Internet Marketing Magazine October-November 2014 by Internet Marketing Magazine

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2014

AL I C SPEMBO JU UE! ISS ov 2014

> HASHTAGS BEST & WORST PRACTICES P11

N ct -

> BEST ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE P25

> GOOGLE+ FOR BUSINESS P30

> MAKE MONEY BLOGGING P39

> PROS & CONS OF SELLING ON AMAZON & EBAY P15

> 3 WAYS TO DOUBLE YOUR BUSINESS

P18

> RETAIN SEO RANKINGS AFTER WEB REDESIGN

P21

COVER STORY: THE NON-LAUNCH LAUNCH

AJIT NAWALKHA >> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, KINDLE FIRE, ANDROID AND THE WEB

MEET OUR EXPERT PANEL Nick Ehrenberg

is the Content Marketing Manager at TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing agency that specialize in content based customer acquisition and relationship programs that emphasize content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and email marketing. Read his article on Hashtag Best and Worst Practices on PAGE 11

Mark Hayes

is the Head of Communications at Shopify, a commerce platform which allows anyone to easily sell online, in store and everywhere in between. Prior to joining Shopify, he was an acclaimed journalist who has written hundreds of articles for publications around the world. In 2013 Mark co-authored the bestselling book and ebook The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping which has been read over almost 1 million times.. Read his article on Selling on Amazon & eBay on PAGE 15

Fuze is a Miami Digital Agency providing strategic and integrated Website Design & Development, Online Marketing and Mobile Solutions. Fuze seeks mutually beneficial relationships with clients looking to take their online businesses to the next level. Connect with Fuze via Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Read the article on Retaining SEO Rankings on PAGE 21

Jeremy Wong

together with his wife Connie, are the creators and authors of Website Builder Experts. Their mission is to help find the best website builder that fits business ownersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; unique needs, so they can build their own website online. Read his article on Best eCommerce Software on PAGE 25

Zack Fagan

is the inbound marketing manager at StoreYa. com, a Social Commerce Platform designed to increase engagement and conversions across social networks, mobile & online stores. Zack loves all things digital and is always looking for the latest social marketing scoop. Read his article on How to Use Google+ for Business on PAGE 30

Jon Morrow

is the creator of Boost Blog Traffic. He started Boost Blog Traffic to teach blog writers how to get more readers, build email list, become an authority in their niche and everything bloggers need to get the attention they deserve. Read his article on How to Make Money Blogging on PAGE 39

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

CONTENTS

4 11

1Ajit

Nawalkha Cover Story on the Non-Launch Launch 1The Hashtag Test: Best and Worst Practices for Social Media Marketers

1Learn

The Pros and Cons of Selling on Amazon and eBay

18 21

1Discover

The 3 Ways To Double Your Business 1Know How To Retain SEO Rankings After a Website Redesign

lDiscover the Best Ecommerce Software to Easily Build Your Online Store

lLearn

How to Use Google Plus For Business: 8 Marketing Tips to Take You to the Top

lMake Money Blogging: 20 Lessons Going from 0 to $100,000 per Month

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

elcome to this October/November Bumper issue of Internet Marketing Magazine. Firstly, why the missing October issue and the combined bumper issue for October and November. We have had health issues in our team over the last month with our graphic design and editorial teams. Rather than creating pressure for those individuals who were not well we agreed ‘health is the most important thing’ and that we would create an awesome bumper issue for October/November.

Hopefully we live up to that promise. Our feature cover interview expert Ajit Nawalkha has certainly done his bit. I always knew he was a very clever guy to be running such an important part of the MindValley organisation, but when I first saw him speak in the US at a high level mastermind I knew that I needed to contact him to see if he would share some of that knowledge with the Internet Marketing Magazine Community. You will find the audio interview with Ajit here. It’s got many sections in it that didn’t make the print version of this publication. For those with iTunes the Podcast version may be more convenient. I know many of you are coming along to the upcoming Digital Marketing Summit which I’m running, so I very much look forward to meeting you in person there. Since the last issue was published I’ve had another trip to the US for a high level mastermind in Vegas and also another trip off to Google Head Office in Sydney, so I have lots of new amazing things to share with you in the upcoming months. In the last month I was published in another amazing book. If you haven’t seen it yet check out Janet Beckers new book ‘Romance Your Tribe Online’ as it is excellent for building and nurturing a modern community. If you haven’t got access to the member’s area please feel free to do at http://internetmarketingmag.net/ become-member/ (it’s free). Our Google Play App is now live and working well. It gets updated roughly one day after the Apple Newsstand issue. So please feel free to check it out if you are on Android. We are working on a way to make it get automatically updated the same day as Apple Newsstand, so I’ll let you know if that comes off. A special thanks to those who have left reviews in the apple platforms as it really helps us out. If you are getting good value from Internet Marketing Magazine and you can spare 1 minute of your time to click this link to give us a quick honest review that would be greatly appreciated (click ‘view in iTunes’ then scroll down and click ‘write a review’, thanks :). Your Bonus Training: Send us a screenshot of your review in iTunes or Google Play (info@ internetmarketingmag.net) and we will send you some great Internet Marketing Training resources.

Greg Cassar Regards,

Internet Marketing Strategist & Editor – Internet Marketing Magazine

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW ALL ABOUT AJIT NAWALKHA • Ajit Nawalkha is the Co-Founder of Blink Webinars and Evercoach. • Ajit is the CEO of Mind Valley Media, the publishing arm of the Mind Valley Group. Ajit also works as a mentor and sits on the board of multiple organizations. • Ajit is very strong in the areas of sales and marketing, business growth training, pay per click, in particular AdWords, Facebook advertising, landing pages, and sales page optimization, creating funnels, just to name a few.

“

You don’t want to create products for markets. You want to create solutions for your market.

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

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> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

AJIT NAWALKHA THE NON-LAUNCH LAUNCH An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar

The optimization debate - do you believe there’s more money optimizing and continually optimizing your current sales pages to really squeeze the last drop out of them? Or with the other line of thinking, which is just bringing more products to market? Ajit: My experience has been that you will make more money if you just bring more products to market.

It’s like this - After a point when your audience has seen your offer, it’s not about that little button here and there that is going to change it too much. Of course you must first optimize your sales pages to an optimal level that makes it lucrative enough for you to be able to drive traffic to it. By optimizing your sales page by say 3% more, it will give you marginal growth and it will give you marginal success.

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

Where if you add a product to an existing market that you already have, you will probably see 30-40% growth in your overall revenue. It’s like how Apple started with the Mac’s. But now they have a whole suite of other hardware and apps. Apple was doing well historically and they could have just stuck to selling their first computer, but they built on it with a suite of other products.

follow. We follow it more like training and there is a pitch at the end, but it’s really soft. It’s not really to push them, to get them to buy. Once people have consumed really good quality content they tend to buy anyways because they’ve just got the end results in advance. So it’s easy for them to now make a decision. Product launches are a very complicated process, if you look at it traditionally from what Jeff Walker teaches. It takes three to four months to build it really well, and to be able to leverage it really well. You can make a ton of money with launches there’s no doubt about that. But we’ve found that in our ecosystem and in the way we approach solutions, we don’t want to invest three to four months creating a ‘product launch’. We’d rather invest three to four weeks creating a really good Master Class (webinar).

Instead of calling them ‘products’ we like to call them ‘solutions’. When you start looking at new offerings as products, you starting thinking “what can I create” instead of asking the question, “what does my client want?” You don’t want to create products for markets. You want to create solutions for your market. You always want to ask your clients, “What is it next that you want?” - They are more likely to say ‘yes’ to it when you actually create that solution for them. You have replaced your product (solution) launches with sales webinars (Master Classes). What have been your learning in this space? Ajit: We call webinar’s ‘Master Classes’ or ‘Online Trainings’. Webinars are perceived as something where there’s going to be a lot of pitches and that’s not the structure that we

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

We have created a very simple formula to be able to design a landing page for our webinar; a ‘show up’ sequence for it; and then the actual webinar flow. Then what we are doing is just replicating it again, and again. The only difference is that we’re changing the solution that we offer. So the flow is the same. The activities that are happening are the same - it’s a very replicable model. The only thing that changes is the hook angle and the central story of the whole master class system. Instead of taking three months to create it, we take three weeks to create it and that’s the switch in the strategy. We can put together a Master Class (webinar) in three weeks which means essentially we can do three to four of those in the time that we could build one traditional launch.

