Ok, I know that this is kind of a rant, but it is also very serious.  This is not a promotional post.  There is really nothing life-changing to learn here.  But I think it is something that everyone should read and pay close attention to.

Internet marketers, please stop it with the ridiculous/deceptive/uninformative/false subject lines that you are putting in your emails.  It has gotten out of hand, and I am officially putting you on notice.  From here on out, I will be forwarding any such emails to the FTC as they are in direct violation of current regulations.  I don’t care if I’ve been on your list for 6 days, 6 months, or 6 years.  I don’t care if we’re close friends or if I’ve never talked to you before.  Anyone who sends me an email with a spammy subject line is getting reported.

Some of those who are doing this are product owners, but many are affiliates.  Listen, I know what it’s like being an affiliate.  That’s a big part of my internet marketing life.  A lot of times you’re too busy to write up your own promotional email for the latest product that you’re promoting, so you just grab whatever lame swipe the product owner provided.  Fine, whatever.  But at least take a couple minutes to look at it and see if you’d want to see that subject (and even the entire email body) in your inbox.  Use some common sense and have some common courtesy.

To the product owners out there who are providing these swipes.  STOP IT!  Honestly.  All you’re doing is hurting your reputation within the industry.  Sure, it might get you a few more opens which leads to a couple more sales.  Wow, good for you.  But down the road, it’s going to catch up to you and you’re going to get a bad name and no one is going to take you seriously.

So the next time you are about to send out a promotional email with one of the following subject lines, or something similar, stop for just a second and consider whether it may result in a phone call from the FTC wanting to know what the hell you’re doing:

“PAYMENT COMPLETE”

“PAYMENT: $0.00″

“DOWNLOAD REQUEST: ABCDEFG12345″

“CB PAYMENT”

“YOUR PAYMENT IS WAITING”

“YOUR CHECK IS READY”

“2nd NOTICE”

“ACCOUNT ID”

“RE: *anything that is not a direct reply to a previous email!!!*”

If you’ve ever wonder what it really takes to drive waves of 100% free search engine traffic, then you have to see this video from Alex Goad:

http://www.MartinKeens.com/Rankbuilder

Usually when people tell you that they can show you how to increase your search engine rankings and dominate niche markets with free search engine traffic, they show little proof or solid results…

The video on that page is a quick case study about a site he took from a measely 6 visitors a day to over 23,000 visitors a month – all non-paid, 100% free search engine traffic…

http://www.MartinKeens.com/Rankbuilder

Not only that, but this site is ranking #2 out of 90 million competitors in Google for the term “internet marketing blog”… This is one of the most competitive in an already highly competitive niche.

…And he also shows how he syndicated, and automatically fed his content to 349,000 pages that are all indexed in Google – building over 20,000 backlinks in the process.

Truth be told, this video is absolutely insane and a *must-watch* – especially because he also reveals the secret to how he achieved these results… which by the way, is completely automated.

This just may be the video that changes the way you go about ranking and driving a boat-load of traffic to any site you want:

http://www.MartinKeens.com/Rankbuilder

Don’t wait, I don’t know how long he’ll keep this up…

I know that it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here.  I’m really sorry about that.  I’m not going to make excuses.  So how about I just make it up to you instead by letting you know about an absolutely amazing list-building PLR offer?

We all know that the money is in the list.  If you are involved in affiliate marketing or any other kind of internet marketing and you do not have a list (or multiple lists), then you are not making nearly as much money as you could be.  And you are working a lot harder than you should be.  Having a list of hungry buyers waiting to pull out their wallets the second that you hit the ‘Send’ button is the key to being and efficient and successful internet marketer.

So today I have something for you that you are not going to want to miss.  Whether you already have 10 lists of 5,000+ subscribers each or you don’t even have one mailing list, you are going to want to jump all over this.  For a limited time, you can get 10 list-building kits (reports, squeeze pages, download-pages, and more) with PLR for just $27.  That’s just $2.70 per kit!  And you can rebrand them as your own so that they really stand out and your visitors just HAVE to have them.

I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of sales BS here.  You’ll either immediately see the value of an offer like this or you wont.  If you do, then head on over to http://www.ListProfitKits.com and take action.  If you don’t, well, I guess you just enjoy working a lot harder for a lot less money.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it is only available to my readers, and it is only available TODAY.

Some of you have probably already heard about the amazing new program that was just recently launched by internet marketing genius Russell Brunson. It is call DotComSecrets University and it is simply amazing. If you haven’t heard about it yet, then I suggest that you go HERE to find out a little about it. But DO NOT buy it there! Continue reading to find out how you can get a lifetime membership (which Russell isn’t even selling, let alone giving away) for FREE!

You see, since I have done so well promoting Russell’s Microcontinuity product, he as agreed to let me give away one free lifetime membership to DotComSecrets University for every 10 people who takes part in another simply amazing offer that he has running. Without going into too much detail, it basically boils down to the fact that Russell needs to empty out his warehouse TODAY to make room for all of the information-packed content that will be part of DotComSecrets University. To do this, he is almost giving away boxes of his world-famous marketing materials that have a value of over $1800.

So we got together and worked out a deal. For every 10 boxes full of internet marketing guides, courses, recordings and more that my readers buy (and when I say “buy”, I mean it in the loosest of terms, you’re basically STEALING these!), Russell will let me give away 1 lifetime membership to DotComSecrets University.

Here’s what you need to do if you want to take part in this absolutely insane deal:

1.) Order one of Russell Brunson’s warehouse liquidation boxes here: http://www.MartinKeens.com/WOW

2.) Forward your receipt to freedcsu@martinkeens.com

3.) Enjoy the overwhelming amount of internet marketing education that you will get from the box that Russell sends you.

4.) If you are selected as a winner of a free lifetime membership to DotComSecrets University, cancel your trial membership that you received when you jumped on the warehouse liquidation offer. That’s right, I am authorized to tell you to CANCEL your trial membership. How many marketers will do that?

Remember, this offer is not available anywhere else. You couldn’t even BUY a lifetime membership to DotComSecrets if you wanted to. And I’m giving them away for free. That’s a $97 per month value for as long as you live!

But this offer ends TONIGHT, so act fast! Submit your entry now by going to http://www.MartinKeens.com/WOW and then forwarding me your receipt. That’s all there is to it. I look forward to sending you a congratulatory message when you win!

If you have spent any amount of time in the realm of Internet Marketing, then you know that the easiest (and often least expensive) way to get content that you can call your own is to use Private Label content.  The downside is that this content is usually outsourced to some writer getting paid $0.03 per hour who couldn’t care less about the quality of the content.  In this case, the saying that “You get what you pay for” couldn’t be more true.  And this is they way that it has been for a long time.  If you wanted to take the easy route and use PLR, you would either have to settle for low quality, or you would have to spend hours tweaking and re-writing the content.

That all changes today …

You can now get premium private label (PLR) content for a fraction of what you would expect to pay.  This is top-notch, high-quality content from a writing and design team who sells individual products for over $1000.  Don’t worry though, you’re not going to pay anywhere close to that much.  In fact, for a limited time, you can get your first month for less than 1/10th of that price.  You don’t want me to waste your time talking about money and prices though.  Let’s take a look at exactly what you’ll get in this premium monthly PLR membership:

• 2 Exclusive info-products in PDF and DOC format
• 2 Professionally written sales pages
• 2 Sets of premium graphics including PSD files
• Bonus reports and squeeze pages
• Easy-to-navigate affiliate and download pages for each product
• Instant access to the PLR Vault (contains over 100 PLR products as of this post)
• Access to the PLR archives so you can purchase previous releases

You can get access to all of this starting at just $9.99!!  Now that’s a deal if I’ve ever seen one.  That’s actually a better deal than I got when I joined.  That’s right, I’m actually a member of this site.  So I can vouch for the extremely high quality of these exclusive private label packages.

I’ll let the owners of the site give you a more detailed run-down of the membership and how you can use the PLR content to make insane amounts of profit (I’m currently making about 2000% profit on the membership fee each month using the products).  So go ahead and check it out now before they take away the $9.99 first-month trial.  Even at the regular prices, this site is still an amazing bargain, but why pass up an even better offer?

If the banner isn’t working, you can click here: http://www.MartinKeens.com/PrivateLabel

1. Stop using direct affiliate links.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

You probably already know that it’s a good
idea to cloak (hide) your affiliate links.

Doing so will help ward off the link hijackers
who switch in their affiliate ID for yours,
and thus steal your commission when they buy
the product.

It also virtually reduces the number of buyers
who ‘cut off’ the affiliate portion of a link
and go straight to the sales page (perhaps
thinking that doing so will somehow give them
a better deal?)

But there’s another reason NOT to use direct
affiliate links: Namely, because you could end
up with 100′s of ‘dead’ links all over the net.

You see, if you make a blog post, Tweet about
an affiliate product or include a direct link
in an ebook, then what happens if the vendor
stops selling that product?

