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There are many strategies to make money from youtube videos, and each of them requires a different approach. All of the are effective, but you have to find one that is more suitable for you.

Some of the most encountered strategies are:

1 – Make money in a high traffic niche on youtube by uploading plenty of videos. (Youtube Traffic Robbers method)

This is the most brutal strategy. It is also the simplest one, meaning that you don’t need a prior experience in marketing in order to get you started. Thus, anyone can make money out of it almost guaranteed if he follows the instructions presented here. Once, you have uploaded enough videos, it can turn into an autopilot income stream. It does not require you to create original videos, and it does not require you to create viral videos- most of which get viral just by luck. This strategy does not rely on luck and you don’t have to be a brilliant marketer to pull it off. It works every time even for total beginners.

2 – Make money in a high paying niche by getting targeted leads

This strategy requires an intermediate level of understanding marketing and is based on building an authority figure/channel on youtube. For this niche you need to build credibility, interact with your users in order to convert them into leads, upload original videos in most of the cases, build your subscribers base, and trying to earn their trust. It can pay off big time, especially since you will be collecting targeted and dedicated leads, to which you can promote over and over again.

3 – Make money by uploading few commercial videos and promoting them

This strategy is based on uploading commercial videos, usually videos promoting affiliate products, or cpas offers, and then using different software’s to make them popular and getting lots of views. The most used softwares are those that inflate your views count by providing fake views, or those that comment, rate, and add to favorites your videos. By artificially inflating those stats, your video will appear on youtube’s most commented list, or most rated, or most viewed, or will get honors, thus getting a lot of exposure and ultimately getting lots of views from real people.

These strategies are not used totally independently (and there are many other strategies and variations). A good marketer will combine them and add his own touch. I am going to explain each of them in detail.

1 – Make money in a high traffic niche on youtube by uploading plenty of videos.

First some general info about this strategy:

Read this in order to decide whether is suitable for you or not to pursue this method:

Aspects of this particular strategy:

• It is free, does not require any money investment upfront.
• It can bring instant results and conversions, usually within few hours of uploading your videos.
• It generally requires you to upload videos daily in order to stay ahead of the game. After several weeks of uploading videos, however, it can turn into an autopilot income stream.
• It is very hard to scale it up big, I would say you can’t earn more than 5,000$ per month unless you build your own super tools, you are a brilliant marketer or you get extremely lucky.
• The work is very tedious and boring when you have to do it manually.

For this strategy, you need to understand the lifespan of a youtube video:

This is generally how a normal youtube video behaves when is uploaded to youtube ( assuming that this videos does not get lucky or viral, and you don’t do anything to promote it besides uploading):

First it will have an initial spike of views within the first 24 hours. This comes from the fact that it will usually appear in the “most recented videos” list on youtube different categories. After this initial spike of views, it will get “sandboxed” with the other millions of videos uploaded. Here it will get very few views every day, usually coming from people searching the phrase contained in its title. Eventually, after several days or weeks, in some cases even months, it will get out of sandboxed, and based on its age – and a couple of other factors- it will rank extremely high in youtube serps. This is the moment when your video has just turned into an autopilot income stream. By ranking high in youtube serps for different keywords, it will get daily visitors without any extra effort from your end.

This is important because in order to see good results with this strategy, you ll have to build your momentum, meaning uploading videos everyday, making cash from the initial spikes of views this videos get, and in the same time building your autopilot income stream by infecting youtube with hundreds of your videos which will pay off in future.

In order to pull this off successfully you need to follow this basic plan.

1. Select a niche
2. Create your videos to CONVERT
3. Spin your videos and upload them constantly
4. Monetize your traffic

1. Select a niche.

The basic idea of this strategy is to exploit on niches that are big on youtube and can deliver a lot of visitors to your website, and make money of those, even if you will convert the traffic very poorly.

You first have to look for a niche that gets a lot of views … the best way is to browse through youtube and you ll get a general feeling of how things work.

I will give some examples so that you can have a starting point:

• sexy/ adult videos niche
• soccer videos niche (and other sports as well)
• movies niches (with subniches tv shows, anime etc…)
• celebrity news niches (and goofs, etc..)
• music and videoclips niche

These are some niches that can deliver huge traffic to your websites – constantly, not only occasionally spikes. I’m talking about several thousands uniques on a daily basis, with spikes that can reach even tens of thousands of uniques per day – when there is a special event that goes viral.

Pick a niche that you are comfortably with and proceed to the next step.

