Eddie Says

Using Social Bookmarking helps to create incoming links, and increases the possible number of results you have in the search engines. If you submit one of your webpages or blog posts to the 20 Top social bookmarking sites listed in the SMR bookmarking tool, you will create 20 separate backlinks. Whilst the search engines don’t always index all of the sites all of the time, it does create more visibility to your page.
The big point to remember is keyword selection.

You must always tag your blog posts with the keyword you want to target. Make sure your webpage title has this keyword, and that it occurs during the article and near the end. Try to use this keyword in any images as the ALT value. Remember, the more targeted you make the keyword the better chance it has of ranking high.
Let’s say for example that you are going after traffic for a tv, that you will promote through an Amazon affiliate link…

Sony KDL32D3000 Widescreen Bravia HD

Now guess what your keywords should be! Number one, the whole thing, number 2 the model KDLxxxxx etc., number 3 could be Sony widescreen bravia, number 4 widescreen tv. You get the idea? 

Example:
1   Let’s say you write a short review on the product and place it on your website with a couple of pictures. This is where you have imbedded Amazon links or one of the banners.
2. Now you could do a quick video on the TV set showing its features and how it looks etc. A problem obviously if you don’t have a set at home, but there’s nothing stopping you from being creative and going down the TV shop with a video camera and taking a few 10 second shots and pasting together in Windows movie editor.
3.  Put the video on Youtube, but make sure it has a front banner and end banner of your webpage review URL. Even better display the URL at the bottom running through the whole video(called a watermark).
4.  Bookmark your review page to the top 20 social sites.
5.  Bookmark your youtube video to the top 20.
6.  Add an entry into Twitter for both pages.
7.  Make sure you have all your bookmarked pages in Twitter.

Ongoing, you should revisit and re-bookmark every month or so. It only takes 30 minutes to do but makes all the difference to maintaining prominence in the SB sites.

Maintaining your business:
Those programmers at Google and co are anxious to make sure that spam is not on their search results, so you need to mix up the SB sites you post to. I can’t be 100% sure of this, but I do believe the search engines will start to ‘slap’ down on these sites as it sees the usage go up. Try to use more than one account with the SB sites. Yes I know it’s a pain in the butt to set them up, but you have to make sure your bookmarks look natural. Don’t just post your own stuff, add a few for related topics. Whilst it is ok to blitz all of the SB sites on one campaign, it is an idea to do this over a period of a few weeks – again because a sudden surge of links is definitely not natural looking to Google. You may want to use Roboform to manage your passwords and logons.
Some Ideas:
A friend of mine has a nice little sideline. Basically he is a book reading maniac and goes through one sometimes two a day. He then writes a 400 word review on his blog, then pings his blogpost through Pingoat and RSA announcer. He then adds the page to a number of SB sites. His blog has Amazon banner code on every review, relevant to the Author the book and related books. Finally he goes on to the two forums he has  joined (book club orientated) and discusses the latest book. People who are interested in reading books like to get honest reviews from someone who has read the book already.

Now I’m not suggesting that you become a bookworm overnight, but there are literally hundreds of opportunities such as this, primarily related to one of your own personal interests that you could work on. Earning money doing something you enjoy….now that’s a novel idea!

I have had some great success with CPA networks. Try Millnic or CPAempire.
Some campaigns that bring in easy easy money relate to companies offering short term freebies. How easy is that! Setup a simple affiliate landing page and bookmark it with the right tags.
“Free xxxxxxx for the next few weeks” visit here for details. Vary your descriptions., add a blogpost and point it to your affiliate page. Tag it, then ping it out to Pingoat and RSS announcer. Bookmark it and Twitter it.
Always a winner is the credit industry.

Don’t bother going after the big keywords though, unless you have real bookmarking and backlinking stamina! Far simpler to go after one such as “getting out of debt fast” or something like that. Use one of the numerous PLR articles and modify it. Either punch out a few variants of it to the top articles sites, post it on a blog, or setup a simple one off webpage. Needless to say, we dot all sorts of affiliate links on these pages, and bookmark the pages, articles and put it on twitter. Cross link any pages. ie. link to your blog post from your webpage, link to your article from your blog, link from your article to your webpage.

