“Be productive and not busy”

That is a great thought to think about. As business owners running our own business it is very easy to stay busy for 8-10 hours a day. But are we being productive is the big question.

Here are 2 examples of being busy:
-Answering support questions
-Responding to emails

But are these tasks productive. On the outside looking in most people would say yes they are. But in all honesty are any other these tasks adding to our bottom line?

NO.

Being productive means doing work that will lead to more sales. Like writing articles, creating new products, improving our sales processes and so on.

Answering support questions and responding to emails are important tasks that need to be done but they can most likely be handled by someone else to free up more time for you to work on tasks that help grow your business.

We only have so much time in a day and that time needs to be spent on the most important tasks.

So next time you are working on your business, ask yourself if you are being busy or productive. If you are just being busy, jot down what you are doing and hand that task off to someone else like an outsourcer or your assistant.

First off the domain I pulled this info from gets 100% of its traffic from search (no ppc or any other advertising) and 93% its search traffic is from Google. In each example I will compare the amount of traffic I received (in May 2009) vs what Google estimates as the monthly traffic using their keyword tool and look at the exact match (for May 2009).

Here are a couple examples:

#1 on Google – I received 4,834 visits and Google estimates there were 12,100 searches for this term. So in this case by having the #1 ranking on Google I received about 40% of the search visitors.

#1 on Google with Site Links – For this term I am #1 on Google and I have an expanded listing with Site Links to 8 additional pages on my site. I received 1,642 visits and Google estimates there were 2,900 searches for this term. So by having the #1 listing with sites links I received about 57% of the search visitors.

As you can see the site links give a big boost in traffic compared the first example where I received 40% of the traffic. For another keyword where I have the site links I am getting around 68% of the traffic but it is for a keyword that gets under 1,000 searches a month which when you get that low I have found that Google’s estimates are not very accurate.

#1 on Google with Double Listing – For this term I am #1 and #2 thanks to a double listing where the second results is indented. I received 527 visits and Google estimates 1,300 searches. In this case I received around 40% of the traffic which is the same as example #1 where I was first on Google without the double listing. In this case the double listing did not seem to bring in anymore traffic most likely because people see it is the same site as the first one and keep looking down the results.

#3 on Google – I received 1,764 visits and Google estimates that there were 8,100 for this term. So I received about 22% of the search visitors.

#3 on Google – For another term I am #3 in Google for I received 1,426 visits and Google estimates that there were 12,100 for this term. So I received about 12% of the search visitors. Obviously these results are much different from the previous example for a #3 listing but I should note that this term has 2 sponsored links at the top of the page while the previous example had none. I would attribute this to the decline.

#4 on Google – I received 1,474 visits and Google estimates 6,600 searches for this term. By being #4 in Google I received about 22% of the search visitors.

As you can see from the results above being #1 on Google will get you in most cases at least double the traffic as being #3 or #4. Having the #1 ranking with Site Links totally crushed everything with me pulling in around 57% of the traffic and all the way up to 68% of the traffic!

I had a hard time finding any examples of being lower than ranked #4 because I would imagine that those keywords bring me so little traffic they are buried deep in my traffic logs.

Of course there are many inaccurate variables in this example, like Google’s search estimates being just that…estimates. But I think overall it gives a great idea as to the value of being #1 in Google when it comes to search traffic. So get out there are start getting more links to your site and work your way up the rankings.

Here are the stats from just one of my EzineArticles accounts…

8,353 clicks were delivered to my websites in May alone! And you will also notice that I didn’t even submit any new articles in May.

If you have done any PPC marketing you know how much 8,000 clicks would cost you. But I didn’t have to pay a dime for all this traffic.

Ok, so article marketing does work, I think I have shown that. Here are a couple tips that I use to make my article marketing gets the best results:

1. Pick a low competition keyword to target with your article. By picking a low competition keyword, you article is very likely to show up on the first page of Google (especially if you are using ezinearticles.com). I like to shoot for a keyword with 10,000 or less competing websites.

2. Include your keyword in the title of the article and first paragraph of your article. Just basic SEO but it works very well.

