Internet Marketing with Allen Walton

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I ran across this tonight and I liked what it said. So I thought I’d share it. This practice really bugs me. John lays it out very nicely.

Free…sorta…

Has anyone else noticed that the definition of the word “free” seems to be undergoing some reshaping lately? I got an email today proudly presenting me “free” software. The software sounded interesting, so being the geek that I am I went to check it out.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the software is a “free 15-day trial” of an application. Once the 15 days are up, of course, they’re going to make me a heck of a deal to buy the full version. Wow, how lucky can a geek get?!?

At least this one is a single payment after the 15 days are up. I recently received a “free” marketing book from a big-time marketer who shall remain nameless. The “free” book only cost me $7.95 for shipping and handling. What “free” means in this case is that the marketer only made a couple bucks’ profit on each book.

That wasn’t what I found annoying. That particular ploy has been going on for years. “I’ll send you this valuable CD/book/whatever FREE! You just pay a nominal fee to cover shipping and handling!” Okay, we all know that game and we go along with it because, hey, $7.95 for an actual printed book isn’t such a bad deal and we’ll overlook the “free” thing.

I got the book and saw the “BONUS! Money-making software included free!” alert on the cover. “Cool, free software!” thought I. So, I looked in the back of the book to see what the free software was and where to download it.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the “free software” is actually a 30-day trial of an online service run by said big time marketer that features all kinds of marketing advice and wisdom. That’s apparently the money-making part of the equation. I pay to access all this great content and the marketer makes money.

“So, what happens after the 30 days are up?” I hear you asking.

Good question. If I decide to continue accessing the service, it’s a mere $39.95 per month! And I didn’t think it could get any better than the “free” book!

For the record, I’ve actually used this service during its beta stage and there is software involved. There’s a little application that you download to your machine that puts a streaming bar across the top of your screen. You click on things you see that look interesting and it opens your web browser and takes you to the site where you can access the article or whatever.

Is it worth $39.95 per month? Not to me, but others apparently think so.

My issue is not with the service. However, I find it disingenuous at best to trumpet something as “free” when it’s going to end up costing me 40 bucks a month. Call it what it is: a “free 30-day trial.” Don’t tell me it’s “free software” when it’s clearly not.

Marketers have a bad enough reputation as it is. We don’t need further fuel for that fire. I have no problem with enthusiasm for a product, but let’s not be reinventing the language to suit our own agendas.

John The Geek

Tags: Online Marketing by admin
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Pure passion is what is suppose to fuel your online business in order to make it successful. I believe that to be true to a great extent. But on the other hand, what I may be passionate about might be something that a million other people are passionate about also. That my friend leads us to what is called a conundrum. No not a condom. Alright already, a tough spot…that better?

If you read the comments from yesterday, guru Bob is one of the instructors with the 30 Day Challenge. It was very nice of him to stop by and see what was up. He became aware of my involvement with 30 Day because of some of the social bookmarking I am doing here in my posts. That in it’s self is pretty cool. Shows that some of these tactics do work.

But as he said in his comment, my niche is far too small when it comes to search traffic. But when I discovered 30 Day it was just the night before launch. That cut down the time I had to search to discover a niche that fit the parameters laid out in the program. Now the question is whether to go ahead with it, or move on. I will stick with it for a bit.

But I am searching for a new niche. That’s where the funny word comes in….where or what…..in regards to a new niche. I’m going to have to do some real work tomorrow to try and find one. I may have to spread or expand the parameters set out in the beginning.

Concert Promotions is a cool niche but way too small it turns out. I looked tonight and the EzineArticle.com article I submitted has been ranked by Google at #15 with my Concert blog being  ranked #22. So Article marketing does work if you write quality pieces. As soon as I find a better niche I’ll write an article and submit it, or have my brother do it.

Getting late and need some rest.

Tags: Online Marketing by admin
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While I am deeply involved with the 30 Day Challenge, I do have to admit that I begin to wonder sometimes whether there is such an animal as ‘The Niche Life’? By that I mean, are there people that are really making a lot of money in small niches online. Or is it all hogwash?

Right now I really don’t know. I am very happy with the information I am gleaning from the 30 day challenge. And I am sure that it will help me in the future. But to find a niche that fits the parameters set out by Ed Dale in the challenge, I have to tell ya’ it ain’t easy my friend.

As you know I ended up choosing “Concert Promotions” and created a blog and a sub blog about the subject matter. Last night I spoke about day 17 I believe  when it was actually day 18, and that was about analyzing you efforts to that point. We were looking for at least 200 visitors to our blog and then to see what our rank in Google had reached and had we made any sales.

Not even close to 200 visitors yet. Maybe 45 so far. But then I do have to admit that the week of tech and family problems I experienced didn’t help the cause any and in fact hurt our efforts. Very little blogging has gone on and link building was non existent during that period. But still with the 30 day stuff, we have reached #20 rank on Google search.

What I’m building up to is the fact that I have decided to continue for a while at least with the concert promotions blogs, but I will quietly in the background look for another niche to work also. Once I find one, then I will recreate my efforts so far but with a different subject matter. I may not try to find such a small niche the second time. I may in fact reach out and look for one with a bit more traffic and more competition.

After finding and developing the new niche blog, I will announce it’s birth here and we can then watch the development of that one in conjunction with the Concert Promotions Blog.

By the way I finished a couple more days in the challenge and am up to day 22. The info I covered today was all about Google Adwords and how to set up an account and write your first ad. All very elementary and easy stuff.

Tags: Online Marketing by admin
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Here’s a 30 Day Challenge update. I was able to log on again today. So we are back up and running. I went and viewed the video for day 17 of the 30 Day Challenge. Yes I am way behind, but I’m not going to skip any days as that would not help us at all.

Day 17 is about looking at your results so far on the target blog we have set up. The idea is to take a look at the traffic we have generated with our new blog for our chosen keyword phrase and see if we have reached 200 unique visitors. Also we are suppose to check and see where we rank for a broad match and phrase match on Google. And thirdly, have we sold anything yet?

“Concert Promotions” for broad match is ranked 20th and phrase match is ranked 21. So for just a couple of blog entries, we are doing pretty well. But we do not have 200 unique visitors, nor have we sold anything yet. But that is ok. We have had some serious Internet issues and have put us way behind. Tomorrow I will press on and continue to catch up.

Once I do catch up, I will have a good idea if our chosen keywords are doing anything. If not, then we are then suppose to move on to another set of Keywords and select another affiliate product to sell. I already have one picked out. If we do ok with our first one, I will most likely still setup the 2nd one anyway.

So hang in there with me and I will get us caught up as soon as possible. Nice to be fully connected and not be buried with technical problems.

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The title is an attempt to lighten things up. Probably in poor taste, but that has never stopped me before. Got up Saturday morning and went to log on the Internet and start getting caught up with the 30 day challenge. When I did, I discovered that my brand new modem had died. Yep…It bit the dust. I contacted my IPS support and they concfirmed my modem was bad, and said I could trade it in on Monday for another new one..

Which I did, but that left me off the net for another almost 3 days. Cuz the new modem they gave me today was not put into the system. So I could not get it to work until I got a hold of support again tonight. After an hour on the phone, they finally got me up and running.

I’m really exhausted, so hopefully when I attempt to log on tomorrow, there will be no problems and I can get back on track with the 30 day challenge. One more note about the recent death in our family. The 5th person to die in 5 years. Been 1 death every year the last 5 years. Just crazy.

See ya tomorrow.

Tags: Personal News by admin
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I’m still out of town. I should be back moving forward by tomorrow night. As I said we had a family emergency. Without going to far into detail, We had a suicide in the family. And then the fallout over that has caused some situations.

Anyway, I’ll be back on the 30 day challenge path tomorrow. Hope it won’t take me too long to catch up. Not long ago I spoke about the challenge step that required writing an article and submitting to EzineArticles to develop a back link to our main challenge niche. I wrote one and submitted it. It was picked up by Google and ranked #12 for Concert Promotions. That put us #2 on the 2nd page with just one article link. Very cool.

The ride will get back on the road tomorrow night.

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I’ve been gone because we had a family emergency. I’m hoping everything is taken care of within the next couple of days. This has put me a couple of days behind in the challenge, but I’m sure I can catch up. Right now I’m sitting in the office of one of our stores writing this. So it will be short tonight.

No real news about our marketing efforts because of the family problems. Hopefully will be back on the ball tomorrow night. I do have to go get a wordpress spam filter. I opened up tonight and found over 200 pieces of pam in the comments box. I’d like to strangle somebody. But then i don’t want to have to ask to use the prison computer, so the filter probably is the best answer.

I hope we have something to put up tomorrow night that is interesting. We’ll just have to see.

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Concert Promotions blog that I have set out as my 30 day challenge project has acquired a new face this evening. Day 15 assignment was to create a Weebly site based on your chosen keyword. The idea being is it is another step in building an authority site back link to help your main site rank better. So I stepped up and built a new site on Weebly.com tonight naturally called Concert Promotions.

If you’d like to go see the site, and I suggest you do, you’ll notice the header is a picture that really has nothing to do with music. But I thought it was so beautiful, I couldn’t pass it up. If you go look at the site and the new post I put up there, I’d like to hear what you think of the header.

Here’s the site link Concert Promotions at weebly.

Day 16 assignment was to post an EzineArticle article about your niche and then link back to your main site in your author’s resource box. I did that in about 10 minutes using the Instant Article Wizard Pro software program that is featured on our tools page. I tell you, if you need to do an article and you don’t feel like spending a lot of time writing your own, IAWP is great. And the way it’s set up, you don’t have to worry about plagiarism, because you get research snippets back and formed in paragraphs. Then you select the paragraphs you want to use and you even can rewrite them if you want. It’s way cool.

