http://www.keepblogging.net/how-to-go-viral-and-get-tons-of-traffic/ http://www.keepblogging.net/how-to-go-viral-and-get-tons-of-traffic/#comments Sat, 24 Jul 2010 10:36:10 +0000 Sam http://www.keepblogging.net/?p=2019

Every blogger out there that wants to take this seriously must know which traffic sources are the best.

There are many sources, such as the word of mouth –which is my favorite one because it’s free and because it’s targeted traffic- others as PPC Advertisements, which you need to pay to get that traffic…

But there’s a way to get traffic that seems to be a little “forgotten” though it’s amazingly effective.

I’m talking about Viral Traffic. How to go viral and get tons of visitors to your site?

Going viral is extremely important if you want to make some profits with your blog, selling affiliate products or selling your own one –an ebook, blogging lessons, etc- so it’s vital to know which techniques can be used to achieve it.

Let’s start from the beginning in case we have a newbie reading this

What is going viral?

The thing is very similar to the word of mouth. Let’s explain it using a very simple example.

Let’s say you launch your new ebook. You tell 10 people about it. It’s a very low number of persons, but those 10 people know 10 different guys and they will tell them about your new ebook.

Those last 10 will, again, spread the world, and will tell about your product to 20 other guys each.

Let’s see, your product has been advertised to 2000 bloggers. 10 x 10 x 20 = 2000

And it just started talking with 10 friends.

See the power of it? That’s Viral Marketing.

Things are not so great from now own, as now we will figure out how to go viral, how to get 10 people to advertise something to other 10 guys and so on.

How to ride the Viral Wave and going Viral

This is when the hard part comes. There are tons of websites that promises you to put an affiliate link that will be spread across their users. That sounds great, but the most of them –if not all- will only promote your link if you first promote other links from other members.

That sounds bad. Really.

So, from my point of view and experience, I think that the next three ways are the most useful and easier to go viral.

1)      Twitter. Loving contests.

Twitter seems to be made to exploit viral marketing. Each retweet is gold. Getting retweets is going Viral.

A great way is to do promotion and contests or something that requires a retweet to enter the contests or to get a ticket for a draw… Need to be creative, but that’s the main idea.

2)      Relationships.

It’s not about how many friends you have, is about how influential they are. If I tell you what would you chose, having 100 friends or to be friend of someone like Shoemoney or Darren Rowse?

I’d choose the second option, definitely.

Does this means you only need to focus on building relationships on probloggers? No, not at all.

You must take every reader you have and build a relationship with him the same way you would act if he / she was a problogger.

3)      Useful Stuff.

The obvious one. Couldn’t finish this post without the useful content thing, could I?

If you have something interesting to share, people will do the work for you.

I may be forgetting something –in this case please drop a comment to update the post to make it more accurate and complete-

Always be creative and innovative.

Thanks for reading and see you on next post.

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Titles are always REALLY important.

They’re important when it comes to choose a book’s title, a blog post’s title, an ebook’s title… The list just goes on and on.

But their importance just multiplies when it comes to choosing a good ad’s title for an advertising campaign.

I’ve tested it and titles can really make the difference. I’m obviously talking about sales and conversion rate.

As an example, and to prove myself I’m true, I decided to run a little facebook campaign trying to sell one of those ebooks that teach how to make money tweeting.

I wanted to check if the importance of titles was really that enormous or I was just exaggerating. Well, results speak for themselves.

On the first campaign I just decided to put a ‘regular’ title. Just wrote what the ebook was about. ‘How to make money tweeting’ or something similar –can remember now what was the exact title, I’m lacking space on my head due to university- and just hit enter.

I set apart obvious marketing factors, such as demographic and age ones –pretty important, remember that people under 18 don’t have a credit card- , as I was just focusing on titles and I had a little money to play with. So what were the results?

Results

Let separate it:

Campaign #1

Here’s what I did:

I just enter the obvious marketing factors I stated before and I bought X –sorry, can’t remember the exact amount again, sorry guys- amount of clicks, hit enter and just waited.

For those who think that the campaign #1 was run without considering a market research you guys are wrong. I did my typical market research. I had the money to play but money is money after all and no one want to lose its money.