You’ll have dead links.
(Maybe hundreds of them)

Now, if you use a redirect link instead you can
change the redirect link to point from the dead
affiliate link to a similar affiliate product in
just a matter of seconds.

And in doing so, you could potentially save
thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions.

2. Look for these common sales leaks.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

If you don’t vet the sales process thoroughly,
you may find that the biggest thief is the
product vendor!

Sometimes the vendor is just a new marketer
who doesn’t know any better.  (Other times,
you may find vendors who are deliberately
trying to rip you off)…

Here are some things to look for:

* Google AdSense ads on the sales page.

Some marketers don’t realize that a sales
page shouldn’t have any distractions, and
that the only way to leave a sales page is
via a back button or the buy button.

Other marketers know exactly what they’re
doing – you send them traffic for free, and
they get the money every time someone clicks
on their ads.

Either way, avoid these vendors.

* Alternative payment options. Another sneaky
way product vendors reach into your pocket is
by offering multiple payment options on the
affiliate landing page.

This is only troublesome IF you don’t credit
if the customer chooses a different option.

For example, if the vendor uses Clickbank for
affiliate tracking, then obviously you won’t
get a penny if the vendor encourages customers
to call their orders in.

* Customer service reps that send visitors to
a new page.

Watch out for this sneaky trick: sometimes when
a prospect has a question, the customer service
rep (or the vendor) sends the customer to a
different sales page.

End result? You lose the commission!

3. Find out what loopholes the vendor will use to keep your money

==============================================

Here’s one last tip: Always read the TOS (terms
of service) and affiliate agreement.

Sometimes you’ll find outrageous payment
thresholds that allows the vendor to legally
keep your money until you reach that threshold!

Other times the vendor charges a huge
‘accounting fee’ just to cut you your check.

There you have it – three quick and easy ways
to start banking bigger affiliate paychecks.

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.

While I was doing a little bit of research last night, I ran across
one specific thing that I am willing to bet many of you are doing, and
I’m willing to bet that it is costing you TONS of sales…

So, what is this “big mistake”?

You are using the wrong “tone”!

huh?

It’s a little hard to explain, but I’ll do my best to make my point
clear, OK?

You see, in an attempt to get high rankings in the search engines
many people write their content like “term papers” or some sort
of super duper informative report of sorts.

But, the part about why the visitor might need your product or
service isn’t there. A ton of information, but not one simple
reason or compelling argument that would make someone click the
link and actually buy what you are selling.

As an example, many times when I see someone write content in the
weight loss niche, they explain things like how metabolism works,
why it is important to eat several meals a day, and other technical
aspects of the niche itself.

BUT

What about the reason people way to lose weight? Things like:

To look good in a bikini
Embarrassment caused from being fat
Illnesses caused from being overweight
possible death
Being more attractive to the opposite sex
ETC…

The things I’ve listed above are some of the reasons people buy
weight loss products. They don’t buy into diets to understand metabolism,
or to find out why they should eat several meals a day.

The next time you are write a piece of content, read it back to
yourself and see if you can pick out a couple of compelling reasons
why someone would buy the product you are trying to sell.

I used the weight loss niche as an example, but what I’ve said is
true for ANY niche…

COMPELLING WORDS = MORE SALES

Think about it….

Even thought most internet marketers now know the importance of building email lists, you might not realize how a highly targeted opt in list is critical for the success of your business. I think we should go ahead and change that.

The first thing that you need to do is select your niche or target market. Nailing down what this is will not only give you something on which to focus, but will also help you find the people who will be interested in the information you have to provide.

Part of your initial research is finding a target market or niche that will be profitable. While choosing a topic such as “Giraffes wearing purple tights” might be of interest and passion to you, it’s probably not the best choice for an online business venture. It may be difficult for people to gain trust in your products if you don’t carefully research first. Let’s look for something a little more promising financially.

How about more popular topics, such as pets, or parenting, or even starting an online business? These topics are good, but could end up being quite global in nature. Take pets for example. Think of the many specific kinds of pets there are. Then, if you go into the different breeds among those types of pets, the numbers are starting to become completely overwhelming. You would be best to start narrowing down your options to something a little more controllable and specific.

So, instead of pets, you choose to narrow it down to dogs. This is a good start. With a little more research, maybe you have determined that dogs can be a profitable target niche. If you already have a relevant list, maybe you purchased one or you have partnered with someone and are using thier list, this is a great time to send out a mailing to your list, letting them know about the upcoming information on both your site and your mailings or ezines.