> COVER STORY: The other advantage with this approach is that it is less stressful. It is better for the team because they can do it themselves and I don’t need to be involved in everything. This is a result of the systemization as they’re following the same flow that I designed – all this means I have more time freedom. I’m also giving more solutions to my audience, which actually makes my audience happier.

Right now our audience knows that we are going to do an online training every other week. They are happy to come and look at more solutions, which they already asked for, so they are more engaged. So essentially overall, not doing product launches has actually turned out to be good for the company because we have been able to have more efficiency for our clients.

EXPERT INTERVIEW

Ajit: For a sales webinar, I think the things that you send before the webinar matter a lot. I’ve seen people approach it as “do a landing page followed by three pieces of content and let them see the webinar after that.” I believe that’s the worst way to approach it. You have to look at it more from the place of “What is every piece of information doing?” You have to design the entire system in a way that every piece is designed to create the sale. When we write the landing page or the pieces of content that go in the middle you have to think about it from the place of “Are you giving results in advance? Are you making sure that there is engagement? Are you making sure that there is social proof? Are you making sure that people already understand the system by the time they actually reach the webinar?” Then the job of the webinar becomes much, much easier. It’s like the sideways sales letter that Jeff Walker teaches in his Product Launch Formula. It’s where we are trying to communicate all the value and lead-in to the sale, instead of actually waiting for the webinar to do all the work. We build the audience pre-webinar in a way so that they are already ready to buy if they attend the webinar or not.

Greg: The other thing that is really smart about that is that you’re systemizing everything. So for example, you’ve got a landing page template; You’ve got a welcome sequence template; You’ve got a webinar template - you’re not reinventing the wheel every single time which is very smart and a big learning for me, because I come from a conversion optimization background.

What do you believe is the recipe or formula for a highly successful sales presentation like a Webinar or what you call a Master Class?

But now when they attend the webinar, the flow of the webinar also itself is designed to build a sale. We start with the introduction of the author; their

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

credentials, and we include testimonials for the author. We attach a story to them, in the sense of how they’ve benefitted either the person who is interviewing them or any of the other clients. This trains the audience them to know that this person is an authority. Then we would put in two or three trainings which are designed in a way that by the way people pitch the product, people are already ready to see why they will need that product. So it’s a successful sales webinar, in our opinion, when it actually does the job while the person doesn’t even feel that they’re being sold anything. They’re feeling that they are getting great content and great value, but at the same point in time, it’s prepping them for the sale. We get 10 to 15% of people who attend the webinar to buy the product.

We use all the principles from the book ‘Influence’ by Robert Cialdini and we make it a point that our webinar flows along something related to that. It has people who ask questions. It has people’s objections being handled while the webinar is happening. All the triggers are there, but the script is always the same. Greg: You’re effectively 80/20-ing everything as well. The indoctrination that you do is brilliant because they’re already turn up knowing you, liking you, and trusting you. So I think that’s a really, really key distinction for a lot of marketers to make. It’s more sophisticated than most, because we meet a lot of business owners and they’re just thinking about “I’ve got to people on the webinar and then I’ve got to deliver the webinar,” type setup. Ajit: There’s one thing that pretty much all entrepreneurs should understand is that at any given point, only a small percent of your overall audience is listening to you. If you look at your email list, usually only 10% of your overall list only is ever clicking on your email and going to your page and actually listening to what you’re talking about. 90% of the audience is not listening all the time and the webinar itself has a very little chance of people actually listening to it. So you’ve got to take all the opportunity before the webinar and after the webinar to be able to educate and then educate again.

You are systemizing your marketing components. What other 80/20 principles do you use in your business life? Ajit: To create results I believe you identify what are the highest leveraged places for you to work in your business. Every quarter I would

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

affiliate side of the business grew by 35%. The reason why that could happen is because I was so laser focused and so is my team. I also define what my CMO should be focused on and heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only focused on those one or two items. Because of that overall your business grows dramatically more, as your key players are focused in one place rather than jumping all over the place. define 1-3 highest leveraged items to focus on. This means that for everything else I will answer to it, but I will just not focus on. So for example, last quarter I was 100% focused on affiliate management, and author relationship management. Because I was focused on those two items, we grew the number of authors by 30%. We signed 30% more deals than what we had done previously. At the same point in time the

I define my two or three focus areas for every quarter, and I just stick to them, and I make sure that those three items grow and eventually that helps the business to grow overall.

Resources You can find out more from Ajit at the MindValleyInsights.com blog or the high end business mastermind at Zentrepreneur.com

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

IMM

Ari Galper

Ben Bradshaw

Scott Bywater

James Schramko

Greg Cassar

Matt Clarkson

David Jenyns

Matt Oxley

Craig Ford

OUR GUARANTEE YOU ARE 100% SATISFIED OR GET YOUR MONEY BACK internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

HASHTAGS

THE HASHTAG TEST:

BEST AND WORST PRACTICES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETERS By Nick Ehrenberg

ashtags are wonderful social media marketing tools. They can highlight trends, tie campaigns to chosen keywords, and isolate conversations. The allure of the hashtag is strong, especially for brands that desire a customized platform for their content. Twitter (and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, Instagram and Google+) thrives on hashtags for everything from primetime TV shows to organic political movements.

However, like all good things in life, the hashtag should be used in moderation. The pound sign carries great power, but only if deployed responsibly. TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook bluntly referred to users who abuse the hashtag as “hash-holes.” Avoiding that label requires an understanding of where the hashtag is most beneficial in messaging – and where it should never be deployed. Here are some examples of good and bad hashtag strategy in brand social messaging:

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

HASHTAGS Bad practice: Leveraging trending hashtags without tying back to your products What is the purpose of your hashtag? Is it merely to capitalize on a common or trending phrase, or does it have a direct connection with your brand’s products and services? Jumping on a fast-moving topic is good newsjacking practice, but there must be an end goal with the tag’s usage. In Twitter’s earlier years, a British furniture store attempted to capitalize on trending topics by including respective hashtags in their messages – without any real connection to the promoted product.

HabitatUK’s audience was understandably annoyed by the chain’s poor hashtag strategy. The story has since cemented itself as a prime example of awful social tactics in general – the company didn’t acknowledge and correct the behavior for several days afterward. It’s far too tempting to throw in a hashtag just because it’s popular. If it doesn’t make sense with your message, the audience will reject it.

short-term traffic to your landing pages, but the real benefits come from creating your own branded hashtags. Condense your company tagline, name or campaign into a short tag, and deploy it consistently with your messaging. Tie that tag to social campaigns, encouraging followers to use it for specific incentives. Over time, the audience will tie that tag to your brand, and you can track engagement via hashtag searches. Sharpie didn’t stray far from the brand when they created their company hashtag. The #Sharpie tag, which uniquely ties to the company, was used to invite artistic submissions from followers. Users responded en masse, posting their creations and increasing Sharpie’s brand awareness.

Sharpie benefited from their branded hashtag by promoting creativity and self-expression – concepts that align with their overall messaging strategy. Even if a branded hashtag doesn’t generate as much traffic as a generic tag, you have far greater control over its usage.

Best practice: Create hashtags that mirror your brand, and give people reasons to use them

Bad practice: #Using #Too #Many #Hashtags #In #Your #Posts

Using existing trending hashtags may help bring

Just reading that headline makes my head hurt.

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

> Hashtag overuse is a common error in social messaging, sending signals of desperation and inexperience. Abundance of hashtags in social posts has even encouraged some users to create websites dedicated to righting the practice. Excessive hashtags are problematic on personal accounts, but they are downright fatal on brand accounts. A recent Socialbakers study reported by Statista found a direct correlation between user engagement and hashtag use per Facebook post:

HASHTAGS

terms.

