A fast warning on latest wordpress update
If you are thinking of updating your wordpress blog, then I suggest you to wait for a while. I recently updated my blogs with wordpress 2.6 and encountered one problem after another. I tried everything these guys suggested without any results.
2 of My main problems were
1. white screen after login – I can’t login to my dashboard.
2. Permalink structure effected: one of my blogs permalink structure is effected badly. I am getting 404 error for articles, archives, pages.
My only solution so far was to revert back to 2,5.1. My suggestion is to wait for a while and then upgrade.
Great Script Resource for FREE.
Recently when I was looking for few scripts to implement on my websites, I got around to Michael’s website. On his blog he shares quite a few script codes for you to implement. Scripts like OTO (One time offer), Overlay Windows and images, content rotation and much more.
I bet you can think of few implementations of the scripts I discussed above.
I suggest you to check out his blog.
30 Minute Backlink Review
A little birdie told me about this new product. Frankly I try not to notice too many products in online marketing. But the name “30 minute backlink” was too much tempting. Anyway I am going to keep this review short as I don’t have much to say about this.
First important thing: Does this work?
It does.
To me, its surprising most people in Online marketing doesn’t know about this. I mean if you are a software developer then you know about this technique. Heck if you are a black hat seo, then you know about this (well BH SEO can take any technique and make it black hat).
I don’t want to give away her secret. But What I wonder if what are the chances of a normal person (not a software developer) to make this method work? Very low. The only way you have to implement this technique is by hiring a programmer. It’s going to take more time than 30 minutes to hire and get a programmer.
And moreover, there are other questions about these links… Will they be on high PR pages? Because from what I know most of the links won’t be.
Its going to be hard work. Am I going to promote this product? ummmm. NO. Damn I had to think twice.
How I started Making sense of conversion maths?
Ed’s response on my blog post “Zero – 150 Unique visitors in 8 days” got me thinking. So I am going to cover this very important topic. Its called conversion maths. Or Rather
Conversion Maths : 80 Unique visitors = $3 Income or 80 Unique Visitors = $70 Income Which you’d chose?
Before I start off this article, let me confess, I am not one of those fanatic testers. In fact I pretty much hate when I have to do the numbers and figure out if I am making money or losing. But this is a fact you have to deal with if you want to do marketing and run a business. So here’s complete background on how I got started…
I wasn’t a Traffic Expert back then…
If you have been subscribed to my list then you know my story. During my first 13 months as a failure in marketing… I started blogging and I wasn’t very good at generating traffic. On one of my main blog I was getting 80–100 uniques a day after continuously blogging for 3–4 months (that’s how much I used to suck).
When you don’t get traffic, you only have one option to turn to… Become good at converting people into clicks (Using google adsense). I think I applied every click tricks for adsense I could find… Some techniques were even pretty objectionable too.
Like the one here called Adsense beautifier. This is an example of a wordpress plugin. Of course this thing can get High CTR’s and in those good ol`days Google used to pay pretty decent money with ever click.
Though I am not using these techniques (as you can increase CTR with bit more creativeness). For example creativity with adsense. Now I don’t want to make this post another improve adsense ctr. So lets get on with story.
In one of those lucky days I sold a product and got a commission of $70. Now this kind of commission outside Internet marketing is pretty un-heard of (at least for a guy like me). So I was curious, surprised and really happy, but I didn’t do anything with the info. Later next week, I sold another of those product and this time I started wondering…
What the hell I am selling exactly for $70 commission?
Now I dug into my affiliate stats and started comparing the prices and their commission structure. I dug into my own stats to tried to understand few things like..
- Where people are coming from.
- What kind of mindset these people into before they came at my blog?
- Does that mindset change after reading my blog post (or pre-sell)?
- Which of my posts were pre-selling these costly products?
- Which keywords people are using to land up on my blog?
- Does these keyword have anything to do with decision making on the product?
- If I write this new post, will it help sell the product more?
Now as you can see, this was heavy duty work for lazy me. It took me like couple of weeks to gather that much data with small visitors. Remember, I didn’t knew about the list building concept back then…
Now after I got my data, I started working on …
- How to get more people into same mindset as when people were buying?
- Can I add something to get additional traffic to my specific blog page?
- Can I add something more to my blog post to increase conversion?
So armed with all these question and answers I started making changes to my layout structure. On how am I was writing my articles and pre-selling products.
Results : Are you interested?
