I love this graph! It shows the number of full page views of a press release I wrote and distributed through PRWeb. Normally news has a shelf life. Once the news is past no one reads it. After a few days there is a sharp decline and it doesn’t rebound. But a press release online continues to get read because it stays in search engines long after its released.

The first bar is day one, with over 200 people clicking on the full press release. The last bar is after 28 days and there are thousands of opens. If this were a paid ad, and you were paying by the click, that would be 20 cents a click (which is cheap). Plus, it’s going to keep getting read.

The black line that you can barely see shows that the number of reads does drop off after the first two days, however, since the news has a permanent link, if people link to it, it can be found for months and years after its release.

There is no “old news.”

I read an interview that Miles Baker did with Clickbank - the place to buy and sell ebooks and downloadable products. What I like about Clickbank is how easy it is to sign up and use. What I don’t like (which they’ve tried to clean up) is the quality of products isn’t always very high. I also think for the most part, people haven’t heard of them and don’t talk about them.
Here are some fascinating facts about Clickbank

• They do over 21,000 transactions a day
• On average, they take in about $1 million of revenue every day
• They have 110,000 active affiliates
• Out of 1.2 million accounts created, about 1.2 percent of them earn a full-time income from ClickBank (incidentally the percentage of affiliates who earn enough to “quit their day jobs” is very small. If I were better than math and not tired right now I’d figure out of the active affiliates, what percentage make a full time income (whatever that is). My point is, it’s usually pretty low. Most people make passive income.
• The percentage of people making a full-time income on Clickbank is on par with the percentage of people on eBay who earn a full-time income.
• Advertising spots on Clickbank cost about $400-$500 a month.

Here’s an example of a product that typical to Clickbank: Convert Your Car To Burn Water + Gasoline = Double Your Mileage!

I used to promote Jeremy Palmer’s ebook but he made it free (thank you!). His is more from the perspective of a paid search marketer but it still has a lot of information that applies to online marketing in general. It goes more in-depth.

If you want a more general overview of affiliate marketing from the affiliate perspective (promoting other people’s products online in exchange for a portion of the sales price) I recommend Rosalind Gardners affiliate marketing handbook.

Oh and I know someone who made money promoting this language site: Rocket Spanish - Learn Spanish online with interactive games and downloadable Spanish lessons.

There are a lot of knowledge gaps that could be filled with an ebook. I noticed there isn’t a lot on Google or paid search, or even SEO. It seems like there is space for a primer on each. Anyone want to write an ebook? I have one that I’ve never completed. Writing an ebook is A LOT of work and time. Which is why I promote other people’s work as an affiliate instead.

First, I read this article about living a resilient life. It was moving because I resonate with it so strongly. Kelly at StartupPrincess (for women entrepreneurs) interviewed Barry Moltz about his book Bounce. Her questions are poignant for entrepreneurs especially. You should read the whole thing.
I must quote a part:

“Let go of the idea that something to learn comes from failure or that you can always duplicate your success. Let go of the shame of losing and the enlarged ego that comes with a big win.

If we let go of whatever the last result was — we can actually Bounce! We can learn what — if any thing — from the last success or failure and get ready by bouncing to the next action that we need to make. 

Individually, a particular result or outcome actually means nothing. No event will guarantee the same result in the future. By learning to bounce through this repetitive process of “success and failure, failure and success”, you will develop a resiliency that will lead to the true confidence that ultimately determines which ones of us succeed. More importantly, it allows each of us to have passion and enthusiasm regardless of where we are in the cycle.”

This sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky in most business climates. But in life it’s crucial and business of course, is part of life. I read with sadness about Paul Tilley’s suicide. I don’t know the conditions or reasons but obviously there isn’t this concept of bounce.
Chris Anderson talked bravely at Ted about how his business crashing. Terrifyingly so. He said, “I saw my own net worth falling by about a million dollars a day - every day - for 18 months.” Then described his bounce back. This inspires me. And funny enough Martha Stewart is my favorite example, making beauty out of weeds while she was in prison. I look to her and think anyone can overcome bad choices, bad circumstances, and bad luck. Then there is Brittney Spear who drowns in it all.
Then I read this NY Times article about how we hate to change. “Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss,” writes John Tierney.

My conclusion is learning this resiliency is crucial in what Stephen MR Covey calls a “double black diamond world.” It’s especially important as entire industries are changing because of the internet (which Seth Godin describes so well in posts like this). The internet both expands and contracts things. It topples business models when someone can come in and change your entire way of making money. It’s both exciting and at times sobering.

Since I got into Internet marketing and fell in love with it the holy grail was a work-from-home job. I thought now I’m free! I can make money anywhere. I thought to truly arrive you had to work at home for yourself. That’s what I wanted. Then I got it, mostly.

At first working for myself was an adventure. I exercised most days, I met and talked to friends during the day and worked until late at night. I had flexibility. I worked in my pjs or sometimes in a towel (I don’t recommend you do that very often).

Then it started to wear off. I missed working with a group of people. I had some big disruptions with one of the companies I worked for and suddenly what I’d spent months building started to fall apart. In just a few months I lost over half my income, crashed my car, and had a rough go of it. You can probably tell from the tone of this post about getting a job.

I chose two places to apply. I’m not in a position to move or I’d be in the hipper Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake. But being environmentally and family - conscious I didn’t want a long commute. For a few reasons, I also had lingering trauma over having a regular job. I knew I wanted to work for a place where I wasn’t fighting for Internet marketing by myself. I wanted a team and a friendly or at least not hostile IT department.

I thought of not blogging about this but I notice a trend that even big time execs blog about departing or starting new jobs. It’s fashionable and in the dynamic industry I’m in, the average time at a job tends to be about 18 months. Then note that I live in an extremely entrepreneurial place. Most startups I’ve worked for over the years are out of business. Or they have VC funding that can mean quick unexpected layoffs.

Besides, Andy Beal outed the news on Twitter. I have built a bit of a following there, thanks in a large part to him. So I drank the Orange soda and rode the beach cruiser around the office. I’ve joined a few fellow Utah bloggers and others doing SEO for businesses at a company called OrangeSoda.

A thank you for inspiring this change goes to Penelope Trunk. I talked about how over time Internet marketing went from being my obsession to being a job I love. That means more balance and better separation between work and home life.

Orange Soda has grown quickly as agencies outsource their Internet marketing services to them. When someone says “free food” people here stampede. It’s young, hip, and still hungry like the beginning days of the web. Plus I love the noise.

Aaron Wall of the SEO Book blog wrote a great rant about PPC vs. SEO. He talks about how PPC (paid per click advertising) is a continual race to the top - eroding profits and starting bidding wars. Who wins? Search engines. Remember that Google makes 99% of their $16 billion revenue on advertising.

Both methods have some barrier to entry, because they’re both technical and take a certain amount of skill. SEO (search engine optimization) on the other hand is more difficult to copy. SEO is sustainable.

You start a client on blogging or an SEO strategy and they get nervous about how much time and/or money it costs and they stop. If they continued they’d see that it’s a worthwhile investment. The links don’t disappear after your budget does. However, it’s not a straight line to profit like PPC can be. It takes a slower, less direct path.
SEO shows a work ethic and builds credibility. It separates the legit long-term businesses from the get-rich-quick schemers:

This is why I like SEO so much more than PPC. Most people are too lazy to spend years researching their topic, years building a brand, years building links, and years building social and customer relationships. We are afraid of failure, afraid of success, and afraid that we are investing too much in one place. But, if someone sees me ranking in the organic results they can’t just clone it unless they know SEO well, and are committed for the long haul. In many cases, knowing SEO well means having capital, time, passion, and a lot of marketing knowledge.

Then he wrote about how if you do well, it’s easy for someone (or your ad network) to steal or copy you. Aaron had this happen - someone stole his ad copy - and here’s his response:

SEO separates out real businesses from 95% of the people buying PPC ads. The guy stealing ad copy is too lazy to compete at that level. I’ll enjoy the logarithmic growth in profits (which have been at least doubling every year) while he keeps stealing table-scraps from Google and other affiliates until his accounts get banned.

This is why successful internet marketers who are the real deal start to give away their secrets. After they’ve built their business, they can afford to tell people how to do what they do. They know most people won’t have the skills or work ethic to get where they are. Some do, but it’s a small percentage.

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This week I went to a UVEF meeting (Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum) lunch that honored inventors. The event was alive with the spirit of ideas and innovation. We had three choices to vote on as the best invention. All states should sponsor an event like this. Prizes were cash but also a lot of needed services such as time with design, patents, and marketing agencies. Overall I was impressed at the quality of the sponsors, ideas, and people who attended.

Often we’re worst at marketing our own inventions - we’re too close to them to be objective. Reading through all of the entries was frustrating. I really had to decipher what their invention was, who it was for, and its value. Their own descriptions were a bit cryptic.

I voted for Klymit (their web site needs love) and they also took first place. Their description talks about insulation - and at first glance I thought it was home insulation. Really they’ve invented a material that is like Thinsulate but thinner and warmer. It has chambers that fill with gas and adjust to your body temperature. They market it to the upscale outdoor rec/ski industry but the army has expressed interest. Imagine being able to stay warm wearing a coat as thin as a t-shirt. Their management team, potential deals with big brands like North Face and the like, ambition, and creativity was inspiring. They have patents and sub patents in the works. All this on an angel investment of $375k. If I were an investor in that industry, I’d want to talk.

The other entrepreneur invented a portable landing system to guide emergency helicopters. It forms a series of flashing lights to help the helicopter land and take off quickly at the scene of a crime or accident. The lights are visible from far away and distinguishable from other lights like police cars and street lights. The man who introduced the concept is in law enforcement. He told how shaving off a few moments getting to the hospital saved a little girl’s life. It was poignant. He wasn’t as far in development but I can see the potential.

Third place went to an ice cream maker that mounts on a kid’s bicycle. It makes a few cups of ice cream. His little girl demonstrated it for us and they were charming, but it just wasn’t as compelling as the other ideas. Notable though is that he’s the inventor of the Bice Cream Maker he has built a successful business. It’s called Shelf Reliance and they sell shelving that helps organize your canned food in the pantry or storage room.

I got to catch up with a few friends I haven’t seen in a while. I happily work for a company that buzzes with ideas and energy - and it’s so engaging. There’s a certain passion that livens up the world when an entrepreneur pitches their ideas. Especially when you see the vision and believe their potential.

It’s a marketers job to sugar coat the world a bit. Take out some of the starkness and add a little magic. This is exactly what annoys IT folks and realists about marketers. The truth doesn’t sell, stories sell.

From time to time people will comment that my personality has spark. And the better I feel about life and the universe, the more apparent the spark.

Sometimes when I write about certain things I love to write about, I can almost feel it through my fingers as I type. When I get too realistic and into the mundane details, it changes the mood entirely.

Seth Godin (his socks tell a story. They are the mental image I have of him in my head. He cannot take himself too seriously because he wears them with his suit!) posted about this finesse, which he calls the placebo effect.

He talks about how you can sell the exact same product for a higher price by raising it’s perception, telling a better story. After all, many of our choices are not based on reason, but on emotion.

“Very rarely do vodka marketers tell the truth and say, “here’s our new vodka, which we buy in bulk from the same distillery that produces vodka for $8 a bottle. Ours is going to cost $35 a bottle and come in a really, really nice bottle and our ads will persuade laddies that this will help them in the dating department… nudge, nudge, know what I mean, nudge, nudge…”

Marketing happens in settings you don’t think about…like how burning candles and incense can add a mood that helps you feel more spiritual. So you’re more likely to feel like your prayers are working.
What’s more, he points out - there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. In fact, it’s expected, it’s imperative.

“It’s all storytelling. It’s all lies.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

In fact, your marketplace insists on it.”

Isn’t Godin the one that said it first anyway - that all marketers are liars?

Listen to Godin’s book on your iPod or in your car on the way to work: All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World (Unabridged)

I want to clear up a misconception about blogging. There are purists who only consider blogs as communities and who have certain ideas about what blogs are. For the small business owner, blogs are ideal tools for SEO. In other words, to get higher search engine rankings (and therefore traffic) for keyword phrases that relate to their business.

Choose a Few Specific Phrases that Relate to Your Business to Focus On
Small business owners may think they should go after general words - like “sunglasses” when what they really should do is go after much more specific phrases like “designer sunglasses.” Your chances of getting to the top of results if someone types in sunglasses are pretty remote. However, “designer sunglasses” may be easier because there’s less competition.

Blogs are Easier to Manage than Paid Search
Many times small businesses can’t afford to do a lot of paid search advertising or they simply lack the expertise. If you’re not careful, you could go on vacation and spend $4,000 without meaning to (like discussed in this video by Dr. Ralph Wilson and Catherine Seda). All because you set your budget thinking it was monthly, when it was actually daily.

Paid Search Costs Keep Going Up
As more people run ads on search engines, you pay more per click. Some keywords can cost $6 or more for each click. The price you pay depends on how many competitors there are at a given time and how well your ad is written. MarketingSherpa just released some data based on a survey of top Internet marketers that confirms this. Big brands increase budgets, small business look for ways to manage costs (like go after more specific keywords, write better ads, or simply spend less).
You can Outsource Blog Creation and Writing
My solution is to set up a blog where writers post daily and focus on a few keyword phrases relating to your business. Then you know how many posts you get per month for your budget. They are PERMANENT links, unlike paid ads that go away when you stop paying for the ad to run.

An SEO Blog has a Specific Purpose - to Help your Web Site Rank Higher in Search Engines
The blog is not intended to get comments or draw a lot of visitors to the blog itself. Think of the blog as the motor on your web site. It’s a quick way to add  links to your web site. Those links help your web site appear higher in search results. The writing is more like articles than blog posts. The blog is simply a publishing platform to make it easy to get content up quickly.

SEO is a Long Term Investment that Pays Off Over Time
You don’t need to understand any more of that to use this technique. I’ve been helping clients who barely know what a blog is. One thing you must understand about SEO is that it is an INVESTMENT. It’s not overnight success. It builds up over time. You can do things to hopefully speed that up (such as using SEO plugins and optimizing your blog well).

This blog made no money at first and didn’t have much traffic. It took a good year before i saw results (but I wasn’t blogging for traffic or for business, I was simply writing about what I was passionate about - which is different than an SEO strategy). After a few years my blog has made some residual income and built a reputation.

Building Credibility and Trust by its Very Nature Takes Time
Think of it like moving into a new neighborhood where no one knows who you are. It takes time to build relationships, meet the neighbors, make friends, and get acclimated. If you don’t try at all you probably won’t make many friends. You certainly won’t become popular, unless you have a positive reputation already or if someone they know with high trust endorses you.

Each time you add a new link with a keyword phrase you are getting a vote and building credibility in search engines. Blogging is one way to do this. It’s a great strategy if you’re on a budget.

I gave Jason Alba a hard time about how he hates to brag. I told him it’s telling people what you’ve been up to and if they like you, they like knowing that. (I do think Jason needs to SEO his post URLs though).

Writing for Marketing Pilgrim has been rewarding, I’ve had stories on Techmeme, and Mashable (today). There is a great community on the site and Andy is such a class act. Today was especially rewarding in that my story was mentioned in the New York Times.

I chose the name newspapergrl because I have a particular fondness for newspapers. One of my favorite writers writes for them. I planned to be an environmental journalist. I love the intensity of a newsroom and I still have great respect for the industry.
If there are any New York Times reporters coming through Utah and you’d let me interview you, consider this an open invitation.

If you want to be successful as an affiliate marketer, you’ve got to read this ebook by Jeremy Palmer. I’m late on posting this but there’s a little surprise from Jeremy Palmer this year. He pulled his ebook in October, I thought never to return. Then, a few months later he put it online and made it free.

In truly generous form Jeremy doesn’t even require your email address plus he gives you his spreadsheet templates. I can’t even tell that he’s using affiliate links in the book. He also announced that he’ll update his ebook in 2008. The principles of affiliate marketing he talks about work well for internet marketing in general. The reason I trust affiliate marketers is that if they don’t convert, they don’t make money. They usually put money up-front to test what works.
The top ranking keywords on my blog are still affiliate marketing related terms. I ran newspapergrl on this tool to find out. Thanks to Paul (here’s his internet marketing blog) for the tip.

Download Jeremy’s ebook here: http://www.quityourdayjob.com/hpam2007/

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