snippets, or article submission using three or four social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Mr. Wong, Delicious, Mixx, BizSugar, Yahoo My Web, Faves, Simpy or Google Bookmarks.

(You can get a huge list from AddThis. Just beware that many of these services come and go like the wind.)

Fourth, the last step is to ping each bookmark RSS feeds, just once, using a site like Autopinger, PingMyBlog, PingKing, Pingoat or Pingomatic. Just be careful not to overdo it, as these services will ban you for over pinging. If you ping two or three of your bookmarks, that will be enough. The search engine spiders will find the rest of the links on their own.

That's how simple it is, and what we've built up to.

1. Post fresh content to your main site/hub.
2. Post link to that conent on Google+
3. Spin that content and post to remote blogs, with PDF to slideshare.net
4. Bookmark the remote blogs
5. Ping those bookmark RSS feeds.

Test this out for yourself. This last puzzle piece fits everything together. I've only confirmed this again this week, even though this was posted sometime in 2010. Not a secret, really. But since it doesn't fall under GRQ (get rich quick), lazy spammers probably haven't figured it's worth their effort.

Bookmarking and Status Updates - automated

Now there are free ways and paid ways to go about this. I only recommend one free way and only one paid way. There are others, but these work the best for me.

Onlywire will post to bookmarks and status updates. Set up an account and you'll also need to run their little program on your computer. I've had my difficulties with them in the past, but they seem to have gotten the bugs out (helps if you set it up right to begin with - that's a confession.)

The page I just linked to says you are going to have to go out and set up these accounts. But let me help you with these.

Bookmarking sites: 

Bibsonomy
Connotea
Digg
Diigo
Jumptags
Stumbleupon

Status Update sites:

Twitter
MySpace
Plaxo
Plurk
Friendfeed
Hi5
Identica

The rest aren't worth it, for one reason or another, and I won't go into them here, as I still have too much to go, plus this needs to get wrapped up.

Both bookmarking and status update sites will tell the search engines about your remote blogs, which then let them discover your main site/hub.

And the bookmarking sites above all have working RSS feeds. You are giving the ping sites (like ping-o-matic, but there are several) the RSS feed for your profile there - so you don't have to ping these more than once a week, as they'll then pick up the top few into that system.

A note on OnlyWire - if you budget this carefully, you can stay on their free plan indefinitely, which has 300 a month. However, if you go over once, you are going to have to either create a new login, or pay for their next version up (which is 10$ a month and another $3/month for the optional captcha solver.)

Drawback to Onlywire
It's only you doing this. (Priming the pump, remember?) So if you do a lot of this, it's going to look pretty spammy real quick. Another option is to also bookmark a lot of other sites, but that then uses up your Onlywire credits - or makes you do this manually. Some blogs will do posts like this. And ping.fm can do status updates to several sites like this - however, the shortener gives away the fact that you aren't doing this personally, so don't expect a lot of community support.

The solution brings up our paid version - but don't worry, they also have a free version you can also use indefinitely.

Synnd - the Syndication Revelation

Sure, that's the marketing line for it. What is does it similar to OnlyWire, but while it has a program running on your machine, it's taking that IP address along with all the other members (there's about 4700 now) and automating the process of setting bookmarks and tweets, likes across the many social media sites out there.

So you can run campaigns which will bookmark your content from all manner of international sites.  And there are numerous benefits to not being the only one to bookmark your content. Multiply this by enabling hundreds of others to do this, and you can see the advantages as Google can see that many people are interested in your site, not just one.

I could sit and talk about it for hours, but we'll let you do your own research.

• Here's 6 lessons with videos on how it works: Perpetual Internet Traffic Machine
• Here's a freebie PDF "The Syndication Revelation"
• Here's a webinar you can watch (free sign up): "Driving Traffic, Viral Exposure, Opt-ins & SEO Using Automatic Social Signals"

And did I tell you they have a free version to try out? You can only run one campaign at a time, but you'll see exactly how it works and get some immediate benefit. Try Synnd Lite.

OK - that's more than enough. This isn't a sales page for Synnd, although I could rave about it if I wanted. It's a heckuva monthly expense, so you need to be doing this professionally. The results seem slow but sure, however you'll see results for you new content if you train on how to use it (not a long training curve) and really exploit what it does.

