Do You Owe Someone Cash for Your MP3s?

You may have received emails over the weekend to buy a new product that converts audio files into a non-mp3 format because apparently, if you make any money from distributing mp3s you owe the patent holders of the mp3 technology some royalties.

Hmmmm…I don’t know. I wouldn’t buy into the “scare tactics” without some serious research.

I’m not a technical person, nor am I a lawyer (thank goodness…just kidding!), so have a read through this thread on the Marketing Secrets forum and see what you think. I wouldn’t rush out to buy any alternative software just yet.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on the subject in the comments area below.

Affiliate Marketing Bribery

You’ve seen it many times…people offering outrageous and huge bonuses for buying products through a person’s affiliate link. It often happens with big ticket Internet marketing information products, software, etc.

Heck, you’ve even seen me bribe people to buy through my link.
I’m wondering what you think about this kind of “bribery”…or if you even consider it bribery. I’ve seen people speculate that affiliates do this on high-ticket items because they wouldn’t sell otherwise. They say the products are over-priced, so affiliates have to offer the extras so they will sell.

This may be true in some cases, but I don’t promote big ticket items that are crap and won’t sell on their own. In fact, I have been promoting a $997 product you may have heard of and for 7 months I didn’t offer any bonuses because I knew the product didn’t need any extra “bribes” for it to be worthwhile. That product was Traffic Secrets and according to John Reese, for a number of those months, I was one of his top affiliates selling the product during that time.

So, why do affiliates “bribe”?

Well, I can’t speak for all affiliates…but one big reason is that the market is competitive and they need to give incentive to buy through their link, instead of somebody else’s. It’s just smart marketing.

But I’ve seen people go overboard with this, in my humble opinion. People create “bonus packages” that are valued at a cajillion dollars and contain a bunch of products that aren’t really related to the affiliate product being promoted.

All I can say is why I do bonuses and how I approach them…it has worked very well for me, so feel free to use these ideas for your own affiliate marketing.

I decided to join the “bribery” bandwagon because I figured I had something to offer people who bought these products. Over the past few years, I have learned that quality information products and software can dramatically cut my learning curve and help me make a lot more money. In the case of Traffic Secrets, I was able to take my business from earning 4-figures per month to breaking the 5-figure monthly barrier with a vengeance. Now, if I could do that, I could certainly help others try to achieve the same goals…so I created a special Traffic Secrets Offer.

If you look at that offer, you’ll notice that the bonuses I offer are DIRECTLY related to the products itself and they are completely unique to people who buy the product. They can’t buy the product anywhere else, giving them more incentive to buy the product with me.

But more than that, I constantly follow-up with my referrals on products like this. Not only do I continue to provide more marketing information to them…I’m also one of their biggest cheerleaders and keep them pushing forward.

I know what it’s like when you purchase an expensive course for the first time. You’re excited at first and then suddenly, you think “What have I done? Was that a mistake?” I’ve also had a number of my referrals experience this and they’ve told me that my encouragement and help has kept them going.

So, for me…giving the bonuses offers a competitive edge, but it also adds value to the already great product. This coming Tuesday, you’ll see Jason Potash launching his Article Announcer software/course and you’re going to be bombarded with emails and special offers. Check out the offers and see what people do to encourage you to buy through their link. Some of the offers are going to suck, but some will be quite compelling. Learn from those.

And yeah…if you’re on my mailing list (and I hope you are the sign up box is on the top right of this page), I’m going to email you on Tuesday too. Jason has created an amazing product and I believe would be a disservice if I didn’t tell you about it. Whether you buy it or not, check out my “value-added-cheerleader” offer (it will be ready Tuesday morning) and see how you can incorporate some of these ideas into your own marketing.

So, whatcha think? Is it bribery or just smart marketing? Can you use this for your business too?

Should I Optimize My Website for Search Engines

Q: I am thinking of optimizing my site to get more traffic and hopefully increase my sales. Do you think it’s a good idea? [Read more]

How Do I Write an Article Byline

Q: Thanks for the information about article writing, Alice. I am wondering if you can talk about how to write a byline at the bottom of my articles.

[Read more]

Alice "White Hat" Seba Has Been Banned

Look at this…3 blog posts in less than 36 hours. That’s not a common occurrence for me, but I had to come back because something happened that I thought you might want to know about. This has NEVER happened to me in the history of my online career, so I was a bit shocked.