Remember that the only factor I left without my spin was the title.

Before seeing the results of the first campaign, let’s check what I did for campaign #2.

Campaign #2

The campaign number two had the exact settings campaign #1 had.

I bought the same amount of clicks and set the same demographic and age filter. But I changed the title. Better said, I optimized the title.

Result from campaign #1

Let’s go straight to the point. I didn’t remember what the amount of clicks bought was, but I do remember the conversion rate.

The campaign #1 drop me a conversion rate of 11.29%, for those who don’t get it, out of the total clickers, 11.29% purchased the product I was advertising.

I didn’t need to design a graphic to see the results obtained. Was simple.

I got a good ROI but could really have been better… Just as campaign #2 shows.

Results from campaign #2

Earnings increased dramatically thanks to an optimized title.

The campaign #2 drop me a conversion rate of 23.81% which isn’t my best but clearly shows what I was looking for.

I didn’t need to make a graphic and compare to the campaign #1 to see that the results obtained optimizing the titles were 2x better.

Titles can really make the difference.

Obviously

So?

You didn’t think I’ll leave this post without sharing some knowledge did you?

Now that I’ve proven and shown you the importance of titles –especially on marketing campaigns- let me share some tips I learnt from experience – and mostly from losing money- that could help you.

Tips to optimize your titles

Just three quick tips:

- Keep it straight to the point. Marketing campaigns consist on maximizing profits while minimizing loses.

When running a campaign to sale some product, the best way to do it is by adding on the title how much the product costs. The reason is simple.

When using the PPC system –pay per click- every click worth gold so you must try to achieve that every single clicker knows what they can get and which the price to pay for it is. Otherwise you’ll get ‘dead clicks’. Let me show you an example:

You’re willing to sell a book about ‘how to make money blogging’.

You’ll get higher chances if you titled your ad as ‘how to make money blogging – only $47’ than if you named it ‘how to make money blogging’ as a lot of people will just check the ad to see how to make money blogging thinking it’s free because you didn’t specify.

Got what I mean? Specifying the price is REALLY important.

- Adding your experience can help too. As an example ‘how this book helped me to make money blogging – only $47’.

You’re saying that the ebook helped you to make money blogging so that will help clickers to take a step ahead and buy it.

Obviously you should never lie.

- Avoid the typical click here –or don’t click here- because, as said, every click worth gold and you should go as straight to the point as possible.

I think this point is very important for newbies, as they may get confused because leaving some mystery is a good way to increase clicks rate but remember that using PPC guarantees you those clicks, so you don’t need to apply this method here.

I hope you can now increase your sales now or at least minimize your loses.

Do you have something to add?

I’ll like to hear from your experiences and thoughts about this subject. Sharing some tips? Drop a comment and will discuss about!

Thanks for reading.

Whether you want to make money blogging or promote yourself, you’ll advertise at least once in your life.

When talking about advertising networks or advertising, we read some terms that confuse us and, in some cases, people become afraid and don’t take the step to advertise.

To avoid this happens, and as it’s very simple, I’ll explain what these frequent terms are and what they mean, even the differences between them and which are the most profitable.

This is mostly for beginners, but it may help more experienced bloggers that are starting to advertise as well.

Advertising Glossary.

What is the ROI?

The ROI simply means Returns on Investment. I’ll show you an example and you’ll understand it easily.

Let’s say you have an affiliate product, a book, which title is “How to make money blogging”. You don’t have a blog, so you try to advertise and promote the (e)book. You love Google, so you try Google Adwords and invest 100$ on advertisement. You set up your ad and publish it. You got lucky, and the book that cost 20$ each, has been sold to 10 readers that clicked your ad.

You’ve made 200$. That’s ok, but you need to take away the 100$ you used to advertise, so you can calculate your real profit. Which means 200-100= 100$. Those 100 bucks are your ROI. It can be also calculated using percentage.

What’s CPC?

CPC is an informative term for both advertisers and publishers. CPC just refers to the Cost per Click from a particular ad.

For advertisers it helps to calculate the estimate amount to spend to get a particular clicks amount.

