Internet Marketing Smarts.com

Banned From Google AdSense? No Problem…

Eddy Salomon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:24:38 +0000

I love Google for better or for worst. They provide me with easy ways to laser target any audience in the world within minutes for pennies using Google AdWords. Furthermore they account for 40% of my overall affiliate income by paying me for driving traffic to other sites. Getting paid for clicks is the best thing since sliced bread in my opinion.

But as much as I love those guys. They have been known to get it wrong sometimes. But honestly what company hasn’t? I love Jetblue to death but they’ve screwed me over many times. So every company has their slips up. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re evil or have it out for you. So stop being paranoid.

But I’ve heard horror stories of people that have lost their livelihoods because of getting banned from AdSense. Is it always just? Well I know for certain some of these guys were doing some shady stuff. But then there are also a lot that played by the rules and still got smacked down by Google.

I have a buddy who just started a blog and was banned from Google Adsense within a month. Look, I know this guy. We worked in a major life insurance company together for over 7 years. When I first met him, I thought he was tighter than an extra medium, metrosexual club shirt. This guy is a good "fella". He’s super anal about following the rules. I remember when he first started, he actually read through all the terms and conditions of every affiliate program he joined and asked me questions about some of their terms. That’s how straight laced this dude is.

So he read Google’s Adsense terms and conditions and stuck by them. But alas he was still booted. He did the whole appeal thing and to no avail. The worst thing about the whole situation was that he made a whopping 30 something cents! Honestly who’s going to be breaking the rules over .30 cents? You would think people would take that into consideration before taking these actions. But let’s move on. This article is about being proactive and solution oriented not crying over spilled milk.

Smack Google Back With Affiliate Programs!

There has always been a camp of people who hated Google Adsense and claim why get paid cents when you can get paid dollars? I tend to agree with these guys to a certain degree. Personally my take is give me both the cents and dollars! I’m not a big proponent of leaving money on the table and people that don’t use Google Adsense in addition to other sources of revenue are doing just that. But I digress, when cents are no longer an option than move up to programs that pay you dollars such as pay per lead or pay per sale affiliate program. Let’s discuss how to do this while still maintaining the benefits of AdSense effectiveness even when you’ve been banned.

So you have to ask yourself, why does AdSense works so well. Most would argue it’s because the ads are contextual and text based. What this means is that whenever you produce any type of content, Google can automatically find related advertisers within seconds and display them on your page. Guess what? Before Google existed we all did this manually and still made money! Sure it took a little more work but the principle was the same.

AdSense Cloning Technique

So here’s my GENIUS solution! I hope you’re sitting down because it’s ground breaking. Manually add related affiliate ads to your content and make them look like AdSense ads, or as I like to call it, the AdSense Clone Technique! I know, I know, this is an Earth shattering concept. But seriously all sarcasm aside, it never dawned on me to do this until years after the fact. After all the AdSense text blocks are known to be the most effective text formats. So just copy their look and feel and place them within the middle of your content.

Where Do I Find Affiliate Programs To Use For My Fake Adsense Ads?

I’m going to assume if you writing content about something you have a knowledge or passion for it. Therefore you should know companies associated with your topic. Just do a Google search and visit web sites that offer related products or services to your industry. Then scroll to the bottom of their homepage and look for an affiliate program link. Sign up for their program and just start promoting their links on your site using AdSense like ads which we’ll show you how to achieve later in this article.

If you don’t know where to find sites related to your industry, just join some affiliate networks like ClickBank.com, CJ.com, Rextopia.com, Maxbounty.com, RoiRocket.com. They tend to list affiliate programs from various companies that cover nearly any subject matter you can think of.

Or you can visit your competitors or related sites in your industry that have Google AdSense links on them. Take note of the urls of the AdSense Advertisers. Visit their sites and see if they have an affiliate programs. If so, join and apply the AdSense cloning technique I described above.

How Do I Make My Affiliate Links Look like Adsense Ads?

Gosh, you ask a lot of questions. Must I do everything? You’re lucky I like you. Here’s the code for creating the best converting Large Rectangle Adsense looking ads on your site.

Affiliate Ad 1 Title Goes Here

First Sentence Goes Here!

& Second Sentence Goes Here!

Affiliate Ad 2 Title Goes Here

First Sentence Goes Here!

& Second Sentence Goes Here!

Affiliate Ad 3 Title Goes Here

First Sentence Goes Here!

