So yesterday afternoon I posted an article on Flash Games Classroom. (Note - This was actually an article I wrote a few weeks ago and submitted to Ezinearticles. It has had a 14% clickthrough rate and a reasonable number of views, so I rewrote that article, updating it slightly for a different audience, so it took about 5 minutes to do the whole post!)

You’ll notice that page has a Tweet Meme “Retweet” widget right at the top, so after posting I used that to Tweet the article to my Flash games Twitter account (about 700 followers). Since then, the page has been retweeted a further 4 times by visitors, and so far over 100 unique visitors have come to the article from Twitter, so 100+ targetted visitors in the first 24 hours for 5 minutes work - not too shabby!

Note that the retweet widget is key - I sent my tweet out to only a small number of followers, but it has the potential for being retweeted by someone with a massive list! You can increase the chances of this happening:

1. Make the content high quality and unique
2. Make it easy for the retweet - have a retweet widget on the page, and keep your own original tweet short (leave room for “RT @yourname ” !!!)
3. Use the retweet widget yourself to send the first tweet
4. Retweet other people’s content - they will be more likely to retweet back!
5. Get follwers who like to retweet! I do this by adding active retweeters myself (I search for “RT learn flash games” for example to find people who have retweeted content containing the terms “learn” “flash” and “games”)

So there you go, a very quick and easy method for getting highly targetted traffic from Twitter on demand!

Anyone got more tips, post them here!

In earlier articles in this series I’ve talked about making money from Flash skills, and the different types of skill you can get paid for.  Today I want to mention something a little different that will appeal to some of my readers.

As many of my regular readers will know, one of my primary interests is gaming, and I’ve been working in the games industry for almost 8 years as a developer and a publisher.  Recently I’ve seen a number of blog posts and articles about beta games testing and how it’s possible to earn an income, from home, by testing games for development companies.

I’m always a little skeptical of such claims, since in my opinion anything you can really get paid proper money for takes real effort, and most of these articles and products seemed to claim that you’d be paid simply for playing games.  However, as a gamer and someone who is always looking for an extra stream of income I was intrigued and decided to investigate further.

Over the past few weeks I’ve researched the subject in detail, bought and read several of the “make money from gaming” guides, and interviewed a good friend of mine who works for a major UK games developer.  Since I had gathered so much information, rather than post it all here I’ve written a short report on the subject called How To Become A Game Tester which you can download for free.

Essentially my findings were as I suspected, there is moreto being a game tester than simply sitting in front of a games console all day and watching the money roll in, but it certainly is a genuine income opportunity and for the right person it can be a great way of earning money, or of getting their “foot in the door” of the hard to break into games industry.

It’s certainly not for everyone, but if it’s a subject that interests you then grab my free report!

This is a proven training system which I believe was originally selling for $397 and is a video based course teaching exact steps for starting out as an affiliate and how to build your successes and become a so called “Super affiliate”.

There’s no catch, it really is free and good solid content.  I guess Ewen’s reasons for giving away free access are that he hope you’ll like his free content so much that you’ll then go on to buy one of his paid courses.  Either way, it’s a no brainer to grab the free course and I believe the offer is only for the first 500 to register so go grab one while you still can!

Note: I am NOT a lawyer and this is NOT legal advice… (sorry, had to be said!)

Fake Blogs

You know the ones.  Normally promoting some weight loss program or something along those lines.  The site is normally set up as a single page promotion to look like a blog post, but of course it’s really just a sales pitch.  They are misleading, and most people would consider them as scams… in my view the new guidelines to crack down on these is a good thing, and won’t affect anything we do as legitimate business people…

Disclosure of commercial intent

What does that mean?  Well basically it’s just being open and honest… if you’re recommending a product to promote it (as an affiliate) then you need to make that clear… something along the lines of “If you decide to click this link and make a purchase I will receive a commission… blah, blah, blah…”

(Like I said - I’m not a lawyer, if you want to know what to write then you need to get advice about this from someone who can give legal advice!)

Again, no big issue for real marketers.  Everyone will have to do it, so there won’t be any disadvantage to having a disclaimer like this on your site… people will get so used to seeing them they probably won’t even read them!

Testimonials

Hmmmm… now this one could catch a few people out!  Basically, the new rules say that testimonials must show “typical results”.

Now, you’ve all seen amazing testimonials right, like the woman who loses 100 pounds in 3 days, or the guy that makes $200,000 in a week following this new system…. then underneath it says “Results not typical - your results may vary” or something similar!

Well, the new rules say that you can’t do that.  Under the new guidelines you need to tell your customers what the TYPICAL RESULTS ACTUALLY ARE!  So under your amazing testimonial you need to put something like “The average user only loses X pounds” or “The average user only makes 3 bucks”!

Is this a biggie?  Well lots of people are worked up about this, and it certainly means a lot of marketers will have to make changes to stay inline, but here’s the deal… Everyone is in the same boat!

