Just pull the trigger…

That is the advice that Tim Tebow’s coaches gave him. It’s no secret that he is learning the quarterback position. He has a great arm but it’s definitely a unique throwing style that is being criticized… can it really make it in the NFL.

But Tebows coaches realize something important. He is only going to learn to be great by just pulling the trigger. You hear the announcers say it a million times during the game.

Listen for it this weekend when he goes up against Brady and the Patriots.

Hesitating, thinking too much, trying to be perfect all lead to unnatural movements that cause more error than just pulling the trigger and fixing it as you go.

In Your Online Business, Pull The D@#% Trigger!

Are you hesitating with your online business or your affiliate website? If you’re like most people who come into this space, you sure are.

You build a website, but rather than market it, you continually try to make it look better. You also keep buying courses because you tell yourself that you need to be fully prepared so when you do market your website, it will go perfectly.

But It Won’t Go Perfectly No Matter How Much You Prepare

It’s actually kind of infuriating. I remember when I was getting my first really successful website going, I was making the same mistakes I learned about in the courses.

I figured, “Heck, if I read about these, why am I still making them?”

It’s because nothing is truly internalized until you do it for real… until you pull the trigger.

How Can You Pull The Trigger Right Now?

Look at your current website that you are working on. If you have a dozen or so websites, pick the one that is doing the best.

Next, sit down and think what are five things you can do each day, that have to do with actually marketing your website?

This could be building links, doing PPC, actively contacting so many new people a day, whatever…

Then commit for only one month to doing those things. Pull the #@%&$ Trigger!

Amazing things will happen.

Isn’t it crazy what Tebow can teach us about business? Let’s hope Denver takes New England down and out this weekend. The game is on Saturday!

Just to preface this post, it’s from my experience and from me talking with other active online business owners. So now that that is out of the way, let’s get into the Google Dance.

This is all coming at you from a complete SEO perspective because that is where you see the Google dance. And I like to talk a lot about SEO because it’s what I have extensive knowledge and success in. And you are going to deal with the Google dance whether you like it or not.

First, the Google dance is when you are beginning that process of directing your rankings for your specific keywords. During this time you are going to see your rankings jump all over the place.

I’ve seen pages of mine get top five rankings only weeks after launch but they they completely disappear for a few weeks as well. It’s pretty frustrating to say the least, you are going to bounce from the 80s to the top 20 then back to the 60s and then off the charts completely. Eventually, you will settle somewhere and then you can build with more consistency from that point.

Why Does Your Website Bounce Around?

Let’s think about this from Google’s perspective. They are probably indexing millions of pages every day if not every minute. Many of these are on existing domains that have been about the same topics for years. Google trusts these sites because they are older and they are consistent.

When a new site comes online, they index it but they don’t know anything about it. It could be a crap site full of spam, or it could be the real deal. They don’t know so it’s almost like they are testing your site.

They are noticing that links are also being built to the site. If you are like most people, you are probably building links pretty rapidly in the beginning. Google sees this and just processes it. But what happens if the links just stop one day?

Well they probably see this as not a very good sign. I would take this as a spam site because it’s not natural for a consistent flow of links to stop. I think this is why they bounce it around.

After a certain time frame where they are consistently seeing links and mentions across the web, they get comfortable with actually making your site more relevant for the search terms it sees in the anchor text links.

What Can You Do When You Are Dancing With Google?

Just keep building links and adding good content to your website. It’s so important that you consistently do this. It looks more natural and with your site consistently getting bigger, you seem a lot more legit.

There are some other things you can do to help with this process, things that I have testing and that work really well for me.

1. Invest In an Aged Domain

This is when you find and buy a domain that not only has some page rank associated with it, but some age too. I prefer to buy domains that are at least 3 years old but I really like to go with 5 years and more. It really depends on the name of the domain name.

In my newsletter, the Money Maker, I have an SEO training module where you can learn all about how to buy aged domains and get good deals on them too.