One of my websites has been banned by Google.

I haven’t a clue why it happened. In fact, I didn’t even know that it had happened until my friend, Derrick Pizur sent me a private message yesterday asking me about it.

Well, very surprised, I checked it out. I saw that I had no PageRank and when I tried to look for pages from the website in Google — there were none. The site had completely disappeared form Google.

I did some investigation and discovered it must have happened on May 21, 2005 because my visitors instantly went from about 700-800 per day all the way down to 200-250. This site made half-decent coin through Google AdSense and affiliate programs, so you’d think I would have noticed.

Fact of the matter is - I didn’t notice. I had no clue. I’ve been busy over the past few weeks and wasn’t looking into my individual site stats. All I knew was that my overall income remained steady, so I saw no reason for concern.

Let me ask you this question. If your website suddenly lost 500 - 600 visitors per day, what would it do to your bottom line? Even though I’m hoping you’ll say it wouldn’t affect you much, I’m guessing for most people, this would be a huge hit to their profitability.
So, what’s the lesson? Well, clearly - don’t put all your marketing eggs in one basket. Whether it’s just having one promotion method for your business or just relying on one website to build your riches…diversify and continue to build.

Of course, if you’re just starting out you need to concentrate your efforts to get your 1st project profitable…but never use one method to drive traffic to that project. If one traffic source dies, make sure your business doesn’t die along with it.

It makes me think about the “Shocking Report” that has been circulating for a week or two from Jason Potash (whom I just mentioned in my blog entry just yesterday) about people dropping like flies of search engines. If you haven’t had a chance to look at, I recommend you do so.

And please note - my site wasn’t even one of those auto-generated junk pages Jason talks about in the report. It was a site full of good and useful content and yet Google decided to obliterate me…so don’t think it can’t happen to good people like you and I.

Here’s the report in PDF format:
http://www.aliceseba.com/trafficreport.pdf

This is Pretty Cool - Free Traffic

I love free traffic….I guess you do too, right?

Jason Potash just posted a really cool interview on his blog that might interest you. On his June 20 entry, he has an interview with an average guy who released an ebook, gave up “optimizing”
his website…stopped paying for pay-per-click advertising a few weeks later… and as a result, his sales conversion shot up to a healthy 3.5%, and he is making way more cash now.

Here’s the blog entry (look under June 20)
==> Free Traffic mp3 here

This Seminar Almost Killed Me!

Well, I’m back from Miami and I have to say the Gary Halbert & Mark Joyner Fusion Seminar almost killed me and forced me to change my usual seminar habits.

#1 Seminar Habit: When I go to seminars, I usually take very few notes. It’s not because the information isn’t useful, but I have a weird “idea filing system”. I only write down a few key ideas that I will take action on when I’m done because I find when I have too many notes, I procrastinate from taking any action at all.

My philosophy is, “If I forget it, it’s probably not important anyway.” Well, darn it all if I didn’t walk out of there with more than 10 pages of notes and a wicked action plan. Now, 10 pages may not seem like much, but please realize that I usually leave a seminar with a few chicken scratches on a notepad.

#2 Seminar Habit: Networking is a huge part of why I (and everyone should) attend offline seminars. What happens after seminar hours is often even more powerful than what happens in the seminar room. I learned this quickly and learned to pick and choose the sessions I want to attend and usually sleep in a bit, so I can stay up for late night networking.

Well, damn it all - Gary, Mark…along with Michel Fortin & John Carlton delivered such great content, I couldn’t afford to miss a single minute. This meant I was up late every night networking and up bright and early each day to resume my student role. But amazingly enough, I didn’t fall asleep in class like I did back in college.

It all nearly killed me! My writing hand got all cramped up and I got almost no sleep…but it was well worth it. BTW - A little birdy told me that the CDs and DVDs will be made available of this event and I highly recommend you snatch it up when they’re released.

A few people have asked me if I have any photos of the event and I’m sorry to say I don’t. I was so wrapped up in everything that was going on, I forgot my camera in my room every time. Next time, I promise.

Is There a Fast Way to Submit My Articles to Article Sites?

[Read more]

Next Page »