Is Your Reputation Killing Your Traffic Generation AND Business?

I say dangerous things sometimes.  Well, here goes…

Most people that are in business (especially Internet marketers) are missing this.  This is probably the easiest way to drive traffic to your business either online or off.  However, in my humble opinion it is the LEAST used method that I have seen.  I’m not saying that you’ll get massive traffic from this overnight, because this is kind of like branding your product or service.  It takes time, cultivating relationships and building a list of customers or clients. 

Let me explain…

Your Reputation Is Paramount

If you think for one second that people are going to buy a product or service from you, and not form an opinion of you one way or another, you’re kidding yourself.  Recently, I was thinking of purchasing an online product from a company I had heard of for years. 

A lot of big time marketing gurus were touting it as one of the best courses that had ever been made.

I decided to look around the Internet to see if anyone had formed an opinion of it one way or the other.  What I found was rather shocking.  As a matter of fact, it has changed the way I’ll view almost ANY product online from now on.

If You Suck On The Internet Everyone Will Know It

This business and product, which has been touted as an industry standard by well-known practitioners in the field, was one of the most hated on the Internet.  As a matter of fact, so many people complained in one forum alone, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do business with them.  The rants ran on for pages and pages. 

Suddenly, I felt like I had been taken.   Even though I had not actually bought the product, I felt as though the gurus I had believed in for so long, were out making paid endorsements for one and other. 

As I said before, many experts were praising this product. I thought, “Wow!  I've been buying products from these “experts” for years. Could it be that I’m just an easy mark?  P.T. Barnum could quickly validate his most favorite phrase by watching the likes of me.”

I have to say, the people that were selling the service, were great at selling their product, because it had gained so much traction over the years.  However, the goods were tainted.  Very, very tainted.  And unfortunately, many people felt like they had been ripped off.

The Info-Product Model of Stupidity

If I were at an expensive seminar, some toothy-grinning guru would probably tell me that I’m being negative.  However, reality is reality.  If something sucks and there are a whole bunch of very intelligent people spilling their guts, then what does it say for that product or service?

Buy hey, this is the way info marketing is done over the Internet.  Build up all of this hype, brag endlessly about your BIG PRODUCT LAUNCH, talk about false scarcity, tell everyone that this is a one-time offer when it actually isn’t, and then sell them crap. 

Once you are in their pipeline, you’ll be “invited” to their seminar at $2,500 a shot.  You better hurry too!  The last one was sold out!  Of course, they deliberately picked a smaller conference room where they could have the scarcity principle work for them.  They could honestly say, “…we only have “x” number of seats at this event, so you better hurry and fork over the bucks.” 

Then they give this impressive list of speakers that have all written books, so therefore are an authority on the subject.

 (This is the reason why I’m a firm believer in going on Amazon and buying their books…USED.  Not only that, but if you are an info-vulture like me, you’ll eventually find some of these products on eBay for a lark rather than the $500 + they’ll charge you for an uncomfortable chair at a seminar.  (Any chair outside of my recliner is uncomfortable, especially when I’m reading a good book.))

I’m serious, though.  If Joe or Josephine Blow is giving an expensive seminar,

why don’t you try to find their book on Amazon?  I doubt that whatever they’ll tell you at the expensive seminar will be any different than what they wrote IN GREAT DETAIL in their book.  Plus, you’ll have access to their expertise any time you want. 

Now, these are people that’ll tell you to track everything you do.  Track your sales, track your direct mail campaign, track your Internet traffic, track how many times a day you take a crap…You know the drill.  Well, I have never heard or seen any proof of their attendee’s rate of success.  In other words, how many people made “X” number of dollars after going to one of their seminars?

I have never seen those stats.   They’ll tell you they have no way of tracking that.  

Isn't that convenient? 

It’s kinda like the government telling you it knows every dime you make, so you better pay every cent you owe in taxes, but has no recollection of the fact they had spent 20 bazillion dollars covertly invading Kazakhstan.   Very, very convenient.

 This is Where You Can be Different.

Now listen, I’m not saying that everyone that sells info products is like this is a charlatan, snake oil salesman.  There are some really good info marketers out there that sell well made products.  I’m sure there are some really great seminars too.  I am also positive that you can learn something from some of these resources that will benefit you and your business. 

However, if you are going to charge top dollar for your product or service, then you better deliver. 

Actually, you better OVER-DELIVER!

And, if you can dredge it up, some honest caring about the people you are marketing to, wouldn't hurt either. Because, so few businesses actually care about their fellow human.  They look at around and all they see are dollar signs, and it eventually will be seen as that by the people they do business with.

However, if you actually care about the people you sell to and service and go the extra mile for them, they will never forget you.  At the very least, you’ll have someone that appreciates you and what you've done for them. 

I just had to get some of this off my chest.


Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

How to Write a Blog Post to Increase Online Traffic

This is one method of traffic generation that requires you to do some homework before you actually begin to implement it.

The “Follow The Leader” Blog Posting Strategy

With this technique you’ll need to find out what posts are generating a lot of traffic that is relevant to your subject matter.  You’ll need to go to a site like DIGG and find really popular posts that people have been making in your subject area.

Here are a few of the sites that are very similar to DIGG that you can use for this strategy:

Reddit.com

Slashdot

Newsvine

Boing Boing

When you start doing your research, you need to look for a post that is:

• Relevant to your niche
• Is wildly popular
• You can somehow develop and write more than one post about
• Has been posted recently

Keeping an Eye on Keywords and SEO

Once you find a post like this, you need to read it, dissect it and check out the keywords in the post.  When you look at the keywords, you need to pay attention to what kind they were using, how many times, if they were used in header tags in the HTML, and what size fonts they appeared in.

An easy way to dissect a post like this is to highlight all of the text in the post, drop it into a word processor and then use the “Find” function on the word processor when you see a word that looks like it is a keyword.  Usually a keyword or keyword phrase will appear multiple times on a page in various places. 

NOTE:  You can also search for the number of times that a keyword was searched for using your Internet browser’s “Find” function. On Google Chrome you can locate the “Find” function.   I personally like dissecting posts by using my Microsoft Word processor, but if you want to use your browser, that’s fine.   

However, the best way to dissect a post for SEO purposes is to right click on a webpage and then look at the source code using the Find function.  I recently looked at a top ranked article on how to write a blog post and the keyword phrase was only on the webpage two times.  However, when I looked at the source code, the term was in the HTML code eleven times!

Writing the Post to Increase the Traffic

Once you know what keywords to use and the type of article that draws attention, you can now begin to write the post.  Make sure that you are not plagiarizing any of the material you’ll be writing and keep a list of the keywords next to you as you write.

A variation on this method would be to just key in the keyword phrase and find out which posts come up the closest to the first page of the search engine results.  Then take that webpage and dissect it as well.

To Your Success!

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

How to Get Traffic Generation from Email and E-books!

This is a very simple way to generate traffic.  Will you get HUGE AMOUNTS of traffic?  Probably not. But when you combine this method with all of the other methods I’m teaching on this blog, all of these trickles will combine into a flood!

The great part about this method is once you have them all set up, you won’t have to do them again, because they work automatically. You don’t need to retype them every time you use them.

Generating Traffic from Email

When you use your email, most services and programs will let you set up a signature section.  This is great because once you have taken the time to set it up, you’ll never have to mess with it again.  And anyone even remotely forwards or shares your email with someone else, your name, web addresses, email address and meme all get sent with a mere push of a button.

Just imagine if you send someone a really great email, full of awesome information, it might get shared and you could even put a message at the end of your message that says:

If you find what I have to offer or say interesting, please don’t hesitate to share it with someone!  You can forward this message, copy and paste it to your blog, (providing you leave my name and contact info on it) or put it on a forum.

To Your Continued Success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

That way, you’ll have people sharing your message while spreading your name and business on the Internet.

E-book Traffic is Good Too!

Another way to get traffic is to write, brand, and give away E-books that have your marketing message on it.  If you have been posting, good, high quality blog posts, webpages, or other material, you can take that stuff, put it together with a word processor and create an E-Book.  That way, you’ll have something to give other people that has the links in it to send them to your irresistible offer or webpage.

When I initially got started on my copywriting business awhile back,  the first thing I did was write a super-professional looking E-book and gave it out to every single person I could online.  I put the same contact information on it that I have listed above, for my email.  That way, if a person wanted to share the E-Book, they would also be sharing my contact information as well.

Does This Tactic Work?

About 15 years ago, I got a free E-book from a guy named Dan Kennedy called “The Ultimate Success Secret”.  I think it is one of the best E-books I have ever read.  Since that time I have probably spent well over $5000 buying Mr. Kennedy’s books, newsletters, videos, and other materials.  

So, you tell me whether or not you think it works.

Speaking of Great E-Books, TJ Rohleder, a “copywriter extraordinaire”, has written an incredible book that just blew my socks off!  It is one of the best things I have ever read, loaded with 600+ pages of Internet Marketing Dynamite.

 

And guess what?  He’ll give it to you in exchange for your email address…And that’s all!

AMAZING is all I can say about it!

I hope this post helps you in your online business.  As always, please feel free to contact me or comment on this post.

To your success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

Easy Traffic Generation by Linking From Your Blog to Other Blogs

Another very easy way to get some traffic generation to your site is by merely linking to other blogs.  If you are linking to other people’s blogs, then there is a very good chance they will notice you and send some traffic your way.  They may also “Tweet” about you on twitter.

Here’s a few more reasons why linking like this is smart to do from a traffic generation point of view:

You'll probably be tracked and appreciated.

·         This type of linking is probably tracked by the blog or site you are linking to and they may check you out.  If they like what they see and said about them, they might link to the post you wrote.  Great for getting some traffic and SEO.  I once had an electric bicycle blog and mentioned Mother Earth News in a post.  Apparently, the editor was keeping track of who was mentioning the magazine through Google Alerts.  They sent me a real nice email and linked to the article.  So, it DOES happen!

·         

     Linking out helps create friendships and alliances. 

     If your blog is a new one, there won’t be much reason to link to you, but over time, instead of creating enemies, you’ll create some friends.  Many times, blogs and forums like linking to the new guy on the block if their blog shows promise.

     

     You may be seen as a valuable resource.

·         Linking out (if done properly and with care) will make you a valuable resource.  If you are talking about a particular subject but don’t want to go into a great deal of explanation about a particular subject, then you can link to a piece of info that is in depth on that aspect.  If the links lead to EXCELLENT material, people will see you as a resource they can count on.  And guess what?  Yep, you’ll get more traffic.

       

      It might be good for SEO reasons.

·         The Search Engine Gods will probably reward you if it looks liked you are linking to quality, relevant sites.  Although, it can be said that there isn’t much evidence to back up this fact, many SEO experts think there is some validity to linking out to other sites.

So, there are several reasons why linking to other QUALITY, RELEVANT sites will help you gain more traffic.  Please feel free to comment below and let me know what you think, or if there is anything you believe I may have left out on this subject.

To Your Success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

Generate Traffic to Your Site Using Forums - It's Fast and Easy!

This is one of the oldest tricks in the book, mainly because it works.  Despite the fact that it’s so simple and easy to implement, most people still get it wrong or ignore it completely. 

Using forums to promote your business is great for a number of reasons:

·         It’s fast ― you’ll see results in your stats the first day you start posting.
·         It helps you to become an authority ― over time (if you post real good advice that isn’t self-serving) you’ll gain guru status.
·         You’ll get great writing chops ― writing good quality posts is great practice.
·         You’ll form friendships and alliances ― In Internet marketing, this is super important!
·         You’ll get valuable links from the forum’s site to yours ― which is good for your sites SEO.
·         People that are on forums are usually a hungry crowd ― they’ll be easier to sell to and get onto your marketing list.