3. Get a couple links for your article. In some cases this may not be necessary, but by getting your article a couple links from bookmarking sites or blog comments can often push it to #1 on Google.

4. Make sure your resource box gives the reader a reason to click over to your site. You do not make any money when someone reads your article on an article directory! You must get them to click over to your site to make money. Give the reader a reason to come to your site by offering a free report or tutorial in your resource box.

5. Make sure to use keyword rich anchor text in your resource box. Article marketing can bring you traffic but just as important is the one-way links it builds for your site. Don’t waste them and make sure you are using keyword-rich anchor text. Also make sure to link to your internal pages and not just your homepage in your resource box.

Follow these 5 tips and you will see great results from your article marketing efforts.

For the last couple of months I have been experimenting with sending my subscribers to an affiliate offer when they optin to my list. I have used affiliate offers and CPA offers with pretty good results.

The best results have come from this formula…When someone optins in to my list I have my autoresponder (Aweber) redirect them to a page on my site that simply says “Thank You For Subscribing. Check Out This Great Offer Below”. Then below that I say “Our #1 Recommended (insert whatever product you are promoting)” Under that there is simply a banner for the product I am promoting.

So if you are in the dog training niche, you would simply say “Our #1 Recommended Dog Training Guide” and then link out to it with your affiliate link.

Over the last 30 days I have made 7 sales and made around $130.

Am I going to retire on this…NO. But it is free money that I just added to my bottom line with absolutely no cost. I should make me over $1,000 in the next year and it took me about 15 minutes to set up. I’ll take it.

To do this in Aweber just login to you autoresponder account and click on “My Lists” -> “Confirmed Opt-in”, then scroll to the bottom of that page where it says “Confirmation Success Page”.

And enter in the page where you put the offer up. This will all take you at most 30 minutes to set up.

You can also do this in the “Web Form” section under “Thank You Page”. But I use this page to explain to my subscribers how to confirm their subscription because I use double-optin and getting them on my list is my first objective.

So go give it a try and let me know how it works out for you.

I thought I would share the answer I gave with all of you:

Buy a quality Private Labe Rights package ($27 here), get hosting (HostGator.com $5) and a domain (Godaddy $10), get an autoresponder (Aweber.com $19).

Build a squeeze page which gives away one or the PLR products you bought in exchange for people giving their name and email. After they optin to get the free product redirect them to a one-time-offer which offers the rest of the PLR products for $27.

Send traffic to the squeeze page using your forum sig, blog comments, article submissions, traffic exchanges, your blog, etc.

You will get some sales but the bigger asset is the list you are building which you can recommend affiliate products to and eventually launch your own product to. Your first product…how I started with $100 and made $XXX in XX months.

This all only costs around $60 so you even have $40 left to use for advertising.

1. Testimonials vs No Testimonials: For this test I simply tested the salespage without any testimonials vs the salespage with testimonials. I figured it was pretty obvious that testimonials would improve the conversion since they are a great way to use social proof but I was surprised at how little of an increase they made.

Results: With Testimonials – 1.9% conversion / Without Testimonials 1.56% conversion. A 22% improvement.

2. Price: This tested the conversion of selling my product for $47 vs $37 vs $27. This one is a little tricky because the best conversion rate is not always the winner. You have to actually compute how much you are making with each since the $47 price point can actually convert lower than the $27 price point and still make more money because of the extra $20 I make on each sale.

Results: $47 – 1.26 % conversion / $37 – 2.03% conversion / $27 – 2.84% conversion. In terms of money made, the $27 was most profitable but just barely when compared to the $37 offer.

3. Headline: In this test I simply tested 2 different headlines. Your headline is the most important aspect of your salespage in my opinion becuase it is what determines if someone readers your salesletter or simply clicks the back button. You only have a couple seconds to grab the readers attention and it is your headline that determines if they stay.

Results: Headline 1 – 2.7% conversion / Headline 2 – 2.2% conversion. The results show that you can make significant improvements in conversion by just split testing your headline. Go do it now.

