John Cow dot Com

Really Cool Script to Get LOADS of New Twitter Followers!

John Cow — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:40:19 +0000

I was asked a couple weeks ago to do a paid review of a brand new script (that I really do like) that you can find at http://www.xaviermedia.cc/twitter/

The script asks the question…

Would you like to get 1000’s of legitimate Twitter followers on autopilot?

The answer of course is… like duh, who wouldn’t!

The script is extremely simple to install, the strategy is extremely easy to implement and you don’t have to spam or do that much work at all.

Basically all you do is take 60 seconds to install a simple php script… the result is when people come to your site they will see an easy opportunity to get more twitter followers (and since it is on your site you know they will be targeted). All your visitors have to do is simply enter their twitter ID in a little form and click enter…. then the chain reaction begins… oh and do not worry, no personal data is stored.

If you for example can get just five people to use it (that is pretty much guaranteed to happen), you’ll get great results because if they also get five people each to sign up you will get 30 followers (your first 5 and all their 5 followers).

When these people refer others via their own referral pages you will get new followers too, and the best part is that you’ve only referred five people but are getting fresh followers all the time:

Level	Number of followers
You	5
Level 1	25
Level 2	125
Level 3	625
Level 4	3,125
Level 5	15,625
Grand total:	19,530

All you did in the above example was referring 5 people!

OK, I know it sounds a little too easy…. well it is… EXTREMELY EASY… just take 30 seconds and try it out for yourself, I just set it up and it took no time at all, try it out here…

http://www.johncow.com/followers/t/

Then do yourself a favour and get yourself a copy at: http://www.xaviermedia.cc/twitter/

Why You Need to Become a “Trusted Expert” in Your Field

John Cow — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:42:38 +0000

Why a Trusted Expert?

Because people want to do business with people they trust. It’s as simple as that. And unless you’ve got millions of dollars lying around, you don’t have the money to put into an advertising campaign to gain recognition for yourself and to build trust with your target audience like the major corporations do. And really, does anyone trust anything that’s said in advertising anymore?

Instead, you need to start looking at your communications in a different way. You need to come up with a strategy that will help you reach people, and build a level of trust with them that will cause them to seek you out when they need your product. And all for little to no money spent on your part. Just time, effort, and some authenticity are all that is required.

You just need to make other people start seeing you as a Trusted Expert. People want to do business with people they trust, and there’s not a whole lot of trust in online business. By being authentic and genuinely helpful (and don’t worry, I’ll explain how to do that if it seems like a foreign concept for business) you will position yourself as an authority in your niche or category.

By putting information first and sales second, it will actually make people want to buy from you more. It sounds counter-intuitive to everything you’ve read (trick them into buying stuff, hypnotize them so they don’t know what’s going on!) but it works, and even better, it establishes a long-term relationship that can provide you with sustained revenue down the road.

It may seem daunting (and a tad egotistical) to brand yourself as a Trusted Expert…

But there ain’t no room in business for humble, and you’ve got to blow your own horn because no one else is going to do it for you!

But to become a Trusted Expert, you first have to know more about your audience. In order to provide them with the information they want, you have to know what they need and why they need it.

So whats your thoughts on this post?

That Often Overlooked Word of Setting Goals

John Cow — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:38:31 +0000

So now that you know exactly how marketing on the web works today, and how it’s vastly different from how advertising used to work, it’s time to start looking at your own communications strategy. Now we’ll start to delve into the theories and ideas that you will be basing your own communication strategy on, the strategy that will turn you from a run-of-the-mill business owner to You, Trusted Expert.

You can’t do anything until you know what your goals are. How are you supposed to get there if you don’t know where you’re going?

And please don’t say you want to make more money. Well, duh. We all want to make more money. Have you ever come across someone who said, “No, it’s ok, I really don’t want to make any more money.”

What are the goals you have for your business?

Do you want to be able to quit that day job you hate? Or, if you’re already doing this full-time, what is a realistic goal for you for the next year?

If you’ve got an offline aspect to this business, how should the online portion relate? How much of the overall revenue do you expect it to bring in?

What are your goals for the next 6 months? What about the next 5 years? (They are very different things, but you need to have a detailed answer for both.)

Once you know where you want to be, I can help you get there.

Stay tuned for the next post

Clear and Effective Communication When Talking to Customers

John Cow — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:29:50 +0000

In my last post, I talked about the importance of talking to your customers directly to get the most out of everything the internet has to offer you and your business. In this post, we’ll talk a little bit about how that can be done.

How do you do this?

We’ll get more into that in the practical parts later, but you’re going to need to customize your site and all of your other communications so that you are exactly what the potential customer is looking for. At its most basic level, you’re going to need to build many different microsites or landing pages with purpose-built content aimed at each of the targets that you’ve identified.

That gets us on the topic of how the design of those pages is another integral part of your communications strategy, but I’m getting ahead of myself again.

With regards to PR, while media coverage is still important, and can be very beneficial to some businesses, there are now better ways to get media coverage than simply by sending out a press release.

What if a reporter already has a full plate when you send your release out? What if there’s no interest in the subject just then? But two weeks later, something related to your subject hits the news, and he goes looking for more information to give his story a new angle, but he can’t find anything about you (And he forgot about the press release you sent out).

Instead, you could tell your story directly to interested people. They will then talk about you, leading the media to pick up on the story and cover it.