So that brings us to day 17 which was designated a day or rest and a chance for people who might be behind to catch up. Yea for that.

I want everyone to know that the list building exit program that you see when you leave this site, offers a newsletter that we will be starting soon. And you can just select it if you are interested in receiving it. You don’t have to check anything else. Also you can un-check anything that is pre-checked if you are not interested in those offers.

That’s about it for tonight. Have to get some sleep and give this old brain some rest.

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You know you have arrived when the spammers find you. I have been getting a few comments as you have seen I’m sure. But just the last couple of days I have started getting 20 to 25 comments…all from spammers with outlandish comments concerning drugs from outside the United States and a bunch of other stuff I won’t even mention. While it only takes a minute to zap them, it’s a bit annoying to say the least.

I didn’t make it to day 15 lesson on the 30 day challenge site last night, as I was just too tired. Well I didn’t get it done today either. Which also means I haven’t done day 16 either. I hope to get some rest tonight and get both lessons done tomorrow.

As I mentioned yesterday, my 30 day challenge niche is ‘Concert Promotions‘ and Google had ranked me as high as #14 which is on the 2nd page. I checked this morning and I was ranked #4 on the first page. Man was that cool. But nothing ever remains the same so tonight we have fallen back to #17…still 2nd page, but we will have to get some more stuff going and add things to the blog and still build some more links to the blog to get us back up there again.

I have a lead generating program I’m looking at now and may have it up and running by tomorrow. If I do, then you’ll see how that works. You’ll see it here. Better hit the sack now if I’m going to get anything done tomorrow.

P.S.   I just noticed, that it appears as though the lead generation program has come alive. you will notice it when you leave our site. One of the pre-checked newsletters, in fact the first one, is our upcoming newsletter we will be starting.  So if you’d like to be on our list and receive it then fill in the form and you be put on our list for the news letter.

Tags: General news by admin
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Today is day 15 of the 30 day challenge. That is officially half way home. But I say almost cause we’ve had some sickness hit the family today and so I haven’t been able to get day 15 done yet. But I will this evening.

So let’s recap what has been going on with the challenge. The first few days was all about research. Researching for - a Niche, a valuable Keyword and what the competition might be for your proposed niche idea.  The criteria was a bit narrow for my liking, but then I’m not running the challenge, so I decided if I was going to do it, then do it right. So I did my research. We were give a tool called ‘Market Samurai’ to use in our testing. Some bugs at first, but turned out to be a life saver.

I settled in quite late I might add, with the Niche ‘Concert Promotions‘…….To back up a second, the rules or guidelines I should say, were to find a Niche that had no more than 30,000 competing webpages for your specific keyword. But that keyword had to have daily searches  of about 100 a day only. I don’t know if you have tried this or not, but it ain’t easy my friend to adhere to those guidelines now a days.

Once we got all the research done we were introduced to ‘WordPress Direct’ which is a program that let’s you pick a theme template and then with just about one click of the button, install a completely search engine optimized wordpress blog. Regardless of what you may have heard you don’t have to have a passion for a Niche to blog about it. Concert Promotions is not a passion of mine. But I needed to select something to get started with as I was falling behind. I even thought how interesting it would be to do a blog about something I wasn’t passionate about and see how well I do with it.

After getting that done, then it was time to setup some bookmarking capabilities to announce to the world that I was on line. After that, we were instructed to put up a Squidoo lens about our blog and write a hubpage about it also. We opened a Tumblr account and announced our presence there too. I’m not sure where we go tonight to get something done. I’m convinced it will be fun and interesting though.

Okay, the idea behind all of this 30 day stuff as I have told you, is to get up a blog and promote it, get it ranked well in Google and other search engines, drive traffic to our site and sell an affiliate product and make our first $10 online. I just got my site up last night. Hasn’t been 24 hours even yet. And being a very impatient person, I said to myself…..self..let’s go see if we have been ranked at all or if Google has not found us as of yet. Remember we are trying to get good ranking for one Keyword that has about 100 searches a day and not more than 30,000 competing webpages…30,000 is still a lot though.

Well here is the results as of an hour ago..again less than 24 hours online……Google has ranked my new Concert Promotions blog at #14 and #15 for phrase “Concert Promotions”, which is on the second page. It blew my mind. Less than 24 hours up and running and I’m ranked 14 and 15….that’s jumping ahead of over 30,000 websites that have to do with Concert Promotions. And we still have 2 more weeks of doing stuff to improve our sites.

I don’t know about you but I find this amazing. Far outdistanced my expectations I must say! Day 15 exercise is ahead of me and I better get to it, before I get too tired.

Till Tomorrow.

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