How I earned $15,000 in the last 24 hours.
November 30, 2007
There are a lot of big name marketers pushing Alok Jain's latest product, Project Quick Cash. In fact, he has dozens of Joint Venture partners, many with email lists that dwarf mine in size.
And yet, at the end of 24 hours, I had out-sold them all and earned more than $15,000 in net profits. In fact, my conversion rate was 16%. I earned, on average, $6.30 for every single click-through I got to the Project Quick Cash site.
What made the difference? What was it that I did that they didn't do? How can you repeat my success?
It was easy: I stated the facts.
I took the time to do a case study, test the results myself before I promoted the product. Only after I knew the method worked and could present the proof of its success to others did I put together a promotional campaign. I'd like to think that I have a good track-record in this regard as well.
Meanwhile, I heard through the grapevine that other much bigger players in the world of Internet Marketing also promoted the product. One huge name in particular stood out to me. Do you know what his conversion rate was?
He converted one in sixty click-throughs. That's about a 1.7% conversion rate. He was a few slots below me on the sales leaderboard despite the monster size of his email list.
Where did he go wrong? I happen to know, because I'm on this marketer's list myself.
This marketer made two mistakes.
- He didn't provide one single shred of evidence that what he was saying about the product was true. Maybe every word he spoke was 100% golden truth, but I the reader (and potential customer) had no way to verify that fact.
- All I ever get from this guy is promotional emails. He hasn't sent anything of instructional value in months. Now why would I trust somebody like that? What has he done for me, the potential customer, to prove to me that he has my best interests (and not just his wallet) in mind?
There is a serious lesson in this: yes, it's true, the money is in the list — but only if you treat your list well. Provide them regular instructional information. Give them facts and stats and proof to show them that what you are saying is verifiable, not just more smoke and mirrors. I think we all know that there's enough of that in the world of Internet Marketing to last for years to come. No need for us to add to it!
Set yourself apart by (*gasp*, dare I say it?) being honest with people. Don't try to sell your list on products you've never used, or never used with good success! Your recommendation is only as good as your track record.
With that in mind, I've decided to launch a new Internet Marketing product review blog. I will only be posting reviews of products that I have done case studies on, and can show verifiable proof of having real value.
I'm tired of the baloney. I'm tired of the smoke and mirrors. The past 24 hours has shown me that you are, too. If you haven't already, check out my first review there. Post your thoughts and comments. Let me know what you think.
Also, if you are the owner of a product that you really believe will genuinely help Internet Marketers, submit it for a review.
Let's demand some honesty from marketers for a change. Some proof and evidence. We may not be able to clean up the world of IM altogether, but we can create our own little spotless corner where baloney is not allowed.
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
Links From Blog Comments - Update
November 26, 2007
I promised an update to my blog comments test where I had 600 comments posted to 600 different blogs for a brand new site. My goal was to see 1) how many of the comments would "stick" (meaning the blog owner would not remove the keyword-targeted link from the comments) and 2) whether or not I would get any search engine value from these blog comments and links.
My gut told me "of course you will", since Google loves links and this was a pretty easy way to get more inbound links. Get inbound links it did, too. Yahoo! is currently showing 195 links into the test site. That's roughly 1/3 the number of comments made, but the reality is that many of the links Y! is showing are duplicates. The real number of successful comments with links is about 100.
Unfortunately, because so few of the links "stuck", the site didn't make it into Google's top rankings for the keywords I was hoping for. The site has only received 77 unique visitors in the past 3 weeks, and of those only 4 were from Google (the rest were from the blogs I had comments posted on).
I think the lesson learned here is that you can get quality in-bound links from blogs, and you can do so very inexpensively, if you're willing to do the work. Since only 1/6th of my comments were actually allowed to keep their links, and since the comments were very well-written, appropriate comments related to the posts, it seems that many blog owners just don't like to see keyword links in place of the "name" field and will promptly delete the comments or remove the link from the name.
However, once you find the blogs that do let you keep those kinds of comments, you can greatly reduce your workload by posting only to those blogs.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give this method of getting links a 6. Worth the work, but only if you're willing to do the upfront legwork required to discover where your comments are worth posting.
Click here to learn how to find blogs that do not use the NOFOLLOW link-killing attribute.
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
Sorry Mr. Reese, thumbs down on Blogrush.
November 16, 2007
Let me start this post off by saying that I have a lot of respect for John Reese. He's a true pioneer in the world of internet marketing, and he's been very successful because of his great ideas.
Okay, that's out of the way. Now let's talk about Blogrush.
Blogrush is simply a traffic exchange system that is dedicated only to blogs. You add your blog into their network, select its category, and drop some JavaScript on your blog. Blogrush pulls the RSS feed from your blog, your blog posts are shown on other blogs with similar content, and you show related content from some of those blogs on yours. The idea is that you will be exchanging traffic from readers who are interested in the same topics.
Great concept, right?
So I read a few good things about it, and I like I said, I respect John Reese, so I signed up and put the Blogrush code on this blog. I figured I'd give it two weeks (14 days) and see what kind of results I got. If the results were good enough, I'd keep it on the site.
You see, I've been having tremendous success with my own traffic exchange service, RealTrafficExchange.com. So I figured if Blogrush did at least that well, and I kept the two traffic-sharing blocks side-by-side, I'd really profit from it.
Unfortunately, that's not what happened at all. Here's a snapshot of the credits I've earned over the last 14 days (it says 30 days, but I've only had the code on here for 14):
Not too shabby, 'eh? 14,943 credits in 14 days. That's about 1,000 visitors a day who saw the Blogrush ads. One thing that surprised me, though, is that Blogrush doesn't seem to tell you how many clicks you've generated, so I have no idea what my click-through rate is.
Okay, so how many new visitors did I get in return for the almost 15,000 views I gave to Blogrush? Here's the snapshot:
Yes, that's right, 20. A whopping twenty visitors over 14 days. I'm sorry, but my blog real-estate is worth a lot more than that.
Meanwhile, I've earned 12,744 visitors from my RealTrafficExchange.com service in the last six months. That's more than 2,000 unique visitors per month, or 1,000 every 14 days (compared to the 20 I got from Blogrush).
So I've removed the Blogrush code from this blog. I'll be watching for news on Blogrush, though, because I find it hard to believe that a large-scale project operated by John Reese will fail. Time will tell.
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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