Ethical Marketing

Judging Competition for High Rankings using a Guaranteed Cost Quote

2010-06-11T14:51:46Z

Q. What is the most effective method of judging the competition for top rankings?

A. You may judge the difficulty of achieving top rankings for highly competitive keywords by comparing guaranteed cost quotes for achieving those rankings. During my last 2 years of full time experience doing Internet Marketing, I have not seen any evidence to support the idea that a single commercial tool can accurately help you judge this for highly competitive keywords. One simple example of a guaranteed cost quote is as follows: If the agreed upon 20 day average ranking is not achieved, the client pays an “agreed upon in advance” prorated fee.

If you decide to pay for SEO services of any kind, be certain that your agreement is crystal clear. The bottom line is that ambiguous agreements are not enforceable. And, there is a really good reason for that. It is because one cannot show that both parties shared the same understanding of the content of the agreement.

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Technorati Tags: internet marketing

The Importance of Keywords in Page Titles

2010-03-28T19:27:10Z

A few days ago I was trying to discover why the competition is beating my client off the first page of Google rankings. A trusted friend of mine recently remarked that she doesn’t use many SEO tools anymore because it just isn’t necessary. What she says is that search engines tell you volumes about ranking simply by looking at search results. To keep it simple, let’s just focus on page titles.

Somehow, I got into a debate with my client about whether or not it is important if your target keyword appears in page titles. She insisted that her research showed that this simply isn’t true. Rather than argue the point, I kept my true thoughts to myself and responded that I’d take the time to see for myself. This is a really good case which shows how inadequate words alone are for communicating information. Since, the need for inclusion of keywords in page titles is so incredibly obvious to me. Surely, it was the words I was using in my attempt to persuade which were at fault.

The very first thing to learn about this is that all marketing channels are not created equal. When you are looking at search results, it matters whether the marketing channel is highly competitive or not. In most cases, a channel is simply not competitive enough to show off the importance of a particular “on page” optimization factor. However, if you look at a marketing channel which has click value of more than one million dollars per quarter, that is another matter. With click cost in this range, a business targeting the first page of Google results can afford to purchase every “on page optimization” advantage.

Have a look at my client’s keyword and see how her competitors use it in their page titles. I won’t tell you the keyword; why not discover it yourself? Click Here

So, does your competition place important keywords in their page titles? Maybe they do and maybe they don’t. But, the real question is “should you?” and I say “yes”.

Best Regards,
Charles

Charles Knell is an independent internet marketing consultant.
Right Results Consulting LLC

Technorati Tags: internet marketing

Is the Micro Niche Frenzy an Unethical Scam?

2010-06-11T14:58:56Z

COPR 2010 Right Results Consulting LLC — A friend of mine recently posted about his personal attempts to make money online. It kills me to realize that he is being taken advantage of. The building of “Micro Niche” websites is the buzz among early adopters of internet marketing tools. The bottom line is this. If I had a drop dead simple strategy which could really bring in 6 figures I would implement it myself immediately. I wouldn’t write a book or a training course about it and degrade my chances of making it work.

Charles

What is the most cost effective means to Improve Search Engine Rankings?

Technorati Tags: ethical marketing, internet marketing

A Tale of Two Markets — in 59 seconds — @Charles_KnNell

2010-01-28T12:14:34Z

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was a world of ethical markets, and it was a world of unethical markets. Pardon the plagiarism. p023mnr

It is my perception that all markets fall into a continuum between the two poles of ethical marketing and unethical marketing. Certain markets are very ethical, for example, the market for “Christianity”. There are also unethical markets, for example, the market for “Search Engine Optimization”. As one might expect, the behavior and expectations of participants in these two diametrically opposed market types are very different. In an ethical market, prospects do not expect to be tricked. In an unethical market, they do expect trickery. In an ethical market, prospects do not expect that the first contact attempt with them will likely be a falsehood. In an unethical market, they accept first contact lies as part of the landscape of the market. Prospects in an unethical market believe that they are smarter than the marketers, and so they accept trickery and lies as part of doing business as usual. Of course, there is probably no perfect ethical market or unethical one, but every market is somewhere on the continuum between being ethical and being unethical.

with apologies to Charles Dickens,
@Charles_KnNell — Copyright 2009 Right Results Consulting LLC

Technorati Tags: ethical marketing

Avoid the Ripoff - Evaluating Internet Marketing SEO Tools

2009-11-06T14:51:42Z

In this series, I explain how I successfully avoid being ripped off on the Internet. This article explains how I evaluate SEO tools and includes practical ideas on developing your own business opportunity evaluation style, a critical skill in the new global economy. SEO tools are a broad set of very different software and training which have the common objective of getting more visitor traffic to a website.

Since October 22, 2007, I have evaluated hundreds of SEO Tools for my own consulting practice, and I’m sharing an interesting gem with you. This was one of my most interesting encounters with one of these tool makers.

The day started out as all days do, breakfast, coffee, and reading email. This day, an ad about generating more Twitter followers caught my attention. I surfed over to the sales page and it looked pretty good. Many people don’t think much of Twitter, mainly because they simply don’t see what’s in it for them. Trust me on this one, this will change. Non-believers can stop reading here. This article is for the one million people who understand that Twitter is a portal into the soul of humanity, revealing what people care about, what interests them, what they might buy. Learning how one can use Twitter more effectively is on the minds of many, many marketers. I made a decision to learn if using this particular tool was in my future.

Is the business trying to hide its ownership? The first thing that I always look at is the domain registration of the sales page. In order to give your web site a unique name (called a domain name), you must register it with a Domain Name Registrar. The legal person who owns the domain name is required to provide accurate information. If you determine that they didn’t provide accurate information you can actually report them to the registrar and they may lose their name as a result of this violation. Currently, there is little enforcement of this requirement, so you may find false or useless contact information. A legit business will never violate this requirement by providing false contact information. However, keep in mind that there is little enforcement of this rule. This is actually no problem for you because you can EASILY verify it yourself. You can make a phone call, right? Bad guys don’t want you to be able to find them. So, this is an indicator or a vote. If the business has provided false or even inaccurate contact information that is a “thumbs down” vote. There are more votes to be counted, however. If you contact the business and they take quick action to correct the errors, that would be a “thumbs up” vote. There is another consideration. Some registrars provide a service called “private” registration whereby the registrar actually is the legal owner of the domain name. This provides more privacy for the site owner, but if the domain owner is suspected of wrongdoing their contact information can lawfully be revealed by the registrar to any law enforcement agency. So, the privacy isn’t really much at all except that it is a barrier to ordinary people to learn the true ownership of the domain name. Therefore, if the domain name has “private” registration, I give that a “thumbs down” vote. In my opinion, real businesses with a good code of ethics are not likely to use “private” domain name registration.

How well does the business handle complaints? The second thing that I do is call customer service and point out a problem. You can tell a great deal about a company by performing this behavior. Is there anyone to talk to? Is there anyone to “online chat” with? Is there an email address that doesn’t work? Is the response time slow? Do you think that customer service will be bad before the sale and good after the sale? You get the idea, right? I have been a customer service manager since 1999, and I can tell you from personal experience that a successful real business does everything it can to get new customers and keep existing customers. If you don’t get this feeling from your contact with customer service, it’s a “thumbs down” vote.

I contacted customer service for the Twitter tool that I was interested in. Previous to my call, I read the sales offer page and the “Terms of Service” document for the product. I noticed that on the sales page for the product there was a “guarentee” shown. But, in the “Terms of Service” the word “guarentee” did not appear. I interpreted this to mean that the sales page offered a “guarentee” but the “Terms of Service” did not offer a “guarentee”. So, my contact with customer service was for the purpose of resolving the apparent conflict between the sales offer and the “Terms of Service”. Now, read carefully, I told the customer service person that I would like their permission to record our conversation. The person told me that this was not lawful and I responded that if both parties agreed to the recording that it was lawful. Many companies do this with your permission when you call them. They do it for their own protection and for training purposes. The person I was talking to declined to have our conversation recorded, so I agreed to that. Recording or no recording, this will get the person’s attention and let them know that you want the real scoop. They will be careful about what they say. They don’t know you and you could be recording anyway (even though that would be unethical after you agreed not to). The customer service person asked me if I was an attorney. I’m not. So far, I have two “thumbs down” votes for the contact. Then, I pointed out that there was a conflict between their sales offer page and their “Terms of Service”. The customer service person insisted that the “Terms of Service” did describe the “guarentee”. In my opinion, this was clearly a false claim. At this point, another “thumbs down” vote clicked in. Then, the most amazing thing occurred, the person said, “You are not calling to BUY the software, you are calling to COMPLAIN* about the software!”. Wow, another “thumbs down” vote submitted. We never even discussed their software. I hung up the phone; my heart pounding with the excitement that I had a clear answer. In the democracy of my own mind, a good decision is the result of counting votes.

* Note: The actual word used here started with the second letter of the alphabet.

Charles KnNell is the publisher of “Ethical Marketing”.

Technorati Tags: ethical marketing, internet marketing

Avoid the Ripoff - How to judge if a seller is trustworthy.

2009-09-14T12:58:39Z

The eye-catching use of a “Money Back Guarentee” is a trend that I’ve seen in online advertizing of Internet Marketing products. However appealing, this guarentee may be only as good as the word of the seller. And, the word of the seller is just fine when the seller is a well known brand name. The Internet Marketing Tools product space is in a constant state of change, and it’s rare for buyers to recognize a trustworthy brand. Change, it seems, is the only constant in this product space.

There are several good ways to judge a seller’s money back guarentee. But, my opinion is that unless the guarentee is a “no questions asked” policy, it isn’t worth much in the case of an electronically delivered information product. In case you are not familiar with fine points of online buying, this means any product which has no trackable physical delivery. There are MANY fine vendors of these kinds of products, and they always give this level of guarentee quality. But, then there are the many others who are not vendors of quality and who also use P*ypal. P*ypal has a very practical approach to the problem of returns of non-tangible products, but, unfortunately it seems to favor the thieves, con men, and scam artists.

Suppose you buy an eBook thru P*ypal. You have a look at it, and you feel that the seller made false claims about it. For example, the seller told you that if you buy his product you can earn an average of $20 per day using it, and he proves that this is possible in his sales pitch. Therefore, you want to obtain a refund. Since the product was downloaded to your computer, when the seller processes your refund, you still have the book. So, after you jump thru hoops with P*ypal using their “dispute” process, you give up and escalate your dispute into a claim. Sorry, but all claims of this type, electronically delivered information products, eBook downloads, software downloads, music downloads, etc. are automatically decided in favor of the seller.

It’s true that P*ypal monitors the number of disputes that a seller’s customers have submitted, and the vendor can be banned for a high a number of disputes. However, this is of little comfort to you because you do not get your refund. As a buyer, you should read the terms of sale that the payment processor publishes. If you don’t understand something, most payment processors are very happy to clarify their written policies. P*ypal is certainly very responsible about this. But interestingly enough, I had to speak to their claims department in order to learn their current policy for non-tangible product claims resolutions. It didn’t seem to be present in their online written terms and conditions, but actually that is understandable. Putting that into writing just helps the thieves. Also, I want to explain why I’m not spelling out P*ypal. It is because it’s fine with me if the bad guys don’t read this article. I already know that very few search for ethical marketing.

Charles KnNell
Follow me on Twitter @Charles_KnNell

Technorati Tags: ethical marketing

The 30 Day Challenge - About Staying on Schedule

2009-09-11T14:52:12Z

Suppose that you just can’t devote enough time and energy to every
day’s training done by the end of every day. Don’t worry, that’s not
a problem. Proceed at your own pace! The ONLY issue is that your
FREE Market Samurai subscription is for 40 days. After that, you must
pay something every month. I’m not sure when the WPD FREE
subscription ends. If you are committed to learning as much as you
can about Internet Marketing, this isn’t a problem.
The important thing here is to complete the 30 days of training.

If it takes you a bit longer, that’s OK ! These are not my words,
their Ed’s.

When you need motivation, just watch the next of Ed’s TV Shows that
you haven’t seen. His shows are great for watching when you need to
get re-excited about this stuff.

The bottom line is that learning a new field is hard work, but it’s
worth it. Yesterday, someone asked me what I did. I told them that I
was an Internet Marketer and they asked me “Who needs to know about
Internet Marketing?”. I said, “Anyone who needs to market themselves
or a product, that’s all. They are the only ones.”

“You will know that the fad of ‘Internet Marketing’ has passed when we
are all are calling it ‘Marketing’”.

Charles
30DCMarketers

Technorati Tags: 30DC, 30DCMarketers, internet marketing, thirtydaychallenge

FREE Internet Marketing Tutorials - The 30 Day Challenge

2009-07-17T21:29:26Z

The 30 Day Challenge is a series of FREE Internet Marketing Training sessions, presented for begineers AND very advanced Internet Marketers. And, there is homework. Now, when I say that the challenge is FREE, that means not only is the training free, but the tools you need to complete the challenge will also be free (but only for the challenge). I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true.

Once the challenge starts on August 1, there will be NO SALES PITCH by any of the presenters.

Even now, in the 30 Day Challenge forums, there is no sales pitching allowed. Now, that is hard for marketers to do! So, there are moderators to enforce it. There is pitching going on now to previous challengers from previous challengers.

The unique thing about this program is that you can do the entire program free. I frankly was very skeptical at first, but Ed Dale is a man of his word.

