Don & Jeremy's|Internet Marketing Blog

Yes we finally did it…we opened our own forum.

Guess what? You are all invited!

Come signup and spread some Internet Marketing Knowledge.

www.MarketCrush.com – Internet Marketing Forum

So, what is Internet Marketing to you?

Is it a way to make some money online, or is it an activity that gives you an excuse or reason to whine and bitch about everything you see, and anyone that might not operate the same way you do? That might sound like a dumb question, but it is a serious one, and is something that I honestly think that people might want to give a long hard look at.

Over the past couple of months (maybe longer) I’ve found myself getting more and more irritated with certain “groups” within the Internet Marketing realm…These groups are mostly comprised of the folks that think they are the Internet Marketing police, as it seems that they spend their days doing nothing except for looking for things to complain about.

It seriously takes every last little bit of restraint that I have to not say “SHUT THE HELL UP MORON” – You ever feel that way?

Here is what usually gets my blood boiling. I log into a forum like www.warriorforum.com and head on into the main discussion forum, and as I scan down the first page of posts, what do I see?

“So and so sent me 3 emails in one day – he is a spammer”

“So and so uses software for backlinks – that is unethical”

“So and so only has a video on their sales page – he’s an idiot”

Now don’t get me wrong, the WarriorForum, in my opinion is hands down the premier resource for people just starting out, as well as for established people that are trying to establish relationships. However, it seems as though a certain percentage of the membership, is there to do nothing at all, but to try and prove how moral and how ethical they are.

If you ask me, most of the people that fall into the category that I’m talking about are little more than douche bags and hypocrites. Seriously, if you take a look at their posts as a whole, you will notice that not only do they do the same stuff that they complain about, but it would appear that their whole existence online revolves around trying to prove how “smart” and “holy” they are.

These people will also more than likely be the same people that a year from now will be starting some sort of “donation” thread to keep from being evicted from their home, or to keep their car off of the back of a repo truck. In a perfect world, you would just be able to reply to their threads and tell them to shut their damn mouth, and to crawl back under the rock they came from….

But, as with any forum or community, there are rules, and keeping it “real” in that way is frowned upon, and more than likely would result in either a temporary ban, or possibly even a permanent one. I want to be very clear about something here…I’m not complaining about the community itself, as I’ve already stated, I think it is a great resource. I am however complaining about the mindset, and the attitudes that certain people have. If you are a regular visitor or poster, you more than likely know exactly the people that I’m talking about.

Don’t let yourself get caught up in the bullshit that is Internet Marketing. Trust me when I tell you, being the moral police, and trying to find things to complain about, won’t make you a dime. I don’t know anyone that has made money from being a cry baby, do you? It’s very easy to get sucked into the drama, if you’re not careful, but the next time that you see a thread like that pop up – really look at it, look at the detail of the post, and then ask yourself….How long did that person spend writing that, how long did they spend researching it…then ask yourself, how much money they made from doing it

Personally, I don’t care who is using flogs to promote products, I don’t care who is sending out 10 emails a day, I don’t care who is spamming backlinks…why should I? More importantly, why should you?

Look at the people that are REALLY MAKING IT…Frank Kern, John Reese, Mike Filsaime, or any other marketer that you look at as being hugely successful. Do you think that they wake up in the morning, and waste even a minute of their time worrying what some other marketer is doing? HELL NO!

Well, this was more than a rant than anything else, but hopefully it will give a few of you something to think about…and in the end, maybe even motivate you to spend more time on your business, and less time getting caught up in the “whose doing what” game that seems to be so popular these days.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on the subject, so drop us a comment below

Hello Everyone,

Since we rolled out the Auto CPA Content Program, we’ve had a ton of questions about spinners. Are they worth it? Do they do the job? If you can think of a question about spinners, we’ve had it asked to us.

Currently, the heavy weight champion of the spinner world is thebestspinner – I’ve done a video demo of it below:

It goes without saying that there are a TON of different options out there, but one thing that makes thebestspinner stand out is the fact that it has a user updated thesaurus. So, any time that someone rewrites an article, their word alternatives are saved.

The best part is, with one click, it will put your article into spinner format and you are ready to roll. If you havn’t already done so, check out the video above. Then you can grab thebestspinner from their official website.

Update: 4-28-2010

I wanted to add a little bit of information to the best spinner review here…

So, I’ve been playing with the best spinner more and more here lately, mostly due to the fact that I was sick, in bed, and bored But, I actually spent a little bit of time “training” the best spinner in a couple of the niches that we are involved in heavily.

The results have been FANTASTIC!!!

