Going nowhere fast.

[grooveman]

Sometimes I feel like I am spinning my wheels in the mud. I have well over 200 good quality articles (on ezine mostly) and other places. I have created squidoo lenses, wordpress blogs and have literally worked every single day for 5 or 6 hours a day on bum marketing methods.. I have been working my ass off and am averaging only one sale a week.
Obviously I need to drive more traffic to my sites and that is what my BIG weakness is... SEO.
A friend had suggested the senuke program as a good way to drive traffic to my sites, but I can't see shelling out $60-100 a month for that.. Is there a good resource that someone could point me to that might help me with the SEO part?

Thanks!
Russ

[david_mclean]

willyboy has an seo blog. deffo worth a read : SEO Tutorials | SEO Blog | SEO Tips | Backlinks | SEO Tutorials

[troyn]

I'm no expert, but I have done ok on my own efforts, and hope this forum helps take me to the next level,

But it sounds to me like a keyword issue, if you have 200 decent articles you should be making more then 1-2 sales a week.

Again I'm just guessing but I would think that it's the keywords you chose. Myself I like to choose keywords that have enough monthly volume and low enough competing sites. Everyone like to target different ones but i like keywords that have at least

20 hits a day but less then 50,000 competing sites.

[PlatinumPi4u]

Sometimes, it helps to give away a "freebie" on one of your sites...

Set up a squeeze page with an incentive for them to sign up....

create a list for each niche you have and market to it too...

add this prong into your fork........

I'll send out 1 email and 1 month later I still will get a sale from someone who had bought through that email that I sent...

[Blackman]

To do SEO right you have to know "the power" of articles/blogs/web 2.0 stuff.

Let's say, if you are writing an article at EA, and want it to get ranked on the top of SERPs, then you shouldn't go for any keyword that has more than 10k competition. Sometimes, it's even 5k. Article marketing is very random and unpredictable. If you want to make proper money with that, then you need to constantly writing articles. Just having 100 or 200 is not enough.

In regards of Bum Marketing, which is more than just writing articles, you have learn SEO definitely. Anyone can write short articles for EA and then wait to get top rankings for long tails in Google, but managing blogs and sites is a bigger deal.

[antantnz]

grooveman ...

you mention 1 sale a week ... how many hops do you get though? are you getting lots of hops, hardly any sales? or just hardly any hops? do you get lots of traffic hardly any hops? or just hardly any traffic? as you can see, lots of possible combinations, and each one is likely to have a different cause ...

also, one problem with squidoo, wordpress.com blogs is they can have a lot of leaks ... try and minimise these, try and get the reader to buy

[grooveman]

To do SEO right you have to know "the power" of articles/blogs/web 2.0 stuff.

I got the senuke program so lets see what I can do with that. I have heard good things about it. And I have been doing more keyword research than I did in the beginning. I write good articles with proper kw density, strong call to action and all that. So I have that part down anyway but yes, SEO is what I have to work on.

you mention 1 sale a week ... how many hops do you get though? are you getting lots of hops, hardly any sales? or just hardly any hops? do you get lots of traffic hardly any hops? or just hardly any traffic? as you can see, lots of possible combinations, and each one is likely to have a different cause ...

Typically I get 100-150 total hops a day but that is a combined total for 20 -40 different products that show up in my analytics. So on some of them, I guess my hops to sale ratio is about where it should be. I basically need to work on ways to increase traffic to my sites and not rely so much on article marketing like I have been.

I appreciate the input from everyone. What it comes down to is learning SEO and working on driving traffic to my site.

[Jamie Lopes]

Well, 20-40 different products.. That could also have something to do with it. Should test out each product, see how conversions are, tweak landing page accordingly. If the 150 hops are spread out throughout so many products, it's really hard to figure out what is working and what isn't. Try to focus on the best converting of the bunch right now, if there are any steady earners.

[lucidflux]

A lot of articles can be good, because there is really no such thing as duplicate content. You need to make a long 500 word article for site/blog of yours and post it there first. Then, take the concept of the article and rewrite it to about 250-300 words. Take this article and post it to top 10 article sites for links and traffic to make sales.If you are posting to Ezine you need to use the same author name at all places. Then take the article and put it on squidoo, wp, blogger, and build these micro sites with new articles with links pointing to your own blog/site with the anchor. Then social book mark all the micro sites and the links will power through all your stuff to the lander. I really don't know much about what you bought, but I doubt it is that different.

[NCMedia]

My .02.

Look at this whole current data you have in front of you. 20 products, divided by 100-150hops a day = ouch. Look at your conversions, and pick the top two-three selling products (look over long term). Now focus on getting nothing but 100-150hops to EACH program a day. You should be able to as you'll open up your time to focus on laser targeted campaigns and not many of them instead of chasing 20 nickels at the same time.

