Internet Marketing Tips » Internet Marketing

Get Started with Pinterest & Drive Traffic To Your Website

Shabbir — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:41:54 +0000

Pinterest is the hottest social networking platform of 2011 and has over taken some of the established social networking platforms by a big margin. Are you still wasting your time with Digg and Stumbleupon? Its time to start pinning. Let me share how you can get started with Pinterest.

How Pinterest Works?

Pinterest is a social network that allows users to share and discover new interests by pinning images, videos or content to pinboards that have a common theme. As with any social network, users can either upload from their computer or pin things they find on the web using pin it button.

Apart from that Pinterest is well integrated with other social networking platform and so when others are browsing through pins, they will also have the ability to share through Facebook, Twitter or email.

Why Pinterest?

Online businesses rely on driving traffic to websites. Many independent studies have shown that Pinterest is more effective at driving traffic compared to other social networking sites like LinkedIn or Google+ (here or here). On top of that every single pin includes a link back to the source of the element (Image or video). If an image is pinned, it will link back to the page where the image was found. However, these are no-follow links and so will not help much in SEO but then the pinners and re-pinners can visit your pages.

How Pinterest is Monetized?

We all know social networking sites are not well monetized because advertising revenue model does not work that well on them. May be one of the reason why we don’t see ads on twitter and Google+ but Pinterest is different. Pinterest is still in beta and is already making money.

They partnered with Skimlinks, which automatically scans through every link posted on the site to see if it can convert that link into an affiliate link and ensures pinterest will make cash from sales generated from pinned links. Pinterest has taken a unique path of generating revenue early.

How to get a Pinterest Account?

Pinterest account can only be created with an invite. Visit www.pinterest.com, click “request an Invite,” and enter your email address to be notified when you have access to create your account, or you can ask a friend who already has a pinterest account to invite you. If you are looking for pinterest invite share your interest in comments and I can invite you.

Can I use Pinterest for marketing?

Pinterest is designed to categorize and share things you love and not a tool for promotion but if you’re a blogger, a pinboard on your blog topic would not be a bad idea. You can find my Internet Marketing Pin Board here.

Build Your Pinterest Pinboard Following

Any social network requires building followers for networking and traffic. However, pinterest is a lot different when it comes to following users. In typical social networking terms you follow people on twitter, facebook and linkedIn but pinterest has option to follow interest (specific pinboard) of a user. It makes much more sense.

I blog about Internet Marketing and Technical Analysis but people reading this blog may not be interested in knowing what I do in Indian equity market. So you can follow me on Pinterest or my Internet Marketing Board on Pinterest.

Add your pinterest pinboard everywhere you can.

Add pinterest follow button to your website.
Create the best board on a topic and don’t hesitate to promote other users’ pins to enhance your collection.
Promote your presence of Pinterest on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter.

Final Thoughts

Pinterest is a visual social network and so you need to create pin boards that have the best visual content like infographics, charts, ebook covers. Are you on Pinterest and using it to your advantage? Share your views in comments

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Why I don’t Recommend Google’s keyword Tool for SEO?

Shabbir — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:13:53 +0000

Google’s keyword tool is useless when doing keyword research for SEO and yet most people prefer doing keyword research using Google’s Keyword tool only. Rather I must say Adwords Keyword Tool. The choice of using it is obvious because – It’s free, it’s by Google and last but not the least Internet is full of recommendation to use it. We need to understand one thing before using it, which is it is not SEO keyword research tool but it is a PPC Keyword research tool.

The question may come what is the difference between the two. There is difference of hell and heaven.

Google’s Keyword tool is not for analyzing SEO competition but for analyzing PPC competition.

Let me try to explain this with an example. Let us take a broad keyword say blog or blogging. Google Adwords Keyword tools reports both of them as low competition keywords.

Now let us look at the same keywords into Market Samurai, the tool I use for my SEO Based keyword research but you can use any other SEO competition-analyzing tool of your choice.

See the RDP column in screenshot above, which means referring domains as back links to the ranked pages. You will find that you need 10k+ links pointing to your page alone to rank for the keyword blog or blogging and this is by no means a low competitive keyword.

You may wonder is Google keyword tool reporting wrongly? NO the Google keyword tool reports competition for PPC and not for organic SEO. You can see there are no ads for the terms Blog or blogging.

So what does this mean, You can get cheap traffic if you target keywords like blog or blogging for your Adwords campaign but it gives you no idea on the keywords competitiveness for Google’s organic rankings.

So never use ~~Google’s~~ Adwords keyword tool for SEO and only use it for PPC keyword competition analysis.

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Google’s New Ad Format – Yet Another Reason to Have AWeber On Your Blog

Shabbir — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:20:41 +0000

As I read this article about Google’s new ad format on Techcrunch I got really excited about it. Google says

We’re currently running a small experiment of a new ad format that helps users sign up more easily for email subscriptions or other free newsletters. This new ad format contains a box within the ad that displays a user’s Google email address (if logged in). If a user chooses to click ‘Subscribe to newsletter’ then the email address is sent to the advertiser directly, which is clearly disclosed within the ad itself.

See the ads in Action. Images credit TechCrunch.

And when you are subscribed you see

Thank you Google, what a great way to start The New Year! I am really excited to get those ads rolled out to my Adwords account. I think you should also start using AWeber now for your blog.

For those who are not aware about what AWeber can do for your blog, read my AWeber review

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Are you Sending Spam Emails Unknowingly?

Shabbir — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:31:51 +0000

Multinational companies even don’t understand the concept of Email spam and send emails which are actually spam. Let me first clarify what is an email spam with an example?

Yesterday I got an email from TimesJobs.com – A Job portal where I registered few years back.

See the email I received from them. Click on image to view the complete Email.

Taking few points from the CAN-SPAM Act (PDF Link), all email messages must:

Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future emails (unsubscribe).
Tell recipients where you’re located i.e. a valid physical postal address.

Email from Timesjobs has neither. They don’t have their physical postal address nor offer any unsubscribe link in the email and so according to CAN SPAM Act this is spam.

Yes I do agree that I registered at Timesjobs.com but that does not allow them to spam me for the rest of my life? Priorities changes for user. I am not looking for jobs and on the flip side I am looking to hire people.

If I remember correctly I was not looking for a job switch even in 2006-2007 when I joined my so called last job. I have not logged on to any job site for years and still get emails from majority of the job sites because I registered with them few years back.

Getting on the other side of the table

As a business I prefer AWeber which apart from handling all those issues of being compliance with CAN SPAM Act can allow you to have list of inactive users i.e. users who have no activities for some months / years. You can create segment users who are inactive.

Notify them that due to inactivity for such a long period their emails are being deleted. You will see more unsubscribe from these segment of users but users like me who don’t have the time to open those emails can safely be removed from your list to create more active and responsive list of users.

So are you sending spam Emails unknowingly?

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Online Reputation Management Tips

Shabbir — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:09:58 +0000

Online Reputation management is a very common term used by SEO experts these days and so I am going to give you real live example to help you not only understand online reputation management but also enhance your online reputation.

What is Online Reputation?

When you search in Google for the term Apple, as expected you see everything about the Apple Inc and nothing about the Apple as fruit.

Couple points to notice in the screenshot above.

Apple beats Wikipedia for the term Apple.
Apple Inc page of Wikipedia beats the Apple page of Wikipedia

Online Reputation Management: The goal of online reputation management is to suppress the negative mentions (or other mentions) by pushing them lower on search engine results pages and push positive mentions higher on search engine results page to decrease the negative visibility of the person, company, business or brand.

Now the same reputation management effect is happening to my Sharekhan PMS Review.

I rank pretty well in Google for the term – Sharekhan PMS review.

But I was pretty much in the first 3 results even for the term Sharekhan PMS but over time my article is being pushed down. Currently is on 9th spot. I don’t care much but the ranking for the term Sharekhan PMS but this is how you should be working on getting your online reputation managed. Well done Sharekhan.

How to Manage Online Reputation?

The answer to the question how I am being pushed down the search engine results page will help understand how you can manage your online reputation.

I am seeing lot of one page websites are being created. Domains like www.sharekhan-.com. Just to mention few domains – http://www.sharekhan-india.com/, http://www.sharekhan-pms.com/, http://www.sharekhan-tradetiger.com/, http://www.sharekhan-firststep.com/ …
Those domains are not hosted on the same server as the main site but mainly on different shared hosts. Different IPs and different hosts. You can even make whois private if you want. Note: Sharekhan uses BlueHost which is one of my recommended shared hosts as well. See iPage Review.
Apart from secondary domains some sub-domains are also created to boost the number of results in the search engine results page. Have some sub-domains for your site that makes sense.
Build links to positive reviews that are ranked in search engines but not very highly ranked. Find positive reviews that are on second or third page of search engine results page and try building links to those sites to boost their ranking higher to improve your online reputation.
Create keyword rich content for the authority website in the niche. This content can rank well in Google almost instantly because of the authority of the website.

Do you know of other ways to improve online reputation? Please share them in the comments.

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Email Marketing Vs Social Media Marketing

Shabbir — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:28:11 +0000

I sent out greetings for Eid-ul-Fitr (31st August 2011) to my blog readers, family members, friends and online friends using multiple methods. For family members I used phone and sms. For friends it was through the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. For blog readers it was through email.