Normally, I would just load an article up, and use the built in options and let the best spinner do it’s “magic”. However, this time, I loaded up an article, and looked for some very common terms in the niche the article was associated with. Now, I selected some good synonyms from the drop down, but also added my own good ones, and then saved them as “favorites”. After about an hour or so, I was able to load up an article, hit “replace with my favorites” and the output was EXCEPTIONAL!

Now I’ve gone ahead and done the same thing in a couple of other niches, and the results were pretty much the same! Instead of having to spend a couple of minutes cleaning up the results using everyone elses favorites, the articles come out with hardly anything at all having to be done.

I may add another video to the best spinner review here in a couple of days showing you the process that I went though, and just how damn easy it is to get the same results. For anyone that is spending a decent amount of coin having articles spun either by a human, or by other software, I can honestly say that the best spinner is the best alternative that there is out on the market right now, and I honestly can’t see anything taking its place, unless someone is able to master some form of Artificial Intelligence, which I doubt is going to happen.

So, if you havn’t tried the best spinner yet, now is a great time to do so as there is a 1 week trial available for like $7 or something like that…

Bottom line, as soon as you get done reading this the best spinner review, go grab the trial, and get to work.

PageRank ain’t all it’s cracked up to be everyone…You know I see people constantly trying to find backlinks from high PR sites but what they don’t realize is…PR is just a tiny little bit of what Google takes into consideration when they determine where you fit in the serps.

Getting all your backlinks from crazy Pr4+ sites…frankly doesn’t look natural. Especially if you are a new site. Go take a look at a high traffic keyword and watch how many times you see a PR N/A to PR3 outrank a PR 4 or 5+.

…Newflash…You will see it all the time.

Why?

Because frankly Google cares more about:

1) Domain Age
2) Relevance of information to the search query
3) Navigation and layout of the page (Yep that bot can tell if your page is easy to navigate)
4) Types of sites that are linking in (and I don’t mean PR)

Things like internal linking structure can play a HUGE role in the success of your site. What I mean by linking structure is linking related content to related content.

For example.. when you have an Acne article on your site…link to another acne related article on your site from that one. Don’t have content where your acne article links to a backpain article.

When a webcralwer like the Google Bot crawls your site…it isn’t exactly super intelligent. You need to teach it and help it understand your site. You do that by linking content on your site that is related together.

Google hits your site—>Crawls to “causes of acne” and at the bottom of that article or content page it finds a link to another piece of content on your site –> “cures for acne” and at the bottom of that –> “natural cures for acne.”

Do you see how much easier it is for a non intelligent bot to now get an idea of what your site is about?

Blog owners…MY GOD I see this all the time with blogs that are basically product review sites. People just post away…They don’t break everything down in categories and sub categories EVER!!!

You want to make your blog that covers multiple topics kick ass and easy for Google to figure out? Use the ability to make categories and sub categories…

Make a category for HEALTH then sub categories under that:

Health
–Acne
–Weight Loss
–Anti Aging
–Yeast Infections

Tie all the content together in those categories…and if you want to be lazy then use a plugin like YARPP.

Google uses that as one of the ways it determines if your site is easy to navigate…You get brownie points for staying on topic and not going all over the place from diabetes to green energy…

Another thing…

Profile links have just gotten out of control…

1) They carry little weight in Google
2) They are usually placed on sites that get crawled a lot just because of the nature of the site having (forum/blog) information that often is updated or added.
3) Most of the time you can’t even use anchor text in them

You put 100 of them up and 30 of them get removed in a week…And guess what? That can hurt. Not only hurt from time or money lost… but it can really sting when Google penalizes you for being a spamming maniac. Think about it…Google crawls said site everyday… finds a link to your site…comes back to do a deep crawl…link is missing.

See Google makes initial quick crawls and then does random deep crawls… Little quickie ones get the summary of some of the new content and links on the site…the deep crawl later checks em out.

Ok…ok…so one link… No biggie…

Google moves on…oh there is another missing link to the same site, and another, and another…

WOW Your building up a real track record for having votes fro your site removed aren’t you?

Profile links are cool when you diversify them with, Article directory submissions, blog commenting, forum links, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, press releases, etc…

Get links from multiple sources…

So the moral of this story is…

1) Take some extra time to create an internal linking structure on your site that makes sense.
2) Diversify your backlink work and you will be way ahead of a lot of the competition out there.

I’m hoping that this post might give a dose of reality to some people in the Internet Marketing world that are struggling a bit…

So, it’s no real surprise that there a million and one ways being given away and sold on the internet. Some people find great successes with some of the methods while others never make a dime. The people that don’t make any money with a method chalk it up to the product itself sucking and not being a viable method to earn money on the internet.

But, is that true? I don’t think so! I see it like this…

Everyone is “built” differently. We all have different personalies, strengths, and weaknesses. So, no matter how good a sales page sounds, no matter how easy the product creator says it is, no matter how much money they say that they made, you run the risk of not making a dime.