2. Create your videos and make them to convert.

This method involves uploading hundred and thousands of videos to youtube, but this does not mean that you’ll have to create hundreds or thousands of videos.

You just need to create anywhere between 10-50 videos (we’ll call them the Basement Videos), depending on the niche, and then re-uploading this videos over and over again on youtube, with different titles, descriptions, tags, etc…

Of course youtube algorithm will recognize this videos as duplicate content, therefore you’ll have to spin them by modifying them a little bit, and re-upload them again as new videos (more about this in part 3).

It is very important to put some effort into making your Basement Videos extremely converting. You only have to create this videos once, and for the next couple of months, you’ll just upload this videos, no need to create new ones. Therefore, you do not need to spare any efforts in making this videos almost perfect for converting viewers into visitors, because this will have a huge impact in the long run.

NOTE: Automatically downloading videos from youtube, watermarking them and then re-uploading will not make you money. You need to upload to youtube CONVERTING VIDEOS. (Videos that will convert your viewers into visitor to your website). Just by uploading hundreds of plain watermarked videos will not get you any decent traffic, people will see the video but not visit your website.

Now, let’s get to video creation part:

First you’ll need some raw videos, not watermarked, that you will then download them and modify in order to form your basement videos.

Sources of videos:

- recently added videos at youtube:

Go to youtube, search for a term that represents the niche you are looking for, and from the results page you get, choose from the drop down menu to sort the results according to Date Added You will be provided with a list of recent uploaded videos where you can find some amazing new videos, some of them unseen before on youtube. Once you find something that you feel is a worthy video, then download it, watermark , and re-upload it using the techniques mentioned furthermore in the report.

While we are here, lets not forget to mention that if the video you plan to re-upload is an adult-sexy one, then do your duty properly, and flag the initial video as inappropriate, such that you can get rid of competition.

Two free programs that allow you to download videos from youtube are

• http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/ – recommended since he also has a converter embedded.
• ultraget.com just downloads multiple videos in flash format, you need to convert them later

To freely convert videos from flash to wmv or avi , you can use media-convert.com

- users channel.

This is another trick that I use, and it most of the time saves me a lot of time. The idea is that once you see a video which looks good to you, with no watermark on it whatsoever, go to the users channel (the users who uploaded the video) and see what others videos has he uploaded. There is a good chances that you are going to find a lot of fresh videos, with no watermark on them, ready to be watermarked and re-upload by you.

- other websites

Believe it or not, you can find at other video sharing websites videos that are not already uploaded to youtube. Use the recently added videos trick and apply it for other video sharing websites on the web.

- the icon video method

The icon video method is the simplest way of creating a video. It’s basically a video created from a promo message (watermarked part) and a picture that is displayed for several minutes in the video. The pictures has the role to increase the length of the video (such that your video will appear to have several minutes in length) AND to appear as the thumbnail of the video (this is one way of manipulating the thumbnail, a very important trick to get lots of views).

An example of an icon video promotion will look like this:

Youtube user search for the keyword jessica alba

In the serps results, he sees a video with the title: Jessica Alba doing a sexy striptease with a thumbnail of jessica alba half naked.

He clicks to see that video, and the icon video appears with a text on a black background: We are sorry, Youtube TOS does not allow us to show the video here. Please visit www.dominateim.com to see the video followed by a picture which will stay there for several minutes, the Jessica Alba half naked picture that tricked him into checking this video first time.

The advantages of using icon videos Is that you can manipulate very easily the thumbnails, which will get you lots of views. Also conversions of viewers into visitors to your pages are higher. Disadvantages? A lot of users will get pissed and report your video.

Once you have downloaded your videos, is time to watermark them and getting them to convert your viewers into visitors to your website.

Watermarking the videos

The simplest and free watermark tool is the Windows Movie Maker program which comes free with every windows installation. In order to be able to import and edit videos in Windows Movie Maker you need to have them into an avi or wmv format. You can media-convert.com to convert them.

(Video tutorial on how to use WMM necessary?)

The way you watermark your videos will determine whether the viewer will go to check your website and make you some cash, or you have just done useless work for the youtube community by providing them with a nice video, but being unable to profit from it.

I usually use a 3 step watermarking process for all my videos, which I like call it the Bermuda Triangle Watermark technique. Why? Because once the viewers gets to my video, it is almost sure that they will visit my website.

1. The first step is to complete watermark all the video-from beginning to the end- with the url of your website. This way, you ensure that there will be no other blackhatter coming and downloading your video, watermarking and adding his credit and url and re-uploading it.