Again, the key datum which they also have found useful is to bookmark, and then run campaigns on the incoming links to your remote blogs. You don't have to do this, but it is the secret ingredient to the secret sauce.

No extra freebies or assignments today other than the above. That's more than you get most days in this data dump, so I'm not going to add to it.

- - - -

Coming up is another week of the stuff I can now tell you, which adds to everything you've learned so far, but isn't essential to it. You will be able to further increase your income with some of these tips - provided they work for  you according to your tests.

Day 13 - Your Luck has it: Writing a Web Page

Here is one subject that has been made incredibly complex.

Yes, there are a lot of parts to it, but you can hardly do this wrong. However, if you take care to do each bit exactly right, then you'll wind up with some better-than-average results for your effort.

We bring this up here as now you are ready to put some things together. And like a song, there are notes, melody, lyrics, and timing to produce something better sounding than a tortured alley cat in heat. ;)

Writing to Your Heart's Content

For all the boobytraps people have laid down about writing (producing content) - it's not all that hard. However, you do have to listen to your heart and act on what you find.

Writing is simple: "Write like you talk."

Imagine someone in front of you who is just dying to hear what you think about something. All ears and expectant. And then you simply write to hold their interest.

Now there are some details like spelling, but that is what spell-checkers are for. Get something like the free OpenOffice (LibreOffice) or MS Word (if it came with your computer) and it will do a fair job of keeping your words spelled right. (And then note how they are spelled and learn - this will actually save you time in the long haul - not having to stop and correct.)

Once you learn that the inspired "voice in your head" (or however it appears to you) is an unending torrent of content, then it's simply the work of getting it all down on the page.

Of course you can study books like Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" to shortcut improving your writing quality by leaps and bounds. Most English books are tedious and filled with non-sensical rules that are dead-ended in government-supported Academia. People don't write that way and haven't for years. Read a lot and write like the people you like to read. Especially if you want to make your prose more entertaining and interesting.

Research

Of course, you have to do your research about a topic. And that is simply asking yourself, "Can I answer anyone's questions about what I'm going to tell them?" If you hold to this idea that you are working to keep your audience's interest, then it will be easy to simply stop and look it up. Once you have all the data, it will make sense to you and then you can resume telling your story.

Some people talk it out, and then ship it off to a service to transcribe their spoken words into text. That takes a fee, though. And you do get better with typing as you practice.

The main point is to be certain about what you are talking about.

One person's content is another person's spam.

There are 3 types of content on the Internet, with untold variations.

1. Pure information
2. Softsell
3. Hardsell

People put pure information out there to scratch an itch of telling someone what they just found out. And you also have this where people are simply using the Web to download their lives onto it. A personal outlet.

And that is all fine and useful. In these cases, like Wikipedia, it has it's own value and is the purest form of content. An example of open-handed giving.

In softsell, which is useful everywhere else,  people are writing "link bait" which is interesting and entertaining and gets a person to click on a link in that page in order to go to a sales page - or another page which is linking to somewhere they can buy the product.

Affiliate marketing will ship them off the the product or service's sales site to buy. (And as Michel Campbell points out, if they have a lousy sales page, you might need to write your own and then link right to their payment backend.)

Sales pages and landing pages are Hard Sell. We haven't talked much about these. Mainly because they are "disliked" by people who run social services and so on. This goes back to the point that 97% or more of everyone out there is only existing to be entertained. Hardsell pieces aren't entertainment. It's like eating a double-chocolate 5 layer cake and washing it all down with a super-sweet energy drink. You don't want to do this as a steady diet.

But they have their places. A handful want to buy and are looking for just these type of pages to help them make their decision. Your usual place for this is to follow up someone who clicks on a classified ad or auction entry. Or as above, linked into a softsell page.

3-2-1

Wordpress.com and others have made selling on the Internet an interesting place. It's now several layers deep. WP.com is protecting their own (domain-and add-on-selling) profits by telling spammers that they need to take their efforts somewhere else. Unfortunately, they have specious ideas of what spamming is. If your softsell content is linking to sales pages, that's "spamming" and your site and probably login as well will disappear with no notice. (And other free blog sites follow this as well.) Accidentally posting the same content several times to different blogs on their site will also get you banned.

So to get the lookie-loo's turned into possible buyers, you have these pages nested about 3 deep.

• A general information piece links to 
• A softsell page with links to 
• Hardsell pages. 

And that makes the whole subject more difficult, as each of these pages is a drop-off point where a person can go somewhere else or do one of these "look - a butterfly!" moments.

So some people simply concentrate on hardsell pages and writing good classified ads. Which is fine, as the conversions are better in this area.

And there is a mix when you are writing email newsletters. Because you can weed out people who are only their for freebies or to be entertained. Everyone else expects that you are going to give them something and expect something in return. Like visiting your blog in order to start the sales cycle again.

Writing a web page

You start with your purpose, of course, and exactly how you want to help that unseen viewer today.

You have a set of keywords in mind which you want to rank well on the search engines. The main keyword will wind up in the title and 1st paragraph, plus the titles and alt-tags of your images. Everything else are related words which Google uses to know what you are talking about. (Tiger Woods vs. Bengal Tiger).

Then you simply spill out your content about whatever product you want to tell a story about. And, depending on where this is going to end up, you either link to a sales page  or to another "review" page.

Once you have your story all written out and the links embedded, then you come back and write or tweak your headline. Keywords should be closer to the front in your headlines.

Now some say that Google doesn't value headlines like it used to. And this makes sense, as people use headlines to attract readers and "excite interest" (get the person to actually read the page).

And a page will be crafted to help a person get through it.

Most of us have developed the technique of scanning a page. And so a good page is crafted with images, sub-headings, bulleted text, indented text, italics, bold - all sorts of ways to mix it up and keep it from simply being a long set of boring text.

As you write, simply keep Google's guidelines in place.

If you get books by Jacob Neilsen or visit Copyblogger, then you'll see people who study people's usage and will tell you what works and what doesn't.

Again, the key point is entertainment.

Sequence is the key

You write your main site page first, which links to affiliate or other sales pages directly.

Then you post content around the web which links to your main pages.

Of course, your own site is built like this as well. You can have sales pages on your site, which are linked to by review pages, which are linked to by informational pages. And then put up social posts and so on which link to these various site pages directly.

We will go into this subject of a mini-net later (that "Special Sauce" I keep referring to) and as well how and where to post elsewhere on the web.

But generally, you work this backward as you build. And after creating a few dozen pages, a pattern will start showing up. Then you simply evaluate that pattern for it's success or "opportunities for improvement" and learn from your experience. The go and write a few dozen more. Rinse and repeat.

We'll go into analytics later which will help you with all this. Your own gut reaction to your own writing will tell you most, however.

It's not "build it and they will come", it's more - "Build it Right and They will Click Through" to your sales pages and buy.

The object of the web pages you write is not having popular pages with lots of traffic - it's having pages which get a lot of people who want to buy whatever you are talking about, and do so.

The web isn't a popularity contest. It's a shooting gallery. The most attractive targets get shot at - and the winner gets the prize. (Meanwhile, you are the one selling the tickets and making the profits from the shooters.)

Okay?

- - - -

Today's freebie is several. These are classics which people have been referring others to for years.

Hopkins - Scientific Advertising
Scott - The Psychology of Advertising
Prevette - The Power of Creative Selling

Don't be thrown off by the terms "advertising" and "selling" - it's all just words which describe getting people to act.

And you can also refer to "Get Your Self Scam Free" in order to study Maslow and Cialdini for understanding of how and why we are programmed to buy stuff.

Assignment:

Review what you've been writing recently and see how you could possibly improve it to make it more interesting.

Then pick up some popular novels (even classics like O. Henry, Louis LaMour, Jack London) and see how they keep a reader riveted.

Now write some more content with these in mind.

Day 12 - Review: the Pause that Refreshes

About this point, I want to do a quick review of what we've covered.

No, I haven't started running thin on material by a long shot.

But I wanted to put this material in order so it makes sense. Because I want to ensure that you have the basics down before we move into the "Special Sauce" section, which can be confusing.

Basics, however, are basics.

1. First we covered that you needed to know what is most interesting to you and you like to do the most. Somewhere around in all that is your basic purpose. (Or at the very least, a more fun way of doing life.)

2. The Internet runs on content - fresh, original, search-engine-optimized content. Almost no one creates this stuff, so someone who can routinely create content focused on a single (remunerative) theme can pretty much ensure that they can earn extra income.

3. The whole point of marketing is to find where there is a problem and offer a valuable solution. People who express interest in your solution are called "leads" and converting them to buyers is the trick.