That’s right, all the changes you may have to make, affect everyone else too.  The best part is, as Frank Kern wrote in is blog post about this today, these new changes will probably put a bunch of people off!  That means a whole bunch of people will probably disappear from online marketing, and whatever niche you’re in will suddenly have less competition!  All the scammers, and the schemers who can’t deal with the new guidelines will disappear and leave a lot more room for us legitimate marketers!

So my advice - consider this an opportunity for growth.  Let OTHER people worry about what this might do to their business, and YOU just concentrate on growing yours!  Sound like a plan?  Well that’s what I’m planning to do, so here’s to the future! (and yes I had better say it - my results probably won’t be typical, and the average user… well, you know the score!)

Do you (re)tweet?  There’s no denying the massive growth in popularity and power of Twitter in recent months, and as more and more people become Twitter-savvy they are starting to use the service in new and better ways.

One type of tweet which is definitely on the increase in the reTweet (RT) which is where a user likes your tweet so much that they send it out again, to all their followers!  This is not only a massive compliment, but it means extra exposure and often new followers.

Format of a retweet

The usual format for a retweet is to start with the word Retweet, or more commonly just RT, then @username (the person who you are retweeting), then the original tweet.

If the original tweet is short enough that you have a few characters to spare then you can add a comment before the RT:

Comment here RT: @username original tweet goes here

Why retweet?

Retweeting is good for you, your followers, and the person you retweet, here’s why…

When you retweet you’re taking a useful/interesting tweet that many of your followers won’t have read, and allowing them to see it.  Since you found is useful/interesting/funny/etc and your followers by definition are interested in similar subjects to you, chances are they will like it too!

So you’re helping your followers by giving them content, you’re helping the person you retweet by exposing them to your followers who will likely be interested in what they have to say.  This in turn helps you by increasing your own followers loyalty, and probably getting the attention (and probably a follow) from the person you reteweeded (is that a word??) A win, win, win situation!

Getting retweeted

Of course the most value when someone retweets is for the original tweeter, so how do you get more of your own content reteweeted?  Here are 4 top tips to get more retweets…

1. Firstly, post high value tweets which help people.  Usually tweets which link to useful articles, videos, blogs or software tend to get retweeted often - any links to free things tend to get retweeted!
2. Use keywords in your tweets.  The more targetted your keywords the more chance they will get picked up and retweeted by new followers.
3. Keep your tweet short.  With only 140 characters, if your tweet is too long there won’t be enough room to add RT @username at the beginning which means people will have to edit your tweet… and people are lazy!  make sure you use shortened URLs for links and leave at least enough characters for your username and four extra (for “RT @”)
4. Lastly - don’t be shy about retweeting other people.  If you retweet often you’ll probably find that other people retweet you back!

So what are you waiting for?  Get out there and start reTweeting!

Now guessing is a great starting point.  You need to put yourself into your user’s shoes, think about what they are likely to be searching for, and that is your starting point for your keyword research - but it really is the start, not the end!

The next step is to take that list of what you think your visitors will be searching for, and plug them into a keyword tool to find out which ones are getting searched in decent volume, and then also to see how competitive those terms are and whether you think it’s worth trying to rank for them.

Choosing the right keywords

Sometimes the difference between a good search phrase, that will get you loads of traffic, and a bad one which won’t can be just a single word - or even a single letter!  Let me give you an example…

One of my websites, Kwikgames, offers free Flash games to visitors.  Each month I take a look at my stats and keywords to see if things need adjusting, or if I can spot a gap in the market which is worth trying to rank for.

Recently I decided to try and rank for “Free word games“.  I had already identified it as potentially viable, with a reasonable amount of monthly traffic, and it looked like I would be able to rank for the term over time with a little work.  According to Google’s keyword tool the term gets around 110,000 searches each month - not too shabby!

But look what happens if I accidentally miss the S off of games… “Free word game” only shows 18,100 monthly searches - almost one tenth of the volume!  And adding one extra word so it becomes “free Flash word games” drops down to less than 1000 searches per month!

Now if I had only guessed at my keywords, and thought that my visitors might be searching “free word game” rather than “free word games” I would have missed out on a slice of almost 100,000 visitors each month, yet all 3 of these variations are relevant to my visitors!

How to find good keywords

Thankfully you don’t have to guess… and you don’t even have to spend any money!  There are some great paid keyword tools out there, and I use one of them myself, but the one I’m recommending you start with if Google’s free tool at https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

You can use the tool in 2 different ways.  Firstly, you can type one or more keyphrases in and hit the “Get keyword ideas” button to get a list of related terms along with their respective monthly search volumes, and an indicator of how competitive they are.

Secondly, you can enter one of your cometitor’s website URLs and you’ll see a list of the keywords they rank for, along with the search volumes.

