Google’s Wonder Wheel – Cool New Research Tool

By Jay on May 16, 2009

Wonder Wheel is right.

Wonder Wheel is right.

I just noticed a cool new feature on Google. It’s called the Wonder Wheel and its part of Google’s most recent addition – search options.

For users, Google’s Wonder Wheel allows you to get related keyword options you can use to dig and refine your search. It’s ridiculously accurate – I tried searching for ‘kpfingaz’ and it tells me where I live (I always put my country when I register for social sites and forums) and that I’m somehow related to a Wealthy Affiliate, whatever that is ;) .

For marketers, it can come in very handy as a niche research keyword tool. You start with a broad search and get relevant search terms to your subject. And you can always retrace your steps and try other keyword options. Meanwhile, the search engine results are displayed on the page which is useful if you do any SEO or article marketing.

Make Money Online

Make Money Online

In the above example, I did a search for “make money online” and chose to explore “make money online scams”.

While this is my favorite feature of the new Google search options, there are also a lot of other useful features that may be more useful to a searcher than for a marketer. Of course, we cant ignore them because we have to put ourselves in the shoes of a searcher if we want to get our campaigns infront of them.

Here’s Google’s video about the new seach options.

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Yahoo! Answers for Niche Research

By Jay on May 3, 2009

discoveryanswersYahoo! Answers is a fabulous resource for doing niche research. I’ve used Yahoo! Answers so many times to find profitable niches and audiences, do keyword research and even make direct sales.

Although its been abused to death, many marketers simply don’t know how to use Yahoo! Answers correctly or even use it to its fullest potential.

Yahoo! Answers isn’t just for posting links and getting a bit of traffic…its a goldmine if you know how to dig and pan for the gold.

Some of the reasons why Yahoo! Answers is so helpful in researching a niche are:

  • You’re encountering real people with real problems
  • Database of over 3 years to dig through
  • Spot wide range of ideas for promotions and cross promotions
  • Plenty of broad and narrowed down categories to search through

There are a number of ways you could go about researching a niche on Yahoo! Answers but I usually have a topic at hand when I go to Yahoo! Answers.

This is my favorite way to research a topic. You should always go to where the conversation is happening in your niche. A niche focused forum might work well but this works great too.

How To Research A Niche Topic on Yahoo! Answers

As an example, I’m going to use a popular women’s problem – cellulite.

cellulite

Yahoo! Answers for cellulite

The image above gives an overview of what you can do with your research.

  1. I search for the broad topic “cellulite” in the Yahoo! Answers search bar.  This returns me with questions that have the term “cellulite” in there.
  2. You will notice that there are over 6000 results for this term indicating that its a very busy topic. There’s pages and pages of questions to go through.
  3. Take note of questions that indicate a problem. When going through questions you will notice that some questions are asked over and over again. Look at the broad categories (eg. Women’s Health) that the questions exist in that you can always explore to find ideas for cross promotions.
  4. The good thing about doing research on Yahoo! Answers is that Yahoo also shows advertisers alongside the results. This is great because you can see what products advertisers are pushing. Make a note of these also as they might also come in handy for your promotions whether you want to affiliate with them directly or not.

Take a look at some of the questions I came across which indicated real problems that would make great content ideas if I were to tackle this campaign.

  • How to get rid of cellulite naturally.
  • How to reduce cellulite (emphasis on affordability)
  • Reduce cellulite in specific areas (thigh, arms, belly etc)
  • fastest way to lose cellulite
  • exercises to get rid of cellulite (popular question)
  • cellulite remedies that work
  • what foods to eat to get rid of cellulite (asking for diet program??)

Also when you’re researching a niche you also want to take note of niche specific lingo and words that you could use in your campaign. There’s no better way to connect with an audience than to use the words they use – it makes you look more like an expert at the topic.

Here are some words I extracted during my research for this niche.

  • cottage cheese (looks like)
  • dimples (caused by)
  • orange peel (looks like/effect)
  • stretch marks (not the same thing) <—- could use further research (niche idea)

In the discussions, persons may ask about specific products…if they work etc… as well as Yahoo! Answers show what advertisers are pushing. You should definitely take note of these products as well – this cuts your work down a bit where you would then go searching for affiliate programs. Its like everything is right there on Yahoo! Answers.

  • Arbonne Figure 8 vanish
  • Celluthin
  • Nivea lotion
  • Cellulean
  • Nivea Goodbye cellulite (could be same as above)
  • Avon cream
  • Accent (procedure that cost $3000)

That little research took me about 20 minutes to do and I found the topic using another Yahoo! Answers research method – digging down through the broad category of  Health.

Niche research is very easy when using Yahoo! Answers so the next time you’re stuck on what to promote, give this research method a try.

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Flutter is the New Twitter?

By Jay on April 8, 2009

I was kinda liking twitter…that is until I found out about Flutter.

Nah. But for reals, though, what would you do if you only had 26 characters instead of 140?

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I Was Plagiarized!

By Jay on April 5, 2009

copycatI like helping people. I think anyone who knows me well would attest to that.