Don’t forget follow up activity, if you see anything related to your web, blog or articles, bookmark it. Increases its link prominence and makes it more likely to get a higher page rank.
 

I know from emails I get, that a lot of you are struggling to make money online. In the last few weeks, I’ve seen some good ideas to source out money making opportunities. Using “Google hot trends” to source out keywords, shopping.com top searches for products, ebay pulse for what’s selling….there’s lot’s of places to check out.

I’ve seen a few new products on clickbank that offer much, but to be honest I haven’t had the time to buy them and check them out. Lot’s of rehashed ideas from what I can see, and taking in feedback from the forums.

Where does this leave you struggling to make money?

1/  Get Comment Kahuna and use it for some good backlinks…free software that kicks butt!

2/  Use social bookmarking for dead easy traffic (the SMR blueprint show you how!).

3/  Try to monetize all websites you have. Adsense, clickbank links, amazon etc.

4/  Try to capture email addresses and put them on an auto responder sequence.

5/  Give stuff away. Earn kudos.

My number one tip is……just take a break from downloading and buying more and more stuff to make money. You probably have a fair slice of information that will do the job, so try not to get bogged down looking for the magic bullet to make money…..IT DOES NOT EXIST. 

I was wondering just how many internet marketers out there were part of what I call the ‘inner-sanctum’. You know, the ones who have huge lists, multiple products and send emails off with phrases like ‘my friend Dave Guru has released a new product’. I estimate that it is as low as 50.

These are the marketers who make vast sums of money from their subscribers buying straight from their affiliate links, who can then re-invest significant amounts of that money on new quality products. It is the opposite of a vicious circle, shall we call it a luscious circle!?

This inner sanctum has a communication network that involves prior knowledge of JV deals, an invite to pre-release stages and a big slice of the pie on all big products that come out.

So how does someone like you or I join the party? At present, we get to join the party at the post release stage when most of the volume sales are gone, and dribs and drabs are left. The reason for this is extremely simple. If you don’t have a big list, you don’t get an invite. Period.

Many of the up and coming marketers go to seminars and conferences, and use these events to network with other people to forge strong business partnerships. This is definitely a good tactic, with the downside usually being the cost of the event.

In the past year, more and more, the ‘top 50′ are bringing in new tactics to sell to their subscribers. The most notable of which is the ‘buy from my link and get this super dooper bonus’. I genuinely believe that the vast internet marketing community is at a stage where the main messages of how to make money have already been conveyed and what they want are top quality packages that enable as much automation as is possible. My personal favourite is ‘Build a Niche Store’! Have a Look.

I’m not saying the 95% of marketers who fail are lazy, but I do think that a strong sense of dis-illusionment sets in when after several ‘dips in the water’, attempts to make money are fruitless. I know….I’ve been there. Days when I’ve spent hours on end setting things up and waiting for a sale or a click…then getting nothing.

So, here’s the point of the blogpost. You have to set your goal on building that list. Build as many as you can, in every niche you enter. Attempt to capture as many email addresses as possible. Set auto responders up with your follow ups, over deliver with goodies. Place your affiliate links in any ebooks you give away. Use PLR to do this. 

Oh, and to enter the inner sanctum? That is a big ask, you need to be capturing email addresses from the ‘make money online’ niche, and we all know how hard that is.

Effective email marketing lies first with capturing the email address, and then giving things away. There are numerous free ebooks around showing how to word the emails, but always the goal is to capture and keep subscribers.  

There is a continually growing army of affiliate marketers online who simply do not diversify. They spend their entire time promoting ebooks through Clickbank. Some use Google adwords, some use forums, article marketing and others through website links. OK, that’s fine.

But, there are so many opportunities out there that they are missing!

I want to discuss the concept of using alternatives such as CPA (cost per action). Here is a short summary of how they work….

Cost-per-click (CPC): You earn commissions with CPC campaigns simply by providing a link to visitors on your web site or readers of your newsletter, who then click the ad and get redirected to the campaign’s landing page.