The crucial difference in PR campaigns, is that, for the first time in a very long time, public relations is actually public. Anyone can launch and run a successful PR campaign by knowing who to talk to, and how to go about it. Blogs, online news releases, and other kinds of web content will make it easy for your potential customers to find information about you, and opens up a dialogue for your buyers to communicate directly with you.

With a direct PR campaign, you should cultivate as many small relationships within your niche that you can. While these bloggers and media people may seem like small potatoes compared to some of the biggies out there, they are highly influential within your niche, which is where your customers are.

You need to remember that a large number of small marketing efforts can bring in just as much business as one big coup can.

You also can’t look at your PR campaign as something that exists separately from your marketing efforts. Online, the two are inextricably linked. PR and advertising are all different aspects of the same communications strategy, and there are a lot of communication efforts that will possess aspects of both. Again, throw out everything you thought you knew about how advertising and marketing campaign are planned. You’ll get lost in the details. Get the big picture down first, and then move methodically through the other steps.

In later posts we’ll go over what the new strategies and theories you need to look at when formulating your communications strategy, and in then I’ll show you how to do it yourself, through step-by-step instructions. Then I’ll tell you how to keep your site in tip-top shape once you’ve gone through all the trouble of setting it up properly. That includes testing, as well as the importance of fresh content and keeping your site relevant in fast-changing times.

And at the end of the process, you can start calling yourself a Trusted Expert.

How it Works Today (Or Should Work)…

John Cow — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:59:47 +0000

(Continued from the previous post: How We Tried to Make a Square Peg Fit Into a Round Hole With Early Online Media)

It’s all About Communication!

If traditional advertising was a speech, then online advertising is a conversation.

Your content, in all of its forms, is the single most important part of your communications strategy. Your content needs to be authentic and provide useful information; in today’s jaded advertising atmosphere, people can see a sales pitch coming from a mile away.

So don’t pitch to them!

Instead, use your content to position yourself as an authority within your niche. You can get more accomplished with some genuine information and by being helpful than you could with a swanky advertising campaign. Make education one of your foremost communication goals.

Building an authentic communication strategy for the web may seem time-consuming, but it is a simple, cost-effective plan that can do amazing things for your company.

Today’s consumer is looking for the right product or service to satisfy a particular need or want – they are already further down the buying cycle than the targets of traditional advertising where you had to interrupt and introduce the idea. They are actively seeking out information on a service or product; you need to position yourself as an authority on that product or service, and gain their trust in order to convert them into a customer. And you do this with your communication strategy.

The web gives you and your business the unique ability to highlight your expertise to potential customers, by using the web-based media that’s available, as well as by interacting and participating in conversations with your existing clients as well as users that you want to turn into clients.

The internet started out primarily as a communication device, and that’s where its strength lies. You need to learn how to harness this power and use it to your greatest advantage. You have to ignore the old way that things were done in traditional advertising, and even in early advertising online. Those rules don’t apply. In fact, the transient nature of the web itself resists rules, as things are always changing. There are, however, guidelines that you can use to guide you through your communication strategy.

The most important thing to remember about your communications strategy is that fact that you can now tell your business’s story directly to your audience via the web; you can reach millions of people without having to buy advertising or run an expensive PR campaign.

People seek out information that they are interested in; you need to make sure that you are up front and center when they are looking for you.

How We Tried to Make a Square Peg Fit Into a Round Hole - Early Online Media

John Cow — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:57:22 +0000

(Continued from the previous post: Wasting Half Your Money on Traditional Advertising)

There was a reason that early online advertising was referred to as ‘New Media’. Because it was new – really, really, new (hmmm kind of obvious eh?).

It was the first new way of advertising to come about since the advent of television. It was also adopted into the mainstream in record time – faster than any other medium, including TV, cable and radio. And advertising professionals had no idea what to do with it.

None!

So they tried to apply traditional advertising guidelines and rules to it, and that’s how the first online advertising campaigns came about.

Banner ads, big boxes, skyscrapers were the first forms of online advertising. Visual ads that mimicked outdoor and magazine campaigns, bought by the thousand (literally – CPM or cost-per-thousand was the main metric when buying ad space online.)

Advertisers were over the moon about the ability to actually measure the performance of the ads. Click-through-rate was the new Mecca, and set the bar for the success for failure of an online advertising campaign. Never mind that it didn’t really tell you anything other than how many people clicked on the ad – it was a real, honest-to-God measurement of how the ads were being perceived.

Then pay-per-click came out… and WOW!

You mean, we only have to pay for the ads that actually succeed in their goal? It went against everything that traditional advertising had ever done.

Then, as the medium become more competitive, the ads became more annoying. Pop-ups, pop-unders and the like were the new version of the flashy (in this case sometimes literally flashy), obtrusive ads that began to annoy people. Because the ad agencies were taking everything they knew about traditional advertising and throwing it at the internet. Software developers came up with ad blockers.

So how were you to reach your customers if you couldn’t hit them with 17 pop-up boxes?

We had to rethink the way we were communicating. Websites, up until this point, had become simply extensions of their offline counterparts; they were still talking at their users, not with them. Online campaigns were just an echo or an afterthought of the traditional campaign. Even the more forward-thinking companies were only spending about 1% of their total advertising budget online.

