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Moderator Matt Van Wagner, president of Find Me Faster, introduces the panel who will focus on new ad formats in search.

Speakers:

Nicholas Fox, Business Product Management Director, AdWords, Google Inc.
Cory Nielsen, Performance Marketing Evangelist, Mercent Corporation
David Szetela, Owner and CEO, Clix Marketing

Nicholas of Google is going to start us off strong. Nicholas’ team is in charge of details of text ads in search results pages. Over the years Google’s search ands haven’t changed that much. Meanwhile Google’s organic results have exploded with variety and content. Universal search is being responded to well because they serve the right content at the right time. So they’re taking that same philosophy and extending it to ads.

They started by asking what the user is trying to do. Advertisers are also going to be helped when the user knows as much as possible because it will improve the chances of the click going somewhere.

Nicholas will be doing demos of new platforms:

Ad extensions: appending additional info to AdWords ads. Same pricing model as traditional PPC.

New ad model: fundamental changes to the format, pricing model, and targeting model

Four Demos:

• Ad Sitelinks
• Product ads
• Local ads
• Comparison ads

Sitelinks: If the searcher knows the right site, search can help by directing the searcher to the right page. Sitelinks bring users to a specific page on a site. They’re typically seeing 30-40 percent increase in click-through rates with solid conversion rates as well when advertisers adopt Sitelinks.

Product advertising: By expanding a plus box, individual products can be listed in an ad, including images, product name and price. It’s a little like a virtual storefront and searchers will have an idea of the offerings a site has. This is implemented through a Google Merchant account. It’s an ad extension. From a user’s perspective, ad units are grouped based on products, making the comparison experience much easier.

Local ads: There are two kinds of businesses that are working this space, chains and not chains. A business’s name, address, phone number, directions and a map are all served to a searcher. For chains, when an ad is displayed, it will include a map with all the locations around the area. By dragging around the map, the area seen will update with locations. This feature launched about a week ago.

Comparison ads: For some searches, an ad will come up with a button to compare. Here’s an example:

Clicking on “compare rates” brings the user to a page where they can add filters to their search and contact different advertisers.

They want to align what the advertisers and users want with an appropriate pricing model. They expect to be experimenting a lot in 2010.

Matt asks the audience who is from an agency and who is doing it for their own business. It’s about half and half. After hearing from Nicholas about what advertisers can do, the rest of the presentations will be on what PPC advertisers should do.

David is next. He says that after his presentation, you should also check out http://om.ly/dtXc and clixmarketing.com… for more info. He’s going to look at Sitelinks, product extensions and product listings in this presentation. Sitelinks, he says, is like displaying more than one ad, with more opportunities to add persuasive language. They saw an average uplift of 60 percent click-through rates during the holidays.

Sitelinks

• Up to four links below ad
• Ads must meet “certain quality criteria” (i.e., position #1)
• Appears automatically for qualified campaigns
• Google claims “30% average increase in click-through rate”

When it comes to click-through rates and Quality Score and Sitelinks, keep doing what you’re doing. Exceptional click-through rates and Quality Score is needed. You’ll know you’re eligible if the Sitelinks option shows up in your campaign settings, under ad extensions.

Product Extensions

• Not in beta any longer
• Must submit product feed via Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base)
• Google chooses which products are shown

An advertiser doesn’t pay for clicks, just for conversions.

Tracking New Ad Formats

For product extensions you’ll receive more data than you’ll ever need. Several new data points to help you optimize. For Sitelinks, he doesn’t know of any intrinsic reporting.

Next up is Cory, who will be speaking about retail-focused ad formats. Getting the consumer closer to the conversion is what everyone wants. 40 percent of in-store purchases start online. 25 percent of consumers that use Google for their product search

What should I know about these new product ad types? Yes, they’re easy to launch, but it can create a bit of a mess.

1 Feed & 3 Ad Networks

Google Merchant Center feeds to:

Google Affiliate Network > Product Listing Ads (CPC)

Google AdWords > Product Extensions (CPA)

Google Product Search > Product Search One Box (Free)

Shared Responsibility

• Paid search marketing team
• Affiliate marketing team
• Shopping feed marketer
• Focus on where the talent is. Each ad type needs to be implemented correctly across networks.

Performance Attribution

Product listing ads: Uses GAN to track performance. Supports unique product URLs / tracking variables

Product extensions: Cost is tracked to AdWords. Sales are tracked to GPS.

So is it worth doing? Yes, and here’s why. Let’s focus on Product Listing Ads (PLA)

Will PLA affect my other ads on Google? From what they’re seeing, there’s been no effect.

• 30-50 percent year over year increase in revenue from Google Product Search.
• Product Listing Ads produced additional growth over that
• With PLA you can dominate a SERP
• PLA: set category level commissions in GAN to compete effectively and control costs
• Product extensions: adding keywords increases CTR by 1.7 times
• GPS OneBox: 80 percent of traffic from GPS is generated from the SERP OneBox.

Q&A

Nicholas: Sitelinks is pretty well adopted, but the other ad options are in early days, so there’s a lot of opportunity for advertisers now. Advertisers can reach out to their customer service reps if they want to get in on the early beta.

