The Smart Passive Income Blog » marketing

Is This the End of the Market Samurai Dynasty? Direct Answers from the CEO

Pat — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:13:10 +0000

Over the weekend the team behind Market Samurai, a keyword research and SEO analysis tool that I’ve recommended several times here on the blog (and that I’m an affiliate for), posted an announcement about some changes that are happening with the software that had a lot of people asking – is this the end of Market Samurai?

Because I use the product almost every day, and more importantly because I know many of you do as well as a result of my recommendation and training videos, I feel that it’s my duty to keep everyone informed of what’s going on.

If you’re not a Market Samurai user you may still find this post interesting, but I just wanted to let you know why I wrote this article up front so that if you’re not interested I don’t waste your time.

UPDATE (Wednesday, February 1st, 2012): Market Samurai just posted a NEW blog post here saying everything is back up to speed, and the article also debunks a lot of claims other SEO analysis tools have made about the situation and clarifies a lot of what’s going on.

What Happened…

One of the reasons I have used and recommended Market Samurai since mid-2009 is because of their very honest and transparent approach to doing business, which very much aligns with my own.

So, when over the past few days the software was having major issues and not working correctly, I knew a blog post explaining the situation was due.

And just yesterday (Sunday), the Noble Samurai team posted this:

Update: The State of the Market Samurai Nation

Basically – what happened is this:

Market Samurai pulls a ton of data from all different sources, one of the more significant sources being Google.

Google, as a lot of us know, has been making a lot of changes lately. In addition to algorithm updates (like the more recent Panda and “above-the-fold” updates) and the integration of search and social – a lot of stuff has been happening behind the scenes too – like changes in the ability to pull certain types of data from their system, or at least putting limitations on them.

Eugene Ware, CEO of Noble Samurai explains, “As large portions of Market Samurai currently use Google’s service, this has temporarily broken a range of functionality in Market Samurai.”

Their Solution…

A lot of Market Samurai is now back up and running, however to lessen the queries on Google certain pieces of data will now be pulled from Bing, and I think this is where a lot of people, including myself, freaked out.

Bing, as much as it’s growing and as good of a search engine as it is, it’s definitely not Google. Google’s data is what we want to use and is still really what matters.

I think the article was a little unclear, however, on which parts of Market Samurai were being replaced with Google. I received a number of emails from people saying that Market Samurai search numbers would no longer be reliable, that all of the new data from Bing would be misleading, Market Samurai is dead, etc.

I wasn’t going to lean one way or the other until I got some real answers, so I emailed Eugene and received an answer just a few hours later, which was surprising considering the hundreds of comments (and his responses) on his blog post, and what I’m sure is a lot more support tickets.

I emailed him the following question:

–

Me: Hey Eugene, I read the latest post on Nobel Samurai …quick question for clarification purposes, because everyone’s in an uproar right now and I’m not sure we all fully understand what’s going on.

My question is: keyword search data (the keyword research module) is still using Google, correct? That didn’t change to Bing, or did it? From what I read in the post it was just for the more basic things like SEOC and things like that, but not actual search numbers.

And the SEO Competition Module is still using Majestic, correct?

Eugene: Hi Pat. Yes, Google keyword data still is from Google at this point in time! And SEO Competition backlink data comes from Majestic! It’s only SEO count metrics such as SEOC/SEOLC and Index Count that have been swapped to Bing at the moment.

Me: Thanks Eugene. By the way, do you mind if I share your response (that the KW Research Module and SEO Comp module, which are the ones I use the most – are still working) in a post if I choose to write about this? Please let me know. Thanks!

Eugene: Hi Pat. No problems if you’d like to share my response in your blog post.

Me: And do you have a quick list of the exact parts of MS that will be switching to Bing? I have SEOC and SEOLC so far…

Eugene: The main changes to Bing are:

-SEOC/SEOLC/SEOTC/SEOUC in Keyword Research
-IC/CA in SEO Competition
-Other changes in other modules are inconsequential.

–

This is good news for all of us Market Samurai users out there: the Keyword Research Module and all of the most important data in the SEO Competition Module are still pulling data from Google.

This means the software will still allow me to do exactly what I use it for: to find good keywords that are highly searched for and have relatively low competition on the first page of Google.

And for those of you wondering, here are the definitions of the affected acronyms listed in Eugene’s response:

SEOC - SEO Competition - The total number of webpages that mention a specific keyword term, in the same (phrase) word order, in Google’s index.
SEOLC - SEO Local Competition - The total number of webpages that mention all of the words in a keyword term in the title of the page, in a specified country.
SEOTC - SEO Title Competition - The total number of webpages that mention all of the words in a keyword term in the title of the page.
SEOTC - SEO URL Competition - The total number of webpages that mention all of the words in a keyword term in the URL of a page.
IC - Instances of Content - The number of times the article has been republished online.
CA - Google Cache Age - The number of days since Google last reindexed the page listed.

Fortunately, the way I perform (and teach) keyword research doesn’t even use any of this data, even SEOC.

The way I see it, SEOC doesn’t matter and shouldn’t even be on there because it doesn’t matter how many webpages are competing for a specific keyword – what matters is the strength of competition of the results on the first page of Google.

There could only be 100 websites competing for a keyword, but if they are all PR7 authoritative sites, then it still wouldn’t be a keyword worth pursuing.

That’s the good news, but there’s some bad news too…

The Rank Tracker

One of the best features of Market Samurai is (er, was?) its beautifully crafted rank tracker – a tool that allows you to check the ranks of your websites in the search engines for specific keywords up to 100 pages deep in Google (1000 results).

It was also neat because it would automatically detect if any internal pages on your website ranked for those keywords as well. For some of my sites, I’m literally tracking hundreds of keywords at a time – something that would take days for me to do manually (even with the help of some other rank tracking tools), but only seconds with Market Samurai.

Unfortunately, because of the new query limitations (and over 400,000 users of Market Samurai), the Rank Tracker needs to get it’s data elsewhere.

“With over 400,000 users now, tracking the ranks of your keywords on your behalf results inliterally millions of Google searches every day. Google’s changes mean that it will be simply impossible for us to continue doing this on your behalf.”

Unfortunately, this data isn’t free – and it would actually be incredibly expensive to get:

“…with a fixed-price product and so many users, it’s simply an economic impossibility to provide the same rank tracking functionality on an ongoing basis. In fact, it would cost us over $40,000 a day to purchase this data!”

I think you know where I’m going with this…

“So, we’re left with the difficult decision of having to pass this costs on to our users in some fashion (most likely a monthly paid service)…”

The paid service would be for the rank tracker only, this is confirmed in this comment here.

To me it was always weird that they didn’t charge a monthly fee for their rank tracker, because almost every other high-quality rank tracker does.

The truth is, of course, it’s going to be a difficult transition. Asking for payment for a service that has traditionally been provided for “free” (or as part of an overall one-time payment) doesn’t always go over well, especially with existing customers.

Netflix, anyone?

You can still, temporarily, track ranks with Market Samurai – except instead of using Market Samurai’s servers, you’re using your own. This works, but too many queries from your own server can create Google Service disruptions – so be careful if you’re in a work environment.

How much will this cost, nobody knows for sure yet, but apparently existing customers could get some sort of discount, and they may offer some limited rank tracking for free.

Will I pay for it?

Not sure.

I do use it but I am also exploring other options.

Other Rank Tracker Options

Spencer from Niche Pursuits has a product called Long Tail Pro, a simpler but just as powerful competitor to Market Samurai that I’ve used and am very impressed by. LTP’s rank tracker still works, although you have to enter urls and keywords one at a time at the moment.

Then there’s Erica.biz’s recent successful startup, WhooshTraffic, which has a more expensive Rank Tracker service. It does everything Market Samurai does, plus the service emails you an update of your rankings daily – which is an amazing feature.

There are several other options too such as Raven Tools and SEOMoz which are both paid services, and as far as free tools there’s SEOBook’s Rank Tracker for Firefox, however I can’t confirm that it’s working at the moment. If anyone has any other tools or suggestions that are working, please leave them in comments.

The Big Picture

So the question is still: is this the end of the Market Samurai Dynasty?

For me, not yet.

I’m going to continue using Market Samurai for keyword research and SEO competition analysis, although Long Tail Pro is definitely on my radar now.

If you’re not happy with the changes that Market Samurai has made – that’s totally understandable.

I’m not happy with them either, but a lot of the changes happened because of circumstances they couldn’t forsee or control, which is part of a potentially bigger problem and lesson we should all pay attention to.

Business that rely heavily on another are scary.

It’s like with my LEED exam study site – that’s a bit scary because the moment that exam expires, if it ever does, that business is done.

Hence, my advocacy for big time diversification online.

It’s also like with any business that relies purely on the Amazon Associates program. If the Amazon Tax hits that business’s state and Amazon pulls the plug on affiliates, then that business is dead, or at least severely injured.

Can we ever not be at the mercy of another company when doing business online?

To be honest, probably not – but the idea is to have the most control as possible.

Another important lesson here is what happens when you always put your customers first.

Noble Samurai has always done that from the beginning and has gone above and beyond to make sure their software is up to date as best as possible.

So even in light of all the recent events and the number of people who are upset, you’ll notice a ton of hardcore support for the company too – people who are going to stick with them no matter what.

A prime example of company motive comes from a specific exchange in the comment section of their most recent post:

A commenter named Kurt: “I thank you for being forthright honest with your members, especially those who have supported Market Samurai for all this time. While I understand where you are coming from, I would also like to take the time to evaluate my choices if Market Samurai (or portions of it will become paid), since we have to check the implications of this on our operations and our business model. I hope you can still maintain avenues such as refund open, especially if some members deem the new cost pricing strategy too expensive for their operations.”

Eugene: In regards to refund, our policy has always been to treat people the way that we’d like to be treated, and for us that means refunding everyone back to the first people who helped us launch our business in August 2008.

That kind of care will keeps people fans for life.

–

Thanks for taking the time to read this “news” type of article from me.

I know I don’t usually post stuff like this, but a lot of people have purchased Market Samurai through my affiliate link (thank you!) and I wanted to make sure everyone knew what was going on and what our options were.

Cheers, and all the best to you!

My January monthly income report will be published next.

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Is This the End of the Market Samurai Dynasty? Direct Answers from the CEO
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Are You Giving Instant Results? You Should, and Here’s Why.

Pat — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:44:31 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was at the mall with my good friend Chris Ducker from Virtual Business Lifestyle. We had just finished an awesome weekend in LA at Blog World Expo and we were headed down to my hometown of San Diego when we decided to stop at a mall in Irvine to grab a bite to eat and explore.

Chris lives in the Philippines and I wanted to give him a taste of the Orange County lifestyle here in southern California, something I became very familiar with when I worked in Irvine at my old architecture firm.

While strolling through the mall we randomly walked up to a mall-cart (those product displays that stand in the middle of the mall) that had some interesting looking merchandise.

I pointed at one of the electronic devices and asked the guy who was there, “So what does this thing do?”

Then, he did a little demonstration for us, which I’ll show you in the video below (and look out for the surprise at the end!):

(Click here to watch the video on YouTube)

And for those of you who can’t watch or listen to the audio, the transcript will be available right here very soon, although I recommend you watch and listen sometime because the demonstration has to do with an audio device.

As I mention in the video, giving people instant results is incredibly powerful.

This is something I always knew, but when I heard Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers.com talk about it in his presentation at Blog World Expo, it really struck a chord with me.

Instant results can yield instant fans, and sometimes instant customers too.

What’s even more impressive, especially if you’re teaching something, is to have the person (or audience) you’re speaking to experience instant results on their own as a result of their own work.

This isn’t always possible, but a lot of times it is and we just don’t take advantage of it.

Here are a couple of specific ways you can think about giving instant results to your audience:

1. Share Specific Methods That Can Yield Instant Results

The easiest thing to do is just simply share specific strategies that work fast. Again, we’re not talking about principles and theories and mindset type stuff here – it’s actual actionable stuff that your audience can see results from right away.

For example, last week I wrote a post entitled 10 Creative Ways to “Level Up” Your Presence on Facebook, which shares tips that I use on my own Facebook Page to increase engagement and garner more comments.

Most of the tips that I included were tips that can be implemented immediately, and consequently a lot of people got excited when they experienced the instant results themselves.

For example, I got this email a couple of days ago from someone who manages a Facebook Fan Page about True Blood (a TV series on HBO):

Hi Pat,

Last week I read your post 10 Creative Ways to “Level Up” Your Facebook Presence and immediately put several of the techniques into practice. I posted then within 10 minutes we had more activity than we’d had in the past week. Well, FB just emailed our weekly stats, and the proof is in the numbers:

4,995 monthly active users +231 since last week
11,435 people like this +26 since last week
385 wall posts or comments this week +371 since last week
248 visits this week +83 since last week

Thanks so much for sharing those tips with us!

It worked, and it worked fast, and for that reason I know this person will continue to be a fan of SPI and consume my content in the future.

2. Demonstrate How Easy it is to Complete a Particular Task

Some people know what to do, they just don’t know how to do it.

Another instant result type of thing that you can share is something that demonstrates how easy it is to accomplish a particular task.

Again, not everything falls under this category, but a lot of things do.

Here are some of my own examples:

All of these tutorials help people accomplish something that would normally take much longer to figure out on their own, and at the end of the instruction they have something to show for it – something instant.

Also, when people subscribe to my email list, some of the very first emails new subscribers receive are emails with actionable items they can implement immediately and see actual results from! (By the way, if you aren’t subscribed yet, you can subscribe using the box below)

The shorter the task takes, the better – because again, people want instant gratification, especially nowadays when everything seems to be moving at lightning speed.

So as much as principles, theories and mindset type advice is good (as they are an important component of the content pyramid), actionable items that lead to immediate results create instant fans, and possibly instant customers too.

And this doesn’t stop the moment a customer makes a purchase either.

If you have a course or an eBook or anything that people pay for, you can knock it out of the park and quickly validate their purchase if you give your new customers something quick that they can implement and see results from right away.

If you can do that, they’re more likely to go through your entire product, and if you deliver, you’ll have a life long fan – someone who trusts your brand and would be willing to share it with their contacts and possibly purchase from you again the next time you have something to offer.

Give them instant results.

If you liked this post, please do me a favor and click the retweet or like buttons below! Thank you!

And don’t forget – the Only72 event sale will be over in less than 24 hours! Click here to check out the deal!

Cheers, and all the best to you!

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Are You Giving Instant Results? You Should, and Here’s Why.
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The Truth About Scarcity Online

Pat — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 22:56:25 +0000

Scarcity is a marketing technique used to urge people to take action now by giving them the idea that they might not have the same opportunity in the future.

You’ve probably seen examples of scarcity used before:

Verbiage such as “for a limited time only” or “while supplies last” in advertisements and commercials.
Infomercials that say if you call within the next 5 minutes, you get a bonus product for free.
Venues that offer a free gift to the first 500 entrants.
Products online that are only available for a certain period of time.
Holiday sales in retail stores at the mall.

The list goes on and on.

As with most marketing techniques, scarcity works because of the way we, as humans, tend to think. Specifically, scarcity works because:

We hate missed opportunities.
We give more value to things that are rare or things that we cannot have.
We love having control over situations.
We love now.

The truth is, scarcity works – and it works really well.

On the flip side, however, scarcity can also backfire if used incorrectly.

Great Examples of Scarcity Used Online

As many of you know, I frequently recommend a product called Market Samurai, a killer keyword research and SEO competition tool that I use almost every day. They beautifully incorporate scarcity into their sales funnel by offering a huge $50 discount during the first 7-days after downloading the free trial. After those 7-days are up, the price goes back to the original $147.00 and there is absolutely no way to go back and get the $50 off.

About 99% of the commissions I receive from this product are from people who purchase at the discounted price, so I can tell that there’s a huge sense of urgency to buy the product before the price goes up.

The key thing to note here is that they are very strict when it comes to honoring the price changes. If they weren’t, scarcity would be compromised and it would not be as effective in generating sales.

Closing the Doors

Different than Market Samurai, which is a product that can be purchased at any time, many products do better by limiting the amount of time people have to sign up or make a purchase.

It might seem counter-intuitive to “close the doors” and completely cut off sales during those times, however, the limited time period forces people to make a decision, it introduces the idea of exclusivity in the program and it makes it easier to market when the doors re-open, since there are probably a number of people who were unable to get in the first time.

This is the strategy that was used successful for the Niche Site Coaching Program and more recently by Corbett Barr for Traffic School.

Again, the key here is that the doors close when they say they are closing, and they are not opened again until much later. I’ve seen a few people online re-open the doors to their programs a day or two after they were closed, claiming one reason or another to do so – and people can usually see right through that. It leaves a bad impression for those who followed through and purchased when it was open the first time.

Early Bird Specials

“The early bird gets the worm.”

Another scarcity technique that I’ve seen used successfully online, which I myself have used a number of times on my LEED Exam site, is the early bird special.

Typically, this is where there’s a special discounted price and/or a bonus offered to the first X number of people who make a purchase. Again, the same psychological rules apply here – and it’s a great way to reward those who are quick to act.

To take this even further, many people include live updated counts of the offer while it’s happening – on the sales page itself (there are scripts that can do this automatically, although manually ever x number of minutes isn’t too difficult) and on Twitter and Facebook too. While the number closes in on the limit, it creates an even greater sense of urgency.

By Invitation Only

This is a scarcity model that is illustrated and executed quite brilliantly by Google.

When a new product comes out, instead of opening it up to the public, Google releases it to a small handful of people and give them the power to invite others to join.

They did this with Google Wave, and they did this more recently with Google Plus.

Access is extremely limited at first, and when you’re IN you feel like you have power because you can invite whoever you want, and when you’re OUT you feel like you’re left out of the party – which makes you want it even more.

It works really well, so much to the point that you’ll see people begging for invites before they even know what the product is about or how it works.

It would be interesting to see how this scarcity + invite model would work with a paid product, or maybe a free membership site of some kind.

Might be something to think about.

The Best Thing To Do Is…

Incorporate scarcity into your sales strategy one way or another, because it works. Be conscious about what’s going on and how your audience will perceive your product when a specific type of scarcity is introduced. If done correctly, the value of your product or offer may actually go up. If done incorrectly and dishonestly, it can hurt you instead.

What are some examples of scarcity that you’ve come across before? Good examples, bad examples, online or offline?

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The Truth About Scarcity Online
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Smart Passive Income Gets Critiqued – Conversion Strategies with Derek Halpern

Pat — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:11:58 +0000

I’m not a pro at this online thing…

And that’s the beauty of it – you don’t have to be an expert at everything in order for success to find you.

