For those of you who market affiliate products online… and have had any type of success… you know how awesome it is to hit those milestones you set for yourself.

• First you hope to make just that first dollar...

• Next you look for making just $100 a day…

• Then you hope that someday you’ll actually start to make real money and make $1,000 in a day…

• Then that $1,000 hour is the next goal…

I can tell you from first hand experience… setting and hitting your goals for affiliate marketing is a great feeling… even if you’re only making enough to pay your cell phone bill every month.

Here’s How I Have Hit My Affiliate Marketing Goals…

I didn’t even know what the heck affiliate marketing was until a little over a year ago.  Ya, I knew people made a crap load of money doing it… but I didn’t know where to start.

Anyhow, fast forward to today (a little over a year later) and I’m starting to make it look like I know what I’m doing a little bit (I’m definitely not big time… but things are heading in the right direction).

Here’s my affiliate marketing timeline:

• Made my first dollar using Adsense on my real estate investing tips website:I think it took me weeks and weeks to make that first dollar… but I made it and got my first Google Adsense check about 4 months later (ya… it took me that long to build up to $100).
• Saw that Adsense wasn’t going to make me rich (at least the way I was using it) so I started to look into affiliate products in mid ‘07:I made my first affiliate sale of Mark Joyners Simpleology in the summer of ‘07.  Simpleology was something that I was personally using and really felt it was worthy of sharing with other people.  The commission from each sale is $24.95.
• I noticed Simpleology starting to make a few bucks a month (like $75-$100) so I knew there were other products out there I could share with my readers at The REI Brain:Rather than making just $25 a sale… I wanted to make more per sale so I started searching for higher dollar products that I felt were great products at a great value.  So, I joined a few affiliate programs that had great products and began to send out emails to my email list… and write blog posts on the subjects.  A really cool thing that I soon found out was that people are willing to send you their product for free just so you can review it… even products that are selling for more than $1,000… free.  Pretty cool huh?  Anyhow, I made my first “higher dollar” commission in the fall of ‘07… it was a $148 commission on a $297 at home study course.That was my first $100 day (and I didn’t have another for several months).
• In early 2008 I just knew there was more out there to be had… and that making $100 in a day was only the tip of the iceberg:So, I started looking for new niches and products for my websites that I could try to rank really well in the search engines… and create recurring revenue.  I actually stumbled on a niche from an email I received from one of my readers at The REI Brain.com.  Long story short, I began reviewing property management software and started to hit $100 days more consistently… and even hit my first $500 weekend (profit… not revenues) in the spring of 2008.   Pretty cool I thought.  Work maybe 2-3 hours a week on these projects and turn that into the low 4 figures a month.
• Now, come up to a month or two ago when things really started to get consistent:Sales were coming daily, adsense earnings were well over $100 a month (really, I know that’s not a whole lot), and I had began to do CPA (cost per action) affiliate programs with Hydra Networks (and some others), promote more than 50 affiliate products, drive traffic with PPC (pay per click), use social media a lot more, and write content almost daily.In March of ‘08 I hit my first $2,000 month for profits from affiliate products.

Then I hit a big affiliate marketing goal of mine…

For quite a while I’ve had a goal to make $1,000 in affiliate profits in 1 day.  Ya, sounds like it’s pretty tough… and for some reason I had been making it actually a lot harder than it really was.

Yesterday (8/13) I finally hit my first $1,000 day (actually, I almost hit that in just 1 hour… and did hit it in just 2 hours yesterday morning) in affiliate profits.

Actually… let me rephrase…

I hit my first $1,596.70 day in affiliate PROFITS.  Not in sales… in affiliate profits (and it cost me absolutely ZERO in advertising costs… all through SEO, social media, and my blog readership).

Since it’s all the craze nowadays to post screenshots (even though a ton of them are fake and photoshopped)… above is a quick screenshot of the 1shoppingcart affiliate reporting area for this particular affiliate account that I promoted yesterday… which is where most of my sales came from.

Once again, I know… this is peanuts compared to what a lot of other affiliates are making online right now… but this kind of income can really add up and change someones lifestyle.

What would an instant $1,596.70 in 1 day (that you didn’t otherwise have) do for you?  It would be pretty cool huh?  And this $1,596.70 is for one day… it doesn’t include the profits from the rest of the month.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t make this much everyday… this was because of a small launch that was going on that I promoted to my real estate blog and real estate investing newsletter readers… and some sales from other affiliate products that day.  But, I’m confident that things will be at that level pretty soon once I systematize my online business a bit better… and get into the swing of things with my new VA (virtual assistant).

The “secret” to making thousands a day online…

I know, that heading sounds pretty hypey… doesn’t it?  It sounds like some late night infomercial trying to pitch you a $39.97 product that is tied to a $97 a month “forced continuity” product.

Well… this advice is free and is something that it has taken me over a year to figure out (and I’m still trying to figure it out).

1. There is no “secret” to making money online... follow a simple formula, systematize it, and don’t give up.
2. Be real, honest, informative, and provide a huge amount of value to your prospects… that’s the ONLY WAY you’ll make it online.  If you look at everything in the “how will I benefit” mindset… you’ll lose out on a lot of money and opportunities.  Take the “how can I benefit my customer/prospect/reader more today”… “what true value can I provide my prospect today?”.  I can promise you that your results will be 1000x times better when you take the focus off of how you’ll make money… but rather on how you can help your prospect benefit.
3. Find something that you enjoy to do and build something around that first… This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but start by focusing on a topic you are passionate about and really enjoy.  You’ll be able to stick with it longer.  I chose real estate investing because I am a real estate investor and love it… then I figured out how to provide a huge amount of value to my readers and separate myself from the competition.
4. Success won’t happen overnight… maybe not even in 6 months or a year…  If you want to build something really worthwhile it won’t happen overnight.  It took me over a year before my first website started to produce an income that a person can live off of (but, I’m pouring a lot of the profits back into the site and hiring Virtual Assistants to take the load off of me).  I’m not saying that you can’t build something more quickly… actually you should be able to if you become educated and take action a bit more quickly than I did… but too many people think it’ll happen quickly… then they give up too easily and never see their true potential.Find a niche, committ to it for at least 6 months… and spend at least 2 hours on your business EVERYDAY for the 6 months.  (I only spend about 2 hours a week now… but starting out it was a ton of work because I didn’t know the shortcuts I know now).
5. Network with people and DON’T be afraid to invest... Networking is huge.  95% of my current successes came after I went to Rich Schefren’s (yep, that’s an affiliate link event in Orlando earlier this year.  I got to know some really cool people… many of them who are way more successful than I am… and have stayed in contact with them to this day.  Huge… huge… huge.Also, up until March of this year I was almost afraid to really invest in myself.  The only education I bought up until March was a $50 ebook from an unnamed “guru” (which turned out to be a pile of crap).  I probably feel the same way you do… but I felt that if I bought anything I would be one of those guys who is an info product junkie and never takes action… I didn’t want to be that guy.So, I put in some hard work… won a trip to Orlando to go to Rich’s event in March (I still had to pony up about $700 for airfare and hotel… so it wasn’t free by any means)… and invested in myself and changed my outlook on my business.  After that event I’ve slowly started to outsource a lot more things that I was banging my head against the wall to complete myself… and the money started to come in a lot more frequently (in bigger amounts).

What are your online goals?

So, that’s my “cliffnotes” story of my affiliate marketing venture over the last year.

I hit my first $1,000 day (actually over $1,500… and did most of it in just under 2 hours)… am systematizing my business more… and can’t wait to see what happens the rest of this year and into 2009.

Whether you’re a newbie online still working to make that first $10… or you’re already making thousands a month… what are your next goals for your online business?

I’d love to hear them and help ya out if I can in any way.

Chat soon,

- Trevor

Popularity: 15% [?]

This is nothing new… you’ve heard it said a billion times… “the money is in the list“.

I can say that you can make a good bit of money without a list (a site of mine makes almost $2k a month with a list of just over 100 subscribers)… but an email list (or mailing list also!) is another asset that you can leverage big time to create more revenues and repeat customers/visitors to your site.

Like I mentioned, you don’t NEED a list to be successful… but a list makes it a whole lot easier to be successful and keep your readers and customers coming back time and time again.

Before you go out and throw up your Aweber or Getresponse (or whoever else) autoresponder code… read this article to get a few pointers on how to increase opt ins just a bit. FYI… I have both Aweber and Getresponse accounts and like them both… really Aweber is probably the one I’d tell people to use… but Getresponse does the job too.

Throwing Up An Opt In Box On Your Site

First of all, if you aren’t collecting email subscribers to a newsletter on your site (no matter what kind of site you have), you should start doing it today.  Even if you throw up a crappy opt in box and get 1 subscriber a week (as I did when I first got started)… that’s better than nothing!

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Head over to Aweber or Getresponse (they are the most widely used by Internet Marketers) and sign up for an account.  Once you’re in there, follow their directions to create an opt in box that captures just the Firstname and Email address (or just email… I’ll discuss later).
2. Take the code that they give you and, if you’re using Wordpress, go to the “Design” tab, then click “widgets”, and insert a “text box” in the right sidebar.  Paste your code into there and save it.

That’s the easiest and quickest way to get an opt in box up and running.  It might not be the prettiest… but it’s done and you are now at least ready to start collecting opt in subscribers.

I’m not going to go too much more into any technical details of how to do it… I’m going to cover other things based on a quick change that I made to one of my websites.

Making Your Opt In Box Appealing… and Boosting Conversions

As you might know, I finally got done launching the new design for a real estate investing website that I run (I am a real estate investor also… this site is actually what got me started in internet marketing).  I like Wordpress so that’s what the entire site is built from.

Anyhow, in the previous version I had an opt in box that looked like this:

This isn’t a bad form… but it didn’t produce a very good opt in rate.  You’ll notice that I give many benefits of what people will get by opting into my newsletter… had that “nice” red arrow drawing the eye over to the form… but it just didn’t produce the results I was wanting.

I’d love to tell you the conversion rate on this form, but I really have no clue (I know, a cardinal sin in internet marketing).

Then, we relaunched the new site design and updated the opt in box with a few elements that have shown a huge increase in opt ins (like… more than 500%!!).

The New Opt In Box - And Results

Instead of the same tired looking opt in box on every page of our site, I decided to mix it up a bit and vary the placement/look of the opt in box in different places in the site.

Here’s the new opt in box on our home page:

The home page opt in box is placed in the middle of the home page right at the bottom of the fold (I wanted it above the fold but it just didn’t work out that way… I’ll have to do some tweaking to the set up of the page.

Here’s the new opt in box on our article pages:

This opt in box is placed in the TOP of the right sidebar of all of our article pages.  It is of course ABOVE THE FOLD and really stands out to the eye.

Here’s the new opt in box on our blog home page:

Okay, for the blog I wanted the opt in box to be ABOVE THE FOLD also and be right in the middle of the page so people had to look right over it to see the articles below.  It’s right next to the “popular articles” section and is very prominently placed in the structured of the blog.

The Elements Of An Effective News Letter Opt In Box To Increase Conversions

There are a ton of elements that go into an opt in box that can make it convert more effectively.  I’m not a guru in opt in box creation (I actually made these ones myself… I’m not the greatest graphic or coding guy at all).

Here are a few elements I integrated that I think are leading to the 500% increase in opt in rate almost overnight.

• It grabs the eye much better - This opt in box has the nice medium thickness RED BORDER, the big red arrow, and the nice “eye candy” to draw the eye over.  If you don’t draw the eye over to the box the chances people will voluntarily navigate over there go down.  Think about those annoying inflatable things they have on car lots or in front of cell phone stores that move and draw your attention.  Same thing… first you need to get the attention… then give them something they want.
• Eye candy - Eye candy is the stuff that makes the opt in box look cool and professional.  I used the image of the software box and free report (to show that the things they are getting are real… and of higher value) as well as the big red arrows to jazz up the box and make the offer present as a higher value to the prospect.
• Give Them Something Specific - In the past I’ve tried to just get people to opt into my newsletters by telling them benefits they’ll get and things they’ll learn.  For me, that just didn’t work all that well.  What works well is by giving people something specific (the software and ebook downloads free) in exchange for their email address.  Imagine going into a restaurant and reading a menu that said “you’ll be satisfied, it’ll taste good, our price is good, and you’ll walk out happy”… but didn’t give you specifics on the food that you’ll actually get?  That would be weird huh?  How likely would you be to actually make an order?  Probably not too likely.  People like specifics, and like to know what they’re getting (exactly) before they make a move.

  So, give people a free report, an audio download, a piece of software, etc. that is of REAL VALUE and that could be sold on it’s own if you weren’t giving it away.

• Use Our Preprogrammed Colors - I’m not all that sold on my choice for the use of the red submit button.  But, with this button… I have it programmed to turn green when someone hovers over the top of the button (head over to the site to check it out in action).  With our society the color green means go… and people are more apt to gravitate toward taking a specific action when they are given “permission” to go with the green color.

  I’m going to test out using a different color as the default color (other than red) to see if it makes a difference… but I’ve seen in other tests that the color red w/ a green color change upon hover works well.  We’ll see after I get done testing.

• Make It As Easy As Possible For Them - It’s been a debate recently among internet marketers whether or not it is better to collect firstname and email… or just email.  Technically, all we really need is their email address to send to them; however, the firstname helps us to personalize the message to them… which is pretty darn effective as well.   But, I put in just the email so it would be as easy as possible for people to submit.  They only have to enter one thing and click submit… and don’t need to fret over giving their real name… or making up some fake name (like a lot of people do).

  Some people argue that the firstname is necessary… I disagree.  While the firstname is good to have, you can write very personal emails to people that give your personality that don’t include their name.  Think about it… when you’re writing to your close friends, do you start the email with their name?  I don’t.  Also, having their firstname can backfire sometimes… like when people put in a fake name… their last name… their firstname in all capitols, etc.

  What’s worse, writing an email full of your personality and not including their name?  Or writing an email that starts with, “Hey VERIONICA,” or “Hey asdfatl,”?  I’d venture to say that I’d rather put no name at all than blow my cover and SHOW THEM that this message isn’t personal at all.

Revamp Your Opt In Box Today

Okay, that kind of gives you a good idea of what you can implement in your own opt in boxes today to squeeze some more subscribers into your list.  Sometimes the smallest changes can be huge (like my 500% increase in opt ins)… sometimes it may be small.  But, changes might only take an hour to do and will feed extra customers into your funnel every day of the week forever.

If you need any help getting your opt in box up to snuff… let me know and I’d be glad to give you a few pointers.  I’m not accepting any new clients until the end of August because of my workload on my own projects and the clients I already have… but if you have a project you want me to look at quickly let me know.

Chat soon!

Popularity: 17% [?]

Recently Mark Joyner shot all of his affiliates (which I’m one) an email that he’s launching a thing similar to simpleology … but to teach integration marketing to help people grow their businesses.  If you used Simpleology… you know that Mark provides huge value (especially since most of Simpleology and this new Integration Marketing thing are free!). 

Anyhow, I was watching Mark’s videos for the Integration Marketing re-realized just how important it is to use integration marketing in today’s business (both online and offline)… but too many people still don’t do it!

If you have an online (or offline for that matter) business… and are looking for the quickest way to instantly add new revenues to your business in less time than it takes to make a PB & J sandwich (maybe a bit longer than this… but not much)… you need to learn about “integration marketing”. 

I’ve heard the term integration marketing a few times but really didn’t understand it fully until I met Mike Filsaime and heard him speak in Orlando at Rich Schefren’s event this past February.  When you hear about integration marketing you’ll be wondering why you hadn’t been doing it already… and be counting up the bucks you could have earned if you had implemented it just even a bit.

What Is Integration Marketing?

In simple terms, integration marketing is simply where you take your current business and integrate other products/services/offers, etc. (yours or someone elses) into your current sales and marketing funnels. 

Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you own an online dog toy store and your current sales process looks like this.

1. Person lands on website and browses through products
2. Person finds a product they like, add it to their cart, and click “check out” to purchase
3. Person fills out the purchase form, clicks submit, and are taken to a nice thank you page where you say how much you appreciate their business and hope to see them again

That’s a pretty standard online sales process for most businesses… don’t you think?  Let’s say your average sale in this process is $25. 

Now, how about a little bit of integration marketing infused in the process:

You have the same dog toy store. Here’s the new and improved sales process.

