Skip to content

Using Scribd For Getting Keywords

Hi guys,

I’m still around although very busy at the moment. For various reasons, I am currently working my butt off to reach various goals on mine (I’ll post more about goal setting in the near future).

Anyway, I thought I’d share with you a cool site I’ve known about for months but never really used until recently.

Scribd is an online document site. It’s kinda like the Youtube of documents. There are other document sites out there too and they make great place to upload your own reports and ebooks (with link backs to your own sites of course!):

http://www.scribd.com
http://www.issuu.com
http://www.openfloodgate.com
http://www.docstoc.com
http://www.edocr.com
http://www.doxtop.com

As well as uploading your books, you can do a search and they are a great way to do niche research. Like Youtube, there are also a lot of pirated books on there too so there could be problems ahead for Scribd.

Anyway, the best thing about Scribd compared to the other sites is that you can see the search engine referrer information for each page. This is a goldmine of niche keyword data!

Lots of the keywords are question type keywords such as “How do I…” or “What…” style keyword phrases.

Hope this helped and do you have any of your own keyword tricks that you can share with us? Please leave a comment and let us know :)

Posted 01 July 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (3) °

How to Survey Your Customers and Prospects

It’s very important to survey your list. To find out what they want so you can deliver the value they are looking for.

I’ve looked into how to do this - there are ways such as using SurveyMonkey but then I found this great tutorial on Aweber’s site which tells you how to make a survey using Google Docs and the results are very easy to do and impressive!

Check it out:

How to Survey Your Customers and Prospects

PS how do you currently do your own surveys? Do you have any tips to share such as what kind of questions to ask to elicit the best quality and most responses? We’d love to hear from you :)

Posted 19 May 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

How To Find Higher Quality Niche Forums

Probably you already know that forums are a great place to do niche research.

In forums, people gather to discuss the issues relating to that niche. They ask the most common questions and the experts reply with the different solutions. Exactly the material that you need to create a great product that will satisfy a need in that market.

The problem is that there are a lot of really low quality forums out there. Some of them are filled with spam, some are deserted, some are commercial. It can be tough to find the really good ones.

I have a number of good methods for finding good forums but one killer query that I use is to search for the phrase “vbulletin“.

So let’s say I wanted to find quality dog training forums. Then I would type into Google:

“dog training” vbulletin

The reason for this is because vbulletin is a type of forum software that is generally reckoned to be “the best”. And for this reason, it is also a paid license (one method is to lease the software) - that’s how valuable it is.

So when you find a site with a vbulletin forum, whose license has had to be paid for by the site owner, then you can generally be sure that it is a decent quality forum.

Do you have any other methods that you personally use to find good quality forums? Please leave a comment as we would love to hear from you :)

Posted 15 May 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

How To Calcuate Clickbank Refund Rate

Those of you who promote Clickbank products might be interested to know that there is a way of finding out the refund rate of a product before you decide to try and sell it.

Although not published, it can be calculated from the product stats that you are shown.

Rather than use a pen and paper and calculate the formula, it’s easier to just use a premade web calculator.

Just type into Google:

clickbank calculate refund rate

I did it and this was the first link I visited to my satisfaction:

http://cbhelper.com/refund-calculator.html

Try it for yourself, you might be surprised by the results you get.

Posted 12 May 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Effective Article Template For High Click-Thrus

Do you suffer from articles (on directories) with low click-throughs to your main page? I know I do.

So I’ve started to use this template that EzineArticles themselves recommend.

To quote:

The Pain Avoidance Template Simple Layout:

1. Introduce the pain. No more than (1) paragraph.
2. Give real-world solutions to the pain. (3-10) paragraphs max.
3. Tell why the solutions offered solves the pain. (1-2) paragraphs max.
4. Wrap up with a (1) paragraph conclusion that reinforces why your reader is in pain, how you recommended they solve that pain and why it’s in their best interest to follow your advice.

Get the full info here:
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2008/04/the-pain-avoidance-template.html

Hopefully I can report back soon my results to you.

Posted 10 May 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Finally I Have A Computer Desk!

Have you ever considered your working environment and whether it might be affecting your productivity?

For 2 years now I have been doing all my computer work from a sofa. Yes, a sofa!!!

Little wonder then then I started to get irritable with leg pains and a bad back.

I decided to bite the bullet and get a desk. Here in the UK, organising deliveries and taking time off work can be a bitch, to say the least.

Luckily, I managed to find a good desk at my local catalogue store. It cost the equivalent of 60 dollars and comes flatpacked as wood and metal tubes. I noticed it was made in China, no doubt for barely a dollar. These crazy markups on physical goods from China got me thinking again about looking into importing, a thought which I have had for a while (I reviewed a product on “importing from China recently” and it was very interesting to say the least. There are a ton of import sites out there - here is just one that you can check out just to get more of an idea - http://www.chinavasion.com).

Life with this new desk is so much better. I have better posture, my neck is not straining. I am no longer glued to the PC all day and when I do sit at it, I automatically feel like “working” and not “surfing”. It’s an incredible transformation!

