Dot Com Note » Promotion

Holy Shit! Internet Marketer Promises “No More Hype!”

Dotcom Note — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:07:40 +0000

Breaking news, folks. I just received an email from an Internet marketer and he is promising “no more hype!” I received this email just now. He wants me to watch a video. OMG, another video. He then starts defining what is hype. He could have asked me to do a Google search (define: hype), instead, he wanted to take a crack at defining what is hype in the email.

: Image via Wikipedia

He talks about how he set small goal (for example making $500 a month) when he started his internet marketing business. And he was making good money. Now everybody wants to make millions. “How can everybody make millions if they cannot make $500″, he asks. Well, he has a video explaining this conundrum.

He wants me to watch the video. According to everybody (who is everybody? I don’t know), this is the best video he has ever made and he is shocked to hear that. I assume that he was thinking this particular video was crappy like all his earlier ones but he was shocked when everybody had great praise for his latest voodoo.

He goes on (in the email. I have not yet visited the site yet). Now he is starting to understand why everybody has good words for the video. Do you know why? Because his latest creation does not talk about hype and fat. It goes straight to the point.

Now, you know what I should do. Wait 5 minutes. This video must be short and to the point, as he promises in his email. I am heading to his site. I will watch the video and report to you all in five minutes.

… (After 10 seconds)

Fuck it man. This is the same site Income Kick Start that teaches you yearlong email spamming business. This is the same guy who made millions from a hospital bed.

Any way, good luck to you all who aspire to make $150,000 a year from a hospital bed.

Niche Revolution 2.0 Shows You The Light At the End Of The Tunnel

Dotcom Note — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:30:37 +0000

Yes folks, if you have been living in a tunnel and in the dark you know how uncomfortable it is. But don’t worry. Resuce is on its way. Two very generous persons have opened up their vaulted secrets to propel you from the dark side only if you’re able to pay their monthly subscription fee by enrolling in Niche Resvolution 2.0. The revolution is coming baby.

: Image via Wikipedia

Surprisingly, I got the invitation for my rescue plan from a well known Internet Marketer whose name I have decided to withhold. I will call him A. This A guy has been peddling all sorts of courses that range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. The subjects of his email caught my attention. I will paraphrase the subject line and the gist is he is wondering why people who have enrolled in his earlier classes are not making money. No surprise here!

I think this is what happened. A was sad this morning because people who had enrolled in his earlier classes were not making money. So, this morning he decided to fix the problem. The genius in him whispered in his ears, “Do some thing for these tunnel dwellers living in the dark who have made you a millionaire.” He jumped out of the bed and sent to his entire mailing list the solution for a hefty commission from Niche Revolution 2.0. His solution is to buy Niche Revolution 2.0 LR membership.

Nice and well, I thought. I clicked the link and there it was. In front of me a shining graphic for Niche Revolution 2.0. I was relieved beasue there no video. As you all know how much I hate those Internet marketers videos that show fast cars and beach front vacation homes.

It is a 63KB long page filled with nice graphics, testimonials, benefits, and a guarantee for your money back.

What is this Niche Revolution 2.0? It is a PLR (private level rights) membership site. It is difficult and expensive to create useless ebooks that Internet marketers peddle all over the Web. You have to do niche market research, write the book (or ghost written by someone) , get somebody to create the graphics and long and boring sales copy. It will take hard work, time, money and discipline.

Niche Revolution 2.0 has solved that problem. The nine benefits of getting the membership is

Two Useless niche books like “how to reduce your stress” and other bull crap every month.
Two audio books for those dummies who are reluctant to read anything
Two sales letters that are long and boring and nobody reads them
Two mini-site designs complete with headers, footers, graphics, background, and purchase button
260 private level rights articles to spam the search engines
12 AdSense websites each with 20-30 pages for you to get some money from Google by spamming their search index with dubious contents
Content spinner software for you to spin your articles so that people will vomit when they read them
Split testing program if you want towaste your money on pay per click
2 mini email courses to spam others through their emails.

Hey, you know, after reviewing their sales page I think it is a good deal if you want to get into the online business. As my readers know I don’t recommend these Internet marketing craps. But they are giving you to try it out for 30 day for $7 only. After that you can keep your membership for $47 a month or cancel it anytime. They also have a traffic generation mini ebook which is good. They also have some training program to get you off the ground.

Do You Know What Are SEO and SEM?

Dotcom Note — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:59:17 +0000

Do you really understand the difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? Here’s a “simple” explanation of what can be a difficult area to understand. SEO is the process of improving a web sites placement in the free listings of the search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Bing etc. These free listings are also known as “organic” listings.

: Image by hongxing128 via Flickr

The Search Engine Marketing SEM aims to create additional traffic to websites by increasing their visibility on the search engine result pages (SERPs). This is where things can get confusing… because SEM can include tactics to improve your results in the ”organic” listings, as well as other tactics which cost money to implement. To avoid confusion, it’s probably best to leave any discussion of “free or “organic” traffic to come under the realm of SEO.

Search Engine Optimization involves:

On-Site Optimization – making changes to the HTML code on the pages of your web site to:
1. Improve the relevance of certain key words/phrases on each page – both in the content and meta tags of a page, and within the links on your site to that pages.
2. fix any problems which may stop the page being indexed by the search engines – looking at your site navigation structure and wording of links.
Off-Site Optimization – getting back-links from other relevant sites, preferably using key words (or “anchor text”) in the links themselves – e.g., links from directories, through article marketing, or even paid links on relevant sites.

The key to successful, long-term results with SEO is doing things within the guidelines suggested by the major search engines. In other words, using “white-hat” tactics.

Sneaky tactics (”black-hat”) will usually result in penalties being applied by the search engines – i.e., your rank may be reduced, or more likely, your site may be totally removed.

Black hat tactics include (but are not limited to):

1. Link farms (groups of web sites that link to one another in their hundreds)
2. Keyword stuffing (hiding lots of text/keywords on a page to influence search engines) or
3. Page cloaking (showing different pages to search engine and human visitors)

So if anyone suggests doing this to your site… heed the words of Elmer Fudd! “Be very, very careful”

Even though “white-hat” tactics are easy to implement, most people still overlook the basics of SEO. So if you make small changes to your pages, it can result in a huge improvement to your overall position in the organic search engine results.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

And think of SEM or Search Engine Marketing as those marketing practices that COST MONEY to generate the traffic. The include

1. Buying placement in search listings (paid inclusion) where your paid listing appears before the free ones
2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising (i.e. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing) where the advertisements appear alongside normal search results, or on relevant pages on other sites.

Companies offering Search Engine Marketing services usually perform a range of BOTH SEO and SEM activities including:

Optimization projects on client web sites.
Managing paid listings at search engines.
Submitting client sites to directories.
Developing online marketing strategies for clients.

Now, you CAN do all this yourself if you have the time and the knowledge. If you choose to do that, you simply MUST become very familiar with PPC programs before you start. If you don’t, your expenses can be potentially quite large from making newbie mistakes with such basic things as the wrong keyword selections!

If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, and want to use a firm to do Search Engine Marketing for you, it also doesn’t hurt to better understand what happens before engaging someone. That knowledge will help you choose a reputable SEM company over the less desirable ones in this industry!

Auto Surf Traffic Exchange – A Comprehensive Guide

Dotcom Note — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:22:06 +0000

An auto surf traffic exchange is a membership website where the members can promote their own web pages by earning or buying “credits”. Credits can be earned by viewing other members’ web pages – otherwise known as “surfing for credits”.

: Image by Burning Image via Flickr

To surf for credits all you need to do is to log in to the traffic exchange and hit the “Start Surfing” button. You will then be shown a member’s web page and a countdown timer. How long you will have to view the page varies from traffic exchange to traffic exchange and also depends on your membership status, but typically the timer takes 10 seconds to run down. When it hits zero you will have earned a credit and will be able to view a new web page. To do that you usually have to complete a simple “icon matching” task with a click of your mouse.

The more you surf, the more credits you will earn. And with some traffic exchanges you will also stand the chance of winning bonus credits and even cash prizes.

