Are you simply flying by the seat of your pants with absolutely no direction.. no goals… NO PURPOSE?

Do you empathize with your customers to understand what they are looking for… what they want to see… what they experience with you?

As much as many of you want to say yes… I guarantee that most of you are actually a no. The reason, in my personal opinion, is because of a desire to make money and an impatience to want it now.

In the below video, I am starting a series with Stefeni Warner of  the WellnessDetective.com and my plan is to have a multi part series that has us walk through the transformation of Stefeni’s current blog to something worthwhile.

The questions that I ask in this video, that each one of you should ask are:

1. Whats the purpose of your site for building your business? Is it to sell products, capture leads, promote your service… what?
2. What is the target audience of your site and who is your perfect reader? (Age, sex, income, goals, location…etc)
3. Whats your niche? Pick a targeted niche to start with. Even though your blog appears to be about wellness, pick one segment of wellness to start with.

Stefeni, please answer these questions in a comment below and in the next video we will take the answers and redesign the blog to match. Once we are done that we will look at market research for posts and then we will get into promoting.

Click Here Now to Download “How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog” for FREE and Learn the Right Way to Make Money Online! – Copyright JohnCow.com – All Rights Reserved

We opened the doors to our powerful Web2Mayhem system and you can sign up now… CHECK OUT THE MEMBER REVIEWS… It Is Crazy how powerful this system is… you will love it!

Click Here to Check it Out Now!

Click Here to Check Out the Other Countless Testimonials
Click Here to Check Out the Other Countless Testimonials

Oh and if you wonder if these testimonials are real… do you think with all the FTC crap we would not have proof of everything we post… these are real… very real. The amazing thing is we have to post about typical results and nobody has sent us anything negative about results who are using the system so we have to only assume that if you don’t use our tools as we tell you that you will not get these results!

So us having to post what you can expect for results… well you can expect our system to work for you just like we say as long as you use it… cause that is what is happening

When you’re starting out in online business, you’re going to come want to start using scripts and software to automate certain things and to either make your life easier, save you time, or to get you where you want to be faster. And when you get to that point, you have two choices – you can either build the software or script for yourself, or you can purchase something from someone else.

While building it yourself can make you more money in the long run, as you’ll own the rights and can then turn around and sell it to other people, it isn’t the answer for everyone. Either you don’t have the knowledge, time, or expertise to do it, or you don’t know exactly what you need it to do. If that’s the case for you, then it’s better for you to buy a product rather than waste time and money trying to build something for yourself. In fact, if you’re just starting out , I recommend that you start out by buying products – most are not too expensive, and they will save you time and money when you need it most.

If you’re in the market (and we all are at some point – I still buy products on a regular basis) for scripts and software, then check out Lazy Revenue, at http://lazyrevenue.com/. It’s a new website that will showcase new and unique products that have been created to save you time and make you money faster and easier. Their products are software and scripts that will allow any webmaster, regardless of experience, to easily add them to your website and start making more money right away.

Their newest product is a “Get More Twitters” script. It sells a complete automated twitter solution, which promotes a customer’s Twitter account. It’s built in PHP and Ajax, and it targets followers, and will automatically follow people as well so things don’t get lopsided, as well as many other features. It’s easy to set up (although they’ll help you with that if you need it) and is an easy way to generate some revenue for your site. When you go to the site, the ‘buy it’ button is a little hard to find – just go to the detailed information page for the products, and it’s at the bottom of the page.

Lazy Revenue also has a great automated marketplace script that works like the old Sitepoint, but with a few added bells and whistles to make things easier (and more profitable). Same as with “Get More Twitters” the purchase button is at the bottom of the detail page. Prices are currently listed in British Pounds – check your conversion rate is you’re not in the UK, but even converted, the prices are pretty reasonable.

What I really liked about Lazy Revenue was their commitment to customer support. We’ve all bought products that promised a lot, but when we had problems with it, getting help was like pulling teeth. Lazy Revenue has phone, email and live chat support, and they’re more than happy to help you with any problem you might have.

So if you’re looking for easy ways to make getting money out of your site easier, check out Lazy Revenue at http://lazyrevenue.com/ today!

This is a paid review by Johncow.com

The Business Advice Forum is an active, useful, and most importantly, free resource that you can use to get impartial and expert advice and discussion about any aspect of running your business that you could want…. and the advice is good!

Got a question about franchising?

Or

How to go about a direct mail campaign?

Simply check out previous posts or start a new thread, ask your questions, and get tips and advice from people who’ve either are in the same situation you are, or have experience in what you’re looking to find out about.

Sometimes all you need is a sounding board to help streamline your ideas for yourself.

Not only that, but you’ll also get the chance to promote your business as well.

There is a Member’s Ads section so that you can promote your business or service to other members, and you can also link to your website in your signature. But the forums are also strictly monitored for spamming or people trying to sell something in inappropriate areas – in order to make it a better experience for the users, and so you don’t have to wade through sales pitches to get to the information you’re looking for.

And did I mention that you can win prizes?

I loves me some prizes…. and as you mist likely know we love contests around here.

In the case of the BAF (Business Advice Forum) they are giving away $20,000 in a series of competitions designed to reward those members who have started interesting topics, made useful contributions to discussion, referred new members and helped to promote the forum to others.

So lets recount what the Business Advice Forum has to offer – free, an active ready audience for your business ideas that will give you an honest opinion, a place to promote your own efforts, and a chance to win some money.

Go check it out at http://www.businessadviceforum.com

I think it is pretty obvious that you know Internet marketing can be pretty darn lucrative…

But I nearly freaked when I saw what my friends Michael and Buck are doing in a $500 billion “niche” that’s still wide open – just waiting for savvy marketers to jump in and claim their fortune.

That niche? It’s the HEALTH MARKET.

And before you say, “Oh… I’ve heard of that.” Or… “But I’m not a health expert or practitioner”…

You Simply MUST Watch This Video that Michael and Buck Created!

You can see it right here:

http://www.healthbusinessconfidential.com/

The amazing thing is, Michael and Buck are NOT health experts or practitioners either – yet each runs their very own 7-figure+ health business from home.