After another 2 weeks I was able to sell 1 of those products in 2 days (or rather 180–200 unique visitors). now this was something good. Why ? because Before I was making $3 a day with adsense and odd change with affiliate products. Now I am selling a product at least 3 times in a week and making around $210/Week.
Now if you know the stats for affiliates, 90% of affiliates are not making $200 per month. Well Finally I was able to break that barrier.
Later on As I kept adding more post, information and becoming better at writing copy and converting, I was able to convert higher and make around $65– $70 per day just by selling affiliate products.
My lessons learned from this experience were
- If you know your basic numbers you can make more money
- Conversion Maths doesn’t have to be complicated. If doing A gets you more money, you just do that.
- Testing isn’t complicated (Hang on I’ll show you how too)
How to do basic testing…
Now there are tons of softwares and stuff out there helping you do basic testing. Of course there are also complicated formulas and terms floating (Multivirate testing) around too. Personally I do not worry about these things as much…
I want to find out 3 things first if I am starting out.
- How many unique visitors my pages are getting (in my case, I wanted to find out about that specific pre-sell page)?
- How many products I am selling from that page?
- What kind of offer I should make on my pre-sell page?
This should get you started to implement basic conversion and testing strategies. For example In that blog I am testing my character voice.
Currently this is converting at 17.9 % +– 10%. You might get worried by seeing this much variation but this version is outpulling my original by 300%. So I know for sure what kind of voice I am going to use in this market.
Whew. I almost wrote a 1000 word post this time around… Anyways I’ll add more on how to do strategy and conversion maths topic. So don’t you worry about it. For now… Sayonara.
Zero - 150 Unique Visitors in 8 days.
I’ve been posting on this blog on how article marketing still produce favorable results. If you remember in one of my old post on “Does Article Marketing Work?” It took me 12 days to get around 150 visitors a day. This time around with my new blog it took me just few days.
Why Do you think I am doing a case studies on new websites?
Simple because I want to show my readers that you can get traffic to new websites with basic techniques that I’ve been showing you on this blog all long.
as you can see my traffic touched 134 in 6th day and on 8th it crossed 150. All it took me Daily blog posting and article submitting. Nothing fancy, Nothing too scientific, just plain old vanilla basics.
But if you are sold on to the idea of “The Secret”, All of what I show it to you here can’t help you.
The “Fatal Error” I was making as an affiliate
NO, It’s NOT about List Building.
You are probably quite aware of how things are in affiliate marketing. The rosy dream of getting checks while you are lounging around your swimming pool is what you have been sold on to. No hassles for customer support or creating product or testing your markets. All you need is to find a market and start promoting someone else’s product.
So lets get this picture straight. I mean I have been that way, where I’ve promoted quite a few products and tried to build list while hiding behind a website and an autoresponder. Of course blogging was a saving grace for me but still there is a missing piece.
Affiliate marketing is dog-eat-dog market. You know how tough it is to survive the number of affiliates out there. Don’t even talk about affiliate who uses unfair techniques like cloaking and cookie stuffing and take your credit. Though there are quite a few fatal errors that might be killing your chances.
Why Are You Not Creating A Brand?
I was talking to marketing friend (from real world… LOL). We were discussing affiliate marketing and how it has been hard for me. While we were talking he asked me a very simple question…
“Why are you not creating a brand?”
huh??? <– that’s me who just lost his train of thought.
“dude, it doesn’t matter what you are promoting you aren’t creating a brand”.
Though I dismiss him outright saying “he doesn’t know online marketing”. It kept bugging me for few days. Unless I realized how simple this question was.
My Slap on forehead moment…
Now if you don’t know what it is then lets say, you wake up late night one day and say “holy shit, I forgot to do my taxes”.
This is one of major mistakes or fatal errors that almost every affiliate are making. They are trying to hide behind a website and an auto-responder. If you think you are building a list and promoting affiliate products fiercely. I’d say you are leaving tons on the table.
Why Branding?
Because it builds loyalty.
You must have noticed in Internet marketing, where marketers are promoting products with tons of free bonuses. The competition is so damn hard, it won’t surprise you if one day they’ll even offer their new born as a bonus.
Notice people who are cashing huge checks. They have a brand of their own. People like Ewen Chia, Frank Kern and so many more, they have their own brand. They are called experts in their own small world. But if you go outside the Internet Marketing niche, you’ll see there’s only rare few who are trying to make a brand as an affiliate. In fact the number is so dismal that you can’t even count.
