imgroundzero.com

So often in Internet Marketing, you see the huge $2k+ product launches that have all the big IM names promoting them, and everyone makes 3/4 of a million dollars or better each time. Of course the gurus do 10 Million dollar launches these days, right?

Well here’s a few points about these huge high-end internet marketing launches:

1. Return/cancel rates for products of this level tend to be well higher than you might expect. $10,000,000 launches often turn into 1.2 Million dollar profits when everything is factored out. Still pretty good, right?
2. The quality of these offerings is generally very much in question. Let’s face it – there’s really only so much SEO, marketing, and persuasion information in the world, and while it is occassionally added to – for the most part Smashmouth said it best in their song, “It’s All Been Done.”
3. The age old argument remains, “If it’s so profitable to do – why do you teach instead?” The theory of course being that you are creating your own competition if you actually have a viable business model, so why do it? Of course IMers will tell you they have made so much money they are compelled to give it back, and blah blah blah. Well…look at it in the context of the real world. To what extent will companies go to to hide their financial information, and revenue sources? Just google “ENRON” to find out.
4. YOU are the machine that drives the big ticket internet marketing launch.

In more ways than 1, average internet marketers drive the tremendous success of these huge product launches. YOU do all the heavy lifting associated with promoting these launches, and you ultimately bare the brunt of the costs associated, even though you don’t realize it.

Sure there are marketing costs, website creation costs, sales content creation costs, and general content creation costs among others that the promoters pay up-front quite often, but when you really drill down…AFFILIATEs outspend the initial product creators, and not just by a little bit. Simply due to the sheer volume of promoters these launches bring on board, the overall advertising expenditure on one of these bad boys can often account for 70% of the initial take or better. It’s a good thing product creators don’t have to endure that all themselves, or they might just not bother due to the smaller profit margins.

Let me clear here – I’m not saying don’t get involved with big ticket launches, or that all of them are pure garbage. I’m just saying be selective about who you promote if you’re swinging in this huge sea because it’s your name on the line. If you get a reputation as someone who just wants to make a quick buck, you will lose a ton of credibility, and money – period, so choose which high-end launches to be involved with wisely.

Technorati Tags: gurus, high-end product launches, IM, internet, Internet Marketing, launches, marketing, product

Article Spinning Examples

Most of the modern content spinning products use what is called spin syntax to allow for creation of multiple articles from one seed article. So what is this spin syntax anyway?

Products such as Link Farm Evo, XgenSEO, and SEnuke which essentially allow for search engine domination via backlinking strategies, and content generation modules typically use spin syntax. The Best Spinner uses this common syntax as well.  This is the most common basic structure of Article Spin Syntax:

{CONTENT1|CONTENT2|CONTENT3}

In the example above, each CONTENT item is a possible candidate for inclusion in the article output. The spin module will randomly select from each of the 3 CONTENT elements anytime it is called to create content. Here is a concrete example and the possible content that could be generated:

{I love making money on the internet in my underwear.|Earning a living online is hard work, but very rewarding.|Internet Marketing is a tremendous niche to make money in, if you can compete.}

Possible output would be:

• I love making money on the internet in my underwear.
• Earning a living online is hard work, but very rewarding.
• Internet Marketing is a tremendous niche to make money in, if you can compete.

Of course, you would use more than just one line of text in an article, so there could be a lot of possible combinations of sentences, and words.

Whenever I write about content spinning, the obvious question always becomes “What About Unique Content?”

As search engine algorithms continue to evolve, they get smarter and smarter at detecting SEO gamers. So, aren’t search engines on to folks who just change a word or two when they’re spinning? Well – YES. So be smart about it.

I discussed some alternative content spinning strategies in a previous article which was part of 30 Days of IM Content which just wrapped up June 30, 2010.  Here is a link to those smart spinning strategies. Most people’s efforts to spin content for backlink generation often fall short because of lackluster spinning efforts.

You would be surprised how much more effective your article spinning can become if you simply invest a little more time up-front working on concrete grammar, html, and writing strategies. Most people write in a very static predictable manner. As such, search engines can easily identify patterns, and link content together often to significant reduction in the perceived value of links.

That means that if you haven’t spun your content well enough, search engines discover your SEO strategy, and discount it. Then your SERP’s fall, so you have to always be attentive to creating quality content – even spun content.

Let me be frank with you for a moment. If you’re serious about making it online, then you undoubtedly know the importance of backlinks, and backlinking strategies in general, so let me tell you the best possible combination for you to dominate search engines.

This is a two-fold powerful content spinning attack that guarantees original content, and links that stick:

1. SEnuke – SEnuke is the #1 tool we use for backlinking purposes.
2. The Best Spinner – Since adding the Best Spinner to our campaigns, our content lasts longer in the SERPs, and pushes more link juice, so we get higher rankings, and more traffic.