Now, they’re literally giving away many of their best secrets – and not asking a penny in return. (It’s all part of a limited test they’re running right now, for research
purposes.)

Just go to this page now:

http://www.healthbusinessconfidential.com/

… watch their introductory video – and then enter your name and email to claim the freebies they’ve put together for you and then come back here and tell me what you think!

Remember – unlike many niche markets, health is virtually unlimited – and there’s no end to the potential customers, or moneymaking opportunities.

And there’s no one I know better qualified to teach you have to grab your share of this soon-to-be a trillion-dollar industry than Michael and Buck.

So check it out and let me know what you think…

P.S. – Once you’ve gone to the next page, be sure to watch the crazy video they did about Buck experiencing his mid-life crisis “in style.” Not only is it funny – but they give you some really great info and you can see how much they care.

They’re literally the ONLY guys teaching this stuff, who happening to also be DOING it on a daily basis. So it’s well worth a few minutes of your time

http://www.healthbusinessconfidential.com/

(Continued from the previous post: Wasting Half Your Money on Traditional Advertising)

There was a reason that early online advertising was referred to as ‘New Media’.  Because it was new – really, really, new (hmmm kind of obvious eh?).

It was the first new way of advertising to come about since the advent of television.  It was also adopted into the mainstream in record time – faster than any other medium, including TV, cable and radio.  And advertising professionals had no idea what to do with it.

None!

So they tried to apply traditional advertising guidelines and rules to it, and that’s how the first online advertising campaigns came about.

Banner ads, big boxes, skyscrapers were the first forms of online advertising.  Visual ads that mimicked outdoor and magazine campaigns, bought by the thousand (literally – CPM or cost-per-thousand was the main metric when buying ad space online.)

Advertisers were over the moon about the ability to actually measure the performance of the ads.  Click-through-rate was the new Mecca, and set the bar for the success for failure of an online advertising campaign.  Never mind that it didn’t really tell you anything other than how many people clicked on the ad – it was a real, honest-to-God measurement of how the ads were being perceived.

Then pay-per-click came out… and WOW!

You mean, we only have to pay for the ads that actually succeed in their goal?  It went against everything that traditional advertising had ever done.

Then, as the medium become more competitive, the ads became more annoying.  Pop-ups, pop-unders and the like were the new version of the flashy (in this case sometimes literally flashy), obtrusive ads that began to annoy people.  Because the ad agencies were taking everything they knew about traditional advertising and throwing it at the internet.  Software developers came up with ad blockers.

So how were you to reach your customers if you couldn’t hit them with 17 pop-up boxes?

We had to rethink the way we were communicating.  Websites, up until this point, had become simply extensions of their offline counterparts; they were still talking at their users, not with them.  Online campaigns were just an echo or an afterthought of the traditional campaign.  Even the more forward-thinking companies were only spending about 1% of their total advertising budget online.

And all that was done with all of this new information is that agencies took the click-throughs and all other learnings from the campaigns and put them into a pretty post-buy report like they did with the TV and radio campaigns and sent it off to the client.  They would make sure to utilize the best-performing sites and drop the ones that did poorly, but that’s about the extent of the introspection.  They didn’t take into consideration that maybe the ads weren’t resonating with the audiences of the sites they were advertising on, or that the site with the highest click-through-rate also had the highest abandonment rate once users reached the site.  They also didn’t take into consideration that no matter how much money they threw at the campaigns, if their site sucked and didn’t have any useful information to offer users, users wouldn’t buy their product or come back.

Slowly, the tide began to turn and people started to realize the real value that the internet held.  People began to realize the potential of the web to deliver useful content to potential buyers at just the right moment in the buying cycle.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s continuation

1. Your PPC campaign has done its job; it’s driving traffic to your landing page. But your landing page abandonment rate is really high – people are bailing almost as soon as they get there. What have you been doing wrong?

You need to look at it from the user’s point of view. When they click on a PPC ad, there are certain things they are looking for when they hit the landing page. If you don’t meet those expectations, they leave.

Here is a list of things that a user wants to see when they hit your landing page:

What they expected to see. Did your PPC ad feature a certain offer? Make sure that it’s front and center so that the user sees it quickly when they first arrive. If the offer is hard to find, or isn’t what was promised in the ad, they will lose faith in you and bail.

That your site looks trustworthy. If you’re running a PPC ad campaign, chances are that you’re ultimate goal is to complete a sale. If your website looks chancy or doesn’t have guarantees or point-of-sale assurances, people won’t take the risk to buy from you. Any affiliation with a respected governing body or security measures that you have to keep your buyers safe, make sure that they’re prominently displayed to reassure the user that you’re credible the moment they hit the site.

How to learn more. If all you have are ‘buy now’ buttons without a way for people to learn more about who you are and what you’re selling, people will bail. Users are naturally suspicious (and often rightly so) of someone who if just pushing the hard sell without giving out any information about who they are or what they do. Even a single link to an “About Us” page is very useful in this regard.

What the next steps are. Generally, people like to know what the purchase process will be and what will be required of them before they commit to anything. By being completely transparent in your interactions with the user, you will encourage a feeling of trust and they will be more easily moved down the buying cycle.

Where they can get their questions answered. If someone isn’t ready to buy right just then, or perhaps has a question that you haven’t answered on the page, make sure that your contact information is prominently displayed so people can get a hold of you easily. If people can’t easily find this information, they will most likely give up and search for what they were looking for elsewhere. This is a pool of customers that you don’t want to lose – if they are interested enough to contact you about your product, they are further into the buying cycle than the normal visitor to your site, and with a little effort, can be easily converted into a sale.

Take a look at these simple guidelines and see if you’ve been breaking any of them. If you have, fix it, and then watch your abandonment rate decrease.

You may have seen all over the news lately that some people have estimated the worth of Facebook at $10 billion.  Yes, that’s right, billion with a ‘b’.  And opinions have exploded all over the place, with most people decrying the rather high value that has been set.

First of all, the math is a little off.  The $10 billion calculation comes from the deal that was just announced, where Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies bought 2% (actually 1.96%, but please, I’m rounding up) of preferred Facebook stock for $200 million dollars.  People have been using the equation if 2% = $200 million, then 100% = $10 billion, which isn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, because the 2% was not common stock, but preferred so the common valuation for the company would actually be lower.