So how you go about creating a brand.
One of the Easy way to create a brand…
Now there are many ways to create brand online but I think One of the easy way to create brand is by creating products. The moment you create a product you become an expert (at least on percieved level).
I don’t understand why not you as a merchant handle all the customer headache (which is normally nonexistent) and you don’t have to worry about getting traffic as your affiliates will do that job. I bet today the toughest thing to do is getting traffic.
In today’s world, you can pay someone to create products for you. If it’s a hard good, you can find someone to source it for you. Heck You don’t even need to take inventory if you try hard enough. So what’s stopping you to become a merchant.
Second Easy way to create brand …
Second easy way to create a brand is by owning a word in your market. For example…
If I say “Mass control” who do you think of? Frank Kern right?
Or If I say “Manifesto”, who do you think of? Who else? Rich shefren.
Or if I say “Traffic secrets” Or “VRE” You automatically think of John Reese.
Or If I say “Stoming the search engines”, You’ll think of Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins.
Or If I say “SEO book”, you’ll automatically think of Aaron Wall.
What about “Warrior Forum”, its Allen Says (though this one might be bit hard for people to remember).
Do you need more examples? Now this can be hard too… I am personally working on creating my own word (which I am yet to finalize) But its fun thinking about online branding.
Well I bet I gave few things to think about in this post.
How I started podcasting with these 8 steps.
Do you want to start podcasting and improve traffic?
If you have a website, podcasting has many applications that allow you to get in front of your customers, get your name out there, and ultimately make you more money. You’ll find there are tons of people who love to listen instead of reading a blog post or an article. These people download the podcasts on their IPod and listen as they go.
8 Step to Create your Own First Podcast.
1. Spend 1 to 2 minutes and brainstorm some topics you are interested in. He doesn’t have to be new and brilliant content for your first podcast, it should simply be something you have a passion for.
2. Select one or two of those topics that catch your eye.
3. Spend 1 or 2 minutes and brainstorm interesting facts that you know about those topics
4. Group those facts together under one or two headings.
5. By now, you probably see the one you want to podcast the most. If not, you’ll need to choose one now.
6. Go online and find a web site that talks about that topic as well that you can review in your podcast.
7. Write down an upcoming event that is related to your area of interest. For example, if the area you’re going to podcast on his genealogy, you might be able to find a local genealogical society which has a genealogy fare coming up. If you can’t find anything, think of a past event that you can review.
8. Develop a brief script on your own, or from the example in the Example box that follows this exercise.
Here is an example script for your very first podcast
“Hello and welcome to our very first podcast at [your web address, which you will get shortly… in the next exercise]. My name is [your name] and today we’re going to be talking about [your topic].
In this podcast we’ll be talking about [heading #1] and [heading #2]. Later, we’ll review a website and talk about an upcoming event.
First, we’re talking about [heading #1]. Did you know that… [talk about the interesting facts you wrote down].
Second, we’re talking about [heading #2]. Did you know that… [talk about the interesting facts you wrote down].
Now is the time in our show where we review a website. Today’s website is [say the web address and the name, if it’s different]. [Briefly describe the website and rate it on how helpful or informative it was as well as how easy it was designed to navigate around].
Finally, we’ve got to mention the [upcoming event]. [Mention who, what, where, when, cost, what to bring, what to expect].
We’ve had a great time on the show today and look forward to having you tune in next time!”
That was easy, wasn’t it? Sure! There’s nothing to it.You probably don’t even need the script. Often you just need a simple cheat sheet with you about the topics you are going to mention in your podcast.
As for as I am concerned, I need the whole script as English is not my first language. Even then I try to not rehearse when I am doing any kind of audio recording.
So what’s stopping you? Get going…
Oh Here are few links for you to get started too…
1. http://www.podcasting-tools.com/ This is an excellent site about podcasting and takes you through everything from an introduction to how-to-podcast as well as the technical aspects of podcasting. It doesn’t look great but it’s quite functional and informative.
2. http://www.podcastalley.com/ Podcast Alley is the podcast lovers portal. Featuring the best Podcast Directory and the Top 10 podcasts, as voted on by the listeners.
3. http://www.podcastingnews.com/ This might be a little advanced for the beginner, but it is an excellent and comprehensive news site devoted solely to podcasting news. Once you’re familiar with podcasting and want to really benefit from the industry and stay on top of it, this should be in your “favorites” folder.
