The Random Blogger

I’ve been involved in Internet marketing, in some shape or form, for about six years now, and I’ve bought any number of ebooks and courses that weren’t worth the virtual paper they were typed on.

Some were very good, but the majority, I’m sad to say, were no use at all. Many were returned for refunds, so at least I salvaged something from the deal, although not the time I spent reading the sales page, downloading the materials that simply fill up your hard drive and, of course reading them.

So, I wish I had found The Masked Guru’s website first, because he basically reveals and reviews the contents of many of the more popular ebooks - for free.

Yes, you’ll actually find out what many of these books are actually about, but it’s all legal, and it won’t cost you a penny.

So far, since I signed up a few days ago, I’ve received emails with the contents and reviews of The Rich Jerk, Day Job Killer and the Ultimate Wealth Package.

I won’t spoil it for you by revealing his verdict on these three very popular products, but I do highly recommend signing up for his newsletter so that you too can be educated and entertained - hopefully, before spending your hard-earned cash.

Oh, and one last thing - his style of writing is very funny (it made me laugh, at least).

So, do yourself a favour and sign up for The Masked Guru today - if you’re in any way involved in Internet Marketing, I know you won’t regret it (unless you’re the author of one of the ebooks he gives a bad review to, of course).

Having spent the past three or more years getting to grips with the black art that is Search Engine Optimisation (aka SEO), I know how hard it is to sort the information from the misinformation that you’ll find scattered all over the Internet.

So if you’re in this position, not knowing who to believe, then help is at hand…

… in the form of SEO Help Videos.

SEO Help Videos is a 10-part video training course, created by Emmanuel Betinis, that covers all aspects of SEO, including keyword research, on-page optimisation, off-page optimisation, how to get ranked quickly, what not do to (otherwise your site may get banned), and more.

You also receive three bonuses - audio interviews with eBay expert Alan Petersen and Social Bookmarking expert Ben Roy, both of which you won’t find anywhere else, as well as a follow-up Q&A video where Emmanuel goes through some of the questions he’s received via email and answers them on video for you.

Now, you’re probably wondering what this five-hour video course on SEO will cost you.

Well, you needn’t worry, because although there are so-called training courses out there priced at $8,000 USD (yes, really!), you’ll be glad to know that the SEO Help Videos course will cost you just $27 USD.

However, don’t let this low price put you off - it covers everything a complete SEO beginner needs to know, all the way through to advanced stuff (such as how Google PageRank is calculated - although it’s worth pointing out that you don’t need to know this to get your sites ranking well).

There is, as you’ve probably come to expect these days, a 100% money-back guarantee, so you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain - even if you already know something about SEO.

Get your copy of SEO Help Videos now and see your rankings increase.

Still not sure?

Then check out these two sample videos:

So, if you want to watch the rest of these SEO Help Videos, get them now while the price is still at a low $27 USD.

For those of you who use article marketing to promote stuff, whether it’s your own product or an affiliate product, then you’ll know the importance of weaving the right keywords into your articles.

This is often easy enough to do, without making it look too “forced”, but some keywords are a bit tougher.

Let’s take a couple of examples.

Suppose you’re writing an article to promote an anagram generator, and you want to infuse the keyword phrase “anagram generator”.

Then that’s pretty easy - something like “…if you’re looking for a great anagram generator, then I can highly recommend Anagram Genius“.

However, let’s say you also want to rank for the phrase “anagram maker free”.

This one might not be so easy to work in, especially in a way that’s natural.

But there is a way around this, and that’s to insert punctuation marks within the keyword phrase in strategic positions.

So, you might write something like this: “… if you’re looking for an anagram maker, free software might be good enough for what you need.”

You see, it appears that Google strips out punctuation marks such as commas when you do a search.

If you’re not convinced, check out these two screenshots from Google, done less than one minute apart:

The number of results from both searches - one without the embedded comma and one with an embedded comma - are the same.

So, maybe this isn’t an earth-shattering revelation, but it may also help you to write articles in a more natural manner while still weaving in some of the trickier keyword phrases that have a good search to competition ratio which you might otherwise have ignored.

Traffic Stacker is a relatively new site that claims to generate more converting web visitors and online advertising with very little cost or effort.

So, I decided to put it to the test.

The first thing I noticed was that the site looks very clean and professional, with an attractive look and feel, all of which helps make it easy to read and understand.