It's rather easy to say something like "I got 2 hops a day for a year, that's 730 hops and I didn't convert...". 100hops a day to each program minimum. If you've proven keywords, and landers from your bum efforts, put the rest of the stuff to the side for a second and consider it a huge split test to see what converted best and why. Now focus on replicating what worked, eliminating what didn't and only focus your time on proven profitable campaigns only until you peak them. Then you start split testing again but with more confidence this time and less than 20 products Trying to push 20 products with bum marketing is nutzoid IMO.

The rest of the advice regarding seo, building your first list, and starting to think about other ways to lengthen and monetize your eyeballs in different ways is a good next step for you. Also - are you using a few different formulas for landers? Re split testing domain landers with a forced clickthrough like we usually do for our products, or are you trying to go to merchants from squid/blog (which is not going to be nearly as effective)?

Hope this helps a bit more,
NC.

[jimmybloggs91]

I dont want to kiss Norbs ass too much but he is soooo right in what he's just said!

[grooveman]

Yeah I kind of went crazy with throwing up domains and such. Everytime I saw a cool product I was all over it and ended up spreading myself too thin. I have been really concentrating on just a few products lately and those are where my few sales per month are (get ex back niche and alternative energy) In fact my last sale was for iplanet.
All my landers are my own, either created from free templates or wordpress. I do have some squidoo lenses and other blogs scattered here and there, but most everything is from my own domain.
So I think I will take a step back, and pick one product a week to put all my energies in because as it is now, I am just bouncing all over the place.
I have also been working on list building the last couple months since I opened an aweber acct, but I don't have too many signed up yet.. Again, not enough traffic.

[NCMedia]

Cool, you're heading in the right direction. In point form:

* Listbuilding - don't worry, keep building and think 1 year down the road, just don't stop building/adding more opts/autoresponders when you can. I had a bitch of a time building lists for a few years but it was worth it, you'll see in 6months to a year.

* Focus on the 2-3 that are converting only and quickly note exactly what marketing tactics you're currently using (as you've done above).

* Look at the community and try at least 4-5 things you normally wouldn't, follow advice that looks 'too hard' or 'different' than what you'd normally do... Be random even just to dip your toes in a few new tactics you might not have known you'd be great at.

* Instead of a lot of articles, perhaps try to focus on a few killer well written/read/researched/key'd articles using a different writing style (good advice and tips on article marketing re writing styles in that part of this forum).

* Once you've narrowed down your time and tasks on only proven profitable moves day to day, you'll start to grow faster and learning curve will become less 'spinning your wheels' and more 'progressive take off' with time vs. return.

It's hard to let go of campaigns when you've busted your butt on them, however the more you look at what you've done to date, and what worked best, and laser in on it, you start to forget about the older investments/campaigns as you continue to develop profitable new ones. << Which will also some day have their final sales so diversifying a bit from day one (but not too much case in point) is important as well.

I think with a few tweaks in your time management and data mining/duplicating only profitable moves you could easily be doing daily sales - all comes down to amount of that gold traffic/hops you can pull to those most profitable programs.

Cool re iplanet - if it's been converting well with low volume hops than take it up a notch and try to focus on getting that 100hops/day. I always say imagine if it 'was' a day job/9-5, would it really take you 8hrs to get 100hops from today or yesterdays efforts? If so then work on your time management maximizing most profitable paths to your accounts to date...

N.

[grooveman]

Thanks again everybody for the input.. One of the problems I have is that there are so many people doing this in so many different ways it just confuses me. I guess there is more than one way to see results,and everyone has their own formula.
It's like an information overload..

[Ganceann]

Thanks again everybody for the input.. One of the problems I have is that there are so many people doing this in so many different ways it just confuses me. I guess there is more than one way to see results,and everyone has their own formula.
It's like an information overload..

That is a blessing and a curse... but it should also tell you something... that everyone has their own method that works for them.

If you take logical steps and try various things, you will eventually find what works for you. It is then a case of replicating it and increasing your ROI to the point where you can quickly assess a new product/campaign and figure out whether it is worth your time to build it up.

[antantnz]

wowsers ...

the advice given in this is just brilliant ... you know, i am a bit similar to grooveman in that i have spread myself a bit too thin and kept chasing the next big thing rather than focussing on getting that 100 hops per day per product ... through a bit of luck i was still doing quite nicely, but the luck has run out a little and it's time to be more focussed and for me i need to do exactly what norb has suggested to grooveman too ...

i think the advice given here would apply to A LOT of people ... maybe it's worth a sticky at some point?