About two days ago, I noticed a nasty drop in click thru rate on a profitable campaign that I had going on Google Adwords for about 3 weeks. Along with the drop in ctr there was also a drop in conversions.

Well, there had to be an explanation for this sudden change so yesterday I made it my business to investigate.

I used the Competition Spy Tool inside Wealthy Affiliate and searched one of my keywords.

The search returned three results including mines in the top spot. Surely enough, there was another ad that looked exactly like mines.

I’d found it. Someone had copied my ad word for word! So they were taking a share of my clicks using my ad copy. Ouch!

But the shocker was about to come.

My next move was to check out the landing page of my competitor.

When I clicked through to their landing page, I had to look in the address bar twice just to make sure. The landing page was an exact copy of the one I was using…same images, same layout..same content! The only thing different about it was that they had modified it to fit in a Site Rubix template. That’s when I realized that it was someone at Wealthy Affiliate.

Who Was It?

By now I was steaming mad.

This kinda thing had happened before but not to me. Some people are just so lazy that the only way they can get anything done is to use Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V on other people’s hard work.

A whois query on their site turned up nothing. Thank God for private registration, eh?

Then I found a leak on their site to an article on Squidoo. On their lens I found the link to another of their sites.

This time it was a site that I’d been to before and that sucked because it meant only one thing…

I was helping this guy!

I knew him. I had helped him for over a year through private messages and even had him on messenger.

He always asked for advice and I had come to trust him. Seemed like a hard worker too.

What I Did.

Now I won’t have minded as much if someone who I didn’t know had done their research, come across my campaign and copied it. But this was someone I knew and helped out.

My first instinct was to confront him on messenger.

I played it cool at first before dropping it on him that I’d found his site and he was doing something really slimy.

I threatened to expose him on the forums and thats when the apologies and the offers to delete their campaign came. I was mad and he knew it . He admitted to being slimy and even offered me the full earnings he’d made from his campaign.

I declined to take his money and even encouraged him to keep his campaign running if he liked.

However, I let him know that I was deleting him from my contacts…which I did…and that I’d stopped helping him.

I would never steal anyone’s hard work and I would defend my hard work however possible it was. Some people could just go so low. I hope I never have to deal with this again.

Have you ever been plagiarized? How did you deal with it? I’d love to hear.

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April Fools Prank Idea

By Jay on March 28, 2009

Looking for a cool April Fool’s prank to pull on your family, friends or office coworkers?

I’m sure you can find loads of ideas searching the internet but this one is as cool as a popsicle.

Encourage your friends to browse the internet but first reset their homepage to:

Google…with Gravity.

Watch their reactions as they wonder WTF just happened!

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I Got Your Product For Free With Help From Google

By Jay on March 15, 2009

Google Search

Google Search

Amazing what you can do with Google.

This weekend I’m going through the members area of a newly released Clickbank product which was heavily promoted this week and I didn’t even pay for it.

Now I’m not a fan of stealing other people’s hard work but I don’t like spending money on IM products that I don’t need either. I just figured I’d take a look so I could do an unbiased review from the point of view of someone who ‘bought’ the product.

Now this may be a blessing of sorts to me, but to the product owner, I’m sure they won’t be so pleased to know I downloaded their ebook and browsed through their members area looking at their videos and so on. Sowweeee!

If only it hadn’t been for their carelessness this would have never happened. With a little knowledge of how Google works they could have prevented all the pages on their site including the private members area from being indexed. Luckily, not everyone knows this so they’re still going to get sales.

So using a little operator that I use to know if my site or maybe an individual post has been indexed, I can find all the pages on a merchant site that has been indexed.

The operator – Site:www.somesite.com

This shows you all the pages on a site that is in Google’s index. You could use this to do a lot of research that would be productive to your business (not the mischief I’ve been up to.)

How They Could Have Prevented It

Now they could have prevented their members area from being crawled and indexed by the Googlebots by giving them proper instructions in the form of a robots.txt file.

They could have also password protected the directory or web pages used for the members area by using tools included in their cpanel or by using DLGuard which fixes a whole lot of problems they would otherwise have.

All in all, I don’t feel too guilty, knowing that if its in Google’s index and I know how to find it, then its pretty much their problem to do something about it before the whole world finds out.

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I Quit My Job Today

By Jay on March 2, 2009

iquitIf you were making significantly more money with internet marketing than you do at your sometimes stressful job, would you still continue working?

I wouldn’t either…and thats why I quit. When most people are losing their jobs in  the middle of a recession, I quit mines because I’m in control of my own income. That is such a good feeling. I’ll miss some of my coworkers but definitely not the job.

I quit my job so that I could celebrate the success of my online business and so that I could put more effort into building what is mines. I quit so that I can do what I love to do – affiliate and internet marketing.

I would have done so a long time ago but even with quitting your job, you have to have a plan. Savings, consistent income and a general business plan are some of the things you have to consider so that is where I started.

So at last, I’m free.

