This post is a rant. It’s a rant about one of those things that are going on in Internet marketing that are all kinds of bad, but everybody does it because they’re all lazy and greedy and they can get away with it. What I’m talking about in this particular case is people selling products that don’t exist yet. As a customer, that’s just a slap in the face, when you are presented with a completely empty members-area, after you’ve handed over substantial amounts of your hard-earned cash.

But, instead of only complaining about it, I also offer some suggestions of what to do instead.

Check out the video below:

Let me know what you think, in the comments!

Cheers,

Today’s question is not one specific question, but a topic that I get asked about quite often. I’ve decided to mash all the questions together and answer them in one video.

Whenever you see high PageRank backlink building services or link packets and aren’t sure whether they can be trusted, the video below is what you need to know about. When it comes to high-PR backlinks, much of what you read is misleading. Some of that is deception-for-the-sake-of-marketing, some of it is ignorance and some of it is just due to habit and convention of how we talk about links (i.e. we use the wrong expressions out of habit, even though we’d know better).

The video below should clear up some of the confusion caused by all this:

Let me know if you have any follow up questions or comments!

Cheers,

In part one of the AdSense challenge, we picked keywords and created some initial content on a new site. Now, it’s time we get Google to notice us and start promoting the site.

Before I get to the tasks for the second part of the challenge, a quick note on my own progress:

Read more »

Welcome to part one of what I simply call “the AdSense Challenge”. First, let me give you a little background info on all this:

Recently, a product called the AdSense 100K Blueprint was recommended to me, I took a look at it and it turned out to be a really good guide on how to properly use AdSense to monetize websites. I liked it so much that I invited the creators of the blueprint to do a webinar for my subscribers and thus, I actively promoted their guide.

And of course, I want to use the strategy described in the guide for myself, as well, so I dusted off my unused AdSense account and set out to build a few sites according to the blueprint… and then noticed that somehow, two weeks had passed and I still hadn’t even started building the first site. To remedy this situation, I decided to set a small challenge for myself and invited my subscribers to join in. More than 100 of them liked the idea and joined and so I decided to run with it and expand the challenge.

What Exactly is this Challenge?

The point of all this is simple: I set specific tasks and timeframes and we all challenge ourselves to get all the tasks done in the alloted time. On the one hand, this can give you a bit of a structure and a plan to follow and on the other hand, setting yourself challenges like this just makes it a lot more likely that you’ll actually get stuff done. Look at it as a friendly motivation booster.

I’ll be posting all the challenge steps on this blog and the comments section gives everyone the opportunity to brag about their progress, ask questions etc.

Ok, I Want In! What do I do?

If you’re already subscribed to my list and you got here through an e-mail I sent you, you’re all set. All you need to do is keep watching your inbox for new challenges or “milestones” that I’ll be setting as we go along.

If you aren’t already subscribed, here’s what you’ll want to do.

1. Check out the recording of the AdSense Blueprint webinar: click here to see the recording!

2. (Optional) Get the AdSense 100K Bluepint: click here to get your copy!

3. Subscribe below:

Steps two and three are optional, of course. You are welcome to follow along with the challenge by just checking by this blog from time to time.

Ok, let’s get down to business. Here’s the first part of the challenge:

1 Find one suitable keyword group.

Consisting of at least three to five related keywords, all with good CPC (couple of dollars, ideally) and manageable competition.

Personally, I like to go for keywords that have a higher search volume, even if the competition is a little stiffer. I’d rather work a bit harder to get lots of traffic than go for ultra-long-tail keywords with very little traffic.

2 Create a new WordPress site.

Get a domain (aged domains allowed and encouraged) and set up a new WordPress site. Doesn’t absolutely have to be WordPress, of course. I just like prefer it over other CMS.

3 Create 5 pages of content.

All around the keywords you picked in step one, of course.

Yes, we’re taking things relatively slowly. You are, of course, welcome to out-do me on the challenge.

Talk soon,

“Build a Mailing List” is an almost universal piece of advice given by successful marketers to aspiring marketers. Anyone who’s done any of it can attest to the effectiveness of e-mail marketing. The biggest issue with it is often getting people to sign up to your list in the first place. The two products I’m reviewing and comparing in this article, PopUp Domination and Digi List Builder, are both designed to help you with that. Both are primarily created to work with WordPress sites (although there’s also a non-WP version of PopUp Domination) and both give you a variety of options for presenting visitors to your site with you opt-in box and whatever your sign-up incentive is.

Read on to learn about how these two products are different and see which one comes out on top.

Overview

What the two products have in common (apart from the fact that all the developers involved are British) is that they let you create an aesthetically pleasing opt-in form that “pops up” in one way or another, when someone visits your site.

Let’s take a step back and look at what is necessary, in principle, to get someone to sign up to your mailing list. There are two main factors that come into play:

1. An Enticing Offer
   It goes without saying that if you don’t have an enticing offer, a good reason for people to sign up, then your list-building efforts are almost certainly doomed to fail. That’s not to say that a “sign up to my newsletter” message never works, it’s just that a “sign up to get X” usually works far, far better.
2. An Effective Presentation
   The second factor is how this offer is presented and that’s where these two plugins come in. And it’s also where the two plugins are most different.

Video Comparison

Instead of trying to express what these two programs do in writing, it’s a lot more effective to just show you what they do, on video:

And here's a recap and overview of the two products:

PopUp Domination 2.0

PopUp Domination is all about delivering an enticing and attractive presentation. It creates lightboxes which are large, eye-grabbing and beautifully designed. You can use images and bullet points to create very professional looking opt-in forms, without needing any design-skills yourself.