Ex: I want to advertise my blog, so I use Adwords (yes I also love Google). When setting up my blog, I chose “Make money blogging” as the main keyword. Adwords says me that the CPC for that keyword is 0.70$ (I wish), so in order to get 100 clicks I would need to spend 70$.

What does CPA means?

CPA is one of my favorite (if not THE favorite) way to advertise, as I mostly make money from Affiliate Programs. CPA means Cost Per Action. As usual, an example worth more than 1000 images.

I’m promoting an affiliate product. I bought a new Olympus Digital Camera and it’s so good, that I will mostly sale a couple. So I decide to advertise using CPA, which guarantees me the reader’s action, which in this case is to purchase the product.

Of course CPA has higher CPC rates than any other advertising way, but I personally think it worth it.

And to finish,

What’s the CPM?

The CPM means Cost per Impression. But hey? Wouldn’t it be, according to other terms, CPI? No, because the CPM rates are calculate on a thousand bases. I’ll show you how it works by writing an example:

Ex: I’ve a banner and I want to advertise it within your website. You tell me that in order to put this banner on your blog’s header, the CPM rate is 5$; meaning that once my banner is displayed one thousand times, I’ll pay you 5$.

Yes, that simple.

I keep meeting bloggers that haven’t advertised yet because there are afraid of these terms, so they decide not to do it because it’s more comfortable to just stay where they are and not to go one step ahead.

Advertising, like everything on the net, isn’t that hard. Don’t be afraid by what others say, just do what you want without breaking the rules and you’re on your way towards your success.

Thanks for reading.

This is the fourth part of the make money blogging post series. (Make money blogging – part I, II, and III.

On the previous posts of the make money blogging series I’ve shown you ways to make money blogging from the off page point of view.

As you know off page monetization bother less to readers, so it’s more important and beneficial, but it’s true that is the lowest income source, unless you use the way I’ll show you today.

This way is a bit related to RSS Feed, as it’s all about email marketing. So let’s start.

How to make money blogging using email marketing.

Before we start, let me tell you that email marketing is the most powerful tool on the net.Plus it’s off page monetization. It covers promotion, relationship building, affiliate marketing etc. So you better control this tool if you really want to make money online.

I said email marketing, when it comes to make money blogging, is related to your RSS Feed, because you’ll need to build a marketing list.

Yesterday I wrote you a post about how to build your own email list, so you may want to read it if you haven’t yet.

Email marketing is all about the promotion. Promoting something may be pretty hard when you’re advertising, let’s say, using Google Adsense, but when you have your own blog, with your own readers, things turn out to be easier.

If you’ve read yesterday’s post, you already know that you need Feedburner and Aweber to start with email marketing. Now that you have your own email list, what’s next step?

1)      Knowing your audience: When you have your own blog, you can’t live without knowing your readers. This is pretty simple, as they want what you’re offering, that’s why they keep coming to your blog. That simple. If your blog is about make money blogging, then you know your readers are interested on this subject. So…

2)      …What to offer: You already know what to offer to your readers. Offer something related to your blog’s topic.

2-1) Affiliate products: You can send affiliate marketing products to your readers that you found interesting. Make sure you post a review about the product before sending emails, saying the positives and the negatives things about the product.

2-2) Blogging tools: If you’re a podcaster blogger that frequently post videos or audios, you can dedicate a post about the tools you use.

In order to do this, you’ll most likely know more about Amazon, which is a site where you can sell everything and get a commission.

2-3) Give out some proofs: If you’re promoting, let’s say, a digital camera, post some photos made with the camera, showing its quality. Make sure you write down all the details.

2-4) Lessons: This is more for experienced and known blogger, but if you’ve a not so common blog, you can give it a shot. Offering programmed lessons to help other bloggers will increase their blog revenue. It’s like making a membership option within your blog.

2-5) Ebook: If you don’t want RSS readers, you can promote and sell your own ebook with unique information. You shouldn’t put a high price, as you’ll get more sales by putting a relative low price. You can advertise your own ebook using clickbank.

Before you try to promote something via email, make sure you have established a relationship with your readers. You can approach them using Aweber autoresponders option.

Email marketing can bring you tons of money, but can make you look a selfish guy and ruin your blog career.