4. In order to find this problem area, you can start by "scratching your own itch" - meaning that you consult what you are interested in, and search through related communities to find something they want or need that you can provide. This can be your own product or someone else's which you offer as an affiliate ("Hey, I know someone who has some of these for sale - just like what you're talking about...")

5. The search engines make it simpler to do market research, as there are well-used keyword phrases that people use to find what they are looking for. If you carefully look these over - and find those which have good "commerciality" (people pay good money to advertise products with them), then the chance is good that if you put your target in front of where people are aiming, you can get this traffic to your web pages. To do that, you simply create content which has those keyword phrases describing it, or in it.

6. Content doesn't have to be all written - but it does have descriptions about it, and that is where you artfully place the keyword phrases (and links to your other content - like your main website) so the search engines can send traffic your way.

7. Search engine optimization is quite simple. You simply find what Google has been saying for years about what a "good" website consists of. And then follow their instructions to the letter.

8. The ideal is to offer several products, preferably those which have to be renewed, or replaced after they are consumed. If you are offering someone else's products, then you can work at getting affiliate commissions for those continuing purchases. This can make your income more or less on "autopilot" if the clients are treated well. Another possible point is to get in with multiple-tier affiliate programs or even "network marketing".

9. I've given you a longish list of very good affiliate programs and why I consider them good - but that doesn't mean they are right for you. Consult your own purpose and see if they will make your life simpler and/or bring you greater peace.

10. The other advantage to offering someone else's products is that these commissions you receive can give you income while you continue learning and improving on your marketing skills. As well, if you are developing your own product, it can pay for your R&D while you do.

And that's the 10 basic points from what we've covered.  I didn't mention some points like auto-responders, but that's because it's a "how", not a basic "why".

At this point you are ready to read something with a critical view. Stone Evans wrote a substantial book called "DotComology" years ago - and it has been passed around for free ever since. A great example of true value. Now some of it is dated (and ignore the stuff about reciprocal linking, which I'll cover in the "Secret Sauce" lessons upcoming) but now you know enough to have a critical view of how things fit together and when someone is blowing smoke (or smoking something odd.)

See you tomorrow...

Day 11 - Email Lists and Autoresonders

Right off, let me apologize. The subject of auto-responders hasn't been segregated out properly in The Online Sunshine Plan.

Best introduction to this broad area is in  Section IV - Your Sales Funnel. It's part of "Collecting up your eggs into baskets." (pages 182, 183)

And the rest of the book just talks like that is all you need to know about it.

Well, it is pretty simple. But, as usual, those who market themselves as "experts" have made it pretty over-hyped and complex.

Now the term "auto-responder" is short for "sequential automatic email response mailer." It sends out emails in a sequence automatically in response to someone mailing it. The incoming mail to it is usually by a form-based script running on your own web page.

The reason people talk so much about having and growing your email lists is that people still prefer email over the Internet. More people use email than use the Internet. Yes, it's true.

So marketers hit on this way to get people to use search engines to find your site and then give away (or otherwise entice) you to exchange your email address for something valuable.

People find your site, opt-in to your email series, and then get some emails from you on a regular or irregular basis which continue to be valuable (or not) and thanks to our incredible "friends" in Washington with their CAN-SPAM act (which doesn't, of course), we now have to double-opt-in and have a little link where anyone can and must be opt-ed out on their choice.

Penalties for violating this can get you immediately kicked off your server with no recourse.

Needless to say, I suggest getting a service to do this - which has their own polished scripts to handle compliance. Too much at risk otherwise.

Now, while all auto-responder services have their own affiliate programs, I am only recommending one to you today: SimplyCast.

Reason being is that it is both a free service to start with and as you grow your business you can then expand into their paid service. Plus, it gives a healthy first payment for affiliate sales (70%) and also continuing payments (30%).

Yes, that's a nice one. 

Unfortunately, their marketing seems over-thought. Difficult to simply find text links. Here's a link to their free and nifty little handbook.

This link is supposed to help you sign up as an affiliate. However, it doesn't work for me. (I've got a request into their support, so I'll leave it here for now until I can come back and fix it.)

But the simple link so you can sign up does.

Freebies

Now, today is a day of downloads. Fortunately, there are a handful of "special reports" which cover auto-responders and building email lists. I have compiled these into a single PDF for you.

And they will simply tell you more than you need to know about autoresponders.

With that, I'll let you go for today.