And now for the downside…

·         It takes time to answer questions ― I would not write sloppy junk that doesn’t help your target audience out.

·         There will be lots of competition ― you’ll see veterans of IM giving great advice...And that can kill your confidence.

·         If you don’t know what you are talking about, it’ll show.  Make sure you have some experience in the area you’re giving advice on.  On a good forum, I guarantee that you’ll probably get pointed out as a dork by experienced IM’ers if they think you’re just blowing smoke!  So, make sure you know what you're talking about!

But, Hey, Let’s Get To The Good Stuff – How To Generate Traffic!

The forum I dispense most of my advice on is The Warrior Forum (WF).  There are others that are very popular you can cheaply and easily use to generate traffic like:

The Warrior Forum (I know, I already said this one.)

Digital Point

Affilorama.com

IM4Newbies.com

Ewealth.com

V7N.com

BlackhatTeam.com

MakeMoneyDiscussion.com

What to do next: 

Once you are a member of the forum of choice, you should take a week or so and get the lay of the land.  Read the posts on there and look at the answers ―You’ll learn a lot fast!  

Announce that you are new and make a few friends.  You’ll also want to learn how to send private messages, learn the forum rules and how to post or reply to posts.

Important!

One thing that you’ll definitely want to do is create a signature for yourself.  A signature is a block of information about yourself and your business that automatically is posted right after you post anything on a forum. 

Here is my signature from The WF:

My signature is pretty straightforward and if you go to the WF you’ll see all sorts of interesting signatures.  You’ll notice that my signature has my website address listed.  This is SUPER IMPORTANT!

The whole goal of this is to get people to go and check out your website and your irresistible offers.  So, make sure you have your URL in your signature.

It doesn’t take much time…

If you are on a forum and see someone on there that has a particular problem that you can help them with, post a well thought out answer.  Always do the absolute best you can to help that person out. 

Try to make sure your solution is not a bunch of hype for something you want to sell them.  People on forums can tell when your #1 goal is to try and sell them something, so make sure you are genuinely trying to help them out.

If they know, love and respect you, they’ll probably buy from you…or at least sign up for your free offer in exchange for their email address.

Once you start posting, check your stats and see if your traffic is coming in from the forum you posted at.  I guarantee you will start seeing people come to your site rather quickly.  If you have a way they can sign up for a free e-book, buy something, or click on a money making affiliate link, you’ll be very pleased with the results.

I’d love to hear if this technique is really helping you out.  Please leave a comment or shoot me an email to let me know how things are going for you. 

To your success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

Marketing For Software Companies: 7 Ways to Market Your Software Business

It's always good to get back to the basics.  I recently read this article from

Avantegate on 7 Ways to Market Your Software or Software Services that I thought I could expand upon for all of you out there in the heartland of cyber-space.

As you already know, just creating a software product is about 10% of the battle.  The other 90% or so is MARKETING your software.  It doesn't matter what you're selling.  

Not to say that your goods should be shabby, but once you have created the product, you really need to put your rear in gear and get it sold. 

A Tale of Two Law Students

I recently heard a story from a top-drawer, killer ad copyist that had an interesting take on this.  He said what if you had two lawyers.  One was a straight "A" student from Harvard Law School and the other was a "C" student from Podunk University.  

The Harvard student put his shingle up and waited patiently for clients to walk in his door.  

The "C" student from Podunk got on a local talk show that was very popular and talked about how he helps clients with legal issues, while saving  them loads of money in the process.  Not only that, but the "C" student had a focused and well targeted direct mail campaign, gave speeches at his local Kiwanis Club and answered legal questions on social media sites like Facebook.

