What’s your technical IQ when it comes to e-Commerce marketing? It had better be high, or you’re unlikely to achieve success, or at least the kind of success you probably dream of. These days, the field of e-Commerce technology is developing so rapidly that you can’t really sell your products effectively without constant re-education.

It’s a challenge even to keep up with the names and acronyms of all the newly evolving phenomena, and Googling a list of acronyms may not help unless the one you find has been posted within the past year, or more likely within the past few months.

The field of e-Commerce technology is changing so rapidly that you must update constantly.

How does SEO fit into Online Marketing?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) used to be enough to drive website traffic, but now the wide range of techniques under the umbrella of online marketing is required, including Analytics (monitoring the hits you get, and also the “click throughs,” and the “conversions” or sales), social media, and even proper server hosting.

Keywords must be not only placed in your meta tags, but must also populate your site strategically for the search engines to take notice of your site. Saturation (the number of pages at your site that are cataloged by a search engine) and backlinks are crucial for driving traffic. Fortunately, a host of SEM agencies can take care of these complicated details for you.

How is this affecting marketing strategies? First, it is narrowing the range of e-Commerce entrepreneurs. Individuals without the technical skill or knowledge to take advantage of commercial opportunities on the web are simply being left out when it come to the rewards of those opportunities. Along with that comes the growth of the burgeoning industry of SEM agencies.

A few decades ago, the Internet seemed a wonderland where everyone could expand personal opportunities almost without limit. Now limitations have appeared and they are technical in nature. Learn or die has become the normative rule in e-Commerce.

Fortunately, a host of learning programs have appeared, of course. This is e-Commerce, after all, so a demand results in someone showing up to supply it. Adam Smith was right, even in a cyber world context. Are you ready to take advantage of the most up to date changes in the world of web marketing? Well, if not, it’s easy enough to change that!

Understanding The Technical Intricacies of Social Media

Of course, the biggest change in the past few years has been the growth in importance of social media marketing as a tool for selling online and driving website traffic, while also building your brand. Most major sellers have networking sites, and hire professionals to spend time directing and managing that side of their marketing efforts.

Facebook is the largest, so of course at this stage it has the highest volume of users. But it does not offer live help. In fact, it’s rather difficult to get answers from Facebook. One has to sift through page after page of “Knowledge bases,” or wait an eternity for a submitted question to be answered. You may never get an answer.

Some of the other sites may have live help of a chat room or phone variety, but those sites are more likely to charge a fee for your site (as opposed to Facebook, where it’s free), since it’s expensive to staff a help desk in real time, or even an e-mail response capability. Furthermore, those other sites don’t have the gargantuan customer base that Facebook possesses. So most folks go with Facebook, despite the frustrations of using it.

Twitter is becoming an essential tool for the e-Commerce marketer, and it’s easier to use. The site is exceptionally user friendly, and all you really need to know is how to make a tiny URL, and you should also learn how to distill your message to 140 characters. A challenge, but hey, brevity is the soul of wit, so maybe it’s worth it.

Other sites abound, Pinterest, for instance, and with its more business-oriented clientele, LinkedIn. Sometimes it seems that a new social networking site appears every month or so. But these sites are technically easy. They don’t pose the challenges so widespread on the technological side of the e-Commerce field generally.

The appearance of the Smart Phone several years ago has had a tremendous impact on e-Commerce. At this point, a significant proportion of online customers are accessing e-Commerce sites not on their computers, but through mobile devices. This makes a big difference, and a marketer who is not up to date on smart phone technology stands at a great disadvantage.

The profusion of “apps” in recent years has added to the complexity of the field. It is possible to enhance your  sales potential with the introduction of an app, but it involves some savvy about the world of apps, or else some financial outlay to hire experts on the matter.

Other essentials include online transaction processing and electronic funds transfer, both now essentials for e-Commerce success.

Another obvious process is internationalization. In a word, China. The Chinese have gotten into the act during the past decade or so, perhaps belatedly, but with genuine force. Chinese marketers are not to be ignored in the equations of the future, not just in terms of corporate entities, but in terms of workers willing to free lance for low remuneration levels.

The same is true of India, which is flooding the markets for technological services with cheap labor. It is now essential, not just to understand technologies, but to understand the technological workforce, in all of its current changes.

