Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner
Do you want to make money from your writing? Did you know that writers are making tens of thousands of dollars using their writing skills online… and those figures are verifiable on certain sites? Hmmm… THAT got your interest, didn't it?
Every business needs writers, and finding writing jobs online became easier when job boards created exclusively for writers were created, BUT… [Read more…]
Today's post is by Alan Bechtold of Ink-U-Bator Mastermind, one of my VERY favorite people in Internet marketing and publishing… cause he's someone who truly CARES about your success AND shares fantastic advice. 🙂
There’s one key to a never-ending supply of fresh, targeted traffic and revenue most affiliate marketers never talk about – even top experts. Maybe it’s because the subject is sometimes seen as politically incorrect. Perhaps it’s because some consider it outright offensive. Still, it’s tough to escape the basic logic of this time-tested technique.
It’s sad so many people are so prudish about it. If more people knew about it, they’d see the success in their lives they richly deserve. Perhaps the social stigma would finally lift, if it was discussed more openly. Maybe we could finally spread the word about this simple, life-altering concept, far and wide, changing even more lives.
What’s the fact so many people avoid discussing in public?
It’s this: people will always follow you in growing numbers directly proportional to the body of work you’ve produced.
I’m often confused by the general reluctance to discuss it. People seem more than willing to avoid acknowledging the existence of this fact at almost any cost. They’ll spend weeks building elaborate SEO campaigns and pay thousands for the latest Click Bank traffic “tricks†course to keep from having to consider the almost inevitable impact applying this simple principle would have on their lives.
I think it’s the “work†part of “body of work†most people are too embarrassed to discuss. Even worse, “body of work†implies work you do more than once.
Oh, no!
Seriously, when it comes to information publishing, the more you’re “out there,†the more people will find you naturally. A growing body of work accomplishes this every time. Without tricks. Without having to work endless variations of systems designed to trick the search engines that always seem to get shut down just about the same time you finally get them all set up and running.
Every time you add a new information release to what you already offer, people who got what you last released will be there, eagerly waiting for its release. They’ll be your best customers for whatever you release next and they cost nothing to reach with the news that there’s something new to buy.
Each new release also acts like a magnet, pulling in new people from word of mouth and the natural buzz something brand new seems to carry with it. When people discover your newest release and like it, they’ll start looking for other things from you.
This increases the sales of your previous releases. The bigger your body of work, the more impressed they are and the more inclined to make more than one purchase they become. This creates an undeniably proven exponential effect that continues growing even long after you stop feeding new releases into the mix.
It’s really not all that hard to do. You just have to shake off any natural aversion you have to the concept of building a body of work and start putting it together now.
Think about publishing outside of your Website or newsletter more often, to get this rolling. Look through all your past published work. If you’ve been online for a few months, you’ve already got enough blog posts or Website or newsletter updates to gather and publish in a good book, with just a bit of editing.
Select a sub-topic that’s currently hot with your audience, then gather up all the related posts and comments that relate to it. Add some updates and maybe a bit of running commentary of your own, to bring things up-to-date. Possibly provide the “story†behind the topic and even behind-the-scenes stories about how the entire discussion unfolded – what you were doing as it happened, how you felt, responses you considered posting, but didn’t.
Call some of the people who contributed to the conversation and interview them. Transcribe it and include it. Add photos of them and you.
Ask your blog or website visitors to contribute their stories on a selected topic. If you can, offer a prize for the best submission. Prizes aren’t necessary, in most cases, but they do tend to turn up the heat on participation. Still, people love will love knowing they could see their names in a book, electronic or otherwise. They always will. A lot of people will happily contribute just for the satisfaction of getting published.
You’ll build more rapport with your current audience with this sort of interaction, and you’ll get your next book built for you!
Set a goal to get something published expressly for distribution outside of your current in-house online media at least every three months. Every two months, if you can do it.
You can always sell or give away what you publish on your blog or Website, too. You probably currently do. However, today’s e-reader market (Kindle, Nook, iPad, etc.) is now so easy to reach with your published works, there’s no reason not to also make your work available on them, too. After all, they represent a ready-made potential audience of millions who could discover you and want more from you as soon as they see what you have to offer now. All you have to do to reach them is set up some accounts, follow some simple formatting instructions and publish.
I know it sounds tough. It does require some consistent effort for a while. But, the effort is honestly easy and fun. And there are dozens more ways to quickly put together information products that e-reader users will love.
Even better — e-reader book buyers are showing a marked preference for shorter works. This is excellent for all of us! It’s much easier to quickly produce 24- 48-page books, and the more you release, the faster to your body of work grows.
Just focus on quality and value. Always over-deliver. Give people $10 worth of information for free, to generate leads with links inside. Offer $50 worth of information value for $5. Remember that the value of the information you’re providing, especially in the e-reader market, isn’t based on padded page counts. Focus on quality, regardless of the resulting number of pages and you’ll build an ongoing flow of traffic and revenue that grows exponentially over time.
It’s virtually a can’t-miss system, proven over decades of constant testing. Your body of work has the power to put you in the diver’s seat of the rest of your life. The small amount of work (pardon my use of the word, right out in the open and everything), over a short period of time, is a tiny sacrifice in return for the huge rewards it so surely will bring.
Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
Do you want to write fresh content or good content? Seems like a strange question, right?As an aspiring writer you’re taught that fresh content is where it’s at, it’s where you’ll get your big break. But is that true? Not really.
Sure, fresh content is the way to go, but only if you can somehow uncover content that no one has written on yet, and a quick look around will tell you that just about every topic under the sun has been written.
So how do you write good content if it isn’t new content?
There are thousands of stories floating around the internet about how to keep weight off during the holidays. Nine out of 10 of them will all parrot back exactly the same thing. That means if you want your article to be the one to catch, you have to spin the information in a way that makes people pause and continue reading.
Spinning information in a unique way is the best tactic a successful journalist can employ.
2. Stay Up to Date
Staying up to date on currently trending topics is the best way to keep your content as fresh as possible and to continually improve on your writing skills. Becoming a fantastic writer is a continually evolving process that requires submerging yourself in the world of writing.
Just because your favorite author has a flare for using witty euphemisms when they write doesn’t mean that you do. You have to determine your own writing style and capitalize on it – being confident in your own writing is what engages people to keep reading. Just about anyone can tell when something comes fluidly and when something is forced, and no one wants to read writing that doesn’t flow.
Even if it’s only a few sentences a day, a paragraph here and there, or something no one ever reads, writing daily will help you continually improve your writing skills and take your content to the next level of awesome.
Sometimes people get so caught up in finding fresh content that they pass up content that can be written in such a way that it becomes great content simply because of how it’s written.
Writing fresh content doesn’t make you a great writer – writing well makes you a great writer.
Elance, Freelancer…You know that you need to build a content-rich website if you want to get free traffic from the search engines, but writing takes lots time and your time is better spent marketing.
So, if you want to free up some of that writing time, consider hiring a ghostwriter.
Listed below – in no particular order – are the services that I use (and have used) to find ghostwriters for article writing projects.
Get an article written for just $5! OK, AND remember that you get what you pay for, so don't expect Hemingway. 🙂
Freelancer is an international marketplace where people who need custom software developed can find coders in a safe and business-friendly environment. Buyers can cherry pick from a pool of 124,597 coders…enabling them to hire a coder across the country or across the globe…from the comfort of their computers.
Buyers who wish to hire internationally, can take advantage of favorable overseas exchange rates, resulting in work being done for 50-90% less than if the project were done in-country. Coders are also given access to a huge pool of potential work and have the ability to work independently from their homes rather than for a company.
Look for PLR content in your niche that either you or your ghostwriter can re-write BEFORE you hire someone to create unique content. See the Related Articles below for content suppliers.
Make this costly mistake at your peril….I've become increasingly aware of affiliates, primarily new Affiliate marketers, who risk having their affiliate and Clickbank accounts closed, and worse, their entire sites shut down.
What are these affiliates doing?
Well, instead of writing their own content or spending a few bucks on PLR articles, they're publishing content and pictures on their web sites and blogs that doesn't rightfully belong to them – which constitutes a copyright violation.
I've personally discovered and dealt with copyright infringers who've used my articles without permission, copied my sales page in its entirety, posted whole copies of my newsletter to their sites, stolen graphics for which I owned the licence, and used a picture of me over a testimonial for a product which I knew nothing about.
Lucky affiliates are asked to remove the offending material, which lets them to learn from their ‘mistake' and keep earning revenue from their site.
However, the problem has become so prevelant, that I and other publishers of original content who hate wasting time waiting for webmasters to remove pages from their sites, simply bypass that step and have their affiliate accounts closed by the merchant or their site shut down by their ISP.
For example, some affiliates apparently believe that they'll make more sales if they simply copy a merchant's sales page in its entirety to their own site.
You and I know that this type of thinking is idiotic, especially when the affiliate link sends the visitor to a merchant's homepage which is identical to the one that they just read.
Not only does this duplication result in far fewer sales, but the affiliate risks having their site penalized as ‘duplicate content' by Google. Moreover, it's ample justification for affiliate or Clickbank account termination. ISP's, which are bound by the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and Clickbank representatives are swift to shut down the abusers.
What about blog content syndication?
Syndicating other's content is usually done for the purpose of increasing the amount of site content, linking out to reputable sites and thereby improving their PageRank and search engine rankings.
There are widgets that make it easy for affiliates to syndicate other webmasters' blog content on your own blog, but just because one can do this however, doesn't mean that one should.
Whether you use a widget or cut and paste the content into your site, using another author's content becomes an issue when whole posts are copied. The ‘issue' becomes even more problematic when the link to the original post is stripped out and no credit is given to the author.
The right way to use another webmaster's blog content is to write your own post on that topic, cite the other author's work by including a sentence or two of their post and then link back to their post using their trackback link.
Your post may then be picked up and included in the Comments section of the post you cited, which is a far more valuable way to earn a link back to your site.
The bottom line is that you need to make sure that you have permission to use other author's content and pictures on your site.
I also recommend that if you don't like to write, instead of ‘beefing up' your site with other webmasters' articles, invest in some private label rights articles to post to your blog.
It's a very low-cost option for increasing the content on your site and you won't risk copyright infringement and all the hard work that you've done to build your site.
My most HIGHLY recommended PLR (private label rights) site is Alice Seba and Mila Sidman's All Private Label Content service. In addition to offering exceptionally high quality PLR articles in 26 niche topics at very reasonable prices, they also give you ane-month complimentary access to their private members-only forum and a list of suggested affiliate programs to monetize your articles.
Are site ‘gizmos' detracting from your sales messages?
Then forget the 3D logo. Toss the animated graphics and pictures of pretty women. Cool scripts don't help you much , and music will kill the deal.
Unless your objective is to showcase your talent as a web designer, those elements contribute almost nothing to your bottom line. In fact, they often clutter and detract from your real objective which should be to sell products!
To get the message out about your product, you use words, not gizmos. Your words persuade people to visit your site, subscribe to your newsletter and buy your or your merchants' products. How you use your words makes the difference between your site's success or failure.
Here are two examples of how words are used to sell real estate:
Which listing would persuade you to to call your realtor?
If you are like most of us, you respond emotionally to the words ‘premier', ‘sandy' and ‘awesome view'. The ‘opportunity' to live a ‘premier' lifestyle, and feel the sand between your toes as you enjoy your awesome view appeals to your senses in a pleasurable way. Appealing to your readers' emotions is critical, and just a few choice words can skyrocket your conversion rates.
You don't need to be a seasoned writer or an established author to make your words sell more of your products. Writing is a skill that can be learned like any other. When you combine your desire to improve your writing skill with experts' books, courses, and seminars – copywriting becomes easier and much more fun.
Best of all, just a little effort to improve your writing will reap huge financial rewards. Just ‘tweaking' one paragraph can double or even quadruple your current conversion rates.
Try it – The rewards you gain by learning to write copy well are worth much more than a few bucks and a couple hours of your time.