Posts Tagged marketing
You Can Still Buy Commission Blueprint 2.0
Posted by admin in Commission Blueprint on September 17th, 2009
Yup, the official sales page for Commission Blueprint 2.0 is closed (you can get a free 7 day trial of the best tools there now) but there’s a backdoor. So if you’re still on the fence, come on down and join me and the other 2000 folks who have bought it and are happy and proud owners of CB2.0 (you just gotta see the forums buzzing with activity).
I’ve been using tools and techniques from it all past week and I’ll just say my work has become much more efficient, let alone a couple of beasts I’m building right now based on CB2.0
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again – it’s worth every penny and more.
21st Century Marketing Ideas for Your Business
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on September 16th, 2009
Increased competition and the recent economic downturn have combined to make effective marketing increasingly difficult. The advent of guerilla marketing tactics, as well as a host of other unconventional techniques can intimidate even the most adroit marketing professional. The “fighting fire with fire” adage is cliched, but true nonetheless. If you’re looking to separate your product or service from the seemingly infinite number of competitors in the marketplace today, you have to use increasingly unorthodox approaches to marketing.
One of the most effective ways of selling yoru product or service is first getting it past the media gatekeepers. One way this can be accomplished is through extreme thinking. Peruse the Guinness Book of World Records and try to find something in it that is related to your service or product. Next, you can attempt to break this record in some type of public forum. Such a bold move will surely garner attention and, as long as you avoid making a spectacle of yourself, attract positive publicity from at least a few media hounds that gather to witness the event. Another strategy would be to sponsor a local event or sports team. The coverage the event or team draws will provide your company name with publicity.
Along the same vain, you may want to support a local philanthropic group or charity that in some way applies to what you are trying to sell. If you don’t have the capital to make a straight donation to such a cause, try giving out a percentage of your monthly sales as part of a promotion. Ideally, this will give customers added incentive to buy your producdt. If possible, you can then advertise your generosity by placing informationa about the charity on your product.
One more way of getting your product more exposure is to send out a bi-monthly or monthly form of literature to serve as advertisement for your business. Given the continuing trend toward visual communication with respect to marketing, try sending out a photo book in lieu of the traditional flyer or newsletter. Promoting your business through photo books could be a very effective way of displaying your products as well as separating yourself from the crowded marketplace. Online photo book sites such as MemoryEscape.com allow you to upload images, select distinctive templates and backgrounds, and choose a personalized cover – all in a matter of minutes. A retailer, for example, may include photos of their newest products, and even add some copy mentioning coupons or promotions. If your business provides a service rather than a product (e.g. hair salon, photography studio, etc), a photo book is a great way of informing your customers of updates while providing them with visual images that stand out from the crowd. If you are finding it difficult to come up with ideas, MemoryEscape.com has an entire page devoted to ways you can use photo books to promote your business.
With the advent of social networking sites, it behooves the savvy business owner to encourage open dialogue between the company and its customers. Your website can serve as an ideal forum for such dialogue. By creating an area specifically for customer feedback and comment, you can show your commitment to your customers and learn new ways in which you can improve your business. This should be a type of forum where customers can ask you questions as well as interact with each other.
While new forms of marketing continue to emerge and others are replaced, one technique will never become obsolete: Creating something free to give away to customers. Such items can range from pens to hats – basically any free merchandise will work as long as your company name and information are printed on it. It is crucial, however, to make sure the item will be useful to your customer. Also, try to make the object something relevant to your company. For example, it you own a hair salon, give away combs, brushes, or samples of hair styling products.
Commission Blueprint 2.0 – Final Review
Posted by admin in Commission Blueprint on September 10th, 2009
Note: When I’ve finished writing this review I realized how lengthly it got, so please bear with me. I’ve bolded some key places that I think are the most important. So if you want to skim it, you can at least check those.
I’ve bought Commission Blueprint 2.0 yesterday and had my chance to go through everything now. So I figured I’d sum up my impressions and uses I have found for it. Now mind you, it’s only my subjective opinion and it very much depends on my level of experience. It contains training for the complete beginners to advanced topics, the tools and services may also be used differently. It also depends on what you’re already doing. Obviously, I have my business plan and I don’t want to digress, so I will only be using what helps to improve my business.
First of all I have to say it really is the most comprehensive IM kit I’ve seen. And I’m using the word “kit” very responsibly, it really is. It not only has well done videos and manuals, it has the most essential tools and services. I can only agree with them when they say it’s the last IM product you’ll need. It has everything you need and anything else may be just extra expert tools that are only optional if anything else.
The videos are basically in two formats – one in which Steve gives an overview of each module and explains how to get most of it for newbies, intermediate and expert marketers. Then the rest of the videos are tutorials in which the subjects are explained step by step.
The manuals are concise with no filler content. There are a lot of case studies in which real life examples are explained – usually there’s a problem indicated and each action taken, and the final result. You can see all keywords they used in SEO, PPC and so on, so it’s not just generic blurred Google page with who knows what keywords and results behind it. You can see it, you can understand it, you can confirm it and finally you can model upon it your own keywords and so on.
On top of it all, there are two action plans – free and with advertising expenses. If you’re new or just need a plan, you can follow one of them and use the training and tools provided in Commission Blueprint 2.0.
There are a bunch of tools and services, Keyword Blueprint and Article Blueprint are clearly being the main accent. The other tools are just as good. Hippo Jaw for instance is a great tracking service for PPC campaigns, AdSpy tool is a software you can install on your server and track competition ads on Google (something like PPC Bully 1.0, if you’re familiar). I’ll expand on Keyword Blueprint and Article Blueprint a little bit more, since they’re the most important to me.
Keyword Blueprint I think can be compared to Micro Niche Finder, although I’ve never used the latter. Essentially it’s an easy to use and efficient keyword research tool. What it does and does it well is automate the manual process you’d do with other keyword tools (such as Market Samurai) as much as possible, and make it easy to find great keywords. I cannot describe well enough how it makes my life easier. Usually I would enter my main niche keyword in Market Samurai, find relevant keywords and then repeat the process on each of them. Then I would find keywords with traffic and low competition and analyze first page of Google for them. Market Samurai does that well but it still takes way too much time and it’s easy to get lost. With Keyword Blueprint I’m able to start off as I would with the main keyword and related keywords it gives, then just click on the keywords I find relevant and it expands on them at the spot. That makes things easier already. Then I would simply select keywords with traffic that I think have good commercial intent and “ask” Keyword Blueprint what it thinks about beating the competition. It then gives a score 1-20, a red cross for no-no keywords and a star if it’s easy pickin’s. I can quickly choose a handful of keywords like that and confirm each of them in Google before I work on them. This process is so much faster than with other keyword tools that the time saved already pays off for the price of the whole kit.
In PPC it gets even more interesting. Keyword Blueprint works in two modes – SEO and PPC. I’ve described the SEO mode above, and in PPC it simply takes into account different characteristics. You start off by selecting a commission of the product you’re gonna promote (this can be an arbitrary amount if you don’t have one yet) and adding the main keyword. It then expands on it like in SEO mode allowing you to also expand on individual keywords on the spot and evaluates the daily clicks and CPC. If the CPC is humongous, it simply says ‘too expensive’ otherwise it gives the actual CPC you’d pay. It’s also important that the CPC is not the bid you’d pay for position #1 in Adwords but a more realistic calculated bid for lower positions that you’d normally bid. That gives a much better estimation. Finally, once you select the keywords you can move them to the evaluator tool where you immediately see if you’ll make any profit at those bids and conversion rate. You can make adjustments from there and see if you can make this campaign work. That’s what you used to do with spreadsheets, the whole thing is now fully automated.
The Article Blueprint is an article distribution service that is comparable to Unique Article Wizard. And again, because you get life-time access to it for no extra cost it pays off alone. For instance, I’ve already canceled My Article Network subscription, because even though it’s a little bit different than AB, I used it in the same way I can use AB. So even if it was the only thing I’d use Commission Blueprint 2.0 for, it would pay of after 10 months alone. I will of course won’t have to wait that long in reality.