And all that was done with all of this new information is that agencies took the click-throughs and all other learnings from the campaigns and put them into a pretty post-buy report like they did with the TV and radio campaigns and sent it off to the client. They would make sure to utilize the best-performing sites and drop the ones that did poorly, but that’s about the extent of the introspection. They didn’t take into consideration that maybe the ads weren’t resonating with the audiences of the sites they were advertising on, or that the site with the highest click-through-rate also had the highest abandonment rate once users reached the site. They also didn’t take into consideration that no matter how much money they threw at the campaigns, if their site sucked and didn’t have any useful information to offer users, users wouldn’t buy their product or come back.

Slowly, the tide began to turn and people started to realize the real value that the internet held. People began to realize the potential of the web to deliver useful content to potential buyers at just the right moment in the buying cycle.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s continuation

Wasting Half Your Money - a Look Back at Traditional Advertising

John Cow — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:32:15 +0000

Once upon a time, the only way you could get your message out there was to buy advertising, or convince someone to write something about you. It cost a lot of money, and there wasn’t a really good way to measure the results. As someone (there are arguments as to who) in advertising once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I don’t know which half.” And that’s just how it went.

Your choices were newspapers, magazines, outdoor, radio, television, and direct mail. While attempts were made at targeting through industry-developed demographic profiling, the segments were broad (think men 25-34) and targeting buyers beyond those very simple demographics was very difficult. It worked for the large brands who were targeting large segments of the population, but was too broad and ineffective for the average small-to-medium sized business owner.

Because those smaller businesses didn’t have the big budgets, and the targeting was so broad, a lot of advertising dollars were wasted reaching people who weren’t part of their target audience. This was accepted as simply something that came along with advertising.

Traditional advertising also relies on a one-way conversation. Because of that, it found that it needed to be an intrusive as possible to make sure that it would interrupt whatever you were doing so you would pay attention to it. When there wasn’t that much competition, the interruption wasn’t that bad, but as the number of media outlets and ways to advertise increased, the messages became increasingly intrusive, with flashy messages that were aimed at the lowest common denominator (read: stupid).

As for public relations, or PR, it was a private club that you had to pay big bucks to be a part of. You paid some PR guru a ton of money for the privilege of getting to use his network of contacts that he made over years of schmoozing to try and get your message out. The success of your campaign was judges by how many inches of press that you got, not how much the press release actually affected your sales. Press releases were also written specifically with the media in mind, it used terms and jargon that only media people would understand, and even had to formatted in just the right way. If you wanted to play the game, you had to submit to their way of doing things.

Then something called the internet came along. And advertisers and PR people realized that is was an opportunity to reach potential customers, even if they didn’t quite know what to do with it at the time.

To be continued…

The Importance of Communication And How We Should Be Communicating To Be Successful

John Cow — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:43:22 +0000

To succeed in the future you must first understand the past.

That sounds like something someone famous would say, but I’m not quite sure if that’s exactly how it goes, but you get the idea.

To succeed in the online world, you have to understand where it came from, and how’s it’s changed. Then you can see where it’s heading, and be ahead of the curve.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how business communication works, both past and present. How traditional advertising worked and the theories behind it, as well as the early forays into the online medium. How does online business work today, and how you can tailor your marketing and communications strategy to take advantage of that.

Advertising, marketing, branding, sales, PR, web design – all of these are considered separate departments within a business. But they really are all about one thing: communications. Every piece of your business, from your logo to your ads to your website to the way the receptionist answers the phone; they all say something about your company (if you’ve got one). And that, in turn, influences people’s opinions about your company and the products or services you provide.

Who then decide whether or not they buy that product or service.

Again, we’re back where we’ve always been - it all comes back to the content.

Great content is what will drive people to find you, instead of you having to spend money to drive them to your site. More importantly, you need to think about what the message is that your potential buyers want to hear. That’s the real key.

You know what you want to say, but is it what they want to hear? But how do I know? Should I ask them?

No. You should test them! Their actions will speak louder than words.

You’ll be seeing a lot more posts like this in the following weeks; posts that don’t give you a how-to on how to fix a plug-in bug, or posts about the latest or newest product out there, but rather posts on how we think and communicate. How we used to communicate, how we communicate now, and how we should be communicating to be successful in business (notice those are two separate things).

PPC Coach Review -

John Cow — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:00:53 +0000

It’s not often that I review other PPC products, because frankly, they’re my competition. And a lot of the products out there suck. But there are a few select products that I think are worth it, and in the interest of spreading the love around, I want to tell you about them.

PPC Coach (http://www.ppc-coach.info/join) is one of those products. You won’t find a lot of hype on their sales page, no promises that you’re going to start making thousands of dollars a month instantly. And I like that.

As I’ve always maintained, it is very possible for anyone to make money online, but it isn’t by any means a guaranteed thing that doesn’t take any work.

And that’s what PPC Coach is offering you – help, support, and training to help you do the work.

You’ll still have to do the actual work, but they will be exactly what their name implies – the coach that helps you get the job done.

It’s run by guys who are affiliate marketers themselves, and are offering the same products and knowledge that they are using to make money themselves.

The realize that there is more than enough money to be made to go around, and want to be able to help other people make money online (while making money themselves, of course – nothing wrong with that.)

So what do they have to offer?

PPC Coach is a membership system, where you pay monthly to access their information and support. Here’s some of what you get:

- The PPC Coach will answer any and all PPC-related or affiliate marketing questions you have.