Don’t be alarmed if you see people opt-ing out, especially from a purchased or rented list.  You’re fine tuning the list for optimal profits.  It’s much better to have a targeted list of 1,000 people than to have a global list of 20,000 who don’t really care at all about what you’re doing.

You may want to break down your niche into even smaller chunks, and stay specifically on topics such as “Caring for your new puppy” or “Training your dog”. If this is your chosen method, your list may get smaller still. However, you could choose to stay within the more global area of dogs, while providing what is known as “mini-courses” or “mini-reports” on the small, individual items such as those mentioned above.

Whether you’ve purchased a list or are building one from scratch, a targeted and specific niche topic is the key to online profits.  Specializing in a narrow subject makes it easier to become the expert and a source of quality information.  Once your subscribers gain that feeling of trust with you, they will recommend your site or mailing list to their friends. This is one of the great ways your list will keep growing; only now it’s with people you know are interested in what you have to offer. There is always room for new subscribers interested in your niche.

What do some membership sites have over others?
They have found a profitable niche to base their
site upon. If you want to drive traffic and
increase membership numbers, find a topic that
people are interested in.

Finding a topic is not that hard but it does
require some research. That is always the most
important first step in any business venture. If
you don’t know what else is out there, how can
you compete? How can you improve on an existing
model?

Finding Your Topic

Start with what you know. English teachers always
tell you to write what you know. That philosophy
goes for business as well. If you are interested
in fitness, begin your research there. Are there
other membership sites on the topic of fitness,
nutrition or both?  If there is, find out what
makes them stand out.

Within each topic there is room to move around.
You can choose a niche within that general topic
(fitness for example) to specialize your
membership site. Maybe the site will offer fitness
tools for women or men’s fitness. One advantage
that your niche membership site would have is a
more focused approach to fitness for that
particular gender.

Choosing Your Price

What is it about $0.95 or $0.99? It’s almost as
if people are saving a lot with only a few cents.
Someone is more likely to pay $9.95 than $10.00.
It must be a psychological thing but it works.
Knock off a few cents and you are in business.

Your price will depend on two things: competitive
prices and your offerings. If another fitness site
offers membership for $9.99, you will have to have
something spectacular if your price is higher.
And, that might be possible if they offer the
basics for their members. Choose membership tools
that make life easier for your potential members.

Testing the Waters

If you already run a website or a blog, use that
forum to gauge how much interest there is in your
niche topic. Poll visitors; send survey links to
customers and post engaging blog entries that beg
feedback on your possible new enterprise. You
don’t want to sink money into a venture that
won’t even get off the ground.

Want to start a membership site that will make
you a profit? Research topics for your site and
explore niche possibilities that will bring you
the traffic and the money. But, when you find a
worthy niche, you will see a recurring income each
month from your hard work.

We are by design social creatures.  We communicate through language
and written words.  When we want to make a purchasing decision, how
do we most often do it?  Think about when you want to buy
something.

Don’t you usually ask someone you know who has something you are
interested in getting?  If you’re in front of the computer and
you’re interested in buying something, what words do you usually
type in?  If you’re like most people you probably type “(name of
product) review”

From a social and practical standpoint this makes perfect sense.
Not too many people like to throw away their money.  When they want
to make a purchase they want to make sure that they will be getting
their money’s worth.  There’s also something more happening
internally.  They want to justify their purchase to quiet that
little nagging doubt that jabs at them when they are thinking about
buying something.

If they have a problem, they’ll seek out information about it.  If
they stumble upon a product that can help solve their problem, they
may not buy it right away.  They may need a little extra push.
When they read a review from another human being that may be the
push they need to quiet that little nagging voice of doubt in their
mind and they will buy.

Are you losing money at your niche site by not having product
reviews?  If you have a niche site, do you have product reviews?
Or, are you like most typical internet marketers and simply have
affiliate links or banners on your site?

The smart marketers know that the best way to get someone to buy a
product from their site is to pre-sell the prospective buyer.
Instead of just sending the buyer cold to a sales page they warm
the buyer up a little bit.  They discuss the product a little bit
on their site.  They talk about the benefits and features of the
product.

When the prospective buyer gets to the site they’ll feel more
comfortable.  They already know what to expect when they get to the
sales page because the smart internet marketer wrote a quality
product review.  The more comfortable the prospective buyer is with
the product the more likely they are to buy it.  This leads to more
affiliate money for the smart internet marketer who implements
product reviews on their niche sites.