Many years ago I used to do “real world” marketing. This was before the internet really took off. Before anyone heard of google or there were any internet marketing guru’s.

Many people try to make it like online marketing is so totally different than marketing is in the “real world.” Not true at all. Yes there is new technology, new terminology, but many of the basics remain the same.

Here is an example of a real world marketing campaign I worked on and then I equate each step to online marketing.

The Marketing Campaign:

Placing an advertisement for the Hotel Wolcott in NYC with the goal of getting more customers to stay there during a certain month.

There were 5 main steps

1) Choose the target market: people traveling to new york city that are looking for budget hotels.

online equivalent: There is nothing different here at all. You choose a target market online that you are going to focus your marketing campaign towards.

2) Find the market: It was decided to run an ad in Arthur Frommers Budget Travel magazine. This is a magazine with a very large audience that would have a readers that were perfetly in our target market.

online equivalent: Where does your target market hangout? A well known site you can buy an advertisement on? Or maybe a site that allows you to place google placement ads on that website? Or the ever popular…what searches are your target market typing into search engines.

3) Budget the ad: I forgot exactly how much we were allowed to spend on the ad, but with the figure we were given we could choose the size of the ad we could run. Bigger sizes cost more, color ads cost more, etc.

online equivalent: Just like different ads cost different prices in the real world, the same goes for the online world. Different websites will charge varying amounts according to the traffic they get as well as where the ad is on a page (higher up usually costs more). If you are going to run a ppc ad, perhaps you don’t have enough of a budget to target all the keywords you want. You must choose the ones you think will be the most profitable

3) Create the ad/offer: This would deal with the graphic design and copywriting of the ad itself. Of course the ad followed the rules of good copywriting – Grab their attention, tell them the benefits of staying at the wolcott , etc. As for the layout of the ad – it was created to be easy to spot, read and understand. This is not always the case with many advertisements.

online equivalent: there is a ton of material devoted to writing advertisements that convert including headlines, ads, classified ads and even banner ads.

4) Track the results – a “service code” is inserted into the ad, near the telephone number so when people call to book a room, they give the “service code”. This is a tracking device and let’s us know they are booking the room because of the ad we ran. It gives a fairly accurate count of how profitable the ad was. If was profitable we know it can be ran again to earn more profits. If it does not make a profit, we know to either change the ad, run it somewhere else, or scrap it altogether.

online equivalent: This is a step that many people don’t take as seriously as they should. In online marketing, actually in direct response marketing of any type, you must track your ads. That’s what direct response marketing means. You can track directly if the ad made a profit. If you do not track you are just playing a guessing game and are doomed to throw money away.

Internet marketing is not hard. Much of it is simply a numbers game.

Regards,

Ethan Semmel

In internet marketing circles, you probably read a lot about the importance of giving away free stuff. As much as I am a fan of making everything as simple as possible there is more to it than just “give away a bunch of free stuff” and people will then like you and buy from you.

Your free stuff should always have a goal. Such as to support the selling of your products, otherwise you are just running a hobby or even a charity. Plain and simple. Many well known marketers who advocate the giving away of free stuff, seem to leave out that important part.

If you go to some well known marketers blogs, you may see some great free content, however almost all of it is made with a goal in mind.

The Biggest Mistake

If you have a product to sell, Do not just put up a bunch of free tips every day of some cool things you know and hope people will eventually buy from you. In my experience of 10 years of running internet businesses, I can tell you, it will not happen.

Therefore, there needs to be a reason you are giving away free stuff.

Here are some example of a reason for giving away free content. The Goal is listed under each reason.

1) To support the sale of your product

Some examples of this type of free content are when people give out a sample or demo of what they are selling. Such as the first chapter or introduction of an e-book.

Another example if when people create a blog post about something like “10 most asked questions about…”. If you have a blog and and have a product for sale, or are going to launch one soon, you can use the commenting feature of blogs to see the questions and concerns people have about the product. Compile your answers into a blog post and upload it to your blog. Instatnt content that supports the sale of your product.

How about those case studies you see so often. Those are fun to watch for many people. Actually, sometimes they bore me, but they are purely to support the sale of a product.

2) For Link Bait

There are 2 general type of visitors that can come to one of your websites. People who don’t know you and people who do know you. Link bait is for people who don’t know you. Sometimes referred to as cold traffic.

The point of this free content is to target certain searches that people are entering into search engines. These “cold traffic” people will come to your site to read your free information. However you should still use “directing” and give them a good piece of content and then direct them to an action you want them to take.

Again, the biggest mistake is just giving out a cool free something and hope people will then take the action you want them to.

3) To drive people to an affiliate product

Someone is selling a course about email marketing. You can make your own content that complements what that person is selling or give out something about email marketing that you know. At the end of your content you direct the visitor to your affiliate link. The goal, of course, is to get sale commissions on that affiliate product.

A very common piece of free content that has the affiliate commission goal is the product review.

Yes, even this piece of content has a goal to it. Believe it or not, this is not posted just because I am a nice guy writing an article to help you. I won’t tell you what the goal is right now, maybe in another post sometime.

Regards,

Ethan Semmel

I used to be under the impression that templates were what amateurs used while the real professional, the expert, created everything from scratch.

That was totally wrong. Everything is templated. And if you want to succeed you need to template as many things as you can.

Here are some examples people may not think of that are templates…

New Houses – When a community if built, from a housing developer, many times there are a handful of different designs to choose from, some more expensive than others depending on the size. All the houses in the new development are built following the template and you can customize the template you pick with certain add-ons or upgrades. You can come in to a new development with your own house design and ask them to built it for you.

Cars – When Honda comes out with their new model, everyone buys the same model (template) and customizes it

Restaurant Menu’s – When people go out to eat you get a choice of food you can eat in a restaurant, and everyone picks from the same menu (templates)

You should templatize as much of your business as you can because it increases productivity.

The only thing that you can never increase is time. Everyone always only has 24 hours in a day. That is set in stone. But if you can increase the work you can do in those 24 hours your will increase your revenue.

Templatizing reduces the time needed to complete tasks.

If you want to make 5 websites about different topics but that will earn revenue the same way – use 1 template to create all 5. The time saved will be huge.

Many people worry that their website will look like everyone elses. First off, that’s not true, but you must remember, most people spend their time on other websites, not yours.

Therefore they get used to certain conventions online. If you want to spend your resources re-inventing the wheel and creating everything from scratch so you can be different thinking this will increase revenue, you are wasting your resources.

There are plenty of good templates out there for most things including website designs.

Use em.

Making money from a website, when you reduce it to the very basics, is a numbers game.

You keep track of statistics for your website that tell you how your sales funnel is working. You analyze the numbers and try to improve on them. This is how it works.

For  a website your you sell your own product, such as an e-book, video or any other type of product you would keep stats on the following:

What percent opts-in for your free offer
( Free report, offer of your free newsletter, etc)

What percent reads your offers?

What percent buys?

What percent takes an upsell or downsell?

What percent becomes repeat buyers?

Your website should direct people to the goals you want them to take. This post won’t cover the “how to” of doing that but everything on your website should have a purpose, otherwise you are just running a hobby.

You aim for a certain percentage with your numbers and then get the traffic and make necessary tweaks to obtain your goal.

For example: If you want to obtain a 30% opt-in rate for your free offer, you start keeping track of the conversion rate of this part of your website.

Maybe when you begin you only have an 18% conversion rate, well your goal was 30% so now you begin to tweak. Maybe try a different headline – one that evokes more curiosity or one that includes a bigger benefit to the prospect.

Maybe this one change will increase conversions a significant amount. I’ve seen one change make my conversion rate triple.

This simple formula is the basis of how to earn money from your website.

A certain percentage of people complete the goals you want and direct them to. The higher you can get this percentage, the more money you make.

As another example, when it comes to marketing with articles, you post some articles on articles directory websites…you give people good information and a certain percentage will click your link in your “About The Author” bio box at the end of an article.

I currently have 1 article that is pulling over 20% click thru rate from the article to my website (1 in 5 people who read the article feel the desire to click thru and see what else I have)

I currently have another article that is pulling around 6%, a much lower rate.

But, it’s the same thing for your advertising or your websites, it’s all about keeping track of your stats and improving the percentage of people you want to take a desired action.

That’s the simplicity of how to earn money with a website.

You Are Just A Middle Man Helping People Find What They Want.

You really could boil it down to being that simple.

Take Google as the broadest example. Google just helps people find information they need on the widest scale. They seem to do that better than anyone else and thus became the biggest search engine.

Just help people find the answers and solutions they are looking for.

You may also have an advantage over many other people…a greater knowledge of how the internet works.

There are a ton of people who don’t even know how to really best use a search engine. There are still plenty of people who go to google and type in Yahoo!

Now, to get back to the middleman concept…

People want a solution or answer to something…just connect people with the solution they want.

3 examples:

1) If its an page recommending some piece of software of which you are an affiliate, you review the program for the visitor giving them information and a recommendation.

Combine this with different methods of getting traffic like ppc, forums, onsite seo, etc. to get it in front of the RIGHT people.

And then what happens is…

A certain percentage of the people who consume your material will purchase.

2) If its your own product, you get this product in front of the people who would be most interested in this solution.

You educate, prove it works, demonstrate what it would be like to use the product, etc. and then what happens is…

A certain percentage of people will buy

3) If its monetization thru ads…

You provide content that will interest people and use traffic methods to get this info in front of people who are looking for it…and then…

A certain percentage of them will click the advertisement thus leading to money for you.

So a great thing to do is to change your mindset and simplify. Think of yourself as a solution provider. Then, just find the people who want that solution.

With success comes resentment.

Online, it is very easy to find resentment, especially of people who sell information products, people who make money selling what they know.

In surfing around online, you can find many sites and blogs with posts or sometimes the whole site, dedicated to why so and so is a con man or a huckster.

Most of the time, they point to the high prices of their “ridiculous” products.

Reminds me of the Oscar Wilde Quote:

A Cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

These people don’t realize that by having that mindset, they will never break through and achieve the success they want.

They are of the mindset that the only ethical way to earn money is by working at their job. And anyone trying to sell stuff, especially for high prices is obviously a con man taking advantage of people.

They may leave a blog post about a well known internet marketer such as…

“So and so is selling some ridiculous course for $300. I can get the same information for $12.95 in the bookstore. What a con job. How can people be so gullible to fall for this junk?”

Other people join in and pile on with other negative comments….hey that’s community building online…like minded people find each other.

Of course, after they leave their comments, they go back to the job they hate. You know, the ethical way to earn money.

Instead of trying to learn from the people who can command those high prices, simply labeling them a huckster is the easy way out…a cop out really.

It would take some effort for those people to start changing their mindset from the “they are all scams” way of thinking to “let me see if I can learn something new”

I don’t care who the big name person in the internet marketing field is, you can find a negative review somewhere online about them that paints them either as a scammer, unethical…or…the biggie…Only Caring About Money.

These same people would probably thank you up and down and write raving reviews about you if you just gave all your knowledge away free…

Never, ever feel guilty about charging a good price for your information, and your work to compile the information into a useable form, etc.

Be a proud capitalist. Be a proud entrepeneur.

Without us, there would be no jobs for the negative mindset people anyway.

I see many questions about opt-in page conversion rates – such as what is a good number? And how do I get a high conversion rate?

It’s very easy to get a very high conversion rate…but there must be some qualifying done first.

Well, I have seen stories of people saying how they got something like a 52% opt-in rate. Other people read that who are getting only around a 10% opt-in rate and become frustrated and can’t figure out what they are doing wrong.

Well, let me just say that, you haven’t been told the whole story. The 52% opt-in rate comes from pre-sold traffic.

I was reading over a blog post from a year ago about a marketer who was getting a 52% opt-in rate from his opt-in page, and that was after improvements were made to the page to raise conversion.

NOTE: By the way, am I the only person who hates the term “Squeeze” Page? The image that you are squeezing the information out of your page visitor starts a relationship off on a bad note, no? Like an interrogation room where lawyers or police officers try to squeeze information from a suspect…anyway…

What is not stated is that 52% conversion came from pre-sold traffic. Meaning the link to the opt in page came from the marketers own list or recommendations from other marketers lists. (JV partners)

I hope you don’t think there was a bunch of time spent on free seo to get the opt-in page to rank high in the search engines or that numerous ppc campaigns were set up.

The opt-in page goes up, pre-sold traffic is sent there in the form of mailing list announcements and blog post links – boom…instant pre-sold traffic and a 52% conversion rate.

Let me give you some of my own numbers from pre-sold and cold traffic.

One opt-in page I used, when I was doing a small launch of a niche product, had over 4100 unique visitors and converted at 65.7% – (see, I did better than a big guru )

Another opt-in page I used for the same launch had 3000 unique visitors and converted at 78.4 – (wow, even better)

But, this was pre-sold traffic so if I made a bold claim of:

“Follow my opt-in page template and get a 65% opt-in page conversion rate and even as high as 78.4%”

…that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Sounds good, but not accurate.

I used the same opt-in page that converted at 65.7% on cold traffic. And the results…it is converting at 19%.

The type of traffic plays a huge role in the conversion rate of any type of page.

In the original blog post I mentioned above, in answer to a comment, it was stated that with good copy the conversion rate on cold traffic can get up to 25%.

So everything has to be qualified when you hear something like, “my opt in page is converting at 20%”

Also, is the cold traffic, traffic you control (ppc, banner ads, etc) or traffic you don’t control? (organic search results). All of this has to be taken into account.

So, do not get discouraged when your opt-in pages are converting at 12.3% and you read how some guru is converting at 52%

If you only send pre-sold traffic to an opt-in page you will have a high conversion rate.

If you send cold traffic to an opt-in page, you have to change your definition of high.

It is said that google loves blogs and ranks the posts of blogs very high and quick.

I was reading an article where Ken Evoy presented the opposite opinion. To paraphrase him, he said that when you look at search results, you hardly ever see blog posts among the results. You see a static “evergreen” websites.

This was someone saying the exact opposite of what is quoted online over and over again about one of the biggest benefits of using blog software like wordpress, and that is that “Google loves blogs and wordpress”

I tested it for myself to see if the search results were blogs or non blogs and here are the results.

First – I started out testing searches for the Internet Marketing “market” since that is the target audience of this blog.

I started with a basic search – how to sell online.

Test Results:

** I made some comments next to the results detailing some interesting stuff like if the site was a very high traffic site, what program it was made with, etc.

1) How to sell online:
Google keyword tool : 22,200 global searches

Search result page 1:

1 – non blog
2 – non blog (yahoo store page)
3 – Blog (“6 ways to sell your stuff online” alexa rank of 2154)
4 – non blog – sell.com classified site
5 – non blog (looked like a blog but was made with mozilla)
6 – Blog
7 – non blog
8 – non blog – ebay
9 – non blog
10 – non blog (about.com)

2 videos at the bottom of the page

** I usually don’t go past page 1 in search engine results, but some people do, so I did page 2 as well for my results.

search result page 2

11 – non blog
12 – non blog (craigs list)
13 – non blog
14 – non blog (dreamweaver)
15 – non blog (front page 6.0)
16 – blog
17 – non blog (about.com)
18 – non blog
19 – non blog
20 – blog

Result: 80% non blogs, 20% blogs

Test 2

I wanted to test a search term that was more popular than 22,200 global searches.

marketing tips:
Google keyword tool: 74,000 global searches

1 – non blog
2 – non blog
3 – non blog (front page 4.0)
4 – blog
5 – non blog
6 – non blog
7 – non blog
8 – non blog (adobe pagemill 3.0)
9 – non blog (but probably cms)
10 – non blog (about.com)

separate section at the bottom with blog posts about marketing tips

2 videos after that on the bottom

—-

Search Results Page 2

11 – non blog
12 – non blog
13 – blog (alexa rank 398)
14 – non blog
15 – non blog
16 – blog ( alexa rank119,830)
17 – non blog
18 – blog (alexa rank 9,609)
19 – blog (bit set up like a regular site)
20 – non blog

Result: 75% non blogs, 25% blogs

Test 3

I thought maybe those searches were too general and I needed a more focused search to test so I came up with this next.

how to start a web based business:
Google Keyword tool: 1,600

1 – non blog
2 – non blog (but probably cms)
3 – non blog
4 – blog
5 – non blog
6 – non blog
7 – non blog
8 – non blog
9 – non blog
10 – non blog

——

Search results page 2:
11 – non blog
12 – non blog
13 – non blog
14 – non blog
15 – non blog
16 – non blog
17 – non blog
18 – non blog
19 – non blog
20 – blog (time.com)

Result: 90% non blogs, 10% blogs – and the results are probably worse than this because time.com (#20) is not a “personal” blog but a large entity.

I then got even more focused with my search…

Test 4

how to overcome writers block:
Google keyword tool: 140 global searches

1 – non blog
2 – blog
3 – non blog
4 – non blog (about.com)
5 – non blog
6 – non blog (cms)
7 – blog
8 – non blog
9 – blog
10 – non blog (about.com)

—–
Search results page 2

11 – non blog
12 – non blog
13 – non blog (about.com)
14 – non blog
15 – non blog (blog like)
16 – blog
17 – blog
18 – non blog
19 – non blog
20 – non blog (cms)

Result: 75% non blogs, 25% blogs
* blog like means it had the layout common to a blog, but was not a blog

There was a definite pattern. I decided to make a test away from the “internet marketing” crowd – so I tested Charlie Chaplin

Test 5

charlie chaplin
Google keyword tool: 673,000 global searches

Search results page 1

news: 3 news sites with time related info about chaplin

1 – non blog
2 – non blog
3 – non blog
4 – 8 images
5 – 2 videos
6 – blog (pbs.org)
7 – non blog
8 – non blog
9 – non blog (blog like – news a repeat of one of the news site links at the top)
10 – non blog

——–

11 – non blog
12 – non blog
13 – non blog
14 – non blog
15 – non blog
16 – non blog
17 – non blog
18 – non blog
19 – non blog
20 – non blog

Result: 95% non blogs, 5% blogs

Next, I went to a popular blog, chose a post to “find” and searched for a particular post on google using the title of the blog post.

I went to problogger.net knowing it is a very popular blog and when I was looking for a post to “find” on google I realized something. Most posts are about blogging.

I figured I would come back to investigate that tidbit more later on…

So, next I went to copyblogger (a blog I enjoy) to search for an article to “find” and there were also many posts about – blogging, as well as tips for social media like twitter.

So I picked one that would not have social media or blogging involved in the post as that seemed like it be a fairer test.

Test 6

The article I wanted to “find” was titled – how to write an article in 20 minutes

Here are the results

Search results page 1

1 – blog (copyblogger)
2 – blog (copyblogger)
3 – non blog
4 – non blog
5 – blog like (squidoo)
6 – blog like (associated content)
7 – non blog (blog like)
8 – non blog (social media site)
9 – blog like (hubpages)
10 – blog

—-
Search results page 2

11 – video
12 – blog
13 – blog
14 – non blog
15 – blog
16 – non blog
17 – non blog (amazon)
18 – non blog (warrior forum)
19 – non blog (blog like)
20 – blog

Result: 50% non blogs, 50% blogs – This is being generous and counting web 2.0 sites like squidoo and hubpages as “blogs”

I repeated this test going back to problogger.net and using a post about blogging. I expected to find just about all blogs in the search results as it was a blog post about improving a blog.

Test 7

7 Questions to Ask On Your Blog

Search results page 1
1 – blog (problogger.net)
2 – blog (problogger.net)
3 – non blog (social media site)
4 – blog (not a good search)
5 – non blog (social media site)
6 – non blog (trackback)
7 – blog (link to the original article)
8 – blog
9 – blog (non targeted)
10 – blog (non targeted)

Result: 30% non blogs, 70% blogs – Although a good number of the “blog” results were very untargeted and about 7 “Other Things” besides the 7 things I was searching for.

Overall Results:

These search terms were chosen in order. I did not try to pick results that skewed the results one way or the other.

The results show that Google favors non blog websites over blogs for it’s search results. The market didn’t matter. Even a more detailed search term with less competition didn’t seem to matter much.

Yes, the more general term, with the largest number of searches produced the least number of blogs in the search results.

The searches that produced the greatest number of blogs in the search results was clearly blog posts that either are about blogging. Also, the searches that I used to find the search results with the greatest number of blogs in the results are not well searched terms at all.

The conclusion has to be reached that Google favors static websites over blogs for it’s search results.

Therefore using blogging software like wordpress to gain a benefit of ranking high in the search engine may just be a myth, unless you are writing about blogging itself.

This is not to say that there aren’t other benefits to using software such as wordpress ( ease of use, a good way to manage content, can start a site quickly, etc ) – but search engine optimization is not one of these benefits.

I found this simple yet very good post summarizing many of the business and marketing concepts and website traffic techniques taught by Russell Brunson. Personally, I think like his style and think he is a very good teacher.

A salesman tries to sell you something.

A friend just tells you a story about why something is fabulous.

Stop “writing a salesletter” and start “talking to a friend”

It really is an exercise.

Take a breath, step back from “saleswriting” mode…

Picture yourself talking to someone who would be interested in what you have.

Talk to them to persuade them about how what you have will do for them. (by being their caring friend who wants to make their life better) to buy your product.

Think about how many times you have excitedly told a friend about something you bought. Did you tell them how great the thing was, or did you tell them what the thing did for you?

Pretend they would answer you back with any objections you could possibly think of that they would have and answer them.

Talk out loud if you have to. Record it…

Have a conversation and edit this down and bingo – you have excited copy that will convey the benefits of owning your thing.

It’s changing you mindset…

…makes it easier!