1. Person lands on your website and you offer a newsletter to get discounts, free products, and an informational package on “how to train your dog to be smarter than Lassie”. 
2. Person opts into the newsletter and gets a thank you page that says something like, “Thank you for subscribing!  To show our appreciation, we’d like to give you a one-time coupon for $10 off of a purchase of $40 or more… but this coupon expires in 24 hours.”  Then give them a link to browse the popular products.
3. Person browses the products (w/ this coupon in hand) and finds the products they want… but it only adds up to $25.  So, naturally… they realize that for only $5 more they can get $40 worth of stuff.  No brainer.
4. Person goes to check out with their $40 in products (of course they have the $10 off coupon), enters their coupon code, and completes the purchase.
5. Person is taken to a one time offer page (thank you + another offer) for an in-depth ebook and 60 minute DVD that normally sells for $37… but is on sale “this one time only” for $19… on “How To Train Your Dog To Do Tricks In 3 Days Or Less” (not your product… it’s someone elses!)
6. Person sees how great of a deal it is… and with one click… they upgrade their order to include the training product.
7. Persons order is now complete and they are taken to a thank you page with a message that says, “Thank you for your order!  It will be in your hands in no time flat.  Since you love dogs, we thought you’d also like these websites and products.  Check them out!”.

Okay, that was actually a pretty simple integration marketing strategy.  Did you see what happened?

Here it is…

Right off the bat the prospect was funneled to your newsletter (so you can keep in touch with them more easily) and given an incentive to order today… and to increase the overall order over your average order.

Then, the prospect did end up increasing their order a bit because “it’s a no brainer”… which gives them more value and gives you a higher average sale.

Then, the customer isn’t just taken to a plain ol’ thank you page… but instead to a “one time offer” that let’s them grab a highly related product (not your product… it’s an affiliate product) for a big discount. 

Last, they are taken to a thank you page that nicely shows them more resources that they would probably be interested in anyway… and of course… you have found a way to monetize these resources by joining the affiliate programs for each company in case your customer goes through to purchase a product from their site.

The Integration Marketing Results…

In this case… of course this is an example… but you added several new revenue streams to your sales process… without hardly any extra effort or cost.

1. You made an extra $5 (of course you have product costs involved) on the initial purchase and gained goodwill
2. You made a 50% commission on the ebook and DVD sale, so that’s another $9.95.
3. Then, let’s say 1 out of every 25 customers clicks through the thank you page and buys something generating an average revenue for you of $5.

Following this example, you would have increased your average revenue per order from just $25 to between $35 and $45.  That’s an increase of about 40% to 75% in revenues with no extra costs involved other than the cost to pay someone to add in that extra page or two (which shouldn’t be more than $100 in total). 

Can You Use An Increase Of Revenues Of Mid To High Double Digits??

That’s kind of a stupid question isn’t it? 

Well… it really is a no brainer… and the process of integration marketing is pretty simple.

1. Instead of having a plain ol’ thank you page for your purchases and email list opt ins… make the thank you page a “one time offer” or something that provides something to your customer that is very high value for the price… and that they can only get that ONE TIME (there has to be scarcity involved or it won’t work very well).
2. Look for products and services that are complimentary to yours.  Talk to the product/service owners and strike up a deal with them where you show their product on your thank you pages… and you split the revenues.  Who would say no to that?
3. Always give your customer/prospect a chance to “upgrade” to something a bit better... for small price difference.  If you offer a service that costs $500 a month… create an extra bonus or two (30 minutes of time w/ you, etc.) and create a platinum version of the service for just $699… then give them the option of upgrading for that small price difference. 

Really, it doesn’t matter how you choose to integrate your other products… or products from other people… into your sales process.  But, the important thing is that you DO IT. 

Here’s Your Action Plan

1. Look at your current sales process and find out where you can offer people something complimentary (or an upgrade).
2. Find products that people would be likely to use before or after purchasing your product… and see if you can strike a deal with them where you show their product on your thank you page (preferably for a small discount or w/ an extra bonus involved)… and have them show your product on their thank you page (or offline equivalent such as an insert into the shipping package, etc.).
3. Rinse and repeat

Enjoy!

I’ll go over some more specific examples of how integration marketing is used on some real world websites here in the next few weeks. 

——————-

One quick note… Mark Joyner (one of the top online and offline entrepreneurs I know) just put out a great free “Integration Marketing” tutorial and business package for you to use in your business.  I’ve signed up for a free account and love the info in there including the free Integration Marketing ebook he has in the free members portal.

Check it out… it’s well worth it!

Popularity: 22% [?]

I’m sure you’ve seen the videos of this guy named Matt Harding doing his crazy "gumby-like" dance all around the world in front of well known monuments and landmarks in pretty much every country known to man.

If not… you really NEED to check the videos out for yourself… they are simple… but you’ll instantly see why millions of people have viewed the videos over the past couple years.  Actually… his most recent video (check it out below) was uploaded into Youtube on June 20th (3 days ago) and already has almost 2 million views… wow!

Anyhow, Matt did it again and just put out his most recent "Dancing Video " with a bunch of new locations… but he put a different twist on this dancing video.

What twist?… you say…

A new dance? NOPE… the same crazy (or stupid… ) dance as before.

A new sponsor? NOPE… Stride sponsored this one too.

The twist that Matt put on this most recent Where the Hell Is Matt "Dancing Video" is a twist of humanity.  Rather than Matt dancing alone… in every stop around the world Matt had big groups of people from that country joining in on the dance enjoying themselves each and every second.

Here’s the most recent video if you haven’t already watched it:

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo .

Dissecting The Video… Why Does It Work So Well?

Making a viral video isn’t an easy task… but new viral videos are created virtually everyday… usually by people who didn’t intend it to go viral… and didn’t expect to attempt to make a profit from it.  That’s part of what makes a video viral… it has to be genuine… remarkable… relevant… and pull on one or more of the psychological triggers that compel us to be drawn toward certain things.

If you’ve watched Matt’s other videos you can see that they all are similar and play on the same wants/desires/ and core identities of human beings.

What’s The Hook?

Just like in advertising and direct response marketing Matt’s "Dancing" videos didn’t become a big hit because they were dull, overused, and uncompelling.  The videos worked because they had a "hook" that worked so well with people that people could identify with the video and the message that it sent.

In Matt’s first videos there were a few hooks that drew people in:

• People desire to live life to the fullest … even though 90% of everyone alive isn’t living the life they truly want to live.  Traveling the world is a dream that many people have deep down in their core because they know that life has more to offer than what they’ve seen and experienced so far.
• Matt’s Story …  Without the story behind the story these videos probably wouldn’t have had the affect and reach that they did.  People identify with stories better than facts… and like to relate what we’re seeing to the story behind what we’re seeing… it becomes more real and genuine when we can peer behind the curtain a bit.  Matt worked his ass off for a few years and one day realized that this isn’t what life is all about.  There’s no way we were created to slave away in cubicles for 40-80 hours a week and be forced to start living our lives when we retire.  So… quit his job… packed up… and spent the next year and a half traveling the word.  Really… who the heck wouldn’t want to do that?  I’d venture to say that almost everyone deep down in their core wants to do that… whether you think you do or not.
• Going against the grain … Matt could have made that trip and did what every other tourist does… take a few pictures or a video of himself standing in front of cool stuff in each country.  But, that wouldn’t have gotten even 1,000 views on Youtube probably.  Instead, Matt does this crazy "dance" in front of recognizable places around the world… and completely melds the "usual" (the locations) with the "unusual" (the dance)…

In Matt’s newest video (the one on this page)… it plays on the same "hooks"… but Matt knew that a 3rd trip around the world doing the same thing wouldn’t get much legs on the internet.  So, he added in the element of getting locals to join in on the dance… truly making it a joining of nationalities across all language barriers.

The added hook of humanity has so far helped this newest video to go viral again.

So, Let’s Break Down The Triggers and Success Elements

Any marketing promotion, advertising campaign, or video has to tug at one or more of our psychological triggers.

I think that the Where the Hell Is Matt video series play on the EXACT same triggers as Tim Ferriss’s book "4 Hour Work Week ".

We all…

• Hate to work a 9-5 job and know there is more out there
• Have an ultimate dream to travel the world and/or experience things beyond our little cocoon when we "retire" (in actuality… we’d all rather do all of that now… but have a mixed up view on what life ‘is supposed’ to be like)
• Are vulnerable and like to see that others are vulnerable and imperfect like we are (Matt’s dance… he could have said, "I’m not going to put this on the internet… people will laugh at me"… but he didn’t… and people admire that)
• Realize by watching the video that we CAN experience the same thing Matt did if we truly want to… all we have to do is step out of our comfort zones and make the decision

With Matt’s latest "Where The Hell Is Matt" Dancing video it’s so successful because it of course grabs at our desires to "live life and see new things", brings the unexpected (the crazy dance in front of well known locations worldwide), and now brings a touch of humanity that we can all relate to.

The idea of filming yourself in front of places around the world, putting music to the video, and putting it on Youtube isn’t anything new.  It’s been done before… and didn’t go viral… not even close.

However, a great marketing principle is to take two things that we all know and like… but that are usually unrelated… and combine them into one.  Often this synergy makes the difference.  Matt joined travel and uninhibited dancing… and it was a hit.

Another recent video that went viral that simply joined two things that we all know and like… was the "Wii Fit Girl " video.   This video joined the craze that the new Wii Fit launch caused… and combined it with the voyeuristic look at a hot girl in her underwear using the Wii Fit.  This video has got almost 5 million views in the last 30 days.

All In All…

Okay… I’m rambling a bit now (I tend to do that sometimes ;-)… so I’ll leave you with this.

There is no hard and fast system that guarantees a video will go viral.  All you can do is study the videos that have gone viral, pinpoint why they are appealing, and start to make a list of things.  Over time you’ll see that all viral videos play on our own psychological triggers and usually combine 2 or more of those triggers into a "new" thing we’ve never seen before.

So, here it is:

• Come up with a new idea that no one has ever explored before (difficult), or
• Put a new twist on an "old" idea with a fresh new perspective
• Keep your video usually under 5 minutes
• Capitolize on a "craze" or trend
• Go after 2 or more psychological triggers

Good luck in creating your next viral video and you’ve gotta hand it to Matt for following his dream and putting a new twist on his success to keep legs under it at least for the rest of the summer.

Popularity: 68% [?]

Social media is kind of a confusing term for most businesses today… let alone knowing how the heck to use it to benefit their online presence and profits.

So, I thought I’d give you a quick tutorial on one way to use social media websites like digg.com , fark.com , de.licio.us , twitter.com , etc… to drive traffic to your website very quickly… and build multiple search engine rankings in the shortest amount of time possible.

Who Should Use This Social Media Optimization Strategy?

Well… everyone. Everyone who wants more traffic , more quickly , more often , and for less money and effort . Is that you? If not, I’m going to have to ask you to push the back button on your browser and head over to your favorite news site and not come back here again ( ;-), seriously ).

All kidding aside, every business who has a website should institute this simple Social Media optimization strategy (or one like it) for your important and high quality content.