Still, the fact remains that Facebook is worth more than any of us will likely see in our lifetimes.  And that makes its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, a very rich, or rather richer (and some would argue lucky) man.  And that somehow makes it necessary for people and pundits out there to try and cut him down to size because he dared to succeed where most of the rest of us have tried (or thought about but not actually tried) and failed.

Why is there the need to pick apart the value of Facebook?

Both Digital Sky and Microsoft have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of having infinitesimal amounts of Facebook stock.  Zuckerberg has pulled in almost $500 million and given up less than 5% of his company; frankly we should be lauding his success and asking him to hold our babies in the chance that some of that skill/luck might rub off on them.

“But Facebook doesn’t make any money!!” … you cry.

While it’s true that Facebook suffers from the social media disease (hee) that also affects Twitter (the one where when you give away everything for free, if millions are using it, you get 0 x infinity, which is still 0) but it is not without resources.  And more importantly, to draw in this kind of money from people who know what they’re talking about, it’s not without plans, either.

“But the new design sucks!”

Umm…so what?

People are still using it.  People are still getting results from it.  And people like me are still using it to promote their businesses (are you?)

“But Beacon was a disaster!”

Well, yes, so it was.

And the fact that Facebook is still alive and kicking and having people invest hundreds of millions of dollars into it speaks well of its ability to both adapt and recover from setbacks.

“But Zuckerberg is a control freak who’s ruining the company!!”

Really?  According to whom?  Mark Zuckerberg is a 25 year old who has accomplished an amazing amount of things so far in his life for anybody, much less someone under the age of 30.  He has a knack for coming up with ingenious pieces of technology.  Even if any of the accounts of his control-freak leadership are true (and I’m certainly not saying they are) he’s 25 years old.  How many of us would have been able to run a billion dollar company at that age?

Like I said, you’re all jus’ jellus.  And so am I, but at least I can admit it.

(And lest I contradict my own post about the importance of good grammar, those misspellings in the title were intentional.)

Oh and do not be shy about sharing this post with others please… you can click here to automatically post it to your twitter account

So what comments do you have?

With your online business…

“Are you building online assets or just money-makers?”

A few years back, John Reese was the first person to ask that question.

You see, most people become enticed with affiliate marketing because it’s a way to generate some quick cash online.

Then, they focus on two dozen different markets just to find a few quick money-makers.

Meanwhile, the *real* secret is building an asset that generates income for years to come.

Watch this video

John clearly maps out his process for creating long-term affiliate cash machines. I know you’ll get a few good takeaways once you watch the video.

I strongly urge you to CLICK HERE to check it out now!

What is your comments on the video?

You know how, when you’re aware of something, it loses it’s affect on you?  Like subliminal advertising, the sales pitch loses its affect when you’re aware of it happening.  We’ve become so jaded and hyper-aware, that we can smell a sales pitch coming a mile away, and it automatically makes us unreceptive to the information.

Let’s give a bricks-and-mortar example of this:  If you get a salesperson who comes on too hard, saying anything and everything to get you to buy, you get put-off and are unlikely to buy from him, because you know he just wants to make a sale.  In fact, you probably can’t get away from him fast enough, and you don’t believe a single thing he says.

But what if we’re having a genuine conversation with someone that may or may not have anything to do with the products available? He seems genuinely interested in having the conversation, but not that he’s pushing a sale. He’s informative, and will gladly give you as much information as possible about the products.

Who are you more likely to buy from?  Even if you don’t buy that day, but think a bout it for while and then go back, wouldn’t you make a point of going back to the one you’ve developed a relationship with?

This is the crux of being authentic in your sales.

I mean, c’mon, everyone knows you want to sell products.  No one is doing this for their health.  You’re out to make a sale.  But coming on with a hard sale and telling people about how it’s the best thing ever and that their puppy will die if they don’t buy it is not going to cut it.

People’s natural skepticism is at an all-time high.  So instead of an insincere sales pitch, provide information.  Tell them that you think this is a great product, and why.  Give them as much information as you possibly can, testimonials, detailed product info, everything you can think of, but don’t try to convince them to buy.  Just give them all the information they need to make the decision for themselves.

Make sure that it comes across that you genuinely believe in the product or service you’re promoting. It also ties in to establishing yourself as an authority.  Does an authority on something try to shill products?  No, but they could certainly have them available if someone was interested….

I found a couple other great pieces of content on this as well…

• http://www.webmarketingtherapy.com
• http://www.toiletpaperentrepreneur.com

So, now you need to tell me… do you believe this to be true or am i blowing smoke up your you-know-what?

Affiliate marketers are constantly inundated with information on the next, greatest product that is going to make them a millionaire.  But if all of these products work, then why aren’t we all millionaires?  Here’s the answer: the problem isn’t always with the programs.

What?  “The problem couldn’t possibly be me, could it?” you ask.  Well…here’s the thing; there are a lot of scams out there, and there’s also some really good products that actually can help you make money online.  But not all people make money using those products.  Why is that?  Because the greatest system in the world won’t work if someone’s not really putting the effort behind it.

A lot of online marketing systems claim to be able to make you money while you sleep. Those are the ones that you need to stay away from.  Those are the ones that are trying to scam you.  Making money online, like making money anywhere else, takes time.  If you work very hard at it, and are very good at it, then eventually you will have systems set up that will make money for you with little maintenance on your part.  But that time is far, far down the road for most of us.  And there’s a lot of hard work between now and then.

Not that it isn’t possible, mind you; I’m not trying to discourage you from trying.  I’m just trying to dispel the notion that the get-rich-quick schemes work.  But with a little old-fashioned elbow grease and a good plan and system to follow, it is very possible to make money online.

Unfortunately, it’s also possible to be trying very, very hard and still failing to make money online (I’m just a bucket of sunshine today, aren’t I?)  You need to make sure that you’re working smart, not hard.  That way you’ll be making the most of the time you’re putting into your online business.