I have notice that when I do this, the domain ranks faster and settles from the Google dance insanely faster than with a brand new domain.

2. Send Some High PR Links Immediately

This has not been as reliable, but it has worked for me. Right when I get a site built and launched so I am actually building links to it, I like to send some high PR links… PR3, 4, and 5 links to it quickly.

If I were Google, I would see this has a big vote of confidence for a new site and I’d be more apt to trust it a little quicker.

Again, sign up for my newsletter and I really show you not only how to get high PR links easily but do so without spending a fortune or doing dangerous things like buying links.

Bottom Line About The Dance:

You are going to have to go through it. Just deal with it and stay consistent with your link building plan. A good affiliate marketing tip, make sure you redirect your affiliate link or hide it. I have found this helps to sustain rankings with affiliate sites.

Now you know what the Google dance is and you know to expect it. Just think of it like this, there are many people that will freak out and quite so your competition just got a lot easier.

I was reading my RSS reader yesterday and came across a blog post from Mashable. If you are not reading Mashable or TechCrunch then you better start. They are a great way to see what is going on in the online business worlds.

Anyway, they wrote an article about what they call the “modern” SEO and how to get your website ranking. It’s an interesting look but it brings up some really good points that I think you need to take heart in. You can read what they have to say, but below you will hear more my personal take on each little topic.

1. Local is Taking Over

I am sure you have done a local search on Google and you can see that it really does take over the entire top ten. It’s bigger and hard to miss, plus from the heat map you can see that it’s where people are clicking… even if there are websites listed above.

Since you are not really in a local business, most likely, just think about how your affiliate site or ecommerce site can fit a local market. Maybe you should get a business address in a big city and optimize your website for that local market along with your main keywords.

If you could take a top ranking in New York City, you can probably get a ton of traffic.

2. You Need Social Now More Than Ever

I think social is still getting more and more important, but from the markets that I’m in, there really is not a huge amount of sharing going on. For example when I go outside the tech world, there seems to be barely any sharing using Google+, it’s all with Facebook.

I don’t think it’s influencing ranking as much as people think right now, but I think that will change more and more as time goes on so you better start it anyway.

3. Content Links Are King

This is definitely the truth and you really should only be getting content links. A content link is a link inside the body of an article or blog post. It’s much higher value and if you know the secrets that I know, then you can get all the content links you need to rank really well.

Sign up for my Money Maker Newsletter and I’ll show you exactly how to do these things.

4. Think of People and Not Robots When You Optimize Your Site

This is pretty common sense and has actually been said for a long time. You want to give your page the necessary spider food so it knows where to best rank your page, but you want the page to read for humans.

This really isn’t hard to do. It think on page optimization is important but links are always going to be more important. Just make sure you have good titles and the keyword does show up in your article a couple times.

5. Check Your Backend: schema.org

I have not really messed around with this at all because my attention go more towards getting good links than anything else. However this makes lots of sense.

Apparently this is all about getting rich snippets, or making your search engine listing look really great and full of extra information. That will drastically increase your click thru rate which is what you want to happen.

The most clicks you get the more traffic. I can’t say much else just yet but you can be sure that this is in my to-do list program and will be handled shortly.

6. Know Your Data

Data is really important and it’s getting harder to collect every since Google has tried to have more and more people signed into their accounts when they are doing their searching. From what I understand the keyword data does not get passed since the search environment is different for each person.

However, I suggest that you collect lots of data about your sites and your ranking. It’s really important because you might be optimizing for a keyword that is supposed to get lots of traffic, but it really doesn’t get much at all.

If you are running an ecommece site then go with Google Analytics. If you are doing anything else, use GetClicky.

When you are building an Internet business, it’s very easy to get bogged down with all the different options and really how slow things can move. For example, you start to build links and a month and a half later you are not on the first page. If it’s your first project, it can make you want to give up.

That is why knowing the fundamentals is so important and can help you so much. You have to keep remembering what you are doing and what you are doing it for and you should be able to get through one more day.