- Access to the PPC Coach Members Forum, where other members can post questions and post answers for you to see.

- Access to specific hand-picked merchants to promote.

- Tutorials and guides that are updated and added to frequently.

- Step-by-step instructions on how to do videos online.

- The opportunity to build relationships with like-minded individuals who want to succeed just as much as you do.

- Great contents and prizes monthly. Everyone likes prizes, don’t they?

And Chris, who is a member of PPC Coach, believes in the product so much that he’s willing to offer people a discount on their first month of membership.

Now, this savings in coming right out of his pocket. By his reasoning, the product is so good, that you’re guaranteed to stay longer than a month, but you get the opportunity to find that out for yourself for a reduced price.

He runs a site called http://www.ppc-coach.info where he offers additional support and information to supplement what PPC Coach offers.

I have always believed in the power of a genuine testimonial over all the hype in the work, and the fact that this guy is willing to put his money where his mouth is says a lot.

So check it out, see what they have to say, and whether or not it’s right for you.

A Better Way to Track Stats? - GoStats Review

John Cow — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:19:44 +0000

Are you looking for a way to better track you stats and metrics for your website? Then I’ve got something for you.

GoStats is a site that’s been around since 1999, which has both free and paid services to get you all sorts of info about who is going to your site, and what they’re doing once they are there. They not only give you a webstats hit counter to use, but they also have a free site traffic analysis.

The free service includes information on page views, return visitors, and page popularity. Their hit counter is an easy (and free! free is important) tool you can use for determining how many people are really visiting your site. If you’re just starting out, and haven’t done any web stats work before (or you don’t have any money), then this is the way to go for you.

If you’re looking for a little more, then GoStats also offers a paid version of their web stats counter that offers a lot more in-depth analysis. You get a lot more options, such as the ability to hide or display as much or as little website traffic as you want, as well as the option to display visitor traffic on a world map to better show where your users are coming from. You also get access to their web statistic reporting engine, and a feature-rich account management control panel.

With proper web stats management, you can know where your visitors are coming from, what they’re doing while on your site, and how long they stay. One of the best ways you can use GoStats for improving your metrics is to understand where people are abandoning the purchase cycle and why. Once you’ve identified that, you can start to fix the problems and start to make more money.

Which we all know is my (and your) favorite thing.

Go check out GoStats for yourself!

Some Very Basic Tips for Starting a Blog

John Cow — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:17:45 +0000

So, after reading John Cow for a while, you’ve decided to start a blog of your own. I’m flattered. Really, it’s wonderful that I serve as such an inspiration…just kidding. But, to be serious about it, there are things you need to consider before you get up and running with your blog.

Whether you want to use your blog to make money (and I heartily approve of that) or you just want to voices in your head to get their own platform, you need to get some things straight before you ever compose your first post. Which you’ve probably already done in your head, haven’t you?

Anyways, here are the big decisions you need to make before you set up your blog:

Your blog name and tagline. This is perhaps the most important step. Not only will your bog name and tagline be indexed by Google and the other search engines, but it is also the single most important branding tool you have. And you can’t change it easily once you’re established. Sure, I could start a new blog, but I would lose everything I’ve built into the John Cow brand. Even if I attempted to publicize the change and move my audience over, there will still be a loss, both in audience and perceived authority.

Where your blog is going to be. Typepad, WordPress (I like WordPress the best and is what I use), and Blogger (Google) all offer easy-to-use blogging software. All have free versions available, as well as fancier paid options as well. If you’re just starting out, go with a free service until you know you’re going to stick with it. If you do, and you decide later that you need some of the options the paid version offers, then you can upgrade.

Choose your URL. All of the blogging services offer customizable URLs, but if you can, you’ll want to also buy your own domain name to redirect to your blog. In fact, you shouldn’t choose a blog name unless you can buy the domain name as well. It doesn’t cost much to register a domain name, and you’ll be glad you did it if your blog takes off.

How you want your blog to look. There are a lot great, customizable blog schemes out there for low-to-no cost. If you don’t have a talent for graphic design, keep the header text-based. Later, when you’ve made some money, you can pay someone to design a proper logo/header for you. Trust me, a text header looks way better than a poorly designed graphic one.

Above all, when you start your blog, make sure you post. A lot. Even if you think no one is reading it (and your stats counter sadly confirms this) it will create a great archive for readers to peruse when they finally do find you, and the practice will help you refine your style and voice before you hit the big time. I personally have sucked recently with being good at continual postings… and the traffic difference is substantial!

Quick Fixes to Improve Your Abandonment Rate

John Cow — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:43:18 +0000

Your PPC campaign has done its job; it’s driving traffic to your landing page. But your landing page abandonment rate is really high – people are bailing almost as soon as they get there. What have you been doing wrong?

You need to look at it from the user’s point of view. When they click on a PPC ad, there are certain things they are looking for when they hit the landing page. If you don’t meet those expectations, they leave.

Here is a list of things that a user wants to see when they hit your landing page:

What they expected to see. Did your PPC ad feature a certain offer? Make sure that it’s front and center so that the user sees it quickly when they first arrive. If the offer is hard to find, or isn’t what was promised in the ad, they will lose faith in you and bail.

That your site looks trustworthy. If you’re running a PPC ad campaign, chances are that you’re ultimate goal is to complete a sale. If your website looks chancy or doesn’t have guarantees or point-of-sale assurances, people won’t take the risk to buy from you. Any affiliation with a respected governing body or security measures that you have to keep your buyers safe, make sure that they’re prominently displayed to reassure the user that you’re credible the moment they hit the site.

How to learn more. If all you have are ‘buy now’ buttons without a way for people to learn more about who you are and what you’re selling, people will bail. Users are naturally suspicious (and often rightly so) of someone who if just pushing the hard sell without giving out any information about who they are or what they do. Even a single link to an “About Us” page is very useful in this regard.

What the next steps are. Generally, people like to know what the purchase process will be and what will be required of them before they commit to anything. By being completely transparent in your interactions with the user, you will encourage a feeling of trust and they will be more easily moved down the buying cycle.

Where they can get their questions answered. If someone isn’t ready to buy right just then, or perhaps has a question that you haven’t answered on the page, make sure that your contact information is prominently displayed so people can get a hold of you easily. If people can’t easily find this information, they will most likely give up and search for what they were looking for elsewhere. This is a pool of customers that you don’t want to lose – if they are interested enough to contact you about your product, they are further into the buying cycle than the normal visitor to your site, and with a little effort, can be easily converted into a sale.

Take a look at these simple guidelines and see if you’ve been breaking any of them. If you have, fix it, and then watch your abandonment rate decrease.

BlogProfitz - An Easy Way to Make Profits On Your Blog

John Cow — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:38:02 +0000

As you know sometimes I’m asked to do reviews on John Cow. And to be honest, some reviews are easier to do than others. This is one of the easy ones.

It’s for Blog Profitz, found at…

Blog Profitz is just what the name implies – a way to make profits on a blog.

Why am I a fan?

Because, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a strong supporter of making money through your blog. And BlogProfitz does this by combining blogging and affiliate marketing, which allows you to monetize your blog with affiliate offers (integrated with CommissionJunction, Clickbank, Affiliatebot, Amazon, eBay and more), targeted articles, news and video.

So why haven’t you heard of this before?

Because it’s new. In fact, it launches today. And they’re capping membership at 1,000, so if you don’t want to lose out, go to http://blogprofitz.com/ now.

For the rest of you that want a little more information first, here it is:

It works with a WordPress blog. Any blog that uses WordPress, either new or existing, can use BlogProfitz. And it will work with your existing theme or template, so your blog won’t all of a sudden drastically change in design when you add it.

When you start the Blogprofitz engine, it injects your blogs with ten, hundreds or even thousands of affiliate products (complete with images, descriptions and affiliate links), all targeted to your blogs’ subject matter and niche. Products are organized in a ‘store’ format so your readers can then browse, read about and purchase the products they want, directly through your site.

If you don’t already have an established blog that you post to regularly, BlogProfitz also gives you another benefit. The system will enable you to post Youtube videos, RSS content and you can choose from a database of over 15,000 private label articles, which you can use as content on any blogs of your choosing.

BlogProfitz is a hosted service, which means that there is no installation, no software, no ftp and no html coding needed, and you can set it up in 5 minutes. If you are extremely technologically-challenged (and I’m not judging!) there are also video tutorials to get you through set up.

So, whether you’ve already got a blog and it isn’t bringing in the revenue you were hoping for, or you have always wanted to start a blog of your own, but didn’t know how you could make money on it, then I strongly urge you to check out http://blogprofitz.com/ and join the ranks of those of us making money online today!

SEO By the Hour - Sponsor Review

John Cow — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:11:20 +0000

There are two ways to get your site seen in search engines. Either pay for PPC advertising (Google Adwords) or improve your SEO so that you have a better natural ranking. A lot of people go with the PPC way because they find the SEO part too daunting.

But what about paying someone to help you with your SEO?

If you think it would be too expensive, think about it this way: although you have to pay for SEO help, it will improve your search ranking. And, unlike PPC advertising, that SEO ranking doesn’t go away once you finish paying.

So then amortize that SEO cost over the next year and compare it to what you’re spending on PPC over the same time period. Seem more affordable now? I thought so.

The next thing you have to do is find someone reputable to help you with your SEO. And, of course, I have something for you. James Harrison at http://seobythehour.com is exactly what he purports to be – an SEO specialist that you can hire by the hour. Charges vary depending on the number of hours that your purchase.

So why this guy rather than someone else? Well, he managed to make his own site the #1 search result for “freelance SEO specialist”. The proof is in the pudding; you wouldn’t want someone to work on your SEO who couldn’t do it for himself.

Also, all the services he provides are 100% organic and can be backed by Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and MSN’s Search Engine Optimization’s Best Practices. He prides himself on never having gotten a site banned and he only practices natural SEO techniques proven to obtain organic search results.

Here’s a sample of the services that SEO By the Hour offers:

Keyword and Competition Research
Content Writing and Keyword Placement
Meta Data - Title, Keywords and Descriptions
SEO Web Design - Website Architecture, Sitemaps and Internal Linking
Website Indexing and Submissions
Technical SEO: Rewriting and URL Canonicalization
HTML and CSS Validation
Link Building and Popularity
Article Writing and Submissions
Social Media Optimization
Brand and Business Reputation
Directory Submissions
Local Search Engine Optimization
Blog Optimization and Blogging
Pay-Per-Click Management
Lead Generation and Mailing List Development

So unless you’re dong all of those things already, there are improvements that you could be making in your SEO. And if you need help doing it (which you most likely do) go to http://seobythehour.com to find out more about what James can do for your website and its organic ranking.

