Your Most Burning Internet Marketing Questions ANSWERED

On March 13th I asked my subscribers to submit their most burning internet marketing questions on the blog. (If you aren’t already a subscriber then the subscription form is on the right.)

I had a fair number of questions. In fact, I’m a bit daunted preparing to write my answers to all of the fantastic questions submitted by my subscribers. Thanks to all who did!

A little disclaimer, too…

Some of the questions asked about stuff I don’t know too much about (such as technical things). In this event, I’ve either asked one of my marketing buddies who does know the answer, or answered it to the best of my ability.

Without further ado, here’s the Q & A session…

Question 1

Tami asks…

“What do you feel is the best SEO software to use to help improve page rank?”

And JimBob asks…

“Which software do you recommend for keyword research?”

The above two questions were fairly similar, so I’ve given one all encapsulating answer. In fact, I haven’t given an answer at all since I have very little experience in keyword research. Instead I asked my good friend and niche research expert Andrew Hansen of EliteNicheResearch.com to dig me out of this hole.

Here’s what Andrew suggests…

“1. Software to improve page rank:

A: None. Pagerank is just links and more links (from sites with a higher PR than you) will grow your page rank. There are of course, softwares to help you get links, but there’s no objective judgment on which of them is best. They all work in different ways, get you different types of links etc You need to use multiple ones for a perfect SEO campaign too so you have many kinds of links from many places. Just do a search on Google or in the warrior forum for “link building software” and you’ll find plenty of them.

2. Software for keyword research:

A: Personally: None. I just use the Adwords keyword tool. I don’t believe a paid keyword tool to be compulsory.

Generally: If you want to use one, Market Samurai is the clear cut, all round best.”

Question 2

Jesus asks…

“I’d love to see a Clickbank versus Rapid Action Profits case study from a vendors perspective.”

Thanks for your question, Jesus.

For those of you not aware, both Clickbank and Rapid Action Profits are platforms that allow product owners to recruit and pay affiliates on all sales they generate.

There are other advantages to both, but this is the main reason.

I’ve used both in the past, but now use only Rapid Action Profits. Here’s why I’ve decided to use Rapid Action Profits instead.

1. I like to pay 100% commissions to affiliates. Clickbank only allows a 75% commission maximum, which isn’t very appetizing to affiliates promoting a $10 offer for $75% commissions.

2. Clickbank has much higher fees. I don’t know exactly what it is, but they take a fair chunk of each sale. I think they take $1 per sale plus something like 8%.

3. Sales I make for my own product goes INSTANTLY into my own Paypal account. If I sell my product through Clickbank then I have to wait for the pay period to end before payment is sent.

4. With RAP you have a very easy to use admin panel where you can customize all sorts of parts of your offer, as well as the ability to email all customers and all affiliates. The ability to email affiliates is very powerful for generating a quick burst of sales.

5. From what I can tell, affiliates love instant commissions which you can get with RAP but not Clickbank. There’s also very little commission theft with RAP since customers can’t send money to their own Paypal account. Clickbank has a huge amount of commission theft, especially if you’re promoting to other marketers.

There are of course a couple of disadvantages to RAP, too. For example it costs $197 to get RAP (but then you can have unlimited products set up), whereas it costs $50 to list one offer in the Clickbank marketplace.

With Clickbank you also get to take advantage of getting placed in the Marketplace where some top affiliates may pick up your product. This is especially good in niche markets other than internet marketing.

Another disadvantage is that RAP can be quite technical to set up. I still can’t set it up and I have many of these sites, but I simply pay John Burnette of RAPInstallPro.com to do it for me. He’s great!

To sum up:

If having a low priced ($20 or less) front end offer is the route you want to take then you’ll need to be paying 100% commissions to make it attractive to affiliates and you’ll need RAP for that.

If having a fairly high priced ($50 or more) offer is the route you want to take then Clickbank is a fairly good option – despite its flaws.

Question 3

William asks…

“I’m setting up a membership program, that will likely only be around $9.95/mo. Most “gurus” say you need an affiliate program, but with such a low monthly fee, it’s probably not worth it for most affiliates to promote it. In addition, it doesn’t seem appealing from an owner’s perspective to give away monthly commissions to an affiliate who only did a promotion once. What’s your opinion about that?”