The 30 Day Challenge is THE yearly online social marketing event for all Internet Marketers. If you signup, when the challenge is over, you will receive many pitches for tools, training, and services, from Internet Marketers all over the world. So, pick the email address you give Ed very carefully. You may even want to setup a new email address just for the challenge. On August 31 and after, you will be receiving email pitches, and some of them are VERY hard to resist, because in my opinion,

30 Day Challengers are the MASTER Marketers of the Internet

The 30 Day Challenge is the creation of Ed Dale. Ed is a friend of Frank Kern who is famous in the Internet Marketing world for a 24 hour campaign which generated revenue of 23 million dollars. Now, that wasn’t Frank’s cut, he had to share it with affiliates. But, you get the idea. And, when you are done with the 30 Day Challenge, YOU WILL BE A BETTER MARKETER no matter what market you are in. That’s a promise.

Join us at the 30 Day Challenge,
Charles

Charles P Knell, follow me on twitter: @Charles_KnNell
A.K.A. Chuck Knell, Charles KnNell
http://www.improve-my-search-engine-rankings.com

Technorati Tags: 30 Day Challenge

FREE Internet Marketing Tutorials - 30DCMarketers

2009-07-02T14:04:44Z

I’m a full time Internet Marketer since Oct 22, 2007 when I formed my own company, Right Results Consulting LLC. Last year I watched every video and did every assignment of the “30 Day Challenge”. Ed Dale, Dan Raine, Guru Bob, and Caro are some of the most helpful people that I know. They say that a friend is a person that will help you out and expect nothing in return. These four individuals fit that description and I’m planning to listen to every word that they have to say this year. I followed every free suggestion they published last year and as the “30 Day Challenge” unfolds this year I’ll provide my own insight and experience to this team. See my post at 30DCMarketers Team for the 30 Day Challenge to join this year’s challenge.

Charles,
30DCMarketers Team

Technorati Tags: 30 Day Challenge

The Affiliate Marketing Opportunity, Is It for You?

2009-05-20T14:38:14Z

I read offers of new internet marketing opportunities on a daily basis. Right now, I’m on the mailing list of about 30 internet marketers. I received one the other day which seemed like investing some time on. So, without mentioning any names, here is the pitch.

The offer is for information on how to set up small websites to be used for affiliate marketing. The pitch is excellent. After you learn the process, you will spend 30 minutes of your own time creating each website which should then generate about $3 per day. Then, repeat the process until you have 700 websites all doing this same thing, i.e. providing revenue of $2100 per day. This is not bad, not bad at all. I have no doubt that I can create a site in 30 minutes. The real question is, “Is this a legitimate offer?”. You must understand that, most likely, it is. But, be careful to buy the “steak” and not the “sizzle”. $2100 per day is $63,000 per month. Revenue of $63,000 per month is $756,000 per year! STOP and THINK. Otherwise, you’ll be buying “sizzle”. This marketer is NOT promising you 3/4 of a million revenue per year, he is only showing you that it’s possible. And, he is right! It is possible. But, look at this offer objectively and from the marketer’s perspective. Why would anyone waste their time creating a course to teach this when they could be doing it? Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that you will likely make money if you follow all of the advice. The real question is “should you?”. Further, remember that there can be no doubt that the creator of the course believes that there is more money for him in creating and selling this advice than in following the advice. Remember that specialized knowledge about well known and well studied areas is generally not expensive. Although, certainly there are exceptions, and you have to decide if this is one of those exceptions. Perhaps you need objective advice, but that is another article.

Before you buy expensive training on affiliate marketing, spend a little time to learn what your objectives are as an affiliate marketer from the purchasers of your service. Read what EBay has been learning about affiliate marketing. Martin-Gill, W. et al of EBay fame, published a white paper on the future of affiliate marketing which you should read. And, that will also take you 30 minutes. It reports on what EBay has learned about affiliate marketing and what they are likely looking for in affiliate marketers. Trust me on this one, they will be looking to optimize their investment.

One affiliate campaign of mine (which I spent 2 days setting up) has a ROI of over 200%. For weeks now, I’ve done no work to maintain it. I have dozens of affiliate publisher accounts and I personally applied for an affiliate account with EBay. I was rejected and I’ll have to admit that I didn’t understand why until now. You can read this white paper yourself and be fully enlightened. See http://www.semj.org/documents/SEMJ_ebay_vol2.pdf.

Best Regards,
Charles

Charles P Knell, follow me on twitter: @Charles_KnNell
A.K.A. Chuck Knell, Charles KnNell
http://www.improve-my-search-engine-rankings.com

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing