Niche Control Marketing

Here’s a little guide that you can print out and keep as a ready reference as you write your ebooks or compose your web pages. It’s a 30-page PDF file and it’s filled with tips to improve your writing. Look, if you want to come across as the expert you are–you’ve go to look like an expert with the words you write.

Whether you are working on your blog, your site, or a book of your own–youare judged by the words you use and how you use them. My guide won’t turn you into a Hemingway, but it is guaranteed to improve your writing.

Of course, it’s free to you. My way of saying thanks for coming by. Hope you enjoy it. I know it will be a big help. Download here. –Mike

Click to bookmark:

Google, combined with good SEO can help you tremendously when trying to determine how your competition is ranking well with their web sites. Furthermore, understanding basic Search Engine Optimization will help your blog or site rank higher in the search engines. What follows is a list of terrific sites and tools that will help you understand what your competition is doing as well as optimizing your own site for higher rankings. These resources can be a tremendous help to you in marketing your ebooks and digital products online.

Google Webmaster Central
http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Vaughn’s Google Search Engine SERP Ranking Factors
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm

The Seomoz Ranking Factor Page
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Fast Blog Finder Helps To Locate “FOLLOW” Blogs In Your Niche. Posting comments in blogs with “NOFOLLOW” attributes will not give your site any link juice by posting comments with your URL there. This utility helps you find blogs, that because they do ont use NOFOLLOW tags, which can provide link juice to your site.
http://www.fastblogfinder.com/

Courtney’s Site With Tons Of Tips For Generating Backlinks
http://courtneytuttle.com/2007/04/09/102-ways-to-make-your-blog-or-site-a-back-link-superstar/

The Firefox NoDoFollow Plugin
This plugin shows you wish links on a page are Follow and which are NOFOLLOW. Extremely useful when looking for places to post your links to get some linkjuice for the search engines.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5687

SEO Quake is another extemely useful SEO plugin for Firefox
http://www.seoquake.com/

Click to bookmark:

Both radio and television stations love to have their hosts do interviews with authors on timely topics. For one thing, it’s free entertainment. Radio stations have to pay to play songs, but doing interviews costs them nothing. And of course authors love to be interviewed because they can promote their books. What many people fail to realize is the ebooks can be promoted using interviews just as print and ink books are.

There are basically 3-4 effective ways to get booked to do media interviews. These techniques always work and I can almost guarantee that if you follow my instructions you will get booked for some interviews.

A friend of mind out in Santa Barbara, Alex Carroll, has sold well over 100,000 copies of his book about beating traffic tickets–all by doing call-in author interviews on radio stations. That’s almost 1.5 million dollars in sales.

What kind of ebooks can be sold by doing author interviews. Well, an ebook dealing with how to use AdWords to sell products on line probably won’t do it. This topic is too specific. More general topics are better. eBooks related to gardening, relationships, dating, general money-making themes, etc. are good.

The difference between success and failure in this business depends on three factors: How well you come across on radio, how much fun and entertainment value you provide to listeners, and how much you know about contacting radio stations to line up interviews.

Please note: This is not a minor thing. Many, many authors have accumulated incredible sums of money promoting their books doing media interviews. It works and it can work wickedly well for those in the know.

I have used this technique to sell thousands of books and be interviewed on over 100 radio and television stations. I even did a short 4 minute interview on ABC’s World News with Alison Stewart in Manhattan

A short interview like this can sell tons of books or ebooks. Give it a try–it’s fun and a great way to drive some traffic to your site. For more info on how to sell books or ebooks through interviews, cheick out my Big Money Writing Little Books program.

Click to bookmark:

Article marketing isn’t like PPC promotion where you set a bid, create an ad, and have traffic rolling in to your site. Article marketing is a time intensive operation that requires a lot of work over the long haul to pay out.

I have friends who claim to do article marketing, but most of them are not willing to invest the time to do it right. They put up a site and submit a couple articles to directories–and then hope and pray that those articles generate some traffic to their site. It will, but not much.

Now, I’m not talking about writing 2-3 articles to get some link juice to a pre-sell page for an affiliate product you are promoting–I am talking about writing many dozens, many hundreds, or yes–many thousands of articles related to the topic of your niche.

