Secrets of the Big Dogs

TRAFFIC GENERATION ON THE INTERNET:
WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T
"Ready to Become An EXPERT on Traffic Generation!?"

If you've absorbed nothing else thus far I sincerely hope that you have taken to heart just ONE overriding concept that we've tried to get across to you...

"Traffic is KING!"

Master the techniques of effective generation of large volumes of quality, targeted traffic and you can sell anything to anybody, anytime, anywhere, and you can make a DARN good living!

Conversely, you can have exclusive rights to sell a machine that turns lead into gold, but if you don't know how to let potential customers know about it, you'll go broke waiting for your ship to come in.

As the old saying goes.....

"He who has a thing to sell,
and goes and whispers in a well,
is not as apt to get the dollars,
as he who climbs a tree and hollers."

Or, even more succinctly.....

"Early to bed, early to rise.
Work like hell, and advertise!"

So the basic idea of the Big Dogs C.H.I.P. is simple: In your Internet marketing career, if you master advertising and promotional techniques you will accomplish TWO things:

you will produce traffic for your OWN projects, and
you can in turn sell it to OTHERS who need traffic. (And on the Internet, who DOESN'T need traffic!?)

In other words, C.H.I.P. enables you to build a solid portfolio of traffic-generating programs AND multiple streams of income in a minimum amount of time!

Remember Big Dogs Secret #5.....

“Don’t dig for gold...SELL THE SHOVELS!

In this chapter we will be looking at the six basic types of traffic generation on the Internet. While we are analyzing them, think about the idea of so-called FREE advertising, and consider this statement…

If FREE advertising really worked, why would
PAID advertising even exist!?

Think about that statement for a moment; let it sink in. IF there were really a form of free advertising that genuinely WORKED, well gosh, everyone would know about it in a few days, and those "fools" that actually sell advertising would be out of business, wouldn't they!? Paid advertising wouldn't exist; it would disappear overnight!

But it's a sad fact in the evolution of practically ALL Internet marketers that we (I'm certainly no exception, myself!) start our careers actually believing that we can advertise our businesses for free (or for a ridiculously low cost). As a result we usually end up wasting our first few months (or years!) on the Internet with no results - no results other than frustration and tears. I naively followed that same path when I first started out, so don't think I'm pointing fingers. It's almost a rite of passage that we all go through before we learn the truth. And the truth is that...

..."free" advertising techniques - and insanely low cost advertising techniques - do nothing more than waste our time and lead to disappointment, aggravation, and frustration (and our spouse's threatening to take an axe to our computers!).

I happen to do a little sky-diving, and a good quality, dependable parachute can cost thousands of dollars. When I'm two miles above the earth, and I'm ready to launch myself out into space, I want the best quality equipment I can buy on my back. I wouldn't dream of buying one from a guy who advertises, "Free Parachutes - Get One Today," or "Cut-Rate Parachutes - Just $29.95"

Yet that's EXACTLY what I did when I started my Internet career a quarter of a century ago!.

As a result, for my first year I did nothing more than "crash-and-burn."
THAT, fellow Big Dogs, was what I called my "year of horror!"

I naively believed ads I saw like the ones below. (By the way, these are REAL ads that have appeared on the Internet in just the last few days while this Chapter was being written...

"734,185 Visitors To Your Site...FREE!"

"Need Traffic & Leads? Get Billions of Them Here – For FREE"

"We Autosubmit Your Ads Every Six Hours to 12.5 Million People – Lifetime Membership, Just $17.00"

"Blast 200 Million FREE Ads Everyday!"

"Email to 70,000,000 per month – one-time $34.50"

"Your Ads to 516,800,000 Daily for Life, and GROWING - $25.00"

"One BILLION Prospects for YOU at no cost!"

"Six Billion FREE Ads Every Month!"

"Email 23,000,000 opportunity seekers for FREE! Fresh, double-optin leads. 100% delivery rate. 100% responsive. 100% spam free."

And remember; these are ACTUAL ads that have appeared on the Internet! Believing in "free" is bad enough, but sit down and think about it logically. How can a guy continue to supply me with 500,000,000 (that's half a billion!) leads for a mere twenty five dollars - not just ONCE, but for the rest of my life!? How can he continue to maintain his program and gather new leads, say, five years down the road (or even five DAYS down the road), when he's charging me a mere ONE-TIME $25.00!!!

And just one more... My all-time favorite:

"Your solo ad to the contact email address of 500,000 leads! PLUS... Your ad in our ezine of over ten million subscribers! PLUS... Your ad sent to eight BILLION fresh leads! All for just $69.95!!!"

How about THAT, gang!? For sixty nine bucks this guy will send out my ad to more people than live on the entire planet. This one sounded so good even I was ready to buy it! "After all," you start deluding yourself into thinking.....

"...Even if I make a sale to just one thousandth of one percent..."
(Why, shucks, it can't miss, CAN it!)

Before we delve into the specific forms of Internet advertising - what works and what doesn't - let's first take a look at just WHY advertising on the Internet is so remarkably beneficial for the entrepreneur, and why ONline advertising is so superior to traditional OFFline advertising.

A. The Five Strong Points of Online Advertising!

1. measurability
2. formatting
3. targeting
4. speed
5. cost

1. Measurability

Never in the entire history of sales have we marketers been able to track the effectiveness of our advertising so quickly, easily, and completely as we can on the Internet. With the assistance of even comparatively simple and inexpensive ad-tracking programs we can view - in real time! - how many visitors (clicks) we receive to our website from a particular ad. And not only can we track the quantity of visitors generated by a particular ad, we can also track the quality of visitors as well; we can see how many sales we received, or how many subscriptions to a newsletter we got. Some programs will even calculate automatically the cost per click (the CPC), the return on investment (the ROI), the date and time of each visit and other invaluable data about your customers and potential customers. With such detailed data, you can determine which of your ads are converting and which ones are wasting your money, and you can do it more efficiently and quickly than was ever dreamed possible in the OFFline world!

2. Formatting

The term "formatting" simply refers to the look and feel - the design - of an ad. In addition to text ads, we marketers have a wide variety of ways of presenting our promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links. But the most favorable factor of formatting is that we can perform most design functions ourselves, and in a minimum amount of time.

3. Targeting

As online advertisers, we marketers have the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising like never before. Advertisers can use "geo-targeting" to display our advertisements to a truly global market, or narrow our campaigns to the user’s country, state, zip code or language. We can even customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user’s previous preferences.

4. Speed

"Speed of deployment" is truly Internet advertising's strongest suit! Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately. I can remember years ago, in my offline business enterprises, placing an ad in a magazine, and then having to wait as long as three MONTHS for my prospects to see the ad. MONTHS! But the delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher’s publication schedule; the "publication schedule" is YOUR schedule, and is pretty much contingent only upon how quickly you can hit your "enter" key. Just as importantly, we marketers can modify or replace ad copy as needed far, far more rapidly than our offline counterparts.

5. Cost!

When I consider the cost of ONline advertising compared to OFFline advertising, I have to chuckle. Quite frankly, THERE SIMPLY IS NO COMPARISON!

Online advertising provides an incredibly low-cost means for us marketers to engage with large (like, the whole WORLD large!) established communities of consumers. As an example, if you were to run a simple one-inch ad in the newspaper of even a moderate-sized city (100,000 population) every day for a year, your cost would be approximately $10,000 (Believe me, I've DONE it). But that same $10,000 per year (roughly $800 per month) would allow you to place your ad in front of MILLIONS every day for a year!

Your R.O.I. (Return On Investment) is staggeringly higher on the Internet!

The bottom line? When you combine the factors of (1) our ability to track the effectiveness of our advertising, (2) designing and, if necessary, re-designing our ads, (3) targeting our market, (4) the speed of ad deployment, with (5) low cost and high ROI, you can easily see that the Internet has given us advertisers an unparalleled financial opportunity!

OK. We've seen the strong points of online advertising. Now it's time to get to the nitty-gritty. It's time to look at the actual methods of online advertising. But a word of warning: don't allow yourself to be overwhelmed or confused by the amount of information we are about to give you about promotional techniques.

At the end of this discussion we'll be showing you the over-all most effective form of promotion, and the one you will be using most often.

But to become the complete marketer we know you want to be, it is important to at least be familiar in a general sense with ALL forms of Internet promotion available. Just don't get caught up in unnecessary details; we just want you to have a general idea of the options available in online advertising.

B. The Six Basic Methods of Online Advertising

1. search engine advertising
2. display advertising
3. online classified advertising
4. social media advertising
5. mobile advertising
6. email advertising

METHOD 1. Search Engine Marketing (S.E.M.)

Simply put, Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase your website's visibility in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Taking the search engine Google as an example, when a prospect performs a search using a certain term (i.e. a "keyword") he is presented with a results page (a Search Engine Results Page, or SERP) with a list of what Google feels are "pertinent" websites - websites that match the prospect's interests. This list is a list of brief Subject Lines describing each website, and directly below each Subject Line is a slightly lengthier Description. Each Subject Line is a "hotlink" that, when clicked on, takes the person to that particular website.

Ahhh! The Holy Grail of Internet marketing! Unlimited, free advertising for your website! All a prospect needs to do is to perform a search using a keyword that is pertinent to YOUR website, go to your website, buy your product, and YOU make money. You're on your way to a Summer home in the Hamptons! Simple!

Or IS it?

I just did a search using the keyword "make money online" (yes, multiple words can still be considered ONE keyword). Google presented me with 1,780,000,000 results (that's one BILLION, 780 MILLION results). Obviously, all billion plus results can't be displayed on a single SERP (Search Engine Result Page), so Google's advanced algorithms "rank" all these websites in order of pertinence, and just list ten or so websites per page. Naturally, you want YOUR website to be ranked on Page 1 of the SERP, in the top ten listings of all pertinent websites. In the worst case scenario, you would want your website to be ranked in the top 30 results - the first 3 SERPs; any lower ranking, and your website might as well not exist!

(Think about it. When was the last time YOU went past the first three pages of results when you performed a search?)

But there IS a solution, and it's called.....

Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.)

There are various programming techniques and some excellent software that you can use to increase the likelihood of being at the top of the SERPs. I’ve used a few SEO programs and some work quite well.

How do they work? Well, to decide which sites are listed, the Search Engines use what are called "algorithms" Algorithms are simply robotic programs with a set of rules that tell the search engine how "relevant" your site is to a particular search, and therefore how high it should be placed on a SERP.

To use a VERY simple example, let’s say your website sells "Nutritional Supplements." Algorithms are what prevent YOUR site from showing up when someone does a search for, say, "Maps of South America," or "Abraham Lincoln" But algorithms are much, MUCH more complex than that. Let’s say someone actually DOES do a search for "nutritional supplements." (I did, by the way, and came up with over 16 MILLION results.) Algorithms roam the whole Internet and "spider" through your site, gathering crucial bits of information. They analyze several different factors and come up with an overall "relevancy score." The higher your "score," the higher your site would be placed on the list of results when someone does a search on a particular topic.

But here’s the problem:

EVERYBODY has access to these same tools to improve the standing of THEIR websites. Not only that, but the Search Engines CHANGE their rules - their algorithms - on a regular basis, and no two search engines use the SAME algorithms. For example, one of the algorithms SE’s use is "keyword density." This means how many times certain keywords appear in your website. Today, one particular SE may feel that your site is most relevant if the phrase "nutritional supplement" appears as 6% of the total number of words on your site. Any LESS and your site isn’t relevant enough – any MORE and you are attempting to "spam" the search engine. Next Thursday, though, the technician in charge may decide that they want to change that to 7%. What happens? Your website may go UP or DOWN in the listings, or even be dropped entirely.

Search engines are constantly changing and modifying their algorithms.

And keyword density is just ONE of several factors that are used to determine the order of results. Attempting to maintain a high position in the SE’s can easily become a full-time job. In fact there ARE individuals and companies who do NOTHING but get paid to maintain their client’s position in the search engines. These folks are specialists in the field of SEO.

A friend of mine recently developed a new website for a niche product. He is currently paying an SEO specialist $700 every MONTH to maintain his site, and to keep it "search-engine-optimized." And he is tickled to death to pay that fee. Why is he so happy? Because he received quotes from other SEO specialists for as much as four THOUSAND dollars a month! In addition, my friend's SEO guy warned him not to expect major results for ten to twelve months!

Do you honestly think YOU can beat these professionals – full-time professionals who get paid to do NOTHING else but "play with the search engines?"

Now I think it's extremely important to point out that I am NOT giving a blanket condemnation of search engines and their use in Internet marketing. SEO is an extremely powerful art that can be very beneficial under the proper circumstances. IF you happen to have a unique product or business why, then, search engines CAN be of enormous value to you. For example, if you are selling "aardvark leather" you have a better chance at the SE’s generating some traffic for you than if you are selling "hats."

(Interestingly enough, just for the heck of it, I did a search for "aardvark leather" and I still came back with over 682 listings - that would be approximately 70 pages of results! But that's still better than the search I did for "hats," which yielded 172 MILLION listings. My advice - don't try to sell hats using the search engines - unless they're hats made from aardvark leather!)

And…if you are involved in an affiliate or reseller program, you can forget the search engines!

First of all, if there are, say, 2,000 people involved in a particular affiliate program, that means that 2,000 people have the EXACT SAME WEBSITE, since affiliate programs generally give you a "mirrored website" when you join. Now even if the main website happened to meet the search engines’ criteria for relevancy, do you think any of the SE’s want 2,000 of the exact same page cluttering up their search results for a given topic!? Hardly! That defeats the whole purpose of search engines, and pretty soon people would no longer use that particular search engine. So search engine algorithms are programmed to look just at the "root" URL, the main portion of the domain name. You’ve noticed, surely, that aside from your member ID or member code, YOUR affiliate URL is identical to everyone ELSE’S in any particular affiliate program. Incidentally, does your particular URL for any affiliate programs you are involved in contain a question mark? This is called the "question mark delimiter," or "query string." It is how many of the affiliate programs identify their numerous affiliates. The algorithms of most of the major search engines simply discard any URL’s which contain a question mark!

Is there a solution? Can search engines be used in any way as a practical means of generating substantial traffic to your website – WITHOUT having to take on search engine positioning as a full-time job?

Yes, Indeed! Y'see, there are actually TWO types of listing that appear on the SERPs. The first we've just discussed; these are what are called the "organic listings" These are the "natural" (thus the name "organic") listings that appear on the SERPs only because the Search Engines deem them relevant. Organic listings appear free to the website owner.

The second type of listings usually appear at the top or along the right margin of each SERP. In other words they are given preference over the organic listings. These are the "Sponsored Listings" or the "PPC ads" (Pay Per Click) and the website owner PAYS for these listings. The website owner sponsors these ads and is charged a fee each time his ad is clicked, thus the term Pay-Per-Click.

In 1998 the owners of a relatively minor search engine by the name of GoTo.com decided to try a unique, new method of listing placement. What they decided to do was to base the ranking of your website on how much you PAID for any particular search term.

As an example, let’s assume once again that your website is all about Nutritional Supplements, and you wanted to rank high in the listings when someone used GoTo.com to search for sites about "nutritional supplements." Well, GoTo.com made it E-A-S-Y! If you wanted that coveted "page 1, number 1" position, all you had to do was PAY for it - out-bid everybody else for that particular search term. If the present page 1 #1 ranking was held by a website that was paying, say 4 cents per click, you could capture that #1 spot simply by bidding 5 cents per click. GoTo.com then simply deducted 5 cents from your account each time someone clicked on your link. And there was no limit to the number of search terms you could bid on! You could put in a bid for "nutrition," "supplements," "health supplements," "vitamins," "minerals," and so on…the list of bid terms is limited only by your imagination.

It’s GUARANTEED traffic to your website that you pay for ONLY if you actually get visitors!

Got it? Organic Listings (Natural listings) are listings that are displayed FREE to the website owner, and they appear automatically based solely on their relevance to a particular search term. Sponsored Listings (PPC listings) are listings that are PAID for by the website owner, and they appear based on the amount "per click" that the website owner is willing to pay.

Was GoTo.com successful? You betcha! In 2001, it was renamed Overture and acquired two of its competitors, AltaVista and AllTheWeb. In 2003 Overture was purchased by giant Yahoo! and is now called "Yahoo! Search Marketing." GoTo.com's minimum "cost-per-click," which started out at just one cent per click, quickly jumped to TEN cents per click. And that's the cost for relatively obscure, unpopular terms; for the more "in-demand" terms (like "business opportunities") you can end up paying five and ten DOLLARS per click! Currently, the highest price per click is over $40.

Now, when GoTo.com first started using this system, they were very much ballyhooed by the "the net should be free for everybody" – "the net should be a level playing field" crowd. Even from the first, however, after months of playing the search engine game myself, I felt that the GoTo.com system was the only LOGICAL way for search engines to work. Sure enough, today virtually all search engines are capitalizing on the GoTo.com "pay-per-click" concept. A good example would be Google's enormously successful "AdWords" program.

This brings us back to our statement at the beginning of this chapter where we stated, "If FREE advertising worked, then why would PAID advertising even exist?" The search engines are a prime example of this. There are those Internet "gurus" that would have you believe that "all" you have to do is to get your website ranked high in the search engines and you'll get all the free traffic you will ever need. As we've shown, the only real way to get a high ranking is to either pay a Search Engine Optimization expert to continually monitor your site, OR to use Pay-Per-Click search engines for an automatically high ranking. Either method could cost you hundreds, and even thousands of dollars a month., and even then, it could be several months before you see any positive results.

So much for "free" traffic from search engines!

Now, to repeat what I stated above, Search Engines can be ENORMOUSLY useful, but to be successful a marketer has three options: (1) he can take the time to learn the art of Search Engine Optimization, and then be prepared to devote continuing time to constantly "tweaking" his site to conform to the ever-changing algorithms of the Search Engines, (2) he can pay a SEO specialist to perform the continuing task of monitoring the Search Engines and tweaking his website, or (3) he can PAY to have his website displayed using Pay-Per-Click listings.

METHOD 2. Display Advertising

"Display advertising" conveys its advertising message visually. It uses text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics displayed on a web page. Several of the more common types of display advertising include:

a. Entire Websites

Obviously, an entire website or lone web page can be used to showcase a product or service, and is generally where a sale or other action is actually made. Technically, though, an entire website is not considered a promotional technique; it is the sales page (the "action" page) itself, and is where the real promotional techniques take the prospect.   It is usually referred to as a "Landing Page." Generally, we marketers usually use other forms of much briefer display advertising to attract customers to our main web sites.

b. Banners

We've all experienced banner ads. They come in several different standardized sizes (see the examples below), with the "468 x 60 pixel" banner being by-far the most prevalent on the Internet. They display an advertisers brief ad, and are connected to the advertiser's main website by a "hyperlink." When the message on a banner ad appeals to a potential customer, the customer clicks on the banner, and is taken to the advertiser's main website (his Landing Page).

c.   Interstitial Ads - Part I (Pop-Ups/Pop-Unders)

The term "interstitial" simply means "in-between." An interstitial ad is displayed to the viewer "between" two other webpages. For example, a "pop-up" ad is automatically displayed to a viewer after they click on a link on one website and before they are shown the website they actually desire to view. Pop-ups are also referred to as being displayed "in-front-of" or "above" the requested webpage. A "pop-under" ad is automatically displayed to a viewer after they are done viewing the desired website and click to close the window. Pop-unders are also referred to as being displayed "behind" or "below" the requested webpage.

Although they can be effective (even major, international corporations use 'em), most Internet users consider pop-ups and pop-unders to be intrusive and irritating.

d. Interstitial Ads - Part II (Login Ads)

Another type of interstitial ad that is effective and not intrusive at all because the user expects to see 'em, are "Login Ads." Login Ads are displayed when a user goes to a membership site of which he is a member and enters his username and password to gain entrance to the site. Before is is taken to the members area, he is presented with the Login Ad. The Login Ad usually remains displayed for 10 to 20 seconds (or until the user intentionally closes it), at which time the Login Add disappears, and the user is taken to the site's members area. Most often, several advertisers have their Login Ads running simultaneously on a particular membership site; each Login Ad is "rotated" periodically. Some membership sites permit advertisers to purchase a Login Ad for a definite duration - a full day, a week, or even longer - during which time no other Login Ads are rotated.

Unlike Pop-Ups and Pop-Unders, Login Ads are not irritating to the user because, as stated above, they are expected. Login Ads can be very effective.

e. Text ads

Text-based ads are usually short lines of text (generally no more than 25 to 40 characters in length), displayed separately from a web page's primary content. Generally the entire text ad is a hyperlink that, when clicked on by the prospect, takes him to the advertiser's main website (his Landing Page). The perfect example of a hyperlinked Text Ad is a list on a search engine results page (a SERP).

METHOD 3. Online Classified Advertising

Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services. Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and auction-based listings. CraigsList and eBay are two of the more prominent providers of online classified advertising.

METHOD 4.. Social Media Marketing

Just what IS Social Media? It is certainly THE big catch-phrase on the Internet anymore. With FaceBook acquiring its BILLIONTH member, and Twitter surpassing the 500 million member mark, Social Media is certainly a force with which to be reckoned. Social Media is here to stay.

But is Social Media a positive or negative force on the Internet? Does it have a VALUE to us as Internet marketers?

Social Media is all about interaction. Think of the pre-social-media Internet as a ONE-way street where you can read a magazine or watch a TV show. But you have no ability to give your thoughts on that TV show, critique that magazine, or connect and perhaps develop friendships with people who might be big fans of that TV show or magazine. Social Media, on the other hand, is a TWO-way street; it offers you the means of interacting with like-minded people with whom we create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.

It is this interactivity that distinguishes Social Media websites from the more traditional "static," non-interactive websites.

Thus, the advent of Social Media is a very positive step in the evolution of the Internet, and offers to individuals outlets of connectivity and expression that were heretofore impossible.

There are eleven broad forms of Social Media promotion. Keep in mind, however, that there are no sharp divisions between these forms. You will not observe obviously definable differences between them, and the benefits of one form quite often "leaks over" into one or more other forms.

a. Social Networking
b. Social News
c. Social Photo and Video Sharing
d. Blogging
e. Micro-Blogging
f.   Social Bookmarking
g. Wikis
h. RSS Feeds
i. Press Releases
j. Article Submission
k. Forums

a. Social Networking

Social networking websites are designed to build networks and relationships among people who share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. Social network sites allow users to share ideas, pictures, posts, activities, events, and interests with people in their network. Interaction is accomplished by adding friends, commenting on profiles, joining groups and having discussions.

Popular Social Network Communities Include:

Pintrest      LinkedIn Hi5

MeetUp Facebook

b. Social News

Social news websites feature stories and articles posted by site members; the stories are then ranked by other members based on popularity. Users can comment on these posts, and these comments may also be ranked. These sites are used to link many types of information including news, humor, support, and discussion.

Popular Social News Communities Include:

Slashdot      Fark Digg

Reddit Wikio      Propeller

c. Social Photo and Video Sharing

Photo- and video-sharing sites allow users to upload and post their digital pictures and videos to a website, and share that content with other users or viewers, either privately or publicly. Users are then able to view the photos and videos and can often rate them and leave comments.

Popular Photo & Video Communities Include:

YouTube Flickr Instagram

PhotoBucket      StreamZoo      Starmatic

d. Blogging

A blog (a contraction of the words web log) is a discussion or informational website consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Interaction is accomplished by allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other.

Popular Blogging Communities Include:

Blogger      LiveJournal      Xanga

Typepad Wordpress

e. Micro-Blogging

A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size. Microblogs allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links". These small messages are sometimes called microposts.

As with traditional blogging, microbloggers post about topics ranging from the simple, such as "what I'm doing right now," to the thematic, such as "sports cars." Most microblogs offer alternative ways of publishing entries besides the web-based interface such as text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio, or digital video. Commercial microblogs also exist to promote websites, services and products, and to promote collaboration within an organization.

Popular Micro-Blogging Communities Include:

Twitter SixApart      Tumblr

FriendFeed      Plurk Jaiku

f. Social Bookmarking

These book marking services are just the same as the favorites folder in your browser. The difference from these online services is that when your computer crashes, you don't loose your bookmarks because they are stored online. Further more, these online links can be categoried and tagged making them searchable by other users. Other users can search these tagged bookmarks.

Popular Social Bookmarking Communities Include:

Ma.gnolia      Delicious     Pinterest

Blinklist Simpy

g. Wikis

A wiki is usually a web application, which allows people to add, modify, or delete content in a collaboration with others. Interaction is accomplished by adding articles and editing existing articles. The name "Wiki" was inspired by the Hawaiian phrase wiki-wiki, which means "quick". The first wiki was developed in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, who wanted an alternative to the word "quick" for his product that would allow quick, collaborative editing. He remembered the wiki-wiki shuttle buses that run between terminals at Honolulu International Airport and the name stuck.

Popular Wiki Communities Include:

Wikipedia      Ballotpedia Foodista

ShopWiki TravellersPoint      WikiNews

h. RSS Feeds

Real Simple Syndication, (technically, "Rich Site Summary") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. The simple use of RSS feeds is to "push" news articles and site updates out to all of the site's subscribers. Unlike using email to transmit updates to subscribers, RSS delivers news directly to the users desktop or news reader where the user can check for updates as they happen. RSS feeds are a spam-free, quick and efficient way to read news and weblogs. To get the most out of newsfeeds, you need a powerful "Aggregator," or reader. An aggregator lets you organize, search, categorize and use news items just like emails.

Popular RSS Feed Aggregators Include:

FeedBurner NewzCrawler FeedDemon

GoogleReader     OmeaReader      NewsGator

i. Press Releases

Online press releases are just the new way of releasing news all over the internet. Doing a press release can cause such a buzz and your news article can be picked up and placed on sites such as Yahoo News, Google News, Forbes and other major news sites around the world. Not only can these online press releases be picked up by online publications but some of these are also pushed out to print publications.

Popular Press Release Services Include:

PRWeb      ClickPress      FreePressRelease

PRBuzz PRLeap PRUrgent

j. Article Submission

Internet article marketing is used to promote the authors expertise of their market, products or services online via article directories. Article directories with good web page ranks receive a lot of site visitors and may be considered authority sites by search engines, leading to high traffic. These directories then give PageRank to the author's website and in addition, send traffic from readers.

Business Owners, Marketers and Entrepreneurs attempt to maximize the results of an article advertising campaign by submitting their articles to several (perhaps dozens) article directories. However, most of the major search engines filter duplicate content to stop the identical content material from being returned multiple times in a Search Engine Results Page (a SERP). Some marketers attempt to circumvent this filter by creating a number of variations of an article, known as "article spinning." By doing this, one article can theoretically acquire site visitors from a number of article directories.

The primary goal behind article marketing is to get search engine traffic to the article so that the author can strengthen their authority and influence within their field, while also leveraging that traffic for their own site(s). The key to article marketing is that the author should be providing value with their articles, not just promoting their site, products or services.

Popular Article Submission Services Include:

eHow Hubpages Squidoo Examiner      Ezinearticles

Seekingalpha      Technorati      Articlesbase      Buzzle Goarticles

k. Forums and Message Boards

An Internet Forum (or message board) is a discussion website where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages (posts), which are generally saved and archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.

A discussion forum can contain a number of sub-forums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish; a posted message might need to be approved by an administrator (a moderator or "mod") before it becomes visible.

The real benefit of participating in internet marketing forums is that you learn a lot. You never know where that next great idea will come from. There are also some direct promotional benefit to participating in forums since many allow a small link to your website in the signature file.

Popular Forum Communities Include:

WarriorForum WickedFire      DigitalPointForum      BlackhatWorld       V7Network

SelfStartersWeeklyTips      Site Point Problogger IM4Newbies eWealth.com

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Summary of Social Media:

What can I say about the Social Media?

There is no doubt that Social Media is THE big thing on the Internet these days, and although the different types of Social Media may evolve, change, and even meld together, it IS here to stay! And there is no doubt that it provides a valuable service.

If you're a 13 year old girl and you want to talk with the other cheerleaders about that cute boy in third period Spanish, then it's great. Personally, though, I don't care how many "likes" my FaceBook page has. I don't give a rat's patoot about how many "followers" I have on my Twitter account.

I'm not in the business of being "liked" or being "followed."

I'M IN THE "MAKIN' MONEY" BUSINESS, AND!.....

.....I can tell exactly how many people "like" my website; they "vote" with their wallets! They BUY something from me; they spend money!

So..... am I discounting Social Media as a valuable form of Internet promotion? Not at all. Quite the contrary, in fact.

For example, I am a HUGE fan of Wikipedia, and I refer to it continuously. Wikipedia is many times larger than the full set of Encyclopedia Britannica books ever was, is completely free, and according to a recent study by the prestigious scientific journal Nature, is just as accurate. And I can't tell you how MUCH I've learned from belonging to online forums related to marketing. This demonstrates the power of the social web.

So I am certainly not against Social-Media! (If I were, incidentally, would that make me "anti-social?" LOL)

What I DO take exception to, however, is the "next-shiny-thing" mentality that has gripped the marketing community into believing that Social Media is the "end-all-and-be-all" of Internet marketing. Social Media is terrific for establishing relationships and making connections with people; and, after all, successful relationships are what sales and marketing are all about. The fact is that the pre-social media web - the "static web" - may have lulled us all into becoming lazy and to believe that we could effortlessly make that "gazillion dollars with NO human interaction at all." The social web may be bringing to Internet marketing that long-missing mano-a-mano, human-to-human interaction that has always been missing.

But it IS wrong to think that the Social Media makes all other forms of Internet promotion obsolete and antiquated. Social Media is ANOTHER avenue of promotion, not the FINAL form of promotion! Social Media marketing can bring many benefits and increased profits, but it comes with caveats.

It places high demands on your time. Content must be created, edited, and published; comments must be responded to and sites and pages must be maintained.

It places high demands on your talent. It can be difficult to constantly come up with innovative exciting content that interests a variety of readers and, without relevance, your efforts will be wasted.

You lose some control of your marketing efforts. Anything you publish is up for grabs, and others can easily criticize you. Public backlash is the last thing you want your social media marketing to spawn, and without the ability to control comments you open yourself up for potential negatives.

Your return on investment is delayed. Social Media marketing can work to build relationships and brand loyalty, but it takes time and dedication. Social media marketing efforts are not likely to earn immense popularity overnight, so you must be willing to be in it for the long haul. "Relationships" and "brand loyalty" don't pay the rent that's due tomorrow.

Finally, and perhaps most detrimentally, Social Media can give you a false sense of "getting work done," when you are doing nothing more than socializing with online friends - the Internet's version of "havin' a few beers with the guys" (or gals).

METHOD 5. Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as mobile phones or tablet computers. Mobile advertising is not really a different and separate method of online promotion; the newer, more sophisticated mobile devices are more-or-less just pocket-sized computers and as such, can be used with any of the marketing methods we've outlined. In addition to merely making phone calls, modern mobile phones also support a wide variety of other services such as text messaging, MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, gaming and photography. Mobile phones that offer these and more general computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.

Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons. There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.

Consumers want anytime-anywhere computing that allows them to consume and create content with ease, but also share and access that content from a different portfolio of products. In today's world, mobility is paramount!

Wordwide, there are over 5 billion mobile users and 1.1 billion smartphone subscribers specifically. The iPad was the fastest growing technology product EVER! With 86% of mobile internet users actually using their devices while watching TV, and with more than 10,901 Tweets PER SECOND being issued as TV viewers watched Adele win Record of the Year at The Grammy’s back in 2012, it’s clear that we all live in a "multi-screen world." We need to be aware that our internet marketing accounts for not just desktops, but ALL screens.

Again, mobile advertising is not really a different and separate method of online promotion. What it is (to us Internet marketers) is yet ANOTHER, even more convenient conduit for getting our sales message out to potential customers. Thus mobile marketing allows to to vastly expand our promotional reach without really changing or complicating our overall marketing strategies.

METHOD 6. Email Advertising:
the undisputed KING of online promotion!

Email Marketing strikes many as old-fashioned!

More fashionable venues like social media and mobile marketing get all the attention, and some people will even try to tell you that email marketing is dead.

Unfortunately, reality doesn’t agree. In fact, email is more powerful than ever thanks in large part TO the Social Media and mobile marketing. Think about it! Prior to the explosion of mobile media, in order to read our emails our prospects had to be tied to a desk in front of their computer screens. But NOW with the advent of smartphones, tablets, and laptops, our prospects can receive our email sales messages virtually ANYWHERE!

Now, understand, ALL of the promotional techniques we've discussed thus far CAN be very effective at generating traffic. However, as valuable as they are, they all have inherent drawbacks that email marketing does NOT. For example:

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) IS extremely powerful, but to be successful a marketer has three options: (1) he can take the time to learn the art of Search Engine Optimization, and then be prepared to devote continuing time to constantly "tweaking" his site to conform to the ever-changing algorithms of the Search Engines, (2) he can pay a SEO specialist to perform the continuing task of monitoring the Search Engines and tweaking his website, or (3) he can PAY to have his website displayed using Pay-Per-Click listings. And remember, first and foremost, that if you are promoting a "work-at-home" type of website, the search engines will be of very little help.

Social Media is great for developing relationships, and this is good..... over the long haul. Social Media is terrific for establishing relationships and making connections with people; and, after all, successful relationships are what sales and marketing are all about. The fact is that the pre-social media web - the "static web" - may have lulled us all into becoming lazy and to believe that we could effortlessly make that "gazillion dollars with NO human interaction at all." The social web may be bringing to Internet marketing that long-missing mano-a-mano, human-to-human interaction that has always been missing; it's great for initiating a conversation, but.....

.....it's email you use when you want to move from “conversation to commerce” - when you actually want to use your time online to pay the bills NOW and not six months down the road!

The ultimate goal of the Social Media channels is to BUILD YOUR SUBSCRIBER LIST! All the true experts and full-time marketers will tell you that. But then what? How do you make money?   And how do you get word out to your subscribers? By emailin' 'em!

It all comes back to email, in one form or another.

So..... just what makes email marketing so powerful?

1. Email marketing is extremely TIME effective, and produces F-A-S-T results!
A promotional email message can be designed and sent out to a group of targeted prospects in a matter of minutes. Email marketing generates an immediate response. The call to action is clear: "Click here to take advantage of this offer," or "Click here to learn more about this service." Initial campaign response can occur within mere minutes of the time the email campaign is sent.

2. Email marketing is easy.
It takes no special skills and no long learning curve to develop an effective email campaign. This is definitely something a non-techie can do.

3. Email marketing does not require that you be an expert "communicator" There is certainly nothing wrong with being a proficient "communicator" - a "people person" It is most definitely a positive personality characteristic. Generally, the most successful salespeople are the ones who are most effective at communicating their ideas, and keeping people interested in what they have to say; you've certainly heard of someone being described as a "born salesman" The problem is that most of us are not born with that innate ability to socialize and communicate with people on a business level. In fact, many folks are attracted to Internet marketing precisely because they wish to insulate themselves from the politics of socializing.

4. Email marketing is targeted.
Don't have a prospect list of your own? That's not a problem. There are literally thousands and THOUSANDS of prospect lists available online for virtually ANY interest or pastime you can think of. Your targeting can be as finely-tuned as you want it to be since many lists can be configured based on age, sex, occupation, and even language or country.

5. Email marketing "cuts to the chase" - it "eliminates the middleman."
Elsewhere I related how, when an associate of mine - a fellow program owner - wants people to view his newest blog post, HE SENDS US ALL AN EMAIL ADVERTISING THE FACT! And just a few minutes ago I got a similar email from yet another of my friends who is also a fellow program owner. The actual subject line was: "Come view Jim's newest blog; 'friend' us on Facebook; 'follow us' on Twitter" (Hmmmmmmmm.....) What does that tell ya!?  Get the point!? Email eliminates that extra level of unnecessary complexity, and moves the prospect "closer" to you and a sale. Email effectively "eliminates the middleman" and "cuts directly to the chase!"

6. Email marketing just plain WORKS!
United States firms alone spent 1.51 billion dollars on email marketing two years ago, and that amount is expected to skyrocket to 2.47 BILLION dollars in the next two years. Over half of all Internet users check or send email on a typical day, and for 92% of those users, checking their email is the very first function they perform when they logon; your promotional message is the first thing they see each day! Email marketing enables you to proactively communicate with your prospects instead of passively waiting for them to come to you. It is a highly effective way to increase sales, drive site traffic, and develop loyalty and brand awareness.

7. Email marketing is extremely COST effective.
Email marketing is an affordable way to stretch a tight marketing budget - and whose isn't these days? In a later chapter we'll be showing you the Big Dog methods to get your email message out to up to several million prospects very, VERY cost-effectively!

Keep in mind, however, that email, social media and other marketing tactics are not mutually exclusive. You can leverage their overlap to grow your list of quality leads and convert them to buyers. However, for speediest results the type of advertising that has always worked most effectively is - in both the OFFline and ONline worlds - advertising that is presented DIRECTLY TO a LARGE group of targeted prospects.....

.....and on the Internet that's email marketing!

Now Let's Talk About.....
After deleting the 10,000th Viagra offer from your inbox, you might wonder if anyone actually makes money off this crap? Chris Kanich and his colleagues at UC San Diego and the International Computer Science Institute decided to perform a study to find out. The technicalities of how the study was performed get a little involved, so I won't go into the details. But Kanich’s team eventually calculated an estimate of how much money the typical professional spammer grossed. That figure came out to approximately $7,000..... A DAY! Seven grand a DAY!

With the potential to make THAT kind of money is it any wonder that spammers spam!?

And here's another number that'll surprise you. Kanich's team also calculated the conversion ratio; it turns out that the average conversion ratio is a mere 1 in 12.5 MILLION, or just 0.000008%! And bear in mind that spam is totally untargeted - those emails you receive from a Nigerian lawyer telling you you are due $10,000,000 are sent to anybody and everybody.

Spammers may be the scum of the earth, but they do recognize one very important rule of Internet marketing. They understand the "Law of Large Numbers;" they know that if they get their message out to ENOUGH people, SOMEONE'S gonna buy. And what medium do spammers use to get their message to prospects? Do they have a blog? Do they optimize their website for the search engines? Do they put up cute little YouTube videos? NO! They use what works. They use the oldest and most effective promotional method on the Internet. Email!

Think there's something we might learn from the spammers?

Traffic From Your OWN List:

We've all heard that expression, "The loot is in the list" It means that once we have a suitably large list of prospects that we can email our own bulletin to on a regular basis, Internet marketing becomes relatively easy. A list of responsive prospects who know and trust you, who look forward to receiving your weekly or monthly communications, and who can be counted on to at least give serious consideration to that program, product, or service you are selling.

In fact, "build your own list" is the big catch-phrase on the Internet these days, isn't it? The currently popular droves of so-called list-builders is proof of that!

It has often been said, in fact, that every person you have on your in-house list is the equivalent of $1.00 in monthly income. A 10,000 member list roughly equals a $10,000 monthly income. (Of course that doesn't mean that every person on your 10,000 member list is going to spend $1.00 with you each month - that's a "guesstimate," or average. It means that if you are selling a $20.00 product TODAY, approximately 500 of your members will make a purchase. NEXT WEEK, if you are selling a $50.00 product, approximately 200 different members will buy it; and so on.)

Notice that, in the above paragraph, I used the phrase "list of responsive prospects" There is a huge difference between a list of responsive prospects, and a list of "freebie-seekers"

One of my famous long, boring stories will serve to make my point...

It was 'way back in the late nineties, when I was beginning to start my Internet marketing career (and after I had gotten over my "year of horror"). I was fortunate enough to develop the second largest downline in my very first multi-level program that I was promoting. Now, due to my many years of OFFline marketing experience, I have always known the value of sending out regular bulletins to the people in my organization. And over a period of about a year and a half, I had slowly developed my own in-house list of 6,000.

Actually, I had three lists:

The first list was of 1,000 currently paying members - people who had joined the program as PAID members, and REMAINED paid members.

The second list was also of 1,000 ex-paid members who had dropped out of the program, but still chose to remain on my list.

The third list consisted of 4,000 free members; these were folks who had never upgraded to a paid membership, but still chose to remain on my list.

Now let's flash forward to March of 2001. I was finally ready to launch my OWN program - the now legendary "Secrets of the Big Dogs"

Naturally, the first thing I did was to announce the Big Dogs program to my three lists (Remember, 1,000 currently paying members, 1,000 former paying members, and 4,000 free members.

I had NO DOUBT what the results would be. Here is what I just plain KNEW would happen...

I would get the most Big Dogs signups from my 4,000 member free-member list. After all, this list was four times larger than either of my other two lists. In addition, although they could have "opted out" of my list at any time, they had chosen to stay on the list. Obviously, I assumed, it was because, although they didn't like the program I was currently promoting well enough to upgrade to pro, they liked me well enough to stay on my list and "wait for something better."

I would get the second most new signups from my 1,000 member paid-member list. After all, not only had these folks stayed on my list, they had also remained paying members.

I would get the fewest (if any!) new signups from my 1,000 member EX-member list. I felt that, even though they had chosen to remain on my list, they probably had become disenchanted with Internet marketing.

Man, oh man, was I in for a surprise... a surprise and an education!

I got the most new Big Dogs signups from my 1,000 member list of currently paying members. This was a mild surprise; I knew I would get signups from this list; I just didn't expect so many!

I got the second most signups from my list of 1,000 EX-members. This was a surprise! Apparently, even though the first program didn't work for them, they were "waiting for something better" to come along. And because I had maintained contact with them, they still trusted my judgement.

The biggest shock resulted from my 4,000 members list of free members. How many new signups did I get? Zero, zip, nada! Not a one! Even though this list was TWICE as big as my other two lists put together!!!

I think you grasp the point!

A list of members who have proven that they are capable of making a purchase will always outperform a list of "freebie-seekers" who delight in doing nothing more than joining program, after program, after program...

The "loot" IS in the list, my friends.

It is the treasure chest of Internet marketing toward which ALL marketers strive, and YOU should too.

But...

...it takes time to build a genuinely responsive list, and it takes ability and experience to be able to write a regular newsletter that people WANT to read and will pay attention to. People will not stay on a list very long if all you send them is advertisement after advertisement, promoting that hot-new, ground-floor "opportunity" you just found out about. You need to develop the skills to write intelligent, genuinely useful articles for your subscribers. Luke Parker, author of "The Encyclopedia of Free Online Advertising," states...

"Owning a list that is worth it's weight in gigabytes is a long term process that requires plenty of upkeep."

Once again, it takes time - time to build a list and time to nurture a list. It does not happen overnight. Unless I am seriously ill-informed, the average Internet marketer doesn't want to wait for a year or two before he sees the possibility of a steady cash flow from his own in-house list.

Yes, it takes time to build a "list you can make a living from." But it also takes talent to be able to write newsletters and articles that are interesting, and that will motivate prospects to make a purchase decision. Some marketers are just plain born with this talent, but it takes others months and years to develop into able "copy-writers."

SO, DO BUILD YOUR LIST!

By all means, build your list, my friends. But fill it with quality, targeted prospects - preferably PROVEN BUYERS, people who have shown that they have the capacity and interest to actually make a purchase. My personal philosophy has always been that... "If you want to be on MY list, ya gotta PAY for the privilege." That's not as arrogant as it sounds. What it means is that the ONLY people I want on my list are people who have purchased something from me.

SO, ONCE AGAIN, DO BUILD YOUR LIST! But while you're building that list of quality prospects, you also need to focus on actually sellin' somethin'!

Otherwise, you're gonna "list" yourself outta business!

SUMMARY

For all intents and purposes, the concept of "free’ advertising that actually works simply doesn't exist on the Internet. So don't be fooled. There is always a price that has to be paid; either a price in terms of time, experience, talent and technical abilities, or a price in terms of money. And what we learned from the spammers is that if you can generate enough traffic on a cost-effective basis you can sell anything to anybody. Remember what we said at the beginning of this chapter:

"If FREE advertising worked,
why would PAID advertising even exist!?"

So just what is the solution?
The solution is

The Coordinated High Income Portfolio

And Chapter 5 is where we get to the "good stuff!"…..

Forward - To Chapter 5                    Back - To Contents