I have been blogging for just over two months now. Many of my mentoring students have been asking my advice on blogging. I have so far hesitated to teach much about blogging, because it’s not something I feel I “know” yet. I feel much more comfortable teaching about things I know.
Well… I took a look at Alexa today and noticed that this blog almost hit the top 10,000 most visited sites on the Internet today. I have been seeing success with many of the methods that are unique to blog promotion. I felt it was time to write a post about blog promotion… BUT… WAIT! I haven’t even explained why I have this blog thing. I can’t really jump into getting traffic to your blog without explaining why I have a blog and why you should have one too; now can I?
Let’s go back to my history. I “made it” online without many of the tools you see me offering today. I had no products. I had no copywriting ability. My search engine ranking data was my key to my original success on the Internet. I would simply create high ranking web-sites for some market and sell the traffic from those sites directly to those who did have copywriiting ability and products. Obviously I no longer recommend that. Having your own product and copywriting ability are both multipliers to knowing how to get traffic. Now-a-days I focus on all three aspects of your Internet business and recommend that you do the same.
With that said… don’t underestimate the traffic business. Consider this. Who is the richest man in the world? Right. Bill Gates. He sells software. Software is a good business! Consider this though. Who are the 3 leading sites on the Internet? Go check Alexa if you don’t know. OK; don’t check. I’ll just tell you:
1. Yahoo
2. Google
3. MSN (Microsoft)
Now take a look at that third one. That’s the company that Bill Gates (the richest man in the world; remember?) started. Now he’s messing around on the Internet in the #3 spot.
Now; let’s take a jump here. What do those three sites sell? Ok; take a minute on this one. There will be a test.
That’s right. They sell traffic (or they mostly sell traffic… Yahoo and MSN are a tiny bit more diverse than that). Now isn’t that interesting… The richest man in the world… who go that way by selling software… now wants to sell traffic.
OK; that was a diversion. We’ll come back to that later. What I wanted to tell you about was my experience selling traffic (which is still the largest part of my business). I made a mistake. I sold traffic anonymously under corporate names. None of my traffic customers know who I am. They just buy traffic from XYZ Corporation because it converts to sales for them. XYZ Corporation has no personality. In fact, it’s fully automated and most of my customers seem to like it that way.
I tried to change that a couple of years ago. I started sending them emails teaching how they could get the most out of my traffic service. I was too late. They didn’t know me and they didn’t want to hear from me.
Then I tried one last attempt (I’m glad I did) by offering them a special on traffic that month. I think I did a two for one deal or something like that. Over 25% of my customers bought a new campaign that day. I made over $60,000 in one day with that one email. I thought that was cool! I still do. I can write a single email and make thousands of dollars in a single day. I think a lot of marketers like that.
The power of your customer list is incredible! If you can convert 2% of strangers into customers with a sales page, you can convert 25% of your existing customers into customers of another product with that same sales page. That’s powerful!
I tried it with another product. It was a good product. It was mine. It was the search engine research itself that lead to the traffic those customers were buying. In effect, I was offering to teach them how to generate the same traffic that I was selling to them. It flopped miserably. No-one bought. I tried several other products. Nothing. Why?
Some of the responses told me right away. Even though I was writing under the company name, they didn’t know me. I’ll repeat that. They didn’t know me. They knew my company. They knew that my company delivered great converting traffic, but they simply didn’t know me. An endorsement of one company by another isn’t very powerful. It isn’t nearly as powerful as an endorsement by an individual.
So, I went on to do the Freedom Events. You know how they went. Based on the endorsement of a few well-known Internet marketers, they sold out. Lesson learned. To get that 25% number, you need one of the following:
1. To be marketing to your customers as a company and selling a special offer on the product of your company that your customers already know about.
2. To be marketing to your customers as a person and selling a special offer on any product that you personally endorse… and have never given a bad endorsement on a product to your customers before.
I wanted to do the latter with my own customers… not those of another Internet marketer.
What is the best way to do that? As I look around, a blog is the absolute perfect vehicle for that. As I sell products (and cross-promote them on the owner’s pages), I also promote this blog. I do it very early in the process. It is mentioned on the owner’s page and is also mentioned in the very first email most people get after purchasing one of my products.
They buy the product from a stranger, but I introduce myself as the creator of that product very early by pointing them (you) at this blog.
Then, I don’t hide the blog behind some corporate image. You do buy my products from a corporation, but do you even know the name of that corporation? Who cares what it is called? I want you to get to know me. That’s the purpose of this blog.
Now some folks are finding this blog before they purchase one of my products. That’s OK too. Some people buy a product based on the sales page. Some buy because they know the author never produces junk. Some have a combination of those reasons.
OK; so… yes… you should have a blog. I suggest that you create your blog between your 3rd and 4th product in your primary market. That’s when I created this blog. That is also when you want to start cross-promoting your 3 or 4 products on their owner’s pages.
Here are some other things that I think are important:
1. Register your name for the domain for your blog.
2. Put your name at the top, not some cutesy blog name.
3. Share of yourself. Do not post to your blog like you are a customer service rep answering the phone for a large company… never revealing anything of yourself… only the corporate script. Chat with your customers like they are dear friends. Don’t give out your home address or phone number, but within the context of the blog… what are you afraid of? Let your blog readers get to know you.
4. Post often. People can get into the habit of doing something daily or hourly very easily. It is much more difficult to get into a weekly or monthly habit. Post at least daily so your blog readers can get into a daily habit of reading what you have to say.
5. Don’t worry about giving away secrets of your products. That’s one reason I only sell software, video and mentoring products right now. It’s simply not possible to accidently give away too much in text on your blog. Software and video are both more robust mediums than text. I can explain in words all day long how to do something… it will still be useful to buy the software to automate that task and/or buy the video to actually see how it all works.
6. Get a subcribe link up on your blog (and all of your content sites). Some people will want to follow your blog, but won’t remember. You need to give them a way to allow you to send them reminders when you post. This will dramatically increase your number of repeat visitors over time.
OK; I think that answers the question about why I have a blog and why you should too… and how you should set it up. Now, I can jump into the specific ways to get traffic to a blog that only exist for blogs… not other types of sites. I’ll do that in a future post.
For now, go register your name and get Wordpress installed on that domain. Get your subscribe link up. Write an article and submit it to your blog… and then submit it via Artemis Pro with your blog mentioned in the resource box of your article. That’s how I started just a little over two months ago and as of today… I’m almost in the top 10,000 most visited sites on the Internet. See if you can beat me in the next couple of months.