Fundamental 1: A Website

This is a pretty easy fundamental to have. Of course you need a website to attract people and make them do what you want them to do. This could be to sign up for a list or to have them click on a link… whatever the case maybe.

It’s very easy to get your website up and with a little bit of training, you can be very proficient at it.

If you want to get this type of training for free them I suggest you sign up for my Money Maker Report. This is a newsletter and an access to my training hub.

Click here to sign up for it!

Fundamental 2: An Offer

You need an offer which is something to offer to your visitors. This could be anything again… an affiliate product, an actual product of just to sign up for a newsletter list.

A good example is the offer I just made to you to join my newsletter list. I told you that I have a free training for WordPress and a lot more great information. If you join my newsletter list then you can get free access to this info. That is an offer.

The way you give your offer is something you can test and optimize pretty easily. With some software, you can test different ways to make the offer and find one that does much better than anything else.

Here is When I Get Interested In Testing

I like to wait until I am consistently getting at least 100 visitors a day to the page then I will think about testing. You want your stats to be statistically meaningful.

You always want to work really hard on getting traffic which brings us to the last fundamental.

Fundamental 3: Traffic

Getting traffic to your website is vital. When I build a website, I typically will not worry too much about making different things their best until I get the traffic. Once I bust my booty to get the traffic and I see what the most popular pieces of content are, I will then rework those pieces of content to be better.

When it comes to getting traffic, there are all sorts of things you can do. You can build links for some SEO traffic, use paid traffic, use YouTube, podcasting, and so much more.

You can even go offline with your traffic generation. Using post cards or little ads in magazines or newspapers is a great way to get traffic to your site. In fact it can be one way that has very little direct competition.

Now Remember What You Are Working For

Now all you have to do is remember what income level you are working for. Always remember that once you hit it, you can change it and make it bigger. But have an income level to hit.

Always remember this and have a life that you want to chase. This stuff works to help you get the things finish daily that you need to do.

That is the advice of many of the big gurus. They always tell you that your pricing is not high enough and you need to double if not triple your prices. That way you will make more money and the vast majority of your customers won’t say a thing.

Has this sage advice by our guru clan actually correct?

For example, just look at what happened to Netflix after they doubled their subscription prices. They went through a mass unsubscribe rate and their stock price got the hammer… hard!

What are the real pricing lessons that you should take from this and apply in your business?

1. Never Double Pricing After Building Up A Huge Base

This is Netflix’s biggest problem. They built a monster following that was exponentially growing. I was part of that mass customer base and even though the majority of their streaming movies sucked, I remained a subscriber.

However, they raised prices with no reason given and they doubled them which seemed to me very excessive. Plus there was not new service given for that increase.

2. No New Value For The Given For Price Increase

You can’t just give a price increase without a good reason and if you are going to double prices, you better bring more value to the table.

When you don’t do either of those things, it just looks like it’s done of greed purposes.

3. Never Double Subscription Pricing

You can probably easily get away with doubling pricing on a product. However, subscription pricing is hard to double. That is a huge increase over the course of 6 months to a year.

That is really unfair to do to your customer base and it makes them feel like suckers.

My Bottom Line Pricing Rule

Be more than fair and try to charge as little as you can, but don’t forget to test. I always try to charge as little as I can and I always give a great reason as to why I do this. This has never backfired on me and only won me favor of customers.

You should test your pricing though because there is a price that might work best. You can use split testing to do this.

Remember that whatever you do with your business or your website, you need to give reasons and good reasons as to why things are happening. Never keep your customers in the dark.

Netflix might have told their customers in their official statement but I remember reading it and seeing no reasons. And if you ask most people, they will probably give an answer having something to do with greed.

When I first started to market my business, and even mostly to this day, I wrote all of my own content. It took me forever!

I started out as a slow writer for a few reasons, but the main one was that I was not used to writing so much and my knowledge was really not that great about the topic.

I would write 16 mini 100 word articles for link building and Blog Blueprint (part of IMA). These don’t have to be the best of quality, but they do have to at least make sense. However, it took me about 2 hours if not a little longer to get them written and posted.

I hated it, but I was hell bent to succeed and get my site ranked.

This was only worse when I had to write longer articles and then spin then.

How I Got To Mastery

It was ugly and I don’t want to scare you too bad. However, I really do want to you realize that if you decide to do things yourself, it won’t be an easy walk in the park.

But things change and today is something completely different.

I can write the equivalent of 14 plus articles ranging from 150 words to 330 words in about an hour to an hour and half. It’s so easy now that it is hard to pay outsourcers to do it for me.

I feel like why pay somebody to write an article which will probably suck when I can knock it out in 10 minutes?

Just to answer that question for you… as you continue to build sites, you will need help writing or you are just going to be stuck writing all day long and you’ll go crazy.

How Long Does It Take To Get To Mastery?

I think it will take about three months or so to really get good at knocking out articles for SEO and link building. But it’s a great skill to have.

Here is how I stay focused when I am writing to build links, or when I am just writing super high quality content for my sites…

1. NatureSpace – This is a great app that I use on my Ipad. It creates amazing sounding nature noises that almost put you in a trance state. It keeps me focused so I can just pound them out without getting distracted.
2. Spotify – This is a music service that lets you play any and all music. Depending on how much mental capacity I need to use, I can listen to music and knock out writing quick. However, if I have to think about what I am writing (like in the beginning) then personally, I can’t do it.
3. Coffee Shop – I love the coffee shop because I can go there and just buckle down and get stuff done. If I didn’t like running up a coffee tab, I would probably go to the coffee shop daily to get all my link building done.

The cat has been out of the bag for some time now, but it still seems like it’s been a secret. I’m talking about the best domain name ideas… buying an aged domain rather than a new one.

This will give you a huge leg up.

Let me explain… these days it’s really hard to even buy a good domain that is brand new. They have almost all been taken and if you do find a good one, you can thank the spammers for Google not trusting it.

Think about it if you were in Google’s shoes.

There is some new website out of the hundreds of thousands created each day. They have no idea what this website will be and they don’t know who the owner is. Because they can’t interview, they are going to assume you’re a spammer and they’ll make you prove yourself.

Their spiders will watch to see the content you put up and make sure it’s not junk and they will make sure you are not trying anything black hat.

Over time, the more you prove yourself, the more trust you build and your rankings will stabilize.

Here’s How You Can By-Pass All Of This

Buy an aged domain name.

What is that?

It’s a domain of the thousands that every single day lapse because their owners decide not to renew them. If you’ve been building sites on the Internet for any length of time, you have probably done this yourself.

But there is a catch that you need to know about…

If you’re going to do this right, you need to make sure that your domain has some back links, some page rank, and some age. This is crucial because there are two distinct advantages…

1. You gain some trust because the domain has been in existence for a long time
2. You get to build more links faster because it seems more natural (compared to a brand new domain that all of a sudden has links going to it like crazy. Think about it… who the heck would know about a new domain that quickly?)

These are big advantages when you are trying to get a domain ranked and even for PPC because Google doesn’t like new domains in PPC either.

However, you have to make sure of a couple things…

1. The old domain had nothing to do with dirty porn stuff
2. The old domain had nothing to do with gambling
3. The old domain is real and not being faked with PR juice
4. The old domain is a “clean” site

It’s easy to check most of this by just using Archive.org. They more or less catalog the Internet through the ages and you can see what sites looked like back in the day. It’s a great way to make sure you don’t have one of these sites.

This all sounds great but how do find these domains?

That is the magic question and the answer is really easy, and yes it does require a paid service. Anything worth doing right these days is worth paying for.

It’s called RegisterCompass.com and it collects all the expiring domain information and allows you to query on it. That is huge!

You can tell it you want…

• A PR3 or higher domain
• That is at least 5 years old
• That comes from GoDaddy Auctions
• That has a DMOZ listing and a Yahoo listing

It will then give you all the names that match that.

