newbies deserve to earn money online too!

Why wasting time building backlinks??

2009-05-21T04:24:00.000-07:00

Hi preciuos reader.
Veeeery long time no post, I know.

Today I´m back to share my opinion about this:

Why building backlinks if you can easily dominate with a good article?

Especially when you have a hihgly competitive niche or product, it will take you forever to build a reasonable amount of backlinks.

I´d rather invest the time in some (5-10) very keywordrich articles, because they reach top exposure and they are there to stay!

Why do I need my site on top 10 when the article does the same work, and almost automatically gets a high ranking??

Need your minds here...am I wrong??

How I get 50 visitors per week for free..

2008-11-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody!

Long time no post, you´re right.

That´s not because I quit IM or anything, absolutely not.

I was very very busy building another niche (some recent posts deal with this..).

What can I say? I got news!

Weeks and months of new experiences I like to share with you here.

Here is number 1:

Something I totally underestimated in terms of generic traffic generation.

We all, me included struggle to show up on googles frontpage right?

After my first sandbox experience (still not over..) I can tell you of something very positive..

Did you ever plan to optimize your niche or whatever business you own for pics??

Well, you should!

Numbers in my statcounter records prooves that I get around 50 visitors per week from google pic search!(Remember it´s a niche!)

Why is that?

It´s not the image alt text, but the filename!

So if your product is "little helper 2" you should definitely make sure to name your product picture exactely like that!

Or, go even deeper: you have a picture of your little helper 2 showing a 20ml bottle.

Go name your picture "little helper 2 20ml bottle".

You might not believe what people search for!

Now that I know, I carefully name my pictures according to my keywords, and it will help you too.

Again, it´s not about the alt text, but the filename!

I hope this helps you and I´d love to read your comments for sure..

See you soon!

Mike

Page 1 Rankings for my new project with Seodoc!

2008-05-19T16:08:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!

In my recent post I introduced to you SEODOC, a free to test SEO optimisation tool and I am starting loving it.

I have a new niche project in germany and it´s not even ready but I have page 1 rankings for 5 pages in google already!

I optimized them to 80% with SEODOC and I have not started building backlinks yet!

This is just great!

See you!

Free SEO Tool.

2008-04-21T11:06:00.001-07:00

Hi everybody.

Yesterday I discovered something great if you need to improve your website´s ranking.

It´s called SEO Doc and you can test it free for 1 day. No need to enter creditcard details.

I´d highly recommend investing a few hours optimizing your site.

Here´s a screenshot..click to visit site.

Secret traffic strategies

2008-04-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

As I mentoined in the social networking post earlier, pages like Squidoo can give an instant boost to your traffic within only a few hours. Why that?

Well, Squidoo is wellknown to the googlebot and has a pretty high Pagerank.

Sites with high traffic, high pagerank and lots of fresh content every day get spidered by the search engines a lot more often than i.e. my site ;-(

If you make a new, keyword-rich post to your Squidoo lens, it can result in a google page 1 search result! Of course not forever but if you´re lucky a couple of days.

I highly recommend you have your own Squidoo lens and post about the things you do.

Another very, very effective method is to use a slide-upload directory like Slideshare.

Here you can knock together a Powerpoint or PDF page and upload it there. Results a amazing!

This is really done in minutes and works like crazy.

Moving done.

2008-04-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

Hi, I´m back with a new post.

The moving is done, I decided to keep this blog and redirect the newbieplayground to my wordpress blog (for SEO purposes). So nothing will change for you if you type in the blogspot.com adress. The-newbie-playground.com will now lead to the new wordpress landing page.

Now let´s finally get back to work ;-)

Earn extra Cash!

2008-04-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

Here are some recommended cash generators for you.

Easy to implement to your daily business.

Adbrite(Like Google Adsense..put code on your site..)

Adsense (The most famous money maker)

Kontera (Put code on your site and it will work like magic)

I´m moving!

2008-04-13T15:06:00.001-07:00

Hi everybody.

I decided to move the newbie-playground to another server t gain full access over the blog. I use my godaddy free hosting account.

There will be no changes for your visits, but the look will change.

Please note tat the playground will not be accessible in full for 48 hrs.

Sorry for that!

See you on the other site ;-P

First videos coming soon..

2008-03-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

I´m here to announce thet I´m busy creating how-to videos for you.

