Happy New Year! 2010 will be simply amazing, I can feel it and not only because it’s the year of the Tiger (I am a tiger).

The 2009… well 2009 has thought me a lot. About life, about business, about people. In 2009 I learned about something called Karma. I have helped many people (in the online marketing sphere) without expecting anything in return - most of the time though the favor was returned, in better ways that I could ever expect… Karma. I have learned that Dale Carnegie was right all along, for the past 70-some years his book has been a bestseller and there is a reason for it (to find out more read my post; The 5 Books Every Marketer Must Read).

Listening first, selling second. This will be my drive for 2010. Since I started my free internet marketing course, over 6,000 signed up to it, many of them are now doing Internet Marketing full time, some are taking it slower and some… well let’s not fool anyone, some people simply gave up. Not everyone will succeed in this industry. A successful career in IM, just like in any other field requires effort, time and patience. Not everyone’s got it. In some case people can’t manage their time and simply waste it without being productive… maybe a boring 9 to 5 is better for some.

In 2010 I will be working hard but it’ll be fun. I will be leaving Canada for 6-8 months and I will be living in Europe… Germany, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, UK - I’ll be all over the place yet I will be working at the same time as traveling. As long as I have an internet connection, I am set… That’s what it’s all about, for me at least. My free course will only get better, I will be producing a lot more content to share with everyone, priceless content that will give you a huge advantage over the competitor marketers and most of this content will be distributed free of charge! I understand that other marketers might charge thousands of dollars for their courses and seminars yet they teach same techniques I do. You might call it crazy but I will disagree… I call it KARMA I truly believe that by helping other people and trying to make this world a better place will also benefit me, somehow. If not monetary than mentally. This world has been going down the train, people become more and more selfish - at least in North America, well I will not follow the same path and whatever will happen - will happen for the better.

So yep, the 2010 is going to be an amazing year for all of us!

Stay tuned, I will be updating this blog more and more often!

I wish lots of happiness, health and success to you and your loved ones.

Happy New Year,

Alex.

Hello, folks!

Today Hostgator is running a special Black Friday sale! They are giving away a 75% discount on their plans! So the ‘BABY’ plan (Unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains…) is about $25 today instead of the regular $120! This is the the only day of year they run such a huge discount! The deal is good even for 3 year contracts, where you will pay about $70 instead of $350! They even offer reseller accounts at 75% OFF!

Personally I started using Host Gator a little over 2 years ago, I also tried a few other hosting companies, now all of my sites (over 20 websites) are all hosted with Hostgator. Very reliable company with amazing free 24/7 live support! So if you ever considered switching to another company or purchasing your own hosting plan for the very first time - today is the day! The 75% HostGator’s Black Friday coupon is only available today! On Saturday it will no longer work. Click here to see  Hostgator’s 75% off!

Use the coupon code ‘75off’

Here is the link: HostGator Hosting

During the order process you will get to this window:

This is where you enter the coupon and save 75%!!!

Alex

I can’t believe I haven’t updated this blog in over 5 months. I guess I was too busy; you know - the weather was nice and I didn’t want to stay home.

Well, I am back to “work”.  This Thursday (and the past Thursday) I participated in a private phone conference on internet marketing and it was really awesome!

A few guys from Wealthy Affiliate ( Andrew and Fred ) decided to do a phone conference so Andrew, as an experienced and successful internet marketer could reveal some of his techniques and could help other folks to succeed online. When I heard about it, I decided to join in and offered my help, I have been doing Internet Marketing for over two years now so I thought it would be great way to meet some new people and help them out.

There were a lot of question but I believe a lot of questions got answered, with a lot of details and everyone got tons of value from this 2 hour long call, also the fact that it was completely free of charge made this whole experience priceless for many attendees. Andrew and I even let out some of our hidden secrets; some strategies, site names and very profitable niches have been revealed. I am sure those who took notes during this phone conference might be making lots of money in the very near future (of course if the proper action is applied, simply taking notes and thinking about them is not enough )

Andrew has suggested that we make this coaching a weekly thing - so next Thursday it’s on once again! We will start with keyword research and move along the direction it’ll take. I can promise lots of genuinely valuable information that most “big boys” out there sell as the “Next Big Thing” and will charge thousands of dollars for, we do it for our personal pleasure, will to help the others and completely free of charge!

This private phone training is open to all Wealthy Affiliate members, so login to WA, open the forum, General Discussion and open up the thread called “SKYPE MEETING”  there you will find out how to register for these mind blowing conferences. Till then,

Success and Happiness,

Alex

Hi, everyone! It is June 1st in Montreal (12:18am) and I am actually very excited to be writing this post!

As of today and for 1 full week Kyle and Carson, the owners of WA have gone absolutely crazy and are offering access to WA for $1!!! Yes, you read it right, One Dollar!  This is an amazing opportunity for everyone interested in affiliate marketing to become a part of the world’s biggest and most popular Internet Marketing community without spending a single penny more than 1 dollar. Before I forget to mention - this offer is limited to 1000 new members - so take advantage of it early before all 1000 spots are filled.