In case you are interested, here is a link to the desk. There is a wooden shelf in the bottom but I did not install it because it would have left zero legroom!

Beech Finish Computer Desk and Chair Set

Posted 08 May 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Free Mind Mapping Software

I don’t know if you have heard of this site, but bubbl.us is taking the internet marketing world by storm.

This site is a free online mind mapping software which I understand is used and recommended by some gurus too.

What Is Mind Mapping Software?

This type of software is great for developing ideas - whether you need to brainstorm an idea for a project, work out the key parts to a product launch, plan your site marketing strategy or more, then mind mapping software can be really powerful.

In the past I have used software such as Mindjet for mind mapping but bubbl.us is really good and I am pleasantly surprised with the good results. You can even share and collaborate on mind maps with other people.

Check it out for yourself here: bubbl.us - brainstorming made simple.

Posted 04 May 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (3) °

4 Hour WorkWeek And My Own Changing Plans

Hey guys,

As you will know from my previous posts, I’ve been meaning to get back into product creation again (in January I decided to go into front-end list building) so I decided to bite the bullet and drop everything else for at least a couple of weeks to get the ball rolling (from my personal experience, getting momentum is the hardest part).

Coincidentally, I have picked up a copy of Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Work Week. Man, I can’t tell you what a revelation this is!

This guy does whatever he wants, when he wants, and for work a.k.a. income generation, he barely has to contribute a few hours per week total. Most of the time he can do what he wants!

I have heard people say that they would prefer to be kept busy (??) but I think they miss the point. He is kept busy, by doing what he wants to do. Sure, marketing is fun and beats a 9-5 job, but I still regard making money as a job, albeit probably the best. But imagine if you could free your time to do other things like Tim has done - become a motorcycle racer, participate in a national tango contest in Argentina, win a kickboxing tournament even though weeks earlier you knew jack about this martial art.

OK, I’m going to shut up now - why? Because, I need to focus on dedicating my precious time towards the most important tasks that will allow me to realise my goals. Some of my projects I will abandon, others I will put in as little time as possible, but I must focus on what I believe is best for me and will allow me to realise my goals - and right now that is product creation.

Of course, I will still be keeping in contact with my readers here, fear not ;)

But think about it yourself, as Tim says in his book, if you were struck down ill tomorrow and had only 2 hours per day to do any work towards your goals, what would you do? The best thing is to simply do those most important things and abandon or outsource the rest.

Have any of you guys read the book, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts?

TTFN

Chris

Posted 16 April 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

End Of Term Report: 30 Day Challenge - 50 Bucks Per Day By End Of March

Let me start by saying that unfortunately I did not meet my target. I would sure be interested in any advice that any “richer” readers of this blog have, based on my descriptions of activities in previous posts.

So the final verdict?

Total made in March = $263.98
Average per day = $8.50 per day

Obviously, this is far short of the 50 bucks per day that I was looking for. I could probably have reached it if I had done nothing but bum marketing but I have been working at long term income.

The good news is that there was a significant increase compared to previous months. I used to wait for a single sale every two weeks on my Clickbank stats but now I see a sale approximately every 3 or 4 days.

Where have they come from?

A mixture:

  • some from old bum marketing campaigns
  • one from a Youtube video
  • the vast majority from my niche lists

So What Now?

Well, those niches where I did make conversions from my lists have averaged around 5 articles per conversion or so.

That’s not bad but I wonder how I would have done had I just done a simple bum marketing style direct to sales page strategy.

Anyway, I think I should continue with these lists although I’m not sure about how to drive traffic - article marketing is very time consuming and also expensive to outsource, in my opinion.

I am slowly coming back to the point of view that after taking time to write content, it is better used on your own sites to get SEO traffic than for the temporary spike you get from the article directories.

This month, I am looking to do a few things:

  • create a new product - this time in a converting niche unlike my last forays
  • PPC - I have recently joined Wealthy Affiliate (more on that later) and am currently conducting a PPC experiment (again, more on my progress shortly).
  • continue adding content to a few niche sites that I have recently created for monetisation by Adsense or affiliate products
  • a new secret list project
  • a high ticket bum marketing experiment

So What Do You Think?

I’ve had to reassess what I’ve done and what I should change to meet my future targets. If I get it right, PPC could really help with this but otherwise we are talking slow burning long term assets.

That’s a mantra I’ve been repeating to myself a lot lately - whatever I do, is it adding long term value to my business?

This is partly why I want to return again to niche site content and SEO. My recent forays have given me some subscribers but how much scope do I have for more sales out of these lists? SEO content is good for life!

I would love to hear from you? Please add your comments, questions and much appreciated advice, and please tell me how you have been doing yourself.

Posted 06 April 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Free Internet Marketing Teleseminars

Just a quick word to let you know of a cool Google search query I figured out the other day to get free teleseminars.

Just type into Google (copy and paste the below):

site:instantteleseminar.com inurl:eventid

and hey presto…I make it 916 free teleseminars!

Not all of them are internet marketing related but probably most of them are.

Good for listening on the way to work or in your lunch break or whatever - basically when you can’t write, might as well use that time for something useful.

Posted 29 March 2008 † Chris § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °