See if this post can give you some insight into it.

I once made the mistake of hiring a company that specialized in handling technical support for online businesses. The single person assigned to my (smallish) account at the time was a member of MENSA. She was a true-blue certified genius with a technical background.

Who could ask for more, right? Wrong! The woman turned out to be completely unable to handle the support for my business, and after a couple of months of fighting and hoping for the best, I fired the firm.

From that point on I became a bit of a control freak about my business. I mistakenly assumed that if a certified genius with a technical degree was unable to handle my tech support, that I just needed to give up and do it all myself.

After about 18 months of that I was at the point where 80% of my time was used up handling support requests. My business stopped growing. I was chained down by support requests, stuck working in my business instead of on it.

Not long after that Mike Filsaime asked me to give him a call, which I did. We had a long conversation about outsourcing things like support requests.

Mike laid the bare truth on me in a way that only he can. “Jon,” he said, “you have two choices: you can burn yourself out doing everything yourself, or you can hire out and watch your business grow.”

“But Mike,” I protested, “nobody is going to be able to give my customers the kind of support I can! I created these products.”

“That may be true,” he replied, “but not even you can do what you do for an endless number of customers without killing yourself. At some point you simply will not be able to handle it.”

He was right, too. I was already at the point of wanting to chuck it all because I just couldn’t keep up with the support requests the way I wanted to — forget about growing my business!

So I did some hard thinking about what I was going to do. Mike told me that he managed to get a very happy customer of his to do support for one of his products in return for a percentage of the profits. That worked very well because the person was not just an employee, but was actually invested in doing a good job.

I decided to give that a try, and ended up hiring Amin Motin, a very active member at one of the support forums I ran. I had already made him a moderator at the forum because of his freely dispensing so much good advice and support to folks there. It seemed only natural to have him do support for my other products.

Amin is also invested in my business. His “salary” comes from a variety of web sites and services which turn a profit for both of us. And you know what? I was very wrong when I said that nobody could give my customers the same level of support that I was giving them. Amin is better than me, more patient and helpful with my customers, and I’ve read more praise directed at him than I have room to share here.

After bringing Amin on board I suddenly had a huge amount of time to devote both to personal and business pursuits. My net monthly income has increased 40% because of being free to work on other projects and toy with ideas I’d had in the back of my mind — and this increase has come despite Amin’s share of the profits and me working fewer hours than I did before (I devote a lot more time to my personal ministry work now).

You see, I had the wrong outlook on my business. I was so afraid to let go of a piece of my business that I had been burned on before that it was strangling its growth (and stressing myself out beyond belief). I also had the mistaken notion that I couldn’t afford to pay somebody to handle the support for me. What Mike helped me to see, and what indeed has proven to be true, is that I couldn’t afford not to have someone else doing support.

Now I outsource everything. My site design, graphics and logos, my support, my content creation. You name it. If it can be outsourced, I try a few folks out until I find the one who fits the bill and I stick with them.

Doing this has dramatically increased not only my bottom line, but also my peace of mind. My family and I travel on vacation, and I’m not stuck doing support tickets in the evening while we’re away. I don’t stress about how support is going to get handled, because Amin is so fantastic at it. I never worry about how my next web site or product is going to look, because the guys at GraphicsGenie.com do such a fantastic job on every product I put up.

You may really not be able to afford to hire out just yet, and that’s understandable. I was in that position at first also. But I promise you, I promise you, that as soon as you can make room in your budget to start hiring out the services that you do not absolutely have to handle yourself, you will find your business blossoming into something much greater than you could possibly make it by yourself.

Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.

Source: Internet Marketing

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In examining the sites in my three way links network, I've noticed quite a few folks targeting single keyword search terms (i.e. "puppies" or "networking" or "apparels"). It's a small minority of all keywords, to be sure, but still enough that I felt the need to write about whether or not it makes sense to target single terms.

To get right to the point, most of the time it does not make sense to target single keyword search terms. There are exceptions, of course, which I'll discuss in a minute, but first let's go over the 3 reasons why it usually does not make sense:

1. Untargeted Traffic

In most cases, it's impossible to know precisely what a searcher is after when they put in a single search term. For example, somebody searching for "puppies" might be looking to buy a puppy, or perhaps they're wanting to find information about how to care for puppies, or maybe they just want to see pictures of cute and cuddly puppies. There's no way to know for sure based on a single keyword.