Some of my readers have already contacted me and asked what exactly do they get in that Wealthy Affiliate $1 trial and if I will be giving out my $97 bonus. So here is the breakdown of things:

1. The trial is not some limited membership but actually a FULL access to WA. This means users will get a forum account, able to use WA hosting, build websites using Site Rubix, get access to their first NicheQ, create their WA Space/Blog, access to the forum, access to all the tools, and access to full support from Carson and Kyle.
2. New users will be given a choice between three (3) free bonuses, amazing books written by Kyle and Carson; Who Loves Money ($77 value), Inside The List ($67 value) and of course Beating Adwords ($67 value). The bonus you chose will be added to your WA account if you decide to remain a WA member after your one week trial.
3. My bonus, Local Business Gold ($97 value) will also be given to new members who decide to remain inside WA after the one week trial. However, I will only be able to give you the bonus if you become a Wealthy Affiliate member using my “Bonus Offer Site” located here.
   

Unfortunately this is a time limited offer only available from June 1st to June 8th - exactly 7 days for you to try Wealthy Affiliate’s 1 Dollar trial. But what happens after that week? After your 7 days trial you will be billed the regular monthly fee, however you can cancel at ANY time within the 7 days. I have been a member of Wealthy Affiliate for almost 20 months and most of my success was/is achieved because of WA, so I really do not see why someone would cancel but just in case you find a reason to not remain in WA - just cancel your subscription at any time within the seven days and you will not be charged again! Sp yep, you can get FULL access to WA and join the successful community of over 25,000 members for one buck! If you were ever skeptical about WA - this is your chance to see for yourself and most likely the last chance. These guys never ran such trial, this is the very first time and from what I have heard this is most likely the last time as well!

Once again, check out the Wealthy Affiliate $1 Trial as soon as possible, this offer ends on June 8th. If you want to get your hands on the product I am currently selling for $97 (LocalBusinessGold.com) then you will need to get to that $1 trial using a link on my website:  Wealthy Affiliate Review. An important detail to mention; Kyle mentioned this offer will be e-mailed to over 200,000 potential members - so the 1000 spots will be filled in no time! Make sure you take advantage of this offer early, while it’s still available!

See you Inside,

Alex

Hello!

It’s been a while since I last updated this blog! Today I would like to share with you my top 5 favourite books related to marketing. Some of these books are great classics and you most likely even read them, however, here is the list.

1. “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, by Dale Carnegie.

If you haven’t read this book, I am 99% sure you have heard of it.

First published in 1937, this book became an overnight success. The advice in the book is still very actual in 2009! This book will not only better your marketing skills but also your “people” skills. You should read this book not only to better your marketing but mostly to better yourself and the relationships with other.

Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to “the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people.

If I was to recommend one single book, without a doubt it would be Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”

You can get this book for under $10! You can also get an audio version for about $30.

2. “Influence: Science and Practice”, by Robert Cialdini.

No, this is not some magic book that explains some witchcraft secret of influencing people and making them do whatever you want. However, the author goes deep into the reason WHY we do certain things and why we do them certain way.

You need to really concentrate when reading this book because it isn’t an easy one, but once you read you will be simply amazed, finally realizing how that sales man convinced you to buy that overpriced useless gadget.

I paid about $15 for Robert Cialdini’s “Influence: Science and Practice”.

3. “Web Copy That Sells: The Revolutionary Formula for Creating Killer Copy Every Time”, by Maria Veloso.

A very detailed book that specializes in writing copy the web rather than traditional sales copy. There is a lot of great information in this book that you will not discover anywhere else. The author and her partners spend hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars testing different kinds, refined to the smallest details online sales letter – and they revealed everything in this amazing book.

A great read for everyone who sells or promotes products online. Do not miss out on this book simply because you do not own a product, This is a great guide for affiliate marketers as well!

$15 should get you a copy of Maria Veloso’s “Web Copy That Sells: The Revolutionary Formula for Creating Killer Copy Every Time”.

4. “The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost Your Sales”, by Dan Kennedy.

Dan is a veteran when it comes to copywriting and marketing. If I am not mistaken he still writes sales letters for his clients… at a charge of $100,000 per letter plus a commission per every sale that came from that letter.

Maybe you can’t afford his service but you can certainly learn his techniques from this great book. I have read it 3 times by now and every time I find a few interesting points that I missed previous time I read it, every time I read it I better my copywriting skills.

$10 will get you a copy of Dan Kennedy’s “The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost Your Sales”

5. “The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy”, by Joseph Sugarman.

Mr. Sugarman is a genius when it comes to writing copy. The book is really a step-by-step guide to writing amazing sales copy and motivating your prospects to become your customers. Joseph is considered a real pro in the field not only by his clients but also by marketers and even the former Vice President of the United States, Albert Gore.

$15 will get Joseph Sugarman’s “The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy” shipped to your door.

Well I hope you enjoyed my list and I hope you will take advantage of it.