4. Order Button: In this test I pitted 2 different order buttons against each other. Button 1 was blue and said “Buy Now” while button 2 was yellow and said “Add To Cart”.

Results: Button 1 – 1.66% conversion / Button 2 – 2.11% conversion. A 26% improvement just from the order button! Amazing in my mind how that could affect conversion so much. I got the yellow button from here which is from Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss.

5. Video vs No Video: In this test I put a video on the salespage which gave a walk through of the course I was selling vs the original salespage with no video.

Results: Video – 1.26% conversion / No Video – 1.14% conversion. The video did beat out the original but not by much. Of course it is totally dependent on how good the video, which might imply that the video I made wasn’t that great. Or maybe video is not as important as some people say it is.

6. Background Color – For this test I put a white background against a blue background. I am refering the the area outside the salespage and not the actual background of the salespage where the copy is. Of course I would think you always want that to be white.

Results: White Background – 1.31% conversion / Blue Background – 1.74% conversion. The blue background was the hands down winner in this one with a 32% conversion increase.

7. Custom Design vs Plan Design: This test I was checking to see if a custom mini-site design with a snazzy header and footer and cool graphic would beat out a plain design with no header or footer.

Results: Plain – 1.37% conversion / Custom – 1.6% conversion. The custom design showed a 17% increase in conversion so I would say that in my market it pays to get some cool graphics which actually make the site look more professional.

Hopefully seeing my results will help you with your own salespages. The real takeaway here is that testing is absolutely necessary for those that want to make the most money from their products. If you are not testing…you are losing money. Period. So get out there and start testing today.

The e-class will consist of a series of online lessons in video format that you can follow along with. You will basically watch me building a niche website and you will follow along building your own website with me.

By the end of the class you will have your own website up and running and making you money.

I will be showing you how to build a niche website that will make money via AdSense and affiliate offers. When I build these websites I aim to make around $100-$500 a month from them. This is not a get rich quick scheme. Instead it is a process of building up your income over time by building as many of these sites as you see fit.

If you are trying to make a couple hundred bucks a month from your online efforts you may only build 3 or 4 of them. If you have much higher ambitions you may want to build 10, 20 or even more of them over time.

I personally have dozens of these sites making me a very good passive income month after month.

The class will cover these topics (and more):
-How to pick your niche
-How to do keyword research to identity keywords you can target for easy search engine rankings
-How to build your site from scratch
-How to format your site so it makes the most money
-How to monetize your site
-How to write the content for your site (and how to outsource content creation if you see fit)
-How to get your site online (we will cover everything from hosting, domain registration, ftp software)
-How to do proper SEO on your site to get great rankings and organic traffic
-How to promote your site and get traffic
-How to build backlinks for your site to increase your traffic
-And much more

This is a great class for beginners because I will literally be showing you everything you need to know. If you have some experience online then some videos may be basic to you but we will cover much advanced topics as well.

My entire purpose of this course is to help you start earning money online. Again, I am not going to promise you will make thousands and be able to quit your job. That is not the purpose of this class.

Instead, the purpose is to give you the proper knowledge to be able to start making money online with niche websites. After the class is over you can start building more and more websites and really take your online business to the next level.

The cost of the class will only be $50. I want to make this affordable to everyone and especially beginners because that is who is will benefit the most.

The class will most likely be around 4 weeks long and will require you spend between 1-2 hours per day on it building your site. After the class is over you will have your own niche website up and running and earning you money.

If you are interested, you can order below and we will be getting started next Monday (6/15).

I look forward to teaching you this class and creating as many success stories as possible!

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Here is a list of them:

Google Apps Gmail – I have a personal Gmail address that I use but I also use Google Apps for all my domains. So instead of having 20 different email accounts to look at each day, they all go right into my 1 Google Apps Gmail account. I can not even estimate how much time it saves me on a daily basis.

Google Website Optimizer – This is a great tool for split testing landing pages, salespages, and affiliate pages. Pretty much every single salesletter I have is always running a split test. Testing is one of the easiest and quickest ways to increase your income. You can double the revenue of any site by either doubling the traffic (hard work!) or doubling the conversion rate (much easier, especially if you have never tested before).

Google Analytics – By far the best analytics program I have used. I used to use Statcounter but once I tried Google Analytics I was hooked. It gives much more in-depth stats and you can hook it up with your Adwords and AdSense accounts to get some really cool features.

Jing – Jing is a free screen capture and screen recording software. While I do still use Camtasia for recording longer video, Jing is great for short videos because you can quickly capture the video, they host it online, and then give you a link you can email or post.

Firefox – I said good bye to IE a long time ago and switched to Firefox. I find Firefox to be much faster, easier to use, and the features and add-ons are awesome.

SEO Book Toolbar – This is a great tool for SEO purposes. Way too may features to list but you can read all about it for yourself.

OpenOffice – I wouldn’t say I use this one daily but I do use it quite often to turn documents into pdf format. Writer let’s easily export any document as a pdf. Great time saver.

Google Keyword Tool – For quick keyword research I always use Google’s keyword tool and several of their other tools as well (Sktool & Insight).

Wordpress – Of course every online marketer should be using Wordpress in their business.

iGoogle – I use iGoogle to subscribe to the RSS feeds of the blogs that I read daily. There are obviously a ton of RSS readers but this is my favorite way to do it.

Ok, so there you have my 10 free online tools that I use daily. Sorry for all the Google love but they know how to make some great free tools. Hopefully some of these can help you be more productive in your daily activities and increase your business.

He emailed back this:

The house is still available. I will be happy to show the house at an agreed upon time and date but I do require that all applicants complete a free credit report to ensure their eligibility. I do not give out the exact address of properties before I am able to show them because last time I did that the house was vandalized.

Please go to one of the following URLs to complete the free credit report:

http://free-creditreports360.com No Social Security Required

http://nationalcredit-report.com

Please let me know when this is done and we can then work out the time and date to go see the house.

***Please do not send me your credit report!

The URL is a reference link so the agency knows where the applications are from. The credit report company only sends your name, email address and whether you have had any evictions in the past 5 years to determine your renter eligibility. This is the only information I am interested in.
Sincerely Tina

p.s. This is a soft credit report; it will not hurt your FICO score!

Well, this sounded a little fishy and is definitely not standard procedure. So I clicked on the link (http://nationalcredit-report.com ) and did a view of the source code and found this….

As you can see it is a MaxBounty CPA offer that he is promoting! I logged into MaxBounty and found the offer and it is paying $23.50 per lead.

This dude is probably getting a ton of unknowing people to get a free credit report thinking they will then get to look at the house for sale while he is laughing all the way to the bank (or jail)!

Of course, I am in no way endorsing this type of scam. Is it cleaver…yes…but it is also highly unethical and most likely illegal. Also, I am sure if MaxBounty found out about it they will for sure cancel his account and not pay the commissions. If you look at the links one of them is already down.

Just another reminder that there are no shortcuts to success in online marketing and remember to always play by the rules. And to all the consumers out there you should never have to get a credit report just to look at a house for sale!

Of course the normal route most people take when doing their article marketing is to write a quality article then submit it to a bunch of article directories like EzineArticles.com. These directories will provide some great benefits but the real power comes when webmasters pickup your article and add it to their site.

You get a bunch of one-way links which are great for SEO benefits but of course you have to worry about Google devaluing the links some due to duplicate content.

But here is how you can take this marketing tactic to the next level and make it much more effective.

Everytime to submit an article to directories you should then setup a Google Alert for the title of your article. What this will do is send you an email everytime Google finds your article on a website.

When you get these emails you should go take a look at the website that picked up your article and if it is a high quality website (not just some spam site that is only feeding the site with various articles from directories) you should contact the website owner.

When you contact them you can thank them for publishing your article and then offer them a unique article that they can replace that one with. Just explain to them that “of course your site would benefit more from a unique article instead of an article that is posted on many other sites…”

You them supply them with a unique article with your links in it or a resource box with links in it. You now have a unique article on a quality site with keyword rich one-way links pointing back to your site. This will greatly increase your article marketing efforts an also your SEO rankings.