by Claude Pelanne at November 5, 2010.

Monthly Archives: September 2010

PodCamp Boston 5 Review

PodCamp Boston 5

Boston Night Scene

I spent the week end at the Podcamp Boston 5 conference and had a great time.

Sessions covered all kinds of areas. Ebook publishing, time management, social media best practices, and yes, how to make podcasting a full time thing.

The sessions were great but what made the experience unique was the open nature of the event. Sessions were not the typical closed class type of set up.

It was conference policy that you should participate and float in and out as you wished. In other words, it was open door at all times. And if any session didn’t do it for you, then you could set one up on your own and get people to join in.

There were learning pods in alcoves and rooms through out the facility.

That is what made the experience unique. My only regret is that I didn’t take advantage of some of the learning groups as they sprouted up at any given time.

All in all it was a great time with a great group of people.

I have a couple of video reviews so check them out if you want to.

Here are the links:

PodCamp Boston Day 1

PodCamp Boston Day 2

That’s it. Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

Traffic – How To Increase Web Site Traffic

If you are in the business of Affiliate marketing then you know there is more to finding the right product and setting up your WEB site. The next hurdle is to drive traffic your way. Here are three ways to accomplish just that.

Search Engine Optimization –SEO

The idea behind Search Engine Optimization is to increase the chance of search engines placing your site high in the ranking when someone types in a keyword. You can do this by including keywords in the content of your website so that they are selected by the search engine fingers that search through the web for keywords. You can select keywords by using established keyword tracking tools that rank keywords more apt to be heavily used by your potential customers.

There are SEO tools available online to help guide you through the process of selecting keywords and learning what to look for. Some of the more established affiliate programs will include these tools as part of their offerings to their membership.

Article Writing

One way to increase traffic is to write articles and post them to an article directory. Article directories will take your articles free of charge and make them available to the public at large. In exchange for your content you can insert a link to your web site. This will increase traffic to your product site and will increase your sales.
One way to carry through on article writing is to set up a schedule and deliver a set number of articles per month. In this way you increase your exposure and traffic to your site.

Different article sites have guidelines you have to respect in order to get published. Among the most important are: you must be the original author of the written material; information presented has to be accurate, useful and easy to understand; for some sites, the article must be at least 500 words and not more than 2000; and you must have copyright of the material presented. Some sites will ask for permanent reprint rights before accepting your submission.

Given the guidelines, article writing is one of the best ways to build a customer base while helping others out as they try to make sense of the online environment.

Blogs

Blogging is an activity that has really taken off on the Internet. There are blogs for literally everything that you can imagine. One way businesses drive traffic to their sites is by setting up blogs that customers use to find out about the product or business. You can set up your own blog with your own content and link it back to your own site. You will not only get traffic, but you will get feedback from customers to help keep up with the marketplace. The point here is to create really quality content that your readers will like and the search engines like to find. Another thing is to refresh the blog with new content so the searches will come back and increase your page ranking and position.

There is another way to drive traffic and that is using Pay Per Click advertising. That is the subject of another article and is not recommended for the beginner, at least not at the outset.

These are some of the ways you can increase traffic to your site. It will take some time and effort to put in place but it is time well worth it since you will see traffic and revenue increase as a result.

Good luck and may your travels be prosperous.

Market Samurai Competition Module

Market Samurai SEO competition Module

Spot your competition

Market Samurai SEO Competition Module

One of the most important parts of working a niche is checking out the competition.

To do that you need to know who they are and how they are set up.

The Market Samurai competition module does that in one screen and color codes the level of difficulty for you.

The SEO Competition Module

You see the url of the top 10 sites for your keyword. You see the domain age, page rank, pages indexed, backlinks to the page and backlinks to the whole domain.

You also see if your competition has any back links for .gov or .edu sites and whether it is on DMOZ or the Yahoo Directory.

You see all on page SEO information; namely whether your keyword is in the title,description, keyword or header tag.

You also see how often the site is cached by Google.

There are other capabilities as well.

The Drop Down Menu Bar

Click a drop down button to the right of the url and you get a host of tools to dig deeper.

There is a page rank analysis button that shows you where the back links are coming from.

There is an anchor text button to analyze what anchor text is driving the links.

There is a link for Google trends to show you what the geographic drivers are for your competition and a Whois button to tell you who the owner is specifically.

There are buttons to check out Quantcast and Alexa for a look at demographic information about your competition.

Conclusion

All in all, you have in one place, all the tools you need to size up your competition and make informed decisions on how to move forward.

This tool is a great way to get a lot done in a short period of time and pays for itself many times over.

The Market Samurai Competition module is a part of the paid service on Noble Samurai.

The point to make is that it is a one time payment so you can amortize your investment against future profits.

I use this tool virtually every day and in my view it is well worth it.

So take action and check it out; the Market Samurai Internet Marketing suite.

There you have it. Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

Affiliate Marketing For Beginners-How To Start In Affiliate Marketing

Get 5% off at Crucial

Home Business: Steps for the Newbie Affiliate Marketer

Starting out with an online Home Business is a daunting task. Where do you find a reliable and legitimate program that can teach you the basics? What are the steps to follow to get up and running?

Home Business Market Research

The first step is to do some research and see what people are saying on different Affiliate Marketing forums. What are the names of affiliate programs that keep popping up from satisfied marketers? Check out those sites and see which one fits your particular need or style. There is no simple answer. Some sites are free, but most legitimate programs have some nominal charge or subscription fee. That is good because it weeds out those who are not serious in setting up a business.

Affiliate Program Forum

Once you have a program, take the time to follow through the tutorial and learn the basics. It takes time and effort to see what the different tools are and how they work. Over time you will begin to better understand the different elements of the business and how they can contribute to creating revenue streams. Again, a forum related to the program may exist or a forum in the particular business sector may be available. Join in and ask questions about all aspects of your plan. You will be surprised by how helpful people are in giving you the information you need.

Some lessons will emerge. For example, is it more profitable to use unique web pages for each product you sell? It looks more professional. Generally, each product you pay to resell will come with customized designed pages. That is why it makes more sense to market from a unique Web site. Do you need to buy keywords or are there ways to market without risking your money up front? Different programs offer different approaches along these lines.

Affiliate Marketing Product Selection

Buy the products you sell. It shows you believe in what you are selling. That’s why it pays to research your product and product provider carefully. What kind of commission is being offered (generally 50% or better is what you are looking for.)? Are there any backend products that can be sold at higher price points? These are a couple of the questions you will need to know about when selecting a product.

Product Reviews

Write reviews of your product lines. They should focus on the features and benefits and help inform your customers to better make their decision to buy. Your reviews and products pages should include opt-in links to help build your customer list.

Follow up your opt-in inquiries with an autoresponder message campaign that will work to help you close the sale with your customers. You can set up a sequence of email replies that will help connect and close your prospective customers.

Conclusion

These are some points that will grow out of your effort as you move through the business development phase of your online business.

With some upfront planning and due diligence and following some basic steps, anyone can achieve a satisfactory level of success with a home based business on the Web.

Good luck and may your travels be prosperous!

Get 5% off at Crucial

Market Samurai Permutations Feature

Market Samurai Keyword Research Tool

Market Samurai Keyword Research Tool Add Permutations

I just did a video about the Market Samurai Keyword Research tool and more specifically the keyword permutations feature.

Keyword Permutations

Keyword permutations are simply the different ways a keyword combination can possibly appear in the search results or be used by someone searching online.

So for example the permutations for drum set electronic would bring back the following permutations:

drum set electronic

drum electronic set

set drum electronic

set electronic drum

electronic drum set

electronic set drum

What the Market Samurai keyword tool does is show you these permutations and the data that tell you which of these keywords has value as a traffic generator.

You can them optimize for this keyword.

What you now have is a way to find keywords that are not obvious at first site or may not even be on your initial list that can help you in your marketing campaign.

If you want to get a visual reference just watch the video below or check out my YouTube channel.

The Permutation feature of Market Samurai is a great way to get keywords “out of the box” and give you the edge in your online efforts.

It is all the more important given the new release of Google Instant Search. With this new real time search feature, long tail keywords will play an ever more important role in the search returns on Google.

You should check out Market Samurai.

I hope this has been helpful.

Stay with it , stay well and may your travels be prosperous.