But what if these names don’t make sense with what I’m building?

A great question and one you really don’t have to worry about. Here’s what I do, I like to find a domain that can make sense.

For example, I really like to go after name domain names. They always make sense and you can always use that as a pseudonym for the site.

It’s not perfect when it comes to the name, but he benefits of having it aged are a million times better than not.

So if you’re interested, subscribe to RegiserCompass.com and build sites with power right out of the gate!

A lot of people are interested in buying site traffic. The reason this is such a great way to get traffic is because you can get it instantly without having to build links or SEO your website.

Plus when you learn to buy traffic, you also become very proficient marketer at converting visitors because you have to. As a beginner, let’s look at some of the bet ways to buy site traffic and the skills that you need to master to make this a profitable venture for you.

The Best Place To Start Buying Internet Traffic

In my opinion, the best places to learn about buying traffic are the Google Content or Display Network (part of Adwords) and/or Facebook pay per click ads. Even though there are rules you have to follow to learn the systems, they are not super strict.

Google Content/Display Network

When you choose to advertise on Google’s Display Network, you are going to have your ads shown on other websites that are part of the Adsense network. You can do text ads similar to regular Adwords, but you really want to use image or banner ads.

You can get really cheap clicks here but you have to invest a little bit to clean up your campaign when you first launch it.

When I typically use this for of paid traffic, I always try to build a list of emails when I do it. That way I can keep marketing to my list and make more sales. It helps me leverage more of my visitors for a longer period of time.

Facebook Ads

Facebook can be really powerful because you can really target your visitors. However, if you want to make the most of your money then it can take a long time to set up. With some many different ways to target, you can have think about the message to your market.

For example if you are selling a golf swing trainer, your message might be different when you target a 24 year old compared to 54 year old. To the 24 year old, my head line might read…

• Destroy The Golf Ball Big Time!
• To the 54 year old, I might go something like…
• Drop 4 Shots By Next Week!

Those were just quick ideas but you can really target and match a good message. Plus with Facebook, you can use pictures which helps to get clicks. But there is high ad fatigue here so you have to keep new ads in circulation.

I suggest to learn Facebook ads, you check this out.

Finally Don’t Forget About This…

I can’t end this article without talking about conversion and learning how to test your website.

The crazy thing about the Internet is you can never guess what will work and what won’t. When you’re paying for traffic you can’t take blind guesses without a system in place to help those guesses workout for you.

I’m talking about Google Website Optimizer and using multivariate testing. Essentially what this does is allows you to test multiple parts of your website at once. This will create hundreds if not thousands of combinations and Google’s system will cycle through them helping you find the best.

It will then display the best more often which is going to let you increase your conversions.

It’s amazing and most marketers don’t take the time to set it up. However, it really is necessary when you are paying for traffic.

Click here to learn more about Google’s Website Optimizer.

Look For the Right Mentor

Just so you know, I have used paid traffic successfully in the past on both Google Adwords and Facebook, but I am not a master at it at all.

I definitely recommend some good products to get you going. These are ones that I have used and that really help because with paid traffic, it’s all about testing your personal sites.

Let’s fast forward and say you get pretty proficient at Internet marketing and you have at least two successful businesses. When you get to that point, even if each only makes you a couple thousand dollars a month… you are set for life.

Using the same fundamental skills mentioned in other articles like…

• Consistency
• A strong mindset
• Good analysis skills

The entire world will open up to you. Here’s what I’m talking about.

There Is More Out There Than The Internet Marketing Niche

I remember when I first started learning about how to create an Internet business, the only market I could think about getting into was the “make money” or Internet marketing teaching niche.

At that time I had yet to earn a single dollar online and here I was thinking I could start a business actually teaching people how to make money.

So after a few years of floundering and in my study everything phase, I picked an obscure niche and started to actually build a business.