Technology is a two-edged sword. It offers tremendous benefits, but only for those with the expertise to understand and employ those benefits. Technology today, more than ever before, is changing rapidly, at a pace that is daunting even for the most energetic of entrepreneurs. Are you up to the task? If you are, the rewards can be superlative!

Most Internet marketers know that putting a deadline on an affiliate offer increases the conversion rate. When people know that an offer is about to expire, they take action instead of putting it in the back burner.

A Hard Date Is Better Than “Expiring Soon”

When using an auto responder sales funnel, most marketers use the “count down” method. Let’s say the sales funnel is seven days long. The first email would say the offers expires in seven days. The next day’s email will say the offer expires in six days, and so on. It doesn’t matter when a person sign up to the list. They will think the offer will expire in x number of days.

The downside of this method is most can tell it’s an automated setup, and the call to the action is not very strong. A count down is not as effective as stating a hard date. “This offer expires at midnight May 22″ is a lot more effective than “this offers expires in 7 days”. What most email marketers don’t know is there is a way to put a hard date inside an auto responder that auto updates with each new day. Here’s how.

The Aweber {!date} Variable

If your auto responder sales funnel is powered by Aweber, then you can take advantage of the {!date} Variable feature to auto insert a hard date into your emails. So, instead of saying “this offer expires in 7 days” you can say “this offer expires {!date long+7}” and Aweber will auto insert the date seven days from now. You have multiple options for displaying the date (see above).

Taking our example of a 7-day sales funnel, the first email would have an expire date of {!date long+7}, and the next day’s email will have an expire date of {!date long+6}, then {!date long+5}, until it hits {!date long+0}. This way, it doesn’t matter when subscribers sign up to the list. The will get all get a custom hard deadline date that is way more effective than “expiring in x days.”

Pretty cool, right? You can become a member of IM John Chow to find out more email marketing tricks like the above. The {!date} trick is just scratching the surface.

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SEO might sound scary to many bloggers whose sites were penalized by Google Panda or other updates.

But does it mean that SEO is dead?

The debate has been going on; a set of website owners said that they were fed up with search engine optimization and would rather use social media to reach their audience. Hmm!

While the other set of site owners still believe that organic traffic is superior to social and hands-free once you set it up. And to you, what’s your take on this? Let me know on the comment box.

It doesn’t matter what your opinion is at this point. This post is going to show you how thinking out of the box could generate more passive traffic to you.

Search engine traffic is passive

The success of a website lies in its ability to generate passive traffic, income, community and survive the test of time. SE traffic is passive when it’s properly done, but social media requires continuous tweaking.

If all you do is optimize for active traffic like tweeting your latest posts, the chances of your blog becoming a go-to resource in its niche are small.

So don’t be tired of doing SEO.

It’s still alive and if you follow the three tips below, you’ll not only attract free targeted traffic, but you’ll also boost your search rankings in the process – without employing any complicated SEO techniques. So, without much ado, let’s get started…

1.   Define your specialty      

Have you defined your specialty yet?

The problem many bloggers have with SEO is their inability to target a specific niche.

Of course, you could still build a profitable blog been a jack-of-all trade but it’s going to take a lot of time – which you don’t have.

The simple formula to position your web pages higher in Google homepage is to narrow your niche.

Then start dominating the niche, by adding rich, valuable and helpful content. When I ask bloggers what they do online, and the responses I get are usually similar. “I’m a blogger!” One of them answered.

Yes you’re a blogger because you update regularly and you also use WordPress CMS, but that’s too generic of a title.

You can’t drive organic traffic by being a blogger, but when you clearly define your role – that’s where the right optimization can take place.

If you’re a business coach, produce and publish more content in that field and begin to build a following. If you know how to create YouTube videos so well, use it as your edge – and beat the stiff competition.

2.   Evoke curiosity with titles

Did you know that the title is the most important element in any piece of content? It doesn’t matter whether it’s a video on YouTube or podcast on iTunes.

Learn how to create titles that persuades. Let it inspire and spontaneously cause an ideal customer to click just once. That’s all you need to establish a connection.

I’ve come to understand that Google rewards catchy headlines, not because Google spider has eyes to see or intellect to detect your creativity, but because people actually loved and clicked on such titles.

Google spider is like the toddler that needs to be spoon-fed and guided – in other words, whatever people do with your title would determine what Google would make of it.

In this post-panda age, you don’t need hundreds of links to outrank other competing web pages. You only need powerful and valuable titles that evoke curiosity.