Cost-per-lead (CPA): By doing CPA campaigns, you earn commissions based upon visitors to your website clicking on an ad,  they arrive at the campaign’s landing page and complete the signup form. For you to receive commission for these visitors they must  complete the entire signup form and end up at the final thank-you page.

Cost-per-sale (CPS): CPS campaigns are very similar to CPA campaigns, except that instead of simply signing up for something, your visitor must complete a sale. These campaigns pay you based on the total amount of completed sales.

So why are these affiliate marketing ideas so lucrative? Because you have the ability to make money by selling actual products, not digital ones.

Within these CPA type networks, you have companies selling financial advice, holidays, mortgages, business courses…..the list is endless! Just think how easy it is to simply place some related CPC ads on a page, a couple of related CPA links/ads and then write a general review using a PLR article or some rewritten articles.  

Say as an example, somebody is wanting to holiday in the Bahamas, and a company is offering $5 per lead. You write an article on how great it is to holiday there, point it to your website, then social bookmark it. Now I’m not saying this will make you hundreds of dollars, but most people arriving on your website will be targeted and will most likely be interested in ‘taking a peek’ at some of the links/ads. Maybe you’ll only get one or two a week.

The point is, you have created a dead easy stream of income in probably under an hour and it could run for many months before you need to revise or tweak it. Now move on to the next one!

If you think about it, how lucrative is affiliate marketing just selling ebooks? People like spending money and if you you can show them somewhere to get exactly what they came on the internet to buy, you are far more likely to get a sale than through the impulse buy. I know there are people who specifically are looking for ebooks on a particular subject, but more often than not, they are looking for free stuff.

So, my advice is don’t limit yourself. 

The biggest step a newcomer to marketing on the internet will make is to actually start!

Suppose somebody gave you a plan and told you to do it, but part of the plan involved you spending more money, would you still follow it? Unfortunately, if you want to succeed online, that is what you must do. Speculate to accumulate is the old saying and it really is the best advice.

What costs must you take on board? You simply must get yourself a hosting account and a website for openers - Bluehost.  Then an auto responder is a must to enable you to build an email list - Aweber.

Then you can do activities that don’t cost. Join some free membership sites and get downloading products. Setup some bookmarking accounts (use the bookmarking tool in the SMR members area). Create an adsense account with google. Create an account with a couple of affiliate sites such as Clickbank and Coprosper.

Once you’ve made these steps, you are then in a position to move forward. There are numerous places on the internet advising you how to start making money, but unless you take action, it will just remain a dream.

I just saw a great video from Joel Comm that says exactly what you must do. Something every day. Small steps, activity, progress. It just builds up your momentum and starts you on the road to money making. Do nothing….get nothing!

Get the SMR blueprint by the way - an ebook (and bonuses) that shows you exactly what to do! Click Here Now.

Ok, so finally it’s ready. The Social Marketing Riches Blueprint.

I’ve spent the last 3 months writing this and tweaking it to make it an easy to follow step by step guide to earning money online. It uses the linking and search power of web 2.0 social network/social bookmark sites and allies it with affiliate marketing.

To say my personal fortunes have turned around because of this blueprint would be an understatement. I cannot believe how easy it is to generate affiliate, CPA and advertising revenue with just a couple of hours work. I just use the same process to create a stream of revenue, then move onto the next one.

At the last count, I have over a hundred of these little suckers running, and they are just ticking over with one sale after another. One of the keys, is not always going after the big fish. Small CPA campaigns that pick up a couple of dollars for a lead are just so easy to do, especially ones that offer freebies to your visitors.

I have also used the blueprint to make small targeted lists in niche markets, and picked up sales on the follow up emails. Offering free ebooks is the best way to get opt-ins.

I won’t guarantee that you will make money if you buy this. Nope. But if you use it as directed (and the directions are extremely easy to follow!) you most certainly will.

An added bonus for all buyers is lifetime membership to Social Marketing Riches, with so many downloads and PLR products, it will stagger you!

I’ve set the price at $27 which is an absolute steal….go see for yourself…

Click Here

I guess this post is somewhat of a rant.