One of the first mistakes people make is splitting their focus.  They’re very enthusiastic, which is great, but they also want to try everything all at once.  Pick one area of IM, learn all you can about it, become successful at it, before you move on to the next.

If you try multiple things at once, you won’t be concentrating on any of them, meaning none of them will be successful.  You’ll then chalk it up to the fact that the programs don’t work, and that it’s not possible to make money online.  It won’t occur to you that you’re the reason you failed.

Make sure you’ve done your homework; find a proven system to help you out. Then when you’ve found the one that works for you, make sure you get the most out of it.  Become an active member, help out other people and they’ll help you out in return.

You need to approach making money online the same way you would making money offline: work at it, use the resources available to you, and make sure you dedicate enough time to it for it to succeed. There’s plenty of money to be made online, just make sure you’re one of the success stories, not the cautionary tales!

As you know, I’m always on the lookout for new products or services to make my goal of making money online easier (and, of course to make me more money online.)  And you, dear reader, get to benefit because then I share with you the ones that I think work.  And I’ve found another one that I think works.

It’s Affiliate Theme, and it offers WordPress themes meant specifically for affiliate marketers.  Most WordPress themes were meant for blogs, and you had to work within those parameters if you wanted to use them.  With Affiliate Theme, you can build mini-sites, review sites, and landing pages, and yes, you can also use it for a blog if that’s what you want.

The biggest benefit to using Affiliate Theme is how easy they make it.  Both new and experienced affiliate marketers will find it easy to use. You can change the look to your site without having to recreate all of your content, and you can build multiple variations of your pages without having to re-input all of your affiliate offers. With testing made that easy, you can quickly determine which pages are working best and you can make more money!

Their Theme Options panel allows you to change pretty much everything about your theme – layout, colors, fonts, header graphics, logo, and even the wording you use on your call-to-action button.

I also like that they’ve coded Affiliate Theme to be optimized for PPC and SEO campaigns.  You write your headlines and page copy, and Affiliate Theme will take care of the rest.  The Theme Options panel also allows you to integrate tracking scripts.

It’s also a very versatile tool – whether you hate to have to deal with code, or if it’s your favorite thing in the world, Affiliate Theme will work with both.  You can either work in the Theme Options Panel, and make all your changes that way, or you can get right into their clean XHTML+CSS+PHP fully commented source code.  It’s up to you.

Most of all, I like how clean the sites are graphically.  This is a great option for newbies who want to put together professional-looking sites quickly.  And for those of us who’ve been in IM for a while, the speed at which you can build and test the sites is astounding.  And, as we all know, time is money.

I also believe that if you want people to but your tool, you have to support it.  And Affiliate Theme does.  They’ve got a Resource Center, where you can use video tutorials, knowledge base articles, and a user forum where you can go to for help, or to bounce your ideas off of other Affiliate Theme users.

Click Here Now to Check out Affiliate Theme

IMPORTANT –> This is the updated lesson to reflect the upgrades within the new TrafficTravis software. This lesson was originally posted May 24th (WOW 3 months ago already).

There are a few other updates and SUPER COOL surprise in store that all JC subscribers will get for free and will make your keyword reseach MUCH easier! My goal is to have everything out to you by Wednesday.. that means fully updated ebook and new cool tool!

This lesson is a continuation of the previous lesson Keyword Research – Show me the Money… Words that is

Now, that you have a large list of keywords, you will want to filter out the hopeful “Diamonds”… these are the words that are actively being used by advertisers and the tool of choice (in our opinion) is Traffic Travis. We almost passed over this tool because in our opinion the name and logo are cheesy (sorry Mark, but they are). It was a good thing however that we got to know Mark about a year ago and he walked us through this tool and we have been hooked ever since.

We need to make very clear right now, this is not a paid review or a requested review for a favor or anything else like that. As stated in the initial lesson, we will be sharing paid tools that we use and this is one of those tools we use and we personally love. After you finish reading this, you may agree or you may have a tool we do not know about that is just as good and you can use that. Just wanted to make that clear to everyone

How to Dig for Hopeful Diamonds with Traffic Travis:

Step 1 –> Once you have Traffic Travis, open it up select “PPC Analysis”

Step 2 –> Click on the “Add Project” button

Step 3 –> Name your project and select the country location you want Google to use. I recommend you leave it to the United States unless you specifically want to target a different country.

Step 4: Select the “Keywords” tab in the project box and then select “import keywords”. Now paste your keywords from the previous “Keyword Lesson” into the form and click on start.

Step 5: The keywords will now be imported into the main table and you will now want to click on “Start Update” and TrafficTravis will now search Google for each individual phrase and get a list of the sites that are currently advertising with AdWords for that term.

Step 6: TrafficTravis will process each keyword and it is important that you watch the status area and the results. If you notice that suddenly the results change from returning results to now getting all 0’s then Google may have put a temporary block on your IP and this means the have enabled an image verification (captcha) system which prevents Traffic Travis from gathering the data. I recommend you do not have Traffic Travis run more then 1000 words at a time.

To check if Google has implemented a restriction, simply go to google search and try to use the search engine. If you get a image verification to use the search, then you will need to wait until Google removed the restriction or employ the use of a proxy service.

Once the status shows complete you can now go to the next step.

Step 7: Now click on the “Top sites for keywords” tab and then click the “Fetch Sites” button. TrafficTravis will now analye the data from the previous step and display the results you are after.

Step 8: In the results click the “Found” column to sort by highest to lowest. This number represents the total number of keyword that this domain was found advertising. Click on the rows that relate to the market of your niche and it will display the keywords in the right hand “Matching Keywords” box. Click save and name the file “keyword1″.

Repeat this step for the top 5 to 10 results of the most relevant domains to your niche and have the highest returned results and make sure to save each file as a unique name so you do not overwrite each one, so for example the next matching keyword batch save would be “keyword2″.

Step 9: Now take the 5 to 10 files you saved and copy and past the results into one file, so to make one list out of the 5 to 10 individual lists.

Step 10 –> Now go back to TrafficTravis and go to the “Keyword Sorter” in the “ABC Keyword Tools” section. Since there will be duplication in our current list we are going to want to clean it up a bit.