Don’t deceive people with your titles, but don’t write generic titles ideas either. Learn from titles that went viral and see what they had in common.

3.   Build a social influence

To get fresh visitors from Google, you need a social influence. You can’t hide under your shell and expect a miracle to happen.

Building a social influence has got nothing to do with Facebook page and wasting time there. Also, it’s got nothing to do with spending 4 hours on twitter – sharing gossips about Lady Gaga.

On the other hand, being social begins with your uniqueness. How you treat others and what inspires you to lend a helping hand to your target audience & readers.

Yes, facebook, linkedin, twitter and all those social media networks are great platforms to put your social lifestyle to work, but it begins with your blog.

Who says a blog is not a social network? Actually, you could use your blog to build a strong community online, and even take it offline like Darren Rowse has been doing.

When you’re a social and loving person, it’d be revealed in your content. You just can’t fake it any longer; especially now that quality content is the permanent secretary of Google. Lol!

Why is SEO so hard?

Have you ever asked such a question before? And to be honest with you, search engine optimization isn’t and will never be hard. If you think it’s hard, I think you should look at the keywords you’re targeting.

If the competition is high, you may conclude that SEO is hard.

But if you become savvy and target local keywords as well as geo-specific key terms – then picking up targeted traffic from Google will be your second nature. Sounds easy…huh?

What challenges do you’ve with search engine optimization? Could you please share your comment in the box below and be explicit – I’ll address the issue in subsequent posts. See you ahead!

I first ran into Junjun Li about seven months ago when I went to pick up $10,000 at the MOBE Add The Nitrous event in San Diego. Junjun was brand new to Internet marketing. He actually got his MOBE license at the event. Since then, he has gone on to become one of MOBE’s rising stars, and was recently rewarded with a brand new MOBE Mercedes-Benz for his hard work.

Junjun’s story is a great one. A skinny boy (his words) from China comes to the US with nothing but the promise of the American dream. Unlike me, Junjun had zero Internet marketing experience when he joined MOBE. Yet, he went on to become one of their biggest licensees and now drives a brand new Merc for free. How did he do it? By following the training and taking action on them. The keywords are taking action. Anyone can go through a training course, but only those who take action will see the results.

Watch the video below to see Junjun take delivery of his new car.

And in case you missed it, this is the video of me picking up my MOBE Mercedes.

Junjun, along with me, will be at the Home Business Summit happening June 7-9 at Hilton Hotel in Long Beach, California. I invite you to come to the Summit to meet Junjun. His story will inspire you. Seven months ago, he was exactly where you are now. Imagine where you can be seven months from now. Junjun got his start by attending an event like the Home Business Summit. Now it’s your turn.

Register for The Home Business Summit

I spend a lot of time hanging out with my ideal readers and there have been some prevalent SEO questions that I would like to answer. The objective of this post is to answer some of these questions. It will help you understand the intricacies of SEO.

1. Should I submit my site to the major search engines?

Great question! Some people think that you need to submit your site often to the search engines. Honestly, it’s a one time thing. Now, it can take the GoogleBot up to 45 days to index a particular page. To speed up this process, there are two things you can do:

• guestpost on other sites in your niche to raise the PR (page rank) of your site
• link your site with Google webmasters tools and take advantage of the ability to have content indexed within 48 hours

One note on PR, there are really only a few benefits nowadays. First, higher PR sites typically sell for more than lower PR sites. Second, higher PR sites stand a better chance at getting indexed quicker. Third, it can be significantly easier to obtain better rankings.

2. What is my competition like?

To some of us seasoned marketers, this is a no-brainer. For others, it’s a legitimate question. First, I suggest you have a very clear understanding of the search terms you’re trying to have search engine visibility for. You can take this list and follow the following steps:

• Use Google Chrome
• Browse via ‘Incognito window’
• Manually enter search terms and see what Google is currently ranking

When analyzing your competition, you need to pay attention to things like: PR, domain authority, links to the domain, links to the post URL, and how well the site or page is optimized for your search terms.

3. What domain extension should I have?

It sucks when you finally come up with a great domain name idea and come to find out that the .com version isn’t available. Here’s what I suggest: manipulate the domain idea until you find a .com version. People automatically think .com when they hear any website domain. If you absolutely love the .org or the .info or whatever, go with it. I absolutely love my blogging.org domain, as blogging is an excellent word to have in the domain name. So.. there are exceptions..

