Move over Twitter…

July 16, 2009

It all started with Twitter. I love the idea of microblogging. It's a beautiful thing. Twitter makes it easy to post your thoughts and ideas about just about anything in 140 characters or less. Other folks can follow along and read what you have to say.

That's why I love Twitter, but that's also why I don't like it.

You see, it's a great idea, but unfortunately it often ends up that I'm following all of these folks who are posting about what they had for breakfast, or tweet that they're giving their dog a bath, or other ridiculous stuff that I have absolutely no interest in.

Then there are the spammers. Oh my goodness! 100 tweets in a row advertising trash I'm not interested in.

Even when folks aren't spamming, Twitter seriously lacks focus. From one tweet to the next, the sheer volume of subjects is dizzying — and it's rarely related.

That's why I created TipDrop.com. TipDrop is what I call a "social-knowledge" site. Simply put, it's a very focused form of microblogging site.

At TipDrop, a user creates a "tip sheet" focused on a particular subject. The user who created the tip sheet, and other TipDrop users, can post tips to the tip sheet. The users can also vote for or against the tips on the tip sheet. Since 140 characters really isn't enough for a good tip, your tips can be up to 255 characters long.

It's like Twitter meets Wikipedia meets Digg.

For example, let's say I created tip sheet on How to get people to link to your web page (which I have–that link points to it). You can go to that tip sheet to read all of the tips that I and other users have added to get ideas about how to build links to your site. If you like a tip, you vote it up — if you don't like it, you vote it down.

You see the power here? Instead of random bits of noise and nonsense, TipDrop creates tightly focused pages of practical knowledge. It's social-knowledge.

To make it even better, TipDrop is driven by what I'm calling a "credibility engine." Everything in the system is given a "credibility" score: users, tip sheets and tips. The more users vote for a tip, the higher the credibility of the tip, the tip sheet and the tip-writing user. The more users that vote against the tip, the lower the credibility of those three things.

The best (read: most credible) tips appear on top of the tip sheet. Once a tip falls below a credibility score of 1, it disappears off the list.

The more credibility a user gains, the higher up the list his tips appear when he first writes them. Of course, those tips are then subject to users voting them up or down. Also, the higher a user's credibility, the more power his votes up or down command.

What this does is encourage high-quality tips from users who are trying to establish themselves as experts in their field. Each tip is linked back to its author's own account page, where a timeline of the user's tips appear, as well as a list of the user's tip sheets.

The credibility engine also helps prevent spam and junk from coming into the system. Spammers' tips will quickly get voted down, reducing the credibility of not only the tips, but the spammer's account. That way, when they try to submit more spam, their spammy tips will have virtually no credibility, appear at the bottom of the tip sheet, and after just a vote or two disappear entirely.

Of course, the creator of a tip sheet has the ability to delete tips they feel are inappropriate. So the tip sheet owner maintains control that way as well.

Unlike Twitter, TipDrop also encourages you to have links on your account page. You can have up to 10 links appear on the right sidebar of your account pages. And since all of the tip sheets you create appear with your account profile and links on them, you are rewarded for making your tip sheets popular by having other people visit your links.

On top of that, the site is monetized with AdSense ads. In your user settings you can put your AdSense Publisher ID and have 75% of all ad impressions and clicks from your account pages and tip sheets credited to your own AdSense account. I believe that users should receive a monetary incentive to create great content, and that's just another way I make that happen for TipDrop.com users.

TipDrop is a great way to get your email list to build link-bait lists of information on just about anything. Think about it: create a tip sheet on the best ways to lose 10 lbs, have other users add their own tips, and monetize it from the AdSense ads plus links down the sidebar to weight-loss products you promote! Build your credibility up with enough great tips and you'll soon be an established authority in your niche.

The site is now in beta, and I encourage you to go take 30 seconds to sign up for a free account (that's really all it takes — it's super-fast and easy). Perhaps start by adding your own tips to my tip sheet on how to get people to link to your web page?

Check the Site Links down the right sidebar of the home page for links to the TipDrop blog and forum as well. I'm very interested in hearing your suggestions and thoughts on how to make the system better.

Click here to go to TipDrop.com now.

And be sure to post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.

Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Traffic, Internet Marketing, Blog | 132 Comments

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Selling physical products online (part 1 of 2)

June 23, 2009

Most of the time Internet Marketers talk about how to sell products that deal with, well, Internet Marketing. I've been guilty of that, too, although for some time now my focus has been on promoting products that either help you create content or help get you ranked in the search engines.

I thought you might like to hear about how one guy (my brother Ted) runs a successful business online selling real-world physical products: porch swings. And man does he sell some porch swings! Last month alone he sold $42,848.31 in porch swings out of a small shop he has in his back yard.

Find that hard to believe? Here's a link to his May 2009 PayPal statement (he does all his business through PayPal):

Click here to see his PayPal statement for May

That kind of success begs the question: how does he do it!?! Let me start off my answer by telling you what he doesn't do.

No Gurus Involved

First of all (and I may be shooting myself in the foot here), Ted has never read any Internet Marketing courses. He's not invested time or money in any of the flood of material out there by self-proclaimed "gurus." He was seriously turned off by the hype and obviously overblown promises, so he decided to do things for himself.

Really, to sell anything online, you only need to know how to do three things:

How to find a great product that's in demand to sell.
How to price your product in order to get it to sell very well.
How to get traffic to your web site so you can start making sales.

Ted took the time over the last three and a half years to figure out how to accomplish all three of those things very well. Let's talk about each one.

Finding A Great In-Demand Product

For the most part, Ted makes his own porch swings in his backyard shop. When he gets too many orders, he offloads some of those orders to another company in a neighboring town — but he mostly builds them himself.

He's not a trained, professional carpenter. He's just a guy who took up the hobby of woodworking and got really good at it.

So naturally, when it came time for him to find an in-demand product, he leaned toward something he could build himself. He used eBay to determine what products were selling like hot cakes, found one he could build and started selling it himself.

It's hardly a requirement that you manufacture your own product. Although the profit margins are generally higher, there are no doubt plenty of folks in your area who have quality physical products but a dismal web presence. Most "mom and pop shops" have a web site but few get any real traffic. Find these shops and resell their products!

Pricing Your Product

Regular folks who are looking to buy products online are very price conscious — especially in this economy. Ted discovered this early on. So he worked hard to find ways to cut his costs and stay competitive. One of his best tricks allows him to undercut his competition because he's a small business owner and not a "big dog" in the industry.

Being a small business owner has certain advantages in keeping overhead down: fewer employees, lower operating costs, etc. So find ways to keep your price lower than the other guy and you can expect much greater success online.

Getting Traffic to Your Site

Of course, no matter how in-demand your product is, or how low your price is, if you've got no traffic you'll get no sales! So you have to learn how to drive traffic to your site.

Although Ted is now getting most of his traffic from Google (thanks to yours truly–more on how I did that for him coming up in my next blog post), for the first year and a half Ted was doing great without getting hardly any search engine traffic at all! He used pay-per-click almost exclusively.

Ted did not, however, use AdWords to drive traffic to his site. Too expensive, he said. He found alternative sites that he could buy traffic from — again, keeping his costs lower so he could price his products better than the competition.

So if you're looking to sell physical products, try to think outside of the box and find second-tier pay-per-click sites to advertise in.

Coming Next Post: Ranking in Google to Sell Porch Swings

As I said, although Ted did great using pay-per-click traffic to sell his porch swings, most of his traffic comes from Google now. That really helps him cut costs because his traffic is virtually free. My next blog post will talk about the steps I took to get him the rankings in Google he needed to get the razor-targeted traffic that launched his business to the serious six-figure business it's become.

Coming this Monday, June 29th, you'll have the opportunity to get all of the details about how Ted found an in-demand product, how he cuts costs as a small business to price himself better than his competition, as well as what second-tier pay-per-click sites he used to sell his porch swings. Look for more information on that in the next blog post as well as in an upcoming email.

Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.

Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Traffic, Internet Marketing, Blog | 84 Comments

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Do you really WANT to succeed?

June 16, 2009

Six months ago I weighed 225 pounds. I am now at 185, and in the best shape of my life. How did I do it, and what does my weight loss have to do with your business?

The "how" is very simple, as most things in life should be. I'm a big believer in Occam's Razor, which can basically be summed up as "keep it simple."

To lose the 40 pounds, I did two things: 1) ate less and 2) exercised regularly.

Everybody knows that to lose weight, that's all you have to do. So why are there thousands of weight loss supplements flooding the market promising to help you lose weight? Why doesn't everybody just eat less and get some exercise?

I believe it boils down to a lack of true desire. At the risk of offending the folks who have bought them, and putting the whole weight loss industry in an uproar, let me say this: I do not believe that people who buy weight loss supplements (as a rule) really want to lose weight.

I feel that way because people who are always looking for a "quick fix" to their problems don't seem to really desire to fix the problem. They just want a patch, a crutch to do the work for them.

With the exception of folks who have a medical condition that makes weight loss very difficult, I firmly believe that everybody who really wants to lose weight does.

Now, when I say that they want to lose weight, I don't mean they casually think "my, it sure would be nice to be thinner" as they stuff their face with chocolate cake and bonbons in front of the television. To me, those actions belie the claim that a person wants to lose weight. Those folks can take as much Hoodia as they want and they'll never lose an ounce.

People who really desire to lose weight (or accomplish anything else in life) take steps to make that happen. In the case of weight loss, it's a simple matter of wanting to be thin more than you want that piece of chocolate cake. You might want the chocolate cake, but if your desire to be thin is greater, you'll pass on the cake and lose weight. Period.

That brings me to your business, where your mentality can either cripple you or launch you to success. You really need to sit back and ask yourself a few questions:

Do I really want to succeed? Am I currently working my day job, comfortable in the "steady" paycheck and measure of security that my J-O-B brings me? Am I casually looking into the television of business while eating the bonbons of laziness thinking "my, it sure would be nice to be successful"?

Or is my success in business a priority? When I have a few extra dollars or an extra hour of time, do I put that money or time into working on my web site instead of buying that cool new app for my iPhone or watching my favorite sitcom?

It's important to do this kind of self-analysis and make sure that you truly want to succeed. Success needs to be more than just a "nice thought" of something you'd "like" to accomplish.

Of course, as with most things there is a good way and a bad way to accomplish your goals. Keeping with the weight loss analogy, you could just stop eating. Without a doubt, you would lose weight, but you wouldn't be healthy — and before long you'd be dead!

My wife and I have been using the Weight Watchers method of counting "points" to lose weight. It's not a diet, it's just a simple way to set manageable goals and learn how to eat better. It's very simple, and has been fantastically effective. Following their proven system helped me to lose weight twice as fast as going at it on my own.

We go to the Weight Watchers meetings, which are run by a person who has lost a lot of weight (and kept it off for a long time) using the system. So we've been taught by a person who knows how to succeed.

The same principles apply to your business. It's important that you establish a healthy routine that's been proven to work. Just doing whatever comes to mind isn't usually the best way to succeed. It's usually better to follow the patterns of success already laid out by people who have proven to be successful.

You can do that by reading a successful person's blog, or following them on Twitter to see how they manage their time throughout the day. You can read the reports they write and use the products they use.

Of course, following somebody else will only get you so far. Again returning to the weight loss analogy: I took Weight Watchers one step further and adjusted their system to cut back on my daily fat intake. Bringing my level of fat intake down to a healthy, but trimmer, 20% of daily calories caused an additional acceleration in my weight loss. I reached my goal weight a few weeks ago, and now it's just a matter of maintaining my current weight (which has not been a problem).

With your business, especially when first starting out you definitely want to stick to a healthy, successful routine that has been proven. In time, though, you'll want to start branching out on your own and adding your own twist that makes you unique and sets you apart from the crowd. Depending on your personality and level of success, how soon this happens for you will vary, but it will come in time.

So to recap, success in business requires three things:

A real desire to want to succeed that's followed up with actions.
Learning from successful people.
Finding ways to improve on what you've learned and set yourself apart from the crowd.

Make sure you follow that path, and I guarantee you in time you will achieve your goals.

Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.

Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Internet Marketing, Blog | 96 Comments

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