Alex

Hello, Warriors!

One of my Youtube videos got over 5,000 views in the past 3 months or so.
I know it isn’t much but that’s not much but the thread is not about getting views, the thread is about learning more about your targeted audience. The better you know them, the easier you can connect with them.

So, this video is within the “Make Money From Home” industry (yes, “industry” and not “niche”).

When you are logged in there is a button next to the video, it says “INSIGHTS”. I never really noticed it until today, so I clicked to see what it was for and I am so glad I did! Here is the image I saw about my video:

Now, knowing that 75% of my video viewers are man and only 25% are women, also knowing that about 25% of my viewers are in the 35-44 age group and 35% of them are in the 45-54 age group… How much easier do you think marketing just got for me? (at least for marketing on the sunject of that video)…

Knowing that about 60% of my viewers are guys who are between 35-55 years old - it will certainly help me market to them.

There are a few more very interesting stats in the “INSIGHT” section, such as which parts of your video are most and least watched, where the traffic come from (embedded videos, related videos…etc), really worth a look!

… It just surprised me how such great free resources are disregarded and appreciated! Well, now I know and I hope this will help some of you as well

Hello, fellas!

You have most likely heard of video marketing, maybe you even have your own videos circulation on Youtube and other videos sites. The point is - video marketing works. You know how they say “one image is worth 1,000 words”? Well, one video is worth 1,000 images and you should be using videos any chance you get. People love to watch videos. But here is a problem many marketers often face; How to make a good loking video? I was one of these folks as well, wondering how to make a decent video without the proper skills or software. Well, I gound a solution, it’s called ANIMOTO.  I also run a car related website, for personal interest and I had tons of pictures related to the site and always wanted to create a video but didn’t know how. Here is what I was able to create with ANIMOTO in just 2 minutes or so:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHldeboK2cc)

The video is animated, with nice music and grabs the attention of the viewer… Yet it took me only 2 minutes to make! All I had to do is upload my images to ANIMOTO, select a song from the huge variety of songs provided by them, and click on CREATE! The website  compiles everything automatically and synchronizes the video effects with the music - isn;t it awesome! You can use ANIMOTO completely free to create a 30 seconds video! Yep, 100% FREE! However I would recommend to opt for their paid service where you could create much longer videos and customize them more for a huge fee of $3 per video! Or another option is buying the “All-Access Pass” which costs $30 per year and allows you to create unlimited number of videos. That’s a little more than $2/month - no wonder I picked that option myself

After you made the video, you can either download it to your computer and do whatever you want with it, or you can upload it directly to Youtube using Animoto’s in-built tool do to so! I told you this was easy and awesome!

So, check it out; ANIMOTO and create some cool videos!

Alex

Hello, dear readers!

As You might already know I am into Article Marketing, that’s how I actually started making money online - and never stopped, because obviously this model works.

Well, I started getting fed-up with writing articles… I am usually able to produce 3-4 articles every hour - but you have to agree this is not a fun task. Today I tried something different and I had 25 articles within 2 hours… You want to know the secret?

The speech recognition software.  I got a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking ($99), installed it on my computer and plugged in the microphone. Shortly after I opened up EzineArticles.com, opened up the most viewed and most published articles in my niche of interest, and then simply retold the articles, in my own words into the microphone. That’s where the magic comes in; the software automatically typed whatever I was saying into a word document…

I found this activity so fun, that I did all 25 articles. In 2 hours I had 25  unique content, keyword optimized, original articles! Small corrections were done within 10 minutes – that’s it!

Now the thing is, as I mentioned in some of my previous posts. English is my fifth language. I don’t speak naturally and I have an accent (Eastern European, for some reason people often think I have an Italian accent) I also speak it slower, so for those who speak English as their first language, 10 articles an hour is not a limit! I am sure you folks could do 15-20 articles every hour without ever looking back

Success and Happiness,

Alex

p.s. the software I used could be found here: http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/products/standard.asp - no, it is not an affiliate link.

Information products make a big part of Internet Marketing; weight loss e-books, forex trader software, online courses and so on sell millions of copies every year. Coming up with your own information product to sell online is not as hard as you might think.

Me friend Annie has a little kids who likes coloring. Annie knows that I spent most of my day online so she asked if I could find some coloring templates that could be printed since she couldn’t find much. I started Googling all the possible keywords and was surprised to not find much either, however I found one huge pack on e-Bay. For $5 I purchased about 300 image templates that the kid could color… but there was another thing - the package came with resale rights.  Annie was very thankful and her kid was happy with all the cars, animals and dinosaurs she had to color!

Few months went by and I stumbled upon that package in one of the folders on my computer. Out of curiosity I went to Adwords Keyword tool and did a few searches to find out there were more than enough searches for such product! I purchased a keyword optimized domain name and made a short sales page using free website builder Weebly.com. There was a simple promotion using social bookmarking sites, a Squidoo lens, few articles and it took off! I am not making a killing but 5-10 sales every week at 15$ per sale is good enough in this case. I am sure I could make much more money with this but I have many more important and time consuming projects… eBay offers hundreds of info products dirt cheap, just repackage them, purchase a domain name and suddenly you are an information product publisher! Pretty easy, isn’t it?

