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Archive

Make The Most Of Google’s Tools & Services

It wouldn’t seem right not to mention the World Dominator in this final edition of “Update”! Despite its efforts to reach into every corner of our lives, I, personally, am fascinated by and have benefited a lot from the stuff that Google makes freely available.

For example, I check my Google Analytics stats almost daily. This gives me a vast amount of info about what’s happening on my many websites:

https://www.google.com/analytics/

I also check Google’s Webmaster Tools area fairly regularly. There’s a lot of good advice there:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

There’s also “Website Optimizer”, a way of improving your web sales pages through “split testing”:

http://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/

And then there are Google’s taken-over services, such as YouTube, Feedburner, Blogger and so on. You can get more services here:

http://www.google.com/options/

.. and explore what Google is currently experimenting with here:

http://www.googlelabs.com/

Of course, to access most of these services, you need a Google account - and this is available only if you have a Google email account - Gmail:

http://mail.google.com/mail/

I knew that someone must have compiled a li.st of Google’s services and, sure enough, a search turned up this page with over 100 Google services listed:

http://www.IanSays.com/GoogleServices

Happy Gooooogling!

How To Easily Build A Toolbar Or An “App”

You’re going to have fun playing with this one! “Conduit” is a free online service which lets you quickly and easily build a browser toolbar or a web-based application.

These can be great ways for your visitors, as the Conduit site says “take away a bit of your website”. I can see this also as an excellent way to build viral applications, which can travel around the planet, continually promoting your site.

There’s also a Conduit Marketplace, where you can share your stuff with thousands of webmasters. And there are thousands of apps in many different categories - including games. I’m going to have a play around with some of this stuff. It looks like a lot of fun :-)

http://www.conduit.com

The Future Of My “Private PLR Club”?

I’ll repeat what I said a couple of weeks ago: I will continue to operate my Private PLR Club. But I’m going to make some changes in the coming months:

  • I will be raising the monthly membership fee for new Members. Existing Members will continue to pay the current low monthly fee.
  • I will be setting up an Affiliate Scheme for Members, once I’ve found the right software. I want Members to share some of the success of the Club and to be rewarded for introducing new Members.
  • I will be able to spend more time on training Members. This has already been an important aspect of Club Membership and I want to extend it.
  • I will continue to find and add new high-quality content to the Members Area, maybe introducing some additional product categories.

Joining my Club is going to be the only way that you will continue to get my help and advice about internet marketing. It’s a service that my Members really appreciate.

The Seven Sins Of Affiliate Marketing

 

What are they? Well, here’s a few of them:

Sin #1: Promoting too many products
Sin #2: Falling in love with the product
Sin #4: Putting all your eggs in Google’s basket
Sin #5: Not leveraging on free social traffic

You can see the other three, with some detailed advice on each one in the report by Gobala Krishnan:

http://www.IanSays.com/7AffiliateSins

This link goes right to the PDF, so you can download it and save it to disk. Gobala didn’t say anything in his email about not handing out this link, so I guess it’s OK for me to give it to you. The report is, incidentally, in advance of the launch of a new service which Gobala is announcing soon.

I don’t know much about the service, but the report makes for interesting reading.

Thumbs Up #2: Info Product Killer 2010

 

You might, just might, get this before the price hike at 3 pm EST today, Friday! Sorry I couldn’t let you know earlier about this, but even at the increased price, this is great value.

OK, “Info Product Killer 2010″ (”IPK”) is all about affiliate marketing - but with a difference. The technique, which is better suited to tangible goods, such as electronics, is simple in concept. You set up a mini-site for the product you’re endorsing, but you aim to get to this site only people who are on the point of buying this product!

It’s a brilliant concept, again, completely new to me, and it’s certainly one which I will be using in my retirement.

In addition to this technique, there’s some extremely valuable training on “on-page search engine optimisation”. I’ve been doing this for years - but perhaps not as well as I should have been. Although the SEO training is focused on the affiliate marketing technique at the heart of IPK, you can use these techniques on any website.

One thing which makes IPK really stand out, in my opinion, is the fact that you get to see real live websites that are actually using these techniques. Quite often, the originators of such “systems” don’t disclose their own websites. But Craig Kaye (who lives about 40 miles from me!) lets his IPK members see some real, practical website examples. And you can find them easily on Google - they’re very well ranked.

The videos are of good quality and, important to me, there are some excellent PDFs backing up the video content.

As I said, you might squeeze in under the price hike if you are quick. But IPK is well worth it even at the higher price.

http://www.IanSays.com/IUse/IPK

Oh, there are a few “upsells” to go through before you get access to the Members Area. They were aimed at people who struggle to build web pages, so I didn’t go for them. But you might find them valuable.

A Freebie With A Difference!

Would you like to see what a “3D Talking eBook” looks like?

Would you like the Master Resale / Master Give-away Rights to such a book?

Better still, would you like the whole lot completely free?

Your wishes are granted! Go and sign up here to get the 3D Talking eBook “How To Make Mon.ey With Resell Rights”:

http://www.IanSays.com/3DTalkingeBook

It’s a neat product, if a bit gimmicky. And it’s a big 88 Mb download. The page you’ll see is exactly the same squeeze page you’ll get in the download, and a sales page is also included if you want to sell it. On the home page of the site, it’s selling for 37 bucks.

I like the material inside the eBook, but I had to chuckle at one thing, though.. on the eCover provided, the guy has spelt “Resell” with three “Ls” :-) But you could easily correct it with your favourite image editor!

Thumbs Up #1: Underground Traffic Blueprints

Your inbox has probably been deluged with emails endorsing “Underground Traffic Blueprints” (”UTB”). This made me suspicious. Normally, when there’s such a feeding frenzy amongst internet marketers, it often means that the product either has massive “upsells” behind the cover price, or some sort of “continuity” (recurring fees) or both.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that UTB has neither. It’s just one very reasonable price to get access to some really powerful video training, all devoted to the holy grail of IMers - getting more people to visit your websites.

In the main section, there’s over 6 hours of video training. The emphasis is on using Google Adwords PPC marketing - but with a difference! I know from personal experience that it’s only too easy to throw money away with AdWords. Now I haven’t had time to watch all the videos yet, but from what I’ve seen already, there are techniques, completely new to me, that is going to help me to get AdWords traffic a lot cheaper than I’ve been able to so far. And there are resources which I’ve not heard of before.

The bonus video section (only available until July 20th) is all about a traffic source which I’ve been thinking of using, but have not been certain how to avoid screwing things up! I’m certainly glad that I have access to these videos.

The videos are all very high quality, and my only criticism is that there are no downloadable transcripts of the videos.

But I suppose, that at the low price that’s being charged, that would be too much to ask.

So, a “thumbs up” from me for UTB. But if you’re going to get these videos, do so before 20th July (next Tuesday) to make sure that you also get the bonus videos. Oh, and there might also be a price hike next Tuesday:

http://www.IanSays.com/IUse/UTB

Got A Computer Problem? Here’s Where To Go

C’mon, everybody hits a computer brick wall sometimes, don’t they? I know that I do!

“Geeks To Go” is a great site to find solutions to your computer problems. It’s filled with news, expert tips and - most importantly - a whole host of forums, dealing with individual operating systems, applications, web development and so on.

You need to sign up to participate or to ask questions, but it’s just like registering for any forum

Here’s where you “find a geek”:

http://www.IanSays.com/FindAGeek

Follow Your Favourite Topics

 

Want to keep up to date with all the news on your favourite topics? I’ve found a great website which lets you do just that. Just enter a keyword, and the site pulls in news on that topic from a whole range of sources. These sources include Twitter (of course!), Bing News, Google Blog Search, Digg, YouTube and others.

Each source is in its own panel, and you can move the panels around on the page to suit your preferences - or delete individual sources.

Then just bookmark the page you’ve created - and you’ve got a unique, customised source of info on your topic, updated regularly. It’s completely free, of course :-) Here’s where to go:

http://www.IanSays.com/NicheNewsBuilder

A Good Alternative To Aweber And GetResponse

 

My autoresponder mailing system is the most valuable of my internet marketing tools. I’m a little unusual in that I chose, many years ago, to use a mailing system on my own web server - “Autoresponse Plus”. It’s very good, but if I were starting afresh, I’d use a third-party hosted system because it’s less hassle.

For years, I’ve endorsed Aweber, the “Rolls Royce” of mailing systems. Just about all the top internet marketers use Aweber.

But it is pricey. You start off paying 19 bucks a month - and that covers just 500 subscribers. If you go above that, you pay an extra 10 bucks per month for up to 2,500 subscribers. And so it goes on up. If you have 10k subscribers, your monthly Aweber bill would be over 100 bucks per month!

GetResponse.com, one of the other big providers, is cheaper, but you would still pay 18 bucks for up to 500 subscribers, 28 bucks for up to 2,500 subscribers and 65 bucks for up to 10,000 subscribers.

It was for price reasons that, a few months ago, I started to look at a smaller provider, “Wizard”. I had a test account, so I was able to look at all the features. And I’m impressed.

It doesn’t take a lot to put up any old mailing system. But the guys at Wizard have put a lot of effort, not just into the techie side of things - important though that is.

They have gone to a lot of trouble to ensure a very high deliverability of emails sent through their system. They’ve had to jump through a lot of hoops with service providers such as AOL, MSN, Yahoo and so on. They are now claiming a deliverability rate of 90%. And believe me, that is very good

So what are Wizard’s monthly fees? Less than 12 bucks a month for up to 10,000 subscribers! If you haven’t yet started to use a mailing system, or if you are fed up with the high rates charged by the Big Boys, Wizard has got to be worth considering. Get a lot more info from here.

http://www.IanSays.com/ILike/TheWizard