Oh btw, if you go there right now, You’ll find story about Gary Vaynerchuk who started Winelibrarytv.com. Its complete interview. You should head over there right now and read it.
Google Killed Widget Baiting
Have you been trying widget baiting? You know where you ask others to put your badge or your code for the sake of link building SEO. You can create a simple script which have a link back to your site and rank for your keywords. That’s not such a bad idea… but google recently killed it.
Slightlyshadyseo.com has an article over google killing widget baiting. You should read this post. Its really imformative.
Claiming your own stranded visitors
Today we are going to talk about stranded visitors left in the middle at your website. No, this is not a talk about confusing navigation systems on your site/blog. But today we are going to talk about 404 pages.
No matter how hard we work, we can still get few things wrong, few links doesn’t go where they should be. And our visitors end up on a 404 page. There are few options after this point, your visitors can take.
- Click Back on the browse button and search again.
- Click bank on the browse button and try to click again (most likely).
- Check if there’s a bad URL or miss-type (least likely).
- Leave your site completely (Most likely).
The most important information you should take is that you have a lost a probably loyal readers (or brand evangelist like Guy Kawasaki says).
When I changed my 404 error page on one of my blog, I see a jump in subscribers. Though I am not sure if I got those people from my 404 errors or not (I know I know, I should be testing it). Anyways There isn’t any major traffic increase to predict any other reason other than 404 errors.
No need to worry though, we can easily fix this thing for you.
How to customize your 404 errors
Step 1 : Get some insipiration from mine
Step 2 : Get some insipiration from others like Problogger
Step 3 : Get some more insipiration from google
Step 4 : Create your own 404 Error page.
Now How to Direct your traffic from 404 Page to your blog?
Here are few thing to get you involved your visitors into 404 pages.
1. Guide them – If you check my 404 page, you’ll see that I am telling them to search or to subscribe or to find content on my blog home page.
2. Ask them to take action: You have to tell people to take action if they still can’t find the content (ie email me).
3. Ask them to subscribe. – Again I am using Feedburner to provide blog updates via email. I’ve found feedburner’s delieverability exceptionally good.
4. Assurance of privacy – You can see that I am trying to re-assure about giving out email address.
These simple tips not only will help you guide few of your visitors in right line, but also help you build subscriber list (isn’t that your goal?).
How to spice up your articles and get them read?
Here’s how to spice up your article marketing efforts. Though of course these points have been discussed million times so far, yet we tend to make mistakes. This 6 point list will refresh & jog your memory.
1) Use short paragraphs. When the paragraph are very long, the words get jumbled in the mind of the reader just looking at it It can get quite confusing and too much of a hard work to read. The reader will just quickly disregard the paragraph and move on to much easier reading articles that are good to look at as well as read. Paragraphs can be a single sentence, sometimes even a single word!
2) Make use of numbers or bullets. As each point is stressed out, numbers and bullets can quickly make the point easy to remember and digest. As each point, tip, guide or method is started with a bullet or point, readers will know that this is where the tips start and getting stressed.
3) Use Sub-headings to sub-divide your paragraphs in the page. Doing this will break each point into sections but still would be incorporated into one whole article. It would also be easy for the reader to move on from one point to another; the transition would be smooth and easy. You will never lose your readers attention as well as the point and direction to where the article is pointing.
4) Provide a good attention-grabbing title or header. If your title can entice a person’s curiosity you’re already halfway in getting a person to read your article. Use statements and questions that utilize keywords that people are looking for. Provide titles or headers that describe your articles content but should also be short and concise.
Use titles like, “Tips on making her want you more”, or “How to make her swoon and blush” .You could also use titles that can command people, for example, “Make her yours in six easy Ways”. These types of titles reach out to a persons’ emotions and makes them interested.
5) Keep them interested from the start to the finish. From your opening paragraph, use real life situations that can be adopted by the reader. Use good descriptions and metaphors to drive in your point, just don’t over do it. Driving your examples with graphic metaphors and similes would make it easy for them to imagine what you are talking about. Making the experience pleasurable and enjoyable for them.
6) Utilize figures when necessary and not just ordinary and insipid statements. Using specific facts and figures can heighten your article because it makes it authoritative. But do not make it too formal, it should be light and easy in them and flow. Like a friendly teac her having a little chat with an eager student.
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