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Note To Self – Adopt CPA Styled Optin Pages

By Jay on February 23, 2009

trafficdyn1Note to Self:

Its not like you never really thought about it. I mean, its 2009 and you know those old ass squeeze page layouts aint gonna cut it no more. Talk about tired… You know what works? Them Frank Kern type squeeze page layouts…”

Interesting thread over at Wealthy Affiliate about squeeze pages. Its the second time now for the month that I’m being reminded that those old school squeeze pages may just need a rest.

Funny thing is I figured that about myself around middle of last year but still went ahead and beat the hell out of those old school squeeze pages.

So now Jarret (Ghost on WA) brings back up the topic and I really pay attention because I already know this. So what was I waiting for? A kick in the ass?

Here’s an excerpt of Jarret’s post on WA:

As a word of caution, I wouldn’t recommend following that format at all. (Unless you’ve got empirical data and conversion #’s telling you otherwise). Right now people have ADD more than ever. Recent studies are showing that we are flipping through websites even worse than flipping through channels. So people aren’t going to bother reading all that or scroll down to even see the opt in box in the first place.

You’ve GOT to make it short, simple, to the point, give them eye direction (arrows) etc.

If you want to enter the league of extraordinary gentlemen.. STUDY CPA offers.

CPA offers pay out for each and every lead they get which means they HAVE TO know their numbers, make pages that convert like fire, and try to squeeze out every last tactic in the book to improve their conversion rate.. otherwise they’ll get buried and their affiliates will jump ship to an offer that has a better EPC….

Looks like I’m going to be studying a little bit more CPA offers.

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The Conduit Method Works

By Jay on February 22, 2009

conduitmethodI first heard of the Conduit Method while browsing the forums of Wealthy Affiliate. A thread entitled “Conduit Sites Are All the Rage” caught my eye as it had 5 pages of discussion. Something was up and I had to see what all the fuss was about.

The Conduit Method it seems was a way to set up review sites that weren’t all about the opinion of the affiliate but rather a way of showcasing the facts while adding actual consumer reviews. This way you can catch someone late in the buying cycle and put them in front of the facts and appear non biased – a fresh approach from the usual affiliate reviews.

This peaked my interest and I decided to try it. Although the method was laid out on the forum, I figured I would purchase the full works from the author, Chris Rempel, a guy who called himself the ‘lazy marketer‘. In fact, the Conduit Method was nothing but a copy/paste technique that suited lazy affiliates and even the newbie affiliate who didn’t find article marketing or PPC too appealing.

The Conduit Method Review

The Conduit Method pdf kinda disappointed me because I already had the information that was contained inside and there wasn’t anything new. However, I had bought the upsell which had videos and sample review site templates you could use as well as complimentary pdf files. These I found interesting and the videos were rather entertaining and somewhat revealing compared to the original Conduit Method pdf.

Overall, its a good product but if you’ve already seen how the Conduit Method instructions which are available for free on the Warrior Forum and maybe elsewhere, then you have to be prepared to get the full package.

Taking Action

I decided to take action immediately and started setting up my first Conduit Site. I jacked one of the templates that Chris was using (saw it in the video) and customized it for the market I had chosen. 5 days later I had the usual contact, privacy policy, blog, and sitemap pages plus two product review pages set up.

I went about getting some backlinks and posting to the blog. The site was far from finished. I just had to get some more product reviews on it and I’m good.

How The Conduit Method Worked For Me

Not long after the site was indexed, I began seeing the power of the Conduit Method. I though it was indeed interesting that a site that had only two reviews with no top listings in Google and even signs that the site was still not finished would perform as well as it did.

Here’s some results I woke up to this morning:

181 hops – 8 sales – $269.20 conversion rate 1:31

This to me was more than incredible for a site that I didn’t expect to perform until I had finished it. The Conduit Method works and I see myself doing more with this.

Check out Chris Rempel’s Conduit Method here.

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TV Traffic

By Jay on February 15, 2009

watching_tvTv might seem like a big distraction to most marketers but to the observant marketer this can be a very important source of huge traffic.

For one, your target audience owns a television. I don’t know who your target audience is but one thing is for sure, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the weight loss niche or the make money niche – your target audience is watching tv.

This presents a very good opportunity for you to intercept traffic that is generated from this popular offline source.

Look at it this way; Tom is watching tv. He sees an ad for a new weight loss diet and since he’s been trying to lose weight for as long as he could remember he decides to check it out on the internet. So, where’s your site? You can be sure that Tom won’t be the only one checking out that new product.

I’ve used this traffic technique to get as much as 5000 visits a day to one of my promotions with sales to match so I know it works. And the best thing about this is that since the ads keep showing over time, you’re sure to get traffic again and again.

Another additional benefit of the TV Traffic method is that television can create new searches and if you catch them very early then you’ll have very little competition to deal with. One way to catch these new searches is to keep an eye on Google Hot Trends where many of these tv influenced searches show up.

I’ve shown this traffic method to my friends at Wealthy Affiliate and they all agree that its a brilliantly creative way of getting traffic to your website, blog or even your articles.

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