Internet Marketing

Niche Research & The Internet Time Machine

by Melvin · Jul 3, 2010

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of TheInternetTimeMachine. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you’ve been reading this for a while, you probably have noticed me tell you a lot that in order to be profitable, you need to have a niche. To be more specific, you need to be in a good niche.

I’ve been into this internet marketing niche for 3 years already and even though it isn’t as long as some people have been into, I could easily say that I’ve learned a lot. My first crack of niche selection was when I started a basketball blog. It was a failure for half a year before I was able to turn it around and make it profitable but still it’s not a niche that I could really make a ton of money with and I realized that immediately.

I then moved on to affiliate marketing where I made a ton of money. Now what I’m talking about here is the PPC- cpa affiliate marketing where I would push lets say a quiz type of offer to Adwords or MSN and then either make or lose money. This is where I learned the true value of niche research. In as much as most of us would like to just follow our passion and make money, unfortunately it’s not possible. Doing an extensive research first to find a profitable place to start with is always crucial and overall, niche marketing is a must-step for any kind of business model

Meet NowRelevant & Internet Time Machine

NowRelevant is some sort kind of a search engine that allows you to do extensive searches for your niche. Now this company just launched a software and service called The Internet Time Machine. What is this all about? Short answer is for tactical niche research. What TITM does is collect the hottest keywords for the past 24 hours. These are either for SEO-types of guys where they more rely on organic rankings or for PPC guys like me who want to get the latest trend. Look:

You can run three different types of searches. One is for SEO-targeted, two is the latest trends which mostly focuses on PPC and third is something that I find unique, the core trend analysis. This type of analysis is mostly targeted to what people are looking to buy right now. Whether it is accurate or not, I would leave it up to you when you try it I guess.

Affiliate Marketing Contest with $20,000 at stake

So to spice things up for their launch, these folks decided to run a massive Internet Marketing Contest wherein you can take home, at minimum, $10,000 all yours! Actually there will just be two winners so each of them will take home 10 grands. How sweet is that?

The contest is open to all I believe and the contest is basically all about creativity and planning skills. The winner of the contest will receive $10,000 and the one who referred the winner will equally receive the same amount. Now what’s easier?

Now there’s a video that’s dedicated to it and I don’t want to spoil that. Here’s the video:

What Type Of Blog Post Can Get You the Most Traffic?

by Melvin · Jun 30, 2010

This is the question that I got from a good friend couple of weeks back. I was about to post it last Monday but I got super busy. Anyways back to the topic. So you’re feeling good to write something you think would crush the blogosphere right? You sit down and wrote it, published it and boom, not much traffic. Where do I get wrong, maybe you’re asking.

Anyways first I’d like to answer the question first on what is the best day to post a good article? The answer (I know you’ll be disappointed) is it depends. Mostly and from my experience the best day is either Monday or Tuesday. This is when I mostly post my “pillar articles” as what Yaro Starak calls it. I was also inferred that Friday and Saturday are good days as well but as I’ve said it depends on the behavior of your readers.

So what type of blog post can get the most traffic? Here’s a list based on my own experience as well as some research. No particular order:

Personal posts

I talked about this in my post about personal posts and voyeurism. Again the reason why this type of post gets so much traffic is because people are always interested to know private things about the author and also add the fact that literally everyone can participate in this type of conversation. Once in a while, it’s nice to let our readers know that ‘hey Im human too and I screw up sometimes’ Here are some examples:

“How To” Type of Posts

Arguably and obviously the best way to get it done during high traffic days. “How to” posts are basically like definitive guides wherein you write an article with a minimum or longer than 1000 words. The reason it works well is obvious, it gets people to read more. And if you do this write, you will not only get a lot of traffic, you will also get a lot of links from other blogs in the blogosphere.

I have done a couple of this post in the past few years but this year I’m trying to do it more and more to provide the best value for my readers. Here’s my portfolio of my own how to posts:

Resource Guide

This is another type of post that seems to rake in instant traffic to a blog. Here in this blog, you really will not find that much but I know for most blogs this is usually there main driver of traffic for their sites. The reason this works so well is because people see it as handy, meaning something that they can bookmark or use for future use. And besides people love lists so no wonder why it does well. Ex:

Interviews With Other Bloggers

Actually this goes well specifically for interviewing high profile bloggers in your niche but for this I would like to use bloggers as a general example. This type of post can attract so much traffic mainly because most bloggers, if not all, love talking about themselves on where they’re up to lately! Instead of just you spreading the word, they help you spread the word and if they’re big enough, let alone their massive number of readers do the job for you. Examples:

Contest Posts

Contest posts are the type of posts that can get it done pretty quick. For obvious reasons, contest posts can very much get massive traffic, comments and attention in just a span of an hour. The cons though is that the long term effect and benefit of it is non-existing since people don’t need to read if it’s already done. In short, it’s time-sensitive. Examples:

Controversial Posts

Controversial posts can get an equally massive traction around if done properly. However, never ever do it for the sake of being controversial. Know what I mean? When you expose something or rant on someone, make sure you back up it up with facts, not just speculations. There’s a good chance that the traffic you will get can only do harm for you if you don’t do it correctly.

My favorite guy in doing is a dude named NickyCakes. Nick has been exposing and calling out on people especially if he thinks they suck. The good thing is he always backs it up with facts. But the one thing that you have to keep in mind when doing controversial posts is that you have to be ready for everything, regardless of you’re doing it right or you’re doing it wrong.

Linkbait Posts

Linkbait type of posts kind of like included in each and every type I mentioned above but the reason I had it seperately is because there are some bloggers out there who use compelling headlines alone to get massive traction.

I’m sure you’ve read intriguing titled posts wherein the content doesn’t really fall into the other type of posts I mentioned above. A good example of this are the April fools posts wherein it’s intriguing and that alone get so many people to read their stuffs.

There’s not much return in it because people are gonna either find it nice or they would get pissed off and it could result to a high percentage of visitors just bouncing off.

Conclusion

Those are the different types of posts that can potentially get the most traffic. So far I think I’ve done most of them and this blog post is more from my experience in blogging.

Also when considering on publishing on any of these posts make sure to spend an ample amount of time and work on them carefully. As I’ve said a lot of times already, it could completely go the other way and more likely just harm your blog if not done correctly.

That’s it for now, how about you do you have any types of guest post that works the most for you? or maybe you would want to share your own reason why some of them work so well?

Image credit to: http://hermawanputra.files.wordpress.com

What My Readers Are Saying With the Free Report

by Melvin · Jun 15, 2010

Not so long ago, I gave away my first “freemium” product on blogging which is all about marketing blogs competitively. The book was titled “Blog Marketing for Fame” and its a little report where I tackled several ways to make your blog popular by employing creative and competent strategies.

So like any other marketer/blogger, I immediately seek their opinion about the product and so far so good. 😉

Vic Soriano says:

Your report is indeed very much informative. I am amazed at your writing skills and would love to meet you in person one day. I am much older than you are but I am learning a lot from you. Continue sharing your knowledge and being a blessing to others that God may bless you even more!

SantoshKumar B says:

yeah it was beneficial n i find it nesessary for future work..thankss..

Elie Palima says:

The ebook was Great. I learned alot. thanks! 😉

I like the idea about guest blogging. actually I’ve thought about it a lot for quite sometime now.

Brook says:

Sound strategies but very advanced tactics. I like the way you pointed out guest blogging and creative advertising. I find it all innovative

Now I don’t want to fill this post with testimonials for the poor sake of bragging. This is entirely risk-free, you just sign up with the newsletter, get your copy and then read it. If you don’t like it, fine, you can delete it w/no problem at all. But I’m sure if you pay attention well to the product, you can actually benefit a lot from it.

Well just to clarify, the free eBook is just an icing. By subscribing to the newsletter, the main benefit you are going to get is the insider tips, premium email newsletter and case studies that I don’t usually publish here in this blog. Those are really good stuffs and in fact, I’m even considering on selling those insider messages someday as a paid product.

Lastly, the newsletter is entirely me sending you good stuff, not some random guy or a part of the staff (unlike some big marketers). You can see that I’m even using my personal email so any time you feel like replying or clarifying something from the newsletter, I’d be able to help up asap. 🙂 So make sure you’re in!

Do make sure you’re not missing the newsletter or maybe if you have already downloaded the product, make sure to give your take as well.

OnlineProfits.com Reopened its door, for FREE! (wtf?)

by Melvin · Jun 10, 2010

Internet marketing is a very broad topic. In fact, some school are either having an exclusive course on this subject or integrating it to their marketing course. The internet has been around for quite some time so expect it to have more and more impact to our offline ways.

Anyways, if you can remember Daniel Scocco last year launched his own internet marketing course called OnlineProfits. For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s basically like a university course on the subject of internet marketing. It contains 24 huge modules which would take you from the start up to the advanced modules. Those modules are the main core of the program.

OnlineProfits.com Relaunched, now for FREE

Yes, thats not a typo or whatsoever. I actually had to refresh Daniel’s announcement to make sure I’m reading it right. His main reason is that he wants to have as much people as possible to gain access to his membership program. Whether that’s true or there’s something fishy remains to be seen. 😉

There’s actually a catch though. In order to get lifetime access to the OnlineProfits Membership area, one must sign up either to the hosting plan of his partners for this program. The partners I’m referring to are Hostgator and Hostnine. The deal is that if you sign up to them via Daniel’s affiliate link, you can get the whole membership site for free.

Now I understand that each and everyone of you already have your own hosting but as Daniel said “sparing an extra $10 to get a $325 membership program” is the best deal and if you don’t find it lucrative enough, then the program may not be for you. To be honest, I didn’t mind paying $10 to get this membership site that is this good. Actually if you use the code “onlineprofits” you will get your hosting almost free ($0.01) but then you have to sign under Daniel’s link. So it’s definitely a no-brainer.

OnlineProfit Overview and Comprehensive Review

From a hindsight, Daniel Scocco’s membership program claims to be the most complete internet marketing resource on the web. It contains all strategies that you will need to do to anything you desire, may it be blogging, affiliate marketing, information marketing and etc.

So as I’ve said, the program contains 24 content-packed modules, from the rudimentary history of internet marketing up to advanced tactics like link building and social media.

Each lessons consist of 500-1000 word article specifically targeted to the certain topic. Another good thing for me is that there is this handy “play now” buttons on most lessons. This is also downloadable so just in case you want to listen to the mp3 while on the go or whatever, you can. Btw, my computer resolution wasn’t able to capture all the modules through the print-screen function so to see all the modules and the topics inside them visit onlineprofits site below:

www.onlineprofits.com/

Altogether the lessons are so-packed in meaty content that I don’t have an idea how Daniel was able to produce all of this. It can be a bit overwhelming for you to look at it, but since its presented in modules, its good to take the lessons one at a time.

All Star Faculty Mentors

One unique feature OnlineProfits.com features is their All-star cast faculty. Again I don’t have any idea on how Daniel pulled this people as mentors for his membership program. Some of the lessons inside the program were produced by them depending on their expertise. For instance, Zac Johnson on Affiliate marketing topics while Hamlet on SEO related ones. I never had seen any other membership sites that have experienced people like them on board as mentors

Live Case Studies & Several Add ons

What’s unique with OnlineProfits.com recently is the addition of live case studies. This case study is produced by Daniel himself so this is one exciting way to really understand how the lessons should be applied. It contains exactly the steps as well as the monthly stats that Daniel would be providing as well.

Like any other program, this does also have several addons to inflate the value more. One of which is the tools section. If you’re not new with internet marketing then most of the tools here are probably not new to you but still there are some nice ones like domain name ideas generator and stuffs like that.

One of my favorite place aside from the lessons in there is the Resources Page. In that page one can find all the resource free exclusively for OnlineProfits students. It contains useful stuffs like list of free and paid web directories, list of dofollow blogs, list of dofollow social media networks and etc. I also like the free premium wordpress themes that are given away. These aren’t just your cookie-cutter free template. In fact, the premium ones you see on WooThemes and iThemes are given away here for free w/c is pretty amazing.

Lastly are the library and social clubs. The library is just basically a compilation of all useful (or useless) articles on any niche. It also comes with a MRR rights so just in case you want to resell them, then you can totally do it. The social clubs on the other hand is just simply a club for promotion. Just like a community for retweeting articles, digging, sending it to stumbleupon and etc.

How to Avail the FREE access

The entire program costs $392 before and I’m sure those who joined the program before will be ‘not-so happy’ with the fact that its offered for free now.

Again you have to sign up to Daniel’s partners which are HostGator and HostNine and you have to do under his affiliate link. After signing up all you have to do is email him you’re invoice number and in less than 5 minutes you can immediately access the program.

Verdict & am I recommending it?

Internet Marketing is a big part of online business. Actually for some people, it’s all what online business is all about. I was fortunate enough that I had experience and that I started young. But even with that, I still took the course.

I know most of you here are bloggers and there’s a good chance that since you’re reading my blog, you’re serious with what you’re doing. You hear me preach a lot that blogging alone is not enough, if you don’t have enough knowledge on internet marketing and you’re not a competent marketer, chance is you’ll not succeed.

I rarely promote info products and membership sites here in my blog and even though I consume a lot over the past few years, I made a point that I wouldn’t promote it here if it’s not possible for my readers to avail it or study it. With OnlineProfits, not only you can get it for free. But it also gives you a good and organized lessons on how things work and why they work. I’m sure most of us here learned internet marketing through experience and with this program, it only aims to sharpen up those previous learnings and organize them in such a strategic manner that we can use them immediately.

Be a part now of the highly-touted OnlineProfits membership program for FREE and start learning internet marketing from people who actually do it and not just teach it. Let me know!

How I (Literally) Doubled My Blog Advertising Income

by Melvin · Jun 7, 2010

In one of my featured posts, I discussed about how this blog currently makes money including all the tools and the reasoning behind the monetization tactics I use and how I do it. The post was received so well that I got some questions asked privately asking for some more additional clarifications. I love helping people out so I did walk them through as much as possible but of course time is so limited that I can’t do that to everyone.

In the last post, I did make mention that direct advertising sales is highest source of income for this blog. I know a lot of bloggers have this as their primary monetization model as well but also I realized that a lot of other bloggers are having so much trouble with it.

In this another lengthy post, I’d like to discuss how I literally doubled my advertising income through the past few years. And here we go:

Pre note: This is not, at all, a walk-through on how to do blog advertising. Its mainly a post where I share how I doubled my advertising income. That being said, consider this post as a post targeted to intermediate to advance users who may probably be already making money with blog advertising. Also there’s no traffic tip in this post.

Getting the right tools & technology

When I started, I installed OpenX on this blog primarily because I have been using it on my other blogs created before this one. And OpenX is really an awesome free tool because they have all sorts of features that are available on so many other paid tools.

Not too long, I realized that I have to jump on the OIO Publisher bandwagon. Again in case you don’t know, OIO is an advertising manager platform that handles the advertising for you. This means that you no longer need to manually accept payments, add banners, track expiring date and stuffs because OIO does that all for you.

It costs $47 with an unlimited use so you can pretty much use it on every of your site. It’s beneficial first because, you can manage ads literally with your hands tied back (heheh, a marketer’s usual hype) and second because it pretty much works alongside any other networks and integrates well with almost all payment processor. It does also have tons of features like geo-targeting and stat-tracking.

Note: If you still does not have OIO Publisher on your blog, you are very fortunate because OIO gave me a coupon code that entitles everyone to a $10 discount. By signing up with OIO Publisher under me, you get the unlimited usage license for just $37 which is definitely a huge steal. Click this link now and make sure you enter BLOOM-MELVS to claim your discount.

Alternatively there are other third party networks that you could look as well like BuySellAds and AdvertiseSpace.com, both of which sell your space for you in exchange for a revenue cut (50%). Some people do well with those networks and while other prefer using OIO to keep profit 100%.

Setting Up the right Advertise Now Page

It’s funny but one of the most viewed pages in this blog is the advertise now page which goes to show that potential advertisers really care about the stats. The mistake that I mostly see with other bloggers advertising page is that the statistics are not as comprehensive as it should. Usually they just put paragraphs with no proofs at all or worse they don’t even use any screenshot from Google Analytics and other logs.

You have to understand that advertisers spend soooo much money in their campaigns and as a wise person, what they want is to get a good bang for their buck. Oftentimes they buy space from as much blogs as possible and then track what’s doing well and what’s not. By having a “proper” advertise now page you’re giving them a clear and concise information of what to expect in your blog.

Don’t Direct Link to the Payment Page

Most people who use OIO Publisher or other third party tool does the mistake of linking their Advertise now box directly to the payment. Why is that a problem? It’s a problem because there’s really no value from the advertiser’s side. I mean if you put yourself in their shoes, you don’t want to buy an ad space without knowing the stats first right?

I conducted an test last year and found an interesting result to where a lot of advertisers will buy an ad space when you direct link it to the payment page while a good number of advertisers will buy but then subscribe for future payments when you send them to the advertise page. You see, a good advertising page builds trust and I have some advertisers here who are advertising ever since last year which I thought was pretty cool.

Giving them reasonable pricing

I understand that all bloggers value their traffic as much as they could but sometimes you have to bent a bit to make things work. It’s not really that you’re selling yourself cheap but its more of determining how the marketplaces prices it. Jeremy Schoemaker even told us before that he is selling initially his ad spots for like 2/10 the price.

Another reason is that you want to build relationship with these advertisers. A lot of times when an advertiser talks with me, he usually asks for an initial month discount and most of the times I accept it. I understand that banner ads have very poor clickthroughs and as a blogger, you want to establish that relationship where you can let people know what they can get from you and how they can benefit.

Stalk, look around

The one thing that’s so good (or so bad depending on where your siding) about online business is that it’s very transparent. You can easily stalk on what others are doing, how they are doing it and stuffs.

Just the same with direct ad sales. One of the tricks is to always look on blogs within your niche and observe who are the advertisers advertising. Then contact them up and tell them you’re offering advertising as well. There’s a good chance that they will respond since most of them are just small business owners and chances are they’d negotiate with you to push their campaign through. That’s because they understand it’s all about market penetration and branding. Once a brand gets through these markets, it’s amazing how it spreads like fire without that much effort at all.

Outsource

I have pretty come to a point now where I have already appointed someone to do things for me. For instance, every two week or so a person I hired would go to all webmaster forums, find advertisers looking for related advertising and offer them the space. He also does a listing on big boards highlighting advertising on my blog and the benefits of it.

If you’re going to chase advertisers (there’s no need to when you have a nice blog like me. 😉 ), it’s almost essential to have someone working for you, contacting advertisers, flaunting the benefits and such. That makes the process very automated at the end.

Blog Advertising is STILL hit & miss.

In this post I didn’t hold back anything, I completely shared to you how I grew my blog advertising income. But still at the end of the day, it’s still a hit and miss income opportunity. A lot of people still claim it as an unstable way to make money from blog and that’s true. If you’re into making more, you would want to definitely work more on a more “in-house” and consistent money maker w/c can bring you more money without having the need for tons of traffic.

But of course if you’re like me and you have those wide sidebars and nice spacings, you might as well just leverage your traffic too and benefit from selling these spaces. After all, probably 80% of blogs still make money from blog advertising. And do take note that they are doing it, without really sacrificing their more profitable monetization ways.

MelvinBlog’s Best Blog Marketing Tip Contest

by Melvin · May 31, 2010

Update: This contest has been extended up to July 25. For more info, read here:

It has finally come. Today I am bringing you probably the largest contest in the history of MelvinBlog Dot Com. This contest commemorates the second year of this blog (funny how I thought its 3 years) and as I’ve planned, we’ll celebrate it with a big bang!

I have been preparing this contest since early last month and I want to make sure that my contest is going to be different. Different in the sense that first, it will add a HUGE value to the blogosphere and second, that every blogger, big or small has an equal chance of winning. I’m very proud to have had this contest finally polished.

Introducing the MelvinBlog’s Best Blog Marketing Tip Contest

This contest says it all. The contest will be about blog marketing which is part of what this blog tackles on an everyday basis. The idea of the contest came after I witnessed (and won) the same type of contest held by Market Leverage w/c is entitled Affiliate Marketing Secrets Contest. I’d like to first and foremost thank and introduce to you guys my media partner slash sponsor for this one. It is Fergal Crawley of the Business Advice Forum who will be handling all the promotions and stuffs for this contest. By the way Business Advice Forum is a good community forum giving out free business advice both to online and offline business forums. Its a nice forum so I highly suggest for you to check it out.

And to the sponsors. I can’t believe we were able to get this much prize for the contest. Compared to last year’s contest, we basically doubled the amount of the prizes and Im really thankful for the sponsors for that. As you know me, I just don’t get every Dick and Harry as sponsors. We got reputable and popular internet marketers as well as established companies that backed us up in this contest and again I’m giving them my biggest appreciation for helping out.

Contest Mechanics

So this contest like I’ve said is a creative writing contest. In order to gain an entry, the blogger/contestant has to write a blog post on his blog about his best blog marketing tip. That certain blog post accounts for 1 entry. Each blogger can submit up to 5 entries all throughout the duration of the contest. There is no rule aside from that the post has to be original, must never have been copied somewhere.

Each entry has to link back to this contest post so I can track all the entries. The link bank can either be in the beginning or at the end of the post. To be uniform with everyone, you can just copy and paste this line:

This post is an entry to MelvinBlog’s Best Blog Marketing Tip contest where there are $2000 worth of prizes at stake.

There will be 3 winners overall and they are gonna get determined by two factors: quality of posts, and popularity. In terms of quality, I have hired 4 judges who are gonna gracefully judge all the entries. I really like to disclose their names but I was told its better not to. Popularity on the other hand, is just about the no.of retweets and comments. So to increase your entries’ popularity, you have to at least give maximum exposure to it (letting it in front for more days means better). Lastly, the criteria is 70 to 30, the higher one goes for quality while the latter is for the popularity.

The popularity factor which is 30% hinges on few metrics which include the no.of retweets of that certain post and amount of comments. I’d like to point out that the popularity criteria is just 30% because I want to give a fair chance of winning especially to those smaller bloggers.

Just for this mechanics alone, I have created a sample entry located of course on my personal blog. (this is just a sample). You can use it as a reference.

Prizes

A little side note: Like in the previous year’s contest, I don’t want to boast just the value of the prizes based on its financial worth. I’m sure there are a lot of eBooks out there thrown for $1000 and by giving 5 copies, it would already be $5000 worth of prizes in a contest, lols. Fortunately, this is not. Like last year, I tried to gather the best prizes from the best people in this space. So just by looking on who they are you will know what I mean. 😉

1st Place – Total at stake = $877

6 months free for the standard package of CrazyEgg valued at $19 a month – $114 value
1 character design courtesy of LogoNerds – $97 value
1 multi-use package of Themewars premium theme – $70 value
WordPress SEO service courtesy of ShoutMeLoud.com – $250 value
1 First Class Package of Ultimate Blogging Theme 3.0 – $147 value
1 license of OIO Publisher – $47 value
$20 cash from FamousBloggers.com – $20
6 months free Web hosting courtesy of MelvinBlog.com – $45 value
1 copy of Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco – $17 value
Premium Interview featured here in MelvinBlog.com – $70 value

2nd Place – Total at stake = $504

$50 cash and one year PRO membership for MyBlogGuest – $170 value
1 copy of Blogussion Thesis theme package – $46 value
1 character design courtesy of LogoNerds – $97 value
1 license of OIO Publisher – $47 value
1 copy of Crowbar Content courtesy of Buzz Marketing guru Dean Hunt – $97
1 copy of Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco – $17 value
$15 cash from BlogTactic
1 copy of 70 Posting Ideas courtesy of Liane – $15

3rd Place – $302

1 copy of Gab Fire Theme – $59 value
1 year membership for ElegantThemes -$19
$15 cash, one advertising space and one copy of Facebook ad coupon eBook valued at $15 courtesy of Smartbloggerz.com – $54 total value
1 copy of Easy Blog Traffic worth $59, Insider SEO Revealed at $39 and Twitter Marketing Power worth $57 courtesy of WebTrafficROI.com
1 copy of Thirtyday blog eBook by Jimvesting – $15 value
1 copy of 70 Posting Ideas courtesy of Liane – $15

Retweet Contest

Due to some demands and also taking this advice from some of my blogger friends’, I would be running a totally separate contest on Twitter which is all about marketing this contest through Twitter. So in order to enter the retweet contest all you have to do is retweet this post using the tweetmeme button above or copying this text and pasting it directly to your twitter:

“RT @melvinblog, Best Blog Marketing Contest, win over $2000+ in REAL prizes http://bit.ly/bestblogcontest pls RT “

You can modify the text or do it your own way, just make sure you append the @melvinblog reply so I can easily track all the entries. This small contest would run the same as the main contest and would end after one and a half months so do keep on tweeting. At the end of the duration, 10 lucky entries will be drawn and will receive each of the following:

1 copy of Blogussion Thesis theme package – $46 value
1 copy of Gab Fire Theme – $59 value
1 multi-use package of Themewars premium theme – $70 value
3 copy of Killer Domains eBook by Daniel Scocco – $51 value
1 copy of Social Media Marketing Book & Youtube Made Simple Video Series courtesy of WebTrafficROI
3 copy of Thirtyday blog eBook by Jimvesting – $60 value

Some Secret Contests

To add another layer of excitement (or confusion, whichever you prefer), I’d like to include some other contests that may go live along the way. Not really secret, but more of short contests within the main contests, that can make this whole thing more exciting and the best is that it gives more opportunity for the participants to win.

