This makes some Internet marketers forget that Internet is still a medium for direct response marketing. Direct response marketing has evolved mostly by direct mail marketing. Because in direct mail, you pay money for every piece of mail sent, you have to have good copy, good marketing, good conversions. You have to track everything. Otherwise you will go bankrupt soon. On the Internet, costs are so low, some marketers lost the vision for good direct response marketing. Just put something, anything online, that has order or subscribe button online, and hope for the best, see what sticks and go from there.

Well, it worked for a while. But not anymore. With Internet came lots of competition, different new types of scams (from phishing to Princes from Nairobi), and lots of junk sites and junk content that offer no value to the visitors. But visitors are becoming more savvy, as are search engines, email providers, even social media sites fighting with these bad marketing sites.

That is why you need to have a good basic understanding of direct response marketing, first. In direct response marketing, every marketing action you take, is geared towards generating a specific response from a prospective customer. That response may be purchasing a product, opting in to a list, or now with social media, like or join on Facebook, retweet on twitter, pin on pinterest or anything like that. I’ll call this action “the offer”. Do this for me, I’ll give you that in return.

In every direct marketing campaign, there are at least 3 critical elements: The list, the offer, and the sales copy. Now, the list is the people who see your message. The offer is, the action you want them to take. The sales copy is the message presenting them what’s in it for them, and why they should act now.

Now, not everyone that sees your message will act. Not everyone who read your sales letter will buy your product. Not everyone who sees your squeeze page will opt-in. Some will, some won’t. The number of people who do take the desired action divided by the number of people who saw your message gives you the conversion rate. Sometimes, %1 conversion rate on a sales page is good, and profitable. Other times, %20 conversion rates on your squeeze page is bad, and unprofitable. It all depends on your campaign, and how you monetize them, and how much you earn per client.

This is why you need to set up a full sales funnel, and track everything. Let’s say you have a simple sales funnel of 3 products: A short report as given as a free gift to all subscribers, a $27 ebook, and then a $97 upsell product, let’s say, a video course.

Lets say your opt-in page converts %25 of visitors to subscribers. %5 of them buy your ebook. And %25 of ebook buyers upgrade. And lets say, you can bring 10,000 visitors to your site by using paid traffic at $0.50 per click, so you pay $5,000 for those 10,000 visitors. 2500 opt-in to your list. This makes your cost per lead $2. Then 125 of them buy $27 ebook, and you earn 3375$. On the front-end, you lost money, but you gained 2500 subscribers, and 125 buyers. And then 31 of them upgraded to $97 package, and you earned another 3007$. Now you are $1382 in profit. You made your $5000 back and then some more.

When that is the case, you can roll out big. The thing is, you do not achieve these kind of results from day one. First you have an opt-in page and a free report that you give away. You test different opt-in pages and find which one converts best, and gives you subscribers at the lowest cost. Then you test front-end products, and sales copy for them. If you break-even or get close to break even with front-end product, that is great. Then you work on your back-end. Once you have your initial test results, it becomes your “control”. Then you work hard to beat your own control, create better results than your previous best. You do a-b spit tests and choose the one that works best. And once you have a winning sales system in place, you roll out big.

If you always know your numbers, and watch them closely, and always work on improving them, sooner or later you will come up with a winning funnel. This is the real “secret” to riches, that not one in a hundred marketer does correctly these days. Test, track, improve. When proven profitable, roll out big.

QualityClickControl : Check it Out

I think there is a major difference between how article marketing is done by different people. Article marketing, when done right, can be a valuable part of building your authority and credibility. But some of the marketers on the scene, wanted to abuse it. And by abuse I mean they have put articles that are spun from private label right articles which offered no valuable advice or information. Some of which did not even make sense to the end reader. When articles are automatically spun to “create” new content, sometimes it chooses the wrong words for the context, and becomes meaningless.

So, there is a difference between high quality content that is based on an expert author’s personal experience, and spun articles which do not make sense and offer no value to the reader.

Now, for Google and other computers to detect the quality difference in articles is hard. I mean, they do not have people to judge the quality of all the content published on the web. That is an enormous task. Every day, the amount of new content published is huge. So have to rely on some kind of automation, some kind of computer program to judge the quality of content.

And all the spinning and mass submitting programs, and people using them, rely on somehow tricking Google into thinking that their spun articles are as valuable as an original author’s articles.

Now, this kind of “tricking Google” approach might work, for some time, until Google figures out what is going on and updates their algorithms accordingly. Then you discover something strange: One high quality article that the readers actually find value in, is more valuable than 1000 spun articles submitted to 1000 directories.

So there is a right way and wrong way to go with article marketing. If you want to position yourself as an expert, add credibility to your name, write and publish high quality, original content that your readers will benefit from. If you want to “exploit” some Google algorithm, then go with all the black hat tricks and software and tools, but do not be surprised if after a Google change, your methods stop working.

Bottom line is, Google is trying to provide the best experience for its users, people who are searching for information online. If you add to the end user experience, you will benefit from it. If you try to trick Google into accepting worthless content as good content, your trick my work for a while, but sooner or later it will stop working.