& Second Sentence Goes Here!

Affiliate Ad 4 Title Goes Here

First Sentence Goes Here!

& Second Sentence Goes Here!

Your ad will look like the one below.

Just replace the information with the affiliate programs you’re promoting.

Bonus Tip:

Many people will find it daunting figuring out what to use as the ad text in their AdSense Clone Text Ads. After all, that’s one of the great things about Google AdSense. They handle all that for you. No worries! Just ~~steal~~ borrow the ad copy from existing web sites that have AdSense ads on them. We’re doing this because it’s safe to assume these ads must be effective since the advertiser is paying web site owners per click. So just visit some sites related to your industry that have Google AdSense ads on them and copy their ad text. Even if you’re not promoting the exact web site or offer of the actual ad, if it’s similar enough to the affiliate program you want to promote, then use it!

AdSense Tips That Should Be Applied!

Although you’re not using Google Adsense to display your ads, their optimization tips still apply to your site which are as follows:

1. Use the largest rectangle ad block.

The ideal spot to place this type of ad block is right smack in the middle of your content. I know that bothers certain people. But honestly it’s the most effective. Have you ever watched a TV show and just when you’re getting into it, they smack a commercial right in the middle? Why? Because at that point you’re riveted. If you’re writing good articles the same thing will happen to your users and that’s why you want to slip in the Ad in between some of your paragraphs.

2. Blue links always convert the best! If your web site design doesn’t work with that. You better redesign. I don’t care what your graphic designer tells you. He or she is wrong! They’re not business people, usability experts or conversion specialist. Although many will have you believe they are. They tend to have a different eye for things than regular web users so you have to keep that mind. The fact of the matter is that Web surfers are accustomed to seeing blue links. They see a blue link and they know to click on it immediately. You can try to retrain them to associate Fuchsia as a link because your graphic designer likes the way it looks. But I guarantee that you’ll conversions will always be lower than someone that uses blue links.

3. White background should be used for text and your ads. Again this goes back to the concept of "when in Rome do as the Romans do". Folks are accustomed to reading black text on white backgrounds. Most books are black text on white paper for a reason. It works better and is easier on the reader’s eyes. Again you can try to train your readers to use your designer’s color pallets. But I guarantee that your conversions will always be higher following this black text on white background rule of thumb.

Stop Your Crying!

Okay now you have a solution for getting banned from Google Adsense. Yes it’s going to take more work on your part initially, but trust me when I say it pays off. You’ll find that you can make as much as you did with Google Adsense or more. So go and apply it. I don’t want to read any more comments on forums about how Google sucks. So what, Life sucks sometimes. But we all still live it. So instead of complaining go and be proactive. What do you have to lose at this point?

Why I love Negative, Hateful Blog Comments & Emails!

Eddy Salomon — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:50:46 +0000

I’ve been making money online in one capacity or another for over 10 years. One of my main industries is work at home. This is a great sector to be in because it’s very profitable and everyone wants to work at home. But it has its dark side as well. Scam artist prey on work at home seekers. In fact, yours truly has been scammed numerous times and it’s how I got in the industry. I wanted to help people avoid getting scammed and help them work at home.

But people that come to my site may not know that, even though we make it clear that other trusted resources like Businessweek.com have vouched for us. Sometimes despite our best efforts, we’re just lumped with all the other jerks trying to part hard working people of their money. So with that said, On occasion I receive venomous emails and a few blog comments where people are making all sorts of accusations about my character and sites.

It always amazes me what people will say over email. In the real world I’m certain that 90% of them are passive aggressive in their every day lives. But the Internet seems to embolden folks. My good friend Ja from FightInsight.com use to refer to these people as "email thugs". They’re all tough online but I’m pretty certain if they saw me in person and faced with a 6′4", 200+ lbs black man, their tone might be a little different. In any event as human being it’s easy to get offended by the things people email us or post.

Hate, The Golden Opportunity.
But I soon learned to turn the tide in my favor. Instead of getting mad and sending hateful emails or comments back. I actually examined what their objections and feelings were. Why you may ask? After all, they’re being jerks and irrational. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in that nonsense mantra that the customer is always right. Because they’re not. But as I got enmeshed in the industry I started realizing that these people were venting frustration based on all the crap that was out there. They had a heighten sensitivity to any work at home site because of their past experiences.

I gained this insight because I actually took the time to digest the negative email or blog comment in an objective way. Of course it was hard at first because the attacks felt so personal. But it wasn’t me they were attacking it was just a reflection of their frustration and pain.