What Is Social Media and Why Does It Help Your Website?

In simple terms, a Social Media website is a place where a community of people come to share things on the internet, network and connect with others, and find things that are related to their likes and interests.

Sounds simple huh? Well… it is.

Social Media can help your website and business in many ways including:

• Direct people to your website and content
• Build links back to your site for search engine optimization purposes
• Monitoring the discussion in your market… and about your business and products
• Engaging in the conversation with your market… and building a stronger relationship with them
• Networking to find new business joint ventures, partners, etc.

But, in this tutorial I’m just going to cover the part of building links back to your website and content (SEO) and driving traffic to your website quickly and easily.

Social Media Optimization for SEO and Driving Quick Traffic

In simple terms, what we’re going to do here is in 4 simple steps:

1. Create high quality content worth telling people about
2. Go to social media websites and let them know about your content, what it’s about, and create a good and compelling headline that piques peoples curiosity about your content
3. Integrate multiple social media websites together (news and RSS feed aggregators, bookmarking services, and video/podcast posting websites) in a way that best builds a web of links back to your content
4. Rinse and repeat for new content

Really, traffic can come from a few different places by using a strategy like this.

First , you get traffic from people clicking through to view your content (article, video, picture, etc.)

Second , you get traffic from search engines because the actual "bookmarks" or "submissions" on the social media website often show up great in search results (and very fast!) when you title it with the keywords and phrases that your target market is likely to search.

Third , many people who have websites and blogs read these social media websites every day looking for things to write about. If they see something worth passing along to their readers, they’ll write about your article and usually link back to your website… driving traffic to your site and building high quality links.

Okay, here we go…

Step 1: Create High Quality Content Worth Telling People About

This step is pretty self-explanatory… but not as simple as it sounds. The internet today is packed with more information than the world ever dreamed of just 20 years ago. This means that there are more competing places for your target markets attention.  Jeff Widman calls this type of content "wall-able "… meaning we should strive to create content that people would want to print off and hang on their wall because it is so profound, entertaining, valuable, etc.

In order to grab their attention… and keep it… you need to create high quality, high trust, content that is different than the other millions of web pages with similar content.

Whether it be separating yourself by being:

• Humorous
• More relevant
• More detailed
• More honest
• More cutting edge
• More timely
• and on and on…

You need to separate yourself from the pack in some way so your target market stands up and notices what you have to say… and cares about what you have to say. You can be mediocre and get noticed at first… but mediocrity does not last for the long haul and is way more expensive than just spending the extra time and effort to concentrate on getting only high quality stuff out there.

Here are some great resources to check out to help you learn how to create memorable content that will get you noticed:

• Do You Have Remarkable Featured Content?
• A Three Step Approach To Strategic Content Development
• How to Create Remarkable Content When There’s Nothing New Under the Sun

Just remember, when creating content… ask yourself the question, "Why would someone care about this?". If you have a good and solid answer for why someone truly would care about your content… excellent… post it and market the heck out of it. If not, keep writing.

Writing A Compelling Yet Relevant SEO Enhanced Title:

Part of creating great content is to create a great title (or "headline") for your content. Great compelling headlines will likely be read more through the social media websites because people will be compelled to click on them more.

Also, the title of the article, post, video, etc. should contain the keywords and phrases your target audience is likely to type into search engines.

FOR EXAMPLE:

You just wrote content packed article on the in’s and out’s of writing a kick @ss elevator speech.

You want to make sure the title of the article reflects what the article is about, is compelling, and has the keyword phrases that people are actually typing in search engines when looking for the solution your article helps them solve.

So, head over to: (and bookmark this site for future reference)

• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com (free keyword searcher)

Once you’re there type in "elevator speech" and see what types of searches people are ACTUALLY typing into the search engines.

In there you find…

These phrases are the actual phrases that people are typing in to search engines to get information on "elevator speeches". The numbers to the left of the phrases is the estimate of "daily" searches for that specific search phrase. Keyword Tracker doesn’t include Google in these estimates, which accounts for 2/3 of all searches on the net… so if you multiply the number on the left by 3… that’ll give you a decent idea of the search volume (still, this is just good for an overall look at phrases and volume… not 100% accurate).

In this search you see that the most searches are the phrases:

• "elevator speech"
• "elevator speech realtor example" (this shows that you might want to write an article specifically about elevator speeches for realtors)
• "elevator speech examples"
• another is "how to write an elevator speech"

So, now sit down with this new found knowledge and try to integrate one of these phrases (ideally one with more searches) into your content title.

For instance, if your article is on how to write an elevator speech… but you also include 7 examples of great elevator speeches… you might write something like:

"7 Elevator Speech Examples From Millionaire Entrepreneurs and How To Write One Yourself "

or

"How To Write An Elevator Speech That Actually Loses You Money "

Ya, I admit… the first one is a bit long… but you get the picture. With the second title, I used the reverse psychology principle. People will want to read the article simply to make sure their elevator speech isn’t one of the one’s that "lose money".

Notice how I integrated the "elevator speech examples" phrase and added some elements that will hopefully pique the interest of the reader.

Anyhow, that is a quick primer course on writing headlines for SEO and to make them compelling for readers to click on. For more info on writing headlines and content head over to copyblogger … he usually has some pretty darn good content over there on writing online copy.

Step 2: Let Social Media Websites Know About Your Content

The first time you do this step it will take you a bit of time… mostly because you need to go and set up free accounts at each site before you can post content. After your free accounts are all set up (usually takes no more than 5 minutes to set up free accounts on each site), you can really automate the posting process pretty easily.

There are a lot of places to find great social media websites that you can post your content to… and I’m not going to make a full list of social media sites (there are hundreds… maybe thousands), but we’ll just use a solid base of 20-50 social media sites to get the word out.

Various Social Media Websites:

• Digg.com
• stumbleupon.com
• de.licio.us
• propeller.com
• reddit.com
• slashdot.com

And a ton of others that I use.

Rather than redoing the work that other people have already done… here are a couple links that have great lists of social media websites that are great for driving traffic and building great links and buzz for your website.

• Dosh Dosh’s List of 48 Social Media Sites (great list)
• Tropical SEO’s List (good list as well… he’s got some that I hadn’t heard of)

At first, pick 20-30 social media sites (just go w/ the first 30 Dosh Dosh lists or the ones that socialmarker.com has)… and use them for your first batch of social media optimization. I like starting off small so you don’t get overwhelmed by the process and give up because it seems like too much work.

How To Get The Word Out:

There are a bunch of different ways to get your content onto these social media websites. One approach is to do each submission one at a time, which is good just so you learn the process… but takes way too much time if you do it every time.

I prefer to use services that help speed up the "bookmarking" and "submission" process like:

Socialmarker.com -

Socialmarker.com is a "semi-automatic" social media posting service that lets you post your content to about 50 of the top social media websites in probably about 25% of the time it would take you to go to each website individually. I use it a lot of the time because it’s easy and is free.

Onlywire.com -

Onlywire.com is pretty much the same as socialmarker… but with a few different bookmarking sites… and about half of the choices. Really, they both do the same thing (socialmarker supports more sites though) so check them both out and use the one (or use both) that you like the best.

Really, it doesn’t matter how you end up submitting your content to these social media websites… it just matters that it is done… and done correctly. If I were you, I’d start off doing it yourself the first couple times so you can then train someone else to do it in your company… or hire a Virtual Assistant to do it for you (which is what I do).

Submitting Your Content:

Head over to Socialmarker.com and fill in the box in the upper right hand corner of the page with your:

• Content title (optimized for SEO as I wrote above and compelling)
• The link to the content
• Text explaining the content in a compelling way. You are looking to persuade people to click on your article.
• Tags. Basically, type terms that are related to your content. So, if you’re writing on elevator speeches you might use, "elevator speech, how to write, marketing, personal branding" etc.

From there, of course click "submit" and the social marker site will take you to each social media website to submit your content. The first time through you’ll have to set up accounts at each site… so it may take a little while… but after that it shouldn’t take longer than 15-20 minutes to submit to more than 40 social media websites.

Advanced Social Bookmarking:

I won’t go into depth on this because this is a whole other article… but when you really get into social bookmarking your content… you’ll want to create multiple accounts at each social media website.

The reason for this is to of course provide more links to your content … but also to spread the submissions out across multiple accounts so it isn’t obvious that you are only submitting your own content… which social media sites tend to not like. Newsvine.com actually is pretty strict on this and my first time through I got my account canceled in just 3 weeks because I only submitted my OWN content.

And, it is important to bookmark content other than your own periodically to make it look like you aren’t only on their site to submit your content.

In addition, multiple accounts lets you leverage all of the accounts together to form a big web of links between your content and your websites… resulting in better search rankings (that’s the idea anyway).

But, don’t worry about these techniques yet except for the one about being sure to bookmark other articles other than your own periodically to throw off the social media sites from "thinking" that you are only bookmarking your own content.

The Aftermath (RESULTS):

After you bookmark your content with the targeted title, you should begin to see traffic coming in within 24 hours.

How much traffic?

Well… that depends on the quality of your content and how compelling your title was written.

Also, by submitting your content to the social media sites… the search engines (especially Google) will follow the links back to your website and index your content almost immediately. I’ve had my content show up in Google within 2 hours before… which is huge.

Here is a screen shot of the results of one article (with a video I created) after I optimized the article and video in social media. This was taken just 2 days after I did the submissions. This is the first page of a search for the name of a pretty popular product. The first two results are #1: the manufacturer of the product and #2 Amazon.com. After that, I take up 7 or the 8 remaining spots with either my website or social media pointing back to my content.

I didn’t post that screenshot to brag… just to illustrate the point that social media optimization really works when done correctly.

Step 3: Build The "Web" Of Links That All Lead Back To Your Company

The whole aim of social media optimization is to lead people back to you and your company in some way, shape, or form.

Really, I don’t care how people get back to my website… I just care that they do .

The best way to ensure you attract the most visitors back to your website is to cast the largest "web" out on the net.

You can do this by integrating social media and other internet marketing techniques together to get your content out to as many places as possible.

Here are some methods to build your "web":

• Social Media Marketing (as described in this article)
• RSS Feed Syndication
• Video Marketing / Content Producing
• Podcasts
• Press Releases and Articles (I won’t cover these here)

And on and on. Once again, this is a whole other article… so I’ll go over it briefly.

RSS Feed Syndication:

An rss feed is simply a way that people can easily read the content from your website without actually going to your website.  For example, you can "subscribe" to a feed and read the articles in your Google Feedreader or other feed reading service.  Yahoo news (and most other give news aggregation sites) use RSS feeds to gather the news and put it on their own website for their visitors to see.

The first step is to head over to www.feedburner.com and set up a free account.  Once you have your account up and running "burn a feed" (video instructions here ) for your website/blog, etc… and you’re done.

Now, whenever you write an article, your RSS feed is automatically updated.  Now, you can use this "new feed" provided by Feedburner to submit your feed to website and blog directories like Technorati.com , Yahoo News, and www.pingomatic.com which will get your content out to multiple websites automatically every time you write new content.

Pretty slick huh?  There is more to RSS feeds than this… but this gives you a good idea where to start and why to use RSS feed syndication.

Video Marketing / Content Creation:

Another pillar of your "web" should be video.  Video is a very effective way to drive people back to your website, teach online, provide great value, and generate more traffic.

Film a video of you talking about how your target market can solve a particular solution (that you help them solve)… or do a powerpoint presentation with your voice over… title your videos using the tips I mentioned earlier… place your website URL in the video to drive people back to your site… and submit the video to multiple video sharing sites like Youtube.com , Revver.com , Viddler.com , and others.

This is essentially the same concept as the social media marketing … but you are now creating video as your content and submitting the video to video sharing websites.

The same thing goes with submitting the videos…

You can do them one at a time yourself… or use websites like the ones below to "automatically" submit your videos in 5% of the time.

• Tubemogul.com - Free video submission service.  I use this one quite a bit and it works great… but it doesn’t support a lot of the video sharing website I like to use.  Great for free though.
• Trafficgeyser - Membership based automatic video submitting service that supports many more video sharing sites than Tubemogul.  The plans run between $50 and $97 / month and have a ton more features in addition to just submitting your videos.  I’m pretty sure they still have the $1 30 day trial .  I used to be a member but now I go with Tubemogul quite a bit and my Virtual Assistants who do the video posting for me using my systems.

Either way, I suggest you either hire out the video submitting or use one of the automatic posting services above.

That screenshot you saw earlier where I dominated many of the top 10 spots in google for the product name… most of those results came from these video sites.

Podcasts :

I haven’t gotten into podcasts a whole lot… but I do know that they work great for getting out your message and converting people into clients.

Since I’m not an expert on using Podcasts… I’ll point you over to Paul Colligan who is one of the top business podcasting experts in the world.

Bottom line… podcasts are just another way to get your word out and grab more attention.

———-

Whew!

I know this article was a tad bit long… but I wanted to go into as much detail as possible on the overall social media optimization process that I use to easily generate:

• More traffic to my own (and my clients) websites
• Traffic more quickly
• More links to my websites
• Better search engine rankings

Really, the process sounds somewhat daunting at first… but once you go through the process the first time you’ll see how easy it is.

The really important part of making this work for your business is systematizing the whole social media optimization process so it is as hands off for YOU as possible.  Have a secretary or intern in your office take over the system… outsource it to a Virtual Assistant… hire a consultant (like myself) to take it totally off of your hands… etc.

Your job is to focus on creating quality content and serving your customers better… this social media optimization process simply helps you get the word out on the internet much more quickly, efficiently, and cheaply.

Any Question On The Value Of This System?

I know a social media marketing plan like this one is very valuable to my business and the businesses of my clients.  However, many small and medium sized businesses fail to see the value… until they see the targeted traffic coming in as a result.

Social media marketing / optimization works in all markets .  From ecommerce sites like Amazon.com… all the way to mainly offline businesses like attorneys, insurance salesmen, consultants, etc.

Develop a social media marketing and optimization plan (use mine to start) and get going!  You can have more targeted traffic later this afternoon if you want!

——

Social Media Marketing combined with traditional direct response Internet Marketing strategies and SEO are truly a killer combination for driving more traffic and converting it better.  If you’d like to hire Trevor Mauch to help you get the most out of your small or medium sized business website for the highest ROI possible … contact him to schedule a consultation today .

**UPDATE**

I am currently booked out for the next 60 days with project based and retainer clients.  I do have 2 projects scheduled to be completed soon… so email me so I can place you in my consultation cue and get your project moving asap.  I look forward to doubling your online ROI today!

Popularity: 94% [?]

"Mr. Mauch, now please click the ‘upgrade account’ button on the left side of your account page ", the polite gal says in a slight Indian accent.

"Well… I truly wish I could but it’s not there… but I do know where it is. Let me go there and click it ", I said in a mildly perturbed tone.

"Okay Mr. Mauch, please do. Then, click the ‘upgrade my account to a business account’ link on the right side and complete the short form and click ’submit ‘", explained Remzi who is very good at doing exactly what she was trained to do as a Paypal customer service rep.

"Alrighty, I’ve done this same thing about 16 times in the last 24 hours and it takes me to an error page (actually a ‘Page Not Found’ page) every time… I’ve followed the 4 responses from email support with no success… changed computers… changed internet networks… but I’ll try it again for one last college try ", I said in a quasi-sarcastic way that I tend to do.

As I filled out the form once again as I had already done 16 times, I got to the bottom of the page and that corny movie suspense filled music crept into my mind as I hovered my mouse pointer over the "submit" button praying that this ordeal would finally be over.

Click…

"Yep, same thing. Big fat error. Is there anyway you can upgrade me over the phone rather than me wasting another 2 hours of my time trying to do a 5 minute task on your website? ", I pleaded to Remzi.

"No Mr. Mauch, that is ALL I can do for you from here… that sounds like a technical problem to me. Here’s the technical support number… they SHOULD be able to help you. "

And the saga continues…

Customer Service Isn’t Customer Service… It’s Marketing In Disguise

As I type this, the ordeal I just played out (by the way, that is a real situation) is still in mid plot.

• My problem hasn’t been solved
• I’ve already wasted more than 2 hours on this stupid little task hoping the solution would be one click away
• I’ve now worked with no less than 4 different customer service people
• Now instead of "putting up" with this company’s lackluster customer service in the past… I’m actively searching for another option that isn’t such a pain in the ass

I’m not going to spend a ton more time on this issue… but in the time I’ve spent with these very nice and