Don’t Be Pissed Off At Me, I Am Not Lying I Am Marketing!

John Cow — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:02:35 +0000

Have you ever heard of the…

Zoom Teeth Whitening system?

It is a procedure done in the dentist’s office for whitening your teeth and it takes about an hour to complete. If you see the posters and pamphlets of the system it looks amazing… the gist of it is that within one hour you can have your teeth sparkling white!

When you look at the system, it seems great except for the price. Costs can be anywhere between $250 and $500 to get it done but the results are very impressive.

There is one drawback though… and it is honestly a HUGE one:

The procedure can cause you a huge amount of pain with tooth sensitivity for the next 10 to 72 hours.

Now everyone is different with the intensity of this pain but for some people it is intolerable. In fact my wife said she would never do it again because it hurt so much. Others have said it was not too bad and would do it again.

The point of this example is when you look at the marketing material for Zoom, no where does it highlight…

“This May Hurt Incredibly Bad”

So the question remains…

“Are They Lying?”

I think by answering that question you can actually understand how you yourself can be better at getting your potential audience interested in what you have to say and sell.

First of all “NO” they are not lying and if you go to their website and read more about the procedure, there is reference to “Teeth Sensitivity”. The point is, they do not put that front and center for a very good reason. It is not to fool anyone, but instead it is to hit on the “emotion” that will cause the potential customer to want to learn more.

It’s no different than any other well done marketing. Find out what it is that your target audience truly desires… what is the emotional topic that will get them interested in learning more about what you have to offer.

This is what you should do for not only your selling but all of your writing. Try to figure out the “emotion” that you want to hit with your content. Make that the part that stands out the strongest and then make sure you provide the rest of the information as they read on.

Are You Saying Hide Info?

No… No… No!

That is not at all what I’m saying.

You NEED to be upfront with your audience but it is no different than having a privacy policy or purchase agreement on your website. I can guarantee that the majority of people do not read these and most assume that because someone has one it means they are saying that your email will be “safe”.

Well, I know of a few marketers who lay it out very clear in their privacy policy that they do in fact sell your email to others. This is 100% upfront and legal but it is your responsibility to read the information, they link to their privacy policy right from the opt-in form.

So it is not “Hiding” anything, you are very much following the rules. You NEED to make sure you have a solid privacy, terms of use, purchase agreement and stuff like that and you NEED to make sure that it is accessible from every page that is related to the purchase or opt-in.

Just like the ZOOM, there was nothing being hidden, it’s just that the focus is on the benefits.

If you want to engage your reader and sell to them, then first of all “Yes” be honest above all else, but you also must know clearly what your target audience desires and what the best words are to use that will strike at the emotion of the topic and will get them to want to buy.

Now I realize some of you “Hard Core” bloggers are going to get angry and say “blogging is not about selling but blah.. blah.. blah”

My response to that is..… whatever!

Blogging is what ever you want it to be… since it is your blog.

I blog because I like to, I blog to help others and YES I blog to also make money.

If you want to make money blogging, then you are occasionally going to need to sell things and if you want to sell things then you had better know how to market.

Over and out amigos

Hmmm… I wonder if this post makes sense to anyone but me?

If it does, what comments do you got?

The Uproar Over Facebook – Y’all Are Jus’ Jellus

John Cow — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:30:24 +0000

You may have seen all over the news lately that some people have estimated the worth of Facebook at $10 billion. Yes, that’s right, billion with a ‘b’. And opinions have exploded all over the place, with most people decrying the rather high value that has been set.

First of all, the math is a little off. The $10 billion calculation comes from the deal that was just announced, where Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies bought 2% (actually 1.96%, but please, I’m rounding up) of preferred Facebook stock for $200 million dollars. People have been using the equation if 2% = $200 million, then 100% = $10 billion, which isn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, because the 2% was not common stock, but preferred so the common valuation for the company would actually be lower.

Still, the fact remains that Facebook is worth more than any of us will likely see in our lifetimes. And that makes its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, a very rich, or rather richer (and some would argue lucky) man. And that somehow makes it necessary for people and pundits out there to try and cut him down to size because he dared to succeed where most of the rest of us have tried (or thought about but not actually tried) and failed.

Why is there the need to pick apart the value of Facebook?

Both Digital Sky and Microsoft have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of having infinitesimal amounts of Facebook stock. Zuckerberg has pulled in almost $500 million and given up less than 5% of his company; frankly we should be lauding his success and asking him to hold our babies in the chance that some of that skill/luck might rub off on them.

“But Facebook doesn’t make any money!!” … you cry.

While it’s true that Facebook suffers from the social media disease (hee) that also affects Twitter (the one where when you give away everything for free, if millions are using it, you get 0 x infinity, which is still 0) but it is not without resources. And more importantly, to draw in this kind of money from people who know what they’re talking about, it’s not without plans, either.

“But the new design sucks!”

Umm…so what?

People are still using it. People are still getting results from it. And people like me are still using it to promote their businesses (are you?)

“But Beacon was a disaster!”

Well, yes, so it was.

And the fact that Facebook is still alive and kicking and having people invest hundreds of millions of dollars into it speaks well of its ability to both adapt and recover from setbacks.

“But Zuckerberg is a control freak who’s ruining the company!!”

Really? According to whom? Mark Zuckerberg is a 25 year old who has accomplished an amazing amount of things so far in his life for anybody, much less someone under the age of 30. He has a knack for coming up with ingenious pieces of technology. Even if any of the accounts of his control-freak leadership are true (and I’m certainly not saying they are) he’s 25 years old. How many of us would have been able to run a billion dollar company at that age?

Like I said, you’re all jus’ jellus. And so am I, but at least I can admit it.

(And lest I contradict my own post about the importance of good grammar, those misspellings in the title were intentional.)

Oh and do not be shy about sharing this post with others please… you can click here to automatically post it to your twitter account

So what comments do you have?

Are You a Financial Idiot Like These Guys?

John Cow — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:42:09 +0000

I just finished reading an article about how 3 men are in jail, each with bail set at $5 million due to a $200 million dollar scheme they had going on. (Click here if you want to read the story). Now what got me the most interested in this story is how they were doing it and how many of us probably do similar things.

Now I truly do not know the entire story here, but from what I can tell is these three guys started gathering investors for real estate investments. They would actually buy the real estate but what happened (and this is just my interpretation), is they got greedy and started spending the money they started to make instead of reinvesting it in the maintenance and upkeep of the properties.

Now over time, the properties started to depreciate because of lack of maintenance and some had to be closed down but what the three guys did was they recruited more investors to then pay the interest to the original investors.

Basically they where getting themselves in more debt, to pay off the original debt.

So here is my question for you… well actually a couple questions.

1. Do you focus in on your business and ensure you reinvest a proper amount of your profits to maintain current investments?

What I mean is, do you just build and build and never reinvest and maintain?

I see so many people put so much time and interest into a blog or something else and then once done, they just move on to the next one. They stop promoting, stop adding new content, stop updating and all that good stuff.

What ends up happening, is the original investment dries up and they continue this cycle, they never actually grow their business but just barely maintain its current level because they are simply building a new one in place of an old one they let die.

It is like trying the fill a bucket that has a hole in it. You can never sit back and relax because you have to keep working to keep at least some water in the bucket.

2. Are you paying debt with debt?

OK, this one is not so much a business question as just a very important one.

Did you know that the average American saves “-1%” of their income, compared to “+10%” fifteen years ago.

I know of people that actually pay off debt by just transferring it from one credit card to another. I am not talking about transferring a balance from a higher interest rate to a lower; I mean just making the min payments.

Finances seem to be one of those things that we so easily say…

“I will take care of later”

Whether it be investing, saving or getting out of debt, we seem to think we have plenty of time and have nothing to worry about… until it is too late!

The problem is the majority of us do this all our lives and then retire with nothing and look back crying that we were so stupid.

I wonder if those three guys really intended for this to happen or did they actually want to start a legitimate business but let greed and the “take care of it later” take control?

Do not be one of the sad statistics… step back, look at what you are doing and then do the things that will put you in control.

So what comments or opinions do you have? Oh and if you liked this post please share it on twitter by clicking here.

BannerExperiment.com - Unique LinkExchange

John Cow — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:16:45 +0000

As you know, I’m always on the lookout for free stuff; well, I’ve been asked to review something new to show you, and best of all, it’s free. And if it’s something free that helps to drive some traffic to your site and build links that improve your search engine ranking, well, then that, my friends, is a win-win.

http://www.bannerexperiment.com is a top list/link exchange that works a little bit differently than all the rest. It uses mini-banners (88×31 pixels) instead of text links to link to your website. There are spots for 500 mini-banners – the sites that drive the most traffic to BannerExperiment get displayed.

It is free (yay) to sign up, and you can submit an unlimited number of websites (although each website can only be submitted once). If, at any time, you want to change the banner that is displayed, you only need to send them another banner (just make sure that the email is coming from the address you signed up with – so they know that it’s you.)

The sites that land in the top 500 for inbound traffic will get their sites displayed on the main page. The more traffic you send, the higher your ranking, and the higher up on the page your mini-banner gets displayed. In addition, when you mouse over any mini-banner, you get the ranking info, URL, description of the website, and weekly stat information.

The site is brand-spanking new, and so if you were to sign up right now, you’d be guaranteed a spot and have a jump on establishing some traffic and staying up.

So if you’re in need of some reciprocal links (and who isn’t) and the idea of free appeals to you (again, duh), head on over to http://www.bannerexperiment.com to sign up and upload your mini-banner now.

If you want to learn more, check out the FAQ section at http://www.bannerexperiment.com/faq.php

Twitter Applications for your Mobile Phone - Twitter Marketing Part 8

John Cow — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:21:39 +0000

Now that you’re using your Mobile phone to interact with Twitter, you may find that using SMS is not the best system out there for your needs. Either you’re getting constant text messages and it is proving to be intrusive or expensive, or you may be in an area where you an only receive SMS messages to Twitter but not be able to send them (users in Canada who do not have Bell as a carrier have this problem).

So how can you make is easier to interact with Twitter on your mobile phone?

By using an application specifically made for the task. There are about a billion (well, not exactly that many) apps out there to help you use Twitter. But which apps out there are the best and how should you use them when you’re using Twitter to help promote your business?

