Internet Marketing Simplified

KISS Cast: If I Don’t Do It All Myself…

Jackie Lee — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:32:46 +0000

Over the course of my internet marketing career I’ve struggled with some doozies of limiting beliefs and beliefs and thoughts that didn’t serve me well. These beliefs held me back, kept me from earning, and kept me from the success I so wanted and rightly deserved.

I tried so many things to break through them, and finally found something that worked ~ and someone who could help me make it work for me.

What I found was EFT, and who I found was my amazing EFT Coach Lynne Morrell.

On the WP Robot Review post there was a comment that really grabbed my attention. It grabbed me because it IS a limiting belief, and it’s one I have held and still have a little bit of.

… It looks cool and there is a part of me that (if I had the money) would love to try it out (and I may someday) but there is something in me that wants to accomplish this with my own hands.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m weird. I would just feel like I was “cheating”.

The idea of if I don’t do it all myself I’m “cheating” ~ yeah, that’s what got my attention. I was a little excited I have to say ~ to hear someone else say it (there’s proof right there I’m not just a crazy lady over here in front of my computer all by myself!)

So I asked Lynne if she’d jump on the phone with me and do a bit of EFT to see if I could finally rid myself of this belief and maybe in the process help some of you to as well. We found a couple other nuggets of limiting beliefs along the way so please ~ take some time to listen to the podcast ~ but more than that TAP ALONG!!

If you’re not familiar with EFT Lynne will explain the basics at the beginning. If you’re ready to tap along and don’t know where or how here’s a chart of the tapping points. With that I’ll turn you over to the podcast.

I hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you enjoyed EFT your best bet is to get in touch with Lynne. While you can do EFT alone at home I’ve found my biggest breakthroughs have come while I was working with her. She just intuitively seems to know how to dig in and get to exactly what the issue is, tap the hell out of it, and then it’s gone.

If you have any other questions please feel free to ask in the comments. I’m going to get a transcript of this podcast ~ I’ll put it up as soon as I do.

How I Fell In Love with Twenty Ten

Jackie Lee — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:45:43 +0000

On Friday I did a quick (HA) WP Robot review. I’ve been using it to spiffy up sites and get dead weight making money around here.

One of the big things about spiffying up sites is finding themes. I don’t know about you, but for me, theme finding is fun and can be frustrating, AND almost always takes hours. Have you seen how many awesome themes there are out there? Not to mention the fantastic themes they keep adding to the Elegant themes membership site?

So I’m trying to be all focused here and after I had upgraded one of my new sites to wp 3.0 I saw the new default theme. Yep, the old fashioned Kubrik is gone and Twenty Ten is in. Well let me tell you what… it didn’t take long for me to fall in love.

Twenty ten is so clean. It’s a lot like the vigilance theme I had on this site before the upgrade which I really liked. The other rockin’ thing about Twenty Ten is you can super easily change the header and background to create a site that looks like no other even though it’s still using the default wordpress theme. And that just rocks.

I’ve heard they SEOd the hell out of this theme and the code is clean and super Google friendly ~ which is a bonus for sure.

So I thought I’d take a minute (because that’s really all it takes) to show you how to pimp out Twenty Ten and make your site your own.

Let’s start with a header. I’ve been creating my headers using a free program called xheader. It’s super simple to use. Just open it up and choose new then pick create a blank header.

It opens up a size box and you want to fill in 940 X 198 ~ that’s the size of the header in Twenty Ten.

Now it opens up your creation page.

Here’s how I make this super simple and easy. I go online or wherever and find 3 images that relate to my topic. I save them on my computer. I then choose the upload image button and upload all three images to the header. (they will show up all on top of one another so it looks like they disappear but just click on them and then drag them to the side).

I position the three images across the header. You can click on them and make them bigger or smaller by dragging the edges ~ just be careful you don’t make them too big they get distorted.

Once the images are positioned I save. I don’t add words to the header because Twenty Ten will put the title of your site right over the header. Xheader will give you a number of options of which level of awesomeness you would like to save. I think I usually pick the very good one ~ I can’t see the difference between them.

Save it to your computer.

Now let’s add the new header to our site. This is just as simple.

Open your dashboard and choose Twenty Ten as your theme if you haven’t already. (remember you have to have wordpress 3.0 installed on your site for this to show up).

Once you’ve chosen Twenty Ten you’ll see in the sidebar area of your dashboard a link that says header in the “appearance” section.

click that link.

Click the browse button and find the header image you saved from xheader. Then click upload.

Once it’s uploaded scroll down and click save at the bottom and click through and check out your new header.

Now ~ a new header’s great, but to really take your site to a “custom” level you might want to add a different background. This is JUST as easy, if not easier than the header.

Find an image or color or background worthy something and save it to your computer. (you can use jing to take an image of something if you need to). Go to the background link under appearance and then browse for the image and upload. Scroll down and save!

It’s that easy. Now you’ve created a custom site that is yours and yours alone and you didn’t have to spend hours searching for it. I used it on this Cool Christmas Gifts site and you can see it looks great.