Not Your Father’s AdWords: The New Google Ad Formats was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Not Your Father’s AdWords: The New Google Ad Formats

Today’s post is question from Hicham Damahi of beezid.com/ who asks “How to handle expired product pages on a classified / auction site.” I’m going to expand the topic to cover expired product pages as well, since the concept it basically the same.

I touched on this briefly in my Shopping Cart SEO Tips post, but there are a couple of different conditions that require some finesse so let’s run through the most common cases:

Product Goes Temporarily Out of Stock: If a product goes out of stock temporarily, but you do expect to get it back in stock,  you’ll want to leave the page up from a search engine perspective. You want to make sure that you let the customer know the product is out of stock. If they can order it or be notified when it comes back in, that’s great. But taking the page up and down–that’s bad mojo right there. Don’t do it.

Product Goes Out Of Stock Forever: If the product goes out of stock forever, you have a couple choices. You can leave the page up with a discontinued notice on the page. IMHO that’s not the best way to go for search engines. Ideally I’d like to not lose any link equity and 301 the product page to a similar product, category/department page, or home page.

Product is Replaced or Updated: If a product is replaced or updated, handle it the same way you would handle a product that goes out of stock forever. Unless there is some value in maintaining an un-purchasable archive page, 301 it to the new product, up one category/department, or back to the home page.

Expired or Completed Auction Page: Handle this the same way as a product going out of stock or being replaced.

Why would you want to 301 the product/auction page instead of letting it expire and issuing a 404? Two key reasons: link reclamation and conservation of  existing link equity. Are all of your products/auctions going to get links? No, but some will. Links are like money: once you have them, you don’t wan to waste them or throw them away. You want to keep them. I wouldn’t advise trying any tricks with rel=canonical either. Search engines have said they will make their own decisions when it comes to  rel=canonical and IMHO the last thing you want to do is leave things to chance. Take the easy method that works and 301 the expired page.

If you are going to have a high volume of items that do this, you’ll want to work out an automated system to take care of as much of this as possible. Use product names, SKU’s ISBN, tags, or even product categories if you have to. Just don’t let them expire.

The danger of leaving up expired products/auctions is that you create a lot of useless pages. Your site only has a certain amount of inbound link equity, so don’t squander it on product pages with no value. Now if you sell unique collectibles and you want to keep the archives up, that makes sense, but if you’re selling consumer goods like an iPod or Samsung LCD TV, there’s just no point to it.

Lastly I’d like to bring up something called predictive SEO, which I wrote about in 2005. If you know that a product is coming, why not put up a page about it in advance? Don’t be a spammer and put up an empty page. Try to put something up that has some useful information: when is it supposed to be out, what are the specs, the price, etc. I also think it’s pretty smart to try and capture leads if you can as a way to lock in some future sales.

So, to wrap things up, here are the take aways:

• Put up and leave product pages up where you will be selling or restocking an item in the future.
• Capture leads for future sales on out of stock products wherever possible
• Redirect out of stock or discontinued products via 301 to replacement product pages or appropriate department pages
• Automate redirection as much as possible to cut down on maintenance

Advertisement: Find out how to get your bloggers talking about your products ViralConversations.com. #8

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

How to Deal with Expired Product or Auction Pages

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1. SEO for Product Reviews, Part I If you do any SEO work on branded or named…
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A guest post by Larry Brooks of Storyfix.com. Image by [phil h]

We are all storytellers. Whether we’re writing a blog, an ebook, a cheesy novel or a killer screenplay, even an essay, article or report.

Without some semblance of a story at the heart of it all, what’s left is a masturbatory exercise in rhetoric. And if there’s one thing we know about masturbation, it’s that we’re alone.

Thing is, alone doesn’t get us paid. Writing for money is a team sport that demands we pass the ball to a publisher and then a reader somewhere down the road.

The differences in various forms of writing reduce to executional semantics. Which means, the essence of what makes us better writers remains eternal and therefore something we can practice and eventually master, no matter what it is we write.

It Is Written

Behind the conventional wisdom, beneath the tips and techniques, before the fundamentals and the principles, and above everything else, there are certain foundational truths about what we do and how we do it.

This is a closer look at the latter.

These universal truths apply to pretty much any profession, by the way. But for some reason there are writers, especially newer writers, who tend to think such foundational truths either don’t exist or do not apply to them.

If that’s you, hear this clearly: that is the worst writing advice, ever.

The best writing advice – ever – comes from a core, fundamental perspective. Embrace these five gifts of truth and your writing will quickly and forever escalate to the next level.

1. Design your writing like an engineer.

The most pervasive and destructive illusion floating around the writing universe is that you can write something good without order and structure.

Even if you just wing it, if you like to make it up as you go, you’ll end up rewriting and revising until an ordered structure emerges and becomes the skeleton of a finished piece.

Some writers – often the most experienced and successful, so pay attention – give significant creative mindshare to the structure of a story before they write it. They build on a structure, rather than digging one out from the chaos of a convoluted draft.

The worst thing that can happen is that you don’t even realize that it’s convoluted. But you see, a story engineer would.

And it’s not just any ol’ skeleton, either. Structure isn’t something you make up in the moment, in mid-stride as you write. Story structure in any genre and in any deliverable format is based on accepted principles and models.

You violate them, or write in ignorance of them, at your own storytelling peril.