For example, in no way am I an SEO (search engine optimization) expert. When I started this blog, I hardly knew what the term meant, and even when I reached 10,000 subscribers, a detailed SEO analysis from an expert revealed that this blog and the way it was structured for SEO was…well…

Abysmal.

And that’s okay, because it’s all a learning experience – and I’m always applying what I learn to what I have so that I can see better results. No matter where you’re at, you can always improve, and although I know my online businesses and blogs have done quite well, I’m always looking for expert advice from others who can help me reach higher levels.

Enter Derek Halpern

Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers.com helps people turn web traffic into sales and leads (and if you don’t have traffic he shows you how to get that too). He and I have chatted a couple of times in the past, but he recently caught my attention when he did a public website review for Chris Brogan, where he openly shared his expertise on how to better convert traffic for one of Chris’s small business sites.

It was, to say the least, incredible!

I was lucky enough to be chatting with Derek on Skype after I saw the review video and he was kind enough to offer a critique of one of my own sites too – and instead of choosing one of my niche sites, or even GreenExamAcademy.com, I chose to have him take apart The Smart Passive Income Blog.

(A LOT of) Room for Improvement

Like I said, there is always room for improvement on any blog – and boy did Derek deliver and confirm that for me. Our session together was simply amazing, and I’m happy to share it with you in a video (and transcript) today.

He really opened my eyes to a lot of great strategies to better capture email subscribers that I’ve never even thought of before, that both you and I can implement today, although I’ll wait a couple of weeks after this post goes live to make those changes, so you can see the “before” live – and of course I’ll report on the changes once they are made.

In this video session, you’ll learn:

The one mistake that I’m making that most other bloggers are making too when it comes to converting traffic into subscribers.
The things on SPI that do work well (yeah he gives me some thumbs up too!).
The 3 elements of a high converting about page (I’m currently only using 1 of them).
The most obvious place to add a subscriber box that is missing from the SPI blog.
The parts of my sidebar that need to disappear now, and why.
Where on my blog I should ditch the sidebars all together, and why.
How giddy I get with how simple, but genius these strategies are.
Plus a few more cool things.

Here’s the video and transcript for you below:

(Watch the Conversion Strategies video on YouTube)

Click Here to Download the Transcript.

I recommend that you check out Derek at SocialTriggers.com right away and sign up for his newsletter, which is packed with incredible tips, personality and care to help you grow your audience and convert that traffic into sales and leads. He’s not your typical internet marketer and I’ll bet that you’re going to hear his name around the blogosphere a lot more in the near future.

A special thanks to Derek for his awesome critique, and I’d love to hear what you think about this video and Derek’s strategies to help improve the SPI blog.

Cheers!

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Smart Passive Income Gets Critiqued – Conversion Strategies with Derek Halpern
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Your Website Is Up – Now What? 5 Things You Can Do To Market and Promote Your Website

Pat — Mon, 23 May 2011 21:57:41 +0000

You’ve just put up a brand new website, or maybe you’ve had one for a while and it’s just not getting anywhere.

The Good News: You’ve already taken some action. Putting up a website is just one piece of the puzzle that many people who want to do business online can’t even say they’ve done.

The Bad News: You don’t know what to do next.

Better News: You’re in the right place, because I’m going to share a number of tips, techniques and strategies from my own experience that will help you promote and market your web properties.

Unlike putting up a website, however, it can take some time to see the fruits of your labor when trying to get noticed online. Furthermore, how quickly you see results can depend on the actual market that you’re in – the more saturated and crowded a market is, the more strategic and “out of the box” you’ll have to think.

The Smart Passive Income Blog was definitely not the first “make money online” type of blog, and if I were to ask any expert they would have told me to stay away from this niche before getting into it. But as you can see, with some hard work, creativity and consistency I’ve been able to nudge my way into one of the most saturated niches out there, and I’ve done pretty well for myself.

Below are some strategies that I’ve used in the past since starting my online career that you may be able to put to practice too. Not all of these may apply to you and your specific situation, but I’m sure there’s at least one tidbit you can take away from this post, and sometimes it just takes one little thing to really jump start your success.

1. Become an Authority in a Forum

When I first started my LEED exam blog at GreenExamAcademy.com back in late 2007, I was also extremely active in a forum related to the exam where a lot of people went to ask for help. A couple of months later, without even knowing it, I was eventually driving a ton of daily traffic to my site and became fairly well known as the expert in the forum.

Was I really an expert?

To me I wasn’t – but because I was leaving detailed answers to everyone’s questions, I portrayed myself as one.

Forums are beautiful because it’s easy for a person to find answers to questions they’re looking for from existing threads, and if they notice you’re the one always leaving brilliant answers, they’re going to want to learn more about you.

And after a certain point, you’ll become so well known that other people will mention you as a resource, and the promotion just takes on a life of it’s own:

There are, of course, some rules that you should must follow when utilizing forums for promotional purposes:

You must first give before you can receive, and your primary purpose in the forum is to answer other people’s questions and solve other people’s problems – not to promote your website. Traffic to your site should be the result of people making the conscious decision to want to learn more about you and what you have to offer – not because you’ve tricked them or forced a link down their throats.
You should never post a link to your website – not until you’ve become well-known enough that you won’t seem like you’re just spamming. Even if the link you’re posting is 100% relevant, it will always seem self-promotional until you become an authority figure.
Always make use of your forum profile and signature. This is where you’re allowed to be a bit self-promotional, so talk about who you are, why you’re there and most importantly, link to your site.

Note: different forums have different rules, so be sure to read them over first before you do anything. Some forums, for example, don’t allow you to post any links until you’ve been a member for a week and have posted a certain number of times.

To find a forum for whatever niche you’re in, you can simply type the following text into a Google search bar: forum:”keyword”

See below:

If I were you, I’d find one of the more popular forums (check the # of registered users, as well as the dates on the latest threads to make sure the forum is still thriving) and aim to become an authority in that forum. I wouldn’t divide my efforts between multiple forums.

Choose one, and kill ‘em with content.

2. Get on the Radar of Major Players in your Niche

There is nothing that can quickly boost the traffic to your website and the credibility of your brand quite like an endorsement from a highly respected, top player in the same niche as you.

In the not-so-distant past, guest posting on big blogs was THE way to get in front of a ton of people. A guest post is sort of like an endorsement from the blog owner, which means huge spikes of traffic and lots of new subscribers for the guest author. Lately, however, guest posts are having less of an impact, probably due to the fact that they seem to be more and more common, sometimes more common than actual posts from the author on many of the top blogs around the world.

Don’t rule them out though, and if you’re in a niche where you believe there’s some major traffic to be had by putting your unique content onto another person’s blog – definitely give it a shot. Read Glen Allsop’s Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging before you do anything related to guest posting.

In the more recent not-so-distant past, featuring ‘Major Player’ generated content in a list post was an effective way to indirectly get a loads of traffic, primarily from resulting shares on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. In this tactic, you’d contact several of the top people in your niche and ask them all to answer one or two simple questions, and then publish all of the answers into one major round up post.

This is highly effective and still works, however in some niches (like the blogging and make money online niches) it doesn’t work quite as well anymore because the same questions are being asked and published over and over again, and for the “Major Players” it was fun the first few times, but after a while it gets a bit repetitive and they realize that their time answering one or two questions for a round up post can be better invested elsewhere.

The best, but toughest type of endorsement you can get from a top player in your niche is a feature, or even just a link to your site included in a regular post written by the author of the blog. This isn’t easy and it’s something that cannot be forced (or else you’ll just be ignored), but with some work and a little bit of luck, you can get featured on another person’s site.

Here on SPI, I’ve featured several pieces of content written by others who have caught my attention a number of different ways – primarily with their unique content that they provide on their own blogs, and how often I hear about those pieces in my social networks. This is probably the same reason why A-list bloggers like Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse were happy to feature me on their sites too when I was first starting out, which obviously did a lot for my brand and my traffic.

Here are 5 non-spammy methods to get on the radar of anybody online. Here’s what I suggest:

Retweet (RT) tweets on Twitter that link to their own posts, and compliment them (genuinely) on their work. Since it’s a RT, they’ll see your name in their “@ Mention” column.
Tag their Facebook page while linking to their posts on your own Facebook page. Like Twitter, this shows up on their own Page and they see exactly who was responsible for the share.
And beyond that, on Facebook and Twitter, you can obviously converse and chat with them about whatever it is they are talking about. Don’t go overboard though – you don’t want to seem like a stalker. Just be genuine, like you were talking to this person at a party. No self-promotion – just get to know each other.
Link to their posts from your own blog. If they have trackbacks, pingbacks or something like Google Alerts enabled, they’ll see where the link is coming from. If not, they may eventually see some kind of traffic coming from a new source (your blog), and they might be interested in learning more about where it’s coming from.
On the blog of the person you are interested in, you can leave comments on their posts! A lot of people have definitely caught my attention with the quality of their comments there on SPI, and as a result many of them have been linked to and a few even landed a guest post or two. If you do plan on leaving comments on other blogs, follow the same rules as you would with forums: keep it purely content – as if you were contributing content to the post itself, be engaging, no self-promotion, and don’t forget to link to your website in the “website” field in the comment section so you can get some direct traffic coming your way too. To sum it up, leave epic comments.

Getting featured on other sites won’t always happen, but using these strategies you can at least introduce yourself to these people and get on their radar, and possibly generate long lasting business relationships with them.

3. SEO and Natural Traffic Generation

Of course, generating natural traffic through search engines is one of the best ways to market and promote your site – not only because you’re getting highly targeted traffic, but also because that traffic is virtually free.

If you have a brand new site, this will obviously take time to happen. Your goal is to get on the first page of Google for your target keyword(s), and depending on the niche you’re in it could take months, or it could take years.

I won’t go into too much detail here since search engine optimization is something that is talked about quite a bit here on SPI and on the blogosphere in general, however I will highlight a few key factors you should definitely pay attention to:

It All Starts with Great Content

Now, more than ever (especially after Google’s recent “Panda” update), the content you publish on your site is hugely important. It should be unique, extremely detailed and useful, or else you’re not going to get anywhere.

Think about creating content so good that it doesn’t deserve to be anywhere else but at the top of the search engines, and on everyone’s Facebook and Twitter streams.

High Quality Backlinks are Still Key

If you want to make any movement in the search engines, you must acquire high quality backlinks to your site. If you’re unsure of where to start, then definitely read The Backlinking Strategy that Works. It’s still working for many people, including myself, who implement the strategy.

Get Traffic From Long Tail Keywords

On all of my niche sites, and even The Smart Passive Income Blog, a majority of my search engine traffic does not from searches for my primary keyword – it’s for other keywords that people are typing into Google that I never even targeted, it’s just stuff I’ve written about somewhere in my posts.

On my security guard training site, for example, 42.91% of my search engine traffic comes from my target keyword “security guard training”, while 57.09% comes from 2,142 other keywords. And although most of those keywords only gather 1 or 2 hits, together they definitely add up, and as a result my Adsense revenue is always increasing.

The biggest thing to take away from this example is that the more relevant content you publish, the more chances people will have to find you.

4. Make a Presence on Lesser Saturated Platforms

Getting your name out there can be tough, but you can make it a little easier on yourself by making a presence on platforms that are a little less competitive and saturated. Here are some other places around the web where you could become an authority figure beyond your blog and the blogosphere, with the ultimate goal of promoting your website and brand.

iTunes (via a Podcast)

Starting a podcast and publishing it on iTunes was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made since the history of SPI. By doing so, I’ve been able to expand my brand onto a platform that has a lot of people on it, but is much less competitive – so it was relatively easy to gain some momentum.

Note: this screenshot was taken in September of 2010.

My podcast currently ranks #1 or #2 for the following keywords on iTunes:

Blogging
Online Business
Passive Income
Online Entrepreneur

These are highly competitive terms in Google, however it didn’t take much for me to find a top ranking for them in iTunes.

There are a ton of untapped niches here, so if you can create a show and become the leader and the voice for the subject on iTunes, you will promote your brand and you will see traffic, and potentially income as a result.

Of course, setting up a podcast isn’t 100% easy, and you’ll definitely want to make sure the quality of your audio is top-notch to get the best results. Definitely check out Cliff Ravenscraft from PodcastAnswerMan.com for all of your podcasting needs – and tell him I sent you.

Even if your site is brand new and you don’t have an audience yet, you can use iTunes as your primary traffic generator. This is exactly how Internet Business Mastery got started, and Sterling and Jay continue to rule iTunes as the #1 business podcast since 2005.

YouTube (via a Video channel)

YouTube is actually the #2 search engine in the world, and although some niches are pretty tapped out on this platform (weight loss and fitness, for example), there are some untapped niches that are very under-represented on YouTube as well.

As many of you know, I’ve been a big proponent of using YouTube to promote one’s website, and it has done wonders for my traffic ever since I started.

Here’s a screenshot of incoming links to SPI over the last few days, just to give you an idea:

Currently, my YouTube videos have been viewed nearly half a million times, and it continues to become a major traffic source for SPI.

If you find and fill a hole in your niche on YouTube and create a video that’s useful, you will get views and you will get traffic back to your site.

My best resource is SPI Podcast Session #19, which is all about YouTube marketing and getting the most out of your time spent on this powerful platform.

5. Becoming a Source for HARO and Reporter Connection

The last thing I’d like to talk about is something that I really wish was around when I was first starting out – a very powerful idea that you can use to get in some major spotlights, which has worked amazingly for a number of people that I know, especially Jaime Tardy from EventualMillionaire.com who was recently featured on MSN, CNN Money and even the front page of Yahoo because of it.

HARO, which is short for “Help a Reporter Out”, and Reporter Connection are two crowdsourcing sites that journalists, bloggers and other publishers use to easily gather information for whatever it is they are researching and need content for.

For us website owners, it’s free to become a source. As a source, you’ll get emails every day with inquiries from people all around the world looking to publish information about you if you have information they are looking for. Not all of the topics will apply to you, but the right ones can definitely put you and your website (again, if applicable) on a website with a large existing audience.

Here’s a screenshot showing what the emails from HARO look like. As you can see, if the topics are of your interest, you can get in front of some particularly large audiences (CBS Interactive, ABCNews, etc.):

I love this idea because the opportunities are coming to you – not the other way around. If I was just starting out, these are definitely emails that I would be looking forward to every single day.

Marketing and Promotion: In Conclusion

A few things to take away from these marketing and promotional strategies that I want to make sure you understand:

Putting up a website is important (obviously), but without any marketing or promotional effort, it’s just going to sit there collecting dust. Hopefully these 5 strategies give you some idea of what direction you can possibly take from this point forward.
Rarely does one see immediate changes overnight (although there is the occasional viral video or link from a super-site that can give you a quick boost), so be patient. Marketing is a process that takes time, and the beginning is the hardest part. However, once you get going it can have a snowball effect and things can begin to take off on their own.
And lastly, marketing is a people thing. It’s the relationships you build – not just with other big players in your niche, but directly with your audience, that can take your website to the next level.

Build sites for people.

Create content for people.

Help as many people as possible.

If you can do that, then you will be rewarded sometime in the future.

Cheers!

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A Blogger’s Guide to Getting Your Freq. On – Defining the Importance of Consistency

Pat — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:55:28 +0000

“Success doesn’t happen overnight – especially when it comes to Blogging, but simply going out there and ‘being consistent’ isn’t going to get you anywhere. Not if you don’t have the right focus, the right drive – and an ability to get your freq. on.”

This is a quote and guest post by my buddy, Alex Whalley, who blogs about building, ranking and profiting from niche sites on AlexWhalley.com. He’s quickly gaining ground in the blogosphere and often times I’ll have to stop myself from reading the content on his blog because it is very useful and engaging information. Today, he talks about being consistent, frequency and what really needs to happen in order to gain ground with your blogs and online businesses. In other words, getting your freq. (not freak) on.

Blogging, like any business requires consistency – that much is a given, and any semi experienced blogger will be nodding their head right about now.

But what is consistency really? And has anyone taken the time to define what aspect of it is important?

“Find what works and do it consistently”

You hear that phrase all the time and although it is true to a certain degree, it’s also a catch 22, because when it comes to blogging and the whole making money online niche – to find out if something truly works you have to do it consistently first!

But there are two key ingredients that every blog needs, and beyond all the mish mash that resides in between – it’s about doing these things frequently, and in your own unique way. You know, ‘Getting Your Freq. On’.

What Are the Two Key Ingredients?

Good Content
Networking

Simple really.

Make these two things happen, and make them happen consistently and you WILL find success.

If, however, your motive is to wait for these things to start ‘working’ then there is a really good chance you’ll throw in the towel before it actually happens.

This is the single reason most people fail online!

It’s got nothing to do with information overload, or not having time, or whatever other reason you can think of. The single most prevelant reason why 97% of online marketers fail is because they skip from one ‘opportunity’ to the next in a vain attempt to find what works rather than simply taking action and ‘getting their freq. on’.

This is the reason why the ‘Guru’ thrives – selling his promises of instant riches and one click copy and paste systems to make you a millionaire. “That works! (?) I’ll do it consistently then…”

“Earning a passive income online takes hard work, some patience and a little bit of luck too” – Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income Blog.

The question you should be asking then is not ‘Is this working?’ but ‘How frequently should I be doing it?’

The question of ‘How Often Should You Post’ is a frequently discussed topic in the blogosphere and although this article is not here to join that particular debate – it is jumping on the point that no matter how frequent or infrequent your posting schedule is, you need to keep that frequency going.

This is Pat jumping in here for the moment, because I do like this particular debate about how often one should post on their blogs. Alex brings up a great point here, and it is that the ‘how often’ doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s consistent and you keep going. On another level, maybe your blogging schedule is erratic, but if that’s the case there still needs to be something that is consistent. An example is Glen Allsop’s blog at Viperchill.com. He seems to post irregularly and not very often at all, however the quality of his articles is consistently top-notch, as each of his posts become some of the best and most unique content on the web, and that is why his blog is considered one of the best. That is all…back to Alex!

The same goes for the all important networking that must be done. If you choose to utilize a certain social network or forum, then make sure you actually frequent that site.

Tools and Resources to Help You Get Your Freq. On

FocusBooster

FocusBooster is a free timer that basically goes on your desktop and counts down from 25 minutes at which point it breaks for 5 minutes and then starts again.

This cycle is based on the Pomodoro Technique – a method designed to help you focus and achieve more in less time. It’s also great because it sits on top of whatever application you are using so that the timer is always prevelant.

Getting Things Done

The Multi-Award Winning, and hugely successful book that has become a multi million dollar industry is definitely a must read if you want to truly get your freq on. Available from Amazon (or any good bookstore) I recommend checking out ‘Getting Things Done’ By David Allen.

The Content Pyramid

Pat himself actually posted a fantastic article, complete with an infographic that serves as a great framework for getting your content freq. on. Read the post, download the graphic and you’ll have a good idea of what ‘type’ of post should come next.

Further Reading / Listening

For some insight into the importance of consistency you can hear the full story of Pat Flynn’s growth in a Podcast with Yaro Starak. The Post (or downloadable podcast rather) titled How Pat Flynn Lost His Job Then Made $203,219.04 In His First Year Online is a fantastic insight into the how, where and why Pat Flynn got his Freq on.

You can learn more about what Alex does on his blog at AlexWhalley.com. Probably one of the more interesting things going on at his blog right now is his recent Article Marketing Experiment where he chose to use only Unique Article Wizard (UAW), a tool that I recommend here on SPI, to help promote one of his new niche sites. In about a month he’s already ranking on the first page of Google, starting to see traffic and make a little bit of money, which is awesome. You can read more about his Article Marketing Challenge here.

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How I Accumulated 10,000 Email Subscribers in 13.5 Months

Pat — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:18:02 +0000

When I started this blog back in October of 2008, I had made the newbie mistake of not including a way to accumulate email addresses. No newsletter, no opt-in form – nothing.

Over a year later, I finally got my head on straight and made the decision to invest in an Aweber account and start building my list. (For details about why one should build an email list, I recommend you read this post.)

I went live with my newsletter on January 2nd, 2010.

1 year, 1 month and 14 days later (yesterday), I surpassed 10,000 subscribers – a mark that I never thought I’d reach, at least not this fast.

Please realize, however, that 10k is just an arbitrary number. The only difference between 9,999 and 10,000 is the extra digit. But, in the same way a lot of people strive to become a millionaire (are you less accomplished if you have only $999,999?) – it does feel pretty awesome to reach the 10k milestone. A lot of people have way more, but I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished in such a short period of time.

As always, I’m not here to boast. In fact, I try really hard (especially in my monthly income reports) not to come off as cocky or better than anyone else, because I’m not. This site is all about the methods and lessons I’ve learned from my accomplishments (and my failures), so in true SPI fashion, here are some of the unique strategies I’ve used to build my list.

A New Vision for Email Lists

I’m subscribed to almost every internet marketing guru’s email list so that I can learn their marketing techniques first hand. These are professionals who know exactly what to write to get us to open their emails, click on the links inside and potentially earn a commission from us.

So what was the biggest lesson that I learned from these experts?

Getting sold to via email sucks.

The hard sell doesn’t make me like that person any more or want to connect with them any further.

It was because of my dry experience with all of these experts and their emails that I decided to go a totally different route with my email list: no selling.

It’s a simple concept, but for some reason “that’s not how you’re supposed to do it“.

Some people might ask, “Then what’s the point of an email list if you’re not going to use it to sell anything?”

I use my email list like I use social media – a medium to further connect with my readers, followers and subscribers. A place to interact (gasp!) and inform – not a place to promote and sell.

Because of this methodology:

My open rates are through the roof since my subscribers know I’m not just trying to sell something.
People trust me and my brand more.
I have subscribers who are more than happy to spread the word about my newsletter and help grow my list.
I have some subscribers who want to pay me for products I haven’t even created yet.

I also use my list as a way to give away awesome, unique content, and occasionally I’ll drive traffic back to my site, which is where any promotions or recommendations for products I’ve used take place. It’s all non-aggressive, non-direct and totally soft sell. For example, I may link to blog posts that relate to the content in the emails that people receive, and within those blog posts I may describe a product or two that I use.

The experts may still find success with their old school methods, but I guarantee I have a list that’s built for the long-run, one that will continue to grow quicker as the hard sell becomes less and less popular both for the expert and for the consumer.

An Unforgettable First Impression

A standard, but powerful technique for increasing the number of subscribers is to offer something for free in return for signing up. Typically, this is something like an eBook, a free report or some type of email course – although it could be anything.

You probably know this already.

That said, not too many people spend enough time on their giveaway because all of the focus is on getting people onto the list, which is, of course, the point of offering the giveaway in the first place.

The Problem

We’re forgetting that when people sign up and get something in return for free, that something is usually the very first thing that they’re going to look at. The followup emails and broadcasts come later.

If the giveaway is anything less than impressive, it weakens all of your interaction with your new subscribers – forever.

If you over-deliver and truly create an unforgettable first impression, you’ll have a long-term subscriber who will be more likely to share your content, help grow your email list and potentially become a customer too.

I spent over 2 months designing eBooks the Smart Way, the eBook that would become my free download for those who signed up for my newsletter. I highlight the word “designing” because that’s exactly what I did. The content was already written, since it came from a popular 10 post series I wrote about publishing an eBook in early 2009.

2 months of work, for a free eBook…but why?!

Because I knew that if I could blow people’s minds with the design and delivery of this content, it could, on it’s own, grow my list, increase overall readership and heighten my authority.

Now, my eBook is constantly being mentioned on other blogs (there are over 2000 instances of the title in Google), people are tweeting and retweeting my landing page, and a few people actually offered to pay me for it.

Here is some actual proof that the time spent creating my eBook was well worth it:

Again, remember that your giveaway is one of the first and best opportunities to leave a long lasting, unforgettable impression that could also help exponentially and virally grow your list.

Planting Seeds

The most common place to accumulate new subscribers is in the sidebar of our blogs. Because the opt-in form is in the sidebar, it’s shown on every single page, so it doesn’t matter what page people are viewing for the first time – there’s always an opportunity to subscribe.

You can do a few things within this area of your blog to slightly increase your conversions:

Use colors that stand out and catch people’s attention. I have big green box with a bright red button inside. You can’t really miss it.
Include a high-quality graphical representation of your giveaway.
Make a piece of your graphic come off the page a little, to give more attention to the area.
Use words other than “subscribe” or “submit” inside the button. “Free Instant Access” seems to work best for me, although I’d recommend split testing with other copy such as “Get Your eBook Now!”, or “Try My Course for Free!”, etc.

A lot of people stick to just the sidebar to promote their list, but really you have an endless opportunities to plant seeds in many places that will help grow your list. Here are locations where I do just that:

1. At The End of Each Post – I have a second opt-in area that can be seen at the end of my posts. The idea here is that when people read our content, they scroll down the page and our sidebar opt-in form may disappear (depending on the length of our posts). We definitely want to give our readers an easy, second opportunity to subscribe here because this is after they’ve consumed our content and are most engaged with us.

2. Within Each Comment Form – Using the Subscriber’s Magnet Plugin (which is 30% off until Friday), I’ve enabled a way for people to subscribe to my list when people leave a comment, which is pretty cool. After testing this for several months, it actually does work very well. Over 1000 people have signed up this way.

Of course, if you’re not getting any comments on your blog this particular feature of the plugin won’t do you any good.

3. On My Podcast

One of the best things I ever did to increase my traffic, readership, authority and my email list was start a podcast.

In nearly each session, I mention an easy url that forwards to my landing page here on the blog that describes my eBook, shows a few testimonials and includes an opt-in form.

The “easy url” is key because people are not reading the content – they are listening to it. So, you’ll have to rely on either show notes, or a very memorable url that people can plug into their browsers.

This is why I picked up ebooksthesmartway.com. It’s much more memorable and easier to read than “smart passive income dot com slash ebooks, dash, the, dash, smart, dash, way”.

Every time I mention this url it’s an everlasting seed that can grow into a subscriber from the moment I publish the episode.

4. In YouTube Videos

Same as the podcast, except with video on YouTube.

5. In Guest Posts and Interviews

When submitting guest posts to other bloggers, or if you’re fortunate enough to land an interview (email, audio or video) instead, you’re typically given the opportunity to link back or say the url of your website. If you have an “easy url” that forwards to a landing page that describes your newsletter and giveaway, you will mostly likely be able to drop in that link as well and you’ll get some hardcore targeted traffic going straight to into your list.

You can also promote your list on Facebook and Twitter, and even on articles that you write for article directories too.

Don’t just stick to one method if you really want to grow your list. Diversify, diversify, diversify.

Thanks again to everyone for your support, and a special thank you to those of you who have subscribed to my email list and downloaded eBooks the Smart Way. It really means a lot to me.

All the best to you! Cheers!

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4 Types of AutoResponder Series and The One You Should Absolutely Avoid

Pat — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:27:25 +0000

It might seem like a weird time of the year to write about autoresponder email messages, especially with everyone else talking about their goals for 2011 and what they hope to accomplish come the new year. But in my case, I feel it’s appropriate because it’s been exactly one year since I introduced my own newsletter and autoresponder series for the Smart Passive Income Blog. One year since I began building an email list.

As many of you know, at the same time I also introduced my free eBook, eBooks the Smart Way, as a “lead magnet” (that’s what the pros call it) to hopefully entice people to sign up, and as I usually do with everything else I’ve got my hands in, I’m happy to share my results with you.

Using Aweber to handle everything, I’ve accumulated 8,252 subscribers over the past year. To some of you, this may seem like a lot, but for others, it might seem like nothing. There are professional internet marketers out there with lists of over 100,000 people which is very impressive.

That being said, it’s not the size of the list that matters, it’s how responsive it is. If you have a list of 100,000 people but only 5% of them open your emails, then you basically have a list of only 5000 people.

I’ve been very fortunate to have obtained a list of very responsive subscribers (Thank you! You all rock!). My open rate (the percentage of people who actually open the emails that I send out) averages around 55-60% per email. From what I’ve heard, this is much better than typical open rates, which hover around 20-30% (source: Warrior Forum).

Below, I’ll share with you 4 different examples of how you can handle your autoresponder series, including the one that I use which attributes to my very high open rates, as well as the one you should absolutely avoid.

What Is An Autoresponder Series?

Before I get into the 4 examples, I’m sure there are a few of you out there who don’t know what an autoresponder series is. If you already know, feel free to skip this section. If you don’t, keep reading.

An autoresponder series is just another fancy term for a number of automated pre-written emails that get sent to your subscribers in a sequential order. This is different than a broadcast, which is a one-time message that gets sent to all of your subscribers (or a particular segment of your subscribers that you set) at the same time.

What’s nice about setting up an autoresponder series is that you can take people through a sequence of emails (which begin on the first day a new person subscribes) without ever having to do any work, since you’ve already written the emails beforehand. Many people use an autoresponder series to take people through an e-Course.

Other uses for an autoresponder series include:

Keeping in contact with subscribers.
Promoting your own products.
Promoting products as an affiliate.
Providing more content to your subscribers.
Re-introducing old content to your new subscribers.
Getting input from your subscribers by asking them for feedback or help. You may have experienced something like this already if you’ve purchased anything from Amazon.com and received an email a few days after receiving your package asking for a review.
Or a combination of any of the above.

The autoresponder series is one of the best tools for generating a passive income (even on a blog), because if setup properly, all you need to do is generate more leads and your pre-written emails will take care of the rest.

Autoresponder Series #1: The Bait and Hook

The bait and hook approach comes from writing a sequence of pre-written emails that work like this:

The basic premise is that valuable content related to a particular subject is provided first (the bait), and then a product or solution is introduced later (the hook).

I’m currently signed up for several different newsletters, and to me this is one of the most common methods – probably because it does work and is very powerful. While the emails with content do provide value, they also help to create awareness around a particular problem or subject matter, which the eventual product could provide a solution for.

With all that said, you do have to be cautious if you choose this method. There’s a difference between awareness and hype, and people nowadays are definitely turned off from hype-toned emails. The copy of each of the emails must be crafted carefully because it can be really easy to sound like you’re just leading up to a product, in which case the emails can be a real turn-off and you’ll find a lot of your subscribers will unsubscribe from your list.

Autoresponder Series #2: The Ground and Pound

This is the most aggressive approach to an autoresponder series, but it can still be effective and profitable in some scenarios. The ground and pound approach works like this, as you might expect:

You might think that this is a big no-no, but in some situations this actually works to a website owner’s advantage.

For example, sometimes an autoresponder series is introduced to an existing customer, and these promotional/product emails are upsells for other products that compliment the initial purchase. In this case, the customer has already proven to be a buyer and so promotional emails will not be as unwelcome, and in some cases they can actually be valuable (in fact, they should always aim to be valuable).

The ground and pound sequence could also work if you properly manage the expectations of your subscribers upfront. If you blatantly tell subscribers that they will get promotional emails from you, then those who sign up will expect it – no harm, no foul.

If you had a photography site, for example, with a newsletter that sent emails with exclusive deals and tips about certain photography products and gear, then ground and pound could be your best friend.

Like I said, this only works in certain situations so you’ll have to use some common sense and think about your specific audience and their particular wants and needs.

Autoresponder Series #3: The Pat Flynn

I named this “The Pat Flynn” only because this is how I handle my autoresponder series. I’m pretty sure I’m not the first one to do this, but honestly I’m not familiar with anyone else who does, and I’m subscribed to a large number of email lists.

The Pat Flynn works like this:

As you can see, there are two components to the Pat Flynn autoresponder series: Content and Engagement.

Content emails are tips and tricks that I provide to my subscribers that cannot be found anywhere else on the blog. This helps to keep people on my list and wanting more. Here are some responses to one of my particular autoresponder emails:

Beyond killer content, I try to engage with my subscribers. This is something I don’t see anyone else doing (I don’t know why), but I highly recommend it.

By “engage” I mean actually trying to get a response from my subscribers in a few of the emails. In one particular autoresponder email, for example, I ask my subscriber what they wish I write a blog post about. This makes people feel like they are involved with the content on my blog (which they are, because I’m in fact using a lot of the responses as inspiration for the content on my blog), and it helps them connect with me on a more personal level too. Hitting reply is a form of taking action, and any type of action taken by a subscriber is a win.

Now, you might not like this idea because “I don’t want to get a ton of emails from my subscribers.” If that’s the case, you’re going to miss out on opportunities of engagement which may not lead to an immediate click or a sale, but could help build a relationship that eventually does.

So You’ve Got Lots of Great Content And You Engage With Your Subscribers – So What?

Good question.

The real magic of my approach is two-fold:

I’m establishing credibility and building relationships in a non-evasive manner, which keeps people on my list and opening emails. This obviously helps increase the open rate and responsiveness of my broadcast emails; and
Some of the content emails get people back onto another platform where opportunities for affiliate sales and product sales exist.

The first point is self-explanatory – by not being aggressive and promoting anything directly on my newsletter, I have an increased open rate and responsiveness on each of my emails.

The second point is probably better illustrated by the diagram below, which is the same diagram as above, with a few more add-ons:

This doesn’t represent the exact order of how everything happens – I currently have over 25 pre-written emails setup in my autoresponder series and things happen at various time (I test a lot), but I think you get the main idea.

The newsletter is not where any promotion occurs, it’s used as another medium to connect with my readers. Money that is eventually made is made off of the newsletter, from people coming back to my blog where I do promote products as an affiliate, and will eventually promote products of my own as well.

The tough part about it is that any transactions that do take place are harder to track. In a traditional promotional type of email, it’s easy to tell how much money a campaigned has earned, based on the number of clicks on a link within that email and the commissions or sales earned as a result.

With the “Pat Flynn”, on the other hand, someone may become a fan on Facebook or subscribe to my YouTube channel as a result of one of my particular emails and may not perform any type of transaction that day, week, month or even year. But, some of those people may eventually find a link to a post on my Facebook Page or watch a newly uploaded Video on YouTube and be interested in something that I recommend, or a product that I release.

Maybe a person will end up on my blog as a result of one of my emails and see one of the ads in the sidebar. There are multiple points of possible transactions that can stem from the newsletter, but again I find it particularly important to use the newsletter as a relationship builder – not the point of sale.

Is this the best way to do things? It is for me, but for you it’ll depend on your niche and your audience, so think about it from your readers’ perspective and what they would want to get in your emails.

Autoresponder Series #4: The One To Avoid

Below is an email sequence that you should try to avoid. Unfortunately, this is the sequence that most people usually have:

A.K.A. no autoresponder sequence at all.

A lot of people setup their email lists (use this beginner’s guide if you don’t know how) and focus purely on the broadcast emails. Broadcasts are great and should be included from time to time, however if you skip the autoresponder sequence you’re missing out on valuable, passive income opportunities.

Remember, it’s all about working hard now so you can reap the benefits later, and it really doesn’t take too much time to setup an autoresponder series.

I hope you found this post helpful, and if you’d like to get to know my autoresponder sequence first hand and get those exclusive tips and tips I was talking about, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter (and get a free copy of eBooks the Smart Way too!) by clicking here.

Cheers!

Any thoughts?

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4 Types of AutoResponder Series and The One You Should Absolutely Avoid
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Drive Like They’re Crazy. Blog Like They’re Lazy

Pat — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:30:22 +0000

When I first started learning how to drive, my Dad gave me a piece of advice to help me stay safe on the road and become a good driver:

“Drive like everyone else on the road is crazy”, he said.

Although I know there are mostly safe drivers on the road (unlike this guy), by adopting this mindset I learned how to stay alert and be aware of other vehicles on the road next to me.

Thanks Dad!

Now, here’s a piece of advice I’m going to give you to help you think about how to become a better blogger:

“Blog like everyone else is lazy.”

Please don’t take offense to this – in no way do I think you or anyone else reading my blog lazy. But, I do have this mindset when it comes to certain things I do on my blog that I know helps when it comes to the experience people have on my site, as well as with conversions.

The Design Of Your Site

Your site should be designed in such a way that the laziest of people can use it. This means:

It’s easy to access.
It’s easy to navigate.
It’s easy to subscribe.
It’s easy to find content.
It’s easy to share your content.

With the desire for speed and ease of use in today’s lifestyle, you’ve got to make the actions you want people to take on your site a speedy “no-brainer”. The harder it is to perform a certain action, the less chances there are of that particular action happening.

Some questions to ask yourself:

Is your site cluttered and hard to understand?
Are your best and most useful posts highlighted somewhere on your blog?
Is sharing your information as easy as one click of a button?

Make things ridiculously easy, and you’ll get ridiculous results.

The Content That You Provide

Your content should be easily consumable, so much that the laziest of people can enjoy it. This means:

Sharing as much information as possible. The more you leave out, the more questions arise and people don’t want to go searching for those answers. If you give people all of the steps, they will appreciate it and you will be rewarded.
Writing your posts so that they are easy to understand. Check out an old archived gem entitled: It’s Dumb Not to Dumb It Down.
Structuring your posts so that they are extremely scanable. Most people don’t read every single word of a blog post. Instead, they scan, which means if you utilize things like headers, bullet points, numbered lists, bold and italic lettering, your content will be much easier on the eye and people won’t have to work as hard to read what you have to say.
Providing great value. If you can give people exactly what they are looking for – something valuable and easily consumable, your readers will have no problem remembering what you wrote and who wrote it.

Your Calls to Action

In general, if you have a specific action you want people to take on your site, the more steps that are involved, the less conversions you’ll have. In other words, keep your funnels small and get rid of any roadblocks.

The most extreme example I can think of as far as a “lazy funnel” is Amazon.com’s One-Click Purchase option. Just think – one click and the product is shipped to your house. No need to fill in any shipping information, billing information or confirmations.

Again, the less steps that are involved, the better.

Another example of a lazy funnel is when I promote my newsletter and my free eBook, eBooks the Smart Way, on my podcast.

In order to keep things simple, I purchased the domain name ebooksthesmartway.com which is something my listeners probably don’t have to write down to remember. That url forwards to a landing page that has information about my eBook and an opt-in form both in the sidebar of my blog and at the bottom of the page’s content. There are no extra steps involved to sign up.

And lastly, one of the most important things you can do while adopting this blog like they’re crazy mindset is just inserting calls to actions in the first place. As much as we would love to think people will do what we want them to do while on our blogs, chances are, they won’t. By telling them exactly what you want them to do, you’ll do the thinking for them and they’ll perform the actions that you want them to take.

Drive like they’re crazy. Blog like they’re lazy.

Can you think of any other examples of how we can apply this mindset on our sites?

Stay tuned for my November monthly income report this coming Monday! Click here to subscribe if you haven’t already, and enjoy your weekend. Cheers!

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Drive Like They’re Crazy. Blog Like They’re Lazy
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THE Backlinking Strategy That Works

Pat — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:37:37 +0000

This backlinking strategy is modeled after Joseph Archibald’s strategy he generously shared free to the public in his 40 Day Challenge on the Warrior Forum. He was able to rank a fairly competitive niche in the top 5 in Google within 40 days.

(For everyone’s convenience, he has also sinsce published The 40 Day Challenge eBook, which is a lot easier to read than the 1200+ posts on the Warrior Forum. Check out his sample chapter here.)

He’s taken it upon himself to be totally active here on SPI and respond to everyone’s questions and concerns about the backlinking strategy on my blog, which just shows what kind of guy he is. If you use this strategy, be sure to thank Joseph sometime.

***Note: This strategy still works even after Google’s latest Panda Update.

I’ve revealed my niche site backlinking strategy before, but never in this much detail.

Ever since the niche site I created for the Niche Site Duel started to rapidly climb the ranks of Google, eventually landing on the number one position, people have been asking me for more detail about my strategy and the software and tools that I’ve been using to help.

There are several strategies one can use to rank higher in the search engines and the one I’m going to explain is just one of them.

Please note that links to software and tools within this blog post are affiliate links which I do receive financial gain from if purchases are made from them.

Furthermore, the principles of this strategy can be done for absolutely free without having to buy any software or tools. I use the software to help and speed things up.

Don’t spend money on anything you see online unless you can afford it and you feel it will pay you back in the future.

Overview

I’d like to start by sharing an overview of the process with you so you can see how it all works as a whole. Later in this post, I’ll get into detail about the individual parts.

(Click to watch Backlinking Strategy & Process Overview on YouTube)

To summarize what I talk about in the video, the backlinking strategy I’m using involves two layers of backlinks – the anchor layer, which are links that you create which link directly to your niche site, and the indirect layer, which are links that you create which link directly to your anchor layer.

The Anchor Layer

The anchor layer consists of a few parts, again, which link directly to your niche site.

These include:

Top Article Directory Submissions
New Blogs
Web 2.0 Properties
~~Links from Blog Blueprint~~ (Blog Blueprint hasn’t been performing as well as it used to. It’s not vital if this part of the strategy is taken out)
Updated 12/03/11 - Direct Links from BuildMyRank (BMR is a BB replacement that has been working much much better for my sites lately! You get 10 links for free, so try it out! Most of the other niche site creators I know use BMR now as well as a primary link resource.)

Later in this post when I talk about how this all happens, I’ll get into what exactly is involved with each of these 4 parts in the anchor layer – what directories I submit to, what “new blogs” is, etc.

The Indirect Layer

The indirect layer is a way to create massive amounts of backlinks which link directly to the anchor properties we setup in the anchor layer. These links do not point directly to your niche site.

The indirect layer consists of:

Mass Article Submissions using Unique Article Wizard
Mass Bookmarking Submissions

The reason that you don’t want to link directly to your niche site is because you’re creating hundreds of backlinks at a time and if you point all of them to your niche site, it will look totally unnatural and your young site won’t be able to handle all of it without raising a red flag. When you point these links to your anchors, because your anchor sites are on high ranking, totally populated websites, they’ll be able to handle the wave/influx of links but at the same time pass or feed that SEO power generated from all of those links into your niche site. Your anchor properties act as a shield while at the same time allow you to get the SEO benefit from the indirect layer.

Yes, I know – it sounds kind of wacky. When I first heard this strategy it really didn’t make sense to me, but after implementing the strategies myself the results are very clear.

The Streamlined Process

Now that you have a general understanding of the what, I’m going to show you the how.

I think the best way to do this is to actually just walk you through the process from start to finish and show you how I can create all of these backlinks from a single unique article.

Step 1: Write an Original Article Related to Your Niche

Everything in this process begins with writing an original article. Personally, I like to have full control of what’s written and what’s published, so I like to write the articles myself, but there are many people who are comfortable with having a virtual assistant or ghostwriter write the article for them instead.

Either way, it should definitely unique content and should typically be around 350-600 words in length. Although the length isn’t extremely important, it’s smart to stay within this range because it will make your life easier in the later steps of this process.

Lastly, you can choose to post this original article onto your niche site before you move on to the next steps. You could kill two birds with one stone by adding content to your site and following the next steps to help build backlinks as well.

Step 2: Prepare The Article for Spinning

Like I mentioned in the overview video above, spinning an article gives you the ability to quickly create multiple variations of an original article so that you can submit them to various places without worrying about duplicate content penalties and so that you can save tons of time by not having to create brand new content from scratch over and over again to get the same message across.

I talked about article spinning in my previous backlinking post and naturally a lot of people commented about it (currently 174 comments) because it is a widely debatable topic.

Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of spinning an article – using multiple variations of an original article and then submitting those variations to several different locations on the web. Some people view it as spammy and others view it as dangerous too. I totally respect that side of the argument, but let me tell you why I think it’s okay.

(I don’t want this post to turn into some huge debate, but I feel I should tell you why I am okay with this method since this is what I’m showing you how to do.)

First, I don’t view it as spammy because I’m making sure that the content that I submit (even after spinning) is good. Since they are quality articles and I don’t submit different versions of an article to the same location, I feel comfortable knowing that I’m doing what I can to make sure my message gets read in the most places as possible, without using the same exact text over and over again.

Also, think about press releases for a second. Press releases are one single version of an article that gets syndicated to tens of thousands of places on the web. Companies like PRWeb make money doing this for other companies, brands and people. As described on PRWeb’s site:

“We send your news to 35,000 journalists and bloggers, 30,000 websites and hundreds of newspapers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune as well as local news outlets across the USA. PRWeb gets your story where it needs to go.”

Several brand name companies and individuals use press releases (the exact same article, not variations) to help spread the word about something. This is exactly what I’m doing when I submit my spun content to various places on the web, although I’m taking it a step further and am not using the same exact content over and over again. I’m using different variations because that’s the only way I can make it happen, at least without penalty.

In my previous post, I think Mark Mason’s comment says it best:

“I hate this spinning discussion. Let’s say Pat has the cure for cancer and he posts it on his blog. Curing cancer is good. So Pat spins articles about curing cancer and posts them everywhere so he can help the most people while playing by the rules that GOOGLE has set.
So what about security guards? Pat’s site rocks. It will help people that are thinking about becoming a security guard. Security guards are a help to society. It’s all good.
So what if Pat “advertises” his site by placing similar content all over the web? It’s not like the web is “full” and Pat is harming someone by taking up too much space.
It seems acceptable for Toyota to place the same add on every TV network and run it over and over. It’s OK for AP to syndicate their content everywhere. Why not Pat.
Not to mention the fact that Pat is only doing this because Google’s algorithms are too poor to tell good content from bad content. I would argue that if Pat Does not do something to rank his site, he is being unfair to all those readers out therebat NEED him but cannot find him.
Failing to properly promote your site when there are people to help profitably is A lot bigger sin than syndicating 47 very similar but different copies of a good article.
If you want to take a stand against someone, get mad at Google. They have an inferior product that relies on backlinks — yet they make Billions of dollars each year from it. That’s the problem, not Pat.

Anyways, I think we’ve beat this to a pulp already – it’s time to show you how it’s done.

In the video below, you’ll see me using a piece of software called The Best Spinner, which is by far the best spinning software available with the biggest bank of user generated synonyms that make the spinning process much faster.

Although there is a “one-button” approach that you can use to spin your articles, I would advise against using that feature because although The Best Spinner is awesome, it’s automated functions aren’t entirely perfect. You’ll see that I take the time to go through each word one-by-one to plug in good synonyms that make sense. Even though this takes some extra time (and like I said preparing an article for spinning is what takes up most of my time in this backlinking strategy), it’s totally worth it when you can just copy and paste spun versions of your articles in all of the later steps.

(Click to watch The Best Spinner – Article Spinning on YouTube)

Is article spinning absolutely necessary in order to make this strategy work. No! But as you will see, it does help to speed things up a bit.

Step 3: Submit to Article Directories

In this step, you’ll be submitting spun versions of your original article to various article marketing directories.

The directories I usually submit to are listed below:

You probably know that many of these top article directories check to make sure that the article is unique before approving and posting it onto their site. EzineArticles, especially, is notorious for this, however I’ve never once had an article denied approval or removed. If you are worried, you can still continue through this process by submitting a version to just one of the article directories.

EzineArticles is the top-choice directory, however it usually takes a while to get your articles approved (several days if you have not yet written 10 articles for their site). If you want an immediate approval, you can submit to GoArticles, which helps because then you don’t have to wait days to utilize the article in this backlinking process.

Here is one version of my article that I spun from the spinning video in step #2, live on GoArticles.com. Don’t forget to add a link directly to your niche site in the author bio / resource section, making sure you have at least one link that is an anchor text that matches your target keyword or keyphrase.

And yes, Pete Chamberlain is my pen name for my niche site and all related articles.

Step 4: Create Your New Blogs and Web 2.0 Properties

At this point you can use spun versions of your original article to create new blogs and web 2.0 properties that all have backlinks pointing to your site. They will be a part of the anchor layer that we talked about in the overview, which means they will contain links that point directly back to your niche site.

New Blogs and Web 2.0 Properties

These are new blogs and web 2.0 sites that you create for free, and the real benefit here is that they are a part of a larger, more powerful and higher ranking domain.

So for example, when you create a free blog at WordPress.com, even though the blog you create will start out as a Page Rank 0 (PR0) website, it’s still a part of the PR9 wordpress.com domain. This same ideology goes for all of the articles you’ve written for article directories too.

Each of the new sites will only require one post, which you can grab from a spun version of your original article (although you could and probably should add a little more (spun) content later – just to give the site more meat.

In addition to the content, you should embed a related video from YouTube (and even a picture too) just to make your page a little more relevant to the topic, and so it looks like it’s lived in a little.

Here is where you can create your free blogs and Web 2.0 Sites (thanks to Joseph for the updated list! - updated 2012):

Again, these only require 1 post (2 or 3 is better) with a link back to your niche site, and after that the only thing you have to do with them is remember the URL so you can link to them in the next step (step #5). I don’t do any cross linking between these sites.

Anchor Text Update for 2012: Also, make sure you vary your anchor text a bit. Meaning, the link from these sites that point back to your main site shouldn’t ALWAYS be using your main keyword. Why? Because it’s unnatural and a good variety of related anchor texts is better. So for example, if your target keyword is “Fly Fishing”, then it’s probably smart to use “Fly Fishing” about half the time (roughly) and then a mix of other keywords like “Fly Fishing Rods”, “Fly Fishing Reels”, “Fly Fishing Techniques”, “Fly Fishing Tips”, etc. for the other half.

Notable Web 2.0 Properties

There are two unique Web 2.0 sites I’d like to mention real quick:

They are free to setup and treated in the exact same manner as the New Blogs, they are just setup a little differently. You can use a (HIGHLY UNIQUE) spun version of your original article for some content, you can add an rss feed from your niche site, some videos, some pictures – there are a lot of cool things you can do with Squidoo and Hubpages. Again, just make sure there’s a least one backlink (with your keyword as the anchor text), pointing back to your niche site for each.

Note about Squidoo and Hubpages (and the reason why they’re separated out): More recently, they’ve been getting more and more strict with the content that is posted on their sites. I would actually write the content on these sites manually if possible, but if you don’t have the time you can test a spun version of your original article, knowing that it may not be approved. This is a warning for you just in case, just remember to think about the end user and what’s actually useful for them. The more “modules” and content you can add on those sites – the better, and the link that can come from those sites can be extremely powerful, if you can land ‘em.

After you have all of the above mentioned sites setup, you don’t need to keep creating more. When you get to this point, you can skip step #4 entirely because they will already be in place and doing their job.

Step 5: Indirect Linking to Your Anchor Sites

In this step, you’ll be creating a load of backlinks that link back to your anchor sites that you’ve created from your article submissions, your new blogs and web 2.0 properties.

Unique Article Wizard

Unique Article Wizard is a tool that I got familiar with a month after starting my niche site and it’s proving to work quite well. Previously, I’ve used Automatic Article Submitter to do mass article submissions, but UAW definitely outperforms AAS in my opinion, simply because I can get a lot more backlinks from it.

That being said, UAW isn’t entirely automatic either, but you can get up to 800-1000 backlinks form a single article, with links to prove it, which is awesome. This is why we use these articles to link to our anchor sites, because 1000s of backlinks to your niche site would definitely be a little much.

Here’s a video explaining how UAW works:

(Click to watch Unique Article Wizard – Massive Backlinks on YouTube)

Social Bookmarking

This is another method you can use to link directly to your anchor sites which will ultimately help boost the authority of your niche site.

There are several different backlinking tools available to help you with this process. One of them, Bookmarking Demon, automates the entire process but I’ve found the software to be really hard to handle, and it’s extremely expensive at $147 a pop. After purchasing it myself (again, I purchased and played around with all of these tools to see what works and what doesn’t so I could report back to you), personally I found that it wasn’t worth that much money to me.

I’d rather use a free tool from ~~SocialMarker.com~~ Social Poster, which really isn’t automated at all (and the initial time you run through it it takes a while because you have to manually sign up for all of the different social bookmarking sites), but it does save a little bit of time.

During my journey with my security guard training niche, social bookmarking was the thing I did the least. If I didn’t have unique article wizard on hand, I probably would have done more of it.

Step 6: Rinse and Repeat

Go back to Step 1.

An Important Final Note

So that’s the bulk of the backlinking strategy, and as you can see there are a lot of parts to it.

The thing is, most of the software and tools I’ve been talking about come with a cost, but I don’t want you to think that you need to purchase any of these things in order to succeed.

You can complete this entire backlinking strategy from the article submissions to the creation of new blogs and web 2.0 properties and social bookmarking without spending a dime. So please, don’t feel like you need to empty your wallet after reading this, I just wanted to show you exactly what I was doing and the tools I’ve been using to help save some time and speed things up a bit.

The tools work, but they aren’t necessary.

I know how much influence I have now that the Smart Passive Income Blog has grown so popular, and with that I accept the responsibility to make sure to never cheat you or tell you that you NEED to spend money on this or that in order to find success. When I created my first online business, the only thing I spent money on was a domain name and hosting package.

In the beginning, I didn’t spend money on a fancy website design, search engine optimization, article spinning software, submitter tools or anything like that. Heck, I didn’t even know those things existing and the only thing I did was publish great content, and I eventually gained a following and things just took off from there.

I am anticipating a number of questions or comments from this post, so please be patient for my response while I catch up on some sleep. It’s has been a long night putting all of this together for you, but I love it. If someone asks a question and you know the answer or have something to say, please don’t be shy.

Cheers!

Update: My buddy Eric over at My4HourWorkWeek.com created a really handy excel file to help you keep track of all of the link building and sites that you create for this specific backlinking strategy. Check it out here!

The Smart Passive Income Blog » marketing

Is This the End of the Market Samurai Dynasty? Direct Answers from the CEO

What Happened…

Their Solution…

The Rank Tracker

Other Rank Tracker Options

The Big Picture

Are You Giving Instant Results? You Should, and Here’s Why.

1. Share Specific Methods That Can Yield Instant Results

2. Demonstrate How Easy it is to Complete a Particular Task

The Truth About Scarcity Online

Great Examples of Scarcity Used Online

The Best Thing To Do Is…

Smart Passive Income Gets Critiqued – Conversion Strategies with Derek Halpern

Enter Derek Halpern

(A LOT of) Room for Improvement

Your Website Is Up – Now What? 5 Things You Can Do To Market and Promote Your Website

1. Become an Authority in a Forum

2. Get on the Radar of Major Players in your Niche

3. SEO and Natural Traffic Generation

4. Make a Presence on Lesser Saturated Platforms

5. Becoming a Source for HARO and Reporter Connection

Marketing and Promotion: In Conclusion

A Blogger’s Guide to Getting Your Freq. On – Defining the Importance of Consistency

Tools and Resources to Help You Get Your Freq. On

How I Accumulated 10,000 Email Subscribers in 13.5 Months

A New Vision for Email Lists

An Unforgettable First Impression

Planting Seeds

4 Types of AutoResponder Series and The One You Should Absolutely Avoid

What Is An Autoresponder Series?

Autoresponder Series #1: The Bait and Hook

Autoresponder Series #2: The Ground and Pound

Autoresponder Series #3: The Pat Flynn

Autoresponder Series #4: The One To Avoid

Drive Like They’re Crazy. Blog Like They’re Lazy

The Design Of Your Site

The Content That You Provide

Your Calls to Action

THE Backlinking Strategy That Works

Overview

The Streamlined Process

An Important Final Note

Other Posts in The Niche Site Duel Series