I think there are quite a few standard models to making money online, all of which involve bringing in visitors to your site, or to your product.

There’s Google Adsense (or other hosting ads). Basically you build a site targeting a specific niche and place adverts on your webpage. There’s a variety of ways to drive traffic to the site, but the bottom line is you only make money when the visitor clicks your ad, and more often than not, once they click that ad they’re gone forever. I don’t know about you, but receiving 3c or so for getting a targeted visitor to your site, then sending them to someone else to make a sale is not my idea of good business.

If you are going to do Adsense, then make sure your site has affiliate links all over, and an optin page with a freebie.

That is the next model. Create a targeted page for a specific niche, offer a gift or a paid product (if you feel confident!), then capture your prospects email address. Sales are made by follow up with an autoresponder.

Model number 3 is to do affiliate marketing through articles writing. I like this a lot, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to get sales through the avalanche of people doing this! There are literally hundreds of article sites online with a huge number of people writing new articles every day.

Model 4 is pay per click. This is where you get your credit card out and pay for targeted visitors through Google or other places. Now I know this can be very lucrative. But the downside is learning how to do it properly, and finding a product that sells. The advertising costs very often exceed the number of sales! Not fun. You either have to be very creative, have patience(and money!) or just get plain lucky.

Having a membership site. This is becoming increasingly popular, and nowhere near saturation point. There are amazing possibilities out there to offer services to niche markets, but once again you have to have the right software, and the right niche. Here’s the right software - Member Speed

The last model I should mention is spammers paradise, free-ads. You know the ones, absolutely jam packed with bullshit ads saying “make 10k per day”. Yeah right - so why are you spending your time doing crappy ads then?

Now the rant! It seems that all people seem to get sent, on a regular basis is the latest way to do any number of these things, repackaged, smartened up and reworded. Flash graphics, great videos, audio. Buy this, make money…blah blah blah.

Even the top ‘gurus’, whilst still sending loads of freebies out, still continue to send us to affiliate links where the prospect is buying almost an identical product to the last.

It does bother me that they have already sold us their item with most of these business models, then say “Mr XYZ has found a great way to earn online - check this out!”. You end up with virtually the same product as you just bought!

I’ve created the SMR Blueprint. I have used variants on a couple of the models above, but incorporated them into social bookmarking, with a complex linking strategy that brings long term amazing results. You can get this from the main SMR site right now, before the official launch. I have set the price at $27, and I believe it to be a very competitive cost, considering that just one simple effective campaign will bring that in within a few days!

Ok, so you just got your latest website ready and uploaded it. It’s keyword optimised and it looks hot. Hell, you’ve even got an optin page and a freebie to capture your vistors. Nice job.

Now what, let’s submit it to Google, Yahoo and MSN. Next, we get a few backlinks from some related blogs, PR backlink or new CommentKahuna. Done. Submit it to some directories, add a few forum links. Really done. 

Two weeks later guess what has happened. Absolutely nothing. No optins no adsense clicks and pretty near no traffic.

Coming soon, real soon the SMR Blueprint. It is a comprehensive guide to using web 2.0 technology to get sustained, targeted traffic from Social sites, and at the same time raising your visibility with the search engines. As part of the deal, follow up strategies free of charge covering advanced techniques to kick up some real traffic.

I’ll let you in on a secret, it is more than just planting a few social bookmarks! 

I was wondering just how many people there are on the internet doing affiliate marketing. Quite a few I should imagine. Then I tried to figure out just how many of them are just not using their initiative. Most of them!

Firstly, how many send their prospects to the sales page direct with clumsy uncloaked links? USE A CLOAKER!   Setup a ‘RECOMMENDS’ folder, put a cloaked redirect on the page and use that link.  Cloakers can be downloaded from the main SMR site free of charge.

Secondly, do you capture your visitors email first? Why not! BIG MISTAKE. A tiny percentage of vistors buy on the first visit, and believe it or not, they don’t bookmark the page. So basically no purchase first time….bye bye sale.

You must attempt to capture the email where possible and place them into your autoresponder. Offer a free ebook or a report. Make a quick report if need be, by grabbing some articles from the net and rewriting etc. Set your autoresponder up to send link again with maybe some more info on the product. Then a few days later, once again, maybe with another alternative offer.