Do you have more ways? Tell us!

Thanks for reading.

Nowadays is hard for someone to just giveaway his/her personal email, because of spammers and kids who don’t know what email marketing is, and just send non-sense emails.

Apart from that, getting email ID’s sounds like evil. I don’t know why, but sounds evil, just like all make money blogging / make money online topics. I think readers first impression is that you’re a selfish guy and you’re going to try to steal every penny out of them, don’t you think?

Well. I’ve written a post, which will be the make money blogging part IV, talking about email marketing, but I thought that first it would be better to give out some tips to build your very own email list, although I don’t have the world largest email list, but hey, I’ve just started this blog from scratch. But as I have a spanish blog with an email list, I’ll be able to give you some tips.

First of all you need to know that this is a very long process, and success depends on a number of factors, such as how you promote yourself, what you offer, how good your content is… But it worth the time spent. With a small email list, I’d be able to earn 1-2K per month on avg. Imagine those who have a huge email list. So

How to start building your own email list and really start to make money blogging

What do you need?

Not too much. A blog / website, because unless you have made a landing page and offer a [downloadable] product that requires a signup, you’ll need a blog or a website so you can give your readers a reason to subscribe to your blog. Apart from that, Feedburner will make it easier to offer email subscriptions on your blog.

Apart from that, you really need Aweber. Aweber creates email marketing software that makes email marketing a baby task. It gives you the possibility to offer email newsletter (that’s why you will need Feedburner) and customize your very own autoresponders. I’ll specify about this subject tomorrow.

Once you have signed up for both Aweber and Feedburner, you’ll be wondering “Ok, what’s next?”

The hardest part has come, as now you’ll need to build your own email list.

Tips to build your own email marketing list.

What do you need to get email ID’s and build your own email list?

1)      Building credibility: You’re asking for “personal” info from readers, so you really need to build yourself a reputation that stands you out of the crowd. It will be hard for new bloggers to get this reached, but while the time goes on and your blog keeps growing, you’ll have it easier.

2)      Be informative: Make sure you let your readers know you’re not spamming nor selling email ID’s. This is very important, as some readers won’t give you their email address unless you REALLY guarantee them you’re not selling anything. A privacy policy will do it.

3)      Offer, offer, offer: You need to give to receive. What can you give to readers?

3-1) Your own ebook: Instead of making an ebook and selling it, give it away just for signing up to your newsletter. This can be easily done using Aweber services. Also, write and ebook related to your blog’s topic.

3-2) Password protecting: Yep, you can protect a particular post with a password that, in order for readers to get it, would need to sign up to your newsletter and confirm it. Subscribe and the password will be sent.

3-3) Giving proofs: When you have a good amount of RSS readers, Twitter followers etc, show them within your blog. The more social power you demonstrate, the more social power you’ll have. It’s the way it works.

3-4) Unique and good content: A must for everything. Always unique and good content please!

Making an email list is the best way to make money blogging, but also the hardest and longest way. But it’s worthy!

Do you have more ways to get it done? Please tell us, never forget that blogging is a two way communication.

Thanks for reading.

It is often said that you need money to make money.

While this is true for the vast majority of business models, it shouldn’t be a #1 rule for bloggers, as to make money blogging you only need to have made money online and being unique and popular.

That said, you may want to advertise someday. The usual advertising method (apart from CPM) is the CPC (cost per click). I’m both an advertiser and a publisher, and I’m amazed when I click on some Adsense Ads. Why?
Because when I click on them, what I see just doesn’t make me want to buy something. I read it and I just say: “So?”

Therefore, and although I HATE to do such a thing because, as I said, I’m also an advertiser, I do the CvR move (Click view run), and just waist a click that may worth 1 or 2$ depending on the keywords / niche.

So you’ll never have a good ROI or can even make a loss. As I’m seeing this tons of times, I’m coming with a few tips so you can avoid this happen and increase your ROI as much as possible.

Tips to maximize your advertising profits

-> Be clear with the title: This is more focused to bring attention. A good title will head to more clicks, therefore, and as long as you follow a few rules and tips, will lead you to having a huge increase on sales rate.

It’s just like creating a blog post title. Put some keywords and and go straight to the point. As per colors, it’s known that blue colors bring  attention better.
Say from the beginning how much the product costs, so those who don’t want to spend too much money don’t even try to click on the ad if they don’t going to spend a penny.

-> Take your time: To analyze market needs. Check where other products fails to provide buyers what they want and emphasize on that aspect.

-> Targeted audience: Part of the analyzing phase. You won’t get the same amount of sales whether advertising for US or Canada, as you won’t sale a make money online ebook on a football niche. This is the most important step.

-> Be descriptive: Tell briefly what your product is about on the top of a page. Say EVERYTHING the product can give to buyers.

-> Test the product: You can’t advertise a product if you have never tested it. This is a very important point to take care of. If someone asks you how the product did while you were using it but can’t answer, you’ll lose credibility and sales.

-> Be honest: Also tell where the product lacks on. You’ll gain credibility and sales.

-> Give proofs: Giving proofs means getting sales. If your product is made to help making money, give proofs from the money you’ve made using it. If it’s made to lose weight, post the typical before and after photos. Just an example.

-> Money back guarantee: This will encourage people to buy the product and test it. If you’re honest about the product and tell the positive/negative things of it, and release the ad to a targeted audience, you shouldn’t be worried about money back requests.

That’s all folks. Do you have more tips? Share your experiences!

Thanks for reading.

Surfing around the net I came across an article on which the author was wondering whether it’s or not a good idea to offer a full feed on your blog.
Actually the article surprised me, so I’ve decided to make a post to give you my opinion about this subject.
I’m sure you all know what a feed is, but I also know some newbies may read this, so I’ll briefly explain what full feed is all about.

A feed is a service that lets readers subscribe to your blog, so they can keep updated when a new post is published and keep track of your blog.

When subscribing on the normal way, you just bookmark the post within your browser and you keep visiting the site everyday, but what happens when a reader subscribe using the email way?
As you know, when you release a new post, those who have bookmarked your site using Google, My yahoo, FeedDemon etc will visit it, but those who entered the email address will receive the full post via email, so they won’t need to visit your site,hence, you’re losing visitors.

That’s when the chaos comes out.

As the vast majority of bloggers (even those who want to make money blogging) really care about this issue, they decide not to offer email subscription, just the bookmark option.

Well, this may be ok if you don’t want to monetize your blog, but when you want to make money blogging you MUST offer email subscription. Why?

Reasons to offering email subscriptions.

Yep, it’s your obligation. You must build a mailing list. The best way is to use a service like Aweber and build it using their great services.
For example, from my email subscribers, only a 30% reach my site when posting, but thanks to them, I’d be able to earn 2 or 3K per month, growing as my email list grows.

Here comes the reasons

1 ) Email marketing: Is the best, quicker and most direct face-to-face online communication. If your email list has 1000 subscribers, then when sending a message, it will instantly hit the inbox of one thousand readers. This is an amazing power, really. I’ll show an example. You have 1000 of emails IDs. You know what they want and send them a targeted affiliate marketing product. Let’s say it the product you’re promoting costs 70$ and only a half of your readers decide to buy it. That’s 35,000$ from a single mail. Just a stupid calculation, but clearly shows the potential.

2) Targeted audience: Already explained on the example above. Targeted audience just means sales.

3) Building communications: If you’re using a service like Aweber, you will be able to send scheduled messages through auto responders, building a relationship with your readers, which will improve your trust.

4) Because it’s cool! Yep. Having a huge email list will be a proof of your social power. That will lead to more email ID’s, which will give you more income.

What do you think? Email list or visitors?

Thanks for reading.

Having a good management of landing pages is a must nowadays if you want to do something on Internet Marketing.
A landing page is a very good way to make money online and quite simple to be made, but you can trick it out a bit to get the 100% out of it, guaranteeing you maximum sales possible.
But what are those tips to take into account when creating a landing page?

Get straight to the point.

Avoid presentations and get to the point. Show what you have to offer and make it easy to be found. Don’t make visitors scroll down the page to find what you’re really offering.
They’ll leave if they have to guess what your product is. Show just from the start the benefits, they’ll start with a smile.

Be persuasive.

“Wow, that’s what I needed! It’s the best product I’ve seen so far!” That’s what you have to achieve, what readers must think. Visitors must realize it even before scrolling the page down. You’ve to believe yourself you’ve the best service first, in order to be credible.
You can get it using various methods…

Provide proofs.

… And this is one of them. There a tons of scammers out there. You won’t get a sale by simply writing down “Hi reader, I’ve tested this and it’s the best thing I’ve ever tested”. Always offer proofs about what the service/product has bring to you. People won’t trust you if you don’t show what’s so good about the product.

Providing support.

I don’t see supports too often but I think it’s one of the most important keys. Offer supports by simply including a mini-FAQ or even an email address. You can get tons of sales just by working a bit more on the support area.

Don’t let them get away!

This one sounds a bit evil, but it’s a big mistake, and I’ve seen them too much. If you’ve made a landing page, the objective is to get a “Click, view and buy” effect. So, avoid including outgoing links. You’ll lose over 60% of potential buyers if you give an open door to another site.
Make a landing page without any door!
There are hundreds of ways to make a good landing page. The most important is to proof how good your product is, and make it clear since the first minute.
Thanks for reading.

The most common mistake I’ve seen on each and every blog I’ve visited is that they only put Google Adsense ads.

No one doubts the benefits of Google Adsense are quite high. But there’s one snag: Traffic.

In order to succeed with Adsense (and I mean truly succeed), you’ll need to get tons of unique visitors each month.

While this is possible with good promotion and amazing content, it may be very frustrating for some bloggers to see how the Adsense income doesn’t grow up, even when increasing traffic.

Said that, my question is: Why don’t you try new income sources?

There are many ways you can maximize your earnings. Using ad networks, sponsorships, affiliate programs, etc.

I’ll let you know some of the best known income sources, so you can try them out.

But before I start, let me tell you that there are some tricks in order to increase ad revenues from your blog. On future posts, I’ll update and show you some ways to maximize earnings.  Apart from that, profitable niches bring profitable earnings, but that’s something we will study later.

This is the first part of the Maximize your Earnings Series.

Let’s get to the point.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs can basically be summed up as “Sell and get a commission”. The trick here is to sell  [downloadable] products. As affiliate seller, you’ll earn a commission that will depends on what the percentage of the affiliate network is. Some will give you higher percentages, other lowers, but if done well, they’ll boost your blog revenue. I’ve made a crappy step-to-step about how they work.

1-      The product’s author promote his/her product through an Affiliate Network.

2-      The Affiliate Network publishs it, so members can start promoting the product.

3-      Affiliate members start promoting, using websites, blogs, etc.

4-      People buy the product, paying directly to the affiliate member who sold the product.

5-      The member who sold the product gets the percentage, meaning that if the amount received was 100$, and has a 50% comission, he’d keep 50$. The other 50$ would go towards the Aff. Network / Product’s Author.

Affiliate Programs are really a great way to make money online, if not the best. If you’ve some questions about how they work, please feel free to asking via comments / contact.

Advertising the product

Affiliate marketing sounds good, but you will need to advertise your product. This can be made through many ways, but the most commons are using a blog, a website or paid advertise.

• Using a blog or website.

You can advertise your product either inserting some ads on the site, or by making an entire site just for the product, showing what their benefits are and why you MUST buy the product.

It’s all about how you describe the product. You must convince the buyer that this is what he/she actually needs to get the profit.

• Using paid advertising.

Just using ad networks as Google Adwords. Pick out a some good keywords and advertise. This method is similar to the one above. What you will want to do is to make a landing page and redirect the clicks to it. A landing page is a page where you directly advertise the product. Let’s say you have a product that teachs how to make money online. Using Adwords as advertising method, you’ll redirect all the clicks to the page where the product is directly advertised, making a landing page.

Using the paid advertising, we must be sure that we have a good ROI (Return of Investment) in order to make a profitable campaign.

On part 2 I will show you the most famous Affiliate Networks, give details about them and compare them, in order to show you which one is more profitable.

So, are you going to keep stucking to Adsense? Or are you going to maximize sources and revenue?

Thanks for reading.