I’d like to give you another example.

At some point I stumbled across a few blogs where people were talking about baking bread at home. Once again, there weren’t any info products available online so I decided to create one just for the heck of it. The big issue was that I did not know ANYTHING about baking bread. After five or six hours spent browsing forums, blogs, yahoo answers I was able to come up with a list of most frequently asked questions on the subject. Once I had the list I went to visit a small local bakery shop, the baker also happened to be the owner. I told him there were many people online interested in baking bread at home but they had a few questions and concerns and It would be awesome if he could help me out with it, I even offered to pay him for his time, but he refused the money! So I turned on my digital voice recorder, read the list of questions and got all the answers… Now I had a $27 AUDIO info product… but that’s not all.

Three weeks later the baker called me and asked if I could film him baking bread; from mixing flour with water all the way to tasting the baked bread. I was hyped and of course agreed.  I came to the bakery with my $300 camcorder and a $20 tripod I purchased at a second hand store that’s how I became a film producer… Okay I didn’t become a producer but I made this video and was able to sell it on the back-end of the audio product for an additional $17. Guess how many people also bought the video? Almost all. The only condition was I had to add the credits at the end of the video, baker’s shop name and address - this wasn’t a problem for me!

As you can see, these two ways of coming up with info products are very cheap if not free, not time consuming and very effective. Nothing is stopping you now from becoming an info product publisher! Comments are greatly appreciated and don’t forget to subscribe to the feed for more tips and tricks!

Alex

NicheQ has been finally released by Kyle and Carson a.k.a. the Wealthy Affiliates and I could not pass by the opportunity to review it and let my blog readers into details, so here is my NicheQ review.

I was expecting it would be another useful feature to WA but I was wrong… NicheQ is not just useful, it is completely amazing! So what is NicheQ and what to eat it with?

The answer is simple - NicheQ is a shortcut to making money online as a niche marketer. You probably know of the hardest and most time consuming part of building a niche business - the research. NicheQ eliminates this part for you. At this exact moment there are 5 niche packs available at NicheQ, the 5 most profitable niches in the world are already researched for you - all you need to do is put it out there and start making money. Do you need more details? No problem…

With NicheQ you get:

• Niche Q Report

A detailed report about your potential customers in the given niche. If you do not know what your buyers want - they will not buy. The NicheQ report contains all the information you need about your prospect; who they are, what do they want, what makes them buy and so on.

• 25 PLR Articles

You get 25 private label rights (PLR) articles to use, modify, rewrite - do whatever you want with them. The articles are professionally written and are keyword optimized to fit the particular niche. Just imagine how much time and money this saves you!

• SEO Keyword Concepts

This is great for “BUM Marketers” - long tail keywords, little competition and a decent amount of searches. These keywords will be easy to rank on top of the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN. The keyword research is very time consuming - and with NicheQ it is already done for you!

• 7 Pre-Written Emails

Every marketer who owns an e-mail list knows that most people buy from you only after hearing from you at least 5 times. Well, folks, NicheQ did not forget the “list marketers” and provides you with a sequence of 7 well written e-mails targeted to that specific niche, this e-mails will not only save you time, they will also create MORE profit!

• PLR Guides

If you are building a new list in the niche or already own one, this is for you! NicheQ created PLR Guides, free reports that you can give out to your prospects as a gift, incentive or a bonus! These guides are well written and are full of great information that will be very useful to the niche! Use these guides however you like!

• Website Templates

Either you want to build a landing page or a review site, NicheQ provides you with professional website templates to use - once again, lots of money savings for you!

• Keyword Lists

For those who are into PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising, NicheQ has compiled lists of profitable keywords and even devided them into small groups so your Adgroups will get higher quality score, lower cost per click and more sales! Combine this with a NicheQ website template and a free NicheQ PLR guide to get those folks on your list - and you got a winner!

At this moment NicheQ covers 5 niches: Web Hosting, Dating, Insurance, Online Gaming and Stocks/Online Trading. Please note that every month new niches will be added.

I could keep on writing about the NicheQ for the whole day, yes I am that excited but I feel like this review is getting a little long and you can’t wait to check it out for yourself! So here is the NicheQ, take a look and join us there!

Alex

Hello, marketers!

It’s not a secret that Google likes Squidoo.com and tends to rank it high in its search results. However many people are faced with the issue of their Squidoo lens ranking high at first and then going down to second page, third page and all the way to the last page of Google search results. There is a remedy to it.

I created a lens about a year ago and I wrote an article on EzineArticles pointing to this lens. The lens got in the top 5 results in a month or so and stayed there for a while getting over 100 daily uniques from Google. Recently the lens dropped to #7 in Google and I got 173 hits from Google in 24 hours.

