Applied Online Promotion - This isn't rocket science.

An applied application of online promotion.

Since I'm moving into study of entertainment - how to promote this in order to earn money online is its own interesting research line.

The idea is to create a content-heavy line of works whicn then would lend itself to promotion. Not so odd, I planned a set of 256 short stories, each with it's own soundtrack, illustrations, and video's. This is quite different from a single release, which you'd have to separately (and expensively) build up a community awareness for, etc. Like a single film, book, or product release.

The flow of stories itself would take on the aspect of a community interest - as some of the jokes about Dickens' magazine installments for his books (...as the ship approached the harbor, someone called out from the waiting dockside throng, "What happened to Little Nell?")

Also, the extended publishing model fits this well - and it's tuned to the multi-result approach the search engines have recognized. This is where we've been heading with this 30-day study all along.

Again, the story itself is read into podcast, it's illustrated and these become a slideshow, then a video. The drawback of this is that you don't want to publish the short stories to your remote blogs, as that is just added and unnecesary content. And would defeat sales, so cut earning money.

The marketing side of this would be to create a second line of work, which would be some sort of story analysis. This could easily be distributed through a mini-net system and then bookmarked, etc. (Your promotion is typically secondary to the original work, regardless.)

Income would be utilizing the soundtrack/podcast, videos, and text as ebooks all as income/money sources.

Promotion would have that "analysis" published via main hub and remote-blog mini-net. Also, creating podcasts, graphic powerpoint, and promotional videos for each ebook - which could (and should) be widely distributed, even though the base materials are not. Even articles can be used to post spun versions of the analyses - good for backlinks.

And obviously, they'd be done in an entertaining form, with their own continuing theme to draw in people - building a community in fact.

This is obviously a great deal of content to be distributing. And a great test of what we've been developing and studying.

Needless to say, in undertaking this, I won't be doing anything else with my time - so trying to exploit my earlier work in Affiliate Marketing would take a back seat. (And is why I haven't built my own affiliate programs into any sort of regular income - too busy researching. But I told you about purpose and passion, haven't I?)

Patterns of Promotion

So the evolving pattern - as someone who has published several dozen books - is to have ebooks on handheld devices. Smashwords seems to be the best way to get these published and distributed into several versions, as well as their distributors. 

They have an affiliate program, discount coupons, and also track backlinks to your ebook. So the basics are there.

The general sequence of promotion is slightly different from the original content creation. The ebook is created, along with soundtrack, and video. And while the ebook is published for sale, the other 2 are stored away for later use. Snippets might be able to be used out of these.

Trick here is to keep the analysis up todate and publish these immediately following the ebooks. If this can be kept (or sped up to ) a weekly promotion, then the initial price point would be kept low, plus the affiliate payouts as high as possible. So these are simply loss leaders. Later stories would gradually raise their price as the series become more popular (after the first 64, hopefully.)

Main point is that by building this community, you create a demand for these books. The volume of them makes them collectibles. This is exactly what "famous authors" who have dogged out an existence by writing. Our use of this is to speed this up immensely. We will create a "body of work" in one year or less.

And we will have "left over" a set of material to extend the brand - earning additional income - after the initial product line is established. (And that is my little secret, as to what exactly - and extensively - is planned.)

The marketing is all (or mostly) online and use search engines to track and give results based on volume of fresh content. Links which run through this would all go to each of the Smashwords book pages. And the bookmarks take in all levels of this. Exhaustively. Pinging has to be done as conscientiously throughout - to alert the search engines of the new content, as well as any "fans". You have to plan your work and work your plan.

You now understand all of what I've been bringing you to (if you've studiously followed every step to this point.) As well, I have someone I can explain it all to, now - without having to explain hubs, remote-blogs, etc.). But the main point has been to scrub all this down to a finite set of rules which can be applied to the next step of online promotion I'll be doing, which brings us full circle back to the point of how to earn extra money online.

Now that it's all written up and in your able hands, I can simply devote my time to creating this monster set of works.

Good Hunting!