If you haven’t got an autoresponder… get one here Aweber

Thirdly, how many affiliate marketers grab the promotion tools from the seller, and use them word for word? Now come on, let’s get creative here. Remember everybody and his dog are doing this! Rewrite the ads, or the emails or the sales pages given. Make them your own. Put some personality into it. If you are using a blog for example, don’t cut and paste the sales jargon into your blog. Put a different spin on it.

Lastly, try to be more adventurous with your products. The internet marketing community is vast, and growing every day. The problem is, most of the affiliates are only promoting ‘how to make money’ products. Believe me there are so many easier ways to get affiliate sales out there. People like shopping online for anything, so branch out. Use Web 2.0 bookmarking to publicise. You don’t need to spend good money advertising on PPC to get traffic these days.

The bottom line is that you are in a competitive market, don’t follow the herd!

The SMR blueprint is being released very soon, showing the exact methods I use to generate easy sales with no cost outlay, and very little work.

You know one of the best web 2.0 sites is stumbleupon. That is a fact. It is just such a great site to build traffic from. The community within this site is vast, and the main criteria to get recognised, is to build quality information pages.

The days of shoving any old rubbish on the net are long gone. Even taking old PLR content and making pages out of it is a waste of time. I suppose the phrase ‘content spinning’ is often used, but I have a new phrase. Content redevelopment!

Here’s a quick guide:

Source out an article on the keyword you want to target. Then a few others. Take the best of all the articles and create a quality web page. Add some photos from free sources, or one of those cheap CDs you can get. Now get a video feed from youtube that is as relevant as you can make it.

Now find a free ebook with giveaway right. Add an optin form to the page offering the free ebook. Add some adsense adds to the page, and a few affiliate links (with pictures).

Set your autoresponder up to send the link, and follow up a few days later with the big offer. Two days later, a follow up, saying something like ‘did you get a chance to look at the site……’ etc.

You’re done.

NOW…add that page to as many web 2.0 bookmark pages as you can - stumbleupon being an absolute must! Submit to the search engines, directories and add some backlinks with informed posts to related blogs.

Another option which I have started using and really seeing some great results, is to use the youtube video to reroute to your affiliate site direct!

How? Use this…..Affiliate Video Brander

There are a staggering number of people who are pouring money down the drain every day with PPC adverts on Google Adwords. Now I know when you ‘crack it’, this can start the cash tills cranking over, but it is nowhere near as easy as it is made out to be. The competion for affiliate products is swamped. To get anywhere with a campaign, your landing page has to be optimised, and you have to be targeting keywords that produce a good click through rate circa 2% or more. If not, the charges stay high and the orders per click don’t work out. Then frustration sets in and you end up moving from one campaign to the next. Been there! I have 3 or 4 good ones running and it was tough breaking through.

So…..here’s the superb alternative. PPC adverts with Stumbleupon! 

There is a catch for affiliates though, you really don’t want to be whacking up your affiliate landing pages and hoping to get anywhere. Stumblers will give thumbs down votes in their droves and you will end up wasting money again. The beauty of using Stumbleupon to advertise, is that it gets your website seen by targeted viewers, so is a fantastic way to build an opt-in list. Setup a genuine product review site, maybe with for example the latest TV sets (linking to Amazon! or manufacturers), and write good copy. Find an ebook you can give away and capture their email address. The uses for this type of advertising are endless.

If you have a genuine business or a good service, this is THE way to get visitors to your site. Remember, if your site is anywhere near decent, you’ll get ‘thumbs ups’, and more free visitors.

Please don’t make the age old mistake of pasting some half baked rubbish on your landing page and expect everyone to go reaching for their credit cards. Web 2.0 communities are becoming more discerning and will hit the ‘x’ faster than crap through a goose! 

The cost of advertising starts at 5c a click, but it isn’t some advert being shown. the visitor goes straight onto your page. And…..they opted to go there, because it met their search criteria and demographics!

