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.

Step 4) Connect to a Proxy server using this software below. I change my Proxy server every 2-5 posts. The more the better. But remember to make sure that the proxy is from within your country. I wont go into details about the program but it is really easy to use.

Step 5) Post the ad. All you have to do is copy and paste the ASCII encoded ad into the ad posting area and then add one of the random quotes you collected earlier to the bottom of the ad. Make sure to also use a different email ever few posts. A good rule of thumb is to change your email every time you change your proxy.

To make all of our lives easier and because im so freaking awesome I have included a set of direct links to everyone of the ADMIN/OFFICE JOB posting fields in all of the free to post CL cities that have been provided to us in the Resources section. These links bypass all the bullshit you have to agree to on CL. Just copy and paste it into a clickable word file or whatever so you have it all the time.

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.

4. If theyve responded to the 2nd email, youve pretty much got them. At least I did.

Now basically what Im describing to you now is what youll be describing to them. Which start with how you should have them write your articles.

Offers
However, before you can have them write articles, you need an offer and keywords to go with it. The offer doesnt really matter that much, so Im not going to go into what offers/niches to target. However, I would advise you dont target brand new offers. If its a brand related offer and the merchant shuts down or pulls their aff. program off the network youve got a problem. Especially if all the articles list the brand name. If you find a related product to switch out your links on your site instead, then all the articles will ideally need to be changed to the new brand name. With 500+ articles floating around thats a bit of a task. So, stick to things that will be around for at least a year. And a good way to tell is by looking at how long theyve already been around.

Keywords

This is one of the most important things. If youve done article marketing or SEO its all about keywords. Youre not going to be throwing up random articles and hoping for them to rank for random keywords. You should, and will be targeting each article for specific keywords and specific search engines. One article that ranks on Yahoo! may not rank on Google. All search engines have trends. Follow the trend and youre golden. But, Ill get into that a little more down the road. But for now, you need to get keywords for your niche. Ideally, youd want to rank for heavy searched for keywords. However, those are a bit harder to rank for. So, you need more long-tail keywords as well. What I do is go into Google AdWords keyword tool, punch in the most generic phrase related to my offer and get ALL the results in the first section (which means all the results contain the word(s) I put in the search box. The second section is related terms) So for example, if my offer was free grant money, Id type in free grants, free grant, grant money etc and get all the keywords.

Once I have all the keywords, I use a proprietary piece of software to determine the competition for each keyword. I personally like to start from the bottom up. I like seeing results first. And with low competition (which most of the time result in low search counts), you can see results faster. Ive seen some guides and posts regarding not doing it this way, but I find it best. If you have your writers write 20 articles on high competition or medium competition searches and they dont show up 1st, that can be disappointing to them. Even if you get them ranked #1 for a less searches for term, its still awesome to them to be #1 on the search engines. Remember, they know nothing about SEO, so THEIR content as #1 for a search is amazing to them. It fascinates them.
For those that dont have software to use for analyzing competition, you can download a FREE trial of SENuke at SEnuke.com You can use the competition analyzer for free forever. Without ever having to actually buy the program. It may shut down on you, but all you have to do is restart the program but thats only if youre going to use the software for more than about 10 minutes.

How to Write Your Articles

Its not all about ranking #1 on search engines. Unfortunately, you cant really split-test 2 different articles. If you change your content, theres a good chance the search engine(s) will knock you down. Ive done it maybe a dozen times, and every single time I was knocked down the page, or knocked it off completely. That being said, you should have a general knowledge of what a good article looks like. Unfortunately, I cant provide you with a blueprint article to go off of. You do have to do some things yourself, and its not hard to find a well written article that sells something. In a nutshell, the article should be part review, part description and part sales. The articles that perform the least are heavy sales articles. They get flagged as spam by real people. No one wants to feel like theyre trying to be sold on something. Good articles are informational and provide value. The type of article that youd send to a friend. A lot of my articles are pure information on a basic subject. For example, I may write an article about how to fix your slice in a golf swing. I wont promote some magic tool, but at the end of the article Ill have a link to Buy pre-owned Callaway golf clubs at 50% off!. Youd be surprised how many people click through to your offer. Same goes for any other niche. As another example, Ive written articles about weight loss tips for random things, and at the end of the article Ill link to a weight loss offer. Ive gotten thousands of dollars just using that technique.

That, in my opinion, is what the general pitch of the article should feel like.
Now, you have to structure your articles properly for each keyword. For very low search count and competition, its easier to rank because you dont necessarily have to target the exact keyword density and word count of the other top 5 10 results because they didnt target in the first place, and theres no trend. However, youll find that with the more competitive keywords search engines have a trend for the top 5 10 results. For example, a keyword like food the top results will have generally the same keyword density and word count. Sometimes there will be flukes (eg. The top 5 have an average of 663 words, and the 6th result has 7,000 words on the page) Same goes for keyword density. Some pages will have a 1 3% density and then one of the top results will have a 0% or 5% density. That being said, I usually ignore the flukes to get a better idea of the average keyword and word density of the pages that are currently ranking. And, each search engine will have different trends for different results. Which is why for the most part I have my writers write 3 articles for the top 3 search engines.