Without a narrative structure in place, even the most elegant and powerful prose plops to the ground in a heap of moist, quivering helplessness.

Order and structure is always – whether planned or retrofitted – a function of design. And design, by definition, is a practice based on certain physics, principles and those proven laws and models.

Learn them, then build your writing upon their proven strengths, and your story will be set free to elevate itself to art.

2. Polish your writing like an obsessive poet.

Writing is very much like singing, playing an instrument or excelling at athletics. The more you do it, the more evolved and polished your sensibilities become, until finally you can instinctively add subtlety and nuance to your performance.

Which, by the way, is what separates the published from the non-published.

Such deft touches usually look easier that they really are when observed from the cheap seats. Success in all of these pursuits is the product of craft, and craft is the product of evolved instincts colliding with proven principles.

The inherent risk in polishing your work is to overwrite, to imbue your narrative voice with a certain hue of purple. Polishing is as much the rendering of complex words into simpler terms as it is de-cluttering the space between your periods, while leaving just a little stylistic juice to spice things up.

Sooner or later your writing will settle into a voice that is uniquely yours. Once there, polishing your work becomes the literary equivalent of clearing your throat.

Sometimes the best writers are simply the best throat clearers.

3. Edit your writing like an anal retentive executioner with a hip edge.

Editing is easily confused with polishing. It can mean two things – copy editing (which is, in fact, the cleaning up and correction of your prose, whereas polishing is more a style and voice issue), and story editing, which is the trimming of expositional fat and the empowerment of narrative moments.

You need both. And you need some combination of two things to do it right: time, and the eyes of a stranger.

What you don’t need is someone trying to turn your work into the vanilla sensibilities of your old high school English teacher. Deliberate, effective voice trumps English 101 any day, provided your readers agree. (Example: earlier I used the word “executional.” Look it up, there is no such word. Each time I type it I see that pesky red underlining. But it’s the right word, the intended word, I’m confident you get it, and my old English teacher can bite me.)

One of the best strategies to bring out the best in your work is to set it aside for a while before turning a fierce editor’s eye back on it. And if you can’t be that set of eyes with objective clarity, consider outsourcing the task to someone who is as hip within your target niche as you are.

In my case, my wife. If it’s purple or if it’s bullshit, I’ll hear about it.

Turning in well-edited – in this case synonymous with appropriately edited – work is the great secret of published authors.

4. Advocate for your work like someone possessed.

Know that the manuscript next to yours on an editor’s desk, or the blog competing for the attention of your reader, is likely every bit as good as your stuff.

Maybe not – making sure that doesn’t happen is the goal here – but sooner or later that will certainly be the case.

Which means, you’ll win some and you’ll lose some.

Persistence is every bit as important to a writing career as talent and craft. This isn’t a business for the thin-skinned, and it isn’t a marketplace for the uninitiated.

Agents and editors and even readers are actually looking for a reason to reject our work as much as they are hoping they’ll fall in love. Nobody said this was fair, and it isn’t.

Your job is to be as passionate about how and to whom you are pitching your stories as you are about writing them. Which means you need to master skills such as manuscript preparation, niche market research, the competition, market trending, live pitching and written querying, not to mention picking yourself up after a good cry and doing it all over again.

The world is full of perfectly worthy manuscripts that didn’t get published because their writers didn’t have the chops to sell it. Don’t be that writer.

Whatever happens to you in this business is what you make happen.

5. Love your work as if you are its mother.

Your mother loves you unconditionally. And yet, she calls you to a higher level of performance, of being. She helps you get there, even if she doesn’t model it herself. She expects you to get there, and if she believes you really want it, she’ll accept nothing less.

And if you don’t, she’ll love you anyway, and just as much.

Her expectation of your excellence, your success, and ultimately your happiness, is the expression of her unconditional love for you. And chances are she takes no shit in the process.

She picks you up when you fall. She tends to your wounds when you fail. She hugs you when you need it, she kicks your ass when you need that.

Then she sends you back into the real world to try again. All in the name of simply loving you.

Your story needs more than a genius writer, a crack idea, a ruthless editor, a maniacal advocate and a few lucky breaks. It needs someone to love it.

Someone to will it into a state of excellence, who understands and accepts that good isn’t good enough in today’s market. Good is just the ticket to someone’s submissions inbox. The ultimate winners bring more.

What they bring is the love of their story, forged and coached and loved into existence at a motherly level of commitment.

And as the author you are, after all, its mother.

This is the best writing advice you will ever hear.

Because everything else in the vast universe of writing knowledge, anything possible to learn and apply to the craft and art of it, is empowered by these truths.

Without all this, all you have is an intention. And that alone won’t get you there.

These five core truths, combined with your talent and passion, not to mention your killer idea, just might.

Larry Brooks is the creator of Storyfix.com, an instructional writing resource for novelists, screenwriters and those who love them. His new novel, Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, releases March 2010.

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The Best Writing Advice. Ever.

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Do you despise long sales letters, yellow highlighters and blood-red, hype-laden headlines?

These tried and true copywriting tactics are proven winners at converting “cold” traffic into paying customers – and $10,000-a-page copywriters use them without hesitation because they appeal to the baser instincts of the easily swayed. They may be embarrassing to look at, but historically, they’ve just plain worked.