The response to the greetings reveals an astonishing fact. Email Marketing Crushes Social Media Marketing by a huge margin. Facebook saw quite a few responses and it was highest among social media platforms but I expected lot more responses on social media platform especially Facebook because it is where everybody interacts and share greetings these days.

The greetings Email I sent out to my email list, received thousands of replies and best wishes.

My email list is of course few times larger than my social media following but mathematically email list generated 250% more responses than social media.

So Stop Promoting Social Media Profiles, and focus on growing your Email List. This is one of the main reason I have my email signup form in much more prominent position on my both blogs than the social media profiles. You can still link to your social media profiles from somewhere but at it is always the email signup form that should have the most prominent position.

You can start growing your email list now. You’ll need a reliable email service provider. I use and recommend Aweber because it is very easy to use and is loaded with tons of features (See here). (Note, if you’re using Feedburner by email, you’re missing out real power of email marketing. See here)

Email marketing is very powerful if you do it the RIGHT way. You should also focus on social media marketing but not at the cost of email marketing? I’d like to hear your thoughts on the same.

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FREE Google Adwords Coupons – $75 Worth of FREE Advertising

Shabbir — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 10:18:57 +0000

Many readers have asked me if I have any Google Adwords coupons that I can share with them. Let me share a simple trick that allows you to grab as many Adwords coupons as you want for all your accounts.

Signup for new account at Google Adwords with new email address and phone number. Google will review your request and send you a coupon via email within few hours after you signup.

https://services.google.com/fb/forms/adwordscoupon/

If you have any issues do post them in comments below and I will be more than happy to help to the extent I can but remember the decision to give you an Adwords coupons lies with Google only and there is no one who can provide you with those coupon like Google itself.

Before you jump into your firsy PPC Marketing campaign make sure you read Effective PPC Marketing Tips – The essential things anyone should know for better return of investment or ROI to PPC Marketing campaigns.

Note: You can have issues promoting Affiliate sites into Adwords. Read Adwords Issues with Affiliate Marketing

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Why So Many Affiliates Fail In Affiliate Marketing?

Shabbir — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:36:17 +0000

Thousands of webmaster’s try affiliate marketing every year and only small percentage of them make enough to quit their job or significantly change their lifestyle. What could be the reason for so many people trying to get into affiliate marketing but could not make a major impact?

Is it something to do with competition? I don’t think so.

Let me share what I found the reason for failure among many affiliate marketers and webmasters.

1. Dedication

Dedication is one of the most common things missing among the new affiliate marketers. Let’s take an example of Sachin Tendulkar once again. You are not trying to be as great as Sachin Tendulkar but let us say you just want to make a living playing cricket, do you think you could just go out hit balls a few times a week and expect to be a pro?

Author Malcolm Gladwell, who studied exceptionally talented and successful people of the world, in his book Outliers, wrote that to be in the top tier of any endeavour requires incredible dedication and they have put in at least 10,000 hours of work over the years of time.

To be a successful affiliate I am sure you will not need 10,000 hours but you will surely need the same kind of dedication to be the better affiliate. I have seen many people start an Internet Marketing training system, read it and get really excited and then either don’t actually follow the system till the end or just do it for a week or two and give up.

Let me share some numbers here of my free e-Course on how to make money online. I see people start with great enthusiasm but in a 10 days time many even don’t care about opening the email.

There can be two reasons for the opening rate of emails going down. Either the content of the email is not what they expect or they lost the interest. From the emails and feedback I get it is more to do with later. After few chapters I get emails and as I interact with them they tell me that they’ve been doing what I am suggesting for months but with no success and even point out the flaw in the products I recommend. In reply I ask only two questions whose answer I know will be “Not many or not much”.

How many articles have you written for the months you are working on it?
How many backlinks have you actively build for your site over the past few months?

By answering not many they themselves answered their own question of why things are not working for them because no matter what product and system you are following, as a webmaster you should be able to generate solid content and good quality links to your site. Isn’t it?

Getting to cricket as an example, if you plan to make cricket as your career and if your coach instructed to practice for 8 hours a day but if you are just doing just for an hour a day, can you blame the cricket as a career or even your coach for that?

2. Invest in Education

I see many people look for most of the things for free when it comes to online and I am sure you will find lot very good stuff for free but what if someone has bundled the same free stuff for you in one place and asking some small bucks for doing that. It can save lot of time searching each of them. Isn’t it?

Successful people invest lot of their time and money in the business and then spend what is left over but I have seen many others go the other way round. They spend vast majority of their time and money on other things in life and invest what is left in their online business.

