This got me thinking about the post I made last year about this and that I can still improve on each of the lessons I wrote about back then.

Have A Plan But Play Each Point

I’ve gotten better about mapping out my daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals but I still find myself worrying about the big picture rather than doing the task at hand. Whether this is fretting over the right keywords to use for a post or checking my link building success, I still need to concentrate more on simply completing the task I’m working on and trusting that it will start to come together eventually.

Luckily, I’ve had the help of Mark Hansen of TheNicheStoreBuilder.com who will tell me when I’m wasting time worrying about nonsense instead of just doing the work. Thanks, Mark!

Test Even If It’s Worked Before

This is an area I actually need to cut back on. I second guess myself way too much and I need to remember that testing is best done AFTER you’ve had some success with a method. In other words, refine a method rather than jump all over the place trying different methods.

I have a feeling I’m far from alone in this area. I think when internet marketers lack at least one huge success they tend to think that everything they’re doing is at fault. This causes the type of method jumping I referred to earlier.

If It’s Not Working, Try Something Else

Hand in hand with the above. I’m currently TOO willing to try something else. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean we should stick with one thing until we’re bankrupt. But we should try to refine a method before completely abandoning it. The difference between taking what we’ve learned to sharpen our focus as opposed to using any failure as an excuse to abandon a technique.

Take Risks

I’ve made great strides in this area but have a long way to go.

Just as there are different sized risks, each person has their own risk tolerance. Find yours and make sure that you stay in the habit of taking risks you are comfortable with. Once you start having success with these smaller risks, you can build up your risk tolerance and start taking larger risks. In time you’ll even be able to step outside your comfort zone. Remember to reward yourself for any and all risks you take.

Don’t Let One Failure Linger

Just as I reported last year at this time in my post “Six Lessons To Learn From Roger Federer“, Roger suffered a devastating loss at the hands of Rafael Nadal in the 2008 Wimbledon final. Did he feel bad? Hell, yes! Did he quit tennis? Hell, no! In fact, he turned around and beat Andy Murray at the 2008 US Open.

This is an area I need quite a lot of work in. I let failures get into my soul and hang around in there too long. If Roger showed me one thing in the Wimbledon final it was that what happened last year or last minute does not have any power over you unless you give it power over you. My inspiration is that I know I’ll have massive success even if I master ONLY this lesson.

Remember That You Are Human

Failure is human. But you know what? So is success! Being able to step back and admit you are fallible is an important first step. Keeping this lesson in mind will help your development in all of the other areas as well.

Post from: Senjo Marketing

The Federer Lessons Revisited

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Here are some quick facts you should know:

• Google uses broad match by default and WordTracker uses exact match
• Google has a vested interest in the search numbers being larger than they possibly are
• WordTracker uses DogPile.com and MetaCrawler.com to compile their data and nobody knows what Google uses
• WordTracker allows you to get results for the searches that Google returns “not enough data” for
• Google is best for quick and broad keyword searching while WordTracker is best for fine-tuning

Read Ros’ Google vs WordTracker Post

Post from: Senjo Marketing

WordTracker Or Google For Keyword Research

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This got me thinking.  What is the best approach to take on landing pages?  The carrot or the stick?  The answer: both!

The Value Of The Carrot

Of course, if you want to provide extra value to your visitors you’re going to have to give them something they can’t get anywhere else.  This means unique content.  Something you’ve written, produced or had done for you.  It gives your visitor the feeling that you do care about their business and let’s them know you’re willing to go the extra mile to get it.

But you can go too far with this.  I’ve seen landing pages that took me more time to read what came with the product than the product itself.  I’ve had bonuses actually cause me to back away because it made the product look like it couldn’t stand on its own without them and came across as desperate.

The Value Of The Stick

Likewise, I’ve seen landing pages where before they even tell you what the product does they’re telling you about how limited it is and how quickly they’ll sell out.  While this can be true for some products, most of the time it puts me way off because I refuse to be threatened into a purchase.  I think most people feel the same way.  When was the last time you read the words “act now or else” and reached immediately for your credit card.

The Solution Lies In Between

I read a masterfully written landing page this morning where the author obviously had copywriting skills.  They started out talking about the product in depth including how it compared to others in its market.  They offered an act now bonus and mentioned that the other products in the market charged a subscription fee which they did not.  They hinted that they weren’t sure how long they could offer all of the product features without a subscription and still be competitive.  That was it.  No buy now or else deadline and no burial by bonuses.

This is where I think the answer lies.  An honest accounting of the product benefits and bonuses(carrot)while hinting at a sense of urgency(stick).  I would have bought the product in an instant if I didn’t already own it-LOL!

What about you?  Have you seen some really well-written landing pages that just struck a chord with you?  Did they lean more toward the stick or the carrot or balance in between?  Leave us a comment and tell us what you think.