But if you’re a Third Tribe type of marketer, you’re in a quandary because you know these push-comes-to-shove sales page tactics just won’t work in your case.

They won’t work for you because you won’t be able to sleep at night. They won’t work for your audience either, because they’re smart and savvy, and they’ll lose faith in you and go off in search of someone more professional.

But these cheesy tactics are tempting nonetheless, because you’ve seen them on pages that you know are converting a lot of customers. Against your better instincts, you might feel a pull to use just one or two of them to stack the deck in your favor – especially if your current page isn’t converting as well as you’d hope.

There’s good news, though – you don’t have to sell your integrity to sell more of your products. All you need to do is learn how to use some semantic aikido to harness the power of these psychologically effective strategies – all the while saying “hold the cheese.”

Let’s take a look at 5 “hard sell” tactics and apply some Third Tribe magic to make them feel better for you and your future customers.

The “Everything Will Be Better In A Week” Tactic

You see this one all the time, online or off. Online it’s usually “Give me 7 days and you’ll have a horde of customers trampling each other to give you their money!” Offline it could be more subtle, such as the SlimFast slogan “Give us a week – we’ll take off the weight.” The promise is significant (as it should be in a headline) but it’s not realistic.

Sure, it works on those desperate for results, and that’s why it will never go away. But your customers are smart enough to know that they can’t really get those results, and that hurts your credibility. They know they’re not going to go from zero to $20,000 in a week or go from a complete unknown to A-list blogger in 7 days, no matter what people tell you.

But it still works on the easily swayed, because they’re desperate for results. Your audience may be desperate as well, but they’re just too darned smart to fall for the idea of an “instant solution.” So what can you do?

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of promising instant victory over a situation, promise them immediate progress instead. For example, “Give me 7 days, and you’ll have a detailed and doable plan of action for getting more customers in the door this month.”
You’re still making the implicit promise of getting more customers, but you’re explicitly promising something more realistic in the short term – a sense of certainty about what actions to take next. That’s what gets product sold while protecting your credibility.

The “Set It On Autopilot” Tactic

I’m seeing this more and more online, and I’m sure you are too – phrases like “The Lazy Marketer’s Guide To Building an Email List” or “(result happens) automatically while you sleep!” Again, this tactic works on the easily swayed, because they are likely to, well, be pretty lazy people. They don’t want to do the work. They want to push that big red magic button and get their results.

But when you’re pitching to a more savvy, successful audience, this tactic backfires almost immediately. They know that success takes hard work (because they worked hard to be successful!) and that there’s very, very little in life that falls into the “set it and forget it” realm. And beyond that, they know if something seems “too easy” it’s either not legit or something that’s bound to be ineffective.

But in reality, there may be things about your product or service that for the most part have a “hands-off” aspect (for example, building a fantastic landing page that brings opt-in subscribers to your list day in and day out). How do you position these types of things without resorting to cheesy language?

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of using words like “lazy way,” “autopilot,” or “does the work for you,” focus on how this aspect of your offer is truly something that streamlines a process that your reader knows is time or effort-intensive. Then follow up with the measurable benefit they receive.

For example, an email autoresponder service that “pulls in new subscribers like clockwork” sounds corny. But a service that automates opt-in form creation and has reporting statistics frees you from coding so you can spend that time tweaking forms for higher conversion.

Now you’re talking about automating one aspect so you can redirect time to higher-value activities … and that kind of benefit-driven description makes for a stronger selling point.

The “You’re Lucky I’m Talking To You” Tactic

This off-putting tactic is a staple of someone following the heavy-handed marketing techniques that by and large, have worked on the easily swayed in the past. You’ll see it in phrases like “At my normal hourly rate of $2,000/hour (if you could even get me!) …” and implies authority (based on the price) and a tension-inducing scarcity of the marketer’s time.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with stating your rates – mine are fairly high, and I use them as a selling point – but when you use it as the predominant selling point, it can work against you. This is especially true if you bring it all up before you’ve made your other, more significant selling points. And talking about how you don’t have time for clients can come off as reputation-diminishing bragging.

Savvy audiences don’t fall for this – they know that bragging is usually a sign of insecurity. And who wants to buy from someone who’s working so hard to try and impress you?

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of leading with how in-demand you are and how expensive your rates are, save this selling point until later and gently position it in terms of the overall value you’re presenting and how the delivery medium causes a change in pricing.

There’s nothing pushy about saying “This workshop represents what I would cover in a ten hour, $2,500 one-on-one consulting package. But since I can only offer a large package like that to so many people, I’ve distilled those ten hours of consulting into a self-paced workshop that you can purchase for $197.”

With this approach, you’re not making a in-your-face statement that can turn off savvy customers, but you are effectively communicating the true value of what you’re offering in a way they can respect.

The “You’re Dead Meat If You Don’t Buy” Tactic

Since fear-based selling can be such an effective tactic, marketers often paint a post-apocalyptic picture of what will happen if you don’t buy their products. You may be told your business will fail, your competitors will eat your lunch and your spouse will leave you for a smarter, younger version of you who knows these “insider secrets.”

The idea is that if the sense of panic can be cranked up, the urgent need to find a solution will appear. And in 99 cases out of 100, you’ll find that same marketer telling you that only their product can save you from certain doom.