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 25 - The Stigma of Network Marketing

Network Marketing, like Internet Marketing, has gotten a bad rap.

But it's their own fault - in both cases.

The problem is GRQ (Get Rich Quick) and this means Lack of Value.

Both have had their problems with this. And the real people making most of the money are those who do educating in this field. Because that is where the real value is. Lets face it - the majority of the people out there are wanting to be educated. Spammers are another form of education - when you come out of the other side, you've learned some lessons which will stay with you a long time.

Fortunately, there are easier (and less expensive) ways to learn life's lessons.

Network Marketing Basics

The point of this is to get people to sell for you. And the basis of Network marketing is to have a repeatable pattern, which can easily be taught and applied. So a person learns this pattern and gets someone else in who they teach this pattern to, getting a percentage of their sales as part of it. That taught person then gets others in and teaches the pattern to them, getting a percentage, and so on.

This is also why I recommend 2-tier (at least) affiliate sales products. So you get returns on the work you do, while you also get returns on others who are working for you. And if they are any good, you'll start getting returns from the people who are selling for them.

And this is also the point of offering valuable consumables - because they have to be replaced. So you have continuing sales.

Shaklee

This brings up Shaklee as an example. While I'm still learning how to crack into this via Internet sales, you can study their whole system with a low entry fee (around $30 - which gives you a lifetime discount on their products) and  see if it's a good match for you and the people you would bring in as a "downline". (I like and have had good results with their Cinch diet plan.)

Shaklee is so low key and not in-your-face, it's almost hard to see why they are expanding. They don't follow the "rules" you expect with various other network marketing offers and systems. Their underlying reason for success is the extreme quality of their products - and the fact that they only sell on word of mouth, not a lot of advertising. Instead, they hand out commissions to people who sell for them.

The marketing which most "classic" network marketing companies use is hard-sell and built on a ponzi scheme of getting more people in at the bottom to pay for those who were there first. Like Social Security. Eventually, these get top heavy and the people who get in later don't get paid anything. (Unless you have the government backing it, in which case they can force people to pay and also print all the "money" they want to pay for things.)

The key is to realize that this is an educational process. And learn from everything. Meanwhile, you simply keep looking for valuable products which can and will teach you the ropes of marketing, plus give a valuable return to everyone who comes into the system.

Magnetic Sponsoring

One fascinating educational process (my only criticism is that they email too much) is one called Magnetic Sponsoring. Ostensibly, you get leads for your own networking system by offering their program. Again, this is about a $30 entry fee for the basic course of the same name to start learning and working their system. You get a nice little ebook and some free video lessons which can start your education process. (That's the only way to become an affiliate - get some "skin in the game") And they are coming out with more materials regularly. Their main point is to teach people about how to network market - and share commissions on all sales, so you are getting a piece of the "action" from day one. Obviously, when people are satisfied, they tell others, and you are then getting another set of commissions from those sales. (Oh, and don't get their "Building on a Budget" - it's based on marketing through Squidoo, so you know how dated it is. I haven't gotten their higher end products, so couldn't give you a review of them.)

The main part with Magnetic Sponsoring is that they give you sample ads to run as classifieds and are constantly tweaking their sales pages for conversions, etc. Of course, you are getting numerous emails to buy this and that new release - which you can opt out of. These are great for simply studying how they are pitching their offers and the frequency (as well as what is annoying and what you should be avoiding.)

Continuing Income (on "autopilot")

The point with these two programs is that you have a low-entry point and are able to train yourself on the whole system of Network Marketing to create a continuing income.

There is no "autopilot" in actuality. The people who earn a lot of money in Network Marketing invest time in working and coaching their downlines to greater production. That's if you want continuing sales and income. I've got a lot of stuff out there (built as tests) which gives me surprise checks every now and then, but I don't work these and have simply put them up as a simple series of pages with affiliate links. And that is more like putting a plane in the air and hoping it doesn't hit something or run out of fuel.

If you want to get somewhere, you have to have a goal and actively work at getting there. Simple.

