This Mistake Costed Me Thousands of Dollars
Posted by Sergey Lorens in Internet Marketing on August 10th, 2009
During my internet marketing career I have made many mistakes. The one I will be talking about in this post however, has ended up costing me thousands of dollars. Yes, just like many other internet marketers, I neglected email marketing. I did not collect email addresses from my visitors and by the time I realized that I should give it a try, I already had over fifteen websites. When I added autoresponder opt-in forms to each of these websites, I managed to increase my income by approximately by 20%. So why is email marketing so effective?
In real businesses, over than 60% of all income is made up by clients the business enjoys a close relationship with and has been working with for a long period. This partnership has forged serious relationships between them and this is the reason is why they treat you with respect and trust. Ultimately, offline and online businesses are very similar. When people subscribe to your list, you can build a relationship with them. This means that in the long term, you may be able to get multiple sales from people on your list. People will begin to trust your views and ideas, and with a good relationship they are more likely to buy products you promote or recommend, again and again.
When you collect the email addresses of your visitors, you can avail of so many new opportunities. Some people may not buy the product you are promoting at the time immediately if they see it on your website for example, or it may take them some time to decide whether they need it or not. If they subscribe to your list and you send them an email with information or your views about the product, the chances that they will buy it in this situation is large. When you ignore email marketing, you are simply losing all these leads.
What I really like about email marketing is that when your email follow up sequences are created, they will generate money almost on autopilot. Your subscribers will get your follow up emails automatically and the only thing you will need to do is to send them an occasional broadcast email. Personally, I use this “autopilot system” with all my websites that are not related to internet marketing, however, with internet marketing lists I do my best to provide them with quality content as well as regular updates.
Some internet marketers estimate that each person from their list earns them around $1 per year. But do you know, these estimates are very modest. From my experience, in some niches that are not even related to internet marketing, each subscriber can earn you up to $3 per year. So what is the verdict? Well, many internet marketers told me that the money is in the lists when I first started out in this business. I did not listen to them. Now, I am one of these people who recommend you start working on your lists. It does not matter whether you promote dog training eBooks or World of Warcraft guides – it’s time to start building that list!
There are many autoresponders available on the internet today. Personally I used GetResponse when I was just starting out but now I use Aweber and also recommend that you to give it a try.
How I made $0 Using Twitter and 11k Followers?
Posted by Sergey Lorens in Internet Marketing on June 30th, 2009
Most affiliate marketers would have heard of the new product called “Twitter Traffic Machine” by now. Clickbank’s stats have it down as having the highest gravity of all their products at the moment, so I decided to buy the product and discovered that the concept behind it was a very intriguing one. In a nutshell “Twitter Traffic Machine” shows people how to utilize Twitter to secure affiliate sales.
For the uninitiated, Twitter is a totally free micro-blogging and social networking service that lets users keep up to date with each other’s updates, or tweets as they are known in the community. These tweets are basically short posts of up to 140 characters in length which are shown on the users profile page and at the same time are sent out to other members of the community who have subscribed to receive the individuals tweets – or followers of the person. To cut a long story short, the more followers you may have for your Twitter account, the more potential visitors a site of yours could receive if you send out a tweet that contained your URL or affiliate link embedded. The nagging question for me though, was the following: is this method really as effective as others are making it out to be? I came to a decision to give it a try and the following is a case study of the results I achieved.
The first thing I did was create three Twitter accounts and started to try and gain followers. Initially, people were reluctant to become followers of myself, but I soon found out that the more followers you gain, the more will start joining you. You see, having followers is rather like having “authority” – the more you have, the more others will respect you and be inclined to join your followers list. Getting to a thousand followers was the hard part, but once I got to that milestone, within a month I had 7000 to my main account. The other two accounts (don’t forget I opened three initially) had about two thousand followers each so altogether I had almost 11,000 followers.
But were my efforts of attracting all these followers worth the trouble? Did I manage to make any affiliate sales? The answer is no. Through various tweets I sent to the followers had affiliate links and landing page links, they didn’t convert at all. Out of 11,000 followers, only an amazing 0.003% clicked on a link – yes, only 33 people out of 11,000 clicked a link! You may be saying that there had to have been a reason for this; maybe the traffic wasn’t targeted enough? In fact, all my followers were people that were somehow interested in affiliate marketing and as so had “affiliate marketing” as one of their interests. Well, the reasons for not making any affiliate sales, in my opinion, is spam. Have a look at what I mean:
You can see that so many individuals are trying to sell one product or another that if you post a tweet with any affiliate links embedded, it disappears in a flood of other ads.
The verdict? Well, I think it’s clear. From my point of view, twitter is worthless when it comes to affiliate marketing. When Twitter first started and there weren’t many affiliate marketers there, it may have been possible to make some money from it, but now it is not so simple. You have to note though, that I’m talking about the Twitter platform, not the Twitter Traffic Machine, which I discovered to be quite good. It did deliver what it promised on the sales page and I got lots and lots of subscribers in a relatively short span of time by utilizing the methods described.
If you have been able to make an affiliate sale using Twitter, please post a comment below to let us know the details. How many people followed you? How many clicks did you get per tweet? What niche were you promoting? Etc, etc.
Just a Quick Update
Posted by Sergey Lorens in Internet Marketing, SEO on June 27th, 2009
Yesterday I received an email from Mitchell Collins. He read my posts about article marketing, search engine optimization and found them very interesting, however he didn’t know how to use this information. I realized that there are many people like Mitchell subscribed to my list. That is the reason why I decided to write a report about affiliate marketing for all beginners. In the report you will learn what is affiliate marketing and how to get started with it.
Of course, if you are already making money online as an affiliate, you won’t find anything new there, however, if you are looking for ways to make money online, you will find the report useful. If you have not subscribed to my list yet, fill in the form to receive the report.
Being Indexed Without Backlinks – Truth or Fiction?
Posted by Sergey Lorens in SEO on June 15th, 2009
Most SEO optimizers are under the impression that the indexing of their sites is only possible after having a few links point back to the website they want to get indexed. Only those clickable url’s, which look like
<a href=”www.website.com”>anchor text</a>
are considered to be valuable from an SEO point of view. Therefore, un-clickable url’s in the body of any content text is not considered a backlink and does not have any value. But is this true?
This year I am graduating from the university. That is why one of my classmates and I have been working on our diplomas for quite a long time. The theme of my diploma was an online shop and the theme of my friends work was a website connected with stock trading. A month ago we finally concluded the work necessary for our diplomas and both our websites were launched within a couple of days of each other.
We both used Godaddy to buy domain names and Hostgator to host the sites. Of course, only a small number of people have seen our websites. I didn’t promote my website because the sole aim of it at the time was to show my programming skills to the professors, not to show my marketing skills. Consequently, there were no backlinks pointing to the website. My classmate was in the same situation.
A few days ago we successfully demonstrated our projects to a committee and they approved it. I then decided to check whether my website had been indexed or not. To my surprise, ALL the pages on my website were indexed. Moreover, my classmate’s website had also been indexed. After a quick search I found that there was only one place online where our websites had been mentioned and that was on domain-daily.com. This website automatically lists all domains that are registered on a particular date. Our websites were listed there too, but you can only find a list of unlikable text url’s on the website.
Judging by these results I can only surmise that Google considers these links as positive votes for your website. Today I had a discussion with some of my friends who happen to be involved in search engine optimization and internet marketing. They had a very interesting theory. When testing my website, I used Firefox, Internet Explorer and the recent Google browser “Chrome” to see whether everything was functioning properly. They think that Google Chrome might have been sharing some information about the websites you visit with Google. I found this theory very interesting, however, presently it is almost impossible to prove or disapprove otherwise. I shall continue to look into this and will keep you informed.
Blog Commenting – A Very Powerful Link Building Method
Posted by Sergey Lorens in SEO on May 23rd, 2009
As of today, the new affiliate website I was telling you about a few weeks ago was finally indexed by Google. If you remember, the reason Google didn’t index earlier was because it received over one thousand links pointing to it in a very short period of time. Google considered that as a spam tactic. It eventually took me nearly two months to rectify the issue and in this post I will explain exactly what I did to get the website indexed.
First of all, I did away with all of the blog posts that were showing on every page of the blog due to the “recent comment” widget. This widget shows approximately five recent comments, so what I did was add five comments myself, without any links pointing to my website and hence the comment that had my website link was automatically pushed off the list. At the time I implemented this measure my website had over 1300 backlinks from just these blogs, according to Yahoo site explorer.
After this, I added two new content pages to the website and bookmarked them to get them indexed. As I expected, they were indexed in Yahoo and MSN but Google was still ignoring my website. At that time my website statistics in Yahoo site explorer looked like this:
Over 1300 backlinks and 3 web pages indexed in Yahoo. As you can see, the amount of backlinks continued to grow as it would obviously take some time for the search engine spiders to crawl the thousands of blog pages and eventually “see” that they don’t link to my website anymore. Over the next few weeks the number of backlinks decreased dramatically.
Finally, I have sent a request to Google via their webmaster tool and requested my website be reconsidered for indexing. I explained to them what had happened and what exactly I did to solve the problem. Several weeks passed, until finally this morning I launched my position checking tool and was very pleased to see that the website has indeed been indexed in Google for almost all my main keywords:
In conclusion I would like to add that I am unsure whether my website was indexed because of my request to Google for reconsideration, or because the number of backlinks which caused the original problem had decreased steadily over the last few weeks. Anyway, I am delighted the website is indexed and I can say with total confidence that posting blog comments for links building is a very powerful method. However, if not done properly, it can cause lots of problems for your website, as you well know from my experience.
By the way, you can find a huge “dofollow” blog archive by following the link: dofollow blogs
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Watch Out! Tired Internet Marketers!
Posted by Sergey Lorens in SEO on May 10th, 2009
I just wanted to share some news with you all, something that has nothing to do with affiliate marketing or search engine optimization.
Early this morning, I was driving to a meeting. I was so tired and exhausted from working late the night before that I mistakenly forgot to look in the rear-view mirrors before switching lanes. The result of my actions can be seen in the images above.
Thank God I have car insurance which will enable me to repair these ugly scratches.
The verdict: Always drink coffee in the morning and do not work late at night when you have an early morning meeting!
Recent Comments WordPress Widget – Friend or Foe?
Posted by Sergey Lorens in SEO on May 6th, 2009
All those SEO optimizers who leave comments at dofollow blogs to get quality backlinks may have already faced some problems with the “recent comments” widget. As you (should) already know, what this widget does is show excerpts from recent comments posted for a blog post on the homepage. There are many benefits for blog owners to have the latest comments on their blogs displayed on their homepage and if they include a “Recent Comments” section in their sidebar, visitors would be able to immediately read comments and hopefully be impressed enough to either return to the blog at some point in the future, or click on them to read the posts.
However, insofar as SEO optimization is concerned, this widget has both positive and negative aspects. Let me tell you about what happened to one of my websites this year because of this widget. Normally when I create a new website, I get a few links from social bookmarking or web 2.0 websites and add links to the new website from my other related websites. In most cases, it is enough to get the site indexed in search engines within a few days. If I start getting too many backlinks in a relatively short period of time, Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines may consider this as dubious and unnatural. This is the reason I try to obtain the most relevant and reputable backlinks first. Sometimes, if the new website has not been indexed within a week after getting backlinks from social bookmarking websites and my other websites, I start posting a couple of comments with links to my website per day.
A few weeks ago, I created a new website; we’ll just call it website X for the time being. As per normal, I bookmarked it, added it to web 2.0 websites and added a few links pointing to website X from my other websites. However, I was very surprised when it wasn’t indexed in Google after four days. I decided not to wait anymore to get more backlinks, so, I started posting comments on blogs relevant to my niche. Ten days passed and the website had still not been indexed. I decided to find out why and checked with Yahoo Explorer. Believe it or not, this is what I saw:
600 links in only ten days! As you have probably guessed, those reputable blogs that accepted my comments with links to my website had hundreds of indexed pages. Because of the “recent comment” widget that showed the latest comment on each blog page, my links where placed on every blog page. This was the reason why Google thought I was using black hat techniques while growing my initial links too fast and therefore decided not to index the site.
So what do I conclude? Well, if your website is new, try not to add comments to blogs that have a “recent comments” widget as it will do nothing but harm. However, if your blog has already been indexed and already has quite a few backlinks from other websites, you can do it without any worries. At the moment I am trying to delete my comments with backlinks to website X from these blogs. This plugin will add a list of the most recent comments posted to your blog and they are sorted in descending order with the newest at the top. That is why after posting a new comment it appears at the top of the list. What I do in this case is simply post 3-5 comments without any links and hope that blog owners accept them.
Up until now, website x is still not indexed. I will let you know when it has been indexed and how high it will rank.
Article Spinning As a Very Effective Link Building Method – Part 2
Posted by Sergey Lorens in Internet Marketing, SEO on February 26th, 2009
I started this case study just over three months ago in an attempt to prove that article spinning can be a very effective link building method, one that doesn’t only increase your website positions in the search engine results (SERP’s), but can also bring a fair amount of traffic from article directories as well. If you recall, the initial results of the case study was quite successful so now, in the second part of the case study, I will show you the website’s results that I have achieved so far and how much money it has subsequently generated. To begin with, I will show you the website’s traffic graphic from my Google analytics account.
As you can see, the website gets around 50 unique visitors per day and more than 1200 per month. 81%of the visitors came via the search engines and 13% came from referring sites. In my case, these referring sites are the various article directories where my spun articles were posted. At the moment the website is at the fifth position in Google’s results for the main keyword. Positions in Yahoo are lower; it is not even in the top ten for the keyword the website is optimized for.
The website has generated $2,627 so far which works out at about $850 per month just from one single affiliate website which took me only two hours to set up and about two hours to write quality seed articles for my article spinner. As mentioned in the previous part of this case study, I actually hired a person who manually submitted the spun articles to various article directories, so the total amount of money invested in this website has been $80 ($50 for submitting my articles and $30 for 3 months hosting) and the total amount of time invested is a paltry 4 hours!
I am absolutely delighted with the results I achieved from the website. If you can make $850 per month on autopilot from one single website, why not create ten or even more websites? Moreover, you do not even have to have a website to promote it using spun articles; you can use squidoo lenses or even blogger blogs instead. You can even avoid paying $50 for submitting articles if you have the time and the patience to do them on your own.
I think that this will be the last part of this case study. It is enough proof that article spinning is undoubtedly a very effective and profitable link building method which you should include in your “to do” list. At the moment I am writing some very useful affiliate marketing tutorials which will be sent to my subscribers in the very near future.
I really hope you found this case study useful. Don’t forget to subscribe to my list to get more information on affiliate marketing and search engine optimization.
Who Said That By Changing A Website IP Address And Template You Will Decrease Your SERP Positions?
Posted by Sergey Lorens in SEO on February 7th, 2009
I often visit many reputable search engine optimization forums on my internet travels. And on these travels I see more and more threads where people state that changing your website IP address or template will affect your search engine positions. While some say that this will seriously harm your positions, others claim that nothing serious will happen. But who is right? I decided to do a small case study to check it out myself so I could be absolutely sure, and in this post you will see the results of this case study.
I have a small affiliate website that has been optimized for a moderately competitive keyword, which was created over six months ago. To be totally honest with you, the website is not a profitable one. It still generates a few sales every now and again, however, the money I do get from it is not substantial at all. That’s why I decided to use this site for my case study. Basically, even if the website did lose all of its search engine positions, it wouldn’t hurt my budget at all.
The first thing I did was copy all the content from this website including images, alt tags, etc. I also wrote down the names of all the website pages. I then registered a new hosting account with a new provider, transferred my website domain name there and changed the website template. This basically meant that I had a website with a new IP address and a new template.
The next thing I did was create a few pages and added the old content to this “new” site. The name of these pages was exactly the same as they were on the “old” site. I did not change the content, so this remained the same. That was all I did with this website. I left it for a month to give the search engine spiders time to crawl the website and to see if there would be an increase or decrease in the positions. A month later I checked the tool which recorded my website positions for the whole period of the case study. I was satisfied with the results I found. As always, proof is in the pudding, so here is a screenshot:
As you can see, the third horizontal red line marks the day (9 Jan) when my website’s IP address and template were changed. On that particular day my website was at fourth position in the Google SERP’s for its main keyword. Today, on February 7th, it is in the second position.
So, who was it that said that changing the website IP address or template would decrease your SERP positions? Judging by these results, I can say with total confidence that it will not affect your positions and this case study proves it. At the moment I am in the process of moving some of my unprofitable affiliate websites to a cheaper hosting service to cut down on my expanses. I will let you know if I see any serious changes in my positions; however, I’m sure this will not happen.
Internet Marketer’s Nightmare or How to Lose All Your Positions Overnight
Posted by Sergey Lorens in SEO on January 7th, 2009
For me, as well as for many other internet marketers and SEO optimizers, losing all your search engine positions overnight is probably the biggest nightmare you could face. I do not have words to describe how I felt when this nightmare became reality and the search engine position of my top money making website fell from number three to 400 in the rankings overnight. It took me more than a month to restore them to where they were again and in this post I will explain to you what caused such demise and how I eventually fixed it.
On September 7th I went abroad for a week. I didn’t take my laptop with me because I wanted to spend a week sunbathing and drinking cocktails on the beach. While I was abroad, my position checking tool was monitoring my websites positions every day so I could check them when I got back. On September 14th I finally returned home. I checked the positions of some of my websites and they were fine, but when I saw the position of my top money making website, the one that I had been working on for more than two years, drop by 360 places, I was shocked. The website’s traffic, and hence income, decreased by almost 80 percent.
I guessed that Google had updated their algorithm, so I immediately checked some reputable search engine optimization forums looking for any information on this update. However, I didn’t find anything on this topic at all. The problem was with something else. I always keep logs and write down each action I take with all my websites. I checked these logs trying to understand what I did wrong and what caused such a fall, however the only thing I had done with the website before my trip was add a new image.
Finally, I decided to check the logs and the source code of the website and found out that somehow there were some hidden links to “adult” websites added, that were full of spyware and viruses. Someone had hacked my website! I am absolutely sure that it was one of my competitors because the keywords I had dominated were very competitive and profitable. Their goal was not to promote those crap url’s they posted on my site, but to harm my website and make it lose its position in the SERPS. Well, they certainly achieved what they set out to do…
I immediately started trying to resolve the situation:
- I deleted all of the hidden links and set a new password.
- Then I slightly altered the content on my home page and added five more pages of new content, bookmarked them and placed links to the new pages from some of my old relevant websites.
- The next step was to start posting blog comments. At that moment I had about 6000 incoming links and my website was more than two years old, so I did not worry about the quantity of links I was adding per day so posted more than 30 blog comments each day during the next week.
The fluctuations continued until October 20th. Then my websites ranking skyrocketed to number three in the rankings and remained there until October 27th when my website again dropped to four hundred! However, the next day it was back up to number three again.
To sum up I would like to say that almost four months have passed since my website was hacked. My website has already restored its former position for the main keywords but they still fluctuate and are not as stable as they used to be. I did not know for sure what would happen If I only deleted the hidden links; some people might have thought that that was enough but for my part, I thought it was worth increasing the quantity of incoming links in the first instance and if something similar happens to me in the future, I will follow the same procedure I did with this website.