Yesterday I decided to update the lens to see if this will help to bring it back in the top 5. I added one single text module with 1 paragraph of text, then I used Pingoat.com to ping the lens… and today at noon I have noticed the traffic from Google increased:

Almost 100 hits more from Google and it’s only noon! After doing a Google search for the main keyword phrase, I found this lens ranking as #3 and not #7 which proves that Google LOVES updates, especially when they consist of new, unique content! I am sure this applies to all websites, blogs, hubs and lenses! So don’t forget to constantly update for your own sake!

P.S. for those who want to know the results of the traffic - 3 recurring sales and 30 opt-ins to my list so far from this one lens for today.

Alex

90% of beginner marketers fail to make their first dollar online for one simple reason - lack of action. I am a regular poster on many Internet marketing related forums and I see this happening every single day; people complaining how they spend $1000’s on courses, e-books even seminars yet they can’t make money online. Every now and then I get e-mails from folks who purchased my One Month Affiliate video course: “Alex, I followed your course, one month passed and I haven’t made a single buck online!” - then they usually proceed by telling me how they made this blog with one post and … that’s where it ends.

Well, my friends, it takes more than one blog post. I mention it in my course, on forums, e-mails and everywhere else I can - it takes effort to make money. Internet Marketing is just like any other business, it’s not going to make you money if you don’t run it properly.

First of all, you need to advertise. This is where we could see the big difference between an offline business and the online business models. The one that’s online could and should be advertised and promoted for FREE. Using blogs, article marketing, social media such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter helps a lot! Yes, it takes time and effort but it pays off! One single 300-word article could bring thousands of people to a site and make hundreds of them purchase whatever you are selling - but you need to do the proper research and you need to write that article! It IS THAT SIMPLE.

So next time you are about to complain about not making money, ask yourself if you have done enough action to deserve that money. If your fingers are not sore from all the typing (or your wallet empty from outsourcing all the typing) then you probably haven’t done enough!

Now go out there, take action and make money (then paypal me half of it

Alex

Good Morning folks!

I would like to wish You and Your family a Merry Christmas! I hope Santa treated You well this year. I would also like to let you know something many don’t even suspect. During this Holiday season affiliate marketers made millions of dollars on the internet by simply helping people to make their family happy.

Thousands of iPods, Playstations, Guitars, winter jackets and many other gifts were sold online through affiliate links. New internet marketers tend to forget about promoting physical products and concentrate on selling Clickbank’s products only. Amazon and eBay are perfect candidates to promote before holidays. If you missed out on all the Christmas Madness (which I talked about in the Christmas Madness post) there is always the next year, besides there are many other holidays and celebrations throughout the year such as Valentine’s Day, Halloween… and you have plenty of time to put up a few free blogs to promote gifts for these celebrations.

I’d also like to talk to you about the Boxing Day.

I ran a Christmas Sale for my list of subscribers offering my two video products at a great discount and then I thought: “Well, my blog readers deserve to take advantage of this as well” - so I am offering One Month Affiliate and Local Business Gold at $27 each instead of the regular $67.77 and $97 respectively! This boxing Day Sale start RIGHT NOW and ends on December 26th at midnight! You must use the following links to get the discount because the HOME pages of both sites offer the products at the regular price:

One Month Affiliate Boxing Day Sale - Save $40!!!

Local Business Gold Boxing Day Sale - Save $70!!!

Once again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Alex

People are scared of scams. Not only scared, people suspect everything is a scam even if they cannot possibly be scammed… Let me explain.

My site, Extra Paycheck and my Extra Paycheck Blog get a lot of hits from Google and Yahoo while people are searching this keyword phrase: Extra-Paycheck.com Scam and to be honest this is rather amuzing to me. As you are most likely aware, the Extra-Paycheck is a free e-mail course to making money online (mostly affiliate marketing).

SCAM, at least to me, means taking people’s money and running away with it without providing promised product/service, so even if I was not delivering what I promise, I offer it 100% free - no money involved… ever! All I ask for is an e-mail address where I could send the content.

After seeing these results, I hit the Adwords Keyword Tool and did a search on many internet matketing related products, free and paid and of course, most searches came using “Product + Scam” keyword phrases. Even the big names, such as Frank Kern, Jeff Walker and many others were searched with the word “scam” at the end.

I guess people do have the right to be scpetical about certain things, but when it comes to free newsletters that only require an e-mail address - how could there possibly be a scam? What do you think about people fear of “scam”?

Yesterday I was speaking to a fellow internet marketer/blogger/friend who told me an interesting story.

His blog got a lot of hits for 3 days, he knew it because he made a lot of affiliate sales for a specific product that he only advertised on his blog. However, he could not understand why all that traffic came to his blog all of the sudden and then disappeared. When I asked him to show me some stats - he failed to do so because he was not tracking the traffic to his blog. If he did, he would have probably gained many more visitors and certainly would have made more sales.

Myself, I started tracking the stats of most of my sites and blog only a few short months ago - and this little techniques already increased my visitors and my sales by a great deal, most importantly it is very easy to use.