But there are some very interesting things you should know about setting up a "continuing income" system. I recently read T. Harv Eker's Speedwealth (a free download here) (webinar replay here)and re-learned some datums I'd earlier read while studying Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad).  The point is that you want to build a system so you can simply get out of the way at some point. Passive income (like our online income earning) is like that. Once you can get it up to the point where you can hire (or recruit) promotion outlets, and someone who will keep your content freshened, then you are able to then put your attention on other ways to earn income - or simply sell it off as a turn-key income source. That is why Kiyosaki was interested in real estate. Buy once and rent it out to other people indefinitely after that. Only so much real estate on this planet, so the supply is limited, while demand continues to grow.

More Network Marketing training routes

Another T. Harv Eker ebook, "Millionaire Minds for Network Marketers", takes what he already has been saying (and improving) in his Millionaire Mind Intensives, just for people who are studying Network Marketing. He also has an hour-long teleseminar (podcast) where you can listen to him describe how to network market from the inside out.

But wait, there's more...

Yes, I've already given you far too much. There's one last way to train on Network Marketing that I wanted to tell you about before I sign off for today.

This is the good old boys at Site Build It!. They have a very direct page which ties in having an Internet content publishing system to a successful network marketing downline. And it has a couple of free whitepapers and a video and other stuff you can check out. They are the past-masters of pre-sell and this page shows they use what they preach.

So if you are into Network Marketing, you can have all these links and free stuff to satisfy your thirst for knowledge on how to succeed.

- - - -

No, I don't have (more) freebies today - because I've already given you nearly a dozen above. And that is plenty to study in this area.

See you tomorrow.

Day 21 - Mini-nets - the beginning of the end

(Secret Sauce: next-to-last in sub-series)
These next 2 days of material both fit together side-by-each (as some Canadian slang goes). So you'll need to study them together. These two parts are much like  a race car with a nitro boost. While either will push the car forward, both together will make it really take off.

The first point is mini-nets.

I'm now giving you Michael Campbell's "Revenge of the Mini-net". This complements his "Clickin' It Rich" and "Nothing But Net". These three, added together, give you substantial data on how to earn extra income online. And while they were all given away freely on the Internet once, they have since been withdrawn to people's individual archives (like mine.)

I stumbled across these just after or around the time I finished The Online Sunshine Plan and kicked that book over to Lulu.

The overall concept was originally to build smaller sites which all inter-linked with each other and so built up authority and "link-love" between them.

This was essentially premised on the vital necessity of backlinks to improve rankings. And in the days of social media, this hasn't changed, except how you implement it.

There is an interview of Campbell with Howie Schwartz, where the latter's "Conversation Domination" was given as an example of social mini-nets.  Schwartz used several dozen social media profiles to create an interlinked set of different sites. At that time, social profiles themselves would rank. And he then linked those profiles to a landing page which would sell his Halloween costume. The problems with this are that 1) they aren't valuable content per se, and 2) the are labor intensive and had to be farmed out.

The search engines moved on after really valuable content, and it became more of a hobbyist approach for individuals. The overhead was too much to base a business on.

However I did find that other social media, namely free/remote blogs, could be employed to host regular, fresh content and could be updated easily through any program that could access them remotely.

Just recently, I did a review of this and found that while this is not all that well known, it's not a trade secret. A special report which Market Samurai put out said their interview of the "big guns" (those who serviced clients for 10's of thousands yearly) said they would outsource posting to such a network of blogs.

But in reviewing The Challenge, I found that on Module 3, they describe just such an off-page network. (A free sign-up to that Challenge will give you access to all the modules at http://challenge.co/training/) They don't spell out how to do this efficiently, however.

I initially thought this to be a trade secret. Spammers didn't need to know about this, as the would make it quit working. But you also see that I don't particularly spill the beens in this limited release. As well, there are some details you'd have to study this whole series as well as doing some hands-on work to get the same results we've been getting.

The Components

Basically, the list goes like this:

• Your main site or "hub"
• Google+
• Remote blogs
• Slideshare.net (pdf's and powerpoints)
• Videos (optional)
• Archive.org - for podcasts
• Status Update Sites
• Bookmarking Sites

Which are all in addition to your work in social networking you do as part of those communities.

The sequence:

1. Post fresh content to your hub, which is all SEO'd with linking into other pages of your main hub. 
2. Share that link with your circles (public) on Google+
3. Spin this content (edit it slightly) and post to the remote blogs.
4. Create PDF of that original content, or the edited version, and post to Slideshare.
5. (Optional: create podcast, powerpoint, and video - then post these appropriately)
6. Create status updates which alert people to the new content on the remote blogs.
7. Bookmark the remote blogs' new content.
8. Ping the RSS feeds for several of these bookmarks.

The trick is that you could spend a week or more doing this all by hand. But within this system are ways to automate this slightly and make it a one-day, if not a few hours' work.

While there are programs such as Windows Live Writer which will post to your blogs, you can also do this with Posterous.

Status Updates can be done by Posterous, but also by Ping.fm (which is changing since it was bought out) and also Hoot Suite, Twitterfeed, and some others.

Bookmarking we will cover tomorrow, as this needs a great deal more space due to their details. I'll also cover why this sequence is this way, why it works, and the basic theory behind it - although you probably already have an idea why.

But I've already given you more to work with today than you'll be able to get through in a week of hands-on application.

A side note is that once you get into Posterous auto-posting, you'll find there are ways to organize your workflow to make this far easier. But again, to tell you simply how to do this would both be boring and take the fun out of exploring.

So now, with the 3 weeks of preps, I've brought you up to what I've been dying to tell you all. Properly set up, this just works too well. But now isn't the time to give you a long list of testimonials and test cases. At this point, I'll leave you to play with this and make your own observations.

- - - -

I've given you a freebie and assignment in the text above.

Just let me know in comments or by email how you find it to be working.

Day 19 - Slideshare and Videos

(Secret Sauce sub-series 05)

Today we cover some of the more viral (as in virus) and effective alternative publishing formats.

If you wanted to review this section in The Online Sunshine Plan, it start about  page 254 and goes to around 262.

Obviously, I've found it far more useful than I described it originally. Because I started working for someone who was ranktracking as a regular part of his business. And we were able to test out these things as part of working to salvage a floundering business by investing heavily in online promotion - which was cheaper and more effective than TV, radio, or other advertising.

Now we are into re-publishing mode here. Briefly a recap:

1. Write your content, include images and links to other pages on your site. Post this.
2. Make a Powerpoint version of that - post to Slideshare.net
3. Record that article and post it to Archive.org
4. Marry these two up as a Slidecast on slideshare.net
5. And/Or turn the recording and slideshow into a video and post this to YouTube and/or any other video site of choice. (Google owns YouTube - hint). Make sure you have backlinks in the description, and the file is named with your keyword.
6. As you assemble quite a set of these, create an ebook and give it away as an opt-in incentive (and/or sell on Smashwords)
7. Assemble the video's into a DVD and use this as an incentive, or a product on it's own. (Costs you under 2 bucks to burn and mail.)
   

Slideshare.net

This has some incredible ranking. Often it will show up on page 1 of Google with several different articles. This is because they will extract all the text of their PDF and post it below the flash version of the PDF itself. Brilliant move, actually.

While you are posting your content as a PDF, they then create a new, original text version on their site. Now the PDF can still be read by Google, and your description and profile should still have links back to your main site.

They also do featured content, which gets internal views by their community (particularly if its snazzy looking).

As I said above, you create a powerpoint and post it there. But you also do a document-type PDF and post it - with all the text. (Never, ever make a PDF out of images. Use Open/Libre Office which converts your original content - copy/paste from Firefox - into a PDF with all the links intact.

If, as part of your posting, you do this with all new content, your whole site becomes accessible through Slideshare PDF's and will simply replace other sites on Google which are present for the same terms. This brings up the possibility of having 6-8 positions covered on the front page of Google. It's become more rare recently (since Panda/Penguin updates), but occasionally we still pull this off.

There was a product called "Conversation Domination" by Howie Schwartz, which used to work along this line. One Halloween, he had the bulk of the top 5 pages (50 spots) covered with his content which pushed a specific costume as an affiliate product. It's much harder to do that now days, as the search engines moved on. Some parts of it still work, but it's labor intensive.

What I learned from this, and in figuring out how to apply this to multiple clients, is in taking the parts which could be simply produced with minimal time investment, but similar results. And yes, when my boss saw my work take over half-a-dozen spots in Google's 1st page, you knew I had his attention and help in streamlining this.

Video's

Mainly, this is YouTube. Because Google owns it, and so will give you multiple opportunities to take additional rankings.

This is one point Schwartz' technique covered. Google, as I've pointed out before, will return web pages as search results, but will also return images, forums, videos, docs, news, and a few others as valuable information. All on the first page. So if you can get the same content published in multiple formats, you can rank for several different content types - and get people ultimately visiting your site.

Another valid point Schwartz found was that this was highly targeted viewers. People who followed those links were interested in this data and were more easily converted to buyers/clients. It didn't result in spikes of traffic, but did result in spikes of sales.

So the simple technique is outlined above. Text to speech, images to a powerpoint, marry the two into a video.  Post all the sub-products to their own free hosting to rank on their own for that keyword.

If you're presentable, you can always create regular content by simply videoing yourself talking. I just like the above because you get more products out of it and don't have to invest in a camera or lighting, backgrounds, etc. Most computers come with some sort of video editing program, or they can be acquired online for little to nothing.

Audacity is a very good open-source recording program. And video editors are also available, while XP and Windows 7 come with their own, as does the MAC. Linux also has many free ones.

Ensure you have a backlink in the first line of your video description. That is what always shows.

The secret to this success is to set up your production lines to generate regular video content along with everything else. Google likes regular, fresh content - and this is a no-brainer if you can organize your life to write once and publish many ways and formats.

- - - -

Assignment is to check out Slideshare and see the many wonderful and creative people who contribute to their communities. And look for documents to see what you find there.

If you already have your Google account, fill out your YouTube profile and poke around in there. Set up all the backlinks to your main site you can.

Freebie - To give you more background on this "Conversation Domination" theory, I've included an ebook from their heyday: Bending the Web. Use a substantial amount of skepticism when you read this, as the two authors are known for fantastic (unbelievable) sales pitches. While some of this material is dated, there is more of it which has become mainstream. Also, note their presentation quality.

Day 08 - Creating Content - the How to and Where for Guide

Content originally meant just information. When the WWW version of the Internet came out, it also came to mean graphics. Later, we added audio, video, PDF's, presentation, and just about everything else.

While this probably could and should have been a section of its own in An Online Sunshine Plan, most of it wound up in Section VI - Promotion, with a tiny bit on sales pages in Section IV (page 187.)

So reviewing these sections is your pre-assignment for today.

But wait - there's more: I'm giving you your freebie right up front today - because you'll need this right off. From the original Online Millionaire Plan archives (the pre-cursor to The Online Sunshine Plan) is a chapter I wrote/compiled/edited for that book: Copywriting and Sales Pages.

Now, we'll get to the ease and simplicity of writing soon enough - first we need to talk about the rest of what shows up under "content".

Types of Internet Content

Look at your average search, particularly popular ones.

Google now lists

• web pages and articles
• blogs (which they categorize differently)
• forums and discussions
• video (and sometimes audio)
• images
• shopping sites
• other document formats, such as Word .docs, .rtf, and .txt files.

- all competing for those few top spots on the top. (And this list is gradually expanding)

So content isn't just writing anymore, although it always starts this way.

As I covered before, search engines think in terms of words. Everything is a keyword to Google, etc. What you see on the search engine rankings are the most popular combinations of words. Because they are trying to serve up just what you are looking for, they'll also populate that search with various combinations and "pretty close" look- and sound-alikes.