The first one would be about google adwords I think.

Stay tuned!

Ewen Chia´s Superaffiliates Membership Review.

2008-03-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed that on the widget to the right, there is a coloumn "Currently testing".

I have now tested Mr. Ewen Chia´s Superaffiliates membership for more than 1 month.

I have a sneak preview video showing you around in the member´s area.

Non-members of this blog, please join us to see the text and video review. (enter your name and email underneath the red button)

Targeted ads continued

2008-03-09T04:59:00.000-07:00

So, now you get an idea of whether your product is hot or not. Please note that there are competitors out there interested in promoting the same product and generate impressions too. I couldn´t find a way to determine those..I guess it´s quite impossible.

Once you decide to focus on that product you can do the following:

Edit your existing adwords ad to find more keywords matching your product.

There are tools like goodkeywords, overture and so on, but agree when I say that the best keywords are those being typed in "live" ?!

Yes, there is a way to gather keywords from people which are the best because you have proof they work and are up-to-date.

What you need to do:

Go to your adwords ad, and use the quick-add button to add more keywords.

If your product was "stress-ex" (again ;-)), then you should now focus on what it is for or what it can help people with.

Obviously, it can help people combat stress.

So, knowing that is good, but to use "stress" as a keyword is maybe not the best idea.

But, go ahead and do it! Even without those "" !

Wat we want to have know is a broadmatched keyword that will gather keywords around them from real people clicking your ad.

Unfortiunately, there is no way to see which keywords triggered your ad unless somebody clicked it. But then still, using a broadmatch keyword, you can´t tell right away if the actual search phrase was i.e. "stress relief", "how to ease stress symptoms"..or whatever with google adwords, at least not easily.

So what can you do to finally grab those real keywords??

Well not too much of work.

Step 1: get yourself an account at www.statcounter.com (if you already have a tracking system, that´s fine you can use that!) and create a project (invisible counter code).

Step 2: If you already have a promotional website for your product, which you can edit (you have to install the tracking code!) then copy and paste your tracking html code into that page.

If you don´t have a website yet, a simple blog will do. Just knock together a blog at blogger.com or wordpress.com and paste some content about your product there to have a good ad relevance (this helps you keepping cost per click low). And install the tracking code aswell.

Step 3: Link your adwords ad to this new site.

Step 4: Make your ad text more appealing, just as if you wanted to start selling already ( you will have costs for the clicks..so why not make some money while testing, huh?)

Step 5: Turn the content network (campaign settings) on, because we are now able to track the keywords.

Step 6: Choose your budget wisely!

-Now your keyword stress begins triggering your ad.

Here is the great thing: Once you get your first clicks, you can monitor every activity in your statcounter backoffice.

See who clicked when, where and most importantly: what keyword did this person use!

I use the exact same system and I try to have it setup before friday of a week to get best information over the weekend.

After a few days, you can check the "keyword analasys" in your backoffice and find very very helpful keywords to use for your future campaigns!

Best of luck!

Where to find your buyers? What are targeted ads?

2008-03-01T02:09:00.000-08:00

Here is another very important part about advertising. Targeting your audience.

I will be focussing more on affiliate marketing here than on network marketing because networkers are looking for people interested in making money online so everybody wants this and the competition is about a google ;-)

Let me explain simply:

"Imagine you were dying to have i.e. a nice tuna filet for dinner tonight.

Imagine you had a boat and now you would head to the shores to start fishing.

At a place you feel comfortable, you drop the anchor and start fishing.

How do you think chances are to find that certain fish when fishing in a place that is crowded by thousands of different sorts of fish?"

Ok, maybe you are have a special bait or technique and a great portion of luck.

But honestly, it seems pretty unlikely that you will have tuna for dinner, except you run to the next supermarket, of couse ;-)

What would you do the next time?

First of all you would want to learn about the fish you want, where it lives, what bait to use and you will do a lot better next time.

That´s pretty much what you should do when you are promoting a special service or product online.

Just putting an ad out there in front of a broad audience will not give you results!

Do some research on your product first, find out what it can help people with, find out where those poeple hang out and maybe test if there is a need for your product at all.

How to do that you may now ask yourself.

I do it that way:

A couple of months ago, I wanted to create a new niche website where I could review and focus on a special product in order to sell it and get commissioned.