As an example, I’m going to use Article Marketing products to prove my point…

So, a person whose third language is English (they only speak poorly broken english) runs across a super duper new Article Marketing guide. they run through the entire process:

Read the sales letter – check
Check for testimonials – check
Ask the seller some questions – check
looks for a money back guarantee – check
Gets excited – check
Buys the product – check

At this point, they have the product on their hard drive, they have read through it, and they are excited as all hell! After all, they are getting ready to make $300 a day, right? So, they start goijng through the method laid out in the product….then it hits them…

They can barely speak english, let alone write it! But, what the hell, they give it a go anyway. So, they dedicate their next three days to nothing but composing articles. Then they submit them to EZA and a couple others only to check back in a couple of days to find that they have all been declined. This hits them hard because they spent all of this time creating content and followed the process to the letter – but, they didn’t make a dime.

THEY WERE DESTINED TO FAIL FROM THE BEGINNING!

The same thing holds true for those of you that buy the shiny new $1,997 course on mastering paid traffic sources like Adwords, facebook, PPV, or whatever. Guess what? If you don’t have money in reserve to test campaigns and to lose some money upfront, you just wasted $1,997 dollars and a couple days of your life that you can never get back!

It’s all about understanding what YOU are GOOD at and what skills and tools you have at your disposal. If you buy a guide that is telling you to spam craigslist into oblivian, guess what? You can’t even start in most cases unless you also buy an expensive piece of software…failed again!

In order to make the right decisions and to only get your self involved in mostly winning propositions, take a couple minutes from your day and make a list of your skills and the things you already own that will help you.

Can you write well?
What software do you have?
How much time a day do you have?
Do you have extra cash for advertising?
Do you have money for outsourcing?
What processes do you undesrtand?
Are you really ready to commit?
What methods are you actually comfortable doing?

The shortest path to success in my opinion is the one of least resistance. So, understanding what you are good at and what you’re not is a great starting point to finally attaining the success you are after.

Here is the bottom line: ALMOST EVERY METHOD I’VE EVER READ WORKS!

Sure, there have been a couple that were just outright scams from some internet moron trying to scrape together a couple bucks by selling junk to sheeple, but the majority of them work to some extent. But, if your skills don’t fit the method, you are pretty much doomed to failure from the beginning. So, before you hit that paypal button next time, take a minute to stop and think about whether or not the skills, money, and tools you have available to you will help you get to where you want to be.

So, there is a ton of discussion lately about whether or not there is a duplicate content penalty or not. To make it entertaining, there are even some real blow hards that like to act like they work at Google or somehow know all the secrets that the internet has to offer.

The truth of the matter is, I’ve had to restrain myself on many occassions from jumping into these threads and telling people to shut up. However, that sort of bluntness is frowned upon in many circles so, I don’t. Luckily for me though – This is our blog and I can say whatever I want.

So, here goes: SHUT YOUR MOUTH MORON

AHHHHHHH….I feel better now.

Anyway, back to the duplicate content penalty. Is there one? Unfortunately, the answer is yes and no.

Before we go any further though, I want to make clear that what I talk about here is strictly my experience with duplicate content.

In some cases, I’ve seen people say that they are able to rank the same exact piece of content several times on the front page of Google. For the most part, I”m calling BS. The only times I’ve seen this happen is if the keyword itself absolutely sucks and has no commercial intent whatsoever. The chances of ranking the same exact piece of content for a competitive keyword on the first page are about as good as me getting snowed in at the playboy mansion. Basically, it isn’t going to happen.

So, the next time someone tells you that they have ranked the same piece of content repeatedly on the first page of Google, ask them to PROVE IT. Even before asking them to prove it though, let me give you the rundown of excuses that they will offer to you.

I don’t have to prove anything to you

I’m not going to give away my niches

I don’t want any competition

etc

Just to be clear – You can probably rank for a keyword like “purple unicorns with colon problems” on the first page multiple times with the same content. Because you and some other weirdo are probably the only ones wth content in the index. But, you won’t see the same content multiple times on the first page for a keyword like “best teeth whiteners” – See the difference?

To me, that constitutes as a penalty of sorts, but if you think about it, it makes sense, right?

Google wants to give their users a wide variety of content and choices when they search for something. So, returning the same content multiple times on the first page for a keyword with a ton of content out there would be a little goofy, right?

Ok, with all that being said, you are not going to be penalized for posting the same content or mass distribution/syndication.

What I mean is, you are not going to be penalized for submitting the same content to multiple places linking back to your websites or other properties that you are trying to build backlinks to.

The same content has been posted on multiple places across the web for the most part since Al Gore invented the internet. Hell, some of the biggest authority sites in existance are full of duplicate content. More importantly, they have thousands of backlinks pointing back to their site that is duplicate conent. Yet, Google and other search engines still see fit to rank them on the first page for more keywords than they can count.

If that is a penalty, I’ll take it

So, here is a common scenario:

You buy some PLR because it is a nice that you are involved in. You should decide right up front what your goals for that content is going to be:

1. Is it going to be search engine fodder (backlinks)
2. Content that you want to rank

If your plan is for search engine fodder, change the title to it and let it rip! Mass submit it to directories using a service or some sort of software solution. If it is long enough, break it in half and then submit each half as a full article as a mass submission, use them as posts on your existing blog to beef up your content. Pretty much anything is fair game.

While you will more than likely getting a ton of backlinks, don’t expect that content to shoot to the top of the serps unless you are doing more than everyone else to promote the content itself. Meaning, unless you are building backlinks to it OR if you were the first or close the first one to submit the content and get it indexed.

Now, lets say you want to get the content to rank.

In order to do this without having to beat the seveal other people down that also got the content, you will need to rewrite it a little bit. The exact percentage is still to this day a mystery to me. Typically, I will just read the first paragraph and then put it in my own words – then rinse and repeat with the rest of the paragraphs. Doing this, I can normally rewrite a 500 word article in about 10 or 15 minutes.

BUT, I’m lazy…

So, normally I will use some sort of software or service to spin the content for me – I’ll be reviewing and giving the low down on the ones that we personally use in the coming days. So, check back for that.

As you can see, having a plan of attack is very important when it comes to marketing with duplicate content. Without having a plan and setting at least a small amount of expectations as far as what you plan to accomplish with that content, you are probably going to be disappointed.

In a nutshell, that is my take on the duplicate content penalty. Leave some comments below and let me know what you think.

Jeremy

If you have been in the CPA game for any length of time, you have no doubt noticed some changes, or at least you should have if you were paying attention. For starters, many of the trial offers are GONE. Depending on which CPA network you belong to, you might not find any FREE + Shipping offers at all.

Even worse, many of the “good” trial offers that are still there now have a HUGE disclaimer statement that scares potential leads and buyers away.

Basically, some of the offers were owned by scum bags who were ripping the consumers off. They were not letting them cancel their free trial, they were not putting the additional charges anywhere in the disclaimer, and in some cases, they were automatically signing people up to multiple offers at once.

So, how do we combat this?

Simple, you have to be more selective about the offers you promote AND you have to be a better sales person.

As far as being more selective goes, it is a good idea to go through as much of the sales process on the offers you are looking at as possible. Make up a name, address, email address, and a phone number to fill in the form on the front page. What you want to look at is on the 2nd page. What you are trying to see is whether or not the offer is pretty much displaying a BIG WARNING:

What you don’t want to see is: YOUR CREDIT CARD WILL BE BILLED $XXX IN 14 DAYS

That alone is going to scare of many of the people that are there to get a “free trial” of the product.

Instead, look for the offers that have the disclaimer at the bottom of the page – normally below the fold. Basically, they are still letting the visitor know that there is going to be further billing, they are just doing it in a different place on the page.

If you have noticed a decline in your conversions of your current campaigns, go through the sales process and look for what we talked about above. I personally went through several of ours and found that big disclaimer on several of them. So, I promptly switched to an offer that still gave the visitor all of the information, they just did it below the page fold…and conversions went back to normal for the most part.

As far as being a better sales person goes…

In the past, there were tons of offers that we could promote and the conversions flowed like water. But, with some of the changes that are taking place, it is going to be necessary that we do a little more pre-selling. This is especially true when we are marketing with articles, content in general, or using SEO strategies.

250 words of crap and a buy now link used to cut it before – not so much now.

It’s more important than ever to hit the hot buttons and to make your readers feel the pain than ever.

If you are promoting a teeth whitener, writing about a “free teeth whitener” isn’t good enough anymore. You have to hit the buttons of your readers to make them remember why they want a teeth whitener. Their yellow teeth, how unattractive they are to the opposite sex, and the fact that people don’t want to look at them in the face when the talk.

Driving the visitors to a squeeze page might not be a bad idea either. This will give you the chance to sell to them many times over. If they don’t take the CPA offer, then you can pitch a digital product, or maybe other physical products from places like Amazon or an other program you are an affiliate for.

Marketing online evolves constantly. It is important that YOU keep up with the changes. If you don’t, you will be left in the dust. So, keep your eyes open, and always keep a close eye on anything that is changing. It really will make a difference to your bottom line.

Don’t mind us if things get a little messy here. We are working on getting the blog the way we want it so things may change from time to time. However the posts will remain here.

We are probably just going to screw it up a little here and there until we have it the way we want it.