I know this blog has gone dormant over the past year. Allen has moved on to other ventures and I continue to work on affiliate marketing, just not here.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I am so fortunate to be able to do what I do every day. I am blessed.

I wish you and yours a safe & enjoyable holiday.

Michael

Marketing online is both easy and difficult. It all depends on your point of view and your current tests.

Yes I said tests. If you are not testing your marketing then there is no way to know if you are making all the money you can. Heck, if you stopped marketing a product because it wasn't profitable, did you test changes first?

I joined Wealthy Affiliate a couple days ago because I wanted to network with other internet marketers who are successful. What I got was so much more.

Wealthy Affiliate has tons of tools to aid in market testing and research. It will take me at least a month to go through all the interesting forum posts and get caught up. Many forums are filled with junk, this one is loaded with great content.

Are you a Wealthy Affiliate? If not, what is holding you back.

Michael

One way to get your visitors involved in your site is to hold a contest.

Take for example The Future Of Making Money Online contest.

Winner gets $50 for blogging about what they think will be the future of making money online. But to be even more interactive, visitors to the Penny Project site will also get a chance to vote for the winner.

It is like a double interaction to get everyone involved.

How can you use contests to get visitors involved?

Michael

Text link banners vs. banners with product images.

I am currently testing the use of banners with product images. This isn't anythign new. Amazon has been doing this for years. But the pricing model of CPC with product images banners is somewhat new.





The credit process is more involved, but my hope is that by having the product images people will tend to investigate further. From there hopefully the merchant has a price and an offer that converts into a sale.

Like I said I am testing this right now. If you have experience with this, please let us know.

Michael

Do you participate in social networking for your business.

There are sites other then MySpace & FaceBook. MyBlogLog is a site by former creator of IGN. New on eWeek is that Yahoo bought or may be looking to buy MyBlogLog.

The think I like best is that you not only link people, but join and link communities.

One Penny Project Community

Take Care,

Michael

p.s. look me up on mybloglog.com my name is beachbumis

One thing many marketers forget is that they need to solve the customers problem(s).

We often fall into complacency and start thinking about the profit margin. When instead we should be connecting with our customers.

We need to stop every so often and give our business a customer checkup. Are we doing ok? Is there anything else we can do for you? What needs are left unmet after purchasing our product?

You get the idea. Focus on the customer and keep an eye on the balance sheet, not the other way around.

Michael

One mistake made with sales copy is only listing features. Many times features are listed as bullets. A better way to market is to turn the features into benefits. For instance, you could say that the feature of a new long lasting light bulb lasts for 300 hours. But by going further into the benefits will give the customer a better understanding of how the purchase of that light bulb makes life easier.

You can help turn the feature into a benefit by asking the question "What problems does a light bulb lasting 300 hours solve". For starters, your trip to the store to buy more bulbs is shortened. You have less maintenance in changing the bulb. Buying one bulb over 2 bulbs is less expensive, etc.

~Marketing Benefits over Features

-Allen

Would your logo have more bang if it included your '.com'. I'm designing a logo for my music store 'MusicWhisperer.com' (coming soon). Many of my signatures are like so '~the Music Whisperer'. However, the domain is 'MusicWhisperer.com'. In addition, I generally refer to my music store business as 'Music Whisperer'. So how would you brand the logo?

The conclusion of the matter ended like so. The word '~the' should not be in the logo because it is not part of the domain. The logo should include only the two words 'Music Whisperer' separated by a space because nowadays it is assumed that the brand is a '.com'.

~Brands for Marketing

-Allen

I am a very organized person. My time management skills have evolved over the years ever since I attended a "First Things First" seminar.

Currently I use a Moleskine notebook to keep track of everything. But I think that is going to change very soon.

Today on LifeHack.org I found out about Emergent Task Planning.

This is something that I am going to have to try.

Michael

This is the source code I used to create my master control panel for my websites. I did find a bug but hopefully it is fixed by now.

http://soft.zoneo.net/phpTrafficA/index.php

With phpTrafficA, you can monitor

multiple sites,
access count and unique visitors,
search engines, keywords, and referrers,
individual pages (access count, referrers, keywords...),
countries, operating systems and web browsers,
traffic patterns and visitor path.

~ Count Your Vistors

-Allen

No, not Allen or myself.

I am reading The Marketing Gurus by Chris Murray.

It is a collection of Executive Book Summaries by the editors of SoundView. Check my profile page to find out more about SoundView.

In this book they give you the good parts from 17 Business Book. Many are or were best sellers. That is a total of 282 pages of high quality marketing information from 17 top notch writers.

I just finished the first chapter and I can tell you already that I believe this is the best business book I purchased, ever.

Normally I get the audio version of books, but this time I went with paper. I had some Borders Rewards points to cash in.

The guys over at SoundView do a great job of compressing the latest business books down into just the main parts. This saves you time and makes it easier to find what you are looking for later.

Start 2007 off right and grab a subscription to SoundView Book Summaries today.

Michael

Well, I haven't blogged since 11-13-2006. The main reason is because I got behind in my 'life' cycle having another baby (my wife anyway). Trying to get back in the swing of things after falling behind in every Internet Marketing project I started is a very difficult. I hope in 2007 I can be in order and timely. So, the first step I started to work on is creating a Master Control panel. This organization tip came from Michael.

Because I can program in PHP, I downloaded an open source PHP traffic analyzer. From this skeleton, I then started to add custom code to include every single IM project I have going plus features such as administration links, leisure links, research links, a tasklist, etc. Now I can go to one place and get a bird's eye view of all my websites plus have every resource is just a click away.

I would recommend a one stop web page that you can use as a dashboard for all of your IM projects.

~Creating a Dashboard to Make Life Easier

-Allen

As I write this there are 25 hours left in 2006.