I started out using google. If the name of the product was i.e. "stress-ex" (sorry, no better idea right now;-), then I´d first type it into the google search to see if there is any competition. (search results to the right top). To get a precise overlook, I type the name of the product between ""´s so I can make sure I get no related results, but only for that exact term.

Let´s say there are about 50 to 500 results, that would be great and there could be some pieces of the pie left for you (competition low).

The next step would be to find out if there is a need for this product at all.
There are many recommendations to find that out, but I do it using google adwords because it´s absolutely "live" and reliable if you set it up right.

So I make a quick keyword targeted ad and use ONLY the product name as a keyword. You have to DISABLE the content network search to do this, otherwise all this makes no sense at all.

The ad text should not be teasing or anything at all because this time you don´t want anybody to click it and cost you money!

Once the ad gets it´s first impressions, you can pretty much say 1 impression equals 1 person being interested in your product, because he/she was looking for that exact keyword which is your product.

Even if you get only 5-10 searches per day it can still be a lucrative product.

To be continued..

Tonight we dine in hell..;-)

2008-02-25T14:59:00.000-08:00

Picture borrowed from allposters.com

You know, one of my favourite movies is 300 actually.

I feel like there is a big clue which is suitable for internet marketing newbies too:

If you´ve seen the movie (if not: do so..please!!), you will know that those 300 spartians bravely faced the battle against the big force of some 100.000 persians (or a million? ok, there is a little hype in this movie..)

This is David vs. Goliath.

This is a newbie entering internet marketing.

I remember myself facing this huge competition online those days and it is still there and growing every day.

But I did not care, because I believed in what I did and still love what I do.

Let´s forget about the final of the 300 movie for a second (haven´t seen it? That´s great at this point ;-)) and focus on the brave warriors who did not give in.

Here´s the message: it´s always worth going for what you believe in, and chances are great that you can make it.

I love to fight for what I want..do you??

P.S.: Got myself a poster of the picture above..yeah, go laugh at me, but for me it´s great motivation!

Free traffic: the famous "Trafficswarm".

2008-02-23T06:33:00.000-08:00

Let´s have a look today at Trafficswarm.

Trafficswarm is one of my famous traffic generators, for almost 5 years now.

This service is designed to bring you free traffic to your website and the system is simple.

Surf other member´s websites-earn credits-turn credits earned into impressions of your website. Sounds easy doesn´t it?

Well, it is.

It´s recommended to make Trafficswarm your browser´s start page, which means any time your are going to open Internet Explorer, Firefox or whatever browser you prefer, you earn a credit.

Trafficswarm is well-known and it has 1000´s of members which could be your customers very soon.

Thumbs up for this service!

Check it out:

Trafficswarm

Advertising 2.0 : Social Networking

2008-02-21T15:16:00.000-08:00

Ok, you have already heard of Pay-per-click, free classifieds, mailexchangers, safelists and articlewriting. Those are the common instruments of advertising online.

But in the last few years, social networking became very famous.

What is that? Well, basically places where you create your profile and most importantly share sources.

Let´s say you find a video or website you liked for certain reasons, then you can share it with other people in those communities.

S.B. is just perfect for making friends, build relations, find stuff that others liked which can help you and finally: free traffic to your website!

I will now tell you some of the biggest websites`URL´s, but please: do not go there and start spamming! This is not going to work!

Gaining traffic from this "modern" source is a project to start immediately, build consequently and giving you results in a few weeks or even months from now.

I´d recommend you to sign up with those communities and complete your profile before you do anything else. You can´t build trust when you hide yourself. I´d strongly recommend to upload a picture of you too.

Then invest, let´s say at least 30 minutes every day to participate in those communities. That can be commenting on someone´s post, enter an active discussion, or starting a discussion, whatever.

The main focus should be on getting noticed as a serious person which is helpful for the communtity.

Don´t forget to put your link in your profile.

Here are the famous places for social networking:
Facebook(Make friends)
Digg (Become an authority by submitting and rating articles or news)
Myspace (Create your profile, show others what you like, make friends)
Sumbleupon (Social bookmarking, rate websites here, submit your site (s) once i.a.while)
Friendster (make friends)
Squidoo (A funny place to hang out! Create a lense (blog-like) with a high pagerank here.)

AGAIN! Because it´s very important:

DON`T just go there, knock together an account and spam! Edit your profile honestly, participate and communicate with others, then you´ll see the most honest traffic to your website ever!

Start today and grow your audience, it will pay out!

Digg.com is a very precious tool for your google listing too.. I´ll focus on that soon!

The 4 most common mistakes newbies in network marketing make.

2008-02-19T09:24:00.002-08:00

There are countless network marketing or MLM companies rising on the internet almost every day.

They promise riches, financial freedom and often times they promise it would be easy and quick to reach those goals.

I think this is what most people looking for an opportunity online are longing for, but at the same if they believe in that, that is mistake number 1!

Number 1: They think the money comes quick and easy. Well, the disappointing truth is that this is not true. I had people in my downlines saying they are going to quit after 1 week. Not only because there was no money coming in but also because they maybe have spent money to get in or they spent money for advertising without talking to me first. Especially network marketing is time consuming when you have no experience. Prepare for a long journey that pays out!

Number 2: Their social surrounding. Often it turned out that people want to quit because none from his social surrounding (family/friends) believes in what this person is doing. They only ask how much money came in (after one week..). It´s disappointing and embarrassing if no money was made at that point of time but everyone has to be honest. Often times people quit when the success is right at hand because friends and family keep those entrepreneurs from believing in what they do. Stay focused, no matter how hard it is!

Number 3: A lack of commitment. In my first network marketing I had thought everything comes without effort. It was a time before the Internet got that popular. I was busy telling everybody how much money I would earn soon while forgetting about putting work into the whole business. This is an effect you can monitor easily when there is a network marketing opportunity that is free to start: People sign up and lay back. Joining the network marketing business requires hard work in the beginning. Work hard in the beginning, it´s a business. Every effort will pay out. Maybe not tomorrow but sooner or later!

Number 4: They sponsor people and don´t care about them. I have to admit, helping other people 24/7 can be very exhausting. But that is the way network marketing works. I watched some gurus personally sponsor 100´s or even 1000´s of poeple. That´s nice in first place and will give you the fame and maybe some bonus money. But in network marketing you would want to build a residual or passive income. Work hard for a year (a few years maybe) and then lay back for the rest of your life, that is what makes network marketing so interesting. You will not reach your goals when you refuse to help others reaching their goals!

Making money online fairytale

2008-02-17T08:39:00.000-08:00

Many people dream of a second income online. They bounce from A to Z, believing in headlines saying "make money quickly" "make money easily". People get frustrated after a week or so when they finally realized that this is just not true! Most people continue investing, learning, trying for a certain period of time and then quit because they still didn´t make a dime but probably had lost a couple of 100´s of dollars. That´s why making money online is just a fairytale for them.

Folks think people who really made a big living online, achieved this over night. The truth is that some 97 % of those trying to make money online fail!

And those who made it worked hard for months and years!

But I don´t want to kill your motivation here..I can tell there are not only "downs" but also "ups" which are really fun to experience.

And there is still a lot of money to be made online, even when you feel there´s no piece of the pie left for you!

Some 4-5 years ago, who would have known that social bookmarking sites like stumble upon or communities like youtube and myspace would rise with such enormous success?

Nowadays those are important tools for every online entrepreneur.

Meaning, there will always be progression on the internet, new services will rise and so do new markets and products.

Therefor the internet will continue to be a very interesting source of income for a very long time to come.

Promoting your business offline

2008-02-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you might get the feeling that there are millions of competitors already dominating your market. You know, the sad truth is that that´s just how it is unless you´ve found a great micro-niche.

Then it´s time to think about offline advertising.

You know, the old-fashioned style using:

-Flyers
-Newspaper ads
-A Sticker on your car
-Posters
-Wear a shirt with your domain on it

Or simply talk about your business.

You´ll see there is almost no competition.

O.k., there is a bit of the risk that people finding your ad have no internet access (are there still such individuals ??), that´s why you use your telephone numbers.

I´m currently designing flyers for just that reason, you know I have a website comparing DSL prices from different providers. This way I can collect leads to my website aswell and build trust face-to-face.

Think about it!

Domains

2008-02-12T11:21:00.000-08:00

Domains are the place where people can find your content.

I´m not mentioning hosting here because if you prefer blogs, you will not need your own hosting.

If you create your own pages, well there has to be a place where they have to be saved online, so you would need hosting.