As your credits accumulate you can allocate them to your web pages, which will then be shown to other members of the traffic exchange.

Most traffic exchanges operate a “surf ratio” policy. This simply means that you need to surf more than one page in order to generate enough credit to have your page viewed in the system. Some traffic exchanges offer a 2:1 ratio, 3:1 or a 3:2 ratio, with a 1:1 ratio reserved for members who upgrade.

Another option for traffic exchange members is simply to buy credits. Traffic exchanges often hit you with “One Time Offers” where you can get a lot of credits at discounted rates if you buy straightaway.

As well as page viewing credits, traffic exchanges also offer “banner ad” and “text ad” impressions. Banners and text ads are shown above or below pages that you view when you surf for credits. You can get these impressions at a much cheaper rate than standard page-viewing credits. On the other hand, click-through rates are typically quite low.

Typically, a traffic exchange is free to join and has several “upgrade” options where you must pay a small monthly fee to secure the benefits.

So what are the benefits of upgrading?

It could be all or any of these benefits:

1. You get several hundred credits added to your account each month.

2. Your “surf ratio” improves.

3. The countdown time decreases.

4. You get new members randomly added to your “downline”.

5. You earn more in credits or commission whenever you recruit a new member for the traffic exchange.

Yes, traffic exchanges are also online affiliate businesses and when you join one you are allocated an affiliate number. If you check your member’s area you will see that there is a section devoted to promoting the traffic exchange. You can go there and get banners for your website or blog, and other promotional material such as email letters and so on.

Since you will be given free credits whenever you recruit someone to the traffic exchange, it makes sense to devote some space on your website or blog to promoting the traffic exchange.

You will also be encouraged to promote the traffic exchange on other traffic exchanges.

A lot of people join several traffic exchanges to gain extra exposure for their web pages, and also cross-promote their traffic exchanges in order to generate a lot of credits in the form of commission when people join traffic exchanges through their links.

When you use a traffic exchange to promote your website, here are a few common pitfalls that you will want to avoid:

1. Don’t promote pages that take a long time to download.

2. Don’t try to promote your main product with a long sales page. Keep your pages clean and simple with a basic message and either a sign up form for more info, or a “click here” button that will open up your main promotional page in a new browser window.

3. If you use a video promotion, don’t take more than ten seconds getting to your main message.

4. Make sure you do not run out of bandwidth – it is amazing how many times you see a “bandwidth limit expired” message instead of a member’s page when surfing traffic exchanges.

5. Do NOT promote XYZ traffic exchange on XYZ traffic exchange!! This sounds unbelievable, but a number of clueless people try to get traffic exchange members to join the traffic exchange that they are surfing on and are therefore already members of! Duh!

Traffic exchanges offer website owners a cheap and cheerful method of promoting their website pages and can be very effective if you know how to work them.

How to Make a Million – Buy A Search Engine For $10

Dotcom Note — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 06:00:21 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

This is the most ridiculous blog post I read this week. This guy at AltSearchEngine is looking for an entire search engine built for him for $10. To be fair, he will give you $100,000 if he can sell it for a cool million.

He has put other restrictions also. For example you can only write the engine in C++, a computer programming language. You cannot write it in any other programming language. What he is afraid of if it is written in another language? I don’t know. Ask him.

Of course, he does not mention how much he will pay you if he sells it for half a million dollars. You are out of luck. You have to be content with $10.

He has conjured up a nice business model – pay people ridiculously low wage with a promise to pay in the future if he can make a fortune. If have to give credit to him for coming up with such a brilliant idea. May be somebody in Afghanistan will take up his offer.

While I am at the search engine, I have to mention another ridiculous search engine I happened to discover this week. It is called SearchWinds. This guy pulls out 10 results for each query from Microsoft’s newly launched Bing (promoted as a decision engine) and asks searchers to vote on the results.

As if the the searcher does not have any better thing do. Not only she has to be content with the limited search results brought from a third party search engine, she also has to waste her time voting on the results.

If you are a desperate person living in Afghanistan with C++ skills, take up the $10 project. If you don’t have any better thing to do, go vote on search results.