2. Low Conversion Rates

Because the traffic is so untargeted, and it's very difficult to know what a searcher is after, your conversion rate from a single keyword search term is inevitably going to be very low. In keeping with our previous example, if somebody is searching for "yorkshire terrier puppies for sale" you know exactly what to have on the page that you rank for those keywords. You know what the searcher wants, and can hone in on that desire and fulfill the need.

If you rely on AdSense or another pay-per-click program for income, the low "conversion rate" means a low click-through rate. AdSense, as good as it is about targeting ads to a page, will have a difficult time knowing what ads to show on a page that is very generic in nature. But for a page like "yorkshire terrier puppies for sale", AdSense will usually be spot-on.

With a single keyword search term you can only hope that what you have on the page appeals to some of the visitors who find your page. You can, of course, provide a variety of choices on the page (puppies for sale, puppy pictures, puppy care, etc.) but keep in mind that too many choices is not a good thing for improving conversion rates. Too many choices on a page leads to a visitor being overwhelmed and less inclined to act in the manner which you would like them to.

Keep in mind, too, that somebody searching for a single keyword is less likely to know what they want to begin with. If somebody is unsure of what they're looking for, they'll be equally unsure about buying from you. Again, this leads to lower conversion rates.

3. Too Much Work For Too Little Return

Despite the lower conversion rates for single keyword terms, they are notoriously difficult to rank for in most situations. That's because many deep-pocketed companies still see the volume of traffic they receive as being at least as important as the return on their investment to get that traffic. "Long tail" keywords (keywords with 3+ search terms) are generally much easier to rank for because the competition is a lot less fierce.

Very large companies are looking to brand themselves as much as they are looking to actually sell something from the potential customer's first visit to their web site. They want to get their name out in front of as many people as possible, with the understanding that if they consistently do this, when the time comes for the individual to actually need what they provide, their name will pop into the customer's head. It's basic psychology, and it works very well.

But smaller businesses can't afford to wait years before they see a return on their investment. They need to have a solid conversion rate from the get-go to warrant the constant effort and expense it takes to maintain their search engine rankings. If you're in that crowd, then ranking for single-term keywords probably isn't the right goal for you.

Exceptions to Every Rule

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. Some single-term keywords are much more narrow in definition, and therefore more likely to be worth ranking for.

For example, anyone searching for the acronym "SEO" is quite likely looking to increase their search engine ranking, so it's not hard to design a page around that need if you rank for that term. There are many terms which are also narrowly defined enough to be quite targeted, though they are, of course, in the strict minority.

Also, if your site relies on a CPM advertising model (where you're paid by the number of ad impressions, rather than the number of ad clicks), ranking for a single term keyword can be quite lucrative. Because those same companies that want to build brand awareness are also happy to pour money into advertising for that same purpose. It's not the number of clicks they care about so much as the number of eyeballs that get the company's logo burned into their brains that matters.

From My Own Experience

I realized the truth about single keyword rankings a couple of years ago when I got a site ranked in the top 10 for the term "veterinarian". I was sure that with all the traffic I would receive that my site would be a big earner — but it wasn't. The traffic was there, but the term just wasn't targeted enough to get a high click-through rate from AdSense or to be able to convert into any kind of real sales. I finally stopped working to maintain the ranking since it was not giving me nearly the return I had expected.

So when you're sitting down to determine what keywords you want to rank for, keep in mind that, unless you're looking to brand your site or to earn from a CPM model, single keyword terms are usually not worth the effort.

Please leave your thoughts in a comment below.

Source: Rank In Google

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This content originally appeared in Jon’s blog and I thought it was interesting enough to share – with his permission. I hope you enjoy reading the post and please feel free to comment on it!

How long has everyone been telling you that Google loves blogs? Months? Years? Well, it’s true, and I wanted to share an experience that helps reinforce that truth to you.