Campaigns like #LoveMyDQ allow Dairy Queen to leverage a unique, targeted hashtag for creative responses from their target audience. They can then categorize based on hashtags for easier analysis and tracking.

Bad practice: #Stringingabunchofwordstogether Seriously – just don’t do it.

In short, more hashtags equals fewer interactions. Any brand that posts 10 or more hashtags in a status update significantly hinders reach ability and reputation management.

Proper hashtag use can ignite a campaign on social media, but improper use can irreparably damage your brand’s reputation. These examples should help clarify best practices for hashtags, and how to avoid the most common blunders.

Best practice: Use a handful of targeted, keyword-driven hashtags One targeted hashtag that aligns with your buyer personas is far more powerful than 10 unrelated trending tags. Hashtag quality far exceeds quantity, even if the overall engagement numbers are lower. Dairy Queen utilizes a handful of primary hashtags for their social campaigns, both branded and non-branded. Their recent #LoveMyDQ campaign also leveraged more common hashtags like #cake and #chocolate – though within the context of their branded

However, if recent reports from Twitter’s CEO are true, we might not need to deal with this issue much longer. IMM * This article is originally published on TopRankBlog.com

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

ECOMMERCE

THE PROS AND CONS OF SELLING ON AMAZON AND EBAY By Mark Hayes

t first glance, online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay seem to be a creation of mutual benefit. Ecommerce store owners gain increased exposure for their products, and the marketplaces gain an expanded product range without having to increase inventory.

Pros of Selling on Amazon & eBay 1. Increased Sales The chief draw of selling on marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay is the scale of their online presence. Amazon alone draws nearly 85 million unique monthly visitors - that’s a heck of a lot of eyeballs! And those eyeballs can translate into higher sales volumes. According to an Amazon executive, sellers report an average 50% increase in sales when they join Amazon Marketplace.

On closer inspection, the mutual benefits remain, but the reality is more nuanced. Should you expand your presence beyond your online store and start selling your products on Amazon and eBay? The answer is... it depends. A marketplace strategy may be a boon for some retailers and a bust for others. There are a lot of variables that need to be taken into consideration, including the type of products you sell, the intensity of competition in your category, marketplace fees and restrictions, and so on. There are, however, some pros and cons that apply across the board. In this post, we’ll explore those pros and cons, so you can make the decision of whether or not to sell on marketplaces well-informed as to the upsides and the downsides.

2. Customer Acquisition Nobody visits Amazon or eBay searching for your store. But they may be searching for - and discover - your products. Products they may not have discovered otherwise, or that they may have purchased from a competitor. Once you’ve got a customer in the door,

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

ECOMMERCE even if it is through a marketplace, you’ve got a chance to win repeat business through excellent service and fulfillment. This is especially the case if you’re selling products in a category that encourages frequent, repeated purchases such as hobby supplies or fishing gear.

3. Marketplace Infrastructure Marketplaces are all about strength in numbers. This is as true for online marketplaces as it is for real world examples like farmers’ markets, shopping malls, and food trailer parks. The variety and all-in-one aspect of the marketplace can draw in lots of customers who prefer that kind of shopping experience. Online marketplaces also bring the additional layer of single-stream checkout and fulfilment support in order to create a seamless experience for buyers.

See fees for selling on Amazon, and fees for selling on eBay.

2. Marketplace Infrastructure While the marketplace infrastructure has many advantages, it’s important to remember that it can cut both ways. Marketplaces don’t exist to help you, but to help themselves. They want the focus to be on the products, not the sellers. And that means they might restrict the degree to which you can brand your presence, communicate with customers, dictate what items you can and cannot sell, and so on. Additionally, there’s nothing to stop marketplace owners - in the case of Amazon, Sears, and so on - from “going to school” on third-party sellers, identifying popular products and stocking them themselves.

Cons of Selling on Amazon & eBay While there are some significant upsides to selling on marketplaces, there are also some drawbacks that need to be considered.

1. Marketplace Fees Setting up shop on a marketplace can potentially supercharge your sales, but it also exposes you to another cost center marketplace fees. Most marketplace fees are deducted as a percentage of each sale, and can vary from site to site and even category to category. Before selling your products on a marketplace, you’ll want to make sure you have a good sense of your margins and a firm understanding of the marketplace’s fee structure. In highly commoditized, low-margin categories, the numbers may just not add up.

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

3. Keeping Inventory in Sync A marketplace is essentially a second point of sale. And one that sometimes can’t be configured to talk to your shopping cart. In effect, both draw down the same inventory, but don’t sync with one another, making it challenging to understand your stock levels without lots of manual reconciliation. Fortunately, applications exist to help you aggregating orders from multiple sources and making sure your inventory stays in sync across all your stores.

> How to Choose a Marketplace As you weigh the pros and cons of selling on a marketplace, it’s also worthwhile to consider which marketplace you would join. The tempting answer is “all of them!”, but each marketplace has its own system, its own processes and limitations and quirks. Learning to navigate those can take time you probably don’t have, so it’s best to stick to one or two marketplaces unless you know you can support more. Two of the largest and most well-known marketplaces are Amazon and eBay. Amazon’s Marketplace takes the sharper retail tack, and as a retailer itself Amazon provides tools to help third-party sellers become part of a seamless shopping experience, including “Fulfillment by Amazon”, which involves shipping your inventory in bulk to Amazon and

ECOMMERCE

letting them handle shipping.

eBay, on the other hand, is essentially a massive marketplace. Where Amazon focuses on the Amazon shopping experience, eBay offers seller tools and features that make it easier for you to feature your brand, as well as sell non-standard items. IMM

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internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

DOUBLE YOUR BUSINESS

3 WAYS TO DOUBLE YOUR BUSINESS By Greg Cassar

s entrepreneurs we all want to grow our businesses. Most entrepreneurs that we meet are ‘too busy’ and ‘too time poor’ working in the business to take time out to think strategically about how to significantly ‘grow the business’. From working with over 200 businesses we have found that there are 3 main ways to double your business.

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

The first one is to get more clients, but I guess that one is pretty obvious. If you can get double the amount of clients then you can pretty much double your business. This is also the hardest and most costly way, as the most expensive clients to get are always new ones because you don’t have an existing relationship with them. They may need multiple touches with you and your brand before they know you, like you and trust you enough to do business with you.

DOUBLE YOUR BUSINESS

Number two is to get your customers spending more. The most common way of doing this is with up-sells. The best example of this in common culture is the McDonalds ‘do you want fries with that?’. But think for a moment, is there an up-sell that you could be implementing at the time of purchase for your customers?

The third main way to double your business is to get your customers buying from you more often. The best way to do this is with strategically designed nurture sequences and marketing funnels. This way you can follow up with your customers and be ‘top of conscious’ with that consumer and progress them further down the buying cycle.

An ideal up-sell compliments the original purchase, but it shouldn’t be something that the customer would expect to have been included in the original purchase. An example would be if your prospect opted in for a ‘Social Media Strategy Planning Guide’, then a ‘Comprehensive Facebook Ads Course’ could be a good logical up-sell as it compliments and adds value to the original purchase, and it’s not something that they were expecting to get included in the original opt-in or purchase.

Amazon is one of the best in the business in this space with their ‘Book Recommendations for You’ based on things that you have previously purchased or shown interest in. See the example below.

We are lucky in the Internet Age that we live in that increasing order value is relatively easy. eCommerce store platforms like Shopify have Apps that you can buy that allow you to easily create up-sells without having to write a single line of code. This can also be implemented with other CRM’s like Infusionsoft but it is more complex, and may require a developer to implement. Another great way of getting customers to spend more is by creating bundles of products that go together. Often how this will work is if there are two or three products added to the cart together as a bundle the customer can get a discount on the purchase. See the example below from the Product Bundles Shopify app.