I still have that business today and it’s huge for me. It’s so huge it will soon be going from stickily online to actual physical stores in the biggest cities like Miami, New York and Las Vegas.

The market is huge. So huge the Internet marketing niche will never compare to it’s size.

Be A Real Marketer With A Real Internet Marketing Business!

A real Internet marketing business is one where you are spread across multiple niches making money from them all. You are able to do this because you know how to build good websites, you know how to build marketing funnels, and sell.

A good marketer that does this very well is Ryan Deiss. I am sure you have heard of him before as he has a huge position as an Internet marketing guru.

But what makes him so successful is he partners with other top leaders in other niches to create online businesses. I know he is partners with a top FOREX guy and together they have a huge FOREX business.

He is also partnered with a personal trainer and they have a huge fitness business too.

That is you goal… to be the marketer that partners with other experts to make a killing. Your expert partner brings the knowledge, expertise, and name to the business… you bring the marketing and business building know how.

Here Is An Example Of This Partnering In Action

One of my many skills with sewing and designing clothing. However, I have never gone to school for this and while I have my own line, I plan on partnering with a “professional” designer to teach women how to start a design business.

While this market is still in the business niche, it’s a great opportunity to have a stake in the fashion industry… a huge market.

I hope this article more or less got you thinking about what you could do right now. You undoubtably have some skills with marketing on the Internet, or you at least know a lot about it.

So maybe you’ll be able to find a friend that is an exert lawyer, poker player, anything… and you’ll partner with them and start a website that will be profitable for you both.

Opportunity for an Internet marketing business is everywhere!

Internet marketing has come to mean a few different things these days. At it’s fundamental level, it’s simple using marketing techniques on the Internet to market a product, a service, or just a website that you have for fun.

Everybody that has an Internet presence does some Internet marketing of some sort. And there are many ways which you can use it to get traffic and visitors to your site.

However, there is another meaning of Internet marketing that you may be more interested in. It’s essentially the same, but it’s also a business system so to speak. The Internet marketing niche is for people that want to make some money using the Internet has a way to do business.

They are the same, but one is more to build a portfolio of site to earn a living. The other might be just another way to get your small business or medical practice more well known.

What Are The Different Types of Internet Marketing

There are so many different types of Internet marketing that it can get a little crazy. It’s a big world to be sure and there is not way you are going to master everything. But it is good to have a dangerous knowledge of all the methods.

Search Engine Optimization

This is also called SEO and the goal with this is to market your site by distributing good content across the Internet. Because of this content distribution, you are also building back links to your site. This helps Google see your site as relevant and worthy to be in the top 10 for a given search phrase.

That explanation is very high level, but essentially, SEO is all about getting your website to rank in the top 10 of Google.

Paid Advertising

Marketing your website through paid methods is really a huge world into it self. There is your more traditional pay per click advertising through Google Adwords. But then you have display or banner advertising, cost per view, rentals, social media, and all sorts of custom deals too.

This is way beyond the scope of this article, but it is something we’ll talk a little more about in other articles. Since you are new to marketing on the Internet, the best platforms to learn first are Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter, and Facebook.

Don’t go overboard because it does take money to make money with this type of marketing.

Video Marketing

Video is gigantic on the Internet. Just look at the range of YouTube celebrities that make a full time living posting their videos. This can be very lucrative and it can be used in so many ways as well.

Videos can be used to build a big audience, to sell something, to give away free training, entertainment, instructions, and even for video articles.

A great service is one called TubeMogul which blasts your videos out to all of the video sharing sites. Not to mention, it’s free so something you need to be using.

To make a video, you can just use PowerPoint of Keynote, but I highly suggest you get yourself on the camera so people can better relate to you.

The World Is Always Growing!

The Internet marketing world is always growing. Just realize that there are certain avenues that will work better for your market. You have to find those avenues and go crazy with them.

The most successful marketers don’t use everything. They just know how to do certain things really well. Because we just talked about getting the word out across the web. Once you get somebody to your site, you have to be able to convert them.

A topic for another day.