Now that you have a list with the competition levels for each keyword you grabbed, I then do batch research of averages for each keyword to send to my writers. To do this, I use SEO Studio from trendsmetrix.com which can be found at

It took me about 3 weeks to find software to do exactly this. And even after I found them, I had to ask the programmer to edit the way it does the research. What this program does is perfect for what we are trying to accomplish.

It does the searches for each keyword inserted (just like a human would), and then gives you the averages of that keyword, as well as other data if you wish for just about any search engine(s) you want. Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask, AltaVista and a bunch of others.
I then export the results, and send them to my writers. After of course explaining to them how to read the report and write the articles.
For the low competition keywords, as mentioned the averages dont matter that much. I generally say 400 700 words, using the keyword ONCE in the first paragraph and ONCE in the title. Thats what Ive found to work best for the long-tail low competition keywords.

Link building

After an article is submitted, I bookmark it on all the top bookmarking sites, plus a few more if its higher competition. Digg, stumbleupon, mister-wong, etc. You can get a list of the ones I use inside the SENuke program under Social Bookmarking.
For a few of those submissions, I use the keyword targeted in the title of the bookmark. And for the rest, I use related keywords.

I always give my writers 50/50 profit. They dont know youre actually really doing all the work with buying the domains, designing the site, hosting it, having the aff. network hookup bumped payout, etc. So naturally, even if you tell them, they think theyre doing all the work. Even though they couldnt do it without you. But, 50/50 is very fair, as youre spending very little time publishing the articles and doing the linking to them. As mentioned, I made about $4,300 half of that went to my writers based on their own generated commissions. I used Prosper202 to track each individual writer. I added them as PPC Account in step 1 in the setup. I keep in touch with the writers (but in the future when I work with 100 500 I obviously wont be able to do that). And when youre first getting started with them, you need to treat it as JV. And if you already havent guessed you should have SEO sites for this. If you have 500 articles linking to one site thats a nice amount of links to just throw away on direct linking. Have an SEO site to go with this and youre even more golden.

You should be submitting your articles to top article sites like GoArticles, eZineArticles, HubPages, Blogspot, Wordpess, other sites listed in SENuke, as well as a few other ones you can find with high PRs.

Since this is such a long tutorial, Im sure I left some small details out. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask away. And if you have good results, post back letting everyone know how you did. Im sure if I can generate $4k in one month with only two writers, anyone who goes nuts with this method and works with 10+ can make a lot more. Good luck!

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.

Ironically, what is one of it’s major perks, also causes one if it’s major inconveniences which is that the advertising reps you will talk to will often have little or no experience dealing with an advertiser like you.

I’ve had dozens of conversations where the person on the other end of the phone had no idea what the hell I was talking about when I was asking for certain deal points, even something as simple as even delivery.

This can be a very frustrating conversation because you basically have to teach them the business in some cases and that can lead to a lot of resistance and often times having to walk away from the deal because they either cannot or will not meet your terms.

And as a side note to that, you have to be willing to walk away if you can’t get acceptable terms. We aren’t playing roulette here, this is a business, if you can’t get deal points you feel comfortable with, you need to move on.

There are hundreds of thousands of other places to get traffic, and rolling the dice and hoping for the best is the easiest way to lose your money, so play smart.

Another downside is that I find the rates on a lot of these sites to be astronomical especially due to their smaller traffic numbers, and lack of understanding who their audience actually is beyond very broad statistics.

Part of that can be because they didn’t know what to charge when setting up their ad program and what most sites will do is go and look at some huge site like People.com and see what their CPM rates are.

This often results in them coming up with some huge number, and because their typical local clients have no clue what it costs to advertise they happily pay it, and so there’s never a need to examine their rate structure.

Well I’m not going to pay a $20 CPM on a local site just because a couple of dentists and local diners are stupid enough to. You’re almost always going to have to negotiate the CPM aggressively to get into a target range that’s acceptable.

There’s actually no such thing as a CPM that you shouldn’t negotiate anyway, paying the sticker price is only for suckers and brand advertisers who don’t give shit, but the point here is that you can expect to go a few rounds with some of these portal sites because the rates they charge just won’t give you the room to make any money, especially as an affiliate.

One of my go to tactics for negotiating with sites like these are to wave the long term money flag. I know from a ton of conversations with these sites that typically, as I’ve already said, they deal with mostly local businesses.

I also know that most of those clients are in and out in a flash because they have no idea what they are doing, they aren’t tracking the results, and they also aren’t making an offer with the intent of forcing an action on the spot.

A typical dentist will put up a banner that says, Joe Smith DDS with a phone number an address and maybe some stupid cartoon of a giant smiling tooth. If they’re feeling really spiffy, they may add a tag line like “the gentle dentist” big fucking deal.

So instead of doing something smart like offering a banner that says:

This week only, cleanings $49, $200 off teeth bleaching, mention woodlandsonline.com for these special rates

They instead blow hundreds of dollars a week or more for a few weeks, then can’t figure out if they’re getting any results, which they of course aren’t, and pull the ad.

Now if the traffic is responsive, someone like you or I who has access to virtually unlimited types of offers to run, all based on real time response, can go in there and snatch up all that inventory each month, which is a very attractive proposition to these sites if you sell it right and makes them very likely to give you a great rate and get you in the door.

Right now there are two portals I have exclusive deals with where I’m running multiple types of offers on multiple pages each month.

Two may not sound like a lot, but if you can find two great sources of constant targeted traffic and sign a deal with them to manage those spots exclusively for a set rate, that’s a dream come true.

Between the two portals, I have the exclusive on over 39 sections of their sites which I pay an obscenely low rate to have all to myself.

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

.ca – Google Canada
.au – Google Australia
.in – Google India
.nl – Google Netherlands
.de – Google Germany
.fr – Google France
.es – Google Spain
.pl – Google Poland
.br – Google Brazil

Notables
dogpile.com – 0.23%
alexa.com – 0.14%
altavista.com – 0.16%
alltheweb.com – 0.04%
hotbot.com – 0.02%
lycos.com – 0.01%
mamma.com – 0.01%

Note: These figures are based on ORGANIC traffic, not from paid search. This is why these figures will be different than any other “market share” report you see. Knowing market share for PPC is a waste because you can easily figure that out when you set up your account. What you want to know is the click-through rate of organic search. So what if a search engine has a 20% market share if their organic listings are pushed so far down the page no one ever sees them? That is why these numbers are vital for every Webmaster and SEO consultant to have.

What about Ask.com? Ask is not listed on purpose as I “block” their bot from all of our sites. According to testing, very little traffic comes from their organic search, and their bot sucks the lifeblood from my servers. To me, Ask is nothing more than a glorified site scraper.

All Google Properties YTD: 80.4%

Commentary: Google continues to literally crush the competition and I have some niches where over 90% of my organic traffic comes from Google. And look how Yahoo! and MSN are falling. This can be directly related to how much Yahoo! and Microsoft are focused on PPC ad revenue as they strive to push the paid ads and concentrate less on organic rankings.

Now back to the data. As I said earlier, you won’t see these types of numbers anywhere else. The numbers I am reporting aren’t “searches” they are organic click throughs. To me, these are real numbers and ones you can base your marketing campaigns on. From other reports you will see confusing percentages, ones that add up to over 100%, as they take into consideration “all searches” on the Internet. Seriously, you don’t care about “searches” – you care about “clicks”, right? Let’s look at the “market share” as reported by comScore.

Here is where I have difficulty with the numbers. We look at these market shares and then focus our efforts in organic search in regards to the engines that have the most market share, right? Right. Above is comScore’s data, and Google has nearly two-thirds of the market, followed by Yahoo! with just over 20% and Microsoft trailing with about 10%. Ask and AOL are on the map with about 5% share each.

Is that really true? Is that really accurate? Should you base your marketing plan on that information? I hope you don’t.

Let’s look at the real numbers that actually produce organic click through traffic. We all know we can open a PPC account today and have traffic in a few hours to a few days depending on whom we use. That is a no brainer. But the organic traffic, the unlimited source of clicks based on our own abilities and not the size of our budget is what we are mostly interested in. That is undeniable fact.

Google US has control of over half the market and when you look at the total Google share, with all their foreign indexes, they control over 80% of the organic market. Look at your referral traffic and you should see similar numbers.

Why are the numbers so different with Yahoo!? One of the main reasons is Yahoo! continues to stack PPC ads at the top of the search results, which means more clicks occur on their PPC listings than their organic listings. And Microsoft? Let’s face it, they have a great looking search portal, it is just unfortunate that no one uses it.

Let’s move onto Ask and AOL. While comScore states each has a market share of 5%, check your log files. Seriously, check your log files. Do you have 5% of your referral traffic from either of these properties? If you do, please send me a screen shot because none of my properties have anything close to a 5% share. AOL barely registers, and the traffic from Ask has been so pathetic and their bot so “indexing happy” I finally had enough and blocked Ask completely.

Forums, conferences and ads on television promote Ask often. Well, fine. Publicity and commercials just don’t matter – it is clicks. Clicks drive your business. Why optimize for an engine that doesn’t produce clicks? You shouldn’t. Don’t waste your time.

What You Should Do: Continue to focus solely on Google and hope the optimization work you do gains favorable rankings in Yahoo! and MSN. At this time, it isn’t worth it to optimize for any other engine but Google. There just isn’t enough share to get a positive ROI.

Notable: How effective is the Yahoo Directory for clicks? – Average of 78 clicks per site in 2005, 54 in 2006, 59 in 2007 and so far this year the average is just 22. That’s less than five clicks per month. Ouch. Figure the CPC and you may have heart failure.

Browsers

A total of 8 unique browsers were detected.