You’re too smart for this “Chicken Little” sales tactic, and since your customers are too, you need an approach that can boost the feelings of urgency and desire without resorting to panic.

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of saying “all is lost” and pulling out the melodrama, paint a picture of how a particular product will be harder to solve without your product (and easier with it).

For example, you could say “It’s certainly possible to network with other savvy online business owners simply by participating in blog comments and using Twitter, but that can be a slow process with uncertain results. Being in the Third Tribe forums, however, means you’re immersed in the highest concentration of willing-to-network entrepreneurs you’re likely to find on the Internet – and that can take your business to the next level much faster.”

Could you write an effective sales letter without this tactic? You could, but you’d have to work a lot harder. (Get it?)

The “There’s No Good Reason Not To Buy” Tactic

I recently read a sales letter with this message at the bottom and shook my head, knowing that a few easily swayed individuals would fall for it. Certainly, it stands to reason that this line could work, because it’s one of those “proven” staples of a “good sales letter.” But it falls flat when selling to a savvy reader. (Which is a shame, because this marketer had a relatively savvy audience).

Why is it such an off-putting phrase? For starters, it’s insulting. It implies that whatever reason you have for not buying isn’t a reasonable one, and calling your potential (and intelligent!) customers unreasonable is a sure way to lose the sale – especially since the marketer doesn’t even know the objection.

And that’s where it gets embarrassing – because when readers realize they do have valid objections, it’s the marketer who looks foolish. Goodbye sale.

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of trying to push your customers into this kind of hard-line close, do a little up-front research and discover as many potential objections as you can. Take each one and build a pre-emptive response into your sales letter.

For example, if price is an objection, remind them of how your product can pay for itself quickly. If satisfaction is an objection, re-emphasize how strong your guarantee is. The more thoroughly you defuse potential objections before the close, the less you have to work to close the sale.

And instead of bullying customers into having “no good reason not to buy,” you’re reminding them of all the very good reasons they have to give your product a shot.

What’s Your Sales Page Personal Pet Peeve?

These are only five old-school tactics that make your sales page unattractive to the Third Tribe type of customer – and as a savvy entrepreneur you’re likely to have your own set of sales page elements that drive you crazy. Share them in the comments below – and if you don’t mind, briefly tell us what you see as the “Third Tribe” alternative.

About the Author: Dave Navarro is a product launch manager who proudly wears his Third Tribe colors – and invites you to join the thousands of people who have downloaded his free workbooks in the Launch Coach Library (no opt-in required). There’s really no good reason not to.

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Five “Old School” Tactics That Could Ruin Your Sales Page

Today a new ‘make money blogging fast‘ product is being launched into the blogosphere that promises those who buy it that they can make big money blogging – fast.

As this thing is launching and I’m already getting emails about it from readers asking if they should buy it – let me give you a few quick reactions to it and other products I’ve seen like it.

Do keep in mind, I’ve not bought the product so I’m making these calls based solely upon what I’ve seen in the sales material and what I’ve heard from charter members. Much of what I have written below applies to most of these kinds of products (and there are many).

Note: I’m not naming the product here (and I’m certainly not going to try to make a quick buck with an affiliate promotion), I just don’t feel good about promoting it in any way – for reasons that I guess will become clear below.

Make Fast Money Blogging?

Here’s the main thing – making money from blogging instantly… immediately… quickly… fast isn’t something I’ve seen too many people achieve (I’m actually yet to meet any). I have seen bloggers make A LOT of money blogging – millions of dollars in fact. It’s certainly possible to do – however in every case that I’ve seen the blogger has worked their butts off blogging for a long time, building their authority, credibility and by writing content that is original and useful – well before their blog started making money.

If you think you can flick a switch or change to a new system and instantly make a lot of money fast – you’re in for a fall. Don’t fall for that line – to make money in this game you’re going to have to work really hard and have a long term view of things.

Lots of Blogs Each Earning Little Bits of Money

OK – the methodology of this program is that you need to start a blog network – multiple blogs that each earn a relatively small amount of money, that mounts up to be a significant amount.

Sounds like a reasonable way to approach things and there is actually some truth to the methodology. I know a number of bloggers who have made some money this way, a few that even make a full time living from it.

I’m not going to knock people for taking on this model – it can work and I guess people do need to make a living. I even did it for a little while myself. However keep in mind that there is a cost of this method – something that I learned for myself the hard way.

The problem with maintaining lots of blogs is that while they each might make a little money that adds up to a reasonable amount – you end up with lots of blogs that don’t really amount to anything in and of themselves on any other level than that they earn a little money.

Perhaps that’s all your dream is (to make a little money from lots of blogs that no one has ever heard of) but what I love about blogs is the way that they open up other opportunities for a blogger. A blog can build your brand and profile to the point that it opens up doors for new jobs, partnerships, book deals, speaking engagements, friendships, business ideas…. etc. The problem is that most bloggers who have experienced these opportunities have worked hard to build a small number of blogs (usually a single one) which they’ve worked hard at – rather than spreading themselves thinly across multiple blogs.

My experience of a small network of blogs was that it while I was able to sustain 10-20 blogs (20-30 posts a day) that the quality of what I was producing was pretty low. I did get a little traffic to each from Google – but never really generated any regular readers, never had anyone comment, never had any opportunities open up as a result of those blogs.

