Facebook, Search Engine Traffic & More...

All sorts of things going on today...

First off, I finally started editing my Facebook page. I'll have a lot to say about 'Web 2.0/Social Marketing' stuff in the near future but for now I suggest you put up a Facebook page. It's a good way to connect with friends and business contacts.

I also added Twitter to my Facebook page (you'll see that gadget located halfway down the right side of my Facebook page). Twitter is simply a way for people to see what you're up to and for you to see what other people are up to (by doing so, you may see an opportunity to contact someone to discuss a project you're working on).

Bottom line regarding the above: just start playing with these tools (if you aren't already). Their usefulness will become apparent.


Cool Site of the Day VIP Program

I'm still working on launching the Cool Site of the Day VIP program. I've got most of the details ironed out but am considering hiring a copywriter to optimize the intro page. BTW, if you think this is something I should open up to the group (over 7,000 of you!), by all means, post your opinion as a 'comment' below (if you're reading this on the blog). This might actually be a great way for us to learn A LOT from each other.


Copywriting (very important topic)

Speaking of copywriters, here are some very useful TAGS from my Del.icio.us account:

• The Gary Halbert Newsletter - Gary was considered by many to be one of the best copywriters out there. He passed away at a way too early age. Another copywriter who is legendary is John Carlton (be sure to sign up for John's '7 Marketing Strategy Lessons')
  
  
• GoCopyWriting
  
  
• Visuwords - tell me this won't help with your vocabulary.
  
  
• GetMeContent - haven't used them yet but it seems like a good place to outsource writing projects (I'll be writing about the importance of outsourcing in a future post)
  
  
• Copywriter Catalog - recently started by a nice guy, Jason Leister. Wish I could remember how we connected.

Shoemoney

I recently told you about WebmasterRadio.fm. Well, lately I've been tuning in every day; there are two shows worth checking out: Affiliate Thing (hosted by Lisa Picarille of Revenue Magazine and Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit) and The Shoemoney Show hosted by Super Affiliate Jeremy Shoemaker. I listen during breakfast and lunch.


Affiliate Opportunity

I was listening to one of my favorite marketing geeks, Markus Allen, the other day (this guy lives and breathes marketing - offline and online). He's rather cynical about a handful of things related to affiliate marketing but one product he's absolutely behind is CGI Connection. Now, before I get into why you should be marketing CGI Connection, I want to point out that I stand behind all the Affiliate Opportunities listed on the right panel of the coolsite.com blog.

With that said, here's why I love CGI Connection: I'm not only an affiliate marketer for this great product but a customer as well. Here's what the guy behind CGI Connection, John Saya, offers: royalty-free web software scripts. Use any of his hundreds of scripts to simply make a better web site. If don't know how to program (like me) but need an easy way to get cool software onto your web site then CGI Connection is like a dream come true. So, become a customer AND an affiliate. You can't go wrong (especially if you take advantage of WMC to drive traffic to your affiliate link. See how it all ties together?)


Web Marketing Concepts

Speaking of which, if you're using Web Marketing Concepts to generate search engine traffic to your web site, here's an update I just got from the developer, Jim MacKinlay: when you set up your domain and 10 subdomains, only insert 200-300 keywords initially and then return to add the remaining keywords (to get to 500) about a month later. Any questions, feel free to contact me. And, oh yeah, that 'process map' for WMC is coming!

Finally, please answer my super short poll about font size preferences (left panel).

Thanks for reading,

Mike

Is it Friday?

Same old story: I aim to post something on Thursday and I'm either scrambling late Thursday night or, as in this case, by the end of the day on Friday. Good thing I have nothing to sell--you've heard it before: send your 'pitch' e-mails on Tuesday or Wednesday when people are more likely to read them.


Cool Site of the Day VIP

Anyway, I'm deep into creating a 'Cool Site of the Day VIP' program so I've only got time to share just a few nuggets with you today.

By the way, the 'Cool Site of the Day VIP' program will enable online business folk like yourself to not only submit a website for review but also opt-in for a pretty impressive monthly consulting/coaching package offered by yours truly. It won't be for everyone but for those who sign-up (and I'll only be able to offer it to less than 50 people), it promises to over-deliver (in other words, I'm going to bust my rear to make sure that NO ONE takes me up on my "100% money back" guarantee).


Search Engine Traffic

I take my hat off to all of you who have wisely chosen to open an account with Web Marketing Concepts. I've fielded a bunch of calls from you over the past several days and I look forward to helping as many of you as possible get the most out of this exceptional search engine marketing tool. And, oh yeah, I'll get to that WMC mindmap soon!

Speaking of mindmaps, if you read the The Internet Business Manifesto, you learned the importance of 'process mapping' all the important routine things that you do in your web business and even personal life. I'll be sharing many process maps with you in the future. The software that I use for mapping is MindJet. Play around with it--you'll be amazed at how well a good map can focus your thinking and ACTIONS.


Pretty Cool Tool

So I get an e-mail from Bill at the Web Marketing Association announcing their upcoming Awards. I see they're talking up a design firm that created the UPS Whiteboard. Can't be that cool or can it? I clicked around and discovered a very cool way to send a message to someone when you want that someone to REMEMBER YOU.

Here's what you do, go to UPS Whiteboard and select the little navigator thingy on the bottom right. Then select 'Break Room'. On the next screen, select 'Create Your Own Whiteboard'. Tell me that delivery system won't capture your intended recipient's attention. I sent a message to my wife but could easily see using it to communicate a simple 'thank you' or 'reminder' to a current or prospective client.


From My Del.icio.us 'tool' TAGS:

1. Web Page Speed Report
2. Formspring (great for adding surveys and polls)
3. Touchgraph (dangerously addictive)
4. Adimpact (GREAT way to get people to do things on your site)

Have a great weekend!

Mike

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Teleseminar - Make Time for This!

I just got this e-mail from Jim at Web Marketing Concepts.

I'm working on a big post for you (unrelated to WMC) but felt I had to get this information to you ASAP.

Here's Jim's message:

"We are pleased to announce that Web Marketing Concepts will be holding a Members Only Telesemiar on Wednesday April 2, 2008 at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. During this 90-minute event, we will be welcoming the new members that have joined during the last month and discussing how you can best use the Web Marketing Concepts system.

We will also be talking about how the Affiliate Content Generator and the Link Expander programs work together to improve your search engine rankings. We will conclude with a Question and Answer session to deal with any questions you may have about Web Marketing Concepts."

Listen, I'm not kidding around, if you haven't signed up for WMC yet you're only hurting yourself. At some point Jim is going to have to shut off all new memberships (or raise the price of entry way beyond what the average webmaster can afford).

As I've said before, with WMC, you will start generating ridiculous amounts of traffic within 45-60 days; if you don't, simply cancel your account. Trust me, it's worth the VERY SMALL risk.

Anyway, I gotta get back to some web page editing. Join WMC today and don't miss the free teleseminar tomorrow night (Wednesday 4/2/08 at 8PM EST).

Back at you on Thursday.

Mike

P.S. I know, you're probably skeptical. Right? How could something cost so little and deliver so much as WMC? Well, it gets even better: if you order WMC before tomorrow night's free teleseminar, I will personally walk you through the steps that I take (shortcuts, tricks, and all) when I setup my WMC campaigns (did I tell you that I currently have 10 separate WMC memberships/accounts!). All you have to do is e-mail me your phone number and your order confirmation number. Let me know a good time to call you and I will make an appointment for us to speak for 15 minutes before the weekend. My obsession with your success is real. Use me.

P.P.S. Here's a video tour Jim recently put together showing some of the nuts and bolts of his system. Worth a look.

Actionable Items

Thinking about that Subject heading ("Actionable Items") makes me laugh; if you've been paying attention, just about everything I post is 'actionable' meaning 'act now and good things will happen later' in your life and business.

Where to get a great logo...

The first thing I wanted to share with you today is a great and inexpensive resource for creating logos. GotLogos.com is run by a guy named Daniel; I've used his talents for several of my websites' logos. You can get a killer professionally designed logo for $25. Great value, try them out (someday I may ask him to offer a discount for webmasters who visit Cool Site of the Day...stay tuned).

Affiliate Marketing Recommendation...

I ran into Gary McNelley of MarketHealth at the Search Engine Strategies Trade Show last week. Gary's a great guy and his company, MarketHealth, sells natural, herbal health and wellness products (yeah, that's a mouthful but all you need to know is that there's a HUGE market for organic health and beauty products). Anyway, I've been a Super Affiliate of MarketHealth (ever since 2006 when I started generating over $30,000 in monthly commissions as an affiliate of MarketHealth products).

Here's the good news: MarketHealth has created a turn-key affiliate program for people who want to sell their products but don't have the time or talent to start from scratch. All you have to do is visit HerbalBiz and signup to create your own unique storefront (and then use WMC to drive traffic to it ;)

Here are just a few reasons why it makes sense to work with MarketHealth (and, no, this has nothing to do with multi-level marketing or MLM):

• Make 50% of the purchase price
• No Online Experience Required
• No Customer Service
• No Warehouse or Inventory
• Sell over 50 well known Health and Beauty Products
• Unlimited Income Potential
• Work from Anywhere
• Set Your Own Hours

I don't know about you but those are all the reasons that led me to build an online business. And like most people, I wanted to deal with a good and honest program that offers the greatest odds of making money. Well, MarketHealth and their HerbalBiz package is about as good as it gets (in the coming weeks I'll be sharing with you the rest of my highest rated affiliate opportunities). If you have any questions after visiting HerbalBiz, shoot me an e-mail--I'll be happy to help in any way that I can.

One Smart Guy...

I'm saving the best for last but this is quite good also: somehow I tripped over Ian Lurie's web site yesterday, Conversation Marketing. First off, Ian is the kind of guy I'd like to work with someday but, in the meantime, Ian is going to teach me (and you) quite a few things that are essential to building and marketing web sites intelligently. Just check out his list of 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren't. Truly great thinking and a list worth reviewing once a week.

Search Engine Traffic. Are You Paying Attention?

Finally, for those of you who took me up on my offer to set up your Web Marketing Concepts account, smart move! I couldn't handle all the requests that came in but you'll be happy to know that whether you use my services or go it alone, the results are worth it.

Here are two screen shots of our traffic stats from cpanel. In this image you can see the number of unique visitors shooting up in the second month of indexing (from 1,672 to 2,740 unique visitors). I gotta tell you, on average, I value a web site visitor at $.25 so that traffic is worth close to $700 to me. What is the cost of a Web Marketing Concepts membership? $49.94 per month (just increased from $29.95 as I said it would. Still a sick deal.). Who's smiling now?


This screen shot shows how many times the pages in this account have been indexed. I know it's hard to see but Yahoo's spider has hit the site over 2,000 times and the Googlebot has visited almost 1,000 times...and we're just getting started. Remember the WMC system builds up to 5,500 content pages per account so when the spiders start indexing all those pages it's 'HELLO TRAFFIC!'


If you haven't signed up for a WMC account yet you're doing yourself a big hurt. I'm putting the finishing touches on my WMC mindmap (explains in detail how to get the most from WMC). If you've opened an account and are ready to fly, send me an e-mail and I'll be happy to send you a free copy.

Sign up today before Jim raises the price again or, as he's suggested, removes WMC from public access.

That's all for today.

Mike

P.S. Some of you have been inquiring about my "Get Google Traffic Risk Free" offer. Visit this page and e-mail me if you're ready for some VIP treatment ;)