A single article submitted to GoTo Articles or eZineArticles may generate from a handful to many hundred reads in a year’s time. And only a small percent of those reads will result in an URL click in your resource box at the end.

Serious article marketers write a minimum of a dozen articles a day for months to generate traffic to one single site! My buddy, Sean Mize, has over 13,000 article to his name listed in eZineArticles. He has written the majority himself, but hires out the writing of a lot each month–because it works!

Article marketing isn’t a quick fix to your traffic dilemma. But if you are dedicated and persistent, over a few months time you can see a huge influx of traffic to your site from your articles.

My own articles generally run about 400 words. I use several different accounts and names for articles targeting specific sites I want to promote. Over the past year, my record has been 42 articles in one single day–that’s a lot and I can’t do that every day–but I can easily crank out a dozen a day in about an hour and a half.

Now, when promoting an affiliate product from a pre-sell page, I generally crank out about 6-8 articles to get some link juice to my page and a little free traffic. But when I have a new site coming out, I will try to get at least 50 articles working right off the bat and I have one site out there with over 400 articles pointing to it.

But here is one key point: If you are using eZIneArticles. People tend to think that their article itself is the key point–and the quality of your article is important–but there are other very important keys.

Be careful on selecting the category you submit your article to. A lot of bloggers search by category for content. After you have written a couple dozen articles, check the number of URL clicks and the categories they are in. Submit your articles to the categories that give you the most hits.

Your title is all important! Your title alone often determines whether someone will click on it or not. Make it provocative and eye catching. You also have the opportunity to write an intro to your article which will be displayed. Your intro can also determine whether someone opens the entire article as well.

One final thing. Rather than just providing a link in your resource box, use some anchor text that is descriptive. It is better to see a link that says “Grow Your Mailing List” rather than “http://www.mailinglistsecrets.com/page24.html”. Links like that look ugly. Anchor your link to keywords relevant to your niche.

Click to bookmark:

I graduated from Michigan State University back in the 1970’s; Yes–I am that old! Ouch. I majored in Chemistry and Mathematics. Now, I have read in a number of places that Freshman Chemistry has the highest “flunk out” rate of any course in Division I colleges. But ya know that the funny thing is–I learned 90% of the math and chemistry BEFORE I EVER WENT TO COLLEGE!

I loved those classes, well–the classes were pretty boring because most of the instructors were pretty boring, but I loved the subjects. And at the end of my freshman year, one of my chemistry teachers said, “Hey Mike, you are going to the awards assembly Saturday aren’t you? You might get a little something.” I acquiesced and accepted his invitation even though I detest such things.

It turned out that thousands of students, parents, and relatives were in attendance. Indeed, my mother, father and grandmother came with me. Anyway, about 2/3rds of the way through the ceremony the head of the science department got up and displayed a plaque, a copy of the Handbook of Chemistry & Physics, and a certificate. Then, he read the name of the recipient of the Freshman Chemistry Award and coughed out my name! I wasn’t really surprised, but I was honored.

And the amazing thing was that I knew all of the chemistry stuff back in 10th grade. It’s amazing what a couple trips to your public library a month during your high school years can do for one.

But the amazing thing is that chemistry, at least Freshman Chemistry is really just a matter of utilizing simple ratios and proportions. Throw in a cursory understanding of the mole concept and the theory of equations–and you’ve pretty much got it. Break the complex down into the simple and the simple stuff is just not that hard to master.

Now, in the title you see the word calculus. The word “calculus” is Latin for a small pebble or stone. That’s because calculus enables one to break the complex down into smaller units which can be more easily understood, and once understood and manipulated, put back together into the more complex starting unit. Both integral and differential calculus allow one to break the complex (whether lines, areas, volumes, forces, etc.) into the simple so they can better be understood and manipulated.

Internet marketing is a lot like calculus. At first it may seem like an impossible thing to do successfully. But when you break it down into its simplest components, it’s really quite a simple thing. You create or find a product; You create sales materials to promote the product; You drive traffic to your site; You build a list of people interested in such products (and work that list vigorously); You incorporate a way to process orders and deliver your product to buyers.

In a nutshell, that’s all there is to it. And none of these component processes are difficult to master. So why do 95% of people who get involved in ebook selling or affiliate marketing never make a dime in profit?

For ebook publishers it’s not what you might think. It’s not that they fail to develop a good ebook–there are tons of crummy ebooks out there that have generated over 100,000k for their authors. It’s mainly that they fail to bring in big  joint venture partners and they fail to develop sales pages that actually convert visitors into buyers.

This week I am featuring my new product, Affiliate Deluge, which shows exactly how to get the big super-affiliates to help to promote your ebook. And–as a bonus–it comes with The Click To Order Secret Code, which shows how to convert visitors to your site into buyers. You can check them both out at http://www.affiliatedeluge.com.

If you’ve got an ebook you are trying to promote, take a deep breath, learn how to get the big JV partners to help you promote it–and tweak your sales pages to convert. These materials will help you do that.

Stay focused, stay motivated, and success will be yours!

Click to bookmark:

Mike’s Intro Message

When I visit sites promoting ebooks, especially sites offering books on how to write ebooks, I am often turned off immediately by the poor writing skills of the person who created the copy. I mean, after all, if they are going to try to sell me a book about some manner of writing–they should be pretty good at it themselves–right?

I don’t mean to sound overly didactic, and this isn’t meant to be a high school refresher course in composition, but you are judged by the words you write. So here are my top five mistakes I see on sales pages as related to grammar and composition.

1. FAULTY PARALLEL CONSTRUCTIONS
Example: This product will inform, motivate, and you will learn how to create your first ebook.

Problem: First break this sentence down into the three different ideas presented. Make each of these begin with the opening phrase of the sentence “This product will…”.

This product will inform.
This product will motivate.
This product will learn how to create your first ebook.

There are a number of problems here. Inform and motivate are both standard verbs. “To Create” is the infinitive form of the verb “create”. The verb forms don’t match. And–you can see that the third sentence given above makes no sense. It has a different structure from the first two.

The original sentence needs to be recast into something like…

This product will inform and motivate. It will show you how to create your first ebook.

2. USING COLONS AND SEMICOLONS
A colon says, I just said something and what follows immediately reinforces that statement. An example would be:

There are three reasons for failing in affiliate marketing: Failure to get traffic to your site, failure to convert visitors into buyers, and failure to promote a good product.

A semi-colon is a break in thought a little less definitive than a period, but more powerful than a comma. The phrase that follows a semi-colon must be able to stand alone as a complete sentence. Here is an example:

I have thought about writing a book for years; I need to get started soon. Notice that the phrase after the semi-colon could stand alone as a complete sentence. I need to get started soon.

3. SUBJECT/VERB AGREEMENT
Probably the most common place I see this is in using the contraction “there’s”. Of course “there’s” is a contracted form of the word combination “there is”. Examine the following sentence:

There’s a lot of ways to make money online. What this really says is, “There is a lot of ways to make money online.” The problem is that is, is a singular verb, while ways is a plural noun (it is the subject). What we need to do is to change the singular verb, is, into the plural verb are to go with the plural subject of the sentence ways.

4. DANGLING MODIFIERS
Examine the following sentence:

The flask broke while conducting the experiment, spilling acid on the lab desk.

The phrase, spilling acid on the lab table, is called a dangling modifier. It tries to attach to something, but it isn’t clear what that something is! The way the sentence is cast, it sounds like the flask was conducting the experiment. This is obviously not the case. Recasting the sentence into something like the following is more precise:

While I was doing the experiment the flask broke, thus spilling acid on the lab table.

5. COMMA FAULTS
A comma fault occurs when a comma is used to join two independent clauses to create a run-on sentence. Here is an example:

The concert was horrible, I wish we would have stayed home.

There are three ways to eliminate the comma fault in the improper sentence above.

a. Break it apart into two sentences…
The concert was horrible. I wish we would have stayed home.

b. Use a semi-colon to separate the clauses…
The concert was horrible; I wish I would have stayed home.

c. Replace the comma with a conjunction…
The concert was horrible and I wish I would have stayed home.

Click to bookmark: