I got a flash of inspiration this weekend and made such profound changes to Xingla Pro, that we now have a major upgrade to version 2.0! Current users get the upgrade for free of course. 🙂
Monthly Archives: May 2008
Using the Great Tools of The Trade
Running your internet business efficiently goes hand in hand with using top notch tools. There are countless numbers of marketing tools out there that are claimed to make you the next top dawg in your market. There’s a lot of hyped up horse crap out there, but there are a number of very good quality tools that can really be useful in building and automating your business.
One such example is James Brausch’s Nemeas. Have you noticed lately that James has been selling a ton of domains at around 500 bucks a pop? Have you noticed that the domain names are all relevant to some market or niche of one sort or another? This is a prime example of someone who has developed a useful tool and not only markets it, but uses it himself. In fact, he uses all the tools that he developed every day in his business.
Like Glyphius, Nemeas is fun to use. You can use it to come up with domain names that can have the best chance of ranking well in the SERPs. Obviously, James did this for quite a long time, bought the domains and is now doing some house cleaning by selling off some of his “real estate” investments. So far he’s raked in over $11,000 in domain sales, and I probably missed a few when I was counting. When was the last time you made 11Gs house cleaning? How long do you think it would take you to make your money back from Nemeas doing the same thing?
One thing that really defines a good tool is something that is going to offer you a tangable return for your investment.
You can bet that any tool or product that you purchase from James will give you a handsome return on your investment.
There’s only one hitch, whether you purchase from James, myself or anyone, you have to do one thing… USE THEM! How many tools have you purchased for your business and then shelved them before giving them half a chance? I see a few hands going up in the back of the room. Ok, mine included. Remember, even the best tools won’t do you any good if you don’t use them.
When you are considering a purchase on a tool that may help your business, do you know if the marketer is actually using it himself? That’s pretty important, because if the developer doesn’t use it himself, then its a pretty good sign that its just a cheezy outsourced knockoff of someone else’s great idea.
I’m not saying that you can’t make a similar product to something that’s already released, but at least improve upon it in some way to offer some value to your customers. If you come up with something original however, then you are a true innovator.
As far as I know, Xingla Pro is the only blog carnival submitter out there at this time, but I’m sure its only a matter of time before the “me too-ers” will have their copies out. I use both Xingla Pro and AmazingCloaker all the time because they crank my revenue and save me a ton of time, and time is money, lettuce, greeeeen stuff.
With that said, Xingla Pro will always be the original and there’s nothin’ like the real thing. Whatever business you’re in, there’s a quality marketing tool that can put your business into overdrive if you give it the chance. Just remember before taking out that credit card, if the person that created the tools aren’t regularly using them in their own online business, then the chances are very good that you won’t either.
Xingla’s First Review…
Xingla Pro is almost 1 month old and I’ve been getting tons of great feedback from users and non users alike. Now Xingla has already received a great review from Mo’s online business blog at oibo.org. Thanks Mo! I really appreciate great and honest feedback like this. Mo also runs a blog carnival at oibo.org, so if anyone knows first hand how they really work, its Mo!
One thing that really impressed me is that Mo also has a blog Carnival submission service. Mo obviously understands the value that XinglaPro will provide for his service. He also went on to list other reputable services out there, which I consider mighty sporting of Mo to include these fine people as well.
You don’t have to have a service to use Xingla of course. Its for anyone with a blog that wants to build their search ranking and attract traffic to their blog / products.
Mo has even called me crazy in his review! Why?, you might ask… Check out oibo.org now and see what a real internet business blogger / blog carnival host has to say about it.
Original Offer Withdrawn
Firstly, I must apologize for not being more clear in my last post. I clearly gave the impression that I wanted to offer Xingla Pro as part of the James Brausch intern package. This was not only James’ impression, but also the same gained from my readers. Here’s a quote from a very well phrased comment made by Trevor Neuman in the last post:
“Jack,
I can’t see James going for this offer… a key aspect of his Intern program is that it doesn’t cost his interns anything at all… and a 50% off special simply doesn’t fit that criteria.
Cheers!”
Both Trevor and James are correct of course. But… the intention of my offer was to make my product available at discount to any intern member as a benefit or perk for being enrolled in the James Brausch intern program. This isn’t intended to be integrated into the program itself.
Blog carnival submissions are one of the intern tasks in the program, so I was merely trying to establish relevancy to the product and it’s application to intern members who may wish to incorporate blog carnival submissions into their own procedure.
The sticky point that I didn’t consider thoroughly enough before making the offer however, was how I would validate who was an intern member and who wasn’t. This would be impossible without James’ help and would require an arrangement via email with one of his staff members. -bad idea.
The purpose of the offer was two fold:
1. The obvious one – it would increase revenue & exposure for Xingla Pro
2. It would add an extra incentive for some to enroll into the James Brausch Intern Program
It seemed like a cool idea at first, but lesson learned… consider all angles first before tossing an offer out on the table. And be careful how you phrase things when creating an offer.
Taken in the context that the intern program would be changed with a paid product would certainly be breaking a promise to his members as James eloquently put it in his response. He’s right of course, if that were the case. The last thing James would ever do is break a promise to those who put their trust in him.
After reading back through my previous post, I can now see why people got this impression. James, I appreciate you taking the time to respond! Now it’s time to put my tail between my legs, skirt away, and get on with the business of internet business! 😛
The Artemis Booster
As you may or may not know, one very effective way to get traffic, and I mean targeted traffic to your blog is by article writing. When I first joined James Brausch’s intern program, I received a copy of Artemis which is an article submission software that contains an internal list of publishers in which you can submit your articles.
This isn’t your typical article submission software. With Artemis, you make some changes in each paragraph of your article at least three times. Now when submitting your article, Artemis will randomly shuffle the corresponding paragraph versions in your article for each submission to a publisher in the list. For example, one of 4 versions of paragraph 1 randomly shuffled, one of 4 versions of paragraph 2 randomly shuffled, and so on.
This in turn creates thousands of unique variations of your article instantly which allow you to avoid any duplicate content penalties by the search engines. The results is an 1875% increase in your article marketing efforts. As if this wasn’t already effective enough, you can turbo charge Artemis by using a large external list of publishers. But how do you get them?
Well, you could trudge through the search engines and spend hours putting a list together (not a great idea), you could outsource the job to someone else, or you can pick up a list of 1000 publishers from James Brausch’s web site who just happens to be running a 24 hour special right now.
This is an amazing deal and well worth the 30 bucks! I’m going to pick up a copy right after posting this blog entry. Another thing that James mentioned was that he would recommend products or services to new businesses that follow his methods. Well I’m going to boldly stick my neck out and make an offer to James. If James agrees, I will make my Xingla Pro Blog Carnival Submission software available exclusively to James Brausch intern members for 50% off the normal price! Blog Carnival submissions are one of his intern procedures and I feel that it would benefit them greatly. James, if you’re interested just let me know at admin[at]jackkeifer.com and we can work out the details for getting a special order link available to your interns, and a copy of Xingla Pro for you to check out.
Article Submission and Blog Carnival submissions are the two most powerful traffic and back-link building methods on the planet. If you’re an Artemis user, I would highly recommend taking advantage of the publisher list being offered at James’ Internet Business Blog now. If you’re not a user, quit screwing around and get a copy now so that you can build your business. Taking action now could be the turning point in your internet business.
Gotta Love That CommentLuv!
Around the end of April I made a blog post referring to some cool wordpress plugins to add to your arsenal of useful stuff. One comment I had received was from Annie, who right away took advantage of the KeywordLuv plugin that I am using.
She later left a second comment recommending another great plug-in called CommentLuv. Being the type to try out new things that may be useful to me and beneficial to my readers, I decided to look into it. Thanks Annie! I’m glad I did…
CommentLuv benefits your readers by automatically inserting their last blog post title into their comment. This way, if you have a blog and you want to leave a comment, CommentLuv will scrape your last blog post and insert it into your comment. You can really benefit from useful keywords such as “internet business”.
Here’s an example of what my comment would look like on someone else’s blog using CommentLuv:
|
Jack Keifer on May 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm Hi Homer, That’s a great story about your son Bart. Looks like he will be president someday! -Jack
Jack’s last blog post..A Competition Free Internet Business |
As you can see CommentLuv scraped the last blog post (in this example) from my web site which I added into the comment form. Now I have a great back link for “Internet Business” on Homer’s website, who just happens to have a PR 8.
Without CommentLuv I would only be back-linking for “Jack Keifer”. Not a very useful back-link. Sure, I could type “Internet Business” in the name field, but more than likely I would be flagged as a spammer and my comment would be deleted. Even though I left a useful comment, the blog owner may never look past the keyword stuffed name field.
CommentLuv is a great way to get back-links to your own blog with targeted keywords. To find other CommentLuv Blogs out there, you can Google using the phrase “Enable CommentLuv” + your target keyword. For example, if you wanted to find blogs related to internet marketing, you could Google for “Enable CommentLuv” + “Internet marketing”.
You will get back all the indexed CommentLuv blogs that are using CommentLuv and related to internet marketing. Now go leave some useful comments and get some nice relevant backlinks to your blog.
You can potentially generate a lot of extra traffic to your blog as well, because readers of other blogs will see your cool headline and click on it to see what you have to say.
CommentLuv is also a great way to get more people commenting on your own blog as well. Remember back when your blog was new? It probably took awhile before you got that first comment. You may not have had more than a handful of readers.
Blog posts with comments shows your visitors that you are creating interesting and useful content that people want to respond to. Comments also validate that you have a following and decent traffic which encourages others to come back and eventually contribute. This adds to the credibility of your blog.
A majority of readers rarely, if ever, comment. CommentLuv just may be a great way to encourage your readers to chime in and contribute to your blog. It’s a win-win for both the blogger and reader. Give it a try!
Action Is The Key To The Universe
Today I’m trying something completely different from the way that I normally would write a blog post. Anyone who’s ever done any amount of writing will testify to the fact that they’ve been hit with writers block at one time or another. Well… now it’s my turn. Even with all the highly effective strategies that I use to combat “the big block”, I’m stuck. T’aint gettin’ through this time.
So… what to do? The natural move that a writer’s block victim will make is usually one of two things. Start surfing the net for other articles hoping to get inspired for ideas to expand upon, or… just stare at a blank page waiting for a finished article to magically appear on the screen with your name on it.
I decided to do the opposite. I’m always preaching about taking action on building information products, starting your online business, building that blog, etc. I know first hand the value of action. Just do it, and expand upon the business or product as you go. After all, no product or service is perfect right from the start. It’s user feedback that gets the next versions released with bigger and better features.
I decided to use this same philosophy of action for writing this post. No idea how to finish, or what to write about… Just start typing and take the action to create! Create what? Something, just create! Even if you don’t have a clearly defined goal for your internet business yet, the very action of doing something to create your business will help you define that vision. Before you know it, you’ll have a brand new product or internet venture launched and generating a real income for you.
Suppose you create a new product which only ends up generating fifty or a hundred bucks a month? Is that a loser? No way! Granted, some products that you create will sell much better than others, but never consider your product a loser! Suppose you created 10 of those “losers”? Now we’re talking $500 to a $1000 a month on the low converters. Suppose you cranked out another 10? or 20 “losers”? Making sense?
Suppose that you never took the action to begin with because you thought that no one would buy it. Suppose you didn’t take action because you couldn’t fully picture how you would complete the product or market it before you even started? This is where 99% of everyone who even consider creating a product end up. Look at the sweet income streams that would have been left on the table had you not taken the simple act of just starting. Remember, create the product once, get paid forever.
Having a completely blank mind from writers block, the easy way out for me tonight would have been to continue to stare at my blank screen until I dozed off into a hypnotic trance. Instead, by forcing myself to take action, I have a fully completed post!
This was an action as simple as hitting the keys on my keyboard just to see where it would take me. Now go do the same thing with your new product. Start it right now & worry about how to finish it when you get finished.
Action really is the key to the universe! 🙂
A Competition Free Internet Business?
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably run across the occasional sales letter or even blog post talking about finding niches and dominating them. Or that if you buy that mega cool keyword research tool, you’ll discover great niches with little to no competition, which you can completely dominate! Wow! Can you imagine being the top dog in the designer ball bearing niche? Imagine having little to no competition in your newly discovered niche!
Sounds pretty great right? I would have to say, eh, er, um… NOT!
It’s a big internet universe out there. First of all, you have to step back and ask yourself why there is no competition? To think that designer ball bearings is an undiscovered niche just sitting there waiting to make you the next internet millionaire is just pure fantasy. Yet many people buy into this very niche mindset.
Perhaps there’s another reason that a niche has little to no competition. Remember in the last post when I wrote about the word exchange game? Try exchanging “competition” for “interest“. Exactly. The niche has little to no interest.
Competition is an indicator of interest in a product. If you have lots of competition, then its a pretty safe bet that there is a demand for this type of product. You have a REAL market. Competition is a good thing… really! In fact, in any major market, let’s say “internet marketing” for example, competition is really just an illusion. The other people in your market shouldn’t be thought of as competitors at all. Instead, let’s use the word switching game again and substitute “competitor” for “JV Partner”, “link exchange”, “affiliate”, or even “traffic source” as few basic examples.
As you can see, taking different perspectives on things, including your internet business is a very important lesson to absorb into your life experience.
The next time you want to create a product or if you’re looking for a new market to expand into, do the opposite of what the “gurus” are teaching. Go jump into a really big market with lots of “competition” and stake your claim. See what happens. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results!
I Can Sell You Anything
I was reading an excellent post yesterday while getting my James Brausch fix on his blog. I started out reading an excellent set of posts. The first one is entitled “That Doesn’t Make any Sense”. This was a follow up post from the previous day called “Thinking About Words Used“. I went on to read the original post which involved a word replacement game, where you would replace emotional trigger words in a sentence with another one. The general idea is to open your mind beyond the conditioning that we regularly receive from TV, family, peers, etc. and seeing things from other perspectives.