[grooveman]

Here is the latest, based upon advice and info I have gotten from this forum this is what I have been doing the last couple of days. I would greatly appreciate some feedback from the SEO and marketing pros on this.

I am just concentrating on one niche, over a couple of different domains right now to see if this works, here what I do every day (for the last few days anyway)

I take one of my recently published ezine articles and rewrite it a little and post it to about 4-6 different higher pr article directories, or wikihow type sites. I have two links to the site I am promoting in the resource with my long tail keywords as the anchor text. I also link back to the original ezine article with a "reference" hyperlink at the bottom of the article.

I then take that same ezine article, change it up some more and use it to create 10-12 web 2.0 sites on blogger, wordpress, zimbio, wetpaint and several others with the same links and reference link to my original ezine article.

I bookmark all of the above sites and articles on about 20 different social network sites like digg, propeller, delicious etc.

I submit an rss feed for the web 2.0 sites t feedage and several other rss sites.

Thats about it, any suggestions good or bad?

Thanks,
Russ

[grooveman]

And it continues.....

I have been putting up 20-40 web 2.0 sites every day for the last 4 or 5 days, I have been doing my keyword research, writing good content, bookmarking, pinging, submiting rss feeds, submitting more web 2.o sites linking to the first set of sites, bookmarking,pinging, screaming out the window....etc etc...'STILL NO SALES.. I just don't get it, I have been doing everything that I think I can possibly do right now,, does it take some time for all this SEO work to take effect?

Any suggestions, advice etc is GREATLY appreciated! Sorry to seem so impatient but you would think that I would be seeing at least something by now.

[grooveman]

I guess I successfully killed this thread.. thanks everybody for the advice..

[NCMedia]

Groove,

This thread has actually been stickied, sometimes the blueprints and steps you follow/project simply won't profit as quickly or as successfully as one always hopes. This is going to illustrate the various ups/downs one sometimes goes through, and mark my words the day will come sooner than later that you update this thread with your first batch of sales once your trial/error and patience pay off.

Don't sweat it mate, keep learning and submitting gold to ezine for now until you pop your first cherry, the rest of the stuff you are doing is good and as long as your keys are relevant, and you're getting your 100hops a day (or even 50 for now) you WILL see conversions mate. Rather hard to believe you haven't converted yet or managed to get your traffic higher however your own mistakes now will make you a more precision targeted marketer once you hit a few successful paths to profit. Nothing teaches you like your own mistakes/successes.

Don't give up, please update this thread once you pop your cherry.
N.

[mill123]

yeah man. keep going. when i started to concentrate on bum it took _forever_ to get there. then i got lucky with a new product and bam. heap of sales. it takes time but it works. just try to dominate those serps and you'll get there. once you figure out how you did it you can skip all the shit that you dont need to do and go straight for the gold methods. of course this is not always the same but its not hard to figure out.

how are you ranking for the keyphrases you have targeted?? if you have that many sites up you should be seeing something.

[grooveman]

Thanks for the encouragement guys I do appreciate it..

I have made a few sales, but only a dozen or so since Jan 1st, which is of course, nowhere near enough considering the time I have put into this..
I think I have identified my weaknesses however, One of them is that I tend to jump on board with every new product that comes along. So I spread myself too thin, across several different niches rather than just starting with one and putting all my efforts into that one until it paid off.
Also, I tend to get into highly competitive niches like weight loss, where there is tons of competition. And that brings me to the third weakness, which is choosing the RIGHT keywords. I have used various keyword tools, but haven't found that magic formula yet for picking the right ones. And I suck at PPC too, so that's four.

how are you ranking for the keyphrases you have targeted?? if you have that many sites up you should be seeing something.

mill123. TO answer your question, on ONE of the niches I have been really working on heavily lately, the get ex back niche, I honestly don't even see any of the sites I have created in the last 4 or 5 days for the long tail keywords I have chosen. I don't know if it just takes more time for those blogger type sites to get indexed, or what. I don't know if there is some kind of tool I can use to check where I am in the rankings or not..


As far as strengths, I would have to say writing articles. I can write a helluva good article with a strong title, proper kw density and a strong call to action. My ctr on my ezine articles is usually very good, but for some reason they clicks aren't converting that well when they get to the presell page, or publishers page.
I have been thinking about doing away with presell pages anyway because I wondered if after reading an article, that the potential customer needs to be sold any more on the product before they actually get to the page where they can buy the product. Sometimes I think it's overkill to do that, but then again, maybe not.
So for now I am going to pump out a bunch of blogger sites every day, do a lot of social bookmarking,and try to do better keyword research and just hang in there until I have reached my first goal. $100 dollars a day consistently. Then to my second goal which is $500 a day.

