Internet Marketing

For People Who Don't Know What An E-Book Is

They Have Internet In Ethiopia?

		Sunday, 07 October 07 - 09:18 AM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Success!

 Today I checked my autorepsonder stats as I had not been very attentive to them recently

And noted that I have people signed up from 23 countries to my newsletter and product "list". Even with the StumbleOn spamfest this week, the 22 countries that are not the USA have more subscribers than my target market, the USA. Can you spell "long tail"

Apart from congratulating myself that I have a pretty good list building from only 18 days in production, I am going to be cautious in what I offer the list as products.

First thing I am going to do is over the next week look for what good affiliate products that are currently out there.  I just don't have the time at the moment to create my own product (sounds like an excuse but my whole department was outsourced this week and things are a bit hectic deciding my future). This will take some pressure off for a while.

Then my plan is

• Free eBook "how to"
• Free video tips that will act as teasers
• Full video product
• One on one coaching

I think the hardest thing for me to get over at the moment is the feeling that I am somehow a fraud, even though this niche is something I have done for money and have studied at university for parts of as well.  So while I am repairing my self esteem with the outsourcing I will remind myself that I am very qualified to do this.

StumbleOn Nightmare Continues

		Thursday, 04 October 07 - 12:15 PM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Totally OT

Twenty sign ups from the Boston College...at least one of them was polite enough to unsubscribe with an apology. Thanks Sean.

My friends signed me up as a joke. Sorry for their stupidity.

Anatomy of a Sale

		Thursday, 04 October 07 - 11:00 AM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Success!

The site was born 25 days ago

After participating in Ed Dale's 30DC and missing out by only 2 days by creating my first sale I tried to encourage my daughter to have a go. After all she is 15 and was whinging that all I was talking about was niches and blogs and blah blah blah.

So I sat her down and showed her what to do. She came up with a great niche phrase that passed the GTrends test and I set her up the blog platform to launch it on. She lasted about 5 days before the daily posting had her bored. So I bought the site from her for $10. So she made her 30DC with ease!

I took over writing the site and as a creative outlet I must say I do love it. Having been a writer-on-the-side in the past, having a bit of fun as a completely different person is quite invigorating. The issue though is people love the great writing and the subject, but they just have not opened their wallets to buy anything.

Just to explain, this site is the "window shopping" site that I was considering whether to drop it or not two weeks after I opened it up.

Some incredible figures

Yeah incredibly BAD figures but everything is a learning opportunity and I am learning a lot about this method of marketing.

Age of site - 25 days
Unique Visitors - 2019
Click through to affiliate sites - 339 (16.8%)
Conversion Rate - 0.34%

But now that the dam is breached, the sky is the limit. Especially as the new newsletter from Dan Raine and The Immediate Edge is alllll about the extra goodies you can add to a site such as this one. (and err yeah I need to start putting into practice what I have read :) )

So the future plans are to increase traffic and increase the variety of affiliates.

Wrong Way Go Back!

		Monday, 01 October 07 - 10:26 AM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Success!

 Sometimes the most common sense things really hit home after a real life demonstration.

And so it is with the mailing list I am creating for one of my niches. I have one page pointing at one URL that collects the email and adds to an autoresponder. This is my first attempt at creating a list and so I have been watching it carefully to understand what works and what doesn't

As it stands I am getting about 33% click through and then 50% sign up. Great figures yeah?

But only because the traffic is very directed. 

The originating page is SEOd, social bookmarked and does the job of getting the people that really want my niche information to the page. On the page is a sticky post that has a link to the sign up page for the list. Simple but effective.

The list page is a graphic with "Sign up for your XYZ" and the  Name- Email address and Submit button. That is it, no SEO, no content, nothing but the sign up box.

Someone last night Stumbled the sign up page

Traffic to the page jumped 3000%

Even though there was a huge jump in traffic. There was not the equivalent accompanying jump in sign ups. Why would there be? This page has no information, nothing. The people arriving there would be doing so out of curiosity or through the random StumbleOn clicking.

The 3000% jump in traffic resulted in 7 times the amount of people that would normally sign up, and some of them are blatantly spam.

So the moral of the story is....

Update

So some funny bugger then decided to Stumble the blog!  Traffic here has now also increased 3000% *laughs*

Thanks whoever that was, much appreciated :)

I Bet You Don't Own an IM Business

		Friday, 28 September 07 - 10:41 PM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Tips

 I recently took the HBDI* test for a management course at my day job.

For those that are in the know about what that is I am have a tri-dominant personality but I can be called a Yellow under normal circumstances and Red under stress. In fact so red that I was almost off the graph.

For others that have never heard of it the test (which was me before I took it), it is basically to understand where your thinking goes normally, and under stress. This then allows you to practice thinking styles that you may need to round out your management style.

Being a yellow dominated person means I will look for the creative way to deal with work, decisions, my life. This is nothing new to me as I know that I would much rather have the idea, start it and then move on to the next, than see it through to the bitter end by doing all the work. After all, all the fun is in the thinking and planning for me, and getting someone to do the doing seems more logical (which is why I am a manager in my day job I guess).

So working my IM world I am seriously considering taking the advice of quite a few IM people out there (like Mike Filsaime ) who say that if you want to own a business rather than own a job then you should be getting other people to do the work, while you organise.

A great example of that philosophy is what is happening in the Immediate Edge at the moment, where Dan Raine has put out the direction and the membership go off and do the work.

You Are Here.

I am totally caught up in the tactical thinking of my niches at the moment and don't have time to step back and check that my strategy I created way back when is still on track. If I continue on this track the effort I am expending to get to my goal will be far more than if I stayed with my head above the waves and my eyes firmly on the shore.