I’d love to hear if you’re using Twenty Ten and what you think!

WP Robot Review

Jackie Lee — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:33:17 +0000

A month or so ago I was looking around for a theme for niche sites. I happened to land on a page from theplrstore.com ~ which happens to be a place I buy quite a bit of PLR when I’m working on something that calls for it. What I landed on wasn’t a written report though… it was a full and complete website. For sale. For $27. Doh.

I looked at the website ~ and realized there were quite a few more for sale as well. These sites were gorgeous. They were filled with content. Filled with products for sale. Looked fantastic. I never in my whole life would have guessed they were sold from a plr site. Never.

I started looking at the way they were made, the things they were selling and I was sold. No I didn’t buy one of the PLR store sites ~ I figured out how to make my own. I found a plugin that would create sites exactly like the ones I had found ~ automatically.

Let me just say right here, right now ~ I have never been a fan of “autoblogging”. In fact, someone talked to me about this plugin a few months ago and I completely blew it off as spam crap. Boy was I wrong. I never would have given this plugin a second look if I hadn’t seen the sites at the plr store. If I hadn’t seen what “real” sites could be created I never would have thought it was possible. Honest to God.

These days I try not to buy stuff to jump into something new. I have some sites ~ a christmas site, some deal blogs that I use to link back to my “money sites”. You all know that. These poor sites sit around and do a bunch of nothing a lot of the time. There are times when I’m working on something else and just don’t use them much. However… I got to thinking ~ last year my Christmas site did quite well. Not from product related keywords ~ but holiday and gift related keywords. Once people clicked through on those keywords they looked at what I had published on the blog and bought. This was with just a few items on the site that I had added to link back to my product lenses on Squidoo.

It dawned on me… what if I had more products to choose from and a great selection of gifts for people to choose from when they come looking for gifts. Oh yeah.

That’s where my thought process started. Then I started thinking about some of my old, defunct adsense sites I had built a few years back. The keywords all related to products ~ and at some point I’d thought of building out the sites and had done plenty of keyword research. I had a whole list of great targeted keywords and just hadn’t taken the time to write, publish and promote.

What if WP Robot could do it for me? Hmm…

I started making a list of all the product related domain names and sites I had. It came out to somewhere in the 20s. What if I could get these sites up and running. What if they each just started making $10 a day? 25 X 10 = $250. 250 dollars a day from stuff I had just sitting around collecting dust right now.

I thought it was definitely worth the investment since most of the process would be hands off and taken care of by the plugin.

When it comes to buying WP Robot they’ve got it set up really nicely. You have a bunch of options and can create a plugin that fits your needs.

It starts with the core module ~ that’s the WP Robot part. It has multiple levels depending on what you want to do. You can get a basic free version which allows you to create 3 campaigns on 20 sites ~ you can get the advanced version which allows you to use it on 40 sites, or you can get the Elite version which allows unlimited campaigns on unlimited sites.

I picked up the elite robot module. I didn’t really understand exactly how the campaigns and all that worked when I picked it up. Now that I have a better understanding I realize I could have probably gone with the advanced level instead of the elite ~ but hey.

Once you’ve made your core choice you can add more modules. These modules are where your content is going to come from. There are 15 modules to choose from that will help you create content from places like Amazon, article directories, clickbank, shopzilla to flickr and more.

Before you go adding modules I suggest you get a clear picture in your head of what you want your site to look like and/or do for you.

I wanted a site that would feature products sold at amazon and I also wanted some articles for content thrown in. It thought it would also be cool to have some price comparison from shopzilla (which is a free module btw) as well. I also thought it would be great to have some video on my pages as well.

With this in mind I looked at the modules it would take me to create this kind of site and I picked up the Amazon module and the article module. I wanted, but didn’t get the youtube module because I wanted to see if I the investment was going to pay off before I spent too much money. I can always upgrade the youtube module later.

When you create your own package and bundle different modules together you save money. It can be a pretty good savings when you pick up a couple modules at the same time.

Here’s my strategy:

I don’t want you to grab a premium plugin ~ and pay good money ~ without having a plan. Here’s my plan.

I picked one of my old adsense (that no longer runs adsense) sites to get started on. I had already done the keyword research a while back when I’d thought of changing the site to an affiliate site.

I added the keywords to WP Robot ~ and asked it to pull different products from Amazon related to those keywords. I set up the keywords as categories on the site ~ so each related post went into the respective category. I did this because it would be impossible to promote all the posts individually. I am instead going to promote (build links to) the category pages as they will stay stable over time, and end up with more and more options to buy as time goes on.

I set the plugin to post once every 12 hours ~ it randomly grabs one of the keywords in the list and picks a product (it won’t duplicate products) from Amazon. It posts the image, the product description, some product features, creates a great buy now button ~ all of which link back to amazon with your affiliate id ~ and this is my favorite thing ~ pulls reviews out and adds them as comments to the post. It then places the post in the right category.