Post from: Senjo Marketing

Do You Use A Carrot Or A Stick On Landing Pages?

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The one inescapable fact of internet marketing is that in order to make sales you’ve got to have traffic and in order to get traffic you’ve got to have backlinks. Google pays a lot of attention to who you link to, who links to you and the anchor text that is used in the linkings. You don’t want to submit your site to a pool and hope that the links are quality and relevant. You need to have control over your link building in order for it to be most effective.

Blog Commenting For Backlinks

As much as we hate to do it, blog commenting is one of the few ways at our disposal where we can pick the relevant blog, use our site’s keywords in the title line and leave a thoughtful comment that’s sure to score us a backlink.

The problem with blog commenting is even with excellent software like Fast Blog Finder the process can still take a chunk of time. Plus, some blog owners only want people who have been around for a while leaving comments. This means that a certain percentage of comments left either get deleted, or worse, spammed. Do you really have the time to be doing all that?

MyWayLinks.net Increases Authority And Productivity

I got an email a few weeks ago from Jonathan Leger announcing a link building tool called MyWayLinks. With MyWayLinks, for a monthly subscription fee you add all of your PR1 and above sites to the network, create a links page for the network and then request links from relevant sites while reviewing links for inclusion on your site. I was skeptical even though my experience with Jon has proven him to be the real deal and not a snake oil salesman. I signed up and got to work.

I was impressed right off the bat as the instructions for my WordPress blogs worked perfectly(it uses a plugin)and I was up and requesting links within minutes of my sales confirmation email.

The MyWayLinks Network In A Nutshell

You start off with a quota of 25 points. You pay 1X the site PR ranking for links you want to place on other sites and you are paid 3X your site’s PR ranking for those you accept and place on your site.  You are emailed whenever a link submission is made to your site and you can do all of your work quickly and efficiently inside your MyWayLinks account. You can check your points balance, request links, review links, add more sites, get support and get on with your life. There’s a MyWayLinks forum that’s active and the support is friendly and fast. You should receive a support response within a day. My experience with Amin and his staff has been beyond professional.

My Favorite Part Of MyWayLinks

The best part? You are in total control! You can search for sites in a certain category, with a certain keyword, PR level or all of the above. That way, you know you have the best chance of getting the link submission approved. Plus, you can set the linking text so Google will love you. Never again will you have to worry if a site you’re submitting to is of high quality or not. You can go to the site from the link in your MyWayLinks account.

It’s a truly awesome system!

The Bottom Line

Jon does not promise you will dominate the entire first page of Google within a day. He does guarantee that if you are not satisfied with the program within 30 days of purchase he’ll refund your last payment.

My own experience has one site I’ve been linking slowly but steadily to is moving up slowly in ranking. I need to add more site keyword content and link to it to continue seeing progress. I discovered another site I had picked keywords that were too competitive for the young site’s PR so I’ll have to fix that and continue linking. This underscores the importance of doing your competition analysis before using keywords for linking. I should also point out I’ve only been using the system for a little over two weeks.

Click Here To Learn More About MyWayLinks

Post from: Senjo Marketing

Jonathan Leger MyWayLinks.net Review

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My 2009 Major Goals

Here is an overview of my 2009 goals. I’ll address each one separately in future blog posts.

• Audit my web properties
• Use a virtual assistant for some site content
• Do more product reviews
• Increase the authority of my sites
• Build or grow mailing lists for every site
• Expand into joint venture opportunities
• Work less than 8 hours per day

I’ll be looking at each of these major goals in future blog posts. I invite you to follow along to see how my experiences compare with yours. We’re probably stumbling over the same obstacles and can help each other see a way through them.

Stay tuned for my next blog post: “Auditing My Web Properties”.

Post from: Senjo Marketing

Getting Back To Online Business Basics

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The 12 Week Affiliate Marketing Course

The course will be titled “ShoeMoney Xtreme” and will be designed for newbies and seasoned pros alike.  The weekly topics will be:

• Week 1 – The Beginner’s Guide To Internet Marketing
• Week 2 – Affiliate Marketing 101: Everything You Need To Know To Start Promoting Products
• Week 3 – Market Research: How To Crush Your Competitors And Discover Hot Niches
• Week 4 – Pay Per Click: How To Earn Cash With Each Click
• Week 5 – SEO: How To Rank Higher And Increase Traffic
• Week 6 – Site Creation: How To Build A Site With Zero Programming Knowledge
• Week 7 – Content Creation: How To Create Articles That Attract Users And Increase Sales
• Week 8 – Marketing: How To Use Social Media To Spread Your Brand
• Week 9 – Make That Cash: 10 Ways To Monetize Your Site And Increase Profitability
• Week 10 – Testing & Tracking: How To Optimize Your Site & Make Sense Of The Figures
• Week 11 – Building Your Team: How To Network With Others And Find Long Term Partners
• Week 12 – Launch Day: How To Kick Start Your Business And Manage Your Projects

I jumped at the chance to learn from somebody of Jeremy’s caliber and signed up immediately!

I Recommend You Sign Up Too!!!

Post from: Senjo Marketing

ShoeMoney Free 12 Week Training Course

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My Approach Looks At Both Humans And Spiders

I do totally agree that the content has got to be relevant and useful to your readers or it is just self-serving spider bait. We’ve all read articles like this-they sound stilted and unnatural and are peppered with obvious keyword insertions at every point possible. They make us mad because we feel like the writer is taking us for idiots with this ploy. We may even unsubscribe or delete them as a bookmark because we don’t like to feel like crash test dummies for their marketing efforts.

When I’m drafting a blog post, I want it to come from a sincere desire to convey an experience I believe will benefit my readers. Only after I’ve drafted what I want to communicate to my readers do I give ANY thought to keywords and SEO. That way, I’m not muddying the content waters by trying to force the post to be about something that a search engine will love but my visitor will be left scratching their head about.

Give Me Your Thoughts On This

I really want to know what method has worked best for you. I’m always trying to learn something new and I never believe that my approach is perfect and can’t be improved on. If that were the case, I’d be blogging from the hubble telescope instead of earth.

So, chime in and give me your thoughts about blogging for humans and/or spiders and let’s open up a dialog that everyone can benefit from. Leave me a comment and let’s get the conversation rolling.

Post from: Senjo Marketing

Do You Write For Search Engines Or Humans?

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If you’re like most internet marketers, you have a set of tasks you must accomplish on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.  Some of these, like finding new affiliate offers, can motivate you while others just sap your energy.  You do them anyway because you’re scared if the wheel comes off your routine cart that you’ll end up stuck in one place or worse.

Don’t get me wrong…it IS important to have a routine because human beings are generally calmed to an extent by knowing what to expect and feeling like they have control over their lot in life.  There is nothing wrong with this either.  It’s what makes us human.  I’m speaking more specifically to the things we do that put us in a bad mood or frame of mind almost every time we do them.  This could be anything from merely opening our email to checking income stats for our sites.  Whatever that task or group of tasks are, you feel it every time you do and you know what they are.

What You Can Do About Them

OK.  So you’ve thought about it and you know that thing you hate to do that leaves you feeling like a failure or just wears you out.  What can you do about?  You’ve GOT to do it or your whole business will crumble, right?  WRONG!  Just as in life, no one thing we do can completely ruin us.  So, let’s step back and take an objective look at this.

Let’s use the example of checking your affiliate stats everyday.  You feel like it’s the right thing but when you’re done you’re in a bad place mentally.  How can you get around this?  After all, it is something you need to check.  The problem is you don’t need to check it daily.  Even if you’re making $1,000.00 per day, what use is the time spent checking it?  The money is not going to go away and even if you’re doing that well you probably still wish it were more.  How does this motivate you?

Action Steps To Take Away

Whatever that draining task is consider ways to do it differently.  Can you pick one day to check your affiliate stats for the week?  The month?  If it’s email can you pick one day per week to unsubscribe from all the lists you don’t benefit from?  Even if they come from an affiliate partner take a good hard look at how much benefit you’ve gotten from reading them.  Using this approach should reduce that email load by at least 30%.  Even if you pick one day per week to do nothing more than look at the ways to reduce your wasted time, you’re going to see an improvement.

My main point is to stop making yourself do things that only drain you.  You’ll find it sparks your creativity which will help in all areas of your business.  Quit beating yourself up and commit to making changes that inspire you starting today!

Post from: Senjo Marketing

Stop Doing Things That Don’t Inspire You

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Recently, I needed to buy a new iPod so I could review some software for one of my other blogs. Because I had been an eBay Powerseller, I knew eBay was the place I needed to go to find the best deal. I did some shopping around and found a seller with a great selection, low prices and impeccable feedback ratings. I placed my bid and won the exact iPod I was looking for. I went to PayPal and made my payment.

So far, so good, right?

Jeff Gets Phished

Less than one minute after I completed my PayPal business, I received an email from the seller(supposedly)claiming that I was not to make a payment until I received a follow-up email with instructions. First red flag.

Minutes later, the aforementioned email shows up in my inbox. It told me that the seller had his PayPal account temporarily suspended because of high volume. It continued that I needed to make a payment through Western Union. Second red flag.

Being suspicious, I sent a response telling them I had already made payment through PayPal and asked what they advised me to do(hahaha). They responded telling me that once I made the Western Union payment, the PayPal payment would be immediately refunded to me. Third red flag.

