Don't offer the same as your competitors

I've just arrived home from a business trip in Nigeria. During that trip I travelled from the capital Lagos to a town further north called Ibadan. It is about a two to three hour journey depending on the traffic conditions. It is what I observed on that journey that I want to share.

There is a lot of poverty in Nigeria and many people try to earn money by stopping passing traffic to sell a variety of products. This in itself was not a surprise. What they were selling was . . . at a level. Every few miles there were a series of small stalls set up along the route and from those stalls every stall holder was selling the SAME product. Sometimes it was drinks. Other locations it was earthenware products and at another location people were cooking and selling food . . . but each was selling exactly the same food. From a marketing point of view this seemed very strange, and there may well have been a very good reason of which I was not aware, but generally in a market a marketer looks for an edge. Sell better products, sell different products, or sell at a more competitive price. So if I'd been at the side of the road where the other stall holders were each selling the same food and therefore fighting for market share, I'd have set up a drinks stall to help wash down ALL the food.

Are Traffic Exchanges worth the effort?

The simple answer to that question is there is not a simple answer. Traffic exchanges such as Link Referral and Entrecard are worth while because 1) They are free and 2) There is a large variety of different types of Internet marketers using these two sites. Link Referral has a very large audience of over a quarter of a million website owners, all with a variety of different types of site. Therefore if other site owners visit your site there may be something of interest for them. The same argument can be used for Entrecard, a form of traffic exchange for Bloggers. Again, this site offers a very large audience to attract to your blog, and these bloggers have a variety of different interests. So to maximise the effect of both Link Referral and Entrecard your only cost is time, and many of the hits you receive could well generate income.

Something completely different is the type of Traffic Exchanges that attract people offering almost identical products, and these are generally "get rich schemes" or something similar. These are invariably a total waste of time, and in some instances a waste of money. Generally speaking people earn credits for viewing other peoples' websites - websites that are trying to do the same thing as the "viewer's" website - getting people to sign up to a MLM scheme, or similar, utilising a squeeze page. It is a totally pointless exercise. Let me use an analogy to explain. Image you sold fruit on a market, as did all the other stall holders on the market. How far would your business get if you just sold your fruit to other stall holders and they then sold their fruit to you. Even worse, what would be the outcome if you all had to pay a monthly fee to set up your fruit stall? Simple, you'd all lose money, expect for the person renting out the piece of land for you to set your stall on. Owners of Traffic Exchanges make money - but the users don't. Avoid these type of sites like the plague.

Can YOU pass the Entrepreneur Challenge?

This is probably one of the simplest challenges you have ever faced. To see if you are a true Entrepreneur I am going to ask you to answer just one question, and that question is this - If you are offered a business opportunity which of the following two questions goes through your mind FIRST? Is it:

a) How much is this going to cost me?

or is it:

b) How much can I make from this?

If you are a true Entrepreneur your answer would have been b). Genuine Entrepreneurs realise that there will always be a cost to any opportunity but they are more interested in the return on that opportunity. So here is my proposal. If I asked you to invest 60 cents per day what is your response going to be.

a) I can't afford 60 cents per day for anything at the moment.

or is it:

b) How much can I make for my 60 cents per day investment?

If the answer is - This opportunity has the potential to make you thousands of dollars each month - would you be interested?

To find out more just click the following link:

Just 60 cents per day

Have a great marketing day!

Don't promote ANY Clickbank products . . .

. . . well not at least until you've read my FREE special report "The Gurus' #1 SECRET Exposed!" There are a number of individuals are making a serious amount of money on the Internet.
But there's even a bigger number of people who aren't. Perhaps you are one of the latter, and you can't understand how some people make huge profits whilst others make only a few hundred dollars per month, if that. The really bad news is that those who are making huge sums are doing it at the expense of those that aren't. My report exposes the technique the so called "gurus" are using to get other regular affiliates to fund their marketing costs. If you want a free copy of the report just click here!
I've also produced a FREE mini online course to help home business owners create a more sustainable online presence. Check out both the report and mini-course today. They'll not cost you a dime . . . and that's a promise. Have a great day.

Using the correct Keyword Format

When using keywords in your website/blog it is important to understand how Google interprets them. Keywords can be used in three basic formats. Let’s take the phrase property in Warwick as an example. The way the phrase – property in Warwick - is set up as a keyword will affect the search results. Please note carefully how each must be presented.

Broad match: property in Warwick. (This keyword will be matched to similar search phrases typed into Google’s search engine, such as – new properties in Warwick. Note the searcher used properties, not property, in their search, plus added the word new, but as a broad match is being used Google recognises the match and also accepts singular and plural spellings.)

Phrase match: “property in Warwick” (This keyword will only match a search with the exact phrase (or single keyword) within the quote marks, such as the following search – where to find the best property in Warwick. If the phrase where to find the best properties in Warwick was used then Google wouldn’t consider this to be a phrase match as the word property has become the plural - properties.)

Exact match: [property in Warwick] (This keyword will only match a search when just these precise words are used by the person carrying out the search. The keyword needs to be set inside square brackets. Google will ignore upper and lower case searches, so Property in Warwick, property in warwick, PROPERTY IN WARWICK will still provide a positive result.

You can use Google's keyword tool to check the popularity of each phrase in all three different formats.

Does Viral Marketing really work?

Viral marketing is a wonderful concept and many large corporations are starting to really understand how to maximise this route to market. No doubt you have received the occasional humourous video clip in an email from a friend and you then forwarded it onto other friends of yours. They then do the same, etc. This is how viral marketing works. Take as an example the famous John West "bear" commercials. These have now been viewed on Youtube millions of times due to people forwarding the links onto their friends. All the marketing department at John West needed to do was load up their TV commercial onto Youtube, send the link out to various people, they shared it with others, because the commercials were funny, and all of a sudden they had a free marketing campaign. Other people even started loading up their own copy onto Youtube.

You too can do a similar thing by placing links to viral marketing sites on your blog. Here are three links to get you started:
Traffic Digger
Free Viral
The 6 Links
They are all FREE and by placing your unique link to each of these sites on your blog, or website, you will get you exposure to potentially millions of visitors. Imagine if just 10 people clicked on your link, and then 10 clicked on each of those peoples' links, and this happened another 4 times your blog/website/advert would be seen by over one million people. All for FREE. Do that with three viral websites, and that's over three million visitors to your site. Yes viral marketing is another useful technique to generate more visitors to your site.
Have a great day.

What is the VALUE of a LIST?

On an earlier posting I mentioned the importance of building a list. It is said with regular monotony by all the "gurus" that their money is in their list. And they are totally correct. Consider this point to support that argument. If you had a regular bricks and mortar business and you sold that business, you would ask the purchase for a sum of money that exceeded the total value of the fixed assets. Why? Simply because the "list" has a value. Over years of trading a business builds a customer base, and when that business is sold that customer base goes with the business. A payment made for this customer base is generally referred to as "Goodwill". When buying an established business you don't need to start from scratch building a customer database. That database is already there.

So let me go back to my original question. What is the value of a list? Again, if you listen to the top marketers they will say that every person on their list is worth at least $1 per month to them. Now that doesn't sound very much, until you realise some of these guys have several hundred thousand names on their lists. How do they get so many names? For the answer to that you need to read my FREE report titled "The Gurus' #1 SECRET exposed!" Some of you will be quite shocked by what some people are prepared to do for money. I'll leave it at that for the moment as I don't want to spoil what is in the report. Have a good day.