Consider the following diagram. The red line is the planned strategy, the black line is where you go when you are doing all of the tactical stuff yourself.



Staying on the red line will require me to do the following

• Clearly document every step I need to take to get where I want to be
• Understand and allocate where and what work others can do
• Check regularly where I am at on that red line
• create an exit strategy for each project
• rinse and repeat for all tasks

This will not keep mistakes from being made, but it will ensure I can see them when they happen and be able to get straight back on that red line.
* HBDI 

Touch Me On The Twitter

		Thursday, 27 September 07 - 12:21 PM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - News(From RSS)

Twitter has become my pseudo RSS feed

OK let's set the scene. It is 1987 and I have been working for a few years in the Australian Videotex industry and had had a PC almost from the day they had been released in Australia (oh yes the wonderful TRS-80). I have never been without a PC nor outside of any form of communication with others. Whether it was through Viatel, bulletin boards, IRC right up to the last 10 years where IM has really taken off. I think I can safely say I know how to communicate on the internet, and can adapt to whatever the norm is for that type of communication.

But it is only recently I took up Twitter and developed my Twitter taste into what I like, and what I don't like, about it as a communication tool.

BAD!

1. Some people use Twitter strictly for spamming their affiliate links. How rude is that!? Sure it is easy, especially with the new tools that will tiny URL with your affiliate link intact, but that is just nasty dark grey hat in my book.
2. People do not Twitter enough. Don't tell me you are going to go get milk, then not post anything for 3 days. I get worried something has happened to you. At least post you are back ... or going on holidays...or something
3. Automated blog posting of Twitter back to the blog as main posts. I prefer a sidebar of old Twitters, so it doesn't break up the flow of the "good stuff" that you have put a lot of effort writing into.
4. Posting you are looking at something on the net and NOT including a link. That is anti-intuitive for the internet.
   

GOOD!

1. People who realize that having followers is having an obligation to produce quality content just like any other web outlet.
2. People who post the stuff they are looking at so you have the opportunity to "look over their shoulders". After all that is what all this social book marking is all about, finding things that interest you by leveraging on where others have been.
3. People that mix it up a bit and have a surprise package of things they are doing, things they are looking at, things they are reading, things they are listening to... the whole shebang.
   
4. People that post that they have just blogged with a link. Totally addictive and if I am following you you can bet I am looking at your link moments after it pops up.

Community Internet Marketing

		Wednesday, 26 September 07 - 01:08 PM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - News(From RSS)

It is with great interest that I watch the direction Ed Dale is taking his Thirty Day Challenge project...

See Ed is ruminating on the idea of whether an open source-like space be set up where the large community that follows Ed, can gather and help educate each other.

The idea certainly has some merits and being the eternal optimist I can envisage an Internet Marketing Nirvana where all is community bonding, friendship and the desire to help their fellow man. Whether that can be created remains to be seen ...knowing human nature, and reflecting back on the large online community projects I have been involved with, the burn out that comes with dealing with the opposite to that ideal can take its toll (but can be handled with knowledge and a lot of break taking and fresh blood).

So how would I go about setting up such a source of knowledge. Wiki is being mentioned a fair bit. But personally i would be more inclined to go with a YouTube type of setup where content can be rated not only by the people that watch it (which would remove the spammers because we all know what shit content looks like, right?) and also that those in the higher echelons can also put their stamp of approval on it.
This can also go for audio presentations as well.

If Wiki and YouTube can be mated and the main substance of the writing come from experienced and proven internet marketers then i would be more inclined to believe its authority. If the majority of writing is done by Fred Blogs who just completed the 30DC and wants to tell me that affiliate marketing is the only way to go, my cynicism is going to walk me right out of that door.

Now if someone did a video series on how to get creative product ideas when you are running a "free" niche then I will be watching that with great interest. Especially if it has a Gold Star from one of the big hitters who are guiding the project :)

Brick Chucked Through My Window

		Tuesday, 25 September 07 - 01:45 AM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Oops

 I have decided my site is being used only for window shopping

Which is a big pain when it is getting some pretty decent traffic for which i have paid not a cent.

So I have decided to chuck a brick through that window and think of a product I can offer to these people while they are shopping around. I know it is probably a waste of time but I am still the newbie type who is invested into the work and doesn't want to give it up (even though I now know how ridiculously easy it is to set up sites like these for nothing).

My last breath on this site will be to sell it.

Meanwhile back at the ...

List building site things are hotting up and I am working in a "just in time" holding pattern writing the content a few days before the auto-responder needs to send it out. I justify this by saying I have a full time job, children and partner to look after and multiple sclerosis. But the truth is, I love stuffing information into my head and I still love playing WoW or Horizons.

So there is my weekly update on what is happening in the Allison world of IM.

P.S. - Talking to some coding buddies of mine about how hard it is to write a FB App and trying to think of a product or 6 fills up a bit of time too.

Things I Saw While IM Blog Hopping

		Monday, 24 September 07 - 11:29 AM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Totally OT

Exhibit #1 PaidWiki

Did You Hear Internet Marketers Suck?

		Monday, 24 September 07 - 03:15 AM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - News(From RSS)

 Well did you?

Actually I am trying out Odiogo on the blog to see if there is any advantage to using that over actually blogcasting each post myself.

So far I am undecided.

For a start the voice is male, and I am not male, I don't want to sound like a male. Text to voice has come a long way but has a few hundred miles to go to sound natural.

The more I think about it the more I think I will just blogcast for those that like to multitask and for those readers that have vision issues.

Tell me what you think, maybe you can use Odiogo on your site for something?

... More items are available in my News Archive