I recently completed a new niche dating site for UK black singles.

This takes my dating portfolio up to 13 sites & I think that’s enough for now!

There may be some other niche site opportunities in the future, but for now I need to focus on promoting the existing ones!

I’ve been running an Adwords campaign for UK Black Dating & this has been pretty successful so far – good click through rates & a good number of sign-ups as a result! The CPC on this site isn’t too bad either, at just £1 per click, which is very low for a dating site! I’ve utilised negative terms to avoid non-relevant clicks and created different Ad Groups for men, women & general long tail phrases, with multiple ads in each group.

I might finally be getting the hang of this AdWords lark

I’ve recently been asked to carry out some e-mail marketing by a client, but it seems that the e-mail marketing market is a circle of contradictions!

My client is a small business & cannot afford the exorbitant charges that Google Adwords now runs up in order to attract business to their website. They are in a particular sector of the market & only want to target the construction sector. After some research into data lists I chose to purchase 3000 B2B e-mail addresses for construction sector companies in just three local counties. The company I purchased from claims to be a member of the Direct Marketing Association as well as several other bodies & assured me that all the addresses were opt in.

Because most web hosts restrict the amount of recipients you can send an e-mail to, to between 30 & 50, it’s necessary to use an e-mail marketing company in order to send the e-mails. However, most of them will not let you use purchased data or 3rd party lists! Their answer is:

“We will design a form for your website, which people can then go to in order to sign up for your emails”. But hang on; isn’t this absolutely useless if people are not aware of your company?! If they’ve been to your website to sign up for a newsletter, then they already know about your company & what service you provide! Yes, I can certainly tell them about the latest offers if they sign up for a newsletter, but it’s useless when the main purpose of this marketing is to make other businesses aware that this company exists & what it does!

I’m bombarded by spam all day, every day, but whilst I’m constantly filtering out Viagra ads & web design offers from India, it appears that legitimate UK businesses are prevented from e-mailing relevant, targeted companies. Surely e-mailing companies to make them aware of your service is surely no different to sending out a postal mailshot, or cold calling by phone. It simply makes another company aware of what you do & that you exist, when you can’t afford to pay thousands for Google Adwords!

Whilst I hate SPAM as much as the next person, if the marketing is targeted & relevant, I don’t mind the 10 seconds it takes me to decide if it’s something I require. I’ve found out about a number of things that I’ve then purchased, or services I’ve used, because I received the e-mail equivalent of a cold call. These are products/services I would never have been aware of if they hadn’t told me about them & I certainly wouldn’t have gone looking for them, because I didn’t know they existed!!!! In fact, I’m much more likely to take up an offer sent via e-mail than if someone phones me, because I like  the opportunity for further research & the chance to decide in my own time, rather than being pressured on the phone!

However, it appears that we’ve become so obsessed about SPAM in the UK, that you are prevented from e-mail marketing companies unless they have already visited your site & signed up to receive marketing from you………..surely this defeats the main point of e-mail marketing…………getting NEW customers.

These restrictions for UK businesses don’t  stop the REAL SPAM – the endless “enlarge your penis” & “buy from this Chinese wholesaler” botnet type junk mail that is the real bane of my life………oh yes, because they don’t follow the UK rules!

Aaaaagh!

Living the life of a successful internet marketer is highly exciting for many people. There are many interesting paths you can take if this is something that appeals to you. But have no doubts about it, if this is something you want to do – you will need to discover the main hurdles and mistakes to steer clear from. So many people go into IM thinking it is easy, and then they fall on their faces. Just a few of the more common reasons include lacking a solid plan, plus they don’t learn to avoid common mistakes that can kill you in business. Luckily for you, this article will spell out some of the major mistakes that you need to be conscious of. Make every effort to avoid committing these certain mistakes, and you’ll be that much closer to success.

Believe it or not, but one of the worse things you can do is buy IM course after another. There is simply too much information to take in. It is incredibly easy to spend tens of thousands of dollars on this stuff – no kidding. Usually the financial and emotional damage has already been done, and the person has nothing to show for it in terms of business or profits. This is because there is not a single course or product that will help you legally make money very quickly. Some courses are very expensive, and when you see that proceed with extreme caution. This is especially true since pretty much everything contained in those courses can be found for free online. SEO is the lifeblood of search engine marketing and getting free traffic from the engines. What that also means is that keyword research needs to be done, and it must be done properly. Each product is different and niche are different. You website must be optimized correctly and with the appropriate number of keywords. Just take your time doing this and do not be in a hurry. There are lots of (free) tools you can use to help you with this.

Don’t get taken in by the promises of “easy” money.

It seems that everyone has a program that promises to make you loads of cash in a short period of time. It’s easy to get sucked into what they’re saying. Never buy into programs like that. While you’re chasing the dream of getting rich quick, you’re wasting precious time and energy that could be better spent creating a business that brings in good money for long periods of time. If you want to make a great income, you’re going to have to put in the time and effort, but once you do it will be well worth it.

There are quite a few ways to utilize the internet to earn a living. Many individuals get into internet marketing simply because they want to earn extra income so they don’t have to struggle as much. Sadly, too many of these people will commit the same mistakes all new people make, and because of that they’ll think it’s too hard, quit, and they’ll lose out on a great opportunity.

It should now be apparent which mistakes you need to avoid. As long as you work hard to avoid simple mistakes like this and as long as you use some common sense, there isn’t any reason that you shouldn’t be able to earn quite a nice living online.

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Email marketing is the oldest form of online marketing, and it’s only gotten more bigger as the use of email increases. Email marketing remains just as popular as ever, even with all the new developments on the internet, such as social media. We will be exploring in the article some effective ways to use email marketing.

Getting your emails delivered is the first order of business when it comes to email marketing. Nowadays, there are strong spam filters that are ready to block any email that looks suspicious. You have to be aware when you create your emails that the spam filters are triggered by certain words and phrases, so you should not use these. If, for example, you are in the online money making niche, stay away from terms like “make money” or “get rich.” Many spam emails that are sent out unsolicited contain these words. The trick is to say the same thing using different words, ones that won’t be blocked by spam filters. For example, instead of saying something is “free,” another trigger word, say “won’t cost you a dime” or something like that. The way you say something in your copy makes all the difference. You have to frame your message so that people can relate to it and will respond to it. You will get a better response to your emails by avoiding typical trigger phrases, because if you word your emails in more creative language they are less likely to be considered spam by your readers. There are many other areas that you should focus on to make email marketing successful but none of your strategies would work if your email doesn’t get read in the first place.

Offering bribes or freebies to your subscribers is another proven email marketing trick. If someone feels they can get something valuable for free, it will be hard for them to say no. By delivering free bribes or gifts to your subscribers, you can boost your subscription rate and grow your list. There are two ways this technique can work for you.

You can do this to get more people on your list and it can also be used as a bribe to your existing list, giving them a gift in exchange for passing this message on. By doing this, you can both grow your list and leverage it for maximum benefit. The more you’re able to do this, the higher response you will get. This is also a form of viral marketing, as free offers are passed along, bringing you increasing amounts of free traffic.

It’s important to send out your emails on certain days of the week. Your email open rate will reflect this effect. Tuesday or Wednesday seem to be the best days for emailing a list. This is for a reason – if you plan to send out your emails on the weekends, you won’t see much response as people are busy. As for Monday – they’re recovering from Monday, and Thursday and Friday they have the weekend on their minds. So the other two days already mentioned really do produce the best results.

You can always find a way to improve your conversions through testing with email marketing.

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Facebook is officially the most-visited website in the US this week, according to Experian Hitwise, knocking Google off of the top spot – where it has been since 2007.

http://tech.uk.msn.com/news/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=152595476

Interestingly, the last site to nab the number one spot from Google was MySpace back in 2007. Facebook will be hoping that this isn’t an ominous sign of things to come. Personally I don’t think so; I never liked My Space – it was always such a mess, but Facebook seems to have the right amount of order & organisation in its structure, whilst allowing people to still do whatever they want with it.

I currently have an ad for Cashback Shopper running on Facebook, targeting the UK only, but will definitely be using it to promote the American version of Cashback Shopper when it launches!

I’m currently running a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign on Yahoo (can’t afford Google!) for my new cheap theatre ticket site, which is themed from the main Cheap Event Tickets site.