It's not just webpages they do this with - it's also videos, audio, images, forum posts, and all the rest.

And this is why there may be "millions" of search items, but mostly you are really only concerned with the first 2 pages - because all these "close but no cigar" populate the rest. (And is why, for those who know, SEO is so easy - once you are over the learning curve.)

The way you author your content is how it's going to get found. So the main keyword phrase has to be used realistically so that it will rank well. Note that term: realistically. Search engines follow how people tend to act in most situations. They study people who use their program. So they know that if content is sloppily put together, or spammy (ie. crap), then people won't stay there very long or come back to visit again. And so devalue that page.

Again, the Internet is built on valuable information being shared.

Any content can be simply converted to the others (as gone over in pages 254-262 of OSP.) A simple sequence is to create the original article (with links and images) in a standalone editor such as Kompozer (the old Mozilla Suite Composer - updated). And post it. Then open that up with OpenOffice/LibreOffice and convert it to a PDF. Take that same work and whittle it down a bit, then post it with additional images as a Powerpoint (on Slideshare.net). Now read that text out loud into Audacity or similar program, and post the audio file on Archive.org as a podcast. Then marry the video and slides together into a video for YouTube (or one of those hosts). That's five different types of content. If you properly title the images, you'll wind up with 6, as Google will associate your images with that keyword.

If you then took a collection of those web pages and converted it into a book (or ebook), you'd then also have the audio-book ready for publishing, as well as a CD/DVD collection of videos.

And the point of doing this all is that you can rank for multiple positions on Google, plus all those properties can backlink to the original piece, which search engines rightly appreciate. (We will cover more on back-linking as a promotion strategy in upcoming days - not too far off, though.)

Authoring Styles

The Internet isn't particularly built (except private sections like Ebay and Craigslist) to host sales pages and ads. But it does. And some elitists get this a bit wonky.

There are 3 types of people who use the Internet.

1. Lookie-loo's: These are here only for entertainment - and are what made MySpace and Facebook big in their time. They don't buy, they just look, smile, and move on.
2. Researchers: People who want real information. Often this is precursor to a sale, but not necessarily.
3. Buyers: These people already know exactly what they are looking for and want either factual comparative reviews - or the best possible price and terms.

They each require slightly different styles to get and keep them interested in your pages.

However, a lot of what passes for advice on copywriting is either for the first or the third. And Wordpress.com policies are built on the first - not wanting to offend, but also not wanting people to spam their free blogging platform with sales offers. (And so a direct sales offer, or too many direct links to affiliate sites will suddenly get your WP.com blog banned, and maybe your own account as well - trust me, I've accidentally stepped on their toes more than once.)

The first two types of visitors can be written for similarly. You write factual, accurate, and informative articles which then link to another page which in turn does a soft-sell review of the product - and in its own turn links to hard-sell landing pages. (And that is the strategy for using the free WP blogs (and anywhere so tight about it.)

Do your landing page (or ensure your affiliate sponsor has a good landing/sales page). This is designed to convert. Period. Next, you then do a review about the product(s) - and you can have affiliate accounts with all the products you compare on that page, BTW.  Your "review" page links to sales/landing pages - probably with a disclaimer that they are heading to a sales page with that link (people appreciate honesty.) Then you do another page which goes out on free blogs and as articles, etc., which then link to your review page.

While convoluted, this still is a way you can write for all 3 publics and get maximal possible leads and conversions. (The lookie-loo's are simply never going to buy anything - but you know they will some day need your product or service. So you want to write this light and memorable. Posting your light ones on the free blogs is sensible as it also can push your review site higher in Google with backlinks (although I'll go over that expressly in the "Secret Sauce" series coming up.)

The third type - buyers - are given hard-boiled sales/landing pages. And you simply take out classified ads to drive them there. This is why classifieds (properly written) have double or more the conversion rates of regular web pages. Visitors are already looking to buy.

You aren't really interested in website or blog generic "traffic". You are interested in people who can be cajoled or are already into a buying frame of mind. You tailor make your site to deal with people who come there for those specific keywords which they use to find information about the valuable product or service you are offering.