I have also added the article module to the site so every once in a while an article will be posted as well ~ so the whole site isn’t just amazon products. You can alter the settings in the plugin very easily to have more or less of anything. This is a personal choice and it’s really just what you want your site to do. There are links to other people’s sites on those articles and I think that’s ok ~ it looks less like an affiliate site that way.

Speaking of affiliate links ~ the amazon module can also cloak all your affiliate links for you.

I started that first site a few weeks ago. I added all the category links to Traffic Bug and I did all the regular linking I do for them all. I’m getting traffic from Google already ~ not much for the main keywords, but for long tail keywords related to new posts.

Here’s the rub:

As I continue to build links to the homepage, and the category pages it will create “authority” for the whole site. This authority will help each new post rank better as well and drive more traffic from long tail keywords in addition to the targeted keywords.

I have started this process on my Christmas Blog, as well as my deal blogs. Now those sites are getting traffic for related long tail keywords as well and I’m already seeing click throughs to Amazon. This has all happened in the last couple weeks.

I see this as a long term endeavor ~ I didn’t do it to make money in a week, but to create new income streams of 5 or 10 bucks a day over time. I think it’s going to work. I can already see the process happening. The blogs look great. They look like real sites and I’m really pleased with how they’re doing so far.

Once I’ve done the initial linking ~ and Traffic Bug is going to do most of the work on that it’s a hands off process. I’ll keep you up to date on how they’re doing ~ but as of right now I’m super pleased with this plugin and would highly recommend it to people who want to get started and are having trouble coming up with content ~ messing with links ~ and getting a site put together. It’s also great for those of you who, like me, have tons of unfinished sites sitting around, or domain names sitting around doing nothing.

It’s not autopilot millions ~ but it’s definitely a viable option for new income streams.

Super Affiliate Handbook Review

Free Blog Images ~ That Can Make You Money Too!

Jackie Lee — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:22:24 +0000

I don’t use a lot of images on this blog, but images can really add to a site. They look great and can serve to keep people on your site a little longer. They can also really bring home a point you’re making in your blog post.

Here’s the rub…

Where do you find great images you can legally use without paying for them? Sure you can scour through flickr and find images you can use, but I’ve got another idea.

Allposters.com

Yep, a poster store. They have thousands of posters on thousands of subjects and I’m sure you can find one that will fit the topic of your blog post.

The even better thing is that you can use your affiliate link to create the images and if someone clicks through and buys it you make a commission.

Now I’m not saying you’re going to make a million bucks from your images ~ but, an additional little income stream is never a bad thing and you get fantastic images and don’t have to worry about using them illegally. Win -win from where I’m sitting.

Their affiliate program appears to be in house ~ although I thought at one time it was through another network, but now it seems all you have to do is fill out the application.

You will need a website for your application. If you don’t currently have a blog or a website you can create one for free on blogger to get you started. You can use the images with your affiliate links on any site after you’ve been accepted.

This is also a great way to create images on Squidoo lenses ~ and hubpages… I’m just sayin’.

I hope this gives you an idea on how to get free blog images ~ and maybe helps you make a little cash on the side. I’d love to hear how you’re finding free blog images ~ or are you paying for them? Tell me in the comments!

How to Get Traffic to Your Blog… A Comparison

Jackie Lee — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:23:40 +0000

Today I’m doing a comparison.

2 blogs.

1 target market.

2 Very different traffic strategies.

The first blog is a very niche related, product focused blog. The other is a more information related site, with plenty of products to be sold as well.

Site one: Toddler Ride On Toys

As you can see it is very specific and details a lot of excellent information on ride on toys. Very specific, and very keyword rich.

Tina’s best bet for getting traffic to this site is to go for search traffic. She wants to find people who are interested in a specific ride on toy ~ they’re looking online to buy that toy. She wants to get them from the search engines.

To do this, Tina will identify targeted keywords with good search volume and low competition ~ write up a post targeting that keyword and then build links to the post. As she builds links to the post it helps the authority of the overall site, but it also helps push that particular post up the search engines for that keyword. As she continues to work on this she will find her site is ranking quite well in Google for her targeted keywords ~ she gets traffic and makes sales.

This is pretty straight forward. However, I am guessing that most people do not have a blog that is this straight forward. So let’s look at blog number two.

Blog number 2: Fun Kids Activities

As you can see this blog focuses more on ideas and concepts than solid things you can sell ~ so it’s going to be harder for Mary K to simply target keywords and get traffic from Google. While I’m sure there are plenty of keywords out there she could target Mary K is a very interactive person and has a writing style that doesn’t exactly fit the mold of “keyword targeted posts” Never fear. She still has options.

I think her strategy for getting traffic to this blog should focus on creating a community. Once she gets a group of regular readers they will help her spread the word organically. They will also trust her opinions and buy from her because of it. How’s she going to do this?

1. Identify her target market.

Who needs ideas for activities to do with their kids? First time moms? Busy moms of multiple kids? Single moms? I’m sure she could brainstorm even more and come up with some very specific groups of people who need what she’s offering. (I know as a first time mom I LOVE her site and use it often!)

2. Identify where her target market hangs out.

She needs to start connecting with these people, so she’s got to figure out where they are spending time online. Do they have their own blogs? Do they hang out on twitter? Facebook? A forum? Hell, they may still be at myspace. She’s got to figure out where they are and then get involved and get to know them.

3. Get involved with her market.

No matter where she finds this target market she’s got to get involved with them, she’s got to create relationships with them. Now, I personally know that Mary K is a master of creating relationships which is why I think this strategy will work QUITE well for her. If she was a loner who hated people I would suggest she get her hiney into the keyword tool and start finding keywords to target. (that’s part of the art of internet marketing ~ knowing your strengths and weaknesses and creating your business around what works for YOU).

She can comment on their blogs, she could add them on twitter and start conversations ~ same with facebook. She could join the forums they hang out in and help ~ answer questions, provide support ~ you know ~ be friendly.

In all of this she is able to link back to her blog so as people get to know her better they stop by and check it out. Since her content is top notch they will likely keep coming back ~ not only that ~ as she becomes more a part of their community they will also retweet her posts, recommend an activity she talked about to other moms they know and thereby build her community even more.

4. Be consistent.

This is the final item of this plan, and the whole plan hinges on it. To become part of a community you have to be there. You have to be around, interacting regularly (read daily ~ especially in the mom niche). Have you ever had a friend who pops up for a week and then disappears for months? Think about how you feel about those friends. I love them, but they aren’t the people I talk about all the time. Nope the people I talk about all the time are the people who are in my life all the time.

It works the same here ~ you hear me talk about people, bloggers, friends, accountability partners regularly around here… that’s because they are part of my daily life. They’re like family to me, so of course I would talk about them, just like I talk about Hanna and my husband.

I’m not saying you have to connect with these people 15 hours a day, but you need to create a reliable presence in the community so people will know you’re reliable and really part of the community.

As you can see these are two very different blogs ~ however targeting pretty much the same market ~ but driving traffic to them is done in very different ways.

What kind of blog do you have? What kind of traffic plan do you have? Are you implementing the plan? Sticking to it? I’d love to hear what you’re up to in the comments.

3 Questions I Ask Myself Before I Buy Internet Marketing Products

Jackie Lee — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:38:10 +0000

I recently subscribed to Traffic Bug. I told my Squidoo readers about it yesterday and received a comment that there was a huge thread on the warrior forum that said it sucked and didn’t do anything. Not surprising. The comment and the warrior thread.

I don’t buy too many things anymore, but there are times I pull out my wallet. I want to share with you what goes through my head before I plunk down my debit card.

1. Is this something that will assist me with what I’m currently doing?

At this point I’m generally buying software and not really ebooks or courses. I have a grip on my online marketing strategy, and I’m not trying to get distracted by another shining thing with all its shiny promises of riches. In fact, most days I don’t even click through to sales pages (because they are generally so well written I would be very tempted lol). However, there is a lot of “stuff” I have to do in my business and I’m finally realizing there are things out there that can help me get it done.

So… if I find a tool that can help me do something I’m already doing, save me time, and energy then I will at least look at it.

2. Who’s recommending the product?

About a month or so ago while I was in 3 step ads I saw an ad for SEO LinkVine. Now I use 3 step ads on a pretty regular basis, but I don’t know who runs this site, I don’t know anything about them. I looked at SEO linkvine and the sales page was great ~ of course. But that’s what people pay the big bucks for ~ great sales copy. I went looking around to find some “real” information about this service.

Of course the first thing that popped up in a google search was a warrior forum thread. I do not trust warrior forum threads at all. Here’s why. I don’t know these people from Adam. What I tend to see is a bunch of beginners who haven’t made a dime, but are throwing their money at everything they can trying to make it and bitching about how it didn’t work for them and how someone scammed them out of their money, and most likely it’s because they didn’t use the product correctly or jumped ship to the next shiny thing before it ever had a chance to work.

I always look for the opinions of people who are successful in this business, who know what they’re doing, who have really used the product/service (in the way it was supposed to be used!). I can’t guarantee that from the warrior forum, and in most cases I highly DOUBT it is possible to get that kind of information from that resource.

I did eventually find a website from someone who did nothing but test out these linking services with some really good backup data. That helped me make my decision.

I don’t buy from any Tom Dick or Harry who says something’s great. I buy from people I know and trust online ~ people who are doing what I am doing, who I know I can trust and have had success with things they’ve recommended in the past.

I have a few people online that are like that for me. Yaro Starak, Ed Dale, Gideon Shalwick, Brian Johnson, Jonathon Leger. Who are the people you buy from? Do you know? I found once I started listening to mentors, I started spending a lot less money lol.

3. How much does it cost?

This is still important to me. It doesn’t matter how much a tool will rock my world, if it’s going to screw up my budget it’s a no go ~ or a save up money until you can afford it type thing. I do not spend money I do not have. Period.