Once you have removed the duplicates you will now have a clean list to work with. Delete any extra stuff that may have been included that you do not want included. Now save this as your good keyword list.

Now we have filtered down our list from a many keywords with many “poor” terms, to a smaller more focused list that contains words you know are directly focused to your topic but also are words you know people are actually paying money to advertise with. This is the start of finding the diamonds… but we are not there yet

Start of Added BONUS Topic –> You better say you love us after this little tip we give you

If you are just starting a new site, this is a great time to find one now, using the keywords you filtered out using Traffic Travis and here is a tip that you are going to LOVE!

This really should be a separate post but we are too lazy right now to do that

–> Get a Domain Name

A very easy and extremely effective way to find a good domain is to use the free “Bulk Register” tool provided by GoDaddy. If you do not have a free Godaddy account, you need to get one now at http://www.godaddy.com

Step 1 –> Log into your Godaddy account and select “Domains” –> “Bulk Register”

Step 2 –> Enter the keywords in the text box provided, select “.com”, enter the “Access Code” and select “GO”. You can select the other extension options if you want.

Step 3 –> Godaddy will now go through your list of keywords and list for you the domains that are available that match your keywords. The results will initially show errors, but scroll down to see which domains are available. You should be able find extremely good domain names to use that will be keyword rich and very targeted to your market.

<– End of Added BONUS Topic (Hope you liked it)

Initial Content Keywords

Now that we have our domain, and our initial filtered list of words, we still have some work to do. To truly find the real “Diamonds” from the hopefuls is we are going to have to use “Affiliate Elite” and run it on a schedule for 2 weeks, we go into detail on this in the next keyword lesson (sorry).

Before we do that however, we want to get keywords for initial site content. We do not want to waste time while waiting for Affiliate Elite, so this is a perfect time to grab 20 or so terms from your list to create your blogs initial content.

Personally our results have proven over and over again that the best results is to not go live with a blog until you have 25 articles or more. We usually target 50 to start with but that is not always possible due to time constraints.

The good thing is we know that with the keyword we currently have that some people are advertising with them, the problem is that Traffic Travis only gives us a snap shot of one day. That means that the words are being advertised with right now but they might NOT be tomorrow because they are no good… which is why we will use “Affiliate Elite” to see if words are used consistently for 14 days.

That said, using some of these words now is better then nothing, at least we can see they are being used by some and the odds are that a lot of the words you select will be good words.

Step 1–> Log back into your AdWords account and go to “Tools” –> “Traffic Estimator” and copy all the keywords into section #1. Then enter 100 in section 2, leave section 3 blank, do not change section 4A and select “All Countries and Territories” in section 4B and select “Continue”

Step 2 –> Google will now display all the keywords and their suggestion of the amount of traffic you can expect for each word. You need to understand that this number represents what Google says you would get with the number one AdWords ad… NOT the number one organic listing, which gets much more traffic then AdWords. Click on the “Estimated Click/Day” so to sort the information from highest traffic to lowest.

Step 3 –> Looking at the list, you are now going to want to select 20 or more keyword phrases. A good rule of thumb is to initially look at the words that are three words in length and have bids between $0.50 and $2.00. The reason is this shows that these words are being advertised on but are not packed full of competitors, which keeps the costs lower. Always start from top to bottom so you can be sure you are getting keywords with some traffic.

IMPORTANT –> Your list might not have any words under $2.00, if that s the case then ignore the cost rule… if there are however, look at those.

Step 4 –> Now you are going to take each keyword phrase and go to google to check out the terms competition. Enter the term in google with the allintitle filter. To do that simply enter the following…

allintitle:”your keyword phrase”

What you are looking for here is the amount of competition this term has and a good indicator of that is the amount of sites in Google that have that keyword phrase in their title. This is not an exact science and there are some who argue that this is not a true picture but from our experience it works and we like to use what we know works (which we recommend you get in the mindset of doing, do not just listen to others but find out what works for yourself). By using the allintitle, we see if a word is overwhelmed with competitors or is easily dominated.

Good guidelines for the “allintitle” results are…

• Less than 15 000 results = Needs to have lots of traffic potential to be worth it. Not recommended for the majority of this content since you will have to focus a lot of link building on this. If you have 2 or 3 that fall in here that is fine but try to have the majority 7000 or less.
• Less than 7000 results = Good – Can be dominated with good optimization and focused link building
• Less than 1000 results = Great – Easily dominated

NOTE –> These are just our guidelines, they are what work for us. Do NOT argue with us if you agree with them or not, they work for us and so there

Step 5 –> Repeat this process until you have a list of at least 20 keyword phrases with OK or better for competition. These are the keywords that we are going to build our blog on initially.

IMPORTANT –> Make sure to only use phrases that make sense grammatically as you will need to be able to create content around these phrases.

Next Keyword Lesson –> Start Up the Diamond Digger

Remember, the problem we have now is that we have words for our content but we do not really know if they are “Profitable”. We have a good guess because we know that as of right now, people are advertising on them but we only know that as of right now they are being used. Yesterday they might not have been and tomorrow they might now be and what we want to know is what keywords are being consistently used for at least 10 to 14 days by the same advertisers. These are the words that we can be sure somebody is making money with and are fantastic words to build content around, especially affiliate based content.

Talk To Us –> Did you Like this Post? If so please let me know, it i good motivation for us to keep this up

Keyword Lesson Series:

1. Lesson 1 – Keyword Research: What are you Basing it On?
2. Lesson 2 – Keyword Research: the Cart before the Cow
3. Lesson 3 – Keyword research: What for may we ask?
4. Lesson 4 – Keyword Research: Show me the Money… Words that is…
5. Lesson 5 – Keyword Research: Diamonds in the Rough
6. Lesson 6 – Keyword Research: Start Up the Diamond Digger
7. Lesson 7 – Keyword Research: Shiny Diamonds Everywhere

When I originally did the COWpetition section a few months ago on promoting the GamerzReviewz blog, I saw a few people try to replicate what I did without understanding the need to step back, look at the big picture and then properly plan. You see, each niche is a completely different animal and what works in one niche is not guaranteed to work in another niche.

For example, I have found twitter to be very good for markets that are full of people that are online addicts, these include marketers, bloggers, programmers and gamers. The real power of Twitter comes from getting people that actually use it to follow you. Getting someone to create a twitter account and follow you is almost useless if they never actually visit the account.

So the first step is to plan out our strategy and this includes creating a goal and then planning out how we are going to achieve that.

Step 1: Set Our Goal

When doing a promotion campaign, you should set your goal as “Traffic” not google rankings, links or subscribers. The reason for this is traffic is where the money is and rankings, links and subscribers are stepping stones to achieving that goal. We also want to create three goals… 6 months, 3 months and 1 month. You can plan out further then that if you want but I do not like to because the blog might not catch on.

This is not by business goal, it is my specific traffic goal for this specific blog. The fact is that not all sites and blogs are going to catch on and after 6 months you will know if you should continue to focus a lot of effort into this project or move on.

Remember you blog is a part of the bigger picture and is a stepping stone to achieving your financial goals. You do not want to digg your heels in and focus your energy on something that is not returning an investment and so after 6 months, re-evaluate the situation and either make plans to grow it more or move on to focus efforts elsewhere. At the minimum I will let a site run for 3 months and within that time will have a good idea about how well it will do but I have also had sites that sucked at first and suddenly 9 months later Google started ranking and sending traffic to it.

Our Traffic Goals:

• 6 Month: 600 Uniques a day
• 3 Month: 300 Uniques a day
• 1 Month: 100 Uniques a day

My Reasoning: I have found that on average doing standard promotion strategies that these numbers are about what we should expect from a niche specific site in the health industry. Whether you agree with me or not, I do not really care and when you set your goals remember they are your goals not someone elses. You do not want to go too high because your first initial few months are in need of momentum and a great way to give you momentum is by achieving realistic goals. You also do not want to under estimate too much because if you make it too easy on yourself you will get lazy.

Now here is the challenge and I know a few of you will say… “I told you so”

http://www.anaudlife.com is already averaging 100+ a day because of this case study and being mentioned on this blog. The challenge is I want to show exactly what we are doing and there is no way to hide the site from you but what we can do (using google analytics) is calculate the traffic from all other sources and get an estimate. The traffic being sent from JohnCow is also not niche targetted and so for the most part will disappear once the case study is over, so we want to dismiss this traffic up front.

IMPORTANT –> Do not be distracted by the fact that the results will not be exact due to the mentioning of the blog, look at the strategies and follow along and implement them yourself. Here is a twist on a popular saying for you that is something I truly believe…

Some people say the glass is half empty, others say half full, I say… why waste time over analyzing the darn thing, slam it down and enjoy it!

If you are going to sit here and over anlyze and pick apart different things, you are going to miss out. I encourage each of you to follow along and figure out how to make this work for you. Make the best of what you are given and enjoy it.

Also, for those of you that have read the eBook “How to Build a Business and Not Just a Blog” this is going to give you a different view because the goal of the COWpetition blog was to sell in 30 days and that limited us on what we could do with it. This one is different and will be a great compliment to the eBook.

Tomorrow I am going to show how I come up with the actions steps to achieve my goals.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

So what is your feedback on this post?

• Part 1 – Planning Your Promotion Strategy
• Part 2 – Understanting the How and Where of Your Promotion Strategy
• Part 3 – Planning the Subscriber Traffic Strategy
• Part 4 – Planning a Contest to Get the Buzz Going
• Part 5 – Planning the Contest Criteria
• Part 6 – Protect Yourself Before You Start a Contest
• Part 7 – Rule of the Contest Prize Delivery

If you have been a reader of JohnCow for a while now, you will know that we are constantly holding contests here. Contests are fantastic ways to get a good amount of exposure, gain readers and more.

One of the huge advantages of us having a well established blog (along with lots of business contacts) is we have been able to sponsor some pretty sweet contests that have not cost us a single penny. This however does not mean that if you are just starting out and have few (if any) contacts that you can not hold a successful contest. What it does mean however is you are going to have to work a little harder to get some buzz going for it and you may have to spend some of your own money on the prizes.

Over the next week or so I am going to put together a case study for promoting a new blog which includes how to hold a contest and we are going to lay out every step of the process here in a blog series so you can learn first hand how to do it. The blog I am going to use for this is a blog that my beautful wife of 12+ years just created at http://www.anaudlife.com

Since I first got into running a business online, my wife has had 0 interest in any part of it. She did not like computers, had no interest in running a business and had not a clue as to how to describe to others what it was I did. The only part that she had any interest in was spending the money that it generated

As a stay at home mother (raising our two daughters) she has recently started to show an interest in blogging and getting involved with some forums and places like FaceBook and about 2 months ago asked if she could have her own blog. After about 10 minutes of laughing (because I thought she was joking), when I could tell from the look on her face that at that moment she thought I was a jackass… I then said in disbelief…

“Are You Serous?”

Well, she was serious and so immediately it popped into my mind… “What a great opportunity for a case study for my readers!”

So the first thing I had her do was list the top 5 things she was passionate about and loved to research on the internet. Number 2 on her list (after shopping for clothes) was rheumatoid arthritis. You see my wife was diagnosed three years ago at the age of 30 with rheumatoid arthritis and in fact it had gotten so bad that she had to use a cane full time. Once she knew what the cause of the pain was, she immediately began researching and testing treatments and everything else related to this condition. She has since eliminated the need for a cane completely and has become very physically active (our dog cant even keep up with her anymore).

As soon I saw this on her list –> BINGO!

You see, having a niche that you are 100% passionate about is a niche you want to be in. You can write with passion, relate to your readers and best of all it encourages you to learn even more about the topic so you can have stuff to write about.

Over the past 4 weeks Audrey has started to piece together a blog that is pretty darn good and she has done it by herself…

She has wanted to learn how to do it and so alI I have done (other then a little graphics help from some of my office staff) is provided some direction. It is a definite learning curve for her (little things like how to write a title, researching keywords, using forums for ideas and so) but I am very proud of how well she has done so far.

She is now at the stage of starting the promotion for her blog and this is the part that I am going to get a little more involved in and this is also the part that I am going to completely share with all of you. You will see first hand what we are going to do and the first part of this is going to be planning out the promotion strategy and organizing a contest.

So, you are going to want to get your pen and paper ready (you will want to jot down ideas that pop in your head) and get ready for some fun learning. I also recommend, if you have not done so already, that you subscribe to our blog so you can keep up with us… we will also be putting this into an ebook form for all our readers after it is done.

PS – One of my good online buddies is putting together a wicked contest for you all that will be hosted here on JohnCow starting next week, so stay tuned!

So out of curiosity…

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

• Part 1 – Planning Your Promotion Strategy
• Part 2 – Understanting the How and Where of Your Promotion Strategy
• Part 3 – Planning the Subscriber Traffic Strategy
• Part 4 – Planning a Contest to Get the Buzz Going
• Part 5 – Planning the Contest Criteria

It is FINALLY Complete… the first ever JohnCow.com eBook…

Building a Business NOT a Blog!

We want to thank all our loyal readers for helping us in creating this.

We also want to thank Garry Conn for providing the spark that initiated the original COWpetition.

We would also like to give a special thank you to LucyWeber.com for offering to do the fantastic eBook cover!

If you are already a subscribed reader (via email) then you will already be receiving this in your inbox. If you are not and you want to learn more about our new FREE 130+ page ebook, then CLICK HERE NOW or opt in to our mailing list in the side bar!

Google search has certain commands that you can include with your search query, which allow you to “filter” their search engine results, which can help you get somewhat of a better idea of areas you might want to improve upon to help your blog rank better.

These of course are not 100% perfect but the information they do tell you is directly from Google and it is very worthwhile in our opinion.

These filters are…

• allintitle:”keyword phrase”
• allinanchor:”keyword phrase”
• allintext:”keyword phrase”
• allinurl:”keyword phrase”

IMPORTANT –> Do NOT copy and paste the filters from this page… the quotes are “smart quotes” because of the WordPress blog editor and will not give you the right results if you paste them as is into Google. Make sure the quotes are “like this”.

Here is how each one works and how you can use them to your advantage.

1. allintitle:”keyword phrase”

This filter allows you to determine where your blog ranks in Google’s results compared to the other blogs and sites that have the keyword in the title of the page. The title is <title></title> in the source code of the page.

Why is this important?

If your blog was ranked 10th in Google for the keyword but 4th for the “allintitle”, you would know that overall your title was good in Google’s eyes and there are other reasons your blog might not be ranking higher than 10th.

If however your blog was ranked 10th in Google but nowhere to be found for the allintitle, then you would know that your title needs definite improvement. You would then look at the top results and compare your title to theirs, watching for keyword density.

IMPORTANT –> You want your title to draw the attention of the visitor… not just the search engine. Try to make your title around 8 to 10 words with the keyword in the beginning. Only mention the keyword phrase one and make sure you treat the title like the headline of a classified ad.

2. allinanchor:”keyword phrase”

This filter allows you to determine where your blog ranks compared to the other sites and blogs in Googles results, which are using that keyword phrase in their incoming links anchor text.

Why is this important?

If your site was ranked 10th in Google for the keyword but 4th for the “allinanchor”, you would know that overall your keyword link popularity for that term is good. That means that out of all Google’s results, in regards to people linking to you with that keyword in the anchor text, Google thinks your blog is doing well.

If however, your blog was ranked 10th in Google but nowhere to be found for the allinanchor, then you would know that you need to pick up your sites link building campaign focused on that exact keyword phrase.

3. allintext:”keyword phrase”

This filter allows you to see where your blog ranks in Google’s eyes compared to the other blogs and sites in their index that have this keyword in their body text.

Why is this important?

If your site was ranked 10th in Google for the keyword but 4th for the “allintext”, you would know that overall your keyword percentage or frequency for that term was good in Googles eyes.

If your site was ranked 10th in Google but nowhere to be found for the “allintext”, then you would know that you need to fix your keyword density (frequency). The best thing to do here is analyze the top 5 results of the “allintext” and try to match thier density.

4. allinurl:”keyword phrase”

This filter allows you to determine where your blog ranks in Google’s eyes compared to the other blogs and sites in their index that have this keyword in the URL. Obviously there is not a lot that can be tweaked here and this test shows that the domain is important but the full file name is almost as important. Sometimes the page file name with a dashed keyword (such as www.domain.com/keyword-here.html) will rank better then a domain with the keyword directly on it (www.keyword.com).

Why is this important?

If your site was ranked 10th in Google for the keyword but 4th for the “allinurl”, you would know that overall your url and / or file name for that term was good.

If your site was ranked 10th in Google but nowhere to be found for the “allinurl”, then you may want to just leave it (bet you did not expect us to say that ) . You could of course set up a 301 redirect with a better file name but in all honesty just try hard to get the keyword in the domain file name right away and you will be ok.

Note: If you test this you will see that Google seems to like the dashes in the file names. So if your keyword is “GPS Tracking Device” and if this page you are checking is not the index page you should make the page file name…

“www.domain.com/gps-tracking-device.html”

Hope you found this post useful… let me know your thoughts and if there are other Google tricks that you like to use.

The results are in, the readers have spoken and a plan is being created!

Over the next couple days we are going to put our plan together for covering these items in order of “voters” priority… thanks for helping make this easier.

We need to finish up the ebook first in the next day or two and then get started on this plan.

Wanted to also remind you all that the “WIN an iPhone 3G” contest ends this coming Thursday July 3rd so Click Here to register if you already have not done so… ohhh and we have another cool contest already lined up after that one

A few other topics that were brought up were…

• Get top rankings
• Using tnx.net
• Thoughts about where IM trends are going and long term planning would be interesting

If there is any other topics you would love to see here on the Cow pastures… tell us below.

This post is a continuation of the Keyword Research lesson “Start Up the Diamond Digger”

Now that AffiliateElite has ran for 14 days, we are ready to get our good “Money” keywords. Once we have these words we are then going to need to decide which words we are going to focus on for affiliate presales content and which ones will be for regular content posts.