September is apparently peak booking time for theatre tickets in the UK, so I decided to go for a big push on some of the most popular & well known London shows.

I’ve set up targeted ad groups – for these shows, containing well researched long tail keywords (which all have a decent KEI) and have carefully worded the ads, drawing on existing ads by well established companies in this sector. Most of the ads are displaying ticket prices, so the “clicker” knows what to expect & won’t click just to see what the price is.

Most of the ads are displaying in position 1 on Yahoo (these bids are around £1, on Google you are looking at around £3 for these keywords!!!) & the click through rates are currently between 3.5% & 14%, which I believe is not bad.

So, following all the rules & strategies I’ve read over the last couple of years for successful PPC advertising & marketing, how are the ads doing?

Well, I’ve had ONE SALE, from 44 clicks! Admittedly it was a decent sale & my commission will be £12 from it, but it has cost me £25 to get it!!!! On Google, I’d have paid triple that, without any guarantee of more sales. The companies that advertise theatre tickets on Google presumably make more money per sale than I do, but I still don’t see how they can make a profit when they’re paying such huge amounts for clicks!

It doesn’t seem possible to make a profit from affiliate marketing using Google (or even Yahoo), unless you’re using such obscure terms, that you then really should be able to obtain natural search engine positions for if they’re THAT obscure.

So, once again I’ll be grateful to break even on PPC & would love to know if any other affiliate marketers makes a profit from Google Adwords/Yahoo Search Marketing?!

I recently got leaflets printed for Cashback Shopper and just had them distributed through a local magazine, which is delivered to 10,000 homes in my local area. The leaflets cost approx £170 & the distribution £290, so I’ve calculated that I need 100 people, or 1% of the recipients to sign up to the site, in order to cover my costs.

Although I’ve done some leaflet posting myself over the last year or two, this is the largest scale leafleting I’ve done & it will be interesting to see what results it obtains. I’m really running out of ideas for advertising which doesn’t cost ridiculous amounts of money (ie Adwords), or has little or no results :/

If I don’t cover my costs (again!), then I certainly won’t bother with this again & think I’ll just have to rely on totally cost free methods (???) or not bother at all anymore!

UPDATE – 5th July

So far, there has been no increase above the norm in the number of people signing up to the site. It looks like I’ve just wasted another £400! I really don’t know what marketing method works any more…..I’ve had so many phone calls from marketing companies telling me their wonder stories, yet not a single one has proven to be of any use whatsoever; all I’ve done is thrown money into a black hole it seems!

I received an e-mail from Google, telling me about their new search-based keyword tool!

They state “the Search-based Keyword Tool compares the content of your website against actual Google search queries to provide a list of relevant keywords which you don’t currently have in your AdWords campaigns. This new tool can help your business to grow and innovate on your keyword choices by taking the guesswork out of the process. Rather than adding keywords to an ad campaign based on what one thinks a user might search on, this tool enables you to manage your keywords based on what you know users are searching on.”

I visited the tool & was presented with a list of over 800 keyphrases, which Google says have been searched for & appear on relevant pages in my site. I decided to pick all the phrases that had a suggested cost per click up to and including £1.00 (246 of them).

I’ve spent the last 4 hours adding the phrases to my AdWords campaign, targeting the landing pages to the ones indicated by the Tool & using the suggested bids. However, as soon as I checked the keywords, all bar one are not displaying due to the bid amount being too low (even though it was the one suggested!). The quality score of the landing pages are also deemed poor, despite them being the ones that sparked off the whole process!

So, thanks Google; for suggesting I use your new tool; only to find that despite following all your suggestions, you STILL don’t display any of my ads unless I bid some ridiculous amount per click! I’ve just basically wasted an entire afternoon on this nonsense & on top of it, the new interface is rubbish! It’s slow, jerky & very frustrating to use.

What on earth is the point in giving me this information, which appears to be totally useless? Their e-mail ended:

“The Search-based Keyword tool actually found 2954 recently-searched keywords related to your site. For each suggested keyword, the tool will also show you:

• The average number of searches per month
• The competitive bidding level for each term
• The estimated bid to appear in the top three ad positions
• The suggested landing page for each keyword

To see all 2954 new keywords and decide which ones to add to your campaigns, go to www.google.com/sktool, sign in to your AdWords account, and enter your website URL. We hope that you find the Search-based Keyword Tool useful in driving even more business to your website through Google AdWords!”

Errrrrr! No it isn’t useful, has wasted my time & has not given me any new (& reasonably priced), keyphrases that I can bid on!

I will definitely not be returning to AdWords any time soon!

I wrote previously about using article submissions to increase the number of backlinks & traffic to your website.

I’ve been submitting my articles manually, to the top 10 article directories, but this process is very drawn out & complicated by the slightly different layouts & entry requirements of each directory. With thousands of directories out there, although submitting to the top 10, 20 or 30 will achieve results, it will be impossible to do many more manual submissions, which will mean you have to write significantly more articles to get more links.

I’ve been looking at the different article submission websites & software for some time & decided now was the time to take the plunge!

I’ve used Submit2Please’s Article Submission Service in the past, but the charges could be considerable if you have a number of articles to publish:

• $49.95 for 100 PR 3 and above Directories (35+ PR 4 & above Directories & 65 PR 3 Directories)
• $74.95 for 200 PR 2 and above Directories(35+ PR 4 & above Directories, 65 PR 3 Directories & 100+ PR 2 Directories)
• $99.95 for 300 Various PR Directories (35+ PR 4 & above Directories, 65 PR 3 Directories, 100+ PR 2 Directories & 100+ PR 1 & 0 Directories)
• $124.95 for 400 Various PR Directories (35+ PR 4 & above Directories, 65 PR 3 Directories, 100+ PR 2 Directories & 200+ PR 1 & 0 Directories)

Bearing in mind I currently have 7 articles to submit, this is a bit too much to pay!

So, I started to look around for services or software that promise to submit to a large number of sites at a reasonable cost, whilst making sure that the submissions are valid & not classed as spam by either the directories, or Google.

Apart from the dodgy looking article submission software packages for $37, there seems to be a consensus of opinion around the following:

• iSnare
• Article Marketing Automation
• Article Marketer
• Ultimate Article Wizard
• The Phantom Writers
  

I was drawn to Article Marketers & Ultimate Article Wizard out of these, mainly because The Phantom Writers is another pay per article plan, iSnare seems a bit too cheap (my opinion on cheap services has been clouded by my recent experiences with 1and1 & Tiscali!) & other users have suggested that AMA only gets your articles out to about 30 sites.

I was originally put off UAW as it costs $67 per month & it seems that you have to spend time using it to rewrite your articles using what is known as “spinning”. Content (article) spinning involves taking an original article and using it to generate 10′s or 100′s of new unique versions of the text & these “spun” versions of your article are submitted instead. Each of these new articles presents the same ideas and concepts as the original, but expressed in different ways. Whilst all are readable and grammatically correct, each is different from the others in terms of the words on the page and therefore unique in Google’s eyes.

The importance of “spinning” your articles will depend on whether you believe that the backlinks from duplicate articles are being disregarded by Google, when Google’s duplicate content filter is treating the article submissions as duplicate content! If this is the case, then it seems pointless to submit your articles to any more than one site for link purposes, but of course, there is the side issue 0f site traffic that your article could generate. There seems to be some debate as to whether this is the case or not, with some people saying it does & others saying it doesn’t! Here’s the part of Google’s duplicate content policy that seems to say it does!

If you believe that each time you submit your article you need to use a different title, different summary, different resource box, and different article body, then perhaps the extra cost of UAW is worth it. However, I’ve also found a free spinner system called Jetspinner that I’m signing up to, which will hopefully allow me to carry out this process for nothing. Then I can create dozens of versions of my articles & submit them to all the directories instead!

Jetspinner also advertises its own article submission service called Jet Submitter (which also costs $67 per month), but as I’ve already signed up with Article Marketer for 3 months use (cost $79.95), I’m going to have to use it for now. If I’m not happy with it, I may switch to Jet Submitter & use their combined tools, but I’ll use this time to submit as many articles as possible, on all of the topics covered by my affiliate websites & see if it makes any difference to their links & rankings!