I use statcounter.com to track all my visitors. This web tracker is free to use and does a very decent job. Of course it does not track every visit and all the details - but I am sure paid service can’t do it either. So, you get a free account, set up a tracking code and add it to your site or blog, but what can you do with the stats?

On the image above you can see (well you can’t really see but you get the point) where the visitors came from and on which page of the site they landed. This is very helpful if you wish to know where you efforts paid off and where they didn’t. For instance, let’s say you are using a signature in a forum where you post, well these stats can show if you are getting any traffic from the forum. If you are - then you need to post more often so you could get more traffic. If you updated your Twitter 100 times but you do not see any hits from there - that means you either are not posting what people want to read or you do not have enough followers… the list goes on, and you can track where you should put more effort and what should be ditched.

This second screenshot is called “Recent Keyword Activity” and it shows what keyword was searched on which search engine in order for a visitor to end up on your page. You will be surprised about some keywords… There will be a few keyword phrases that get quite a few visitors to your page - yet you did not even suspect the existence of such keyword, let alone ranking high in the search engines for it. Once you find out the often searched keywords - you could optimize some pages and post of your blog or site, which hopefully, once again, will result in MORE free, targeted traffic.

… this is not the only information you can get when tracking your site or blog. You can also see where the visitors cames from (meaning Country, City), you can see how long they stayed on your site, which page they landed on and the last page they viewed… this could be very helpful.

If you are not tracking your efforts - you should start doing it now, because you might be wasting a lot of your valuable time on useless tasks which do not help you out in any way.

What do you think of this?

Alex

Hello, folks!

Today I would like to share my experience… from yesterday.

Yesterday I put up a brand new affiliate marketing campaign and I made $834 off of it in about 12 hours. It only took me one hour to set everything up.

So how did it happen?

Well, I keep my eye on the “trends”. I try to keep up with what’s hot today, what’s on the news, what sells… Google Trends and Digg are the main sources for this kind of information, watching new on TV doesn’t hurt either (although you can look at Google News instead).

Yesterday I was going through the blogs that I subscribed to, just looking over the news and on one of the blogs there was a mention that Hostgator had a 75% sale that day only!
The Black Friday 75% OFF Sale on all of their hosting plans.

Since I am a loyal and satisfied customer of Hostgator, I thought the sale would be a great reason to promote this company… knowing that I get paid $119 per sale was another reason.

So I wrote up a quick and short post on my blog about it and gave my affiliate link to Hostgator site. Then I submitted my blog to Pingoat and Pingomatic, also DIGG.com, I also mentioned it on Twitter.

Then I posted a thread about it right here on WA – now I was able to get a few sales from here because I have been an active member and people have seen my posts before – which kind of helps with the trust issue, if a NEW member would have posted it – I am not sure if the outcome would have been the same. In the thread I offered 2 links; my affiliate link and the NON-affiliate link because my goal was not to make the money but to help people save money, 75% OFF is a pretty big discount. If someone didn’t want to buy through my link for whatever reason – well I didn’t force them too.

A few hours later I checked my blog stats and noticed some traffic from Google, here are the keywords from which I got the traffic:

hostgator 75% - (position #4)
hostgator 75% off – (position #5 and 7)
hostgator 75% sale (position #3)
hostgator black friday (position #2 and 3)
host gator black friday position #5
host gator 75% position #6
host gator 75% sale (position #3)

My blog ranked twice, the rest of the rankings were my DIGG post. This is why I love digg, it could get you the first page results in minutes.

So it seems like a lot of people have heard about this Hostgator Sale and GOOGLED it,,, and I was right there on the first page.

Now, I only made 7 sales, but it’s still over $800 in one single day, to be more specific in 12 hours and it only took about one hour of time to set all this up.

So what is the moral of the story?
Hot trends could be very profitable. They will not last for a long time, but they could give you a little boost and make you a few extra $. When you stumble across a HOT trend, try to find a very compelling offer for the people who are after the trend and deliver it to them. That hostgator offer was easy to sell because it truly was a great offer in the eyes of people who needed webhosting. Where else could you get a very reliable and reputable hosting plan with Unlimited bandwidth, Unlimited domains and free 24/7 support for $27/year (or $71 per year)? It was a no-brainer for those who needed hosting, and I delivered it.

Keep your eyes open for hot trends,

Best of Success,

Alex

Hello, folks!

Today Hostgator is running a special Black Friday offer! They are giving away a 75% discount on their plans!
So the ‘BABY’ plan (Unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains…) is about $27 today instead of the regular $120! This is the first time ever they run such a huge discount! The deal is good even for 3 year contracts, where you will pay about $71 instead of $350! They even offer reseller accounts at 75% OFF!

Use the coupon code ‘LUCKY’

Here is the link: HostGator Hosting

update: If you see this post AFTER November 28th, unfortunately the offer has expired. HOWEVER, you can get a 20% discount on all Hostgator plans using the code ‘SNOWMAN’

Alex

Hello, folks!