If you’ve not done much in the way of keyword research in the past this is a great way to start.  Look for phrases which have a reasonable monthly search volume, but don’t look too competitive.  It’s tempting to see phrases with massive numbers and try to rank for them, but unless you can rank for a term the number of monthly searches are irrelevant.

As an example, of I take “word” out of my example phrase above and just try “free games” the keyword tool returns over 30 million monthly searches!  While it might be tempting to try and rank for that, I know that the competition is just way too fierce - I’ll never in a million years rank above sites like yahoo games or Miniclip!

So spend some time looking for terms with good volume, and less competition where you can “slip under the radar” and get a piece of the action.  As a very rough guide, a site in the number 1 spot in Google can expect to get around one third of the clicks - so if you rank #1 for a term which gets 1000 searches a month you can expect to get around 300 - 350 clicks from that.  The number 2 spot tends to get significantly less and so on, with the number 10 spot getting only 1 - 2% of the clicks.  Knowing that you can work out roughly what volume of traffic to expect from the keywords you’re aiming to rank for depending on where you rank!

Watch out for a follow-up to this post in the near future where I’ll be talking about how to closely track your own rankings, and analyse your competition!

Well, if you’ve on any Internet Marketer’s email list you’re bound to have come across such offers, and you may or may not have had any success with them.  Once thing I’ve noticed though, is that all of these “Twitter marketing systems” have been missing a huge opportunity for using Twitter to help increase your natural search engine traffic… let me explain!

Twitter allows you to search in real time.  What that means, if you can find out what people are tweeting NOW, by the minute, 24/7.  That means when a news story breaks, or a product gets released, or an important blogger writes a hot article you can start to get people’s reactions right away.  That gives you an opportunity to create followup content, and get ranked fast for things you know people will be searching for in the coming days.

The easiest way to explain this is with an example…

Twitter natural search bump

One of my websites is a free Flash games portal called Kwikgames.  The site hosts a bunch of free games and draws quite a decent amount of traffic which is then monetized through advertising and selling brended games.  One of the most popular games this year is called Crush The Castle.

A few days ago, the makers of Crush The Castle released an update.  Called, Crush The Castle Player’s Pack, it was essentially a sequel with 50 new levels.  Within hours hundreds of game site owners were tweeting about the new release in the hope of getting people to their sites to play the new game.  I saw some of these tweets, and immediately added the game to Kwikgames, and wrote a short blog post about the game.  24 hours later I added another short blog post, both of which linked to the game game…

The result?  Within 48 hours of reading those first tweets I was on the first page of Google for the game, and my stats were showing a steady stream of visitors to the new game… visitors that were coming direct from natural search and which I wouldn’t have had if I’d not been on Twitter!

The best part is that this is so simple, and easy to repeat.  Just keep an eye on Twitter, see what’s hot, create a blog post or two and bingo - a boost in your traffic.  I believe it can be done in any niche, at any time.  OK, so you’ll need a site which already ranks reasonably well in Google, but any half decent blog with a PR4+ would easily suffice.

So there you go - my method for an instant traffic boost from Twitter!  Give it a try, and leave a comment with your results!

From reading emails from visitors, and comments left on posts, and also due to the changes in my own businesses, I will be changing the focus on the blog to a degree.  While it will still be focussed on online business, working from home, and building multiple streams of income using the web, my future posts are likely to be less elementary.

In the past I’ve blogged about such topics as time management, building CMS sites with Wordpress, and creating content, I believe that the majority of my readers are looking for information which is of more immediate use.  So I’ll be sharing tips and ideas to help you develop your online businesses, which you can implement today!  From great tools I’ve found online, to methods for increasing traffic or conversions, to methods for improving site design, I’ll still be sharing everything I find but many of the posts are likely to be shoerter, more to the point, and of more use to the average online entrepreuer.

I hope you like the new format, and if you do I hope you join in the conversation and leave the odd comment.  Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be sharing some background about businesses successes I’ve had in recent months, including my results from trialing the Niche Profit Classroom system which I blogged about in the spring.  I also have a freebie for anyone who uses Flash, and a way of using Twitter to actually give real results fast and increase your traffic.  So watch out for those, and add me on Twitter, Facebook or join the email newsletter to stay in touch…

It’s good to be back!

The 30DC run a pet project of Ed Dale, of Stompernet fame, and is far and away the best and most complete free course on Internet business.

As the name suggests, the course lasts for 30 days, and each day you’ll learn new skills with the aim of making a profit by the end of the course.  Now in its third year, 30DC has produced amazing results with past students, and each year it seems to get better and better.  In fact, even if you did 30DC last year and you’re already making a living online, I still suggest taking this year’s challenge (I am!!) because they always teach the latest tools and tactics and I defy anyone to take the course and not learn something that will move their business forward.

Head over to Thirty Day Challenge now and see what it’s all about!  The challenge itself kicks off tomorrow, but there is already a ton of pre-challenge training on the site, and the daily training videos stay up all year so even if you don’t read this post for a couple of weeks or months it’s still totally valid!