I don't think I have ever been so determined in my life to see something work. This is my shot at early retirement, and I am NOT giving up.

Thanks again everybody!

[Navtej]

hey, honestly i think you are doing the EXACT SAME MISTAKE I DID!

a few months ago i started with weight lose,acne and other competive niches only to find my hard work go down the drain because i wasnt getting any sales... in fact 0 sales !

then i started to get into smaller niches but ounce again i made another mistake, i went in sevral niches without making 1 on autopilot ( get good rankings ). This leaded to 0 sales aswell.

Now, a few weeks ago i started on 1 niche and gave it my all... SUCCESS i have already had 97$ days and i am makling great cash without doing anything. Just today i got 3 sales and it all comes from the work i did 2-3 weeks ago.

I have school so i couldnt work on anything but the point is, i get around 100-200$ per week doing nothing ( well atleast for now) from bummarketing.

CHANGE NICHE!~

[grooveman]

Yeah I definitely screwed up by getting into these super competitive niches but I figure if I can make a few sales in those, then I should be able to handle the less competetive niches with relative ease.
I am still cranking out these blogger sites every day, sometimes 30-40 a day, linking to my main site, backlinking, and still writing articles. I am seeing some progress from my work, and sales are up to about 2 a week now instead of 1. So if I keep it up maybe I'll hit that $100 a day goal in a few months.

Waiting for REPI. Already got 10 articles and a lander ready to go.. Bring it on!

[lemonarian]

Hey, try using other platforms to build links.. you're really shooting yourself in the foot if you're only cranking out blogger blogs. I can get out like 40 web 2.0 properties as well, but I diversify my strategy... Well my entire web 2.0 strategy is basically by using linkwheels. Diversification is the only free lunch bro.

Keep up that motivation Everything will 'click' in your head soon enough.

[grooveman]

I have managed to put a lot of your stuff into action.. I put up blogger sites, rss, bookmark, ping and everything else.. I see the occasional site or article in the first few pages of Google which is nowhere near good enough considering the work I have done and the number of sites floating around out there.. I havent followed the "wheel" strategy much because of the way I put the sites up, but I do plan to start doing that more. I will just have to start manually creating some of the blogs instead of using software to do it..

Anyway, still working at it. I have a feeling that good things lie ahead..

[Xingo]

Interesting thread...

Putting so much work in it... doing all what I should be doing...yet no sales...
It rings so true for most of us, doesn't it? yet few people are laughing all the way to the bank.

Yes some methods are working very well for some, but when that is the case, the same marketers start creating products on their winning methods as if those are the secret path to internet marketing wealth. Affiliates jump on the new products, and a load of money is mainly made by the product creator and super affiliates.

I have been online long enough to see that and similar pattern repeating over and over and why most marketers are falling into the same merry-go-round, leading nowhere.

There may be a way out this if we look at the fundamentals: what is Google looking for? answer: targeted content tied to related keywords.
Another fundamental: what are the factors that create a sale? One or two marketers out there do illustrate these fundamentals.

I hope that helps,
Xingo

[kaita1]

I am kind of worried now as I have been concentrating on writing and submitting articles and am hoping to see my site go up in rank and page.

I need more help to get this all figured out but it sounds like you are doing the right thing in a lot of ways IMO

Best of luck to you really,

Kim

[grooveman]

Thanks. It does seem to be getting a little better but the sales are really just still trickling in and nowhere near what I want them to be. I know what to do, problem is finding the time to do it..
I need to clone myself.

[cduncan]

A small tip if you are looking to increase both traffic and conversion rate...

Having a small 5-6 page site on one niche/product and having it ranked for 5-6 relevant keywords you choose works a lot better than just 1 article all by itself. It gives google a little bit to work with and ranks you a little higher.

All you have to do is...

1. Make 5-6 articles that relate to the niche. (like; what it is, how to do it, etc. Determines on niche) Its better if the articles are on questions people would normally have before purchasing the product.
2. Write an article for each article you create to submit it to all article directories and social bookmarking sites to give it a search engine boost. (the articles have to be closely related, same keyword works great)
3. Wait 5-10 days to see where your small site ranks for each article.

Having a small site that supports one keyword with all other articles a type of FAQ helps conversions by up to 200% more.

You can possibly rank really high for a keyword that was really hard with just an article.

That's my 2 cents i guess. Since you seem to work really hard, this would be your best bet.

Hope you succeed man,

Chad

Throw me a private message with your results if you use this way.

[Kid B]

I thought I was the only one. I am also frustrated which sent me here. I have been doing about 3-4 a week and hope to do more through the insight I learned here.