I am about to tell you a story of how I made a little over $1,100 in less than 2 hours and how YOU can do the same even if you are a newbie. It does take very little technical knowledge and if I say something technical that you do not know how to do - just Google it, that’s what I did.

This idea has been posted MANY times on this forum and many other IM forums, it’s about taking your online business offline.

I was driving home from (I really don’t remember where) about two weeks ago and I noticed this small office with a huge window, they had many led signs displayed and projecting whole bunch of different lights. I figured those were for sale, so I stopped and walked in.

The owner welcomed me and ask if he could help me with anything.

- How is business? - I asked.
- Not too well, replied the owner of the store.

He then proceeded telling me a little more about the business. They sold led displays to businesses, schools, hospitals and so on. I asked if they had a website and as we’re in 2008, they did have a website just like many other businesses. The owner told me their website does not bring new customers but serves a purpose of showcasing the products to existing clients and to those who walked in at some point of time and took a business card with the website mentioned on it.

I told the guy that I could possibly help him get customers from the Internet, I proceeded by explaining the benefits of being in the top results of search engines, then I asked him how exactly those products are called and asked him to use his computer.

So I typed: WHATEVER THE PRODUCT Montreal. Then I tried Monteal WHATEVER THE PRODUCT - sure enough his website was nowhere to be found in the first 5 pages of Goolge, I didn’t check any further. In fact most results were somewhat irrelevant and those that were relevant seemed to be there by pure luck.

I made an offer the owner could not refuse.

I offered him to build a brand new site that would rank at least in the top 5 results for any keyword phrase he wants. I would charge him $1,000 ONLY if this happens and he agreed. I also asked him to purchase a domain name (that I already had in mind) and a cheap hosting plan - this cost him under $10. (Since he picked a monthly payment plan for the hosting, possibility to cancel any time and the first month was only $0.01). I also asked him to write the name of the top 5 products he sold, detailed description of each product and take a photo of each product. We drafted a quick contract, signed it and I went home. All this took about 30-40 minutes.

In 2 days I received an e-mail with all the information I requested. I logged into his hosting cPanel, uploaded Wordpress, uploaded a few free WP themes that I though would match the business, I also uploaded ALL-IN-ONE-SEO-PACK plug-in for WP and the sitemap plug-in. I created 5 pages, each with the name of the product I made sure to fill out all of the All-In-One-Seo fields with relevant information - so title of the page, description and keywords/tags. In about 30 minutes the site was complete.

I left it alone for a week, hoping to have the time to work on some backlinks, but as I was trying to see if Google indexed it - it appeared on the first page of the results for all 5 keyword phrases. That’s not all. Each keyword phrase was ranked as a result #1 and #2! Now, this might be surprising for some of you, but the truth is, when you are doing this for a local business you put the name of the city in the search - which makes ranking on top MUCH easier for MOST businesses.

Anyways, I went to see that guy the very next day, showed him the results which made him speechless and $1,000 poorer. Yes, folks that was it.

Now, you say - it’s only $1,000 - but the title says $1,300!
Pretty simple. The hosting he purchased - it was through my affiliate link which gave me a $100 commission (Hostgator on CJ). Before leaving the office I offered him a consultation for…. $200. In 15 minutes I told him about keeping his site on #1 spot by building backlinks. I explained the theory of article marketing - this took about 20-30 minutes.

A week later I received a call from this guy, thanking me once again. In one week this brand new simple WP website (… blog, really) brought him 2 new customers and a profit of $3,000.

… Should I have charged him more for such service? Probably… but it was the first time I tried anything like this and it was so spontaneous - I though even $1,000 was too much to ask. I’ll know better next time. However, It was a great experience and he already referred me to a friend of his who owns several used cars dealerships…

So, it is that simple. As you can see nothing technical in it. Or at least nothing that you can’t find a video tutorial for on Youtube. I am not a good face-to-face salesman, my offer was just too good to turn down. I promised results or it was free. The only expense I asked for was under $10 for the domain name + 1 month hosting. I am sure some businesses will turn me down - and this was my fear that always kept me away from trying such thing, but for some reason I had a good feeling about these guys, so I walked in with a smile and well… made $1,300 in under 2 hours.

You can do it as well, I am sure of it.

Alex

p.s. COMMENTS Greatly appreciated!

Hello, folks!

Today I got 15 e-mails from Paypal and apparently today I lost almost $150 - renewing domain names I didn’t even want! So I started digging deeper into my Internet Marketing expenses and I found a bunch which I could eliminate, here is the list of top 5!

1. Renewing Domain Names

About 1 year ago I registered a lot of $1.99 .INFO domain names - because I had many different ideas and wanted to use those cheap domain names for testing… unfortunately I did not know that most domain name resellers renew your d0main names automatically. When these .info domain names are renewed - you actually pay almost 10$ per name instead of $1.99. So I went into my account and set almost all of my domain to MANUAL renewal. I made sure they my ESTABLISHED website domains are set on AUTO-RENEW.