So lets say, you don’t have a tip. Still you can join the retweet contest and some secret contests that I am going to throw as well. So what’s the best way not to miss these other exciting hidden contests? Well make sure you’re subscribed to the blog, so you don’t miss anything out. 😉

Duration & Other Rules

The contest would run for one a half months and it will end on July 15th 12 am ET. After that date, no more entries will get accepted so make sure you start working on your entries right now. Also please give us 5-7 days max to compute all the stats and announce the winners (patience is virtue my friend).

Questions, Clarifications, Suggestions?

No contest is perfect, most are faulty especially at the start. If you have anything to ask, clarify, suggest or criticize, feel free to do so in the comment form. Remember that good contests are good not mainly because of the prizes, but also with the participation from the audience like you. 😉

I will reserve this space for other rules which I dont have at the moment. But Im sure this comment box will get populated as soon as possible. And that would only be probable, if you start asking questions now. 😉

Note: An update and clarification on contest was published here. It also contains the official FAQ

Your Blog Is Terrible At Converting…

by Melvin · May 30, 2010

In this guest post, Welly Mulia talks about conversion using the blog as a powerful medium

Even if you have a blog with an opt-in form to collect visitors’ email, you still need to create a separate squeeze page that resides on its own if you’re really serious about building your list.

Before I get into the why, let me just very briefly explain what a squeeze page is (for the sake of those who don’t know what that means).

A squeeze page is basically a simple web page that is purposely created and set up to build a list (group of people with similar interests). People who land on your site are called visitors. The ONE and ONLY purpose of a squeeze page is to convert these visitors into leads, and the way to do that is to convince them to enter their email on the opt-in form on your squeeze page.

The Why

Now let’s see why you should create a dedicated squeeze page instead of relying on your blog’s opt-in form. There is only ONE reason, and that is because the conversion on your squeeze page is going to be much higher than your blog. This means for the same number of visitors, you are going to acquire more leads from a squeeze page.

Why is this so?

Because your blog has A LOT of distractions:

– Links (both internal and external) within posts that take the visitor away to other places

– Comments left by commentators also have links that are clickable to their websites

– Ads and links on your sidebar

Bottom line: Your visitors have a lot of options when they are on your blog. They can click an ad; click an outgoing link left by a commentator, etc. The more options (other than just subscribing to your list) you give to people, the less focus they become. The less focus they become, the less likely they are going to join your list.

Having a squeeze page, though, is useless if you don’t monetize your list. You’ve worked hard to build that list, make sure you reward yourself by monetizing it. Of course, I’m not advocating you to simply sell all the time to your list. Doing this will definitely wear out your list in no time and your subscribers will unsubscribe faster than you can find new ones. You want to mix in education and entertainment with your sales pitches.

I’ve come across marketers who are on both extreme ends – one group sells too much, and the other sells too little. You want to maintain a balance between education and selling, as well as add in entertainment (your personal stories and how they relate to what you offer) to your messages.

List Monetization

Let me give you some tips on how to monetize your list:

– The freebie that you give away to get people into your list must be VERY RELATED to the product (your own or affiliate) you want to sell

– Don’t give everything away in your freebie. Yes of course your freebie must be high quality that delivers value. But don’t give everything away. Give away
USEFUL but INCOMPLETE information. If you give away the whole pie, why should they buy your product?

– Your freebie must NATURALLY LEAD to your product. For example, if your freebie is about how to build an email list, a good sales offer would be to sell an autoresponder service (either your own or affiliate service). Or you could also teach them the GENERAL concept of email list building, but never really reveal the step-by-step action they need to take to successfully build a list. If they want the complete, step-by-step guide, they have to buy your product.

Squeeze Page Tips (to help increase conversion)

Before I end this article, I’d like to give you some additional tips when it comes to creating your squeeze page:

– It’s a good idea to have your squeeze page professionally designed (but not too fancy) so that you portray a professional image to your visitors that you are serious in whatever you’re doing. Contrary to what you’ve heard, people DO judge a book by its cover, especially when you are a stranger to them.

– Make sure your opt-in form is above the fold. This means visitors landing on your squeeze page can immediately see it without having to scroll down the screen.

– Use a BIG opt-in form and a BIG subscribe button so that they are eye-catching and easily noticeable.

– Use the word “FREE” and “INSTANT” on your subscribe button, opt-in form, in your headline, as well as a few times throughout the copy on your squeeze page. Do not overdo it though. People like free stuff because of their greedy human nature, and they also love when they can get it instantly without having to wait. After all, this is an instant society.

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