That’s why you have me.

As you know I’ve been using Twitter just for a little while now, it has already had an amazing effect on my business. It’s been a great promotional tool, and I rely on accessing my Twitter account wherever I am.

There are the most Twitter applications available for the iPhone, but that makes sense as there are more applications in general available for the iPhone than with any other kind of SmartPhone. While there are less choices available for other kinds of phones, you should still be able to find something to suit your needs.

Here are some of the apps available for using Twitter on your mobile phone:

Apple iPhone

Twitterific (http://twitterrific.com/)

This is one of the oldest and most-used applications out there for Twitter. There are two versions – one free ad-supported one, and a paid version for $9.99 that is ad-free. It’s got a clean, simple layout for viewing Twitter, and it also makes it easy to use Twitpic to post a picture of yourself as well as using the iPhone’s GPS to point your followers to your actual location – great if you actually have a bricks-and-mortar store.

Tweetie (http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/)

Also extremely popular with iPhone users. Tweetie does not have a free version, but the app only costs $2.99 from the Apple App store. Its got a great user-interface, and is extremely responsive, and will do just about anything with Twitter that you might want to, including a great built-in search feature. It also has a mini-browser within the app itself so you can view links in tweets without having to exit the app and load your browser.

BlackBerry

TwitterBerry (http://www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry/)

The default choice for BlackBerry users who are on Twitter (there aren’t that many more to choose from). Its got a simple interface that includes the character countdown, the public timeline, and the ability to post tweets and send Direct Messages, and although it’s not as pretty as some of the other apps for different SmartPhones, it does get the job done.

Windows Mobile

Twinkini (http://www.trinketsoftware.com/Twikini/)

Again, it’s not as polished as the iPhone apps, but it does load quickly and give you all of the basic Twitter features, like sending tweets, marking tweets as favorites, and viewing your timeline. It will also let you add your GPS location to your tweets.

Cross-Platform Apps

These will work on any SmartPhone. There are two different ways these work – either they are web-based, and use your phone’s browser to work, or they are a true application that works outside of your browser.

Web-Based

Twitter Mobile (http://m.twitter.com) – Twitter’s own mobile site. It has everything you expect it to.

Slandr (http://m.slandr.net) – Slandr uses Twitter’s own API, but says that it delivers a better user experience than the Twitter mobile site does. While it seems to be a good interface, it does insert ads between tweets, which would get old fast.

Applications

TinyTwitter (http://www.tinytwitter.com)

TinyTwitter has two different versions available – one that will work on any Java-enabled phone (Nokias, Blackberrys), and one for Windows Mobile. It’s not a very large application, so it will download and install quickly, and it has all the basics you want – tweets, @replys, Direct Messages, following and unfollowing. Is also allows you to set the time interval for checking for new tweets, which saves you from having to constantly refresh.

Using Apps, whether web-based or downloaded, can make using Twitter on your mobile phone easier and faster. You don’t have to deal with sending SMS messages (or any of the charges associated with that), and it will work wherever you are. Find the one that works best for you, and at the right price (free is always good.)

Remember, this is not an exhaustive list, but it should help you to get started.

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Should Bidding on Trademark Terms in AdWords Be Illegal?

John Cow — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:47:35 +0000

If you participate in AdWords at all, you should know that Google allow’s for advertisers to bid on trademark terms, meaning when someone types in a specific trademark term, your ad would show up in the sponsored results.

What advertisers are not allowed to do is use the trademark terms in the adcopy itself but as for having the ad come up for that term, that is not an issue.

Personally for me, I see no issue with it. The way I look at it is no different then how radio, television or a local newspaper is. As long as the adcopy is within the rules, the time and place it appears is only limited by the amount of money the advertiser wants to spend.

Well if you asked Audrey Spangenberg, she would have a completely different view point on this.

What happened is Audrey Spangenberg typed in “FirePond” (the name of her small software company) and she was not impressed with what showed up. Her company website (http://www.firepond.com/) appeared in the top position for organic listings but above it were competitors and this caused Ms Spangenberg to become furious.

Now, this is not the first time this has caused someone to get furious over just such an issue (Gieco & American Airlines) … and I am sure Google will see more of it in the future.

Whats more, Google is actually expanding its policy to bid on trademark terms to more than 190 countries (ohh I could just imagine the expression on Ms Spangenberg’s face).

Now when it comes to trademark laws, from what i can tell there is nothing that can really be done about this and to be honest I think that is a good thing… but I am sure there are plenty of lawyers who want a crack at trying to fight for it anyway.

Here is how I personally look at it.

As a consumer, if I was shopping for a specific product, I want to have both the product come up and the competition. That is the beauty of online shopping, you can look at different options and let the better product win.

If it was to become law that Google would be controlled as to who they can allow to pay for advertising, then our search experience would suffer but I also have to ask the question… would that mean that they would have to control what appears as organic listings also?

I mean, what happens if I have a competing product and I write a comparison review and my page shows up as number one?

Is this not what search engines are all about?

I mean the idea is to show us relevant results and is not a direct competitor completely relevant?

I 100% agree with not being able to use trademark terms in your ads, this causes the potential consumer to be mislead but when it comes to be able to have your ad show up when your trademark term is typed into Google… that is something I believe should stay as being allowed.

So whats your opinion?

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Here are a couple other posts on this topic…

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