Make sure you are investing in your education and empowering your business. Learn from other successful people and try to avoid working alone or even listen to people who can have a negative influence on you. If you cannot network with people face to face, try to learn as much as possible through books, DVDs etc. Recently I reviewed Job Crusher program and it is one such programs that can help you build your expertise in internet marketing as well as help you network with many more successful webmasters online.

In the process of educating yourself you can have failures and successful affiliates enjoy the process of learning, even when they’re learning from their failures and appreciate the experience of failing in order to learn and grow. You can see how I handled failures when I started online in 2004.

3. Embrace the Competition

As an affiliate marketer you should understand that affiliate marketing means competition. You are not alone in the niche and you will never be alone even if you start alone. You can look for small and unique niche to begin testing affiliate marketing but in the long run to make more and more money online, you need to get into major niches i.e. health, wealth and relationship. Learn from the small niche and plunge into the competition.

Remember Affiliate Marketing is one of the easiest way to make money online if done the right way. Share your experience and view about affiliate marketing in comments below.

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Revresponse Review – Get Paid for Generating Leads

Shabbir — Mon, 23 May 2011 06:47:37 +0000

What is Revresponse?

RevResponse is an ad network that pays you for generating leads using your website, blog, newsletters and even mailing lists. You refer a user to sign-up for the free content or magazine and RevResponse pays you commission on every qualified subscription. There are many other affiliate networks that do the same only for US users but Revresponse accepts international traffic.

1. Pays for Lead

Revresponse pays you for leads (i.e. free signups) and so your users don’t need to buy anything for you to be getting paid. It means better conversions. Payout per signup is in range of $1.50 to $20.00 per action.

2. Payments

Revresponse offers PayPal as the payment method with minimum payout level as $50. Payment is on a net-45 payment model, i.e. money will be sent approximately 45 days after the end of the month where a publisher crosses the minimum payout level.

3. Co-branded site integration

Like any other Affiliate network, Revresponse also offers normal banners and links but they also offer a Co-branded site that you can integrate and design like your own site. See this or this

4. Wide range of offers

Revresponse not only accepts international publishers but also offers wide range of products and offers ranging from Agriculture to manufacturing to Energy services and lots more.

5. Referral Program

The referral program pays 20% of the earnings that a publisher generates for the first six months. (Signup as my referral here) 20% is really good cut but there are very few publishers who would generate considerable income in the first 6 months. Ideally I would like to have lower percentage say 10% or so of publisher earnings for lifetime.

6. Can promote without a website

This is a big advantage of Revresponse over other ad networks. You don’t even need to have a website to be promoting their offers. You can even monetize your email newsletters, 3rd party lists, blogs, RSS feeds, your Facebook friends and lot more…

7. Offers

There are no clear cut guidelines as to what a valid lead is and what is not. Lead Qualification criteria are determined by the magazine owners, and are not very transparent to publishers. Reports reveal very little information as to why leads get rejected. Go4Expert saw 98% rejection.

And you can see that most of the offers were much related to Go4Expert audience i.e. technical.

Offer listing doesn’t reveal any helpful information either.

And many a times, magazines become unavailable without any notice to the publishers.

Final Thoughts

Success with Revresponse depends largely on the fact that there are offers that fits your niche. I think it would be worth trying Revresponse because they don’t need a banner space at all and you can even test them on certain specific pages of your site like a thanks page. Just after user register’s you can offer your user some free magazines. That is where I saw maximum leads were submitted for Go4Expert. If you see your leads are being accepted by the magazine owners, you can continue using them.

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Clickbank Multiple Sales Page

Shabbir — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:52:21 +0000

Clickbank does not allow you to have different sales page for your affiliates especially the super affiliates. I wanted to have a different sales page for some of my super affiliates and so created this plugin. I have gone through the Clickbank terms and condition where I did not found anything that is against this plugin provided you redirect users to new sales page which follows Clickbank’s sales page guidelines.

If you would like to get started with Clickbank check out Step By Step Guide to Start Selling With Clickbank

Installation

Download the Zip file. Extract the php file inside it and Upload the file at wp-content/plugins.
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
Open the plugin configuration page, which is located under Settings -> Clickbank Multi Sales page and enter the Redirection URLs one affiliate per line in the form of affiliateid|URL.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get the affiliate id of my affiliates?

There are multiple ways to get the affiliate id of your affiliates.

Ask them. You can ask your super affiliates what is their Clickbank id so you can customize sales page for them.
Use your clickbank reports to know who your super affiliates are? Offer them a custom sales page.

More queries, Can you help?

Yes I will be actively helping on any issue you have with this plugin so just post your questions, feedback or anything else you want to share in comments below.

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