Next year will be full of new ideas. Some will be a success and some will fail.

My business isn't very big, but it has grown a little bit each year. I know Allen has some goals for 2007 that he might tell you about. My biggest goal in 2007 is to grow my business to the point where it can sustain the social, family and spiritual goals that I set for myself.

I wish you all much success in 2007. Please stop back daily or subscribe to our RSS feed. Your interaction is welcomed, we love to hear from visitors to the site.

Take Care,

Michael

P.S. Check This Out --> RatingsHub

Hello Again,

How is this for marketing RatingsHub is only 2 weeks old and already has an awesome Alexa ranking.

Not to mention all the backlinks and free promotion.

How can you start a website with no traffic and get an Alexa ranking of 32k in less then 2 weeks?

Subscribe to gain access to the reviews. See if you can figure out what is going on, where the marketing is, where the traffic is from and why?

Take Care,

Michael

Just a quick note on a new website that I will be working at.

I will be an assistant editor with David Vallieres as the senior editor.

The website RatingsHub will allow people to share what they think about information products and services online.

There are no ads or external links on the site. Only the facts.

There is only one way to get access to this FREE website.

http://www.ratingshub.com/invite/beachbumis.html

Take Care,

Michael

Just thought I would give you a quick update on my project to start with one penny and double it until reaching $x.

Here is the link and you can continue to follow along there. That way I won't have to keep talking about it here.

Allen is also doing this project and you can find a link to his Phat BLOG on that site.

Take Care,

Michael

Tired of going to 6 websites to post your item for sale?

Check out VFlyer.com

I used them the other day to post an announcement. There are a few sales categories to choose from with more on the way.

Take Care,

Michael

It appears that the new way to build your list is to pay someone to build it for you.

There are 2 email campaigns running right now where everyone and there brother is telling us about offer X. Well the reason they are doing this is because if I give my email address for the free offer X report they get $.50 or something like that.

The publisher of offer X is giving away a free product and paying for a list, so how can they make any money.

The answer is...

Michael

Getting heard in a noisy Internet world can be difficult. A strong brand conveys trust that can get you heard. A brand helps move businesses from being about cost to being about value - ideally about relationships. A brand is a recognized set of promises and expectations that exists in the hearts and minds of key customers. Until your customers get it, you don't have a brand however. You need to know your market, understand your company, understand the competition, be unique, and have a really good tagline. If your current branding efforts don't fulfill what a brand can do for you, then consider a re-branding campaign.

~Rebrand to Reach Your Market

-Allen

(Ideas for this article came from Banking on Trust by Rogere Sametz)

You may be asking yourself, when is the next podcast?

The time required to make a good podcast is beyond what Allen and I have available right now. As much fun as it is, the time involved is just too much.

We look forward to providing good info in the BLOG posts and will put out a podcast when we can.

If you have any questions you would like answered on the BLOG, feel free to check out our profile pages and drop us an email.

Michael

Frequecy matters....again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again! Even if it takes 10 times to make it stick.

~Marketing Frequency

-Allen

Does one ad source account for more then 50% of your income?

What would happen if there were changes to that source. Hint, the changes are due this week.

In a perfect world once we figure out what ad works and where it would remain constant. But we all know that the advertising world is not perfect.

New competition, ad rate changes, market economics and source channel changes are just a few of the factors we must deal with.

Things change and we have to always keep an eye on every ad in our basket.

Good luck this week.

Michael

Here's a cool idea that's on the brink of reality. Amazon wants to run your business - at least the technical and logistical parts of it. Using Amazon as a digital utility, the same technologies and operations will soon have the capability to power your own Internet business.

~Marketing for Tomorrow

-Allen

Did you know MySpace is not a commercial website? Yep, you can't promote products or services on MySpace.

At least that is what the affiliate managers are telling me.

I don't know much about MySpace and other then a link or 2 in my BLOG don't market on MySpace.

Could MySpace be yesterdays news?

Michael

The following is a great post but it is not mine. I have to apologize because I can't remember where I clipped it.

~Marketing Your Award

-Allen


10 WAYS TO MAKE THE MOST OF ANY AWARD

One of my clients has just won a business award in New York.
Usually he wouldn't mention it to anyone, but the smart marketer
can leverage any sort of award with minimal effort and great
results.

Here's how our client might make full use of this award:

1. Have the award framed and placed in the reception area of his
office.

2. Develop a hard-copy newsletter (a Microsoft Publisher design
will be just fine) with an article titled "We Win Major New York
Award" on the front page.

3. Write a "Thank you for your support -- it enabled us to win
this major award" to every single customer and prospect in his
database. Send the newsletter out with the letter.

4. Design an HTML newsletter (we use Constant Contact [3]) to
announce the award and send it to all of his contacts' email
addresses.

5. Send media releases to the local newspapers, and radio and TV
stations; he could think up an interesting angle and see if he
can get a story published.

6. Send media releases (and story angles) to relevant industry
magazines.

7. Announce the award win -- complete with a groovy-looking icon
using this seal tool [4] -- on the homepage of his company's web
site.

8. Write a case study explaining how he won the award, and make
it available on his web site as a downloadable white paper.

9. In a few weeks, send to current and potential customers a
survey on which one of the questions is: "As you might know,
last month we won a major international award for excellence in
our industry. Do you view award wins as important when reviewing
a company's credibility? (Hint: While the answer is important,
the main thing he'll have done is said (again) "We won, we won!
Aren't we great?!")

10. In every communication from now on, call his business "The
award-winning..." I'd even put the name of the award at the
bottom of his email signature and at the foot of all business
stationery for the next print run.

When you win an award, you can pop it in the closet and never
look at it again. Or you can take full advantage of the
opportunities it provides.

Business is tough. Blow your own trumpet, because no-one else
will.