But first, you need to do your homework. You need to be able to know your potential customers at least as good as you know your best friend. I’m not kidding, this is serious. All other business success first depends on this. How good do you know your customer? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Do a research on basic keywords that describe your niche on Google and make a note of and visit the top 10 sites that come up. See what kind of content is on their sites. What are the main topics? What kind of problems or concerns about that topic frequently comes up?
2. Do a keyword research + “forums”, “blogs”, and see what topics come up in the current discussions.
3. Search Facebook groups on Facebook. Read the conversations.
4. Look for email discussion groups, in Google and yahoo groups. Join some of the more popular ones.
5. Find most popular products advertised online. See their sales pages. Look how they engage the potential customers feelings. What kind of problems such products solve. Create a swipe file of headlines, offers, bullet points, of these products. This can be very valuable if you then go and create your own product. Also note if these products have affiliate programs, in case you want to go the affiliate route.
6. Do a keyword research on Google External Keyword tool. Especially focus on problem solving phrases like “how do I …”, or “get rid of …” and similar phrases in the results. Try to find long tail, problem oriented keyword phrases. And make a list of them.
7. Also make a list of “authority figures” in your niche. Who has the most popular blog? Who has the largest list? Who is the owner of a best selling product in this area? Those are powerful people who you can contact with, and build joint ventures with.
8. Do an Alexa and Quantcast research about the domain names of popular product sites and popular blogs and forums. These sites give you a lot of traffic and demographic data. This way you will know the age group, location and many other statistics about your potential clients.

Based on all of this information you gathered, imagine your customer to be one single person. What is this person’s age, sex, and nationality? Put a name on him or her. Visualize him as if he was just in front of you.

Whatever you do from now on, put this person’s best interests in your heart, and then you cannot go wrong.

So, the funnel metaphor is that, you can have 10,000 subscribers to your free list,  that is the wide mouth of the funnel. For all you know, all of them can be freebie seekers. If you only offer them a free report, and do not even try to sell them anything else, you’ll never know which one is a buyer, ans which one is not. Also, if you only offer low priced, introductory level products, you will never know which one of them are high ticket buyers. So the idea is, offer them different products and services at different price points, and sift them through your marketing funnel. When you do have extra levels of products and services, that way you know for sure who among your list is a $47 buyer, or a $197 buyer, or a $997 buyer, or a $10,000 buyer.

Also, if you do the math, numbers add up pretty fast. Each extra level of product or service you offer, you add a lot to your profits. You probably only pay for some kind of advertisement cost up front to build your free subscribers list, so you have a fixed cost of $X to acquire each lead, which is called cost per lead. If you can convert enough of that leads to buyers at your front end to cover your advertising costs, and maybe achieve some little profits, then you are basically building your list for free. And then all the additional sales add to your profits, because they are now pure profits! You make no extra advertising to get those sales.

You all heard that money is in the list, but let me expand on that a little: Real money is in the back end sales to your list. Most of the time, your front-end sales will barely cover your advertising or marketing costs. Your net profits will come mostly from your back end sales, which practically cost you nothing.

This is why most successful marketers do not just sell one $47 e-book. They also sell many other offers related to that original front-end product, at different price points, including recurring products, as up-sells, down-sells, and cross-sells.

You should model and learn from them. Do not just build your list to maybe break even with one cheap e-book sale. Earn much more by building a funnel selling many more related products at different price points. This will multiply your profits.

And the best part is, you do not need to create all the products you offer. You can create a funnel with selling other people’s products as an affiliate. And I developed a tool that makes creating funnels super easy. Visit fastfunnels.com for more information.

In fact, that might be the most important part of your email marketing strategy. Everyone says that “money is in the list”, which is partly true. However, if you can say “money is in your relationship with your list” it is even more true.

And this will effect your open rates, click-through rates, sales conversion rates, and therefore, bank account. It has been said that, in Internet Marketing circles, for each person on your list, you can earn $0.50-$1.00 per month. So you can expect to earn $500-$1000 per month, with a list of 1000 people. But there are also other people, who can earn, $5, $10, or even $100 per subscriber. So what is the secret? How do they do it?

They build a list of more qualified people. There are freebie seekers, and then there are buyers. A buyer’s list is 10 times more valuable than a “freebie seekers” list. And even among buyers, there are buyers with different budgets. There are buyers of short $7 reports, $47 ebooks, $197 courses, and then $1997 high priced coaching program. If you have a list of 1000 buyers of a $1997 coaching program, of it would be more profitable than 1000 freebie seekers.
They build a better relationship with their subscriber base. They do not burn them out with 5 different free offers a day (as some people who are trying to build their list with ad swaps do). They do not bombard their email list unrelated product offers, all of them using high-pressure sales tactics (you definitely need to buy this, you cannot do without this online, go and buy this now!…). Instead, they give free valuable information first. If they promote a product, they make sure it is a high quality product that will help their subscribers. Instead of bombarding them with 10 different offers in 10 days, they promote one single high quality product in 10 days, explaining 10 different ways this product will help them.