So when I realized that, I would dissect their comments and turn it around on them. So for instance if they claimed that I was promoting scams. I would make it clear that our site was heavily sponsored by advertisers that we didn’t hand pick but was served automatically by an outside vendor. Then I would provide them with the urls of specific articles and sections on my sites where I handpicked quality work at home opportunities and where I provided scam prevention tips. Basically all I was doing was using their objections to my benefit by sending them quality content that was obviously passively monetized with some affiliate links but more importantly I gave them what they were looking for!

The Internet is a different place then it was in the early 90’s when I got started. It’s all about providing the users relevancy and what they want. We can thank Google for that and we should. It’s made surfing the web a better experience for everyone.

The Big Pay Back!
The result of being proactive with negative emails and comments is the acquisition of a customer or visitor who now trusts you. I have found that the most venomous haters will be your biggest cheerleader when you take the time to help them. These folks will sing your praises at the top of the mountain which in this case is forums or sending emails to others. Because they’re known as being so tough on others, when people read glowing comments from them they follow like sheep and are more likely to now trust your site and you. This equates to more money, subscribers and visitors.

The Steps
So let’s do a quick recap of the steps.

1. Read venomous email or blog comment.

Most bloggers or web site owners will file negative emails or comments in their special folder known as the trash bin. Don’t be so hasty. Sometimes the comments are beyond repair so it’s fine to do it in those situations. But first follow the step below before deleting a comment or email.

2. Fight the urge to pimp smack the offender.

Seriously, just calm down and walk away if necessary. Now come back and pick apart their email to see what the real objections are. Ignore the personal attacks.

3. Zone in on the comments where you can be proactive and provide solutions or validation via content on your site.

For instance if they say that you’re not providing information on x widget or service. Hunt down the exact page where x widget is found and send it to them in the email.

4. Take the higher ground.

I don’t care how nasty an email is (unless it’s about your momma), I try to respond very professionally assuming I was able to achieve step 1. I always thank them in the email for providing me the opportunity to help them and I express my apology for whatever they’re feeling. I’m not saying I’m sorry for something I did wrong because in most cases I didn’t. I’m basically saying I’m sorry that they feel a certain way and I’ll try to help them through it as best as I can.

5. Get back to work.

That’s pretty much it folks. I’ve had almost 90% success following these steps. People that went in there calling me all types of names come back and say how happy they are that they found my sites and talked to me. So trust me it does work.

So stop being so sensitive. Turn lemons into lemonade.

Disclaimer: The steps above won’t work if you’re a scammer, have questionable business practices or are evil.

Cheers!

How To Double Your ClickBank or Affiliate Profits!

Eddy Salomon — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:37:28 +0000

Clickbank is one of the largest digital information product based affiliate networks, if not the biggest. As an internet marketer you either have a product listed there where other affiliates are promoting it for you. Or you’re the affiliate marketing the information product. Either way the following tips are going to help you double your clickbank affiliate profits. Well sort of.

The Money Is In A Warm List

Clickbank now provides you with the names and email addresses of the people that have purchased a clickbank product from you whether you’re the owner of the product sold or an affiliate. Any business owner knows that it’s much easier to sell to an existing customer than it is a new one. That’s assuming you didn’t screw that customer over. So now that you have the contact information of the customers that just bought a clickbank product from you, just send them a quick note as follows:

Dear Customer’s Name,

Thanks for purchasing "name of the ebook".
I feel confident you’ll enjoy it. I was wondering if you would mind if I just keep in touch
with you from time to time to see how you’re doing with that ebook
and just to share free tips and advice related to "the subject
of whatever the ebook is".

If that’s cool with you, can you just email at: MyAutoResponder@MySite.com
so you can be added to my list. It’s just easier for me to manage so
I don’t forget to send you those helpful tips. Don’t worry I won’t be
spamming you with nonsense. I hate that crap too.

I hope to stay in contact with you.

Thanks again for buying "name of ebook". Let me know if you need
anything else.

Sincerely,
Your Name
YourSqueezePage.com.

This note does a lot. The most important thing is that you’re thanking the customer for buying the product you’ve created or promoted. People appreciate things like that. How many affiliates actually take the time to do that. So already you’re being perceived in a different esteem.