Knowing this was all bullshit, I forwarded the email to eBay security. They confirmed it was phishing. I then contacted the seller directly through eBay telling them to beware that somebody was sitting on his auctions and sending these emails out. He thanked me for the email. A few days later, I received my mint condition refurbed iPod, left feedback and have been thrilled with my purchase since.

What Did We Learn Here?

Even though the criminals are getting more creative and, in some cases, more sophisticated, there are still some simple steps you can take to not get ripped off on eBay.

Among these are:

• Only deal with sellers that have at least a 99% feedback rating and make sure to read through feedbacks to see if you spot a consistent complaint.
• I will not buy from anybody who doesn’t have at least 100 feedbacks because it’s impossible to get any kind of profile on a seller who has less than that.
• When you win an auction, wait for the official ebay email telling you that you’ve won and how to complete your purchase.
• If you receive ANY email telling you to do anything different than the auction listing DON’T DO IT! Instead, log into your eBay account and check your messages to see if an official eBay message was sent.
• Whether you received an eBay message or not, go to the items you’ve won section, click on the item you’ve won and select “Ask seller a question.” Tell the seller about the email you received and ask them to confirm it was from them.
• Here’s the part that might throw you for a loop-Even if the seller confirms the email IS from them and they want you to complete your payment through some third party that’s not part of Ebay, DON’T DO IT! Chances are they are scam artists who simply have not been shutdown yet by eBay.
• Forward all emails to eBay’s security department at the address provided in the help section and wait to hear back from them.
• If eBay gives their approval of the change in terms the seller has proposed by all means go ahead and complete the transaction.

Conclusion

I can’t overemphasize the importance of reading a listing FULLY before even making a bid. That way, at least you know the terms well enough to know if somebody’s playing you for a fool.

Beyond that, deal with sellers you trust and don’t fall for follow-up emails asking you to do something the listing did not mention.

Finally, make sure to make use of eBay security if you ever have a doubt. I got my response back in less than one hour from the security address because eBay obviously considers that a high priority area.

Post from: Senjo Marketing

How NOT To Get Ripped Off On Ebay

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For the last few months, I’ve been looking for a new theme for my site. The theme I was using has served me well since 2007 but it was starting to look tired to me. Plus, I wanted to do something that signaled my rededication to the site. What better way than to give it a facelift I thought.

I Had Specific Needs For The Theme

After spending who knows how many hours in the last year looking at free and premium themes, I came to a couple of conclusions.

1. Many themes were not meant to be tinkered with by non-programmers.
2. Paying for a theme doesn’t guarantee it will work better than a free theme.

I found all kinds of beautiful themes that were very unfriendly to even a WordPress savvy user. If you didn’t like the theme as it was, good luck trying to change it through the dashboard. Stuff just wouldn’t display right or would look outright awful if you tried to mess with it.

One example that comes to mind are the themes that claim to be widget-friendly but have a majority of their elements hardcoded into them. In other words, if you inserted one widget, you had to basically rebuild the entire theme. Yes, I understand from a programming standpoint that there has to be a switch that says to WordPress “when I use a widget you need to shut off the hardcoded elements”. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating because often the widget version of a feature just doesn’t look or work as well as the hardcoded feature.

Then I Found Flexibility2

In another of my searches for themes I happened on the Flexibility2 theme by Ryan Graberstein of Advantus Media. The theme was free to try and looked awesome so I thought I’d give it a whirl. The more I got into the theme, the more impressed I was with it.

I’ve tried out themes before that allowed a high degree of customization. The problem with them usually was that there were too many choices. Your average blog publisher only wants to change so many things themselves. Otherwise, they’d rather hire a web designer. Most bloggers just don’t want to micro-design their blogs.

I learned quickly that the Flexibility2 theme was exactly what I was looking for. It included a back end that allowed me to turn on or off features I wanted without completely screwing up the theme. I could easily choose a header, use one of my own or replace the title and tag with my own logo if I wanted to. There were a number of pre-set sidebar configurations and tons of stuff that can be tweaked by anybody with even rudimentary WordPress skills.

I was hooked.

Over the next month, I will be making changes to my site as I implement new programs and I am completely confident that Flexibility2 will hang right with me no matter what I need to do. Plus, Ryan’s videos and personal support are second to none.

Check Out The Flexibility2 Theme Today!

PS-While you’re on his site, make sure you get a look at his newest theme-FlexSqueeze. FlexSqueeze allows you to set up professional landing pages within your WordPress site. Plus, FlexSqueeze is a painless upgrade from the Flexibility2 theme when you’re ready to get serious about making great landing pages in a snap.

Post from: Senjo Marketing

My Site’s Getting A New Look

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