Now, guess which one was more successful.

The same thing goes with any other type of business, without some sort of a marketing plan in place, you are going no where fast.  

So here are the 7 ways to market your software.  I've added important links to each one of these ideas that was written about in the article.  If you want to see the original article, please click on the link at the beginning of this post. 

NOTE: I am not affiliated with any of the sites in this post.  All links are just that, PLAIN LINKS.  Not affiliate links.

1.  Continuous Search Engine Optimization.  You really need to check out SEOBooks article on SEO for businesses.  One of the best things I have ever read.  This site is loaded with high octane info on SEO that can help your online marketing efforts.

2.  Submit Your Shareware to Software Download Sites.  Here's a good article on how to do that from Avantegate called Submit Software for Higher Sales

3.  Write Newsletters and Press Releases.  If you don't have a method of delivering your Newsletters through direct mail, here is a way to do it online using Ezines. This is quite possibly the fastest way to get great traffic to your site and turn yourself into an authority.  If you don want to actually produce a newsletter online, you can always write articles using the Ezine Articles site, shown in this video.



4.  Affiliate Marketing.  For people that have developed Apps, one of the best places to go is Chupa Mobile.  This site is very straightforward and easy to use.  Create an account. organize the apps you created, sell them and collect the cash. (Don't forget, you still have to do the marketing!)

5.  Get Noticed On Online Forums and Blogs.  This is one of those situations wherein you will have to either read quite a few blogs and see which one's are most suited to your software niche. As far as forums are concerned, you'll just have to look around for the most popular ones and lurk for awhile.  As a copywriter, I usually frequent the Warrior Forum.  It is loaded with advice on every type of marketing, both online and off.

6.  Pay per Click.  In the last few years, PPC has gotten very, very expensive for people marketing their services.  So, you will need to learn how to use it first.  Just like anything else, you'll need to learn about marketing using this particular vehicle, because you can loose your shirt if you aren't careful.  
A great book to get is Ad Words Secrets Revealed, which is loaded with all sorts of strategies and information to help you launch a PPC campaign using Google's AdWords advertising behemoth.

7.  Affiliates Marketing.  One of the best places on the Internet to put your App online and have other people sell them for you is the Apple Itunes Affiliate Program.  There are also other sites like Appifier that will let you sell them there as well.

These are usually the best sites on the Internet to use or learn from.  I'm sure there are others on there, so if you want to share other sites you may have found, please leave a link in the comment section.

To your success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

How To Use This Google App To Set and Achieve Your Goals Fast!

I'm a big believer in creating lists.  I have whiteboards all over my house with lists of things I need to accomplish.  This was really helpful when I was working on rehabbing my house that was completely gutted from top to bottom.  I would list at least 2 weeks of work I needed to do at a time.  

The reason for doing this is two-fold.  For one thing, when you have really big projects like that, you need a list so you can prioritize the really important parts and get them done sooner.  Actually, I like to tackle the biggest parts of a project first because they are usually the most important.



The other reason for working like this is when you knock out the biggest and hardest parts of a project, you'll have a huge psychological advantage.  Your brain will automatically tell you that you are on the down hill portion of your work and you will feel a certain momentum in getting your goal completed.  Another advantage of doing work like this is you'll feel a huge sense of accomplishment.  Because you have completed the work in a much faster and more ambitious manner, you'll kill that dreaded Procrastination Beast and get more work completed and more goals accomplished.

Google's FREE Application - Smart Goals

Google has a great free Application on the Google Chrome Store called Smart Goals.  This is a very simple application that I use to list my goals and accomplish them quickly and efficiently.  

The best part about Smart Goals is that here is a very small learning curve.  It is so easy to use that it takes almost no time at all to learn how to use it.  It took me literally 3 minutes to sign up and start using it.

So if you want to start listing your dreams and pursuing them, this is the perfect way to get started.

Please try it out and leave a comment below.

To your success!

Mark Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/