Next you’ve asked to keep in touch with the customer and provide free tips and advice related to what they’ve already bought. This is basically just asking them to join your mailing list. This is very important because Clickbank doesn’t want you spamming their customers and you shouldn’t. Asking them in this non-chalant way will increase the likelihood of them joining your list and you won’t risk losing your clickbank account for spam.

The Steps To Double Your Clickbank or Affiliate Profits.

The following steps are assuming that the customer has responded well to your thank you email and is now on your list.

Step 1. Get an autoresponder and Set up a series of autoresponder messages. The first one should be a thank you message from you just reminding the customer that you’re happy they bought "the name of the ebook" and that you’ll be sending them tips and other related information about the topic of the ebook.

Step 2. Create some useful articles or tips related to the ebook and send them over in a week or two. This will give the customer the time to read the ebook.
Don’t go for the kill yet. It’s important you deliver on your original promise of just providing them with some free tips and information. You’re building a relationship of trust with the customer.

Step 3. Find related lead based affiliate products and services to the original ebook you sold them. Create emails around these lead based offers and send them after your free non promotional tips and articles created in step 2. The great thing about lead based programs is that your customer don’t actually have to buy anything for you to get paid. They’re merely filling out a form to get information or a product already related to what they purchased an ebook on. This makes you look great to the customer. Now you could stop right here if you wanted to and continue to repeat that step.

Step 4. Find another set of related sale based affiliate programs and products. Create emails around these offers and send them out. At this point you’ve built up a trust with your subscriber and they don’t see you as a sales person. They see you as someone that cares about them because you’ve sent them all this free information in the last several days or weeks depending on how you space out the emails. Now they’re inclined to trust you and buy the things you have recommended.

Automated Residual Cash!

This is basically a process that becomes automated after your initial thank you email. As your list gets bigger and you add more messages to your autoresponder, an initial sale of a few bucks can literally double and triple over the course of days, weeks, months and years. That one sale now becomes residual income. That’s how you double your clickbank profits.

This Can Be Repeated Anywhere…

Honestly this technique can be used for an affiliate network you’re part of as long as they give you access to the list of people who converted from your affiliate links. If not, it might just be a matter of asking. The worst they can say is no. Now go and give yourself a raise!

Traffic Jam (TrafficJam.com) Goes Live! What Is John Reese Thinking?

Eddy Salomon — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:18:09 +0000

So John Reese’s Traffic Jam (TrafficJam.com) has finally launched. It’s the second part of the whole BlogRush.com launch that took place earlier this year. BlogRush.com was suppose to be a great service that would provide bloggers free traffic. It worked by installing a widget on your blog. The widget would display posts titles related to your blog topic. Other blogs in return would display your blog post titles on their blogs if it was related. This was all done automatically. So it was basically a glorified traffic exchange program which seem to have a lot of potential at first.

However BlogRush.com was a huge disappointment among many bloggers. Honestly, I won’t lie, I was hating on BlogRush on the inside as well. But because I have a lot of faith in John Reese and no, I’m not a groupie. I just stick by people that have proven to me that they’re real deal and more importantly have helped me make money. So with that said I continued to use BlogRush.com on my blogs but wasn’t getting a lot of the free traffic that was initially pumped as the main reason for joining the network!

But I stayed on my grind and continued to bang out content. Once in a while I would check my blogrush.com stats and it wasn’t very promising. My blog posts were getting a lot of visibility (impressions) but not many of the visitors were clicking. This is made very apparent with the heat meter that they use to display interest in your blog posts. If you wrote great headlines then your heat meter would be on fire which indicated a lot of interest. The flip side is when the heat meter would turn blue and show icicles. It basically meant your headline sucked and thus the heat meter was colder than your wife after calling her fat. See the image below to see what I mean.

With visuals like this, it was a great a motivator to write better headlines to get that elusive on fire heat meter. Eventually one of my headlines caught fire. Coincidentally I also saw more comments to that particular post not to mention some free traffic from the BlogRush network. So I thought to myself, this is a great way to help me come up with more compelling content. So I did what any good marketer would do. I rinse and repeated similar headlines. And wouldn’t you know it, the heat meter was on fire again. So I started to finally get some of this free traffic that was promised by BlogRush.com. But I always wondered to myself what headlines my counterparts were using that were on fire. Because if I knew that then I can rinse and repeat again. Enter TrafficJam.com!

So What is TrafficJam.com & How Does It Help Me?

I think John said it best in his email so I’ll just post it here because I think the description is totally accurate.

