Internet Marketing Muscle Blog

Test Using WP Syndicate 3

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:19:00 +0000

Hi, this is a post that I will use as an example to publish to Posterous automatically using a plugin that I want to modify. This, however, is not the post that will get auto posted. I'm just using this as an example to show you how the post should look in WordPress, then in Posterous, then in Blogger (and all the other platforms that allow syndication. The post in WordPress should be the full post. The "reposting" on Posterous should be either (version .8) a snippet of say 300 characters

Test

Test Using WP Syndicate 3

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:18:00 +0000

Test Using WP Syndicate

Test Using WP Syndicate 2

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:15:00 +0000

Test Using WP Syndicate

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:13:00 +0000

Test Using WP Syndicate

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:09:00 +0000

Content Syndication

We're going to try to do a hangout on the...

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:16:00 +0000

We're going to try to do a hangout on the road next Friday at 7am. We should be somewhere near Fresno by then. Yes, in the car, on a cell connection :)

This could be EPIC. Or a total #FAIL.

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Internet Marketing Tools: Install a Plugin from within WordPress

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 00:08:00 +0000

Internet Marketing Tools - How to Wordpress: How to install a plugin.

The Four Ps of Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:46:00 +0000

Back when I was in the retail business, managing a fairly small (at the time) sporting goods store, my division supervisor, whom I respected a great deal, would always visit and leave true pearls of wisdom.

Being the wet-behind-the-ears 20-something that I was, I thought everything he said was so profound. Later, I'd come to realize that it was all in the delivery!

What I didn't know was that he was one or two steps ahead of me (maybe more, he was really smart) and when I went on to another career in a different industry and began work on my MBA, I came to find that what he so expertly presented was just case studies and theory from business school!

Now, I'm not trying to demean or belittle his work. On the contrary. This man knew a lot, but he knew no more than anybody else. He just applied it.

And he taught it really well. I've found through life experience that the old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach," is a bunch of crap.

Those who truly know something can teach it like none other. Put another way, to really know if you know something well, try to teach it. If you can transfer that knowledge to a 22-year-old, then you know your stuff.

Now, I said all that just to say all this:

One of the truly extraordinary -- yet so simple even a wooden dummy knows it -- things he taught me was what is formally called the "4 Ps of Marketing."

Product
Place
Promotion
Price

Others call it the "marketing mix." Whatever you call it, all you really have to know to succeed in sales and marketing (as opposed to business, which is a whole other story) is how to maximize these four things.

Product. Obviously, you have to have a product, whether it's something you created or bought, or an affiliate product you want to promote, you by all means must have a viable product (or service) that others want.

It's that simple.

Don't have #1? Chuck it and start over.

It's also critically important to have stock in said product. That is to say, if you run a retail establishment, and you're promoting a certain product, you better have it in stock. Nothing kills a sale faster than these 3 words: "Out of stock." This is what is meant by place or placement. It's distribution. Right in time inventory. Better have it when a customer wants it.

This also implies that you have to put it (place it) where customers can find it.

Promotion covers pretty much what all of us internet marketers do. Of course, if we are selling information products, we never "run out." It's complete BS that the gurus say "Only 15 copies left."

No, what they're really doing is building tension: If you don't grab it now, you may not be one of the 15 people to get a copy. It's all about creating scarcity (which also lends itself well to Price).

As internet marketers, we have scads of products to promote through affiliate programs. We also have literally thousands upon thousands of ready-made products awaiting us in the form of Private Label Rights material. Change a few things here and there, add a little, take out something, etc. and you're ready to sell.

Simple. Easy as P-L-R.

As savvy IMers, we're always promoting something. This is why we have websites and email marketing lists, right?

Promotion is our thing.

Price for the potential consumer makes a huge difference in whether they buy or not, especially for things that they really don't need. It's raining outside and your kid doesn't have a jacket? You figure out a way.

But $997 for the latest "gift from a guru," NO. I'll pass.

Price does matter. Funny thing is, sometimes when you raise the price you not only make more money (higher margins) but you also may sell more units.

It's called snob appeal. The vernacular we Internet Marketing folks use is "perceived value." Whatever you call it, we have the ultimate testing ground, don't we?

We can simply set up multiple sites or pages and drive traffic there and see what price sells best, "all other things being equal."

Somebody figured this out eons ago selling physical products and then everybody started pricing things at x.99 or x.95, as if $9.95 is significantly different than $10. It's a freaking nickel people!

But it works. You see the same thing in the IM world: Products supposedly sell better with a .x7 price tag, like "$27" or "$97" -- I know, it sounds stupid. But there's a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting this pricing structure.

Nevertheless, no matter whether you are selling physical products or information, the 4 Ps still apply. Always will.

You can learn a whole lot more about business, promotion, and internet marketing over at Internet Marketing Muscle.

Article Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:53:00 +0000

A Beginner's Guide on How to Syndicate Articles

You have a business. And you have a web site for that business. But you are lacking the desired traffic. You want to get the word out about your site. For this reason, you choose to write articles that are intended for marketing. Your problem now lies on how to syndicate those articles?

Step by Step
There are many ways that you can go about in syndicating your articles. Here are only some that you can consider as your basic guide especially if you are new to the concept.

1. Good content
You have to tap on to your target market in the very vast cyber world. And how are you going to do this? By providing what they are looking for. For example, you are selling mattresses and you want to capture people in the medical industry. Your articles can go like tips to finding a good mattress after an endless shift, or how about the medical benefits of a good mattress for someone in the medical field.

Those were just samples and at top of the head thoughts. The idea here is to know who you want to listen to you and make sure that they will really do.

2. Usually, the articles are short, from 500 to 2000 words depending on the requirement of the article submission site. The way to do is to establish yourself as an expert in the field of interest where you will be able to tap the kind of market who will be interested in buying the products that you are offering.

The articles should not be directly promoting your products. You may get banned from the article submission sites if you do so. There is an allotted space for you to advertise your web site and that can be found on the author's bio. You can link that to your web site so the people who will be interested with you and what you have to offer would know where to go.

3. Decide on the article submission site
Use the vast resource available on the web to know what these good sites are. Stay away from the spammy type. You wouldn't want to be associated with such. Track down which sites rank higher and which of them cater to the people whom you are targeting. Enlist on those sites and start submitting good articles.

4. You can also syndicate your articles to offline mediums such as newspapers or magazines. You will be able to tap onto a larger field this way. And you can also direct those people to your web site address.

5. RSS
This means Really Simple Syndication. This will distribute your articles widely suing an automatic process. Not only will you able to reach a broader audience, you will gain important backlinks to your web site.

At this day and age, syndicating your articles is easier. You just have to settle on how you will go about it. This will help you a lot in promoting your business because you will be able to get noticed by more people.

Now that you know some of the steps on how to syndicate your articles, you can start on pounding your brain and the keyboard to create articles that will really be helpful in helping you achieve your goals.

For more internet marketing information, check out Internet Marketing Muscle
.

Advertising - Get Real

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:38:00 +0000

Advertising and marketing are creative disciplines. That's one reason I love being a part of the marketing industry. Finding creative solutions to help clients sell their products and services is a fun way to make a living. Having said that, I must also say that too often I see marketers going too far.

In my opinion it is certainly possible to be too creative for your own good. What exactly do I mean by that? Let me share a very public example to explain.

My example comes from the reality television show, "The Apprentice." Okay, so I admit it, I LOVE that show. I'm not much of a reality TV fan, but there's something about watching these teams compete on business challenges week in and week out that intrigues and entertains me.

Quite often they are given marketing-related tasks on the show. Let's face it, marketing is one of THE most important jobs you'll ever have in business. If you can do it well, your business will more than likely do well. If you can't market well, your business is in trouble.

In a recent episode of "The Apprentice" the task was to create a TV commercial for Dove Body Wash. The teams were instructed to come up with an "out of the box" 30-second spot to promote the product. The result?

Both teams created garbage! I guess some may argue they certainly did think "out of the box," and both teams tried to justify that's what they did, but in the end, they failed miserably at their number one task: to sell the product!

And that's what I think happens to many marketers who try to be too creative. They lose sight of the fact their job is to sell a product or service. To do that effectively, your marketing has to be one word: relevant.

You can be as clever or creative as you want, but in the end if your marketing is not relevant to the product and to those who are most likely to buy it, you have failed.

Look, I realize we have to be creative to capture our audience's attention. After all we are trying to cut through a sea of marketing clutter. I just wish more marketers tried harder to connect with their audience vs. simply entertain them.

Heck, I sometimes wonder if marketers even know who their audience is. This definitely came into play in The Apprentice with both teams showing men using Dove Body Wash in their commercials. C'mon, it doesn't take a lot of sense to recognize this product is for women! But because they were so focused on being clever, they lost sight of this very basic fact.

If I can leave you with one thought it is this: Identify and know your audience and then aim to connect with them and jump into the conversation they are already having in their head about your product or service.

If you can do this, you will be effective in capturing their attention, AND selling your product or service.

Check out Internet Marketing Muscle for more info.

Quick Traffic-Building Tactics

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:25:00 +0000

By far, social networking and bookmarking is the quickest way to get a flood of traffic to your website. If you're starting a new business, here's what I suggest you do to begin building traffic to your site or blog:

Sign up to digg, StumbleUpon, Friendster, Facebook, MySpace, and twitter. Also sign up for Ping.fm.
Use Ping.fm to post updates to all the above services whenever you post a new page or post on your blog.
Use Feedburner to distribute your RSS feed. Make sure you have an RSS link and image at the top of your blog.
Make sure that your site or blog has a sitemap. Send that sitemap to google.com, yahoo.com, and bing.com (formerly known as Live.com). Whenever you update or add a page, ping your sitemap to the search engines.

If you really want a traffic rush, write something controversial. Your headline is very important here. Instead of writing "Quick Traffic-Building Tactics" (like I did above -- shame on me!), write something like:

How to Flood Your Website and Take Down Your Server with 7 Killer Traffic-Building Secrets

Or, if you write an opinion piece, instead of "Fox News Sucks," write:

Every Minute You Watch Fox News, Rupert Murdoch Kills a Baby

Yeah, I know. Brutal. An exaggeration. Hyperbole. But it might catch some attention! And that's what it's all about. Now, of course, your content may not be able to back up the actual claim, but it has to deliver a knockout punch that matches the initial impact of the headline.

If you must, set up secondary accounts at all of the above services and submit your own stories!

Ethical? I don't know. But ethical doesn't feed your family. Cash does. And the way to cash? You have to have visitors.

That pay you money. We'll get to that in a while. But first, you have to get some eyeballs looking at your pages.

Social sites like twitter and Facebook will get you bursts of traffic. Hopefully, your content keeps them there. Once a visitor gets to your site, you have to work to get them to stay. Your content will take you a very long way, but try to think of ways to get visitors to stay on -- and come back to -- your site. Suggest with every post that they subscribe to your feed or sign up for your list. Encourage them to become ambassodors of yours -- by putting social bookmarking buttons within your posts. Check out Socialize-it.

For more information on traffic-building tactics that will crush your webserver and stop Rupert Murdoch of Fox before he kills more babies, check out Traffic-Building Ideas.

PLR is One of the Fastest and Easiest Methods for Starting an Online Business

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:03:00 +0000

Private Label Rights, or PLR, publishing is one of the quickest and most effective internet marketing methods that you can implement. You can literally acquire, modify, and publish a PLR product in one day.

If you want to get your online business up and running, generating cash from day 1, PLR publishing is the way to go. What you do is acquire the rights to modify and call your own material created by somebody else. Here are a few places to go to find quality PLR material (a lot of private label rights material is crap):

PLRWholesaler
SureFireWealth
PLRSO

Most of the documents you find here is free; some is very affordable.

No matter which way you go (free or paid), you then modify the material to suit your needs, putting in your name as the author, your headers and footers and links, and change, to your heart's content, any of the verbiage so that it suits the market you want to target.

Publish it using a PDF creator (the free OpenOffice is great, by the way), upload it to your site, set up a ClickBank and/or PayPal account, promote the product on your site and partner sites (if you have any), and start building buzz around your product.

For example, you could write a free report that promotes your for-sale product. Distribute this free report wherever you can (Facebook, twitter, digg). Write about your free report in articles that you distribute to article directories with a link in your resource box to either the free report or directly to your product sales page. If you use the latter technique, place an opt-in form at the top of your sales page directing your visitor to your free report.

You can be up and running with a product in just a few hours. Depending upon your market reach, you could have sales today!

If you want to learn more about PLR publishing, I have two shortcut reports that will tell you all the details and give you the opportunity to begin generating revenue immediately:

Internet Millions
Easy PLR Profits

If you are serious about earning substantial income online, you must -- at the very least -- investigate PLR. I assure you that it's one of the easiest ways to kickstart your business.

About Internet Marketing Muscle

noreply@blogger.com (billspaced) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:23:00 +0000

This blog is mainly to help spread the word about the information I talk about over at my website, Internet Marketing Muscle: Putting Muscle into Your Internet Marketing. I'll give you links to what I consider to be my most important and/or interesting posts, product launches, affiliate promotions, new or interesting promotional methods, and free reports that I regularly publish.

Internet Marketing Muscle is all about YOUR internet marketing, or online, business. I'll show you how to go about brainstorming, creating, building, and promoting your online business, using readily available tools and proven methods, many of which are free or very low cost.

We'll talk about choosing a niche, brainstorming your ideas, site-building tools, using blogs, driving targeted traffic, list building and list marketing, creating your own products, using private label rights and promotion, and a whole host of other things that will enable you to build your own dream business. I'll also show you how to make the most effective use of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and digg (plus a whole lot more).

All, of course, at a much lower cost than you could ever imagine even 5 years ago! Maybe even last year...

Join me over at Internet Marketing Muscle. Make sure you bookmark this page (add to favorites), subscribe to my RSS feed, and sign up to my email list, where I'll keep in close contact with you about all things internet marketing.