Commentary: This is the first report in some time which FireFox has lost market share. While it is just a slight decrease, IE picked up a healthy 1.5%. It is recommended you begin to test your sites in FireFox to ensure they look proper. We have a strong belief (and apologies to Mac Safari users) that unless a browser has over a 25% market share, it is not cost effective to be compliant.

Browser Versions

Commentary: A total of 118 different browsers were detected. IE 7 and FireFox 2 are now neck and neck and basically dead even. Those are the two browsers you should verify your site looks perfect in. FireFox 3.0 has had too many negative issues for it to be a player until at least the beginning of next year.

Cookies

Commentary: We’ve been waiting for years for this figure to move past 90% and it finally has. While this number isn’t entirely accurate as it probably is factoring in requests by a search engine spider or bot scrapers, which don’t accept cookies. If you run an eCommerce shopping cart that is cookie dependant or if you are an affiliate and your commissions are tracked by cookies, this is excellent news.

What this means: There are a very small percentage of users who do not allow cookies at all. Many use FireFox extensions that alert JavaScript calls. JavaScript is how a cookie is set on a visitor’s computer and cookies are the way affiliate links are most often tracked. Now, if the shopping cart being used requires cookies to process the order, the user may turn them on for check out, but surveys show the users are more likely to either call a toll-free order number or cancel the purchase. If you or your merchant has a toll-free order line available, make sure there is a method in place to track your leads coming in.

JavaScript Version

Commentary: Why does this matter? If you are using a 2.0 version script, only about 2% of visitors may be able to view it properly. It is advisable to keep your JavaScript to level 1.6 or below. I used to recommend keeping it at 1.3 or below, but with the added market share of 1.6, you can now step up. Yes, you may sacrifice some functionality, but deliverability is always more important.

For your information, we use JavaScript 1.2 for most of our functions and we are operating just fine. If you don’t know, ask your web designer/developer.

Operating System

Commentary: Wow. Check out the growth from the Mac. Nearly doubling their market share since 2005. Windows continues a downward trend, and it has experienced is sharpest decline this year due to the problems with Vista. Consumers are moving away from Microsoft and are looking for more stable environments to work in. Depending on your industry, you might want to take notice at the changes Apple has done, especially with their Apple Stores. They are the most profitable stores in America (per square foot of retail space) and they understand usability, customer service and delivering a solid product.

OS Version

Commentary: Even though Windows XP/Vista is moving down in market share, NT is growing. And it looks like Windows 98 is about dead and Windows 2000 isn’t far behind with just 3% of the market and dropping fast.

Screen Resolution

Commentary: The best news continues to be the drop of 800 x 600 … the WORST resolution for web designers. Despite a sharp drop since 2005, 1024 x 768 continues to be the dominant resolution.

Countries

Commentary: The sites that were built and used in this study were all sites built for a US audience. Of course, the sites are available worldwide. So, based on these numbers, would it make sense to offer the site in another language? These numbers do not indicate it would produce a positive ROI. The strongest non-English country has less than 2% of the referral traffic. However, if you notice the US-based visitors account for just over half the overall traffic, it does raise concern, as most of the products offered make international shipping impractical due to the expense.

This means only about half of the visitors to the sites can realistically order product. That isn’t good. Because the visitors are all organic, I’m not losing money bringing them in, however, I do have an audience that cannot purchase. Therefore, I must brainstorm to figure out ways to monetize half of my traffic.

What You Should Do: Here is a checklist of what you should be doing with your sites based on these numbers:

• Update your content at least once per week, but preferably every other day.
• Look into getting a Blog started on your site; you can post it as a sub directory (http://www.domain.com/blog/) or sub domain (http://blog.domain.com/).
• Contact your mailing list every 5-15 days, but at least once a month. Get them to come back to your site instead of giving them the information right in the email.
• With your organic traffic, focus on Google heavily.
• Ensure your sites display properly in IE 7 along with FireFox 2.0.
• If you are an affiliate verify your merchant has telephone ordering options to track and credit you with sales.
• Check the version of JavaScript you are using for your site and verify it is version 1.6 or lower as about 2/3rds of the market may not be able to display higher versions of JavaScript consistently.
• Test your offers. Are they easy to understand? Verify your Calls to Action can be seen “above the fold” in resolutions 1024×768 and 1280×1024.
• Even if you are targeting US citizens for your marketing, just over half your visitors will be from the US. Verify you have other options for them.

Set aside a block of 2-3 hours this week to tackle the above and you might be surprised to discover some very simple flaws in your site(s) that are resulting in lower conversions. Correct those and your revenues will be up without any increase in traffic.

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.
4. Provide a link back to the product. When an item is placed in the shopping cart, include a link back to the product page, so shoppers can easily jump back to make sure they have selected the right item. Your own experience probably parallels ours. Recently, shopping for a CD/DVD printer, we wanted to know what color cartridges came with the printer. It wasnt obvious where we should click to review what came with the printer so we had to navigate using our back button till we were able to get our questions answered. Not all consumers are willing to take on this navigational challenge and choose to abandon their carts instead.Suggestion: According to my testing, having a link BACK to the product page and then relying on the customer to know what to do to get BACK to the shopping cart is just a bad idea. They can do it, sure, but at what cost? In fact, only 4% of users who clicked on the product link were able to get back to the shopping cart without causing a system error or adding a duplicate item to the cart. That highly escalates abandonment. Instead, use a pop-up system to allow users to see more detail on the product without leaving the page.Key Point: You may want to instruct them to press Ctrl as they click to override pop-up blockers.
5. Add Pictures inside the basket. Just adding a link back to the product details page inside the checkout process reduces abandonment rate. By just placing a thumbnail image of the product inside the basket can increase conversions by as much as 11%.Suggestion: If you are going to include a link back to the product details page, take some time and create a pop-up instead (as mentioned above), so the product details hovers over the shopping cart page so the customer can make the review and not get lost. I tested the link back and it does not reduce abandonment.
6. Provide shipping costs as early in the process as possible. If you can, provide an estimated cost while the prospect browses your site. Your visitors want to buy; they just want the answers to all their questions when they want it; and total cost is one of those critical questions. Also, if the shipping information is the same as the billing information, include a box that shoppers can check to automatically fill in the same information. Dont waste their time while testing their keyboard skills.Suggestion: Free Shipping or Low Cost Flat-Rate Shipping test the same. Because of this, you may wish to offer a Flat Rate Shipping over Free Shipping as you will get the same results in terms of conversions, but your margins will be better with getting at least something for the shipping charges.
7. Show stock availability on the product page. Shoppers should not have to wait until checkout to find out that a product is out of stock. One thing that I like to see, Estimated Delivery Date or this product usually ships in x days. Deal with the I want it now! mentality, and let them know when they should expect to get their product.Note: Amazon.com does an excellent job at this.
8. Make it obvious what to click next. A prominent Next Step or Continue with Checkout button on each checkout page is a great idea. If possible give the shopper a visual cue as to where they are in the process. Make the button you want them to click next obvious. Dont bury it. One top 50 e-tailer mistakenly placed visually similar remove from cart and checkout buttons right next to each other. As you can imagine many people click before they read. At this site they ended up clearing their cart, and when they went to checkout found nothing in their shopping cart and immediately abandoned the site in frustration.Suggestion: Different colored buttons test out the best in this situation.
9. Make it easy for the shopper to edit their shopping cart. If a product comes in multiple sizes or colors, make it easy to select or change values in the shopping cart. How many times have you bought a pair of slacks online and wanted the same pants in two different colors? Make it easy for your customers to add to and edit the contents of their shopping carts. It should be simple to change quantities or options, or delete an item from the shopping cart.Suggestion: Not every cart needs this functionality. If you arent sure, survey your customers before you end up investing a lot of time and money into a system that your customers may never use. Surveying is a powerful tool that many companies dont use enough.
10. Make it Your Fault. If information is missing or filled out incorrectly during checkout, give a meaningful error message that is distinctly visible. It should clearly tell your visitor what needs to be corrected. The tone should state that the system was unable to understand what they entered, not that the customer made a foolish mistake.Suggestion: Not every system allows for custom error messages. Check with your provider. If they dont allow it, request it.
11. Make Shoppers Aware that you are a Real Entity. Checkout is the time when customers concerns start to flare up. Let them know you are a real company by giving full contact information during the checkout process.Suggestion: Testing also shows that a strong testimonial (appropriately placed) shown at checkout can boost customer confidence.
12. Give the Visitor the Option to Call. If visitors have a problem during checkout or just feel uncomfortable using their credit card online, give them a phone number to call. Use a separate telephone number that is different from the one you use for the rest of your site. This will help you track, evaluate and understand shoppers needs and behaviors. While youre at it, give them a fax-order form so they can complete their order by fax if they prefer.Suggestion: We have tested pop-up warnings that occur if the back button is clicked on the order page. The pop-up basically states that if they do not feel secure about giving their credit card information online, they can call and then list the toll-free number to order. This is very effective, but make sure you use a separate phone number so you can track the customers that you gained through this measure. You always want to track.
13. Make it Always About Your New Customer. Make the focus of the checkout process easier for your new visitor with whom you do not yet have a relationship than for your registered customer. It is much harder to acquire a new customer than to keep selling to loyal customers. Registered customers will find a way to sign in (if they dont already have a cookie), but dont make the registration and log-on a barrier in the way of new visitors finding their way to check out.Suggestion: I hate, hate, hate sites that make me register before buying. I usually always abandon the cart. Im not alone. Testing shows that this process is the leading cause for high abandonment rates.
14. Add 3rd Party Reinforcement Messages. Verisign, HackerSafe, BBB, or logos of credit cards have either greatly boosted conversions rate or kept them neutral. In other words, they never hurt. Hacker Safe certification seems to be helping clients all across the board especially in sites with larger average order size. They claim a 15.7% average increase in orders – directly attributable to earning the HACKER SAFE certification.Follow-up: My testing doesnt show numbers as strong (more in line with 9% increase) as Hacker Safe is claiming, but that is still a number high enough that should attract your attention.
15. Present Coupon Codes Carefully. Be careful how you handle these, you dont want to decrease your conversion rate. You might want to think carefully about where you present this option and how you label it. Coupons should add to the experience not create doubt for those who may not be shopping with a coupon.
16. Deal with Pricing Issues Head-on. If you sell name brand products and your store is price competitive or truly provides better value, why not try a Lower Price Match guarantee.
17. GTC: Get the Cash. Offer more payment options and add other ways to collect the cash. You can offer visitors an option to pay by credit card, check, eCheck, PayPal, Google Checkout, or any other means you can to get the cash.Suggestion: One of the worst mistakes that you can make is not giving all options, especially American Express. Many companies do not take American Express because of the high fees. I ran into this AGAIN recently. I was about to perform a transaction with a company but they didnt take American Express. I asked to speak with the owner. Sorry, we dont take that card, the fees are too high, was her reply. I politely informed her that while she feels she is saving 1% by not accepting American Express (that is how much more AMEX charges over Visa and MasterCard typically), she was actually losing$400.00 because I was turning around and walking out the door.

    Not taking American Express is just plain stupid. There are many business owners just like me that only carry one credit card. Dont turn your back on them.

18. Offer Point of Action Reassurance. Check how often information critical to your customers buying decision gets buried in tiny type at the bottom of the page. When a customer wants to know something, they want an answer. If you walk into a store, its fairly easy to find out product warranty information. You can read the box or ask a salesperson. You should give your customer the same option online. At the Point of Action (POA), when hed figuratively be examining that box link right there to product warranties, your companys specific policies, testimonials, even optional extended service plans. At the exact point when your customer has to start filling in a form with personal information, reassure the customer that privacy is sacred to you. You may also consider having that page secured. At the point the customer might be curious about your companys shipping costs, make them concretely available. Just when the customer is wondering whether or not it is possible to return the item, if it doesnt meet their needs, make it clear that you have a no-questions-asked return policy. Make the best use of your assurances at the right time and place.
19. Track Your Mistakes. Develop a system that keeps you notified of errors during your checkout process. One client noticed a portion of their visitors had cookies turned off. He developed a Cookie-less checkout option and his conversion rate and sales jumped.Suggestions: Check your web logs for exact numbers of visitors who have Cookies Disabled. This month, 10.1% of visitors to our sites have cookies turned off. Looking at the data since June of 2005, the numbers are 12.1%. So the news here is that fewer surfers have Cookies Disabled. This is good news since most shopping cart systems require cookies. But before you invest in a cookie-less system, make sure that the ROI of going to the new system makes sense. How do you find out? Look at your web stats!
20. Save it for them. We know customers often leave a shopping cart with items in it, but they do return sometimes. Dont be overly concerned if visitors leave items behind. Just plan on doing your best to give them a reason and reminder to return and complete the sale. You may have the ability to save the cart for them or email them that they left items in the cart and can complete their order when they are ready. This can be done online at your website or through the telephone with IVR (Interactive Voice Response). Remember, if theyve gotten to the shopping cart, they are most likely considering the purchase.
21. When all else fails, Survey. Try an Exit survey (think of it as an objectionator) if people abandon your checkout. Try offering them an incentive to complete your survey or even save their cart. They may just tell you why they didnt complete their order.Suggestion: Offering an incentive to fill out a survey is a good idea. However, offering an incentive for those who abandoned the cart to come back is not a good idea. According to my testing, the rate of abandonment increases after about 45 days of putting in the process. The numbers indicate that users will abandon the cart on purpose to get the incentive and an additional savings. That isnt why you wanted to offer the incentive in the first place. You may want to look at other incentives instead of a percentage off the sale.

These 20 tips can help you reduce your shopping cart abandonment. Of course, every site is different and has its own environment and issues. Dont overly obsess about abandonment rates, since many people simply use the shopping cart as a placeholder for considering purchases of interest to them. Another issue to consider is competitors will go through your site to find out how you operate. They will abandon their carts too.

These tips help you focus on those whose intent it is to check out and purchase, but may have questions, doubts or obstacles holding them back. Some of these tips will result in dramatic improvements and others might not do much. The only way to find out is to test each.

Remember, the only way to improve your conversion rate is one step at a time. The best way to reduce the shopping cart abandonment is not by changing the ordering process, but changing the message on the product page. Prospects that have a higher level of trust with the merchant, are more compelled to buy the product, and who can see a real need for the product and/or service have a lower rate of cart abandonment.

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.

Okay, so what can we learn from this example? We see that Orbitz and Delta both came into the Top Ten in mid-January. Right at the same time, which is when this shift occurred. I could give you a few dozen examples, but take my word for it, around mid-January there are new entries by branded companies in the Top Ten SERPs for highly competitive keyword phrases. My question is, if this issue is really as big as Update Florida, why did it take five weeks for the SEO community to report it?