2. The second step is to add at the end of the video (or at the beginning of the video or both at the end and in the beginning of the video depending on the niche), another message- like a promo, which will convince the viewer to go to your website. This is where you actually convert the viewer into a visitor-or fail.

3. The third step is to prolong the end of the video, with the address of your website on a black screen, and keep this end for 30 seconds- 1 minute. Why? Because at the end of every video, youtube display a screen with similar videos. This can distract your viewer and forget about the plan to go to your website, and may choose to check one more video instead. By prolonging the end of the video with the url, you assure that your viewer focuses more on the message you just sent to him.

At this step you should have a set of videos ready and watermarked, with which you are going to work from now on. If you have any trouble creating your videos, please check the forum and ask for support.

3-Spin your videos and upload them constantly

Once you have a set of converting your videos, then it is just a matter of spinning and uploading them over and over again before the traffic pours in to your website.

The simplest and free- method to spin your videos is to import them in windows movie maker, add another frame of credits at the end, and save them with a different name. The small frame addition is enough to trick the youtube filter into thinking that this is a completely different video than from the previous one.

For multi video upload, the simplest and free- way to do it, is using youtube’s in house video uploader, located at http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_multiupload (you need to be logged in to see it).

In order to use it, you ll have to install a small application (follow the instructions given by youtube there or ask for support in the forum).

Once this is done, you ll have to pick the videos to upload, input titles, descriptions and tags, and then the software will automatically upload all your videos without any extra effort from your side. You can let it run overnight.

Titles, descriptions, tags, thumbnails and annotations

Titles:

Some advice:

• Do NOT use generic names/facts (like Sexy girl)
• Use numbers, precisely values work best (How I made 5670$ in one month, 3 Secrets to magic )
• Use superlative terms (best, worse, most beautiful, top goals, most amazing)
• Use capitalization (BEST video on youtube, the WORSE accident EVER, )
• Use catchy words ( unseen before, secret, never released, the hidden truth, top confidential)
• Imply the reader affectively (OH my god, Can YOU believe, girl stripping for YOU, have YOU seen this?, YOU do not want to miss this, etc..)
• Use exaggeration and misleading titles, just to get views (see FULL movie here, this is the UNCENSORED version of girls gone wild-although obviously you censor the video). You ll convert the views latter into visitors, your job is just to attract views at the moment.
• Use keyword rich titles- they help with rankings

Tags:

The more the better. Use very sought words. Reach the maximum number of characters allowed.

Description:

Your url written as http://www.url.com should be the first thing in your description, followed by a short explanation of the video (optional) , press enter several times, and after that follow with a lot of keywords. You can extract them from a keyword generator tool, or you can copy them from other videos. Description is still an important factor in ranking a video, especially for long tail keywords.

Thumbnails

Thumbnails are crucially to getting a lot of views to your youtube videos. As of now, youtube gives you three choices for your thumbnail: the frame that appears at of your video, the one at and the one appearing at . (The one in the middle is automatically chosen, you can manually select any other one).

Unfortunately for this method, there is no simple way to manipulate your thumbnail (Unless you use the icon video method). Even if you insert an image exactly in the middle of the video, the spinning process will increase the length of the video, therefore modifying constantly your thumbnail.

Ratings

Ratings are an important factor determining how well your video will rank in youtube’s results page.

This is a small trick to get your videos an average rating of 5 stars (maximum possible). After you upload your videos in one account, log off, then log in using a different account. Give to all your videos a maximum rating of 5 stars. Then log off, and log in again with the original account (the one that uploaded the videos). In your settings, select do not allow ratings for this video. This way, the average rating of your videos will be 5 stars (as you voted earlier from another account) and no one else can vote anymore.

Annotations

Annotations create clickable link from the video leading to your youtube profile or to another youtube video. This can only be added manually to each video, and for this strategy are not effective. Don’t bother putting annotations on your videos, it will take to much effort with very little ROI on your side.

4. Monetizing your traffic

The monetizing part obviously depends on the niche you select to dominate. I am going to list the most effective forms of monetizing for this particular marketing approach.

- Adsense

Creating a MFA page and sending your traffic there is the most basic way of monetizing this kind of traffic. Some of this niches deliver a lot of traffic, but is hard to monetize it, because there are not many affiliates products or cpas that can be sold successfully to this kind of people, or simply because they do not convert well. Creating a website, with keywords related to your niches, and placing adsense on them, is the simplest way to make some income from this visitors. People will come to your website, and since they won’t find what they were looking for, they will just click an ad that appeals to them and leave your website. (Youtube users are not tech savvy, they click very easily ads, especially if these are targeted)

the ration impressions/unique visitors for the standard youtube traffic is 1.7 This means that 1000 uniques from youtubes will generally generate around 1700 adsense impressions on your website, regardless of how many pages your website has.

For the general and low paying niches (celebrities, politics, etc..), you should expect a cpm between 10$-20$ at adsense. This means that 1000 uniques will generate 1700 impressions, and will earn you somewhere between 17$-34$.

For more specific and high paying niches (movies, anime, etc…) you can expect a cpm of 20-30$, this means that 1000 visitors will generate you somewhere between 34$ -51$.

As you can see, this is not the best monetizing possible, but it is the easiest one. You do not have to bother to pre-sell your visitors, convince them to fill a cpa lead, or buy a product. You get the visitors in bulk, they click an ad, you get paid. Rinse and repeat, and money is flowing into your adsense account.

Domain parking

This is the upgraded adsense way of monetizing. A parked page consists only of ads, so when the visitors come to your website, they have no other choices but to click an ad- or press the back button.

It has the advantage that can work also on niches that are forbidden in adsense such as the adult niches, or gambling, etc…

In order to benefit from this one, you’ll have to sign up with a parking company. I will list some of them here, and I will give a more exhaustive explanation of their advantages and disadvantages in another forum thread or report- this is about youtube marketing, not about domain parking.

• sedo (do NOT try this with the adult niche, you’ll get banned)
• namedrive
• revenuedirect
• parked.com (one of the best)
• domainspa.com
• parkingpanel.com good for adult traffic

If you are a large domain owner, you’ll get access to more exclusive domain parking companies, that pay better, but we’ll talk about this in another discussion.

CPA leads

-This is getting a little bit more complicated, because you need to have an intermediate understanding of marketing and know your traffic in order to get visitors to fill in a cpa lead.

Usually, there are not many cpas offers that work with the bulk traffic youtube approach, but-depending on your niche- you can find some to play with.

A better way of monetizing is using incentive offers- or trying to incentive offers that are not allowed to be incentive. In return you will promise the visitors something that he is looking for.

For instance, if you use celebrity traffic, you can promise to show him a naked picture of his favorite actress in exchange for filling in an email submit/ or ringtone submit.

For instance, if you use movie fans traffic, you can promise him to download free movies in exchange for an email submit/ ringtone submit.

You’ll find more about this method of incenting offers in the cpa forum.

Classic cpa leads generation work much better with other youtube videos strategy yet to be presented.

- Affiliate products and building your list

This monetizing method is not fitted for the bulk videos strategy, and works much better with the other strategies yet to be presented. (Make money in a high paying niche by getting targeted leads and Make money by uploading few commercial videos and promoting them).

To be continued with…

2. Make money in a high paying niche by getting targeted leads strategy.

and…

3. Make money by uploading few commercial videos and promoting them.

Please visit the forum for additional tips, tricks and discussions, as well as step by step blueprints of particular niches.

Hey guys just thought I would write up a real quick step by step method to post using the Home Business method manually. I use this exact method and get about a 90% post rate. I only post about 15 ads a day but I usually make around 30-50$ using it. I hope this helps somebody who is new out here.

Step 1) Get a new gmail email account. I usually make a new gmail account everyday just to have a few backups. And remember to use the “+100@gmail.com” trick that was taught.

Step 2) Copy and paste some random famous quotes into a Open Office Writer file. I do this so that all I have to do is copy and paste a random famous quote into my CL post. This helps to keep the post look random to the bots. I use:

Step 3) Write up your ad and encode it. It doesn’t have to be anything that would make Tolstoy happy but make it look like a real job offer. I Then use the below address to encode the ad because whenever I would open the site that was in the Home Business method in IE my AV would pop up and tell me there was a trojan on the page. Who knows, but I do know this site works just as well.

Article Marketing :: $4K Monthly :: EASY!

As mentioned in some of my previous posts, my main income is from PPV and Article Marketing. Now, the majority of my Article Marketing ventures have been done the usual way. Write or pay for articles, submit them to random sites, do some linking and hope for the best. It works, and Ive made a nice amount of money doing it. However, you can always improve something. And, thats what I did.

The top two goals of any marketer are more money and more time. At least they should be their two top goals. That being said, I wanted to integrate both of these things into my Article Marketing business. And, thats exactly what I accomplished.
I developed this method a little over a month ago. However, I wanted to actually test it for a month before I released it. Here are my final results:

$4,300 revenue (Roughly)
4 hours worked (Roughly, excluding time you wont have to spend)

Id say thats pretty damn good if you ask me. Would you work 4 hours (of easy work) for $4k? And, its passive residual. Meaning, it keeps flowing in (passive) and it grows (residual). I guarantee that from the work done in December, Ill keep seeing income from the articles submitted for probably over a year.

This method is going to be a bit detailed, as I dont want any people attempting it coming back and complaining it doesnt work. Even if you dont complain, I still would like it to work for whoever goes and does it. Its definitely worth it. If youre having problems funding PPC/PPV campaigns, this can be your funding money
In a nutshell, youll be getting free articles by splitting your commissions with freelance writers. If youre rich already, paying for articles may be worth it to you. However, most of us arent that rich. And even if I was, I dont know if Id want to buy 1,000 articles at $5 – $15 a piece.

Ive also tried Scamming people out of articles. That doesnt work that well, and is definitely NOT a long term solution. You risk the hot headed freelance writers getting too pissed off at you and reporting you. Trust me, not a smart thing to do for a long period of time.

So, splitting commissions is the best way to go. Everything is free, so this shouldnt be a problem. Youre doing very, very little work.
So, lets get started:

1. Youll obviously be getting freelance writers for classifieds sites. Craigslist is all that is needed, as its a little difficult to work with a large amount of people. I personally only worked with 2 people. However, Ill be developing my own personal system that will allow me to work with over 100 500 people, easily. So, what youre going to want to do is make a Craigslist ad (preferably in your own area if you live in the U.S.). Always, always keep your ad professional. Proper structure, grammar, use of words, etc. Nothings worse than a poorly written ad. Be honest and straightforward in your ad. Im not going to post the exact ad I used, but its fairly simple. Youre looking for a few article writers to write articles for you based on a revenue sharing commission structure. You can lie and tell them that previous writers earn roughly $2 – $5k a month. No cost to get started, and will be able to see their articles published on the web. Keep it short and simple.

2. After the posting, if youve done it right, youll get a few hundred emails. At least I did. Instead of having an auto-responder, I just copy/pasted a pre-written response. All I did was replace their name at the top and bottom. (Eg. Hey ____ and Talk again soon _____) Obviously, the email response will detail the project more and then ask if they have any questions.

3. After theyve responded to the first email response, I have a pre-written 2nd response to go with it. Along with that response, Ill read over their first email and answer any questions they may have. The 2nd response starts with questions they have, and then a Heres a little bit more detail about everything. And again, will ask them if they have any questions to get started.

Well FIRST what you have to know, is when youre getting into the adult scene is, that traffic trading is one of the biggest advantages of adult sites.

What Does That Mean?
Well actually it means that youre just looking around for some trades with other sites, most have automate scripts so you just have to fullfill your mail and site url and will get a trade-link in return back for it.

so you will now repeat that step for your likening. you can add 20 trade partners or 100. its up to you. just check out that the site youre trading with has some traffic allready, as we`re planing to take benefit of his visitors aswell.

so now we have a bunch of sites we can send traffic to and they will send traffic back to us.

one of the most adult trading scripts is “CJ” there are many mods out like cjoverkill and much similiar products. all freeware of course…

now just add the sites to your CJ, add your CJ to your site so if a webmaster is checking your site he is seeing your cj trade and will find his site linked there atleast.

so this is half of the rent.

How does i bring traffic to the trades ?

Well here are 2 possibilities.

If your site allready has traffic and youre lazy just replace some links of your content ( depending on kind of site youre running on a tgp just set a % in your CJ like 50% so every 2nd click will lead to a trade partner of yours instead the original content)

if youre starting by zero i always prefer getting a macro recorder like jitbitts macro recorder
set up a dial-up connection
now recor your macro, start firefox (or any other browser) visit your own site, click your CJ linktradelist. every partner just 1 time so if youre having 30 trade partners every “round” will bring you 30 new visitors in return to your site.

now just close-firefox set your privacy detials high so everything will be deleted after you close firefox and re-dial.
thats it
set your amcro recorder on repeat a couple times or 100 of times

now check how long 1 round will need in seconds. so you can calculate how many real visitors will come to your site.

one other big advantage of this technic is, that you have a trade list with all your partner sites. now we want to monetize our traffic and best would be if we can target it a little atleast and not just send unfocused traffic somewhere were we “guess” it might be good.

so what we do is, we visit every partner site we`re trading with. study her site, look what sponsor(s) they are using. write it down.

repeat this step for every partnersite you have.
it will happen that some sites will have the same sonsor.
in that case write it down.
so on the end you will have
6 sites using adultfriendfinder (for example)
4 using livejasmin (evene example)
and the other 12 have some smaller niche affils

you will now have a good overview which sponsor will be best for you to stuff (but i personally prefer to stuff every affil my list contains on the end. if its to less money or i can remove it later anyway)

now just register yourself to the sponsors if youre not having allready an account there. add the links to your Cookie Stuffer Script.
thats it.

after you did this 1 time successfully you can repeat the whole.
so start a 2nd site. this time you can add your traffic trade links to the CS Code youre running on your first site. as CSG mostly is just doing a “click” on that link it will work for our purposes. even if we “hijacked” CSG a little bit for his normal use. so every visitor on our first adult page will also bring us now a click on our trade of our 2nd site.

dont use always the same trade partners. as there are soooooo many adult sites out mix it a little bit up. even to benefit by more different traffic.

so i hope i might gave you some new ideas / inspirations.

Today i want to talk to you guys about advertising in local online portals.

Local portals for anyone that doesn’t know are directories specifically for residents of a certain region, so if you live in say Tampa Florida for example, there’s more than likely a Tampa Florida online portal for everything from doctors offices to restaurants.

Portals are kind of a combination of the yellow pages, and a local newspaper all rolled into one and in an online format.

To date I’ve purchased ad space on over 70 portals around the country, and what’s most important is that I was able to profit off a very significant number of those deals.

If I could get the same success rate I do on local portals with all of my other advertising campaigns, my job would be a lot easier.

Unfortunately, the reality is, you’ve got to go through a lot of losing campaigns to find winning campaigns, however there are certain types of traffic targeting you can do to stack the deck in your favor.

One of those types of targeting I’ve found is local portals, many times I’m the only direct response advertiser buying traffic from them at a given time, or worst case, one of just a handful at best, so the audience isn’t being saturated with these types of offers, and the demographic, if you choose your portals correctly is extremely targeted.

So here comes the broken record, it’s all about understanding your demographic, who’s signing up for this kind of offer, and cost effectively sniping that traffic anywhere you can find it.

If you can do that, stay focused, and buy your traffic intelligently, you’re going to be successful.

Now when it comes to local portals there are a few inconveniences that you’re going to need to address:

I stated a minute ago, that one of the great advantages of local portals is that I’m often the only direct response advertiser, the reason for that is that 99% of all ad buys on these sites are typically local small businesses in the area.

This information is killer for your business and well worth the read. Digest the important info in about twelve minutes, as I not only give you the numbers, but more importantly, what to do with the information.

Often when we create sites or focus on a market, we tend to forget to check the trends and how they have evolved. I have taken the numbers so far this year and compared the numbers of 2005 and 2006. The hope here is to see “trends” and the path visitors are headed with technology so you can stay ahead instead of being in constant “chase” mode.

Many people ask me what I feel is one of the things which gives me an edge in the affiliate space. This is one of them. Now, the one thing about web stats is it’s great information, but it can also suck your time dry.

The data below is taken from REAL affiliate sites. Real sites with real visitors. These are US based sites only and do not include any foreign properties. The YTD numbers include the change from the August numbers so you can see the trend from the last three months. To make this data real easy to digest, I marked any key data, which increased in BLUE and decreased in RED.

On to the information… (Note: If you have a text reader for email – you will need to login to the back office in order to view the numbers correctly).

Visitor Return Frequency

Commentary: This refers to the frequency of visits by a user. You want your sites to be “sticky.” The idea of making a site “sticky” has been preached in the Internet community for about a decade now. I know, it is a “yawner” but it is still an issue you MUST consider.

As you can see from the data, visitors coming back everyday is strong, and in showing a strong upward trend over the last two years. My testing shows that Blogging and “email drip” systems are pushing these numbers up. Think about it; if one-third want to come back everyday how would that change your content development schedule?

As stated above, this is where a blog can come in handy. Also, keeping in contact with your visitors via email is a good move … and I have seen no fall out by contacting my lists on my affiliate sites every five days with new information, even if it is to tell them about a new blog post. Just keep the emails short, to the point and make sure there is great content for them to read. Nothing is more disappointing than being taken by an “evening news hook” trick … you “stay tuned” through the commercial only to be served lame content.

If you contact your list via email, don’t give them the information in the email. Instead, give them a link to your site or blog. Get them back to your site whenever possible. Your goal is to get them back to your site over and over again until they buy or buy again. What is really interesting is the consistency of the numbers in the 2, 3, 4 and 5 day returns. What is also good to realize, the numbers are still strong 6-30 days out. This means if you remain in contact with your list, even if it is on a monthly basis, you are likely to get them back to your site.

Fact: I can tell you from my testing if you stack your return visits within a few days of the original visit, your conversions ratios will surge. I have interviewed dozens of buyers who said, “You kept in contact with me and it seemed that the questions/concerns I had with the product were answered in your follow-up emails. It was highly professional and engaging.”

What You Should Do: Do you have new content to show new visitors on a daily basis? A weekly basis? If your answer is “no” then you need to get a plan in place to get new content on your site that will assist in converting those visitors into buyers. Look at your own numbers and see how they compare with the numbers above. If they are a lot lower in return visits within the first five days, you need to revamp your approach so you can get them to come back more often.

1) Make sure you have a Blog (Get “Fantastico” for your web server, which allows basically a one-button install for WordPress).
2) Email your list at least once a month (I use 1AutomationWiz and swear by it).
3) Add new, engaging content at least once a week (Hire a Ghostwriter through eLance, Guru.com, oDesk.com or RentaCoder).

Organic Search Engine Market Share

co.uk – Google United Kingdom

In a recent survey, the following were the top reasons why Internet shoppers abandoned their shopping carts. Note: they could pick more than one reason. I will cover the main issues at the top, and then get into the 20 Tips.

- High shipping prices (72%) – This is a biggie and all shipping charges need to be presented to the buyer before they have to type in their info and see the shipping rates.

- Comparison shopping or browsing (61%) – This is beyond your control, dont worry about it.

- Changed mind (56%) – While this is also beyond your control you can test your cart steps to see if this may be a cause of the mind change.

- Saving items for later purchase (51%) – If you offer this feature, but you dont collect their name and email address to contact them with a reminder drop it. Data shows shoppers who choose this option rarely, if ever, come back to purchase.

- Total cost of items is too high (43%) – How do you rank compared to other similar products in the market? Do you have sufficient Points of Difference to justify the higher cost?

- Checkout process is too long (41%) – Very important to have as few steps in this process.

- Site requires registration before purchase (34%) – I think people didnt understand this option, as it should be at least double this figure. Unless I REALLY want the item, I never buy if I have to register first, and I know Im not the only one who feels this way.

- Site is unstable or unreliable (31%) – If this is your site, then fix it!

- Checkout process is confusing (27%) – How do you know if this is a problem for you? Easy. You are getting calls with people saying, Your site was too confusing so I called. Your staff needs to be giving you this feedback so it can be corrected. They should also be mindful to ask, Would you mind telling me briefly what you found confusing so we can fix it? Ill give you free shipping on your order for helping us. Reward your customer for helping you. It is just good business.

These tips are taken from the book, Call To Action. It is part of our Recommended Books section.

I like to think of sales as the ability to gracefully persuade, not manipulate, a person or persons into a win-win situation. – Bo Bennett

Shopping cart abandonment is a significant problem for any website owner or affiliate. In some market verticals between 65% and 75% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts before completing the checkout process.

What is amazing is the numbers are basically the same as they were in the late 90s. We have come a long way in terms of technology, but there are still key mistakes being made that lend to that high rate of abandonment.

Here are 20 tips to help you reduce the abandon rate on your online shopping cart.

1. Check how many steps are in your checkout process. This is usually a prime knee jerk target for results, but we have found that whether you have one step or seven steps in the checkout process is not all that critical (which goes against conventional advice by having as few steps as possible from experts).The authors of Call To Action state that they had a client that they were able to bring the checkout process from six steps down to one, but there was no reduction of the abandonment rate. In the testing that I have performed I also found this to be true. There was not a significant reduction in abandonment rate by decreasing the steps to checkout that can be consistently measured. Surveying revealed that once people found what they came to buy, they are going to buy, regardless of the steps involved. In other words, the customer is going to buy the product, regardless of how hard your site works to make it so that they cant!Suggestion: Look at the steps of your check out process. You may consider a group of independent people to look at the process and give honest feedback. Look for consistency in complaint or praise. While my advice is not to reduce the steps right now, if your checkout process is very lengthy, consider a reduction to make it as smooth and painless as possible. As that is just good customer service and that is something we all need to focus on more.
2. Include a Progress Indicator (e.g. Step 2 of 5) on each checkout page. No matter how many steps you have in your checkout process, it is highly advised to keep shoppers oriented by letting them know exactly where they are in the checkout process. This is best done by showing a step number. Be sure to clearly label the task to be completed at each step. Always give them an opportunity to review what they did in the previous steps and a way to return to their current step if they do go back. Make it as easy as possible for them.Suggestion: This is only necessary if you have three or more steps in your checkout process.

