You’ve Got To Be Hungry! Thank You Les Brown!
Here is a little reminder from Les Brown about what it is you have to do especially during these economic times! The video is about 10 minutes long but it doesn’t seem that way. Think of his message whenever you feel inadequate, small, unsure.
Enjoy!
If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it, Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it
If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it
If life seems all empty and useless without it And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,
If gladly you’ll sweat for it, Fret for it, Plan for it, Lose all your terror of God or man for it,
If you’ll simply go after that thing that you want. With all your capacity, Strength and sagacity, Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,
If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt, Nor sickness nor pain Of body or brain Can turn you away from the thing that you want,
If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it, You’ll get it!
Success by Berton Braley
Amazons Record Holiday Sales
Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com
First off, Happy New Year!
Now I want to jump right back into things with some news that will be contrary to all the doom and gloom that we are fed on a daily basis. If you haven’t seen this news story, Amazon posted the best Christmas selling season ever!
This wasn’t the case across the board as many retailers suffered as sales in general were down however you have to take a closer look at how Amazon does business versus the other guys. How many of you knew that Amazon was the largest drop shipper on the planet? Many individual companies sell their merchandise through Amazon so their supply lines are a lot longer!
As traditional online retailers were running out of stuff to sell, Amazon had hundreds of backup sellers providing a seemingly endless supply of stuff for you to buy. How many times have you seen Amazon show something out of stock?
Amazon also offers fullfillment and management services for many large and not so large online retailers such as Target.
Lastly, Amazon has a very extensive affiliate program. During the Christmas season large retailers such as Best Buy decided to drop their already abysmally low commission down to a horrifyingly pitiful 0.25%! Who is going to waste time sending traffic to any site for a paltry 0.25%? Amazons commission, although not earth shattering, start at 4% and go up depending on your unit volume. That is a 1,500% better return for the affiliates effort by sending traffic to Amazon!
Amazon was good to me this holiday season as an affiliate! Nothing dramatic but enough to make me focus more attention on them this year!
Article Marketing Video Tips
I just wanted to give you a video that I did on an important part of article marketing, creating interesting titles. After watching the video, leave me a comment letting me know what you think and then visit Traffic Reign for more information.
Here ya go!
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video.
Tags: article marketing, article marketing strategy
Doom & Gloom, Economic Bailouts – The Sky Is Falling!
I just wanted to share my view of all the negative information in the news today. Not in a rant but in cartoon form! Enjoy. . .
Tags: economic bailout, chicken little, recession
Searchers Getting Set In Their Ways
Being in the top 10 of SERPS just ain’t what it used to be according to a study from Think Eyetracking. I have definitely noticed significant leaps in traffic going from even the 5th position to the 3rd for a given keyword.
With universal search creeping into more and more keyword categories along with the amount of sites that show above fold in local search, now more than ever you need to think of how to diversify the traffic into your site.
Whether that means buying traffic (think outside the Adwords Box) or leveraging social media, a balanced approach will make for a healthier balance sheet.
What are some of the traffic sources you use outside the search engines?
Tags: serps, search engine rankings, think eyetracking, traffic generation
I Bet Your Site Doesn’t Sell This Well!
I came across an article from GrokDotCom.com discussing the top 10 converting retail sites as reported by Nielsen Online, here is the list:
1. Office Depot 26.90%
2. 1800flowers.com 20.90%
3. FTD.com 20.30%
4. J. Jill 19.4%
5. ProFlowers 19.30%
6. QVC 18.20%
7. LL Bean 15.9%
8. Children’s Place 15.2%
9. Blair.com 14.9%
10. Zales 14.6%
*Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts
How does your site compare? I know that none of mine are even close to being on this list. One of the things that I have been lazy at is performing test to maximize conversions. It is the missing secret that very few marketers talk about.
What types of test have you run? Especially if you are an ecommerce store? What software are you using? I am curious to see what people are doing in this arena and how you manage the process.
Two of my favorite sites to get data on the types of tests you should be running and the reasoning behind them are:
)If you haven’t done and testing to this point, Google offers a couple of free tools that will get you started down the path of conversion optimization. They are:
Check out these videos on how to use Google’s stuff:
Running A/B Tests
Running Multivariate Tests:
Tags: conversion testing, google website optimizer, marketing experiments, grokdotcom.com, conversion rate
Animoto Slideshows: My First Guest Blog Post
Jack Humphrey, The Friday Traffic Report
First off I would like to thank Jack Humphrey for letting me put my graffiti on his blog, The Friday Traffic Report. I did a little video on him as well that’s well, amusing. The video was done using a free service called Animoto so if you aren’t sure what that is, check out my post about creating videos using Animoto on Jack’s blog to get a glimpse.
Let me know what you think!
Also, if you haven’t gotten a chance to take a look at Jack’s Authority Blackbook do so TODAY! It has the best collection of social media and blogging resources that you can imagine and its FREE at that.
Tags: Animoto, slideshow creator, jack humphrey, the friday traffic report
SMS Text Message Alerts For WordPress
This is the first post in a new section called “Cool Tools” (I know, very original). Anyway, I just found a new plugin for wordpress that allows a visitor to sign up for sms alerts.
I have no idea whether or not people will enter their cell phone numbers but I will give it a shot anyway. To sweeten the pot a little, I will give away a package of sofware, ebooks and website templates to anyone who does sign up. Look for the SMS sign up to your right ——>
Do you want this for your blog? Click here to download the plugin.
Tags: wordpress plugins, cool tools, sms text message
Google is Finally Showing Search Volume!
If you are an Adwords advertiser, you may have gotten an email today saying that Google decided to show actual numbers for traffic estimates! This is a beautiful thing as it will allow me to better estimate how many clicks and impressions I can expect from a particular phrase in any given position of the results.
If you you haven’t taken a look at Google’s keyword tool, click here to give it a spin.
What keyword tools do you use for your research?
Also, heres a quick video that someone already put out on the subject. The image quality is low but you can sense the excitement in this guys voice.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool Now Has Search Numbers
Tags: keyword research, google keyword tool, google adwords
10 Million Millionaires!
I just came across an article in MSN about the world now having 10 million millionaires! It is a bit a counter intuitive information given the current recession but it makes perfect sense.
People who recognize the movements in their markets can profit no matter what the conditions are.
Tags: millionaires, rich, money, msn