Part 1 Filter Our the Good Words

Step 1: Open AffiliateElite and select “Analyze Adwords Competition” and click “OK”

Step 2: Select the campaign from the drop down menu that you want to get the keywords from.

Step 3: Click the “Report” tab.

Step 4: In the “Report” section, right click in the table and select the “Expand All”

Step 5: Click the “TD Ratio” twice to sort from highest to lowest of percentage found

Step 6: Click the “Export” button and then save as a Excel CSV file.

Step 7: The export CSV now needs to be edited to see the best keywords. To do this delete all the columns except “Keywords”, “Total Days Found” and “Total Days Found (%)”

Step 8: Now highlight the three columns and click in the menu “Data” –> “Sort” and then sort by “Total Days Found” and “Total Days Found (%)”

Step 9: Now you can delete all the keywords that were not found atleast 85% of the time. Now copy those keywords and save them in a notepad file (.txt)

You now have a list of keywords that you know have a very good chance of being profitable because they are keywords that advertisers have consistently been spending money on. The challenge now is to figure out which of these words are good from an organic search engine stand point.

This is where we use the Traffic Estimator tool from your Google Adwords account.

Part 2 Finding the Organic Treasures

Step 1: Log into your Adwords account, go to the “tools” section and then “Traffic Estimator”

Step 2: Enter the keywords from the .txt file you created from AffiliateElite and (1) enter them into the top box 1, (2) Enter a Max CPC of 100 and (3) select “all countries and territories” and add. Now click on “Continue”

Step 3: Google will now give you details of each of the keywords. It is important to remember that this data is related to Google Adwords and that means that the traffic estimates are lower then what you might expect from organic search engine listings.

Now you are going to click on the link “Estimated Clicks / Day” and this will sort the data from highest traffic to lowest.

Step 4: Next you are going to start searching for the best words to use for content on your blog. Do NOT use single word phrases, you will have better chances with larger phrases such as three word phrases because these tend to have lower competition. Start at the top of your list and work your way down and what you are going to do is take the keyword phrase and enter it into google search using the allintitle search command…

Allintitle:“keyword phrase here”

You are going to want to find the keywords that have decent traffic and low competition and as a general rule if the allintitle results are…

• Less than 10 000 results = OK
• Less than 5000 results = Good
• Less than 1000 results = Great

Organizing Your Keyword in Order of Priority

With your list of keywords, you now want to figure out which ones are going to be designated to your presales pages and which ones will be best for regular post content.

For your presales content you want to select the words that…

• 1. Have the best traffic potential: Your presales pages will be linked to from every page on your blog and therefore will be easier to rank for in the search engines. These are the pages you want to focus high traffic potential to.

• 2. Are directly related to the product or service you are promoting: Do not select a keyword just based on traffic, the word also needs to relate directly to the product or service. For example if your best keyword is “Red Race Cars” and if the product or service is about “Blue Race Cars”, that might confuse the visitor.

Note: You need to balance this with competition as well. For example if you have a word that has a traffic potential of 100 visitors a day and a competition of 8000 versus one that gets 90 visitors and has a competition of 3000… we would take the little bit less traffic phrase since it will be easier to rank for.

– The End!

Well, that is it for the “Keyword Research” series… we hope you enjoyed it and got some good training from it. As always we appreciate any and all feedback or questions!

PS –> Do not forget to check out the new contest sponsored by Market Leverage… you can Win a New iPhone 3G

Keyword Lesson Series:

1. Lesson 1 – Keyword Research: What are you Basing it On?
2. Lesson 2 – Keyword Research: the Cart before the Cow
3. Lesson 3 – Keyword research: What for may we ask?
4. Lesson 4 – Keyword Research: Show me the Money… Words that is…
5. Lesson 5 – Keyword Research: Diamonds in the Rough
6. Lesson 6 – Keyword Research: Start Up the Diamond Digger
7. Lesson 7 – Keyword Research: Shiny Diamonds Everywhere

Notice how there has been a lot of people giving away stuff lately… not just things like reports and audios… we mean solid things that people would otherwise have bought. Look at Camtasia a few months ago when they offered a free copy of version 3… it was a great move on their part.

Why are companies doing this more and more?

Because the strategy works… it gets people talking and spreading the word and looking at what you have and if they like it they tend to want more of what you have. With Camtasia, the version 3 was a great version and there was really no reason to upgrade but we can guarantee you that alot of people probably did.

Well here is another awesome offer that is a great product from Chris Malta over at World Wide Brands and it is once again 100% FREE. No shipping charges, no hidden fees, no upsells or anything else. We can pretty much guarantee you will like what you get and find value in it… and if you don’t then please let us know because we were impressed. Click Here to check it out!

Solid Plugin for Increasing Sociability

Yesterday we received an email from Becky Sanders of http://www.preblogging.com/ about a plugin of hers that has been getting some pretty good feedback. The plugin is called Increase Sociability and is suppose to be able to help increase your Digg & StumbleUpon traffic by reminding those visitors to vote for your page.

The plugin is based off one of our favorites called What Would Seth Godin Do. What Beckys plugin does is it displays a custom message when visitors come to your site from either Stumble Upon or Digg and the message can be customized however you want. She also has added an extra section to allow you to create a custom message for what ever referring domain you wish.

This is cool and if you think outside the box can be pretty effective. For example, lets say you have a JV Partner that is going to make a blog post about your blog. You can create a custom response and have it appear only to people who come from that site and you can target it directly to them with a special offer only for them. That offer could be a special gift, download or discount.

Another example is if you are getting good results on a different social site other then Stumble Upon or Digg, such as Mixx or Propeller… with Increase Sociability you can customize the message for when ever someone visits from those sites.

Do not underestimate the power of creating custom greetings for your visitors!

Overall, we think the plugin is great… we do have three suggestions for possible improvements… not sure how hard or easy these would be but Becky if your reading, here they are…

1. More custom fields –> Be great if you could add as many as you wanted, but having a couple more at least would be great.

2. Able to target specific pages only on your blog –> This could allow you to create a more targetted message to the visitor on that page.

3. Have a great big picture of us on the settings page –> Well ok, maybe this one is not a great idea.. but the first two were.

Overall.. a solid plugin… great job Becky!