Thats easy. Drum roll . Its because the keyword phrases which are impacted by this algorithm shift are NON-COMMERCIAL phrases. In other words, they are phrases which are not money producers. To prove this, I set up eight CPA campaigns. All targeting keyword phrases which were affected by this shift. I dumped nearly $1,500.00 on this test and the conversion rate was awful. Even with simple CPA offers which just had a name and email address field, the conversions never came close to breaking even.

Resource Tip: Use the Detecting Online Commercial Intent tool from MSN adCenter Labs.

Did it affect all keyword phrases? No. Just the big ones and mostly the one-word terms like gifts and electronics which no one in their right mind would bid on in the PPC space. For example, type in running shoes and Nike is no where to be found or wrinkle cream and you will see many review sites right at the top. And I did a complete sweep of my affiliate sites and I have no significant movement of the keywords which drive most of my revenue.

Bottom Line: Non-converting keyword phrases are phrases the seasoned online marketer ignores.

Updated Testing Results: As many of you know, I am an affiliate marketer first. It is how I make my living. Not by speaking or this membership, but by working in the trenches, just like you. And one of my favorite short cuts is to hijack keyword lists from competitors and run a PPC campaign to see which ones convert. And amazingly, in looking at my data over the last eight months, it is consistent that only 6% of the phrases convert to the point of breaking even.

Why is that?

Lots of reasons. As David Bullock would say, it has a lot to do with your offer. A keyword phrase which converts for another site, may not convert for your site because you have a different offer, a different price point, or even a different product. Dan Thies is big on anything that can be measured can be improved, so just because it failed doesnt mean it cant work if you send it to another page or to another offer.

All good points, so why am I harping on this? Simple. I dont want to see you get distracted by the noise in the marketplace, especially during a fragile economic period. Concentrate on what works, on what sells, and how you are delivering your revenue. Maximize it and slowly spread to other areas and test new options.

Other Take Aways:

- 40% or more of your traffic should be from non-search engine referrals.
- Work on your list building. Are you continually building your list and contacting them at least once per week with solid information followed up with an offer? If not, you need to be doing this consistently.
- Relationships. Do you have solid relationships built with at least three high-profile bloggers who could send out a plug for you within 72 hours? In other words, if your rankings went away tomorrow, do you have relationships in place where you could survive the short term until you figured out your ranking issue?
- Do you contact your current customers at least once a month with additional information/uses of the product they purchased from you or up sell offers for additional products?

While this algorithm shift should affect your business exactly 0%, it should force you to sit down and ensure you have a plan in place in case your Google traffic blows up and you can continue business as usual. And dont tell me you have good rankings with Yahoo! and MSN as your backup. 15% of the organic click-through market is not going to replace 75%. You need a real plan – a realistic one.

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

Does that make sense to you? Most people read that and say, Huh? Its okay, but let me make it crystal clear for you. Google has two indexes: The Main Index and The Supplemental Index. The Supplemental Index is an area where there are pages that Google had difficulty in the following areas: completely indexing, the page is stale, or a variety of other issues. You can also look at the Supplemental Index as the last holding ground for a page before it gets dumped from Googles index completely.

How can you tell if your site has pages listed in the Supplemental Index? There was a Google hack:

site:www.domain.com *** -view

But Google killed the access in 2007. How do you know which pages of your site are in the Supplemental Index? Ive taken the guess work out with my Google Supplemental Index Locator, or GSI Locator for short.

Lets talk about what the Supplemental Index (SI) is not and also to clear up a major misconception: it is NOT the Google Sandbox that new sites get thrown into. This is something completely different and sites young and old get pages thrown into the SSI, even I get pages in the SI. And it isnt always on purpose.

Pages in he SI used to rank just fine in Google, but they did not display correctly: just the URL. No Title. No Description. But that was then, this is now. Pages in the SI dont rank well, period. This is why you want to get your pages out of the Supplemental Index – especially if you run an aggressive AdSense campaign. Having just one page in the SI could be costing you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a month.

What are some of the main reasons pages get into the SI? Lack of internal links. For example, when Google performs a deep crawl on your site, it compares the pages it found with those in its index. If there are pages in the index that GoogleBot didnt fetch in the deep crawl, Google knows that those pages are no longer accessible through an internal link – therefore, Google sees them as being phased out by you. Those pages are then moved to the SI.

Of course, this is just one of the many ways you can get pages into the SI, and it is one of the most common according to my testing and feedback from members.

Myth: If you have pages in the SI, those pages contain SPAM elements. You should clean up your site.
Fact: Untrue. Pages do not get placed in the SI for SPAM. They get removed or penalized from the index for SPAM, but the SI is not a repository for SPAM.

Here are the test results and what you can do in order to get your pages, or your entire site, out of the SI. I have included the main reasons why pages get placed in the SI, the methods I used to get the pages out, and the success rate of each. The success rate is based on the status of the page 30 days after making changes.