My favourite place for domains and hosting is Godaddy, they have cheap rates.

Blogs can also have a domain, if you redirect the domain directly to blogs.

Many people use a combination of blogs, domain and hosting using Wordpress Software.

This way you have easy control over your blog and almost no limitations in terms of design and addons.

Note: If you are a member of GDI , you already have domain+webspace.

The don´t list!

2008-02-12T04:45:00.000-08:00

Things you should avoid doing!

- If you have an MLM business: never sponsor people and leave them alone!

- Never use blatent or agressive writing in forums to promote your business!

- If you have leads for your business: do not overload them with emails (but DO follow up!)!

- Never spend a big daily budget for google ads before you made sure your ad is responsive!

- Do not SPAM! Autoresponders like Getresponse have a built-in double-opt-in method, so this is already taken care of.

- If somebody unsubscribes from your list, do not contact him again, that´s SPAM too!

- Never buy ebooks or software before you have found reviews for them on the internet!

- Do not practise clickfraud. That means do not click on a competitors paid ad, i.e. google adwords, multiple times to cost him money!

To be continued..

Using blogs

2008-02-11T16:26:00.000-08:00

Whether you have a business or not, blogs can help.

Why? Blogs can be created in minutes, serving you in different ways.

You have a website and need backlinks to improve your google ranking? Create a blog (blogger.com would be the best choice as google aquired that service.) and use the same keywords in it´s content, then put a link on it pointing to your website. There you go..another backlink!

Also a blog does not require html knowledge, maybe you might choose a blog over a website when you can´t do html.

And the best thing about blogs is: they are for free!! I currently have about 15 sale-blogs, each promoting products, there is no limit.

Tracking your efforts..

2008-02-11T16:16:00.000-08:00

Well, I have great news!

You agree when I say that it is crucial to monitor your website visits? You better do!

I can recommend a free tool, called Statcounter.

In the free version, it can log up to 500 visits providing information about who visited your site from where how long using what browser with what resolution.

This tool is just great for beginners!

Have a look at Statcounter

Affiliate marketing, what is it?

2008-02-11T14:31:00.000-08:00

Well, honestly the number 1 income source online!

Amazon kind of invented or discovered this system first and today, almost every company selling online has an own affiliate programm.

How does it work?

There is the merchant, he has products that he wants to sell. The old-fashioned way is to spend big on advertisement to sell the products.

The idea was, if there were people who have a website and can refer people to their website or recommend their product, they´d save on advertisement and pay the affiliate. They only have to pay the affiliate if he generates a sale. So it´s really a win-win situation!

There are multiple ways of selling as an affiliate today, bum-marketing, niche-marketing, email marketing or stealthy, subtile ways of marketing.

Each way has it´s own rules and requires individual tactics.

A very famous moneymaker is selling Clickbank products. They ave a huge marketplace with ebooks tho choose from.
I myself got involved with niche marketing and found it very interesting and lucrative.

A contact of mine, Mr. Andrew Hansen from Australia, had helped me a lot with his great work Nichemarketingoncrack.

You know, it´s funny as a marketer: in most cases you buy ebooks and at the end of the day it was just another waste of money. But sometimes you buy an ebook and after finishing it you feel like it took you to at least the next level in the matter of wisdom.

That´s exactly what I thought when finishing Nichemarketingoncrack.

I love it!

Ok, enough of that!

Tastes are different and maybe you´ll find other methods like being more for you. That´s ok!

Online marketing shall be fun!

A quick tip for affiliate marketers..

2008-02-11T14:11:00.000-08:00

You are desperately trying to sell other people´s products and your conversion is lower than your basement?

Make sure to always give away something for free like an ebook or amazon gift certificate (this one goes great!) with every purchase. There is always competition out there, so your offer has got to be better than others!

Make google love your site!

2008-02-11T13:27:00.000-08:00

Here some SEO (search engine optimization) tips you should know:

Google´s top criteria for ranking a website high are:

- Content (your content must be good, optimized for your keyword(s) and unique) !
- Backlinks (the more sites out there linking to your site, the higher it will rank) !
- Good link structure within your website(s) !
- Services, meanwhile aquired by google like Youtube (put a vid on your site!), Blogger (why not use Blogger to create content instead of websites?) and feedburner (update people who join your blog via feeds!) are always friends of the googlebot.