Hi William. Fantastic question!

This is a dilemma I’m having at the moment, too.

Let me share how I plan to do it…

Firstly, I’m following the training of Nano Continuity which I recommended this week. Essentially, NC suggests you set up a continuity offer at a low, low price like $5 per month and get lots of new members. Since it’s such a low price getting members is easy and member retention is incredibly high – so as time goes on your member numbers will rise and rise and rise.

I’m going to set up a continuity offer for $4.95 where I deliver a weekly training PDF dealing with all sorts of list building topics, such as getting subscribers, building relationships with subscribers and generating revenue from your subscribers. As you say, paying affiliates at this kind of price isn’t really feasible.

So here’s what you can do…

Create a low priced, high value front end offer for something like $10-20. Set it up with Rapid Action Profits and pay affiliates 100% for ALL front end sales.

Then work to convert as many of your customers into paying members without paying an affiliate commission. At a price point of $9.95 per month you should expect to convert about 15-20% of your customers into paying members.

You can do this by presenting your continuity offer instantly after they purchase your front end offer and then through a series of follow up emails.

As well as follow up emails, you can deliver broadcasts to convince more of your front end buyers to join your continuity program. For example, let’s say you have arranged a special interview with a guru in your market and you will be sharing the interview with all members at the end of the week. Send an email to your front end buyers email list notifying them that all members will be receiving this special interview at the end of the week and that if they want access to it then they’ll have to join in the next few days.

Now you just have to make sure you get as many new leads as possible into your funnel. I’ve written about getting new leads on the blog in the past. Take a look at this article.

http://www.acceleratednicheprofits.com/how-i-generated-500-buying-subscribers-this-weekend/

I think you should take a look at Nano Continuity too. It’s a fantastic training course revealing exactly how to do what you want to do.

Hope this helps.

Question 4

Joel asks…

“How do you determine the best affiliate product to promote? Or, how do you choose what to promote?”

Hey Joel. Good question.

In the internet marketing niche there are a few core guys who I follow closely because I trust them. I watch their emails carefully and see who they are promoting.

My logic is that if these guys trust them enough to promote their offers then they must be good guys or girls too. Of course I check out the product myself to make sure it is quality and it has to be related to the interests of my subscribers and customers.

In the weight loss niche again there are a few core products (about 10-12) that I consistently promote. Plus, I’m on the affiliate lists of the authors and they have some secret offers and time limited offers that you can promote that are not available to the general public. I’ll normally do a promotion for these offers.

A few general things to consider are:

1. Will the salespage convert? If the vendor has data to back up their conversion claims then I’m more inclined to promote.

2. Can I get a reciprocal mailing? I rarely do this at the moment but might look to do it in the future. I’ve never promoted anyone just so I can get a reciprocal mailing but if I have a choice of promoting two equally good products at the same price and that convert similarly, but one author will mail my offer in return – then I’m going to promote that guys offer.

3. Are there all sorts of crazy exit pop ups, pop overs or other things that annoy website visitors? I don’t want to send my subscribers to pages that are going to piss them off.

I hope this helps.

Question 5

A few people asked similar questions (and I expected this) about how to make consistent money with no investment. Here are the questions and then I’ll give my answer.

Barbara Brooke asks…

“What I need is something that brings in money on a monthly basis. Do you recommend a mini site or continuity program? Doesn’t matter to me what it is if it brings in money monthly. I have to get something set up to cope with all the bills.”

Richard asks…

“Hi James

I ask what is probably impossible.

Is there a way you know of, with no investment, to begin making from $50 to $100 a day, today. I have bills that must be paid, soon. Any suggestions you have would be helpful.

Thank you for your time and God bless
Richard”

And Louis asks…

“Hi James

I am sitting in the same position as Richard above. I am looking for a “guaranteed” way to earn a $100 or more per day. It seems everything that I am trying which the person who sells it, says is working easy for them never works easy for me.

I don’t have a job and I can’t afford to spend anymore money on any software etc. We are really just scraping by.
Thank you.”

Okay guys, thanks for your questions.

Making money with zero investment is tricky, but not impossible. It would be difficult to build a business without any investment, but there are a couple of strategies you can implement to create temporary cash flow.

Here’s a few of the ideas.

1. Set up a free blog at blogger.com about a chosen topic. If you have any passions, or if you’ve simply chosen a topic that you think could be profitable, start blogging. Post a new article daily and include links to affiliate products. The more you post and the better the quality of your posts, the more traffic you’ll get and the more money you’ll make. This won’t make you rich, but you can generate some steady cash flow. I’ve never persevered with free blogger.com blogs but I know there are some who have and have been quite successful.

2. A very similar strategy to that above. Find out about new product launches occurring in various niche markets and create a review blog using blogger.com. optimize your blog for keywords such as “product name review”. Come launch day many potential customers will type in keywords like that above, land on your blog and order through your affiliate link.

3. This is perhaps the easiest and most sure-fire way to generate quick cash flow. Selling your services is a quick way to generate cash. You can sell article writing services, blog writing, product creation, programming, graphic design and much more. You can do so at places like elance.com, guru.com or scriptlance.com.

Like I said, it’s very difficult to build a business based on only freebies but it is possible to create temporary cash flow.

Question 6

HP asks…

“Hi James,

My most burning question:

How do I get people with big lists to promote my 100% commission offers.”

Hi HP

The first thing I’d suggest is to get your product set up away from the Warrior Forum. There are still many people unfamiliar with the WSO section of the WF and many marketers would be hesitant to send their subscribers there.

Using something like Rapid Action Profits you can set your product up on its own domain and still pay 100% commissions.
Now you can reach more affiliates and JV partners.

Firstly, you should aim for the smaller to mid range affiliates first. You have more chance of getting 20 people with an email list of 5,000 to promote than you are to get one person with an email list of 100,000 to promote right away.

If you want the big guys to promote for you then you need to be able to offer a very high visitor value AND be able to reciprocate for them.

I rarely have anyone with an email list of more than 20k promote for me but I’m doing just fine. I’ve had one person with an email list of 100k promote for me but I’ve generated over $55,000 in sales for their company over the last two years. If you were to approach him without any prior relationship I’d expect he would say no.

Don’t worry too much about getting the big gurus to promote for you, you don’t need them to become successful.

Have a read of this article revealing some ways to find affiliates.

http://www.acceleratednicheprofits.com/3-clever-ways-to-find-new-affiliates/

Hope this helps.

Question 7

John asks…

“How does one select a profitable niche to enter without selecting one that is too competitive like Make Money Online, or Internet Marketing?”

Thanks for your question John.

I don’t follow standard advice when it comes to niche selection. I say, just go with whatever you want.

In fact, in my eyes the more competition the better.

Let me explain…

My business is not based on getting search engine traffic. It’s based on getting other people to send me traffic, such as affiliates, bloggers and email list owners.

Therefore the more of them there are the more traffic they can send me.

I would suggest though that you don’t start in the make money online or internet marketing niche. Once you become successful in another niche then you can migrate into the MMO or IM market.

Hope this helps.

Question 8

John T cheekily asks three questions

Here they are.

“You did say we could ask anything, right…so here are mine…

Assuming you graduated from school, and everything was taken from you, i.e. your list, contacts, but your left with your experiences & knowledge…starting all over from scratch, please answer the following questions…

1) With your knowledge of the current economic climate, what business model would you select to generate income again — affiliate marketing, product creation, membership model, offline marketing, etc., or what?

2) After selecting your business model in question #1, would you map out your detailed sales funnel?

3) If your going to build a subscriber list for your business model, and you could only use 3 methods of driving targeted traffic to your squeeze page, what 3 methods would you use?

Thanks James…”

Thanks John for your questions, I’ll do my best to answer them…

1. The model I’d choose is this. I’d have two front end offers: the first a freebie in exchange for an opt-in and the second a $10 offer.

I’d drive traffic to the freebie offer using strategies such as article marketing, paid advertisements and other traffic strategies that I implement myself.

I’d use affiliates and JV partners to drive traffic to the $10 offer paying 100% commissions.

I’d then focus on converting as many of these subscribers and customers into a $5-20 per month continuity offer. I’d also promote affiliate offers to these subscribers for additional revenue.

2. I’ve kind of outlined the sales funnel above.

If you wanted you could create a $97 course to sell to your customers and if you have extreme knowledge you could create a $500+ product to sell to subscribers and customers.

I’ve never created a high cost course because I like the idea of sharing incredible value for low prices, but it’s something I may do in the future. Imagine getting just ONE sale per day for a $500 product. That’s over $100,000 per year.

3. If I was driving traffic to a free squeeze page I would use:

Traditional article marketing – by submitting articles to EzineArticles.com etc.

Blog contributions – by submitting premium content to authority blogs in your market.

Paid solo ads – by paying for solo emails to list owners in my market.

I hope these answer help.

Question 9

Dwight Anthony asks…

“I thought this would be a good one since i haven’t tried in a while. Does Google still allow you to drive traffic through to a squeeze page? If they do, what changes must you comply with so that your ads for squeeze pages get approved by them?”

Thanks for your question Dwight.

I’m definitely not an expert at this but here’s my understanding.

Google is no longer a huge fan of the one page squeeze page. From my research, I believe you have more chance of ranking well and not getting slapped if you have…

- A privacy policy, terms of use, contact link, disclaimer and site map.
- Links to other free content on your squeeze page

For example, there’s a famous squeeze page called DoubleYourDating.com

It used to be a traditional squeeze page with a headline and a few lines of text, but take a look at it now:
DoubleYourDating.com

It’s got all kinds of legal things and links to articles. This is from Eben Pagan – one of the most successful internet marketers of all time – so I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.

Model his page and you should be okay but make sure you check the Google guidelines thoroughly.

Hope this helps.

Question 10

Craig Sowerby asks…

“We know a good way to create a product is to interview an expert. But the big boys never want anything to do with the little guys.

So how do you get some good interview with some niche experts?”

Good question, Craig.

I’ll offer similar advice as I did to HP above. Don’t aim for the big guys straight away, try and get a mid-sized marketer and interview them.

Then take that interview and distribute it as far and wide as possible.

The reason people accept interviews is because it gives them free publicity. If you get an interview with a mid sized marketer and then distribute 10,000 copies and make that guy some crazy amount of money then you can use that as leverage to secure interviews with bigger guys.

If you can show them proof of how your last interview benefited the interviewee then that’s how you get the big guys.

Hope this helps.

Question 11

Peter asks…

“Hi James, I’d like your thoughts on this.

Let say I want to set up ten blogs about dog training, each one about a different breed. That’s ten domains, each with a different IP address. What would be the SEO impact in your view if, instead, one domain was set up and each breed treated as an addon domain. Eg http://www.bulldog.dogtraining.com, www.labrador.dogtraining.com.

Or,could a separate blog be set up on folders so we’d have dogtraining.com/bulldog, dogtraining.com/labrador.
Interested to hear your thoughts on this.”

Thanks for your question Peter. Before I give my opinion on this, here’s what fellow blog reader Brian suggested:

“Peter,

If you host all 10 websites, under the same shared hosting packages then each domain will be an add-on domain and effectively the SEO advantages will be small.

If you had 10 domains, with 10 different C Class IP addresses then this would help more.

Why would you want to add 10 blogs – 1 installed for each breed?

If you opt for the 1 domain option then install WordPress on the root domain and not a sub-folder. Then just have each breed as a different WordPress category.

If you go for the 10 domain option, then try to get each domain as keyword rich as possible. eg bulldogtraining.com, trainyourshihtzu.com or shihtzu-training.com etc etc.

Hope this helps,
Brian”

Thanks Brian for your response. Here’s mine.

I suggest you set up one blog and create a category for each breed. That way every single page will benefit from link juice generated by other pages.

For example, let’s say another blogger writes about your site and links to your website at dogtraining.com/poodle, then all the other categories will also benefit from that link juice and so all your pages will rise up the search engines. (I believe this is the case anyway.)

Whereas if you had ten separate sites and a blogger linked to your poodle site at poodletraining.com then ONLY that site would get the link juice.

Plus, if you have it all on the same site then you can create an authority site. Google loves these.

Hope this helps.

Question 12

Anonymous asks…

“I struggle with setting up an offer, I mean where do you put your downloadable product, how does it link from your squeeze page etc – the set up – would love to have a straight forward guide.”

Thanks for your question.

I’ll explain this briefly using Aweber as an example since that’s what I, and most others, use.

First, create a download page and save it as something like thanks.html. This page will have your download link.

Then log-in to your Autoresponder account and create a web form. Design it whatever way you want using the point and click templates in your Autoresponder account. Then you will be asked to insert a link as to where everyone who enters their details gets redirected to. Redirect them to www.yourdomain.com/thanks.html and then when they enter their details and become a subscriber they will instantly receive access to their download.

Sorry for such a brief explanation but I can’t explain technical things.

Question 13

Pat Aplemar asks…

“Hi James,

Content on my blog is free.

A lot of people say this content is very good.

Can you tell me what strategy is the better to monetize a site like mine?”

Thanks for your question Pat.

There’s a few ways to monetize blogs, such as:

1. Create your own product and sell it within your content posts.

2. Convert your blog readers into email subscribers so you can deliver dedicated affiliate promotions to them.

3. Link to affiliate products where relevant within the content of your posts.

4. Write dedicated product reviews. Some of your blog readers will check it out and perhaps buy and you’ll get some traffic from people searching for specific product reviews who will buy.

5. Contextual advertising such as Google Adsense is another way to earn a few pennies per click.

I use the first four strategies on all my blogs and I recommend you do too.

Question 14

Joyce asks…

“Hi James,

First, thank you for your commitment to newbies

Second, my question is about PPC. People keep telling me to sign up for Jump Fly but I am new to the game and $1500 start up cost is outside of my budget. Any ideas on how to get started with PPC for less…”

Thanks for your question Joyce.

I’ve never heard of Jump Fly but $1,500 is very expensive to get started. I wouldn’t recommend it until you have some stable income.

If you want to self-teach Google Adwords then there’s only really one course I can recommend. It’s from Perry Marshall and it’s called “The Definitive Guide” for a reason.

Perry is the Adwords king and his training is fantastic.

Click Here To Check It Out

I will get an affiliate commission if you buy through that link, just so you are aware.

Question 15

Ed Kangai asks…

“My burning question James is: How do I know who most to trust and what’s going to work out? Any handy pointers welcome.”

Thanks for your question Ed.

The honest answer is that you really don’t know who to trust at the beginning. After a little while in the industry I think you develop a BS detector – or at least I have.

If marketers are suggesting you can make a million dollars by clicking a few buttons, then you can strike them off straight away.

If you are on someone’s email list and they send offer, after offer, after offer then they clearly don’t have your best interests at heart, so you can strike them off.

There are a few core guys and girls who I completely trust and who you’d do well to follow. They include:

Andrew Hansen
Lee McIntyre
Tiffany Dow

There are more, but I’ll start with these guys.

——————————-

Right then guys. That’s 15 of your most burning internet marketing questions ANSWERED.

It’s taken me an age to write this article. Well, it’s actually a 4,300 word and 14 page Word document – can you call that an article?

I sincerely hope this helps, not only those of you whose questions I’ve answered, but all of my blog readers and subscribers.

Now I want to ask you a quick favour…

Because it’s taken so long to answer all of the questions, it would be a shame if only 300 or 400 people were to read it.

Can you help me spread the word and link to this article?

You can do so by sending a Tweet using the button below, putting it on your Facebook, Digging it or linking to it from your blog.

If you do any of those things, then shoot me an email using the Contact link at the top of this page letting me know what you’ve done to help spread the word and I’ll send you a free copy of 100 Subscribers Per Day.

Plus leave your comments below letting me know what you thought of this post.

I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks for reading,
James Penn