A few more thoughts. Most domain extensions serve specific purposes. For example, if you weren’t a school, then there’d be no need to have a .edu extension; same goes for .gov if you’re not a government. Having a .co, .biz, or .info doesn’t necessarily put you at a disadvantage. Keep your ideal customer in mind and pick the one that best suits them.

4. How can I find out where I stand in the Google rankings?

Honestly, this is a total time waster. People forget that the amount of money they make is directly correlated to specific activities. Blogging with a purpose and promoting that content so that it ranks well is an income generating activity. Finding where you rank, not so much.

Now, obviously everything has its place. I just don’t want you spending too much time dinking around trying to find out where you rank. Having said that, here’s a simple process you can follow.. unless you want to invest in a quality ranking tracking tool:

• Follow the bullets in Step 2
• Stop once you get to page 10. (Any more than that is spending too much time)

Now that I’m back from the Fiji Mastermind, it’s time to resume the weekly Dot Com Pho meetup. Once again, we gathered at the patio of Pho Ba Co for an afternoon of networking and enjoying the Southern California sun. It was 82F and not a cloud in the sky. Felt like I never left Fiji.

On this edition of Dot Com Pho, we show you how to go to the Home Business Summit for free, and Chris Voss from The Chris Voss Show shows off the new Samsung Galaxy S4. It’s a pretty slick phone. Apple will have to burn the midnight oil to top it. Anyone is welcome to join us for Dot Com Pho. Follow me on Twitter to find the time and location of the next one.

Do you feel like you’re not getting ahead as a blogger?

I mean, you’re not getting huge amounts of traffic, active readers, email subscribers and most importantly, you earn meager or no income.

I know that feeling because every pro blogger who’s achieved tremendous success today started from a zero level.

They were once broke, hesitant to begin and had those little voices speaking on their inside. Telling them “what if….”

But they pressed forward. They continued. They studied hard, read blogs and so many books just to escape the trap of failure.

And you know what, they finally cracked the code. The cleared the stumps off their paths and today, they’ve huge social media fans, speaking engagements from every corner and thousands of dollars on their bank accounts.

It’s a personal journey

Yep, you need other business-oriented persons to climb the ladder of success, but blogging itself is a personal journey.

No one is ever going to motivate you as much you’d do to yourself. It doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read or exclusive mastermind groups you belong to, if you’re not determined, blogging will not work for you.

If things aren’t turning out the way you want with your blog, it’s time to ask questions and see if you’re the cause. From my personal experience, I learned that pain can be a stepping stone to greater heights in life.

But I’d not advice you to dwell on that, instead I need you to look forward and see how much $10,000 per month could change your life. At least, to an extent.

In other words, don’t be motivated by pain or the fact that you’ve no money in your pocket; be awakened by the joy of tomorrow. Let VISION lead you.

That’s how you can transform the lives of people and make the world a better place to live in. That’s the biggest motivation that would bring a lifelong prosperity.

Use other people’s time

Successful entrepreneurs use OPM (other people’s money) to expand their frontiers. Bloggers on the other hand should use OPT (other people’s time) to reach a wider audience.

Did you know that thousands of people are waiting to send you huge amounts of traffic and money? In fact, I just discovered this not too long ago.

And that’s why blogging is the most lucrative business tool that any serious online entrepreneur can use to reach out and become the go-to expert in his or her niche.

To get these sets of people to evangelize and win a lot of souls for you, you MUST exchange value with them. The first thing you can do to put the machine to work is to produce exclusive content continually.

Let me give you a scenario: In 2011, I struggled to attract loyal readers to my blog. Every day, I felt like giving up and getting a day job. But something kept me going – perhaps my zeal to change the world one step at a time.

And I don’t mean the whole world here, but my OWN special world. Fortunately, I attended a live conference in my city and the keynote speaker made a terrific statement that changed my business & life.

He said, “Create a definite path for people to follow and they’d fly in like Bees.”

Fast forward to 2012, my blog is already getting a lot of loyal readers and quality backlinks from authority blogs.

Because my readers are tweeting, sharing, citing and telling everyone they meet about my rich content. 95% of the time, I didn’t ask them to share it… it’s a reflex action…

The truth of the matter is that if you spend eons of time to write what your readers will not find anywhere else on the entire web, you’ll generate fresh traffic and you might be lucky, a media agency could pick up your best content and republish it – of course with your permission.

If that should happen to your content, you’re guaranteed 5k – 10k free traffic in 48 hours. Do you’ve enough bandwidth space for that?

It’s time to act…

How many e-books are stored on your hard disk, which you’re yet to read? What about all the bookmarks you’ve on your browser, when do you plan to use those information toolkit?

Here’s my honest advice to you, stop downloading every new e-book and start acting. You already know so much, even as a beginner.

Start writing & marketing and learn along the way. As a rule of thumb, study every product you purchased, before buying another one. It’s high time you begin to act. Don’t you think so?

A wise step you can take this year is to fill your blog with epic content; the type that would remain evergreen, helpful and fresh as the months go by.

You’ve got to change people’s perception about you. The quality of articles, blog posts, videos and other digital materials you put out would determine your worth in the blogosphere. See my content marketing study on how to get your online business to life.

And if you’re looking for a freelance writer who understands how to write good content that can grow your website and income, I’m open for hire.

Kick failure out of your blogging career by getting other people actively involved in promoting your content, ideas and products. Do this and you’ll fly like the Eagle. Leave a comment if you like this post. You’re awesome!

What are some of the most important factors when considering an affiliate network to join? You want to have the right kinds of offers to promote, of course, but you also want to make sure that you’re making the most amount of money as possible. And having faster cash flow is certainly appreciated as well.

Taking these kinds of considerations into account is GuardianAds, a network that says they have a “selected team” that will provide you with “superior results.” Let’s get started with today’s review and see what GuardianAds has to offer for the “best affiliates.”

How Is GuardianAds Different?

In looking through GuardianAds, there are several highlight points worth mentioning.

First, they claim to offer huge payouts and higher conversion rates compared to the many other networks that are out there on the Internet. As an online entrepreneur seeking to make money on the web, this is naturally one of the biggest priorities that you’re going to have. More money is a good thing.

To help you achieve those goals, GuardianAds has over 500 direct-only, 100% unbrokered offers, including rare international offers that you can use to capitalize on the different types of traffic you are able to generate. They say they have “exclusive offers you can’t find” and that if you find anyone else that is offering a better payout, they’ll beat it. That sounds pretty great.

Enjoy Your Weekly Payment

In general, you will find that most affiliate networks operate on a net-30 payment schedule. Some even go as far as net-45 or net-60, meaning that you have to wait a long time before you finally have your earnings in your hands.

GuardianAds is different. They provide weekly payments by default, again helping to improve your cash flow and, thus, helping you be more effective as an online marketer. Weekly payouts are oftentimes only offered to top affiliates upon request, so to have this option activated by default is a definite plus.

A Look at the Dashboard

As can be expected, there aren’t too many surprises when it comes to the affiliate dashboard used by GuardianAds. After logging into the system, you’ll see the main navigation along the header: home, my account, APNs, recent offers, my offers and reports.

Along the right side, you’ll find the contact information for your specific affiliate manager, including his/her Skype and e-mail. GuardianAds boasts that it has experienced affiliate managers that are keen to help you succeed. If you have any special requests, you know where to go.

In the main portion of the dashboard are your top campaigns, as well as some basic stats about your commissions, impressions, clicks, and conversions.

What About the Offers?

With some affiliate networks, you have access to the entire library of offers right off the bat. With others, you have to apply for each one individually. GuardianAds falls into the latter category.

The criteria will presumably vary from offer to offer. When I tried one of the random biz op offers, it was approved instantaneously. Of course, your mileage will vary. It appears that a great number of GuardianAds offers are related to dating or gambling, but they have other categories as well. And as you can see in the screenshot above, the payouts have the potential of being quite high. There are several offers with over $100 CPA.

After you have been approved for an offer, you will then gain access to the offer page, like the one shown here. You’ll see the expiration data, the payout, a description, a preview link, the allowed traffic and any available creatives. In this particular case, there is only a text link to the landing page.

Affiliating with the Guardian

When it comes to affiliate marketing, you’re typically not all that interested in bells and whistles. Instead, it makes a lot more sense to focus on networks and systems that just work. You want to make more money and the philosophy of GuardianAds is in line with that. They have good payouts, a weekly payment schedule, exclusive offers and experienced affiliate managers. There are even loyalty programs and contests.

GuardianAds may not have the largest number of offers, but the hope is that you will have at least a few quality offers that are both up your alley and potentially very lucrative.

CLICK HERE TO JOIN GUARDIANADS AFFILIATE NETWORK