2. Hosting

When I first started my Internet Marketing venture I purchased a web hosting plan. $120/year seemed reasonable, but I could only host one website, so when I needed to start a new website I purchased another hosting plan and so on… Eventually I ended up with 5 hosting plans costing me $600 and not only that! I also had to log in into each hosting account separately when I wanted to edit my website. Eventually I stumbled across Host Gator, where at 8$ per month I can host UNLIMITED number of domain names, unlimited disc space and unlimited bandwidth! They also offer great support and I haven’t seen one single downtime so far. Now I have 10 websites - which could have cost me over $1,200 per year in hosting alone, it now costs me under $100/year and all the websites are in ONE account - which saves a lot of time.

3. Monthly Memberships

1 year ago when I didn’t know anything about making money online I signed up to many paid membership sites and forums, I didn’t log-in to most of them since. Some were simply useless and others just weren’t my cup of tea. Sure, most cost me $20-$40/month… Let’s do the average at $30/month at 10 websites = $300/month waste! In one single year it adds up to $3,600. I have been a member of Wealthy Affiliate Community for over a year now, and this membership program offers me more than all those other paid memberships together - and it only costs me $1/day, why would I keep the others?

4. Stop Buying Junk

I often find myself an amazing sales letter about getting lots of free traffic to your website and sure enough I purchase that amazing $47 e-book just to find out there is nothing new. Great sales page doesn’t mean a great product, besides you most likely know all those “tips and tricks” on getting more free traffic, don’t spend money on it! If you want tips on getting free traffic, you can read some of the posts from this very blog: Free TV Traffic, Dominate Google’s First Page, How to Get Backlinks… Submit articles to EzineArticles.com, make HubPages, Squidoo Lenses, use Twitter, Youtube… Free Traffic right there and I am not even charging you for it.

5. Invest in Good Education

I just told you about not spending any more money on e-books, programs and the rest… However, there are a few things you should consider purchasing. If you are new to PPC (Paid Advertising) - You should definitely learn as much as you can about it, otherwise you are likely to lose a good chunk of money. There is a video course to PPC I could recommend; James Shramko’s Double Digit CTR. An amazing video guide to successful PPC marketing at a measly $39! I have purchased about 15 PPC guides so far, some at over $100 but this video course beats them all.

With these simple tricks I was able to save over $5,000 this year alone - I hope it helps you to save some money as well,

Alex

Hello, folks!

Today, I am posting yet another technique to get FREE traffic to your site, blog, lens… and this will only take an hour or so! Well, let’s start with an introduction.

… One of my lists usually gets 10-20 new daily opt-ins but today I got 100! I had to dig deeper and find WHERE exactly they came from… it was a Squidoo lens I built a while ago. That lens usually gets 20 uniques per day, but today I got a little over 750! About 250 of them clicked on my links within the lens, 100 subscribed to my list and I also got 5 sales! Remember, I spent 30 minutes creating this lens, another 20 minutes writing an article and submitting it to EzineArticles, 3 or 4 months ago and I haven’t done anything to it since.

So what exactly happen?

When I created the lens, I tried to use the “Free TV Traffic” techniques I learned about on Wealthy Affiliate. This technique was posted by Jay, a member of WA (I don’t feel right taking credit for it).

So, I explain. You most likely have seen those “Work From Home” TV infomercials. Many of them promise to make you super rich but we all know it’s a bunch of B.S. most of the time.

Well, that’s all for now. I imagine you figured out the rest

Just kidding. Here is something a lot of marketers don’t realize. Many of those folks who stumble across these infomercials open up Google and search for reviews. So why don’t you make a review and get on the top results of Google for the main keywords? I explained how to get on Google’s first page in this post: “Dominate Google’s First Page for FREE”.

You could either order their package and review it (which I do not recommend, because once you give them your phone # - they will never stop calling you). What you could do, is check out Scam.com and RipoffReport.com - most of the programs advertised on TV are listed in these sites, with reviews and customer’s feedback.

As to WHY I got so many visitors all of the sudden, the answer is simple. That same infomercial ran on TV today at 3pm, then 6pm - and since it’s Saturday, most people are home, watching TV.

Now you see how amazing it is. You make this lens or a blog, which will have a constant amount of daily visitors and HIGHLY increased amounts of visitors on special occasions - for instance when that TV ad is playing on TV. The advertiser pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their ad on TV - but most of the time they do not optimize their online business - so you “steal” their traffic, it’s all your completely free!

Don’t limit yourself to “Make Money From Home” infomercials. There are A LOT of TV ads related to looking good (Muscle Building, Acne Removal…), Losing Weight and many many others…

DISCLAIMER: Please use this technique at your own risk. I once purchased a domain and built a mini site about it, The_Whatever_Infomercial_Scam.com and I received an e-mail from the lawyer of this company asking me to transfer the domain name to them or they will sue me for $300,000 because I used their trademarked name and claimed their company to be SCAM (which it was and still is).

Be creative.

Make money.

Alex