Email marketing following a sale has traditionally been the best way to follow up with customers and get them to make an additional purchase. It may well still be the best way, but a close second is remarketing. Remarketing is where you apply tracking codes to your site that then allow you to follow site visitors as they navigate around the web. Facebook remarketing is now getting quite advanced with its segmentation as it gives you the ability to progress buyers through the buying cycle and ascend them from one product

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

DOUBLE YOUR BUSINESS purchase to the next based on pages on your site and marketing funnel that they did or did not reach. All these 3 business ‘levers’ of get more clients; get them spending more; and get them coming back again work well on their own – but the real magic happens when you utilize them together. The mathematics of the business gets exciting, sort of like compound interest, as they have a multiplying effect on each other. Think about it for your business. What would happen to your revenue and profitability if you got your landing page conversion up 10%; added a low price product sale (tripwire) behind the opt-in; added an up-sell behind the tripwire; improved your phone sales script conversion by 10%; added an email follow up sequence; added a Facebook remarketing campaign; and then increased your targeted traffic by 10%? The reality is you would have a massive increase in your leads, sales and profitability. That alone could be enough to double your business. So think strategically about your business as a whole rather than just thinking about every job that you need to do. Pull those levers in your business and start watching it multiply. We have found that most businesses need the exact same medicine prescribed for growth. If you haven’t got your copy yet, grab the Free DVD ‘How to Double Your Business with the Latest Digital Marketing Strategies… and a Step by Step Casestudy of a Business We Recently Tripled’. This gives you a great summary of the 80/20 of what the majority of businesses need for strategic systematic growth. IMM

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

SEO

HOW TO RETAIN SEO RANKINGS AFTER A WEBSITE REDESIGN By Fuze

etaining SEO rankings after a website redesign requires careful planning and consideration of many key elements. Failure to do so can result in severe dips in traffic resulting in a significant loss of business. One of the biggest mistakes we see from both clients and design companies, is focusing only on aesthetics or trends, and ignoring the fundamental principles and best practices that facilitate SEO retention and growth. Unfortunately, many business owners unknowingly hire web consultants who lack the experience or knowledge needed to execute

an effective re-design. The results can be catastrophic, and you probably know someone who has experienced the aftermath. If your website is lucky enough to rank highly in search engines for competitive keywords, resulting in qualified traffic that makes you money, you should be mostly concerned with maintaining the same level of success after you launch your new site. So, how can SEO rankings be retained after launching a new website?

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

SEO Conduct an SEO Audit The first step to minimizing risk is conducting a thorough SEO audit on your existing website. The goal should be to identity elements that need to be either kept in place to retain your current rankings, or be improved in order to beef them up. There are many handy tools that can be used free of charge to assist with quick and accurate analysis of the state of your current site. Screaming Frog, for example. will generate a list of existing, missing or duplicate elements, such as title tags, pages and headings. You’ll also be provided with details on all inbound/ outbound links, anchor text, redirects, follow/ no-follow links and image alt text. Once you’ve compiled a list of elements that are missing or in need of improvement, you can begin to map out the architecture of your new website. Perform an Analytics Analysis Another invaluable tool that can be used free of charge to assess the state of your current site is Google Analytics. An analytics analysis is a great compliment to an SEO audit, as it can identify things like which pages receive the most traffic, which content keywords are driving the most traffic/conversions and how visitors are navigating your site.

Again, you should take note of what’s working, and what has room for improvement, and incorporate the findings into your website planning efforts. 301 Redirects One of the most common and costly mistakes is forgetting to redirect pages on your site for which the URLs have changed. If your pages have changed locations and search engines can’t find them, it can spell disaster. 301 Redirects will preserve 90-99% of your “link juice” or ranking power. For this reason, it’s always preferable to avoid changing URLs. This can save a tremendous amount of time and headache, especially for sites with a large number of pages.

Reasons for changing URLs on a re-designed site are typically that the overarching domain name is changing (e.g. seomoz.com recently switched to just moz.com), or permalinks are being updated to be more user friendly (e.g. yoursite. com/products-and-service.html is changing to yoursite.com/services). Regardless of the reason you choose to change URLs, the easiest way to ensure SEO value is passed from the old URL to the new URL, and search engines are taken to the right location, is with a server-side permanent 301 redirect. Redirects can be created by using the .htaccess file on your server, which can be easily populated with scripts that tell search engines to redirect from old URLs to their new counterparts.

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

SEO

Inbound Link Retention An inbound link analysis should be performed in order to identify high quality links that you’ll need to preserve in order to maintain your search rankings. Remember, sites that have linked to you will not automatically update their links to match your new URLs. This is another reason 301 redirects are vital to preserving the health of your search rankings. Also, if you have pages on the old site that rank well and have a good number of inbound links pointing to them, you’ll want to ensure to retain the pages on the new site. Site Architecture If you make changes to your global site navigation, it should be done with purpose and should follow Google Webmaster Tools Guidelines. Search engines prefer a “flat” site architecture that allows users to access any page on the site within a maximum of 3 clicks. They also prefer highly organized site navigation with related content broken down into silos of Categories and Sub-Categories. If search spiders are accustom to crawling your current site and you serve up a drastically different navigational structure, it will take some time for them re-establish trust. When possible, maintain a consistent navigation and preserve your internal link structure. On-Site SEO Elements Often, re-designs are executed haphazardly, without considering the ways in which onsite SEO factors will contribute to search rankings. All pages should contain the elements deemed important by Google Webmaster Tools guidelines, including proper title and heading tag structure, unique meta descriptions and appropriate use of keywords.

Choose an SEO-Friendly CMS It’s widely known that Content Management Systems like WordPress have built-in SEO features that provide immense benefit. If you are moving to a new CMS platform, make sure you consult with your SEO and development teams to ensure it is capable of providing the flexibility to easily implement SEO best practices. Content If certain pages on your website are ranking well for keywords that are valuable to your business, you’ll want to ensure the majority of the content is kept in tact. If your content changes dramatically, search engines may not honor the previous ranking authority, which will cause your rankings to drop off. For newly created pages, always ensure to follow best practices: don’t keyword stuff, always implement a proper title and heading tag structure, and write user-friendly and unique page descriptions. IMM

It’s very important to have an SEO expert look over your new site and page structure, to ensure best practices are followed.

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE

BEST ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE TO EASILY BUILD YOUR ONLINE STORE By Jeremy Wong

inding the best ecommerce software to build your online store is a daunting and confusion task – especially if you are new to the world of creating an ecommerce business. If you are thinking of creating your own online store and looking for some ideas for the top ecommerce platform to use, this article will hopefully shed some light on this subject for you. When we first started building online stores to kick start our side business while we were working our regular day jobs, we didn’t where to start, how to build a good website, how to upload products, or how to connect a store to payment processors.

that broadly speaking, there are two ways to build an ecommerce store: 1. Hosted shopping carts (more user-friendly) 2. Self-hosted open source shopping carts (more advanced)

HOSTED SHOPPING CARTS Hosted shopping carts are much more user-friendly than self-hosted solutions (more about this in the next section).

We were just confused.

Basically, the website builder gives you a complete ecommerce package and takes care of all the technical aspect of things, so you can quickly and easily set up your ecommerce online store and start selling.

As we invested more time conducting painful research, we discovered

The idea is that they “hide” all the codes, and create simple and nontechnical user interface for you to create your own website (using drag and drop technology for you to insert your content such as images,

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ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE galleries, etc) upload your products, connect your website to a payment processor, so you can start selling very quickly.

Shopify is a one-stop-shop ecommerce website builder where they simplify the challenges of building an online store to drag and drop – making life easier for you.

The main benefit of these ecommerce software is that they are very easy to use even if you are not technically savvy. The drawback is that there isn’t as much flexibility for you if you want to modify the functions provided by these ecommerce software providers.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that they are too simple and cannot handle larger stores, as their users include smaller businesses that are generating thousands of dollars in sales, to million dollar businesses.

When we started out, we found that using a hosted shopping cart is the fastest way for us to get set up, without the headaches of learning how to code or hiring expensive developers to help us get set up.

2) Bigcommerce (50,000+ Active Online Stores) Bigcommerce is another reputable ecommerce website builder that allows you to build your store without getting tangled up in technology.

The following are a number of ecommerce platforms (hosted shopping carts) that we recommend you to check out.

1) Shopify (100,000+ Active Online Stores)

• A very comprehensive set of “out of the box” e-commerce tools to help you build your store • Leverages on different social channels to help you grow your sales • You can add more advanced tools through their App store (just like Shopify) Shopify is probably the best ecommerce software in the market today. • Beautiful and professional themes so your store looks great • Extensive number of apps for you to add to your store to extend the functionality of your business • 24/7 any time support (very important if you are serious about your business)

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Bigcommerce is also one of the best ecommerce software available in the market. In our opinion their biggest competitor is Shopify, and each of them has their own pros and cons.

3) Squarespace Commerce Squarespace is known to help users such as

> yourself create very beautiful, image rich websites. Their templates are very polished and stunning, but what a lot of people fail to appreciate is that their ecommerce tools are very under-rated. In addition to being able to create a very beautiful storefront, Squarespace also allows you to have full control over product variants, manage your inventory, upload unlimited products, sell physical or digital products, coupon generation, configure shipping options and costs, configure sales taxes, manage your customer email list, and other helpful tools for you to build a comprehensive online store.

Although Squarespace’s available ecommerce tools are not as comprehensive as Shopify or Bigcommerce, if your store is simple enough and doesn’t need all sorts of bells and whistles, Squarespace might just work for your needs, especially if you are picky about your website design. Further, Squarespace is a much cheaper option than Shopify and Bigcommerce.

4) Weebly eCommerce (88,000+ Active Online Stores) Weebly is one of the most user friendly, and intuitive drag and drop website builders in the market. Further, their eCommerce features

ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE

are comprehensive and allows you to quickly build a full featured online store. Not only do you get to insert multiple products with multiple variations of the same product (such as color, size, etc), they also have a fully integrated shopping cart in which your shoppers never leave your website to ensure a fluid, consistent shopping experience, as well as easy integration with popular and trustworthy payment processors such as Stripe, Authorize.net and PayPal.

Although Weebly’s eCommerce tools are not as comprehensive as pure online store builders such as Shopify and Bigcommerce, they do have enough for you to build a very successful online store. Again, they are very user friendly and intuitive website builder, so the learning curve to how to work their tools is relatively low.

SELF-HOSTED OPEN SOURCE SHOPPING CARTS Self-hosted carts a lot more technical and confusing if you are not very computer and code savvy. If you don’t consider yourself a technie (we don’t consider ourselves technies either), a hosted shopping cart website builder might be more suitable for you (see discussion above).

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE Open source shopping carts are basically standalone programs that require you to install them into your own host (such as Bluehost). This also implies that you should have selfhosted website build in order to setup the shopping cart. Getting a self-hosted website built is not as easy as using drag and drop website builders and is more technically challenging. The main benefit of using open source carts is that you can configure them to function the way you want them to. So flexibility is a huge benefit here. The drawback is that most of them require you to be technically savvy to install, setup and configure them.

These carts are flexible and have a lot of advanced features that you can use and configure. But bear in mind that you’ll need to be technical, or have someone who is technical to help you out here.

ADVANCED TOOLS / PLATFORM TO GROW WITH YOUR BUSINESS (AND SAVE YOUR SANITY) One thing to consider when selecting which ecommerce software to use to build your online business, is whether the software has a good selection of advanced tools that you can “bolt on” to your website as your business grows. Let’s face it, as your business grows, you will need more tools to help you manage your growing operations. For instance, you might be manually managing the shipping process of your products, or you might be manually doing your bookkeeping at the moment. Or you could be running some marketing functions without automating too much of it. You might be able to do this because your business is still relatively small / new, so these tasks are still manageable. But what if your business starts to grow? Sales volumes are up, new product creations are being demanded from our shoppers, and you now have a lot less time to deal with a lot of operational issues. This is where picking a good ecommerce software with a strong platform will help save your sanity!

So if you’re not a technie, or if you don’t have time to learn more advanced coding functions, this may not be for you. Some examples of open source shopping carts include: • Magento • Open Cart • Ultra Cart

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Self-hosted, open source shopping carts do have a lot of options for this. But if you are looking for similar solutions for hosted shopping carts, Shopify and Bigcommerce both have Apps that can be bolted to your online store to “extend” their functionality. This will

ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE

automate a lot of business tasks for you, freeing up your time to address more important issues instead of doing a lot of tasks manually.

CONCLUSION – BEST ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE

Finding the best ecommerce software is not an easy task. The first step is to determine whether you are technically savvy or not. If you are, open source carts will give you more flexibility and you can configure the cart as you wish. If you are not comfortable with codes (like us), or if you want to quickly and easily set up an online store and start selling, using hosted shopping carts / website builders is an excellent way to proceed without having to deal with technological headaches. Further, with hosted website builders, they have dedicated full time support teams to answer your questions should you have any. That in itself is worth investing in. To conclude, here are our recommended hosted ecommerce software again: • Shopify • Bigcommerce • Squarespace • Weebly IMM

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

GOOGLE PLUS

HOW TO USE GOOGLE PLUS FOR BUSINESS:

8 TIPS TO TAKE YOU TO THE TOP By Zack Fagan

oogle Plus marketing. That’s probably something you’re not overly familiar with. Who uses Google Plus for business? Everyone uses all of the internet giant’s other tools, but for some reason, Google+ seems to have slipped through the cracks. Or has it? Google+ has over 150 million active monthly users, and 50% of its users sign on daily. Wow! So with that much activity, maybe Google+ is a good place for businesses after all. Not only is marketing on Google+ a good idea, it is a great idea! There are tremendous advantages that G+ has over other social networks, like its influence on SEO, and some incredible tools that can’t be found elsewhere, like Google Hangouts and Google Plus Ripples. Using Google Plus for your business can be an amazing way to reach a new audience, boost your SEO, and increase sales. In this post we’re going to take a look at 8 marketing tips for Google Plus.

1. Personalize Google Plus for Your Business The very first thing you’re going to want to do when you start your Google Plus business page is to personalize it for your brand. Only once your page has been personalized will you be ready to get started with your marketing. Personalize Your Profile You want your About Page to really stand out,

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show your business’ personality, and to direct your page viewers towards relevant pages on your website. To achieve this you need to do three things: 1) Describe your business as clearly as possible 2) Try to include references to your company culture, or write your description in a way that shows who you are as a business 3) Hyperlink text as a call to action for people to click through to your site. Here’s a fantastic example of a Google Plus profile from Moz:

GOOGLE PLUS

Moz clearly explains who they are, they include personal info by saying “we believe” and by mentioning where they’re located, and they provide hyperlinks that each lead to a super relevant landing page. Claim a Google Plus Page Custom URL Google recently added the option to give your Google Plus page a custom, personalized URL. This is a great way for you to brand your page by making your URL company related, rather than a random string of numbers:

Clearly one of those will be easier to remember and easier to notice than the other.

2. Build a Relevant Community on Google As with any social network, in order for your marketing to be effective you need to build a community around your page. It’s not enough to just have any community though, you want to have a community that is relevant to your niche. There are a few great ways you can build up your Google Plus Community. See if Anyone is Talking About Your Business The very first thing you should do is to search through Google+ to see if anyone is mentioning your business. Obviously if your page is already established this will be a bit easier, because usually people will have tagged you in the post. Otherwise, a good place to start is in the Google Plus search bar. By searching here you can find people who have mentioned your company name even without having tagged you in the post:

StoreYa was not specifically tagged in this post, but we were able to find it by searching for StoreYa in the search bar. Use Google Ripples to See Who is Sharing Your Content When people share your content, they don’t always necessarily credit you (as was just mentioned), so that means that your content could be getting shared left and right and you’d have no idea! Thanks to Google Plus Ripples you can now locate and trace all of these shares. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you find someone who shared your content, but didn’t tag you in it. You can click on the black downward arrow in the top right corner of the post in order to get the drop down menu.

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GOOGLE PLUS person:

Choose “View Ripples” from the menu, and that will take you to a page that looks like this: From here you can take a look at that person’s profile and see how they originally shared the post. By using Google Ripples you can find all kinds of people who have shared your content. Additionally, even if your content has not yet been shared, you can use this as a competitor research tool. By looking at who is sharing your competitor’s posts you can see who you would like to connect with. Search for Influencers With Hashtags To get a bit broader, you can search Google Plus for hashtags that are relevant to your business. Look around to see which names pop up a lot, or for which people get the highest interaction on their posts. These people will be great candidates for people to connect with. For example, Neil Patel is clearly an influencer in the #eCommerce community as can be seen by the number of +1’s and shares his post received.

This lets you see how your post was shared, who shared, and if there was a second level of resharing (as you can see in the case of Kunle Campbell and Jim York). You can then click on a specific name in order to zoom in on that

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

GOOGLE PLUS

3. Post Regularly to Build an Audience and Promote Your Page As you continue building up your community, you are going to want to start posting consistently to your page. After all, if people are going to add you to their circles you are going to want to provide them with some quality content. If you are struggling with keeping your content flowing you should consider using an automation tool like HootSuite. You should be sure to interact with anyone who shares your content. Leave a comment or at least give it a +1 In order to show that you appreciate the share. There are a few ways you can increase the interaction with your posts:

Another cool trick you can do is to click on the hashtag on the side of the post and Google will flip the card in order to show you more relevant posts:

Use Hashtags Hashtags are great because they categorize your posts, meaning that anyone can discover what you write as long as they search for that hashtag. Google will usually automatically give your post one or two hashtags, but you can add as many as you want on your own. Use the Custom Formatting Options Unlike other social networks, Google Plus lets you customize how your text will appear! That means you can bold, italicize, or strike through text in your posts. You can use this to get your message across clearer, or to draw attention to certain parts of your post.

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

GOOGLE PLUS Here’s how you can do the formatting: • Bold = *Word* • Italics = _Word_ • Strike Through = -WordJust like that you can make your post really stand out! For example, check out how the bolded “Look” acts as a call to action on this post:

4. Use Google Circles to Segment Your Audience The Circles feature is one of the most useful and unique aspects of G+. This feature enables you to segment all of the people you follow into specific lists. You can get as specific as you want, and you can add people to more than one Circle.

• Location: This can be especially good if you have physical locations so that you can post relevant information for the local stores. • Level of engagement: If there are certain users that engage very frequently with your G+ page then you can add them to their own circle. These people could be singled out as brand representatives. • Influencers: This can be for people that you’d like to reach out to and form a relationship with because they are big names in your field. Using Circles well can be a fantastic way to grow your audience, boost engagement, and post targeted marketing/promotional posts (a free advantage you don’t have on other social networks).

This enables you to get really creative with your posts, because you can choose to publish posts to specific Circles. In order to do this, all you need to do is compose a regular post, then under “To:” choose the Circles you wish to publish your post to.

For example, if you sell clothing, you can have a Circle for men and a Circle for women. This way you can always post relevant content. Here are a few more ideas for ways to segment your Circles:

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5. Take Advantage of Google Communities to Boost Your Networking Google Communities are the same idea as Facebook or LinkedIn groups. They are a place for people with similar interests, or in the same industry to get together and discuss. There are two main things to gain from joining communities – connecting with influencers and

> promoting your brand to potential customers. You can start by viewing a community in the same way that you would a hashtag search. Pick out who is the most influential in the community and try to connect with them. Next you should build up your own presence in the community by commenting, sharing, and +1ing other people’s posts. Soon, you will be able to start posting in the communities as well. This will give your business added, relevant exposure. To share to a Community you can either enter the community and share it straight from there, or you can do it the same way you share to your Circles:

6. Get Involved With Google Hangouts Google Hangouts is essentially a free video chat that gives you the ability to host a chat with up to ten participants. This feature opens up almost limitless possibilities. You can:

GOOGLE PLUS

another great way of boosting your brand with informational content. • Provide customer support: You can mention on your site or on your G+ page that you are hosting a customer support session between certain hours in order to provide more personal support. • How to use your products: You can use Hangouts to show your customers how to best use your products. One of the best features of Hangouts is Hangouts on Air which gives you the ability to live stream any chat to YouTube. This enables you to increase the size of your audience for your Hangouts, and to be able to keep using this content later.

If you want your Hangouts to get some more recognition you should post them to Hangout directory sites like HOAshows.

• Host webinars: Sharing relevant information is key to content marketing and webinars are a great way to make your content a bit more personal. • Have question answer sessions: People like asking questions, you can host a session with your CEO, or with another influencer in your community. This is

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

GOOGLE PLUS 7. Use Google Plus for SEO Being Google’s social network, it’s not surprising that Google Plus can really give your SEO a boost. So let’s take a look at a few ways Google Plus is good for SEO. Get as Many +1’s as Possible +1 is Google’s equivalent to a Facebook like. The difference between the two though is that, according to a study done by Moz, +1’s seem to be more influential in regard to search engine rankings.

That means that the more +1’s your posts get, the better they will rank. Taking this into account, you should do everything you can to get as many +1’s on your posts as possible. One great way of doing this is by embedding posts from Google Plus into your website or blog posts. For example:

Embedding posts from Google extends the life of your posts and gives them more chances of getting +1’s. Google+ Content Gets Indexed Everything posted on G+ is counted as a dofollow link to your original post. So the more your content is shared on G+ the more (and, according to some, the faster) your content will get indexed, and your link will be boosted. This means that not only when you share your content, but any time anyone shares your content, you are getting an SEO boost. Since that is the case, you should encourage shares on Google Plus to take full advantage of this!

8. Utilize Google Plus Local for Local Businesses Google Plus offers an amazing feature for local businesses that can help them in many different ways. This feature is very similar to having a local business page on Facebook. It enables you to set your location, business type, and more. Ratings and Reviews Customers can leave ratings and reviews which will be seen by other people that visit your page. These reviews act as social proof on top of social proof, because not only are they reviews, but the reviews will be shown to people who have the reviewers in their circles. Meaning they will see reviews written by people they know. You should always encourage your fans to review your business. You can even incentivize it for them, by offering them something in exchange for a review. Search Results Your business can be boosted in the search

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GOOGLE PLUS

results both within Google Plus and on Google itself.

actions like asking for a review and asking for a follow on Google+.

On Google Plus users can search on Google Local by location for their desired business. For example, here I searched for clothing stores near NYC:

Setting up your Google Local page correctly and optimizing it with keywords can be a great way to boost your local business.

Start Marketing on Google Plus! Google+ has a lot to offer your business both through its unique features that enable you to connect with your audience and through its significance for SEO.

By ensuring your location is put in correctly, including all of your contact info, and using keywords, you can boost your business in the local results. Now if we were to look for this same business in Google, this is what would turn up:

So follow these tips and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be on your way to Google Plus success! IMM

First you can see the Google reviews in the regular search result, then you can also see all of the businessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; information that was taken from its G+ page in the box on the side. Notice that the box provides all the relevant info, directions, and includes a few call to

internet marketing magazine october / november 2014

BLOGGING

MAKE MONEY BLOGGING:

FROM 0 TO $100,000 PER MONTH By Jon Morrow

ou know everyone thinks we’re fools, right?

To most of the world, blogging is a joke. It isn’t a career. It isn’t a way to make money. It isn’t a tool for changing the world. It’s a hobby, a diversion, a fad that’ll come and go. Sure, you can start a blog, but don’t count on it to take you anywhere. That’s just silly. Try telling your family or friends or coworkers you want to quit your job and make money blogging. They’ll smile politely and ask, “Does anybody really make money from that?”

In January and February, we cleared over $100,000 per month in sales. The verdict is still out on March, but if we didn’t make it, we should be close enough. How?

Yes, they want you to have dreams. Yes, they want you to chase them. Yes, they want you to succeed. But they also want you to be “realistic.” If you really want to improve your life, you should get an advanced degree, write a book, or even start your own business, not hang all your hopes and dreams on some stupid little blog. There’s no money in it.

Well, I’ll tell you. Not because I want to brag (well, maybe a little), but because most of the advice out there about monetizing your blog is complete crap. For instance, do you see any ads on this site? No? How about e-books for sale? None of those either, huh? In fact, you might be hard-pressed to find anything for sale at all.

Or is there? There’s a reason why. I’m hesitant to say this, but… This Blog Makes $100,000 per Month

Over the past six years, I’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the smartest bloggers on the planet. I worked with Brian Clark

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BLOGGING as he built Copyblogger to a multimillion dollar brand. Neil Patel and Hiten Shah also hired me to help them launch the KISSmetrics blog, and while they’re not big on publishing revenue numbers, they did recently close a $7 million venture capital round.

Professors do it. So do public speakers and best-selling authors. Hell, consulting is a $415 billion industry, and what are all those consultants doing? Getting paid to teach.

Combined, I wouldn’t be surprised if both blogs have earned more than $50 million. In comparison, the $100,000 per month I’ve managed to generate is a pittance. But everyone has to start somewhere, right? The reason this blog has made so much money so fast is I learned from the best, and then when I left, I kept learning. Every day, I crunch numbers, read books, talk to experts, and spend at least 30 minutes in silence, staring into the distance, doing nothing but thinking. It’s paid off. If you’ll take some of these lessons to heart, it’ll pay off for you too. Because here’s the thing: You’re Not a Fool. You Can Make Money Blogging.

Blogging is no different. It’s just the same old models with some rocket fuel thrown in, courtesy of social media. In fact, we might as well call that the first lesson:

Lesson #1: You’re Not Just a Blogger You’re an expert, a teacher, a mentor, maybe even an entrepreneur. Your blog is simply a launchpad for all those things. Look around, and you’ll find nearly all “bloggers” who make a decent income have books, courses, a side career as a keynote speaker, or even software. That’s how they make money. Their blog is just the “freebie” they give away to attract customers or clients.

Lesson #2: Don’t Sell Advertising Selling ads is attractive, because it’s passive income, but you can usually make 3-10X more money using the same “ad space” to sell your own products and services or even promote an affiliate product. Pat Flynn, for example, makes about $50,000 a month in commissions from promoting Bluehost. So, you want to make a living teaching other people what you know? Nothing wrong with that.

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Here at BBT, we mostly promote our own products, but we’re also in the process of creating affiliate sales funnels for LeadPages and Stablehost, both of which offer hefty

> commissions (and are great products too!)

BLOGGING

people first, safe in the knowledge that you have something more profitable up your sleeve to sell them later.

Lesson #3: Build the Funnel in Reverse Here at BBT, our products cost $9,997, $997, and $591. We’re working our way down the funnel in reverse, releasing the most expensive products first and then gradually getting cheaper and cheaper. It’s been much, much more profitable this way.

We’ve all experienced sales funnels. A company entices you with a freebie, then they offer you something cheap but irresistible, and then they gradually sweet talk you into buying more and more expensive stuff. It’s a tried and true marketing tactic, and you should absolutely build a sales funnel for your blog. What you might not know is you should build it in reverse. A lot of bloggers launch a cheap e-book as their first product, and then they get frustrated when they don’t make much money. Here’s why: the real profit is at the end of the funnel, not the beginning. Selling e-books is fine and dandy if you have half a dozen more expensive products to offer your customer afterwards, but it’s downright silly if you don’t. You’re much better off creating and selling the expensive product first, and then gradually create cheaper and cheaper products. When you do have some less expensive products to sell, you can offer those to new

Lesson #4: There’s No Such Thing As a “Cheap” Market “But Jon,” I can hear you spluttering. “I can’t sell a $10,000 product! My customers don’t have that much money.” My response: you’re 98% right. Unless you’re selling exclusively to multimillionaires, the vast majority of your customer base won’t be able to afford premium products, but what’s interesting is it doesn’t matter. Often times, you can make more money selling to the 2% than you can to the entire 98% combined. For instance, our $10,000 product is a yearlong coaching program for writers – a group that’s not exactly known for their wealth, but I always fill all 10 spots within minutes of opening the program. Here’s why: I notify 40,000 writers about it. 2% of 40,000 is 800 people who might possibly buy a product in that price range. By only accepting 10, I’m creating a situation of extreme scarcity. You can do the same thing, even if your list is much smaller. If you have 100 subscribers, chances are two of them might be willing to buy premium products or services from you, and those two will often pay you more money than the other 98 combined.

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BLOGGING Lesson #5: By Charging Premium Prices, You Can Offer Premium Service Feel guilty about charging that much money? You shouldn’t. By charging premium prices, you can offer premium service, doing everything possible to help your customers get results. For example, with my coaching program, I get on the phone with students every week, review their homework, answer their questions, look at their blog, and guide them through every step of the process.

Lesson #7: You Are the Bottleneck Without a doubt, time is our biggest problem as bloggers. Not only are we expected to publish a continuous stream of content on our blogs, but we also have to deal with technical issues, read books and articles about our field, create new products to sell, answer questions from readers… the list goes on and on. The further into it you go, the more clear it becomes that you can’t do everything.

Could I put that same information in a $7 e-book? Sure, but I couldn’t give anyone oneon-one help at that price, and that’s what people who buy premium products and services are paying for. Lesson #6: Deliberately Delay the Sale Another big shift in thinking: rather than trying to push everyone to buy your products upfront, smart bloggers delay the sale. I first heard this idea from Rand Fishkin over at Moz. They offer their blog readers a free trial to their Analytics and SEO software, but after studying the behavior of their customers, they noticed something interesting: people who read several blog posts before signing up for a free trial stayed customers for two or three times longer than people who didn’t. I’ve noticed the same thing with our customers. Instead of immediately clobbering readers with sales pitches, it’s much better to give them some content first and build trust before you begin talking about your products and services. Yes, you’ll make less money in the short term, but the long-term profits go through the roof.

So, what’s the answer? Believe it or not, I found answers from studying manufacturing processes. If one machine is working slower than others in a plant, it can literally cost the company tens of thousands of dollars per hour. To make sure it never happens, smart plant managers are willing to spend any amount of money to eliminate bottlenecks. They have an unlimited budget, because the cost of eliminating the bottleneck never comes anywhere close to the cost of the bottleneck itself. The same is true for us, except the solutions

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> are often different. Instead of buying a new machine, for example, we might purchase a new type of software that automates some of our business, or we might hire a virtual assistant or programmer. It can be expensive, yes, but it’s worthwhile if it saves you enough time, because then you can dedicate that time to higher value activities.

Lesson #8: Measure The Value of Everything You Do What are those higher value activities, exactly? Well, it depends on your goal. If your goal is to increase traffic, for example, start measuring the visitors per hour invested. Let’s say you invest three hours in writing a post, and it brings you 100 visitors, and you invest five hours in writing a guest post that brings you 500 visitors. The first activity has an hourly rate of 33 visitors per hour. The second activity has an hourly rate of 100 visitors per hour. Guest posting, therefore, is a better use of your time than writing content on your own blog.

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Lesson #9: In the Beginning, Creating Content for Your Own Blog Is Silly I tried to sneak this one under lesson #8, but I think it’s important enough to get its own number, even if it does get me labeled a heretic and burned at the stake. Because here’s the deal: In the beginning, your blog is like an empty classroom. Standing in front and giving a lecture is silly, because sure, it might make you feel important, but there’s nobody listening. You’re all alone, and you can come up with the smartest, most entertaining lecture in the history of mankind, but it won’t matter, because no one else heard it. When you first start out, writing content for your own blog is one of the least efficient ways of building your audience. You’re far better off serving a little time as a “guest lecturer” first. In other words, write guest posts for someone else’s audience, impress the hell out of them, and siphon off a portion of their readership for your own. That’s what we did here at BBT, and it resulted in the most successful blog launch in history: 13,000 email subscribers in 60 days, before I even wrote a single blog post. We had nothing but a coming soon page and an invitation to join our email list. Sounds strange, but I can promise you it’s vastly more efficient.

Granted, it’s a short-term perspective, not taking into account long-term gains, but it’s still extremely useful to start measuring your time this way. Not just for traffic, but also for subscriber growth and revenue.

You don’t have to wait until you get to 13,000 subscribers to start, but I’d advise accumulating at least a few hundred. That way, you have an audience to share your content when you start publishing posts.