Technorati Tags: article, backlinking, backlinks, content generation, engine, search, SEnuke, SEO, spin, spinning, strategy, syntax, the best spinner

Holy crap – that was a lot of stuff to talk about. But keep in mind, I really entered this exercise primarilly to see the impact on overall traffic, and to provide some respectable internet marketing content. I was definitely able to quantify and measure to a certain extent the traffic impact, and you saw some of that a few days ago.

The thing is if I was trying to create an authority site, I would of much more aggressively backlinked during this time, and set up some feeder sites, and auto-blogs for backlinking purposes. I also would have outsourced almost 100% of the content.

Well, I didn’t think there was that much value in that, so I basically gave away at least 2-3 juicy money making installments during the series for free.

Here’s a quick rehash of some of the stuff we talked about:

• SEO
• Affiliate Marketing
• Social Media
• CPA
• Adwords
• Freelancing
• Twitter Tweaks – The auto-tweet
• List Building
• Outsourcing
• Video Marketing
• Keyword Research

And more. Anyway, the thing is…I want to thank everyone personally who took part in the 30 Days of IM Content experiment. It’s been my pleasure to spend the last 30 days imparting some helpful information, and I look forward to doing it again some time.

For now though…it’s time to put my TOP SECRET undercover marketing home makeover action plan mind map into action. Watch out!

Thanks again for spending some time with us here at imgroundzero.com. Stick around, we’ve got some more stuff coming down the pipeline.

Technorati Tags: 30, 30 Days Of Content, affiliate marketing, content, CPA, days, Internet Marketing, keyword research, outsourcing, SEO, social media, video marketing

For the past 2-3 years, video has been all the craze in the internet marketing world. Video sales letters, video squeeze pages, and video everything inundating us from all sides. You’ve got to get on youtube, or you’ll never make it in IM. That’s been the mantra, and while there is definitely some value in video, I think it’s important to temper it with mechanisms that appeal to different types of learners.

For example, when I created a powerpoint presentation last summer describing the linkwheel creation process, and turned it into a video with voice-over, that appealed to people who learn by observation. Other types of learners would not get tremendous benefit from that style of teaching. So it’s important to know video’s place in your process, and to use it effectively in those regards.

Let’s consider video squeeze pages. You have to think in terms of moving people through the various levels of your sales funnel towards the final goal of them making a purchase, and hopefully even becoming a faithful customer that will come back time and again. So how does the video squeeze page fit into that picture?

Obviously the goal of a video squeeze page is to generate opt-ins. In my opinion, the message in a video squeeze page, or video sales page has to be laser targetted. You have to know exactly who is coming to the page, and what will motivate them to take the action you require to get them into your sales funnel as a prospect. Not only that, but the information than has to be presented in a compelling manner too. That means even in a squeeze page – you need SALES skills. Think of the video squeeze page as an additional level of pre-sell.

No matter what you are using video for in your marketing efforts, you will ultimately have to write compelling copy whether it is words to be written on title slides throughout your movie, or it is a narrative to be spoken and recorded. That leads us to one of the great discoveries about Internet Marketing that I discussed on Day 8 of the 30 Days of Content series, and again that is:

You Have To Sell Something

Who would have guessed a discussion about using video in your internet marketing efforts would lead to this, and how exactly does it lead us to this?

Let’s say you want to do affiliate marketing. Well to do that you are going to have to sell someone else’s stuff. Ok – have to sell. What about PPC? Let’s say you’re using adwords to get targeted traffic to your widgets website. Well even just getting that person to click on your ad is like a mini-sales process. And of course, you still need to convert them on the backend. Aha – more sales.

What about CPA? Do I even need to illustrate this point any further. Anytime you are trying to get other people to take action no matter what medium you use to communicate – you are conducting an exercise in sales. When you try to convince people of things – you are selling.

So what of video?
Should I do it?
Is it a waste of time?

Listen, video isn’t a short-term fad. It’s always going to add sales to the bottom line because it appeals to a certain type of buyer that can only be compelled to take action visually, and using audible cues. But no matter how you choose to add video to your internet marketing efforts, don’t just do it because someone said it’s a good idea, and don’t half-ass it.

A really bad video can hurt your business a lot, so if you don’t have the right skillset to present information or material in a linear logical format, then it’s best to outsources this portion of your marketing efforts. The ultimate answer to the questions above is – you need video, but you need to do it right.

Technorati Tags: 30, 30 Days Of Content, adwords, affiliate, affiliate marketing, content, days, IM, internet, Internet Marketing, marketing, PPC, sales, video, video marketing