It was only when I switched to having 1-2 blogs with quality, useful and original content that things opened up. As a result I slowly started to make real money blogging and more importantly started to see opportunities to leverage the profile of my blogs to bigger and better opportunities.

Using Other People’s Content

One of the main methods taught by many make money blogging products is to use other people’s content on your blog for the bulk of your posts. This one teaches that you should use other people’s content for the bulk of your posts and throw in some original stuff from time to time. They even give you tools to find and import other people’s content quickly (remember you need lots of blogs to make this work – so you need to do it quickly).

Again – this is something I dabbled in for a while. I did it all manually and tried to use the content in a way that added value rather than just copying and pasting in content (I also did it with the blessing of those whose content I aggregated and always acknowledge sources) – but in the end I dropped it as a method for a couple of reasons.

Firstly it was the most boring thing I had ever done (and I’ve worked on conveyor belts on production lines for 12 hour shifts – so I know boring). Blogging can be an amazingly uplifting experience – but copying and pasting in content is not fun.

Secondly it’s only marginally useful – there are ways of aggregating content from other sites that can be useful, but it always takes work and extra effort for this to happen. The method demonstrated in the product I’m referring to just mashes up a load of content from other sites in a way that doesn’t really help anyone. As a result a blog that does this as the bulk of its content isn’t really useful to anyone, except the blogger making a few dollars from it. The demonstrator describes the post as quality content – it’s not really. It’s on topic, it might do ok in Google, but it doesn’t really help anyone.

Thirdly – you end up a blog that isn’t really unique or original. This comes back to my points above about creating blogs that actually help build a brand or profile for you. If all you do with the bulk of your content is rehash and mashup other people’s content you’ll never get a name for being anything much more than someone who reads, quotes and links to other people’s content. Perhaps I’m crazy – but I’d rather be known for someone who has original, interesting and useful ideas than someone who whips up mashups of other people’s stuff all day every day. But maybe that’s just me?

Fourthly – while search engines unfortunately do rank this kind of content, I’m finding that they’re getting better and better at identifying truly useful content and junky content like this that is created purely to get search traffic. Sites like this can and do rank well but often they fall out of the rankings and in the long term don’t tend to rank well.

Note: at least the teaching offered in today’s course acknowledges sources of content with links and only uses short quotes from those sources – I don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as some tools that scrape content, strip links and acknowledgements and automatically produce very spammy content.

Final Thoughts

In the end people will believe that they can make fast money blogging if they want to. Some people just want to believe the dream and nothing I can say will convince them. They’ll happily pay their $67 a month, create a few of these ‘blogs’ and a few months later realise that this isn’t a ‘fast’ or particularly ‘easy’ game.

If you’re tempted then please just pause for a moment and think about your objectives for blogging. If you’re looking to purely make money and you don’t want any real personal satisfaction or have any goals of building a brand or profile – then this type of model may actually work for you.

But if your dream is to build something that grows your profile as someone with authority in your niche, or to land a job or book deal, or to get invited to speak at an industry event, or to be quoted in mainstream media about your topic, or it’s just to build a blog that has loyal readers who keep coming back because you’re helping them…. then perhaps this isn’t the type of blogging model for you.

Your Thoughts?

PS: Interestingly the sales page of this new product highlights some successful blogs that make a lot of money blogging. They include Dooce and Mashable. I would argue that these blogs pretty much prove my point. They’re all about original and useful content. They are not about creating lots of blogs that each a little money – they’re about putting in a lot of work to produce useful and original content over a long period of time and don’t resemble anything I’ve seen about the actual product being promoted on the page.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Make Fast Money Blogging Products – My Reaction

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Make Fast Money Blogging Products – My Reaction

Have you ever intentionally ignored something only to find out that you’ve been a fool for doing so?

This weekend I discovered what a fool I’ve been for ignoring a resource that could have been helping me make my business a lot more profitable.

Many of you will have heard of Jeff Walker and his wildly successful ‘Product Launch Formula‘ before. Every time he’s opened the doors on this training a lot of people talk it up as being ‘the resource’ to get if you want to make money from selling your own products online.

I’ve seen all the promotions come and go and… shamefully… I’ve ignored them all.

You see I thought I knew better. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I didn’t have much more to learn about this business. I thought that all the hype about this product…. was just hype.

That was until this weekend.

The Best Invested Two Hours I’ve Had for Ages

On Friday I found myself with an hour to spare. I’d seen a number of bloggers that I know and respect talking about Product Launch Formula again and decided to check it out for myself by taking a look at some of the free case studies that Jeff Walker is about to stop using due to the new FTC regulations.

As I hit play on the first case study I smugly thought to myself that I was just going to hear the same old same old teaching from another internet marketer.

Two hours later…. and as my wife called me (for the 4th time) to come eat my dinner – I realised that I’d been a fool. In front of me on my desk was a pad and paper, full of notes. The notes contained things I needed to investigate and think more about as well as action items that I plan to take this week.

Already I was learning stuff that I wish I’d known when releasing my own products earlier in the year.

I particularly found the Product Launch Blueprint video VERY useful.