You see, building a relationship takes time. You do not ask a girl to marry you on your first date. Maybe you meet up for a coffee. Maybe then a dinner and a movie. Maybe next date drinks and dance. Making a sale is like that too. Basically, you are asking them to spend money, by trusting your advice, your judgment. This takes a lot of trust. Give before you ask to receive. Give them more value than they expected in your freely available material. And then when you ask for the sale, refer them to a product, they will feel they like, know and trust you enough to listen to your advice.

In a way, you are becoming a leader of your subscribers. You are positioning your self as an authority in your chosen field and telling them “trust me, I am expert on this topic, I know what is best for you”. You should gain this trust. And really deserve this trust. In a time that everyone is selling everyone else everything they can sell, trust is the highest priced, hardest to gain value. And as hard as it is to gain, it is very easy to lose in an instant. Just one promotion of a low-quality product, and your subscriber feels you value the commissions you will gain by making one more sale more than your relationship with him, and he will unsubscribe.

The first thing to understand is, Google is doing its best to provide the best search results that it can generate for its end users, people who are doing the searches on Google. All of their business depends on making their searchers happy with the results. If Google cannot serve the people doing searches online, relevant, useful, valuable results that they want, Google will be out of business soon.

So the number one thing you need to keep in mind is: When you create content, make sure the content you publish online is high quality content that your potential clients will find valuable, and interesting. This alone can be your best SEO strategy. What happens when you create high quality content that your users consider valuable, useful, and helpful? Great things happen automatically. People create links back to your content, because they like them, they think it is good enough to share. They share your content on their Facebook and twitter accounts. They talk about it on their blogs. And all without you lifting a finger.

Most of these processes are emulated by “SEO tools” and software. You can use software to create many profiles at the push of a button. You can use SEO programs to submit your articles to 1000 different article directories at the push of a button. You can generate 10000 forum profile links linking to your web site in less than a day. You can spin one article to create 100′s of new “spun” articles from that “seed article” and publish at different web 2.0 sites, like blogger, tumbler, hubpages etc.

Now, while these tools are powerful tools, there is a right way and a wrong way to use them. For example if you do “spinning” a bit too much, you might end up with articles that make no sense to a real human being reading it. It might still include your targeted keywords or links back to your site, but if an end user does not find value reading it, sooner or later, Google will find a way to eliminate them from the top of the results.

But you can still spin an article, and then at least read and correct the article, and then submit it as a good quality, unique article to different places online, and it still provides value to the reader. It takes a bit more work and effort to ensure each spun article is of good quality, but it makes a very important difference in the end results.

To summarize my point of view;

1)Think about the end user viewing your content first. Make sure you provide value with everything you do online.

2)Only use automation tools to increase your productivity, as time saving devices. Never let them spit out junk content, thinking 1000′s of low quality backlinks will improve your results somehow. Even if you achieve short-term gains, your whole business can be wiped out in a single day by a new Google update.

Help Google by providing quality content that web searchers will find useful, and Google will be your best friend. Try to trick Google to giving you high rankings without providing value to web searchers, sooner or later Google will figure out what you are doing and will update their algorithms accordingly, and you will be out of business.

In order to gain the best leverage out of Google’s recently announced ranking system using social signals, a new plugin known as Social Metrics Pro has been launched. This plugin is compatible with the WordPress platform and is available in a downloadable format.

For the uninitiated, Google announced about a month ago that it has started using feeds from social networking portals to rank the popularity of websites. With the advent of Web 2.0, people have become more actively participating in the working of the Internet rather than merely browsing it. Google feels that the number of comments and shares that website content receives through social networking websites is the right parameter to judge its popularity. Always one to be the pioneer, the Google search engine has used these feeds as the new ranking factors.

Among the social networking platforms that Google has targeted are included Twitter and Facebook. Every tweet made through Twitter and every like through Facebook is now a yardstick along which Google measures the popularity of websites.

Social Metrics Pro helps online entrepreneurs as it gives a true picture of the social popularity of online content. It uses a simple color coding system to illustrate this popularity. Content that is more popular is coded green while the one that needs attention is coded red. With this color coding system, it becomes easier for the marketer to convert the reds to greens, which means they can propel the viability of their content across online social networks.

Currently, Social Metrics Pro is capable of measuring Facebook Likes, Twitter Tweets, Google Plus +1s and several other social signals such as those from StumbleUpon and Digg. The plugin is being developed further so as to be able to measure social signals from other social networks as well.

Daniel Tan, a developer of Social Metrics Pro, says, “With Google’s newest announcement, there has been a lot of activity in the world of search engine optimization. Backlinking has now become passé; and marketers are looking at how to improve the visibility of their content on social networking websites. We purport to make this task easier for the online marketer with Social Metrics Pro.”

Social Metrics Pro has been also launched with a limited time Unlimited Sites Version, where it can be used to assess the performance of an unlimited number of websites with the same software inclusion.

There are a few major companies when it comes to auto responders and let me go through 2 of them for you giving you a view of what features they both offer so you can make up your mind on which one will suit you best.

You may think you can handle all your emails manually, but let me tell you, once you build a email list of a couple thousand people you will need an automated way to handle some of the complex strategies you would want to implement.