1. Page not updated. Pages that have not been updated in one year or longer have a 68% chance of being placed in the SI.

How to get out: Update the page so the file size changes plus or minus 1% (42% success rate). This wasnt as successful as I thought it would be, and it has gotten worse. There are many forum posts and articles out there that state this is all you need to do to get out. Testing shows differently. You have to do more.

So, I made a solid update which included: Changing the heading tag, updating the Title, and significant changes to the body content. You may want to invest in a major or complete rewrite of the article. Since the article hasnt been touched in a year or more, chances are very good that things have changed and the article is out of date. Now, what if you do a complete rewrite and there is no change in the file size, do you need to make more changes? No. File size is not the issue here, it can be the same and there will be no difference in the success rate. The issue is new content. (93% success rate).

2. Direct Link Missing. The page in question no longer has a link directly from the home page or a main category page. Pages that lost their link within the site itself (these arent backlinks) have a 72% chance of being placed in the SI.

How to get out: Get a link on the home page or a main category page to the page in question (95% success rate).

3. New Site. The site is new; it has been online for six months or less. Even though this is not a Sandbox issue, there was a success rate of 29% by following the steps in the New Member Welcome PDF. While the rate is low, it will help you in other areas and you will be better off in the long run.

Do you want the complete prescription? See below:

Complete Prescription
By following the information below, you will have a 96% chance of getting ALL of your pages out of the SI in 30 days or less. Keep in mind this will take a solid effort from you and it is time consuming, but it will pay off in a big way as your traffic levels will spike by getting out of the SI.

How am I so confident? Because of the 400 Supplemental Pages I tested with on 47 different domains, only 16 pages remained in the SI. That means I am 96% sure. That is confidence.

Change the Title. Make it more compelling, update it, and treat it like an advertisement. Remember, you are after a click through here. You may consider using the pipe symbol | instead of a hyphen in the Title, as I have seen some good movement by doing this, plus, it seems to command attention and improve click-through rate. Do not have more than one Title tag.

Domain Name/Server. Make sure your domain is either on its own IP address, or you control every domain on that IP. If you still virtually host, kick the habit and get your own server. Only have one domain? Get with some friends and go in on a server for all of you to share. Dont virtually host. If you want to take back control of your business, this is where it starts. One of the main reasons do to this is sharing an IP address with a mentally disturbed webmaster is just asking for trouble.

Robots.txt. Verify your robots.txt file is compliant. View my robots.txt to get an understanding of what your file should contain.

Crawlability. How easy is your site to crawl by a search engine? Do you use dynamically generated content? If your URLs have lots of &, %, etc. then you may have quite a bit of trouble. The good news is there are mod_rewrite scripts available to handle the problem and make your site more crawlable. See the Mod_Rewrite Tutorial for more info.

CSS. Ensure that your CSS file is an external file. Do not place any hidden text, hidden code in your CSS file. While GoogleBot cant detect many CSS tricks, the number one reason for bans on sites with CSS Tricks are competitors filling out SPAM reports. Dont take a chance. With your CSS as an external file, make sure that you place it in a separate folder and exclude that folder from being spidered in your robots.txt file.

Heading Tag. Change your heading tag. If you dont have a heading tag (either a 1, 2 or 3) add one. Do NOT under any circumstances, have more than one H1 tag. Why? For the same reason the front page of a newspaper will have two headlines. It isnt effective.

Content. Severely modify the content on the page. Look to update the text, and new relevant content. Change the formatting. Make sure you use CSS, so you dont have a slew of font and other formatting tags that tend to bloat the file size. That is a bad thing.

Directory Submissions. Submit your site to all relevant directories in your category/industry. One of the most effective directories that we have tested with is GoGuides.org. Testing has shown this is a HUGE benefit to your site. Especially with Google. Best of the Web Submission.

Press Release. Submit a press release and have the release posted on a major news feed such as Yahoo! News. Why Yahoo!? Because Google actively spiders Yahoo! News.

Which press release to use? The best one for your money is PRWeb. Dont get suckered for the free press release distribution networks. While the statement promotion can be found that is free is true, the statement all good promotion comes with a price tag is also true. Promote your business the right way; it will pay off in the long run.

ALT Tags. Change your ALT tags so they are not optimized for the search engines, but instead they should describe the graphic.

Meta Description. Ensure that you have a unique, compelling Description Meta Tag, the Keyword tag is optional.

Character Set Tag. The character set tag is recommended, although it does not affect the SI.

XML Sitemap. Create a Sitemap, and use the Google Webmaster Tools.

Link Campaign. Launch a link campaign which assigns 25 or more links to your home page and/or subpages. Make them solid links – and not garbage links. Work at this. Make it pay off. Ever wonder why you do a back link check on a solid site and they have a PR6 with 40 links and you see another site with 400 links and a PR4? There is a reason for that. It is called quality.

The above tips will allow for more of your pages to be removed from the SI and also give your site great long-term benefits with the other search engines as well.

And those are good things.