Keep in mind that these case studies are just part of what Jeff is offering as part of his Pre-Sales process – I’m yet to pay a cent (also note that the case studies are online online for another 2 days so you should view them now).

What I’m discovering is that I’ve got a lot more to learn about developing and launching a product. I also discovered that Jeff’s teaching is not full of hype, that he delivers real value, that he’s passionate about what he does and that his teaching has helped a lot of people.

Why I like Jeff’s Teaching

Note: as you’ll see in the case studies, Jeff really emphasizes a number of things that I think are well worth noting:

• Making money in this way takes work – if you’re not wanting to work, don’t get into the game
• Many of the techniques talked about are particularly powerful in normal everyday niches/topics. Some say it only works in the ‘make money online’ niche – but the reality is that they work better in other niches where the strategies have not been over used.
• Baby Steps are important – Jeff isn’t just into having a big launch and making a big payday all in one day – he’s into building momentum over time and building a sustainable business. His steps are baby steps, you don’t have to invent the wheel all at once – you need to take steps towards your goal. As you do you build your income towards the big pay day rather than just arrive at it.

These three things make what Jeff’s teaching a lot more credible and powerful in my mind. I’ve come away from what I’ve seen so far really liking his approach.

As a result I’m going to be getting into more of Jeff’s stuff for myself and am enrolling with the next class for myself.

Product Launch Formula Opens Its Doors Again Today

Product Launch Formula is opening its doors again to a new class. Last time they did this they only had the doors open for a single day. This time around it’s only available for 36 hours.

Check Out the Case Studies

Whether you buy the full course with me or not – I really think the free case studies are well worth working through (you can see the two videos that I mentioned above for free here and here).

If you do sign up for Product Launch Formula I look forward to working through the training program along side you – we’ll be class mates!

PS: I’m really sorry that I didn’t alert you to the case studies earlier but I only got into them myself for the first time on Friday.

Due to the new FTC regulations Jeff is about to pull them and they’re only available for the next couple of days. Put some time aside today, grab a pad and pen and get into them for yourself while they’re still around.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

You Need to See These Case Studies Before They’re Gone

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You Need to See These Case Studies Before They’re Gone

Are you looking for a way to make money online? Of course you are. If you weren’t interested in this market, you probably wouldn’t be reading John Chow dot Com. Maybe you’ve tried your hand at domain-flipping or professional blogging, but you haven’t been able to achieve any measurable success? Maybe you want to give another technique a try?

Even though there is a lot of information that is freely available in the blogosphere these days, there is still money to be made through a membership-based site. Don’t know where to start? You might be interested in the e-book from Membership Sites Secret, which serves as the subject of this review. The e-book is meant to walk you through everything you need to launch and run a successful membership site.

Getting Started with Membership Sites

Heading over to the main sales page, you’ll find that you have the opportunity to purchase Continuity Sites Secrets, an e-book on “how to setup a professional looking continuity membership site.”

This e-book is just 53 pages long, but you won’t find any charts or images taking up any unnecessary space. It’s all text that gets straight to the point. Even so, it’s hard to justify the $49.95 asking price. You’re paying almost a dollar a page.

At the same time, you’ll find a lot of other “make money online” packages going for $400 or more. It’s up to decide whether these prices are inflated or not.

What Will I Learn?

The assumption that many people make about the profitability of membership sites is that you have to charge a monthly fee from these members in order to make any money. That’s not necessarily the case. In this e-book, you are reminded that you can offer “free” memberships, cashing in on product referrals and affiliate commissions instead.

The Continuity Sites Secrets e-book also tells you why membership sites are a good way to go, though I have to question some of the stats and techniques described within. The above excerpt is quite vague. What does “paying for content” mean exactly? Is this a dollar figure? Number of people? Percentage of online revenue generated? Average price of paid content?

Further still, this excerpt seems to have its statistics backwards. It’s saying that “paying for content” was a larger market in 2004 than it was in 2005. Doesn’t that mean that the market is shrinking (and not growing)?

Going through the rest of the membership site e-book, we are told about choosing your niche, using an auto responder, deciding on a publishing schedule, and setting up a paid membership site. Other sections discuss how to get content, capitalize on affiliate programs, and market your product.

Given the shorter length of this e-book, it’s not surprising that most of these sections tend to lack depth and the onus will still be on you to create a profitable membership site. Intermediate to advanced Internet marketers may struggle to find any real “secrets” contained within.

A Couple of Bonus Secrets to Boot

When you submit your fifty bucks, you get a little more than the 53-page e-book. You also get two additional e-books: How to Get Instant Traffic to Your Membership Site and Simple Strategies to Sky Rocket Your Traffic. These add a little bit of value to the package, but they really should have been included as part of one larger, more comprehensive e-book instead.

The Limited Time Offer

If you’re going to use a limited time offer to sell your product, the offer should really be for a limited time. However, navigating over to the Membership Sites Secret homepage, you’ll find that the sales copy refers to a price that is only available for the next five minutes. Go ahead and revisit in an hour or even a few days; the offer will still be there.

Further still, considering that the product is about running a successful membership-based site, it’s a little ironic that the “members” section of the site is hardly protected at all. There is no password needed to enter the download page, nor is there any protection for the URL where you can download the PDF files. If you know the URL, you can download the package without paying.