Article Blueprint covers hundreds of article directories and the private high PR site network. I’ve only submitted one article and it’s been submitted to 5 directories yet so I don’t have any real results but if it works as it’s supposed to, it will do the job for me. My only complaint is that it doesn’t support jet spinner syntax and only rewrites articles by accepting 3 rewritten versions of each paragraphs. I’m not used to that nor I like it, so what I did for my test article was to spin each paragraph and submit them. It got approved but obviously it’s a little bit of a poor man’s solution and I’ll try to persuade them to add jet spinner syntax support. That would increase the rewriting ability so much more.
There are also two unannounced tools. One of them is a tool to find hub pages to get links from – a replacement for Hub Finder from SeoBook, which to quote them, “allows you to find sites which link to common resources that you manually enter, or resources that rank well in Yahoo! for a specific term.” That’s usually useful when trying to rank for high competition keywords.
The other tool is another link building service. As far as I know it’s gonna be a 3 way linking network with a unique twist. While I’m not a big fan of 3 way links since the back-links you get are from a page full of irrelevant content with tons of other outgoing links, the unique twist sounds intriguing. I also know that they were working on a service comparable to Linkvana, so this might be related.
From the training what I found the most useful is the video series on how to build your own high PR website network. They explain step by step how they do it in the fastest and cheapest way. So for instance to create a network of 20 sites would cost $120/month for hosting and ~$30 one time fee per domain. You would buy domains with PR, change the former site’s theme to what you need and retain the PR. Great strategy the concept of which I’ve already had in mind, so it will be a good opportunity to implement it.
To wrap it up, it’s a great value in all aspects – knowledge, entertainment (I find the videos and how it’s all done quite so!), tools and services. You don’t have to look far for examples where you pay $2k and get perhaps only 10% of what you get in Commission Blueprint 2.0. So if you’re still on the fence, unless you’re really short on money and can’t do anything about it, get it and get it fast. It’s gonna be closed in no time, and that’s not a marketing gimmick.
From Commission Blueprint to Commission Blueprint 2.0
Posted by admin in Commission Blueprint on August 31st, 2009
In April I wrote about my results of using Commission Blueprint for a few months. Now with Commission Blueprint 2.0 coming, it’s closing to a year and I’m glad to say that I’ve improved since. I wrote that I made $2.5k/month with a ~$15 daily spend. I’ve managed to up the revenue to $3k and cut the spend to $10/day. That’s only Clickbank. In addition to that I’ve had a whole bunch of campaigns in other networks and private programs, albeit those mostly had only a weekly or so life-span (still bringing up to $2.5k each). That’s very good by my standards – heck, I’ve never made that much money in my life before.
The point is, it’s all to do with Commission Blueprint. Maybe it could have been another product, or maybe I could have made it on my own from all the free information on the Internet, but it was Commission Blueprint that pushed me through.
Now looking back to my past performance, I can see two clear phases. I worked exclusively on PPC as per Commission Blueprint until March or so, then encouraged by Niche Blueprint I began working in SEO. Those are just two different traffic getting methods, but as they say, diversification is key. At the time of writing this, my revenue from PPC and SEO are about equal and have a 50/50 share in my affiliate business.
But where I’m getting at is, the first Commission Blueprint was only about PPC. There was nothing about SEO in it and I had to pick it up from other products (mostly it was Niche Blueprint from the same guys) and all information I could find on various forums, blogs, etc. And while you can do well with only PPC, you can do so much more with SEO. That’s where Commission Blueprint 2.0 comes in and covers even more than SEO (as I wrote in my previous post).
It seems to me that Steve, Tim and co. have purposely decided to release the two products a year apart. You start with Adwords, get a good hang of it, then you move to SEO and other venues in your affiliate business. A year is ought to be enough to make the transition.
Nevertheless, even if you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, Commission Blueprint 2.0 will be a good place to start too.
The Search For A Marketing Agency
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on August 17th, 2009
The marketing agency you choose can make or break your business. This article puts forward three points that you should keep in mind while choosing your agency. This article is designed to help recently founded businesses. If you want results with fast turnarounds, you will know the contact details of the most reputed marketing agency on finishing this article. You can get resources on australia online marketing by visiting this site.
1. Giving your brand the muscle
Does your prospective Sydney marketing agency specialize in building your brand identity? Your brand identity is how you, your prospects, your clients and all your staff view your business. By looking at your branding, a potential customer should immediately understand what you are selling, what sort of company you are, the customer interaction they are likely to experience and the outcome that they are likely to receive by using your products or services. To understand more about website marketing australia visit this resource.
The stronger your brand identity, the better will be your chances of marching ahead of competitors. An experienced agency will run the branding marketing strategy around the name, logo and tagline of your business. Marketing activities will have to incorporate brand identity under a set of guidelines developed by such an agency. The branding agency that you choose should have a proven track record.
2. Focus on developing a marketing strategy that is right for you
Confirm that your marketing agency will provide you with the knowledge you need for developing a great marketing strategy. The following points need to be kept in mind:
a. The company’s goals and history
b. What is your company’s current position vis-à-vis the marketplace? Where do you want your company to fit into the marketplace?
c. What is the repository of marketing materials on hand as of now?
Which brand position does your marketing material target?
You should now have a step by step plan to achieve your goals with these results.
3. Your strategy implemented
Merely, the development of a working marketing strategy doesn’t take care of your marketing plans. You need to first ask yourself if you have the right tools and knowledge to bring your strategy into effect. If not, it is essential that your marketing consultant is well versed and experienced in these matters. Even so this condition could filter out your search for the best marketing agency. Cost-effective and reliable outsourcing would give you a good hold in the market amongst your competitors.
Commission Blueprint 2.0 Review
Posted by admin in Commission Blueprint on August 16th, 2009
Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey are releasing Commission Blueprint 2.0. That’s great news, knowing how good the original Commission Blueprint was. But there’s some common misconception. Commission Blueprint 2 will not be an update to it’s predecessor – it’s gonna be a completely new product about much more than just PPC.
Here’s what Commission Blueprint 2.0 is about. It consists of a huge video library, manuals and several tools. It’s divided into these 10 modules:
- A welcome module
- Keyword research. Everything you need to know about keyword research, case studies, tips and tricks, and the new Keyword Blueprint and Ad Spy tool.
- Finding Offers. How to choose a winner and the Picking Offer Calculator.
- How to build converting sites, including the Site Builder tools.
- Affiliate sales and conversion strategies, including the landing page bonus, IP, double selling, riding trends and CPA conversion techniques.
- SEO module – everything from the basics to the most advanced techniques that can get you ranked even under the most competitive keywords. Includes Article Blueprint tool, building PR farms, link building examples and case studies, link building plans.
- Adwords module from basics to advanced techniques, using Wordpress Direct, YouTube PPC, and the Hippo Jaw tracking tool.
- Social media and article marketing with case studies, tips and tricks.
- List building and email marketing tips & tricks, case studies.
- The conclusion module
Every tool I mentioned is part of Commission Blueprint 2.0. I know those tools sell separately, so it’s quite exciting to see them there.
The whole outline looks really great – there’s nothing that it wouldn’t cover about affiliate marketing and looks like it will beat some quite popular IM courses out there. I know the style of teaching of these guys and I can honestly say they know how to teach. You literally just have to copy what they do on video, they give you real life examples that you can look up, and there’s no way on earth you can lose after following the material. That’s what I gather from the other two products that I’ve bought from Steve and Tim so far – Commission Blueprint and Niche Blueprint.
I can only recommend Commission Blueprint 2.0 based on my past experience with these guys. If you can find the money to invest in it, go for it, you can’t lose. I’m buying it the minute it’s released (in fact probably even earlier as I’m sure as a past customer I’ll get an early link).
How To Make Money With Your Own Products
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on July 24th, 2009
Wouldn’t you love to sell products you created yourself? A growing number of people agree with you on that. Whether you want to earn extra cash or become a full time entrepreneur, making and marketing your own products is the way to go for many people. Both things are entirely possible. You just have to keep the following pieces of advice in mind to get the profits rolling in fast.
Probably the biggest draw to this endeavor involves profits. If you can be successful with your product, you really can make a whole lot of money. As a matter of fact, you get to keep the profits once you have covered the cost of making your product. That just begs the question, how do you ensure your success?
Of course, you need an idea first if you eventually want to make money online. Don’t worry if you’re having a hard time thinking of a good one, since you don’t have to rush this. You can try to solve a current problem, for starters. You can also try to figure out how to ideally solve that problem.
You need to have something that people will want to have and are willing to pay for. To discover if people are into your idea, run a poll or a survey. It does not matter what your idea is, a poll will provide honest opinions from all different types of people.
You might have some luck trying to improve an older product that already exists but is not really popular. You just want to be careful and make sure you are not violating any patents or copyright laws. Heck, if you can bring some renewed interest to something by making it better, go for it! .
Think about creating your own niche or category. It could be in clothing, toys, jewelry, video games, computers – anything, really. If you have an idea, however, but no market or niche for it, you can make one of your own. Think about it – someone out there had to decide that clothes for teddy bears was a good idea, right? Someone decided they needed to invite a lighter that hooked into a USB port.
Regardless, whether it already exists or if you have to create it, your product has got to have a target market. Remember that to make money, you need to sell your product. That is where the internet comes in really handy. High priced ads are no longer necessary. All you need is a web site of your very own.
This endeavor takes a lot of patience and determination. You have to work incredibly hard. It is not just about creating your product, you have to find a target market and get it sold as well. The first step is having or finding an idea. From there, you can proceed on your plan of action. Do you plan to make money blogging? Are you trying to market a product that you’ve made yourself? Whatever it is, don’t sway from your goal, and you’ll get there sooner than you think.
Tips For Marketing Your Own Products
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on July 24th, 2009
In this day and age, there are a ton of different ways that you can make money. but wouldn’t it be great if you could create and sell products of your own? Creating products to make money is something that is fun and totally fulfilling. You get to be your very own boss as well as make all of your own work hours. You also get to see your very own products sell. However, you must be warned that marketing and creating your own product is very difficult in the beginning and that you have to be dedicated if you want to see results.
You see, having a product is not a guarantee for success. It is not enough to have an idea or even a fully developed product. You have to have a market for it. No one is just going to stumble upon your designer handbags or awesome new computer program unless you advertise it properly. If you want to create products you make, you are essentially becoming an entrepreneur. That means you have to consider every aspect of buying, selling, and marketing. You will be in charge until you have enough money to hire professionals.
Naturally, you have to begin with an idea. Usually, people create products for something in which they are interested. The person who decided to create the first pair of nail cutters for pets probably had a lot of them. The person who first decided that keyboards needed plastic covers likely needed one themselves. Maybe you are a new mother and think that baby bottles can be better-designed . Maybe you have figured out a way to make a computer screen clearer and cleaner for playing video games on it.
Anyhow, you get the point, right? A good idea is essential. Once you have that in place, it is time to start researching. You have to make sure that there is a target market for your product. Other people need to have an interest in it is well. How do you find out if they are? For one thing, you can conduct some polls both online and offline.
See if people would use your product, how much they would be willing to pay for it, if they would even consider buying it, and things of that nature. There has to be some niche, some market, some sort of demand for your product if you want to be successful.
You will also have to test your product. This will of course require some kind of prototype, or prototypes, depending on how many focus groups you want to hold. Still, before you ever try to market it, you will need to know exactly how your product works. You also need to know how much it will cost to make. That way, you can estimate how much profit you will be receiving in return.
You also have to advertise as much as you can. You have to let as many people as possible know that your product exists. Otherwise, they will not even know to purchase it. You can do a lot of advertising on the internet. Put together a web site, do some social bookmarking, figure out SEO.
Do not forget the more conventional media outlets out there, either. Make a brochure. Run an advertisement in magazines and newspapers. Go local and national.