Lesson #10: Don’t Waste Time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. Here’s another shocker: you know your dream

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BLOGGING of building up a huge following on Facebook or Twitter and then using it to promote your blog? Well, it’s a dumb idea. Out of everything we’ve tested, building our own social media accounts produced the lowest visitor per hour figure. In other words, it’s quite possibly the worst way you can spend your time. Does that mean having followers in those places is useless? No. Facebook is nice because you can advertise to your followers. Google+ can help boost your search engine rankings. Even with those benefits though, it shouldn’t be near the top of your list for things to do. In my opinion, you shouldn’t think about them at all until you hit 10,000 subscribers, and then outsource the management of them to someone else. You can use your time more efficiently in other places, such as:

Lesson #11: Webinars Kick Butt If you’ve been on our list for long, you know that we do a lot of webinars. Here’s why: on average, each webinar generates $40,000 per hour invested. It’s by far the most profitable thing I do. Nothing else even comes close. If you’re wondering how on earth we make that much money, all you have to do is attend one of our webinars to find out. Everything we do is

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on display, and you can study it, free of charge. Interestingly, webinars are also the most effective way to build our subscriber base. When doing webinars for other people, we average 500 new email subscribers per hour invested. It’s not uncommon to gain 1,0002,000 email subscribers from a single webinar. If we’re promoting a product, we usually make at least $10,000 too. Translation: webinars kick butt.

Lesson #12: Longer Content Gets More Traffic You know what else works? Long content. It might seem strange, but on average, longer content gets much more traffic than shorter content. Not just for us, but for our students too, regardless of the niche, and here’s a post where SEO expert Neil Patel came to the same conclusion. The sweet spot seems to be about 2,000–3,000 words per post. That’s why posts here on BBT are much longer than your average blog. Granted, content of that length also takes longer to produce, but if you measure the visitors per hour invested, longer content still wins by a mile. Assuming you’re promoting it, of course.

Lesson #13: Promote The Crap Out of Your Content The problem is almost no one promotes their content enough. And by “promotion,” I’m not talking about sharing your own posts on Twitter and Facebook. I’m talking aboutblogger outreach – the process of building relationships with influencers and asking them to share your work.

> At a minimum, you should spend just as much time on outreach as you do creating your own content. So, if you’re spending 10 hours a week writing blog posts, you should be spending 10 hours a week on outreach too.

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predictor of how much money you’ll make. Here at BBT, we make about three dollars per

Can’t do that? Then scale back how much content you’re creating. Spend five hours on writing blog posts and five hours on outreach. You’ll get better results.

Lesson #14: Ignore SEO for the First Year Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not against SEO. Far from it. We now get tons of traffic from Google. I just think most bloggers focus on it way too early. Again, it all comes down to time. When your blog is new, the most efficient uses of your time fall into three broad categories: building relationships with influencers (including guest blogging), creating content worth linking to, and selling your products and services. If you do those three things well, not only will your blog gain traffic and prominence, but you’ll also start getting search traffic without doing anything. And then you can focus on other things that matter more, such as…

Lesson #15: Your Email List Is More Important Than Anything Else In analytics, there is a principle called “the one metric that matters” (OMTM). The idea is that you find a single number that accurately predicts the success or failure of your project. In the case of blogging, that number is the size of your email list. (Not RSS, mind you – it’s dying a slow but certain death.) In my experience, your email list is the most accurate

subscriber per month – an impressive feat, due mostly to our skill with marketing. The number isn’t important, though. The point is that I can accurately predict our sales based on the number of subscribers. So can you. If you’re new to this, I would strive for one dollar per subscriber per month in sales. In other words, an email list of 1,000 subscribers should result in at least $1,000 per month in sales, 10,000 subscribers would result in $10,000 per month in sales, and so on. The more subscribers you get, the more money you make. Granted, your relationship with your subscribers and the quality of your products or services and dozens of other factors still matter, but to drive revenue, focus on email list growth. To make money blogging, it’s absolutely essential.

Lesson #16: Start Selling from Day One How long should you wait before you begin selling? 1,000 subscribers? 10,000 subscribers? More? Nope. Start selling from day one. Here’s why:

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BLOGGING One of the biggest factors affecting the speed of your growth is who you can hire to help you. Because you’re the bottleneck, remember? So you want to hire a virtual assistant and someone to handle all of the technical details as soon as you possibly can, but of course, that requires money. Hence the need to start selling immediately. Now, a caveat: don’t turn your blog into a gigantic sales pitch. Nobody likes that. You should, however, be offering something your audience wants and needs. Don’t push them on it, but do make it available, and do remind them from time to time that they can purchase it.

Lesson #17: Your Product Ideas Suck You probably have all kinds of ideas for things you can sell, right? E-books, courses, maybe an iPhone app? Or a service?

Lesson #18: Surveys Are Dangerous So, how do you find what problems exist in the mind of your customer? Traditionally, the answer is a survey, but I’ll warn you: surveys are dangerous. Ask the wrong question, and you’ll get an extremely misleading answer. Use that answer to guide your venture, and you can waste years of your life, not to mention possibly going bankrupt. If you’re a beginner, I recommend asking one and only one question: “what’s your biggest frustration with <topic> right now?” So, in my case, it would be “what’s your biggest frustration with blogging right now?” That’s it. Nothing more. Look for patterns in the answers you receive, and you’ll learn a ton about what products or services you need to create.

Lesson #19: Start with Services, Then Expand into Products

Well, here’s the bad news: More than likely, your ideas for products suck. The good news is you’re not alone in this position. Everyone’s ideas for products suck, including mine. Here’s why: We all tend to create products we can see people need, but they’re not aware of it yet. We think if we show them the magnitude of their problem we can convince them to buy our product or service to solve it. If you’re Steve Jobs, you can do that, but I have more bad news for you: you’re not Steve Jobs. You’re a beginning marketer, and as a beginner, you should only be selling products that solve problems your customer already knows they have. If you have to convince them the problem exists, you’ve already lost the battle.

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Once you find a common problem, start offering a service where you solve the problem for your audience. The reason is simple: you can start offering the service immediately. You don’t have to create a product first. You’ll also learn more about the problem as you attempt to solve it yourself. When I started, for example, I worked as a blog traffic specialist. I was contracted with a few different advertising agencies, and every

> time they wanted to increase the traffic for a client’s blog, they called me. I didn’t just advise them. I did the work myself, redesigning the site, creating the content, everything. It taught me a ton about what worked and what didn’t. It was also immediate revenue. The first month I offered my services, I made something like $5,000. After working for more than a year as a traffic specialist, I felt I really understood the problem and how to solve it, so I created my first product: a course located atguestblogging. com. The first month, it generated something like $30,000 in sales, and now it brings in more than $250,000 per year.

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next few months, that’s something we’re going to change. In the meantime, could you do me a favor? Share this article. Not just so it’ll get me traffic, but so other people can see that you really can earn a legitimate income from blogging. Maybe reading this will even help them do it. After all, isn’t that what we’re here to do? Help people?

It’s a wonderful product, but here’s the thing: I don’t think I could’ve created it if I hadn’t worked as a service provider first. I wouldn’t have had the knowledge or the money. Keep that in mind when you’re deciding what to offer first.

Lesson #20: Teach Others What You Learned Why on earth would the CEO of the company (me) work for hours to write an article like this, sharing all our secrets? It’s closing in on 4,000 words, for God sakes! Simple: It’s my responsibility. If people are ever going to respect blogging as a legitimate business model, those of us who are successful have to speak up and share what we’ve learned. None of us works in a vacuum. The only way we can advance our field as a whole is to collectively share what we’ve learned. And it is a field. There are thousands of people around the world making a living from blogging. The problem is, there’s not a repository, a central community where we can all talk and learn from each other. Over the

In the end, that’s what I love most about blogging: every article we publish, every course we create, every coaching call we do can change somebody’s life. Maybe not always in a big way, but we touch thousands upon thousands of people, and we make their lives just a little bit better. We inform them, we inspire them, we give them the roadmap for achieving their dreams. And the best part? We get paid for it. It’s our job. I just wish more people knew it was a viable career. Let’s change that, shall we? IMM *This article is originally published on boostblogtraffic. com

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internet marketing magazine october / november 2014