Stumbleupon say “Well designed and targeted content often starts to spread virally through StumbleUpon. The more people who see it, the more they pass it on to their friends (both within and outside of StumbleUpon). ”

And further “StumbleUpon is an effective way to reach a large, enthusiastic audience. People who use StumbleUpon are excited about the websites, photos, videos, and blogs that they discover here. They’re eager to try new products and explore new services. ”

If you have $10 to spend - why not get up to 200 visitors who want to see your site, and have lots of friends to tell about it!

OK, let’s get right to the heart of the matter. First off you need to setup numerous accounts….yep…boring! But it needs to be done. Within the members area for Social Marketing Riches is a bookmarking tool and also a large Web 2.0 directory.

Get yourself over to as many sites as possible and setup your accounts. More often than not, it takes a few seconds to register, plus clicking on a confirmation email. Perhaps to keep yourself from going password mad, you use the same userid and password for all of them?

The easy way to get your site noticed is to whack in 20 or so bookmarks spread out across the community. I like using Twitter to group all my Web 2.0 bookmark pages together. There are various other great techniques to make this whole process work quickly that I will be showing within the members area.

Don’t forget easy bookmarks to Yahoo, Google and Lycos. Then Squidoo, Technorati and Stumbleupon. Just that lot will boost your traffic.

Make sure you tag the links correctly. No point in having a page about ‘Elephant Holidays’ if your tags point to something else. Try to include as many relevant tags as possible. There’s a great technique to doing this, also within the members area.

Anyway, have fun. More to come.

Your name is mud! Ever heard that before? I know the older generation used to use that expression all the time. But for those of you who haven’t a clue what it means…..

Your reputation is tarnished and nobody wants to know what you have to say!


Now, from the title of this post, you’re looking for some guidance on social bookmarking, so let’s summarise…

1. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.
2. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.
3. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.
4. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.
5. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.
6. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.
7. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.
8. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.
9. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.
10. Don’t spam, lie, misrepresent or scam. Always write good content.

OK, did you get that? I can only advise you on this, I can’t make you follow it. But let me assure you of this…..once word gets around about you being any of the above, it will REALLY get around. Word spreads like wildfire on these networks.

You can either use them responsibly, correctly and with the right approach and motives, or you can go in and spread your rubbish…..and achieve a big fat zero. 

The whole internet is buzzing with the news from eBay, the banning of digital products from its auction process. Well here’s my 2 cents worth…

Suppose you’re having a party. You’re quite wealthy, so you order in the drinks for a grand night. You invite 30 odd friends and tell them to bring some people with them. Now, friends being what they are, they bring their own drinks, and you are well stocked up.

In full swing, things are going great, soon the ‘uninvited’ guests start ringing their ‘friends’ and pretty soon the whole damn house is full of mostly people you don’t know, who haven’t brought any drinks with them, and are making the most of your hospitality.

So what do you do? Hide the drinks and let your friends know where they are.

Enter the Google Slap! Closely followed by complete adsense dry up, massive adwords price hikes and all the freeloaders, and many of the legitimate sites all being hit!

Now move on a year or so, here comes the new Squidoo Slap, same thing. All of a sudden, lenses that were ranking well are hit and knocked down the ratings. To some extent though, Squidoo has recovered its foothold, but the rubbish is being closely filtered.

And now…..eBay Slap!

There are hundreds of top quality business people taking this huge hit on their income, but more importantly for ebay, all the chancers, spammers, ebook devaluers, content spinners and thieves are also being booted out.

It’s not a great state of affairs if you had just started or were on the point of launching your eBay assault! Even less so, if your main income was from the selling of ebooks.

So what does everyone do now? I guess you could use the Classified Ads option and see if that works. You could task out your ebook business to a CD creating company and get them to burn your CDs for you (or do them yourself - ouch!). Did I say eBay slap? more like eBay slap in the face!

So, do you want an alternative to doing this manually? DVD Automator - takes care of the whole thing! You prepare your ebooks, labels etc….then outsource it for a very cheap cost. 

I do know this though, some top business team are even now plotting to take this hugely lucrative business niche and own it…..an auction site specifically for ebooks. Could that be you?