I don’t recommend doing that, since it’s fraudulent and akin to stealing, but the more evil John Chow dot Com readers among us will probably figure out how to do it anyway.

CLICK HERE FOR MEMBERSHIP SITES SECRET

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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The Secret to Profitable Membership Sites?

Apologies for the attention-grabbing title. Couldn’t resist. Everyone knows that people like content, right? And that Google makes sweet, dribbly love to sites with good content. You can’t sneeze without spraying a “content expert” who’ll tell you all about the importance of killer copywriting for ranking.

I alluded the other day to a site I was looking at that is pretty much content free, poorly structured, lacking any real volume or quality in backlinks yet still ranking for some ace keywords bringing in a shedload of targeted traffic and big sales numbers.

Today I was looking at their primary competitor – a massively well known name who rank for any number of insanely competitive one/two word phrases. And guess what? No content, poor structure… etc etc etc.

So content is dead and we should fire our copywriters and spend the money on wine, women and links, right?

But wait! Who ever said $content =$text?

What both these sites have in common is presentation. Their market is all about visuals. So the sites are entirely geared up towards photography. One of them uses video to display its products in a really innovative way. None of this is really indexable stuff – aside from some alt attributes that repeat the product name from the heading tag – and yet if I wrote killer 2000 word post after killer 2000 word post on their product I’d probably never outrank them.

The reason? This stuff is really linkworthy.

It’s a really fast-moving market. Things come and go in the space of a few months and there’s a whole raft of people out there who live for the latest thing. As soon as something hits the shelf, they’re blogging about it to maintain their status as the hippest kid on the block. Where do they source their images? And where do they send their acolytes? Not to anywhere with anything as old-fashioned as words on it.

So content is really king. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that a copywriter is always the place to go for it.

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“Content is King” is Bunkum

Step into a bookstore, find the business section, and pull out a book. Then flip the book to the back cover.

Here’s what you’re sure to find on virtually every business book: A selection of well-chosen fascinating bullets.

And there’s a reason why bullets make it to the back cover of a book.

It’s because you tend to read the title, then the subtitle (on the front cover) and then flip the book to get the gist of the book.

Yes there’s the yada, yada, yada about the book on the back cover. Yes, there’s an index. Yes, there’s a contents page.

But you ignore most of the yada, yada, yada and head for the bullets.

You do it because bullets are like flashing Christmas lights

They flash because of their ability to create curiosity. And not just a little bit of curiosity, but a massive amount of curiosity.

So here I’ve got a book on my desk that’s about podcasting. And at the very top of the back cover are the following bullets.

• How to find and download audio and video podcasts to your computer or portable media player
• How to develop, format, produce, edit, encode, and upload your audio or video podcast, including in-depth information on using music legally
• How to set up an effective audio studio, including the complete and updated “The podcast studio buyer’s guide”
• How to create great video, including tricks of the trade such as the law of thirds, the line, and the three-point light technique, as well as tips on casting, locations, scheduling, and more
• How people are marketing and making money through podcasting in the era of Web 2.0

Notice how they’ve put the entire guts of the book in those five simple points?

And notice how each of those points started with a “how” statement?

So let’s tackle those two ideas one at a time

Idea 1: notice how each of those points started with a “how” statement?

It doesn’t matter what the line. If you put the word ‘how’ before it, it instantly becomes interesting and gets our curiosity going.

Or you can always add a “why,” which does the same trick.

For example:

I went to Ireland this summer.

versus

How I went to Ireland this summer.

or

Why I went to Ireland this summer.

Another example:

I make butter chicken.

versus

How I make butter chicken.

or

Why I make butter chicken.

Of course you won’t use a sentence that’s as boring as the ones above, but you do get the point, right? The only question that remains is how do you get all of these sentences. And the clue lies in Idea 2.

Idea 2: Notice how they’ve put the entire guts of the book in those four or five lines?

So take your entire book or course, or speech, or whatever. Split it up into distinct parts.

For example, my product The Brain Audit has seven sections, so it could naturally be split into seven distinct bullets. Or you could also select just five.

Then pull out something from each part to describe the benefit the reader could get from that section.

So for The Brain Audit, the bullets read like this:

1. How to instantly get (and keep) the attention of the customer.
2. The roller coaster sequence (and why it matters when selling).
3. How to create a uniqueness factor in a matter of days.
4. How to know if a customer is really interested in your offering.
5. Why benefits and solutions aren’t the most effective way to sell.

Each of those bullets represents a different part of the book

And each of them has a simple “how” or “why” structure to get and keep attention.

In fact, this same technique that you see at the back of a book can be used for any persuasive piece of writing, be it a sales page, an event, a speaking engagement, product, or service.

The fundamentals are simple

Take your product/service. Split it into five or seven parts and pull out the most important highlights or benefits.

Take those highlights or benefits and put a “why” or “how” before each one.

And there you have it: a collection of fascinating bullets.

And that’s how you make your product/service or course stand out. Like flashing Christmas lights.

About the Author: Sean D’Souza offers a free report on ‘Why Headlines Fail’ when you subscribe to his Psychotactics Newsletter. Be sure to check out his blog, too.

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The Flashing Christmas Light Technique for Writing Irresistible Bullet Points