The Blog That Resurrected My Rankings

I had a site devoted to a particular type of exercise equipment. The site was in the top 7 results for its keywords in Google for over six months. Unfortunately I had server problems and the site went down for a few days. Google crawled the site constantly because it was well-linked, and so big G knew instantly that the site was down. Since it stayed down for a few days, Google must have decided it wasn’t coming back up, and its rankings plummetted.

After the site did come back up, it reappeared in Google, but this time on the third page (ranking 25 – 28 for its keywords, on average). Its original page one rankings just wouldn’t come back. I shrugged it off as a lesson learned and basically forgot about the site.

Early last week, though, I was testing a tool I’m creating that helps you write and post blog posts to WordPress blogs super fast. I decided to setup a blog on the site that lost its rankings, just to test it out. I made a bunch of blog posts (they were post-dated so they would show up slowly over time), and sat back to see what would happen.

To my surprise, over the weekend my site jumped back onto page one for its rankings. I hadn’t touched that site in months, and now it’s ranking better than it ever was — at #4 for 3 great sets of keywords. This, of course, has spiked my AdSense earnings for the site.

Another nice benefit of the new blog is that the blog itself is getting some additional traffic from Google, even though the blog does not have any external links directly to it. Google is applying the authority of the site itself to the blog. Since the site is well-linked, the blog is given a bit of “trust” by Google and is appearing in the search results as well.

Scraper Sites Can Help You Rank

On a related note regarding blogs and traffic, I’ve recently setup a blog that automatically creates a bunch of posts each day based on a variety of keywords. This blog is a test for a larger idea I have in mind, and the test is working great, with the blog having achieved more than 12,000 unique visitors in the last 5 days. The vast majority of the traffic has come from Google.

As part of that same test, I setup a second, similar blog that does the same kind of thing. Despite the second blog actually having more content, it has (so far) received no joy from Google at all (it’s not even indexed yet).

The difference is in the scraper sites that are referencing the content. The keywords that I’m creating content around for my successful blog is a scraper magnet — hundreds of scraper sites are auto-posting content from my own blog to theirs, and giving a reference link back to my blog posts to try and make it more legit.

How do these scraper sites know about my brand-new blog posts so fast? Because the blog is indexed by Google’s blog search, and many scraper sites scrape results from that blog search to post to their own blogs. They also scrape many other blog search engines, and since my blog pings those search engines when I make a new post, the blog’s content gets picked up and spread around fast.

Those links from these automated scraper sites have resulted in my blog quickly gaining hundreds of backlinks from all over the web, and that means great rankings for the pages of my blog.

The second test blog I setup, however, has not attracted the scraper blogs and so hasn’t even been indexed in Google yet. It might seem strange that scraper sites can help you rank, but if they link back to the source of the content, they really can.

Trackbacks Are Your Friend

On a final note, I recommend setting up your blog to automatically post trackback links to the blog posts that you link out to. If you’re not familiar with trackbacks, it’s a simple concept: any time you link to an external blog post from within your own blog post, your blog posts a “comment” to the blog post you’ve linked to, letting the readers of that post know about your own post referencing it.

Now, not all blogs will approve your trackback link, but many will, and I’ve received literally thousands of visitors from a single trackback link appearing on a popular blog. So make sure you setup your blog to automatically post trackbacks to the blogs that you link out to — it can often result in a flood of traffic.

Have any more great blog-related traffic building ideas? Care to share your opinion about this post? Please post your thoughts in a comment below.

Source: Jon Leger’s blog

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You’ll also know that churning out article after article can be exhausting – especially if you’re involved in several niches.

Well I’ve been using a tool that virtually writes the articles for you. Of course I have an advantage here because I’ve been speaking to the developer every day for many weeks about it.

That tool is Instant Article Wizard Pro 2.0 and the developer is Jon Leger. I’m pleased to say that several of my suggestions have gone into the product and I’m very pleased to say that it’s every bit as good as the current hype surrounding it.

In fact, it’s so good I thought I’d let my son have a go with it. He’s 13 and his favorite pastime is to watch comedy on tv – all day. He keeps away from the computer at all costs, if work is involved.

Well, I gave him twenty minutes instruction on how to use IAW Pro 2.0 and how to look for topics and then left him alone for an hour. He ended up creating 3 very respectable blogs posts for a specific niche. So good, in fact, that he’s started the blog now and in about 4 days Google have picked up 3 pages in their index.