And in those few paragraphs above, you can tell immediately if some of these "guru's" are smoking something odd. If they only tell you about getting your traffic up, then they are fakes. If they say you have to get your traffic up in order to get that 1-2% of the market - they really don't know what the Internet is all about. Only if they say you are looking for precisely-targeted leads to convert - then do you continue studying what they say.

- - - -

Now that is really what I've distilled about content authoring since I wrote An Online Sunshine Plan. It's more refined than all I studied about it - and gives you the middle ground so you can effectively market your goods. (And believe me, I write this so you don't have to do the years of content as I did in order to have the retrospective view and distill it all yourself. Costs too much.)

Assignment is to simply do some studies of your own. Go back over your own market research and look up the pages people are using to promote their products which exist in your keyword space. Clickbank has some wild examples of good and bad landing pages, as do others.

Do study over the freebie I linked above. I've got some more really good classics coming up later. One thing at a time - one day at a time.

Some great stuff coming up. We'll give out some tested Affiliate data tomorrow, I think...

Day 07 - What Search Engines Really Need

(...probably a kick in the pants - just kidding.)

This is perhaps a revolutionary version of what you really need to know about these guys. It's based on Section V of The Online Sunshine Plan.

And might be quite shorter than what you may be expecting. (That section is your pre-assignment, BTW.)

I. What search engines make their money from: Advertising.
And Google admitted, finally, that buying ads "helps" your organic PPC. Ostensibly, they make their money by helping people convert to buyers. Or so they think. (Advertising is an addiction businesses have, which I've covered elsewhere. That's why they got the government to write it in as an exemption in the Tax Codes.)

II. What search engines are good for: New customers.
Once you have a person buying from you, you want to turn them into clients so they will continually and regularly buy your products or services. At that point, they already know your site address (or will find it by searching for your brand, not your keywords) and so no longer need to use search engines.

III. What search engines think in: Words.
All their algorithms are based in whole or in part on what associated words are used. Videos are "read" by the descriptions (and links) left below or near them, as well as their actual file title. Pictures - the same (so next time you see an image with a number or code, realize an opportunity was missed.) PDF's are turned into text and then read (so make your PDF's out of text, not scanned images.) Podcasts are slightly different as they can transliterate text out of voices (so be sure to have high-quality enunciation used, not slang or technical words so much.)

IV. What search engines hate: the same stuff we do - spammy, low-quality content which is designed to "game" the system instead of producing real value. Search engine algorithms are based on people-usage. If people click off a page, then it's not very good quality. (And why you want to include catchy phrases, video's and images - all good "infotainment" value - as long as they contribute to the actual content of the page.

And that's about all the new data I have to share. Not because this particular section was well written,  more that Google really hasn't changed much over the years. Basically, anyhow (we'll leave Android and Google+ out of the picture for now.)

Your freebie today (and assignment) is to simply get and study Google's SEO Starter Guide. The reason people don't have top ranking pages are due to not making a checklist out of this guide and comparing their own site against it. Period.

I've been working freelance for a guy who built his backend to simply do just that. Because he couldn't find anything out there which did. And years later, I did a study of some 58 different Content Management Systems and found only one which would do it (nearly) right out of the box. (And the other drawback was that these CMS's were very clunky and poorly built. Design by committee or something.) His just gets right to the point and is simple to use. I've helped improve it a bit, but just in terms of tweaks (and he's been talking about ripping it all down and starting from scratch to really do it right.)

Now, I didn't get into social media, which is another animal. And we'll also tackle "backlinking" at that point. Both of these have been buzz-words for some time. And both are poorly understood. In the upcoming section I've labeled "Secret Sauce", I'm going to let fly some strategies - while painfully honest - are highly effective, but are simple for search engines to thwart if they ever become mis-used. (And I also have the solution to make your use of them proof against any "Google-slap".)

OK?  Tomorrow we dig into the many types of content you can (and should) be producing from your original piece and the 3 styles you can (and should) be using to write their variations...