Simple But Effective Marketing
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on July 19th, 2009
With the morning sun shining bright you are sitting in your office. With a cup of hot coffee by your side and memories of the weekend’s activities still fresh in your mind, you feel relaxed and think, today at least, life is sweet.
You take a sip of new blend coffee and then feel a rush of cool air and a movement catches the corner of your eye. As if from nowhere there is now an impeccably dressed stranger sitting in the chair opposite. Surprised, you bet; you didn’t hear anyone knock and just as you are about to say something he begins in a calm and measured voice.
‘The deal is this’
‘In every city of the world I am going to display your product on billboards at the busiest junctions.’
‘I will be able to tell you how many people see the advertisement, their gender, age group and nationality.’
‘I will tell you what they think of your product and in many cases I will give you their contact details. While they are reading the billboard I will make it possible for them to view your website and, if they feel the urge, make a purchase.’
‘I can have all this setup in two days and it will cost you less than a small advertisement displayed in your favourite trade journal.’
He stops talking for just a second. ‘Interested?’
Okay you might be forgiven thinking that such an offer was too good to be true, you might think that you are going to wake up from a dream or maybe it really is time to get a lock on that office door.
But let us just take time to reflect. If you are still reading this well I am that man who has come from nowhere and offered you a deal.
The advertising site is on the Internet and the billboard I’m offering is the humble online survey.
Stop for one moment and start to associate an online survey not with ‘market research’ but with ‘marketing’. And not any type of marketing this is ‘Marketing’ with a very large capital ‘M’ and in flashing neon lights. Marketing that is effective, low cost, quick, and direct.
You can advertise a published online survey on a website, or via email and like a billboard by the side of a transport hub, your message will appear in front of people. Unlike billboards where it has to be estimated as to the number of people actually see an advert, the online survey records the number of times a survey is started.
By asking demographic questions such as age, gender and nationality you can collate important information that will allow you to measure the effectiveness of your promotion and ensure that you are interacting with your target market on a one-on-one level.
Unlike billboards where the message is often subliminal, or maybe just trying to achieve brand awareness, with online surveys you have the opportunity to connect with the public to find out what they really think about your product, how it relates to them, how it is perceived.
Using an online survey website it takes only minutes and hours to create a survey and using the power of the Internet an online survey can reach hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis.
Even if you offer a prize as an incentive for people to complete the survey or use Pay Per Click advertising to capture a wider, or more focused audience you will still have low cost but effective marketing.
‘Tell me then. Is it a deal?’
Business Design That Works
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on July 15th, 2009
At the heart of any marketing communications effort should be a respect for design that communicates clearly and effectively to bring you the results you are looking for, and your selected design agency should be familiar with all forms of visual media. Print management with a view to not only cost effectiveness, but also how your brand is expressed to its maximum impact across all above, below and through the line channels is vital to effective communication with your target audiences. This all becomes even more important when it comes to 3D marketing of the brand such as brand environments, large displays, simple pop-up units or fully fledged exhibition stands.
Whether it’s uniquely different banner sign printing or exhibition stand design and custom built display solutions, you need to make a distinctive eye catching impression with an identity and execution that not only looks good in the medium it inhabits but is easy to erect and dismantle.
At the centre of all this is the initial corporate identity design. Aside from a design’s creativity and whether it captures the spirit of your proposition, its ability to translate across all those myriad expressions will determine its longevity and impact. Something might look good on A4 print materials but may not be so fantastic when you enlarge it to use on exhibition graphics.Equally, any logo or graphic in an exhibition environment can be enhanced by an imaginative use of lighting that can produce a number of different effects.
Portable Display Stands, Banners, Pop-ups, Modular stands and Shell Scheme Graphics all have their own unique requirements in terms of how robust they must be and how long they should last. Design that works will take all those considerations into account from the very start. The marketing functions of Point of Sale Material, Window Graphics and Signage have a similar purpose, but have completely different lifetimes. These items are expected to last considerably longer than temporary exhibition materials and with POS are often left unmanned and need to work entirely alone. They must therefore be considerably more robust than temporary graphics, but still retain the same sense of style and unity of corporate design as all the other relevant items of marketing colleteral.