He’s now working on writing a report for the niche that he intends to sell from his blog. He’s using IAW Pro 2.0 to do it.

3 blog posts doesn’t sound like much. But this is a 13 year old boy who’s thinking about food, girls, computer games and everything else he can. Anything, in fact, that doesn’t involve sitting at a computer ‘working’.

And if he can do it, so can you.

As he continues to work with the application he’s picking up speed. I have no doubt his next three blog posts will take a lot less than an hour (that includes the time to post to the blog and format the text).

What could you achieve if you were able to make 40 separate blog posts every day, without fail? Do you think you might be able to generate some money?

Yes, me too.

If you’d like to learn a little more about IAW Pro 2.0 and discover the insane offer Jon has made so you can try this powerful tool for just $7, visit www.instantarticlewizardpro.net

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Don, the developer who’s bought it, has plans to fix the current bugs and release an updated version in the next week or so. It will be well worth downloading once it’s released.

He’s also told me he has several other plans to extend the product and increase its shelf life. It’s already quite a capable script, but over time it should have a few nice features added to it.

One thing I’ve seen over the last 6 or 7 months is just how few people take the time to read the manual. Don’s pushing for customers to look at the existing wealth of information that should solve most problems. Seems like a sensible idea to me.

For anyone who doesn’t want to learn how to install, get in touch and I can install it for you.

I have a similar product myself which I haven’t yet started to promote, but it will be relaunched in the next few weeks. I’m undecided whether to stick with the original name of Profit Twister, or change it. We’ll see.

If anyone’s interested in promoting it as an affiliate when I launch, just get in touch and I’ll give you more details of the commission structure.

Tags: 7dollar secrets, Jon Leger, Profit Twister, digital download delivery

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Jon Leger’s Adsense Gold is an interesting product too, although that’s more for people who are already making some money and want to be as efficient as possible at it.

The following article is one of those Jon includes with his product.

Google Adsense Best Practices

by: John Gall

When selecting the size of your Google Adsense code the 300×250 is by far the best performer. This square box works best when placed in the middle of the content towards the top. I commonly place the 300×250 ad block under my title and on top of my first paragraph. Sometimes I put the 300×250 ad block under the first paragraph if it is short but never below the second paragraph. Banners and skyscrapers may look better on your page but will perform much worse than the 300×250. Remember why you’re publishing your content; you want to make money not look pretty.

When selecting colors for your Google Adsense ad block you want to blend the ad into your page. The best practice is to make the ads look like content so users will be interested in clicking the ad. I’ve had great success using a basic white background and black color text on my pages. I then use the default blue for my Adsense text and use “White” for the border of the ad block. This causes your square to look like it has no border thus blending it into your content. If done right your Google Adsense block should look like you put links on your page your visitors might be interested in.

Google allows you to assign a “Channel” to your ad block so you can track the success. Be sure to assign each new site or subject a unique channel so you can tell what subjects are popular and pay well. Using channels is also a good way to test various ad colors and sizes but if you use the 300×250 you can generally be assured that you’re using the most successful size.

When starting out with Google Adsense it will be very tempting to click your own ads, some do this because they are interested in the ad but some are cheating. In both cases you will likely get kicked out of the Google Adsense program if you click your own ads.

About The Author

John Gall is a web publisher who uses among others Google Adsense as a revenue source. Creating informative websites is a hobby funded by ad revenue.

http://www.whoinventedmotorcycle.com

http://www.km-in-marathon.com

http://www.carbsinpizza.com

——

Now, personally, I don’t know that I agree with everything that John Gall says, but at least it’s food for thought.

And the channels he talks about are just ways for you to understand where the money is coming from so you can do more of whatever it is that works.

Jon Leger’s Adsense Gold gives you much more information and it does it immediately. I bought the package last night and installed it this morning. It only took about 5 minutes to install. It’s pretty simple to use, too.

It will collect the stats quietly in the background and once a week I see where the money’s been coming from. One thing you’ll hear from all the top marketing guys is that you must test. The difference between one advert and another could double your income.

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