This post made me think back to a book I read as a teenager called “I Can Sell You Anything” by Paul Stevens. In one chapter of the book, he elaborates on the use of “weasel words” such as helps, virtually, up to, as much as, etc. For example, “Virtually spot free”. Most people would think of a clean surface with no spots. Let’s check out the definition of virtual from a dictionary.
virtual adj. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name: the virtual extinction of the buffalo.
OK, so another way of saying “virtually” could be “almost” or “not really”. Almost spot free… Not really spot free. Hmmm, paints a different picture, eh? Of course, technically, weasel words are necessary in advertising to protect the maker of the product. There are no absolutes with a pain reliever for example. For Novartis to claim that you will be free of pain in 15 minutes after popping two Excedrin would be marketing suicide.
After reading that book way back then, I started word replacing all the weasel words that I would pick up on in the commercials I would see on TV, or in printed Ads. This really helped me to become more aware of exactly what the product was really about, & not what you are led to believe. I started seeing advertisements in a whole new light and I was suddenly much less vulnerable to being snowed.
An entirely new perspective was opened up to me that I never saw before. Kind of like the movie “Dead Poet’s Society” with Robin Williams, where he played a college professor who, in one scene, had his students stand on top of their desks so that they could see their every day surroundings from a different perspective. That was the same kind of “ding” moment for me way back then.
This same “ding” moment can come about in any aspect of communication if you play along as James Points out in his post. I apply this concept pretty much unconsciously all the time. I never really gave it much thought before reading James’s post. TV really is a dangerous medium for conditioning because we simply absorb what is being spoon fed into our brains. This is why TV is such an effective advertising medium, because you can insert “where’s the beef?” directly into the brains of the public and suddenly, millions of people know that Wendys is the place for big juicy hamburgers.
When you think about it, everything the average person really knows about world affairs, politics, government, etc is by what they are fed by the media. Whether true or not, people then regurgitate that info back to their peers as if it was absolute fact, just because they were told it was so by the media, without any “real” first hand proof to back it up.
Check out Jame’s post in the link above and play the word exchange game the next time you watch or read the news, an advertisement, or are copywriting your next sales letter. If you apply this to key facets of your internet business, you will tap into a new level of creativity that you never knew you had.
Finding The Magic Pill For Unlimited Income Online
One thing that makes the marketing of information so popular on the internet is the quest for the “magic pill” mindset. 98% of those who are looking for information, especially in the areas of self-improvement, internet business, marketing, weight loss, etc., tend to make their purchases based on the hope that somehow this info will magically take care of everything for them. If any new skill sets can be absorbed by osmosis, all the better.
In the movie “The Matrix”, Morpheus offers Neo either the blue pill or the red pill. If he takes the blue pill, everything will remain the same. He will continue on with his relatively comfortable life as he knows it, but never achieve his true destiny. If he takes the red pill, however, then the illusion of reality will be lifted and he will learn the secrets of the Matrix. It will not be a comfortable, easy transformation. All the brainwashing and comfortable false security will be gone. See any parallels?
In my own personal observations, I’ve noticed that people generally want the best of both pills. They want the comfort of the blue pill, remaining stagnant and unchanged. At the same time, they want the results of taking the red pill.
This is one reason why prescription drugs are such a huge market. For example, many people with high blood pressure would rather pop a pill every day for the rest of their lives, rather than make a lifestyle change and cure the root cause of the problem. This would require effort. A deviation from the comfortable pattern that we have molded for ourselves into.
This is the very thing that you have to consider for your online business! Even after taking the red pill, Neo had to take action and work to fulfill his destiny as “the one”. Once he understood the matrix, he could have simply lived out his life in obscurity in his new found world and died an unknown.
When you purchase that needed tool for your current business, or that course on how to build an internet business online, remember, if its good information, you may be getting the red pill, or at least some diluted form of it. Now its up to you to act on your new knowledge, and fulfill your destiny.
The secret to success is that there is no magic pill that will do it all for you. There is no system that will allow you to input nothing and get millions back out. The real secret, the real magic pill is action. Get a mentor. Learn all you can about being successful and then apply it.
If you’re an info junkie, then you may already have a goldmine of information just collecting pixel dust in your hard drive. Dust off those e-books, go back through them, but this time ACT on what you read. Getting a successful internet business off the ground takes work. It takes dedication. Don’t let anyone B.S. you into thinking that it doesn’t.
With that said, its really not that hard once you take action and start making those baby steps towards your new future. You must start by having a “take action” mindset as your biggest priority. Now build your business, stick with it even through the failures, and freedom will be yours.