The sign-up process was very quick and painless, which was good.

I should warn you that although membership is currently free, they do offer two different upgrade options, although these are not necessary to gain the benefits.

Once you’ve activated your membership, which only takes a few seconds, then you’re straight into the Members Area.

As with the public pages, this is well laid out and intuitive, which means I was able to work out what to do after only a few minutes, and was able to get up and running in less than five minutes.

Once you’ve logged in, there are two main things you can do - create links and create ads.

To create a Traffic Stacker link, all you do is enter any URL (although I have found that, currently, it has problems with certain ones - I’ve raised a support ticket and they’re looking into it) and the system will transform it into a “Traffic Stacker” link for you.

You can also create a Traffic Stacker Ad, which you can use to promote anything you want, using the Generator tool.

And of course, you can create as many ads and as many links as you need.

The back office is organized nicely too - no hunting for stuff, as your five most recent links are displayed on the main page, for easy reference, while all of your links are shown in the order you created them.

Given that you’ll be using the Link Creator more than anything, that’s available right at the top of the page you get after you’ve logged in - another time-saver.

Once you’ve created your first ad and your first link, you can start to use Traffic Stacker to generate traffic.

How?

That’s easy too - as you may have expected by now.

Instead of promoting the original source link, all you need to do is promote the Traffic Stacker link that you generated.

Whenever somebody clicks on that Traffic Stacker link, the original page is loaded, and then, a second or two later, there’s a neat little ad that slides up at the bottom of the page.

This ad displays another member’s ad, as well as a link back to Traffic Stacker that contains your affiliate URL.

What this means is that, if anybody should click that Traffic Stacker link, they’ll be taken to the main website, and should they sign up, they become your referral.

This is a fantastic viral feature, because you can build a downline without even really trying, just by using the site to promote your own products or affiliate pages.

So, how do your own ads get displayed?

Well, whenever that little slide-up ad window appears on your pages, you earn credits that will in turn allow your own ads to be displayed on the ad windows that appear on other people’s sites.

The more clicks you get on your Traffic Stacker links, the more your ads will get displayed.

Don’t forget too that this is a viral tool - when you do grow your own downline, whether that’s by promoting Traffic Stacker or just by using it and having people click on your affiliate link, then you earn credits on their link clicks too, up to five levels deep.

That’s a ton of additional free ad views you can get, just by using the service.

I have to confess that I only recently signed up for this service, so I can’t, in all honesty, say how much extra traffic having a large downline actually generates for you.

But the rest of the service performs exactly as they claim - somebody clicks my links, credits are added to my account, and then my ads get displayed.

And BTW, Traffic Stacker keeps tracks of things like clicks and ad displays for you, which was not even advertised as a feature.

If all of that weren’t enough, there is one more feature that makes this a no-brainer - you can email your downline with your own offers, promotions, etc.

Now, you can use this system to send out millions of spam emails - it’s tightly controlled so that you don’t annoy your downline with too many messages, and the system does show you how long it will be before you can send out your next email.

Overall, Traffic Stacker seems like a very simple, robust and usable service - reminiscent maybe of some of the systems from a few years ago, but vastly improved and consequently much more valuable.

In conclusion, I highly recommend you take Traffic Stacker for a test drive!

Just a day or two ago, we came across somebody advertising something called Stupidly Simple SEO, which is a method of getting one-page micro-site indexed and listed on Google - within minutes.

Now, you have to admit that this sounds fanciful at best, especially as he claims that you don’t even need your own website either.

And no complex formulae, keyword density calculations, backlinking - in fact none of the traditional SEO stuff at all!

Well, ever suckers for something new, we decided to try it out for ourselves.

The good news is that you can find out the basics of this system for free, via a short video.

However, if you really want to make full use of this ingenious system, then you will need to upgrade to VIP membership, as this gives you access to many more detailed training videos, including some advanced techniques that are truly cunning.

Unusually for us, we watched the five or so training videos almost immediately, and have just published our very first micro-site using the Stupidly Simple SEO technique.

We clicked the Submit button at 8:51pm our time (which shows up as 11:51pm on the website we used, because of different time zones):

Just 20 minutes later, this micro-site was listed in third place on Google, immediately after Amazon’s double listing:

The above screen shot was taken at 9:18pm, so that means Google indexed it at 9:12pm - exactly 20 minutes after publishing.

Now, we still have to make some money from this micro-site, but this initial test is certainly very encouraging (and in fact my wife is working on our next micro-site at this very moment).

So, if you want to try it out for yourself, then we can safely say that this really is Stupidly Simple SEO.

Like many Internet marketers, I’ve read my fair share of books on copywriting, and it can be a confusing subject, just because there are so many opinions on what works and what doesn’t, depending on the author.

So, I was very intrigued to come across a product called The Copywriter’s Brain, which is Derek Franklin’s concise summary of everything he’s read and learned about the skill of copywriting (although that probably doesn’t do it justice).

Now, Derek is somebody I’ve worked with before and respect greatly - his products are always simple to use yet meet a real need - and in fact he created The Daily Goal Machine for me, which is one of those “Victor Kiam” products (i.e. I liked it so much, I asked Derek to create one for me to sell too).

So, what exactly is The Copywriter’s Brain?

Well, it would be easiest to let Derek tell you in his own words, via this short video:

So, what do I like about The Copywriter’s Brain?

Firstly, it’s incredibly succinct - all you need to know about copywriting, information gleaned from the world’s best copywriters, really is on a single page.

Secondly, it’s easy to use, but in case you have any problems, Derek provides four videos to help you get the best of it, both in terms of navigating the tool and strategies for making best use of it.

And thirdly, it does come with two bonus pieces of useful software that are written in Derek’s inimitable style.

Are there any downsides?

Well, the product is delivered as a mind map, which requires you to download some Mindjet MindManager software, although the good news is that this mind map viewer software is free (and available for both Windows and Mac).

So, no deal-breaker there then.

In conclusion, this is a great tool that will help you get your head around copywriting in a unique and powerful way, and the price is a drop in the ocean compared to what you would spend if you were to try to sift through all of the traditional information on something that often been perceived as a “black art” .

I therefore highly recommend The Copywriter’s Brain.

I’ve been involved in various aspects of Internet marketing since 2004, at a guess, and I’ve seen many so-called “gurus” come and go.

I’ve subscribed, at one time or another, to most of their lists, and for reasons I’ll explain here, I’ve also unsubscribed from most of them.

You see, to me, it seems that most of these people might originally come out with something useful and/or good (although many don’t), but after that, and they’ve nothing else to offer, they all bombard you with the same emails promoting the latest “big thing”, just to try to make some affiliate commissions and get to the top of the league tables.

To me, if you’ve one thing to say, and you’ve said it, then that’s it. I really don’t want to receive dozens of emails all promoting the same product launch.

This is even more true when you realise that the stuff that has always worked will always work - without the need for loopholes and fads and fancy scripts, etc.

So after all this time, and after wading through (and mainly deleting) what must be thousands of emails, who do I still listen to?

Sadly, not very many of them.

But there is one person who is genuinely different (well, there are a few, but I may have to write about them some other time) …

… and his name is Paul Myers.

What makes Paul different?

Well:

1. He doesn’t send you a load of junk mail (aka spam) promoting stuff that he clearly hasn’t tested for himself.
2. He doesn’t send you one or more emails every single day, clogging up your inbox.
3. When he does email you, what he says is well-written, unique content that’s useful, educational, often humorous, and that offers a perspective that nobody else seems to offer.
4. When he does promote his own products, of which he has quite a few, then you can guarantee that they will be reasonably-priced (I think the most I’ve paid for anything is probably $27), and yet they offer much more value than most everything else I’ve bought (including the really expensive stuff too).

In fact, I positively look forward to receiving Paul’s emails - to the point that I wish he would write more frequently (although I accept that if he did that, the quality may not be sustainable, not that I feel that this would be a real problem for him).

So, do yourself a favour, head on over to TalkBiz News, and sign up for his newsletter.

Not only will you be glad you did, but you’ll also receive a free copy of his highly-acclaimed book, “Need To Know“.

Anybody who earns their money from the Internet these days knows the need to generate backlinks to their site - and preferably one-way links, as the days of reciprocal (aka two-way) links are maybe not dead, but they’re certainly not in the best of health any longer.

And while you can still try to contact webmasters and ask for a link back to your site, this is a lot of effort and is a lot harder to succeed at these days than it was several years ago.

Internet marketers are nothing if not creative, and so the concept of three-way links and one-way links building services was born.

There has been some debate for years about whether Google can detect a three-way linking network, and I have to confess that I’m sitting on the fence on this issue at the moment.

But one-way link networks - that’s a whole different ball-game!

Jonathan Leger’s 1WayLinks is a great service, maybe the best - until I heard about the imminent launch of a new service called ezArticleLink.

This new service, which is due to launch on 22 February 2010, takes the one-way linking concept even further by automatically building one-way links to the sites that have one-way links back to your site.

(You may need to read that previous paragraph a few times for it to sink in.)

It looks as though they will have two membership levels - a free Silver level and a paid Gold level - and for the next couple of days, you can sign up to be an ezArticleLink JV Partner, get a free Silver account and earn passive income from people who sign up under you (as well as account credits when they have articles they submit approved).

If this sounds a bit garbled, then apologies, but I’ve only just come across this and thought I’d let people know about it, given that the pre-launch phase is almost over.

Anyway, it’s free to sign up as a JV Partner, and you do get a free Silver account, so what have you got to lose?

I’m certainly going to give it a go, and will try to report back on how well it works at a later date.

Since launching our main business website in February 2007, we’ve had to learn a lot about Internet marketing, including what is now popularly known as SEO (i.e. Search Engine Optimisation), which is nothing more than trying to make sure that your site is easily found in the search engines.

Getting good rankings on the search engines used to be easy - ten or more years ago - but there has been a world-wide explosion of people trying to make money online since then, and it’s now no mean feat to get your site listed on the first page of Google’s results.

So, we’ve spent a fair amount of time and money over the past two years or so reading up on SEO techniques, buying ebooks and training courses, and most of them have been fairly so-so, including some that cost thousands of dollars.

Always keen to learn (or maybe always a sucker for more), we recently found a product called Supercharged SEO that promised 100% automated SEO strategies, which, given what we thought we knew about this subject, seemed a bit on the hypey side.

But, the price was only $17, which is practically nothing these days, and so we bought it, not expecting too much.

So, was it worth the money, and did we learn anything new about SEO?

Actually, it was probably the best SEO product we’ve ever bought!

What you get are three well-made videos, with a total duration of about one and a quarter hours, together with supporting PDFs that include copies of each slide from the videos, a list of resources referenced, as well as a few WordPress plug-ins and other code that are part of the strategies he reveals.

These strategies, once you put them in place, truly are 100% automated, as he promises, because once you set the framework up for any given site, the rest just happens all by itself.

You do need to be aware that these strategies are focused on WordPress blogs (and ones that you host yourself, rather than ones hosted by Wordpress themselves). To be fair, he does state this on the videos, and he also says that many of the techniques will work on other types of sites too, but for some of these, you may be left to work it out for yourself.

Having said that, it’s a minor issue, given how popular WordPress is, especially as more and more people are using this platform in place of the regular HTML mini-site / sales page.

I would also say that it’s probably not for the absolute beginner, as some experience and understanding of SEO and blogs would be advantageous. Again though, his explanations and supporting materials are really good, so I doubt you’d have any problems implementing any of these strategies.

So, in conclusion, even if you think you know SEO already, as we did, I highly recommend Supercharged SEO, and I’d be very surprised if you didn’t manage to give your sites the set-it-and-forget-it supercharge that he promises.

I’ve used PHP redirects to cloak things like affiliate links for a long time now, and I’m therefore a bit rusty on the other techniques (e.g. JavaScript and Meta Refresh).

So, when a guy I’m collaborating with on a project or two asked me how to cloak his affiliate links, I started by setting up a sample PHP script for him, but then when I tried to remember exactly how to use the other non-PHP methods, I ran into a wall of amnesia.

As always in this situation, I turned to Google, and happened upon a brilliant website where you enter the URL you want to redirect to, and it instantly gives you copy-and-paste code you can use in all three formats (i.e. JavaScript, Meta Refresh and PHP).

It’s quick, simple, and means you need to know or understand practically no code at all.

The site is called My Redirect Code, and I highly recommend it.

(BTW, my friend has written an excellent short report called Unlimited Profit Streams that’s well worth a read, and it’s only $7 USD. If you can’t make that back after reading and applying what he teaches, then I suspect Internet Marketing isn’t for you.)