"For marketers, this (TrafficJam.com) is the ultimate research tool. You can monitor blogs by niche and keep up with what type of posts are getting the most interest across the Web. This will make it incredibly easy for you to know what type of blog posts you should be making to get more traffic, interest, and popularity for your own blog.

Now you’ll never run out of ideas for new blog posts!

This research data can help you identify untapped keywords and other opportunities.

This site is essentially a LIVE HEADLINE TESTING MACHINE!!! (by topic)"

- John Reese

Now I think he’s pretty much summed it up. I know just by using BlogRush.com it has helped me write better headlines but with TrafficJam.com I can tap into other people’s headlines and ~~steal~~.. I mean mimic what’s working for them. This basically means more traffic for my blog because it’s already proven that it works otherwise their blog posts won’t make the top rankings on TrafficJam.com.

So if you’re looking for free traffic, more comments and even more readers to your blog, then join BlogRush.com and start visiting TrafficJam.com to learn what’s hot in your niche or others. Then just lather, rinse and repeat for your own blog.

How To Get More Subscribers With Dance Club Moves!

Eddy Salomon — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:08:53 +0000

Any marketer or business owner worth their salt will tell you the money is in the list. If all your advertising partnerships disappeared tomorrow, would you still be able to keep your head above water? A lot of businesses would cringe at the thought of this. But then there are smart business owners like our subscribers that wouldn’t even flinch because they know they have a massive list of existing customers that they can tap into. Hopefully you’re one of these smart business owners, because you’re going to find the following article very useful.

For the others, We’re not going to get into the mechanics of building a list and capturing the information. There are great services that handle this such as GetResponse.com which is found in our tools section. But nonetheless when you become up to speed with the technical aspect of list building, this article will still prove useful.

So let’s get in to it. Most of us have been to a dance club at least once in our lives. I’m in my early 30’s so it’s not as appealing to me anymore. Actually by my late 20’s it had lost a lot of its appeal to me. I just didn’t want to be that 30+ year old dude in the club trying to seem cool and hitting on women that looked at me like I was in a walker and wearing adult diapers. If you’re that dude, my condolescences go out to you and your self respect.

In any event, one thing I always hated about the club was that whole waiting on line business. There were a few times where I didn’t have to do this because I was on that magical "List". We all know that list all to well, for better or worst. Have you ever been outside for over an hour in the rain and then some random people just head to the bouncer and tell them they’re on the list and presto, they’re in? I won’t lie, I was so mad at these people that you would’ve thought I had just taken a "Hate"orade bubble bath that night. It was really frustrating for the person on the other side of that cool line.

Everyone wants to be part of the cool list. We all have this high school mentality of wanting to be part of a popular crowd even when you lied to yourself and said that you didn’t. Deep inside you did. Well the visitors to your website have the same mentality. It’s not something we shake off as adults. We still want to be accepted and part of a crowd. So you as a blogger or content producer must play on this primal emotion.

How To Get People To Flock To Your List!

1. This goes without saying but you should always have a call to action on everything you write. Don’t just have a subscription box on your homepage and call it a day. You want that call to action at the end of every piece of content you write.

2. Make the call to action sexy though! When you go to a club you’re trying to look as "fly" as possible. Well most of us do. Your call to action should make your users feel like they’re missing out by not being part of your list. There has to be some unique selling proposition. After all you put a lot of effort in your ad copy, right? Well subscriptions are just as important as sales because they can lead to more of them if you manage your list properly.

3. Make reference to your cool subscribers in your actual content. Remember people are like sheep they want to be lead. So when writing content always make reference to your subscribers in a positive way and link to back to the subscription page. So for instance here’s a sentence you might use. "It amazes me how many people fall for that scam. But fortunately my subscribers already know how to spot these type of scams a mile away." I basically implied that my subscribers were smarter and thus cooler merely for the fact they’re on my list. It’s very easy to do this every time you write. In fact, there shouldn’t be a time this isn’t employed in your articles or content.

By the way, I’m not only a client, I use these techniques in this and other blogs. If you re-read this article again, you’ll see exactly where I used tip #3. So if you treat your content like a dance club you’ll have people dying to get in but the difference is that you welcome them all. Unlike the hottest dance club your users won’t have to grease the bouncer, get frisked or deal with a meat head’s delusional visions of grandeur.

Party is over, lights are on, now go back home and employ these techniques. And for God’s sake stay out the club. Aren’t you a bit too old for that?