The directory list has been updated and posted in the back office. And here is a comprehensive list of all the directories that had their PageRank change in this update.

Dropped in PageRank

A Web Directory (-1) 0/10
All Web Directory (-1) 3/10
Art Weblinks (-1) 2/10
Clasione (-1) 3/10
Cluboo http (-1) 2/10
Cream Directory (-1) 0/10
Demotte Directory (-1) 1/10
Directory Buddy (-1) 1/10
Directory List (-2) 0/10
Go Guides (-1) 5/10
Gooony (-2) 0/10
iBrain (-2) 0/10
King Bloom (-3) 0/10
Links Match (-1) 3/10
Most Popular Sites (-1) 3/10
Objects Directory (-1) 3/10
Open Here (-4) 0/10
Seek On (-1) 4/10
Seek Pick (-1) 0/10
Shoula (-1) 2/10
Site Folders (-1) 1/10
Starting Point (-1) 4/10
Sun Steam (-1) 3/10

Increased in PageRank

A1 Directory Search (+1) 3/10
AbiLogic (+1) 4/10
ABiz Directory (+2) 2/10
Absolute Directory (+1) 5/10
A Direct 2 Z (+2) 6/10
Around the Web (+2) 2/10
Business Directory (+1) 1/10
Click 4 Choice (+1) 5/10
Clickey (+1) 6/10
Cyborg Info (+1) 4/10
Velnet Search (+1) 3/10
Directory One (+1) 4/10
Directory Storm (+1) 4/10
Euro Find (+1) 3/10
Fast Paths (+1) 1/10
Gokodo (+2) 2/10
Goongee (+1) 5/10
Info Web World (+1) 3/10
King of the Web (+1) 3/10
KwikGoblin (+2) 2/10
Link Now (+1) 4/10
Little Directory (+1) 3/10
Managed Names (+2) 4/10
Network Room (+2) 2/10
Nintra (+1) 3/10
One Way Link (+1) 4/10
Portal Boost (+2) 4/10
Red Reach (+1) 2/10
Search Ave (+2) 2/10
Seek On (+1) 5/10
Seekzap (+1) 4/10
Sezza (+1) 5/10
Smart Links (+3) 4/10
Spheri (+2) 6/10
Sporge (+1) 5/10
Way 2 Find (+1) 4/10
Web 10 (+3) 3/10

Over the last week or so there has been a TON of press about the new Google algorithm change with brands – even some going as far as to saying it is bigger than Update Florida. I wouldnt go that far, because that update literally killed many markets. This one, not so much. But lets break this down as I have had a week to really hammer on it in my testing lab.

So what changed?!?!

Report: Google has flushed their index and rebuilt it again based on brand strength. Last fall Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was quoted as saying Brands are the solution, not the problem and now brands are shooting to the top of the SERPs.

Reaction: Everyone who is not a brand is freaking out that SEO is now dead again.

What You Should Do Right Now: Sit back, take a deep breath, and know this: the sky isnt falling. And Im going to show you why you dont need to panic. SEO is far from dead.

Lets start out by defining a brand.

Definition of Brand: A company that is well known in certain markets. Examples:

Running Shoes: Nike
Photocopies: Xerox
Tissue: Kleenex
Jeans: Levis
Bandage: Band-Aid
Coffee: Starbucks

The sheer power of brand awareness is when the actual competitors product is called by the name of the branded company. For example, you dont ask for a tissue if you are going to sneeze, you ask for a Kleenex. If you get cut, you dont say, Do you have an adhesive bandage? No. You ask for a Band-Aid. And if youre old enough, making a photocopy was referred to as Making a Xerox copy.

With that out of the way, we can agree that branding is important and nothing will change that. Lets now look at the actual algorithm change. Well use RankPulse to track these changes as it has been the choice tool in all the Blog posts online.

First things first – lets define the Supplemental Index. The best way is to take it straight from Google

A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that its pulled from our supplemental index. Were able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.

If youre a webmaster, please note that the index in which a site is included is completely automated; theres no way to select or change the index in which a site appears. Please also be assured that the index in which a site is included doesnt affect its PageRank. For tips on maintaining a crawler-friendly site, please visit our webmaster guidelines.

Reference: Googles Webmaster Help Center