I recently got an email from a reader, and it’s very sad. They recently got some bad news about their health. They didn’t have health insurance because they decided to spend the $97 a month it would have cost on books/websites/services online to help them make money ~ thinking they would make money first and then get health insurance. Now they’re screwed.

I’m not going to get into a health care debate, and I’m in no way judging people with no health care (as I’m one of them) but I’m just saying… take care of yourself and your family first… then spend money on your business. There is nothing you can buy online that will serve you better than food or rent.

So back to Traffic Bug. Here’s why I bought it.

1. It does the linking I’m doing and MORE.

It submits my sites to RSS directories, website directories, pings them and bookmarks them, as well as submits them to search engines ~ over time ~ just as I would do it. (It also has new features in the works)

This is all stuff I would be doing if I wasn’t so lazy. So it is submitting to RSS directories (which I do do) as well as a bunch of things that I wish I was doing. Right now. In my business ~ it takes about an hour or two a day out of my schedule.

2. It was recommended by Ed Dale.

Ed Dale runs the annual “challenge” to make your first dollar online. I’ve done the challenge a few times, and I trust Ed Dale implicitly. The first Challenge I did with him he recommended Market Samurai which was in Beta at the time. Brand new, not even completely finished. I think we all know how that turned out. He has since rolled out many many tools for the challenge and they have all been amazing. I trust his recommendation even for a product that is brand new and in beta.

3. The price was super low

Ed always gives a great deal. Even without Ed’s deal the price was less than half what the next closest tool would have cost me each month. So far it’s been a dream to use ~ customer service has been excellent (yes, I’ve sent emails and they’ve been replied to multiple times ), and I’ve seen quick indexing thus far, and since it will take time for the links to go out I’ve documented where all my sites are now that I’m using with it so I can see my own results. Traffic Bug is helping me, saving me time, doing work I hate, and helping my sites in multiple ways, so it was a purchase that was a no brainer for me.

Those are the things I think about before I purchase something for my business. I know in the beginning it was really easy to get caught up in a long thread at the warrior forum, but now, for me, it’s not worth the time it takes to read it. I stick with recommendations from people I trust, and things that will work for my business. These are my three questions… what do you ask yourself before you whip out your card? I’d love to hear… tell me in the comments section.

Who Said You Have to Work 5 Days a Week?

Jackie Lee — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:21:49 +0000

Yesterday I was chatting with my niche marketing accountability partner Frank Dickinson. He was saying how he felt unmotivated and like he had been at his desk for way too long. I totally understood where he was coming from, I frequently feel the same myself. (especially during times I’m doing activities that aren’t incredibly energy promoting ~ like link building)

We talked for a while about it and juiced up his energy level a little bit, but it wasn’t until later in the day when I had a sudden desire to clean the house (which let me tell you ~ doesn’t happen very often) that something came to me.

Who ever said we have to work 5 days a week?

I have no problem (minus some interruptions throughout the day) sitting at my computer for 12 to 14 hours a day. So who said my work week had to be 40 hours broke up into 5 days? Or who said I needed to spend 40 hours at all?

Most of us entrepreneurs, who are now working from home, at one time spent time punching a clock for someone else. That whole 9 to 5 mentality ~ you have to work 40 hours a week and it has to happen Monday through Friday ~ is kind of ingrained in our minds and psyches.

Well guess what! This business doesn’t necessarily take 40 hours a week (after you’ve got things rolling ~ it can take a LOT more during the beginning stages) or maybe I’m not inspired for 40 hours this week, but last week I was on a roll and banged out 60 hours?

There is no one at my office door glaring down over me, pointing a finger telling me I can’t get up from my desk until I finish my 8 hours Monday through Friday.

I think it is something to look at. I know Fridays are not super productive days. I seem to lose energy around noon ~ well that’s most days lol.

However, it doesn’t matter if it’s Saturday or Sunday ~ I’m usually excited and motivated to work on stuff in the morning. So who says my schedule needs to be all day and only on weekdays? I’m my own boss. I get to make the damn rules. What if I want to work from 9 to 1, 7 days a week. I can do it. What if I wanted to bust my ass 3 days a week and take the other 4 off? I could ~ if I could fit what needs to be done in that time frame (and I wasn’t a person who would have an overwhelming feeling of *something I’m not sure I want to identify* to be in front of my computer lol ~ but hey maybe that’s what Frank needs to look at?)

The only caveat I would make on this is to make sure you can get done what really needs to be done for your business in the time you decide to make “work hours” I do also believe in the idea of identifying “work time”. That time where you have your timer out, and a specific task at hand, that belongs only to that task. No twitter. No facebook. No TV. No kids if you can swing it. No email. WORK. Whatever that looks like in your business.

So yeah, maybe this post is an essay in the obvious, but I think it’s pretty easy to forget that you’re in control of this journey and that means how you schedule your time too.

How are you scheduling your work hours? Is it working for you? Would an unusual work schedule work better for you? Maybe give you more energy and excitement to make the “work time” you do spend more productive? I’d love to hear about it… leave me a comment.

What Would You Do Wednesday…

Jackie Lee — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:37:52 +0000

Back a few years ago when I was doing some individual coaching with Courtney Tuttle I really just wanted him to tell me what to do. I wanted a list of stuff so I could just go do it. If I got the list and did it I would be making money and that’s really what I wanted; to experience success (finally)! If I had the list and did it and didn’t make money there would also be someone else to blame besides myself for my failure!

He said to me…

Internet marketing is 90% art and 10% science

I thought he was crazy and I was pissed, but I slowly realized just how right he was. There is no list. Every action you take creates a result. From that result you have to look at what’s happened and go from there. Make a decision based on the results and what you have to do to get where you want to go. No two campaigns/websites/lenses will ever go exactly the same. That’s why there can never be a list… there may be an outline… but no list. Not only is there no list of “do this do that”, but there’s also no list about how to proceed when you get an idea. There are a ton of different things you could do, at least 4 or 5 directions you can go with any idea. So how do you know where to start?

That’s the art part and it really is 90% of the whole thing. It’s something you gain from experience, from failure, from success, from time. I thought it would be fun once in a while to take a question I get and play it out on paper, the thoughts that go through my head as I decide what I would do… so here goes.

Recently I had someone ask:

You’ve got this Ironman lens, it’s made some sales… now what would you do?

This question came from my LearnItStepbyStep.com membership site, that breaks One Week Marketing down into little pieces with easy step by step instructions. When I get questions there it’s tough for me because the site is based on OWM, I feel compelled to stick to answering questions as would work with that program… but those possibilities aren’t necessarily what I would do. AND… as time goes on and I find things that work/don’t work, my answers change.

Here’s what my thoughts were, as I pondered the question. Remember, that my talents, likes, dislikes, passions are all taken into consideration when making these decisions. As well as what’s worked for me in the past, what I feel like I can follow through on etc. No two people will come up with the same answer, because no two people are the same. These are my answers… they may or may not be yours.

Here’s how my brain spun through the brainstorming process

Hmm… I could create a micro niche site for it. I know the keyword phrase works. I would have to get a trademarked domain name. Hmmm… don’t really want to do that. Ok… I could do a little more keyword research and find some more inversion tables that fit my research criteria, and build a site with more pages, targeting one inversion table on each page. That would mean I have to do linking to each page, to get each keyword to rank in the search engines to drive traffic.

ponder ponder ponder. (a day or so went by ~ at least one sleep)

I have 22 other sites on a list that need to be worked on. I am not really very passionate about inversion tables. It’s working on Squidoo. It’s in profit. All these other sites really need work. I don’t need another project to work on right now. I don’t think it would get finished if I started it. Then I would feel guilty for starting yet another project that didn’t get finished. That’s no good.

I’m just going to leave it alone. It’s making money. I’m not going to mess with it, and let it keep making money while I continue to work on these other sites which is what’s on my list.

I know other people use Squidoo as a “market research” area. I find that difficult. Once something is done for me, it’s done for me. I have a hard time going back and building something else out of it. I am never short on ideas for sites, so I usually leave lenses as lenses. That works for me.

Lenses can provide great research ~ and can easily be built into something more… that just isn’t the way I usually go.

Do you have a what would you do… question? Feel free to ask it in the comments, and I’ll save it for another Wednesday. If you want an immediate answer join the KISS Club and start a “what would you do thread”. I’ll be happy to answer today.

Testing, Testing, Testing…

Jackie Lee — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:56:46 +0000

There are days when you get this “brilliant” idea. It glows in your head, it keeps you up all night (because you know those flashes of brilliance always come just as you’re laying down to go to sleep, right?!), it seems like the perfect solution to some or all of the problems you’ve been having.

You get up the next day (after having fallen asleep finally an hour or two before the little one comes screaming in that it’s morning), and you put it into action. You put the pieces together. You work your ass off. Your idea is now IMPLEMENTED! WOOT!

You sit at your computer watching the numbers… whatever numbers it is you’re expecting from the new plan, whether it’s sales, or signups, or pageviews ~ the numbers you’re looking for don’t really matter. You’re looking!

Then a day passes, and you don’t get the results you expected. Then 2 days pass, and those numbers still haven’t moved. Well.. the internet takes time… but you see all the things are there that should be moving your number and it still ain’t budged!

What do you do now?

1. Throw your hands up in disgust.

2. Give yourself a good ass kicking about how another of your brilliant plans has flopped miserably.

3. Walk away from your computer discouraged and positive that internet marketing just doesn’t work for you.

4. Test and tweak your brilliant idea.

You know the answer is #4 right?! Of course it’s number 4, all the others are silly and unproductive, so don’t even let yourself go there.

Where is this coming from?

You know my brilliant idea to put the popup domination plugin on my easy chicken recipe site. My faith that I would begin to see sign ups and then sell to them via my list instead of on the site.

well… not so much.

Over the last week that site has had around 250 visits, and not one sign up through the pop up box. I did get some sign ups when I offered the cookbook via twitter, but that’s it.

Time to go back to the thinking board.

Here’s where my thoughts went, the problem solving I did, and the solution I’ve come up with.

1. Most people are coming from the search engine looking for a very specific recipe. They aren’t looking for a bunch of recipes at that moment, but do want the recipe they are looking for.

2. This niche is irritated by/doesn’t understand pop ups

3. This niche is overwhelmed/un nerved by the pop up.

4. the pop up takes them away from what they’re looking for, and they get thrown back to the front page once they’ve signed up. (they don’t know this, but I do and it bugs me)

5. maybe they would be more receptive to a free cookbook after they’ve gotten the recipe they came looking for.

Possible tweaks:

1. put the opt in box (noticeable, pretty opt in box) in the sidebar.

2. put the opt in box (noticeable, pretty box) at the bottom of each recipe post.

3. don’t use the name form in the opt in box and see if that makes a difference (I hear it does)

4. get an ebook cover for the book done so I can feature the ebook more than them giving their names.

That’s all I’ve got now… my brain will continue to mull this over as time goes on.

For today…

I’m going to pull the pop up. I’m going to add the opt in box to the sidebar, and the bottom of each post, and let it go for a week and see what the numbers are.

Lesson…

Even the most brilliant ideas may sometimes flop, but that doesn’t mean they won’t work. It just means they don’t work as they are right now.

Do you have a brilliant idea that didn’t work? How could you rethink it, brainstorm around it and tweak it to see if it might work in another incarnation? I’d love to hear, tell me all about it below.

Unrealistic Expectations ~ How to Break Them and Move Your Business Forward!

Jackie Lee — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:26:56 +0000

This is a post I published back on December 31, 2009. I had just conducted a survey to try to better understand what it is I can do for you to help you succeed in internet marketing. I was surprised (I’m not sure why) by the results I got and felt it was time someone stood up and said out loud what I’ve been talking about with my close internet marketing friends.

In the last week I’ve seen so many of these unrealistic expectations show up around me that I decided to write a post about it. Then I remembered that I had already done it. When I read this post I thought “Geez, that’s exactly what I was going to say today”. So here you have it, a post pulled from the archives because it’s just as relevant today as it was almost a year ago when I wrote it.

So without further ado… here’s the post.

I just opened an email from Brian Johnson. He’s the creator of Commission Ritual. I don’t remember what the email was about, I didn’t click a link and I didn’t buy anything. However… he said something at the bottom of the email that REALLY got me thinking. Here’s what he said:

People DO NOT fail at internet marketing, they simply GIVE UP before the magic happens.

This hit me like a ton of bricks, because it’s TRUE. I started thinking about why this is true, and realized it’s got a lot to do with the topic of the blog post I’m writing today. How nice.

Today I want to talk about expectations. There are a lot of different expectations people have when they start an internet marketing career, and it’s these expectations that many times set people up for failure. I suppose you could also call them internet marketing myths.

Here are just a few…

1. It’s gonna be easy
2. I can make a full time income working a couple hours a week
3. I can go from having no sales to making 10K a month in a year
4. If I build it they will come
5. I can try a little of everything and make lots of money

Those are some of the expectations people come in with, now let’s look at how those expectations can positively or negatively impact your internet marketing business.

Unrealistic expectation: It’s gonna be easy.

NO. It’s not gonna be easy. Yes, the tasks you have to complete are relatively simple once you learn how, but it’s not easy. It takes consistency, persistence, time, effort. To be quite frank, most people aren’t willing to put in the time, effort and work it takes to become successful. Coming into the arena with the expectation it’s going to be easy leaves them ready to run as soon as something gets hard. It makes it very hard to stay with this when things aren’t going as you planned/hoped.

More realistic expectation: This expectation is one that will allow you to navigate the inevitable bumps and lumps is to expect it’s going to take work, and like anything in life there will be ups and downs. If you can stick with it, you WILL succeed.

Unrealistic Expectation: I can make a full time income working a couple hours a week.

Yes, you can ~ but probably not this year. You go to your job and spend 40 hours a week there. Are you making 10K a month yet? How can you expect to come online, where there’s a huge learning curve, and spend a couple hours a week and think you’re going to kick it to 10K a month in the next 12 months. I hate to be a buzz kill (really I do) but chances are much greater that will NOT happen than they are that it will.

More Realistic expectation: The time I spend on my online business is directly related to the level of income I can hope to achieve. If you spend a couple hours a week you can expect some income. If you spend 2 hours a day, you can expect a little MORE income. If you spend 8 hours a day, you can expect even more income. However, a little time spent is better than no time spent and all the hours whether they’re in 2 hours a week increments add up! So yes, you can succeed on two hours a week, but it’s not going to happen overnight.

Unrealistic expectation: I can go from making no sales to 10K a month in the next 12 months.

Doubtful, unless you’re willing to spend a bunch of money and have a BUNCH of time. Whether you are online or in a brick and mortar business, business is business. If you don’t have the skills to make 1 sale today it is doubtful that you will be making 10K a month consistently 12 months from now. It’s just basic business ~ most brick and mortar businesses don’t even expect to be in the black for the first few years, much less making 10K a month. Because the internet is easily accessible and it is POSSIBLE to make 10K a month I think creates this unrealistic expectation.

More realistic expectation: This one is really the dream killer I think. People come in thinking they’re going to be making 10K a month in a year, they have minimal time to spend. The time they do spend on their business is actually more like a hobby. After a couple months of seeing no results they get pissed, believe this whole IM thing is a scam and quit. I’m not saying 10K a month is unrealistic ~ I’m saying going from 0 to 10K in 12 months probably is. Why not set a more “realistic” goal. 2k a month? It gives you a more realistic starting place, and then when you reach it you will have even more “proof” that this whole IM thing DOES work and you will continue to stay motivated to move forward.

Unrealistic Expectation: If I build it they will come.

Not so much. Whether you’re building a squidoo lens, or a niche site this is where I see people get the most frustrated and ready to just throw in the towel. There is WAY more to getting traffic than just building a site. Building a good site is definitely the first step but even the BEST site on the internet doesn’t get traffic without promotion. Yes, the promotion part can be very dull, even mindnumbing, but without it ~ nada.

More realistic Expectation: If I pick a few solid traffic driving strategies and take action on them regularly and consistently I will get traffic to my site. period.

Unrealistic Expectation: I can do a little of everything and make lots of money.

The answer to this question on the survey really surprised me (I don’t know why). I asked what is your goal in 2010, and provided 5 different options. I can’t tell you the number of people who clicked ALL 5. Yowza. What really got me was how many times this was combined with I don’t have much time to work this, and I’ve never made a sale but I wanna make 10K a month by the end of the year.

Talk about some unrealistic expectations. When you’re starting out it can be so overwhelming. There are so many options, so many shiny things. It’s hard to know where to start because you don’t even know what you don’t know. You feel like you have to try everything to see what you like, and what’s a good fit for you. Yeah, I get that. I did it too, for a year or two. I don’t really see anything wrong with that ~ other than you also want to spend a couple hours a week, and want to make 10K a month by the end of the year. You can’t put out scattered, inconsistent effort and expect to create solid consistent results. It just doesn’t work that way.

More Realistic expectation: This can go one of two ways.

You can decide to work one thing and work your ASS off toward 10K a month. or

You can check out a bunch of different things, figure out what you love and what’s gonna work for you and expect to make no money the first year.

Either one is fine, one is not better than the other, but both are much more realistic.

If you take a good look at how you’re feeling about internet marketing at this point in time you may be able to tie your feelings (whether good or bad ~ gung ho or ready to quit) to some of the expectations you have about how this is going to work. It’s so easy to fall into these myths and expectations and then come up feeling cheated because it didn’t go the way you thought it should.

Bottom line: this is a business. It will only succeed if you treat it as such. It’s the day before a new year. We’ve probably all set our “goals” and expectations for the new year. I encourage you to take a look at the goals you’ve set for yourself. It’s great to have goals, don’t get me wrong, and goals should “stretch” us, absolutley. However, if you’ve set your goals at a point that is too high that they aren’t even attainable you’ll find it much easier to get frustrated and quit.

You might want to think about setting some goals that aren’t about money ~ money comes from action in this business. (You know I’m big on taking action) Why not create some goals that are easily measured and accomplished by the actions YOU take, and are not necessarily dependent on someone else doing something to make them happen (buying products)?

I had set a bunch of goals, of course based on the money I want to earn. I was all excited about them. I picked up a copy of Lynn Terry’s free report about boosting your blog and setting goals for the next year and ended up changing all my goals. While it’s about boosting your blog in the new year it’s a great read and makes you really think about what you want your goals to be.

Now instead of monetary goals I’ve set growth goals for my blog. I’ve got goals to grow the level of community here, grow traffic, grow subscribers, do podcasts, and more. The thing is if I implement and strive for these goals the money will BE there. Those are the actions I have to take to increase my income. So now… instead of scratching my head 6 months from now wondering why I don’t have an extra 5K in my bank account every month I can look and see if my traffic has grown? Has my subscriber base grown? Have I done any podcasts? If the answer to those questions is NO, then not only do I have a reason why the cash is not in the bank, I have a place to start to put it there.

soooo…. here’s my challenge, and I know we’ve done this one before, but life changes, and once we look at our expectations our goals can change. I want to know what you are going to DO this year. What are your growth goals going to be?? Please, share them with us in the comments section! I can’t wait to hear, and remember ~ the magic WILL happen as long as you don’t quit!

Happy New Year ~ I can’t wait to watch you achieve your goals!

So there you have it… what do you think? I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts. I have figured out a couple things in the time since I wrote this post. One of which is this, I truly believe the best way to overcome these expectations ~ and they come and go in waves in our business ~ I get them sometimes too, even still, is to have a good community around you. A place you can talk about what’s going on in your head. A place where people can lovingly tell you “You’re thinking crazy. That’s unrealistic!” That’s what I’m creating with the KISS Club, and I’m pretty sure the members are feeling the same thing. We’d love to have you.