There are seven different lightbox-designs to choose from and for each one, you can select a theme color and a button color. All of the text in the lightboxes (headlines, bullet-points, button-text) are customizable, but there are hard limits to the text. For example, if you choose a lightbox that supports a one-line headline and three bullent-points, then that's exactly what you get. There's no way to add a fourth bullet point. This is not a huge drawback, but it is something you should be aware of.

Here are just a few examples of what the PopUp Domination 2.0 lightboxes can look like (click to expand):

Digi List Builder

Digi List Builder has less emphasis on making the opt-in form look good (although they still are well designed) - you can upload a custom image (like an ecover image or a visual call-to-action), upload a custom button and input some text.

The focus with this plugin lies on how and where you can present your form to the site visitors and Digi List Builder offers four options:

• a lightbox that appears every X number of pageloads (you can set the number of pageloads)
• an opt-in box that appears at the end of each blog post, before the comments section
• a footer opt-in area that scrolls with the page (i.e. it's always visible)
• an option that allows you subscribe people who comment on your blog to your list (can be unticked by visitor)

See the four variations below (click to expand):

Two more things are worth emphasizing about Digi List Builder: First of all, you can use any combination of these opt-in forms. Potentially, you can have all of them running at the same time, hammering your visitors with opt-in forms relentlessly (not recommended, but possible). Secondly, and this one is brilliant, anyone who subscribes to your list through Digi List Builder will henceforth no longer see the forms when they visit your site. This is extremely cool, as it allows you to crank up the "annoying" factor somewhat, without it turning off your subscribers.

Note that if you implement Digi List Builder on your site and you already have subscribers on your mailing list, they will still see the forms. The forms only vanish for those who opt in through Digi List Builder.

Conclusion

So, which one is better? Both of these products are very good in their own way, so I can't make a recommendation for one over the other. The way I see it, which of these plugins is better suited for you depends on how you want to utilize them.

If you have a site that is purely built as a traffic-magnet, to get people on your list, then Digi List Builder is the better choice. On a site like this, you don't have to worry about annoying people with the lightbox or footer opt-in, as you really want visitors to either sign up or leave, anyway.

If you have a blog where you are doing personal branding, then PopUp Domination might be the better choice, as it is easier to adapt to your site's overall visual style and has more of a "wow-factor". More advantages are that you can use PopUp Domination 2.0 on non-WordPress sites, you can specify specific pages and categories, if you don't want the lighbox to appear everywhere on your blog and you can use it as an exit-popup.

Here’s a (long) video-presentation on the topic of “Funnels”. Whether you use an autoresponder, a multi-page website, a series of content like in the typical product launch or even one-on-one follow-up with your prospects on the phone or face-to-face (in the offline world), you’re using a sales-funnel of sorts.

And if you aren’t, then your conversions probably suck…

Watch the video below to get all the details on why funnels increase conversion dramatically, how to set them up and what the essential components are, that make them work.

Sales Funnels Video Presentation

(Full-screen 720 HD resolution is available on this video)

Click Here to Download the Video

Many of the principles discussed apply to affiliate marketing, but all of this stuff is especially important for product creators. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic!

Cheers,

In a previous post, I had reviewed a WordPress plugin for setting up easy split tests and had given it a thumbs-up. Setting up split-tests on WordPress is usually complicated or expensive… or both. The previously reviewed plugin made thing easier, but unfortunately, it’s no longer available. Now, along comes a new candidate by the name of WordPress Split Test Optimizer. Is this a better solution for running A/B tests on WordPress based sites? Does it manage to be simple and affordable at the same time?

Read on to find out.

Overview

The first thing you need to know about this plugin is that it integrates with Google Website Optimizer and that’s a good thing. Like Analytics, Website Optimizer is a very powerful tool that you get to use for free, courtesy of Google (and their hunger for data). The thing is, GWO doesn’t usually play nice with WordPress and while there are integration options and even free plugins to help integrate the two, most of them still have some severe limitations.

So, let’s see if WP Split Test Optimizer can justify the asking price, compared to what free Optimizer plugins offer.

WP Split Test Optimizer Video

Here’s a video detailing what this plugin does and how it compares to the free ones that are available.

To recap, the WordPress Split Test Optimizer plugin has two advantages over free plugins:

1. It’s slightly easier to set up and manage. This isn’t a huge advantage, but it’s nice to have.
2. It allows you to very easily track clicks on particular links as conversions. This makes the plugin very useful for affiliate marketers. Unless you’re a coding Ninja, Website Optimizer is otherwise almost useless for affiliate marketing.

Conclusion

This plugin is being sold for $47 and while it definitely works as advertised and is a good product, I guess the main question would be: is it worth the price, compared to the free plugins available?

I’d say that depends mainly on how good you are at coding and how valuable your time is. To me, spending 50 bucks on a plugin like this is a much cheaper solution than spending hours fiddling with code (trying to get click-tracking to work, for example).

In general, if you want to start split-testing and you like to use WordPress, then this is a good solution. If you want to do more advanced, multivariate split testing and don’t mind spending more money on it, then my first recommendation is Visual Website Optimizer. For more “causal” use, WP Split Test Optimizer is the better choice, simply because it’s a solid solution and comes with a one-time price.

Click Here to Get Your Copy