When I first stated this game, I took the gurus too literally when they said, “Drive 7 billion visitors to your site in 24 hours,” or, “Make $800 kazillion in 2 days.” I thought they were talking about me.

Then when I tried to secret method or the super technique, it took weeks, not hours, to finish it. I said to myself, “Well, that doesn’t work.”

Looking back, I wish I had been more patient with myself — or with the process. Maybe it does work, but I left out one essential ingredient that never seems to get onto the sales letter.

PRACTICE.

Think about it. Have you ever learned to do anything without practicing? I’m not just talking about the piano lessons your mom made you take when you were 10. I’m talking about driving a car, using the Internet, typing, reading, walking, bicycling. You forget how hard a lot of those things were because they were a long time ago, or you thought you were playing. The truth was,  you were developing a set of neuropathways, muscle memory, and know-how that is essential to doing a thing quickly. It’s always hard before it gets easier.

The key is not to let that stop you.

If you decide not to do a thing because you decide it’s not what you want to do, well, that’s up to you. But if you give up before you’ve really given it a try, you’ve cheated yourself. Like I did. But it’s not too late. I just drafted this blog post in less than 10 minutes, and it would have taken at least an hour before I forced myself to practice.

Copyright symbol, red. Image via Wikipedia

Private label rights, or PLR, is what they call it when you can do anything you want with the information item you’ve just acquired.

Let’s say you’re just read something terrific in a book under copyright and would like to post it on your blog. You can quote it, or you can write about it. But you can’t just copy it and say it’s yours.

Without going through the various levels of copyright — which is a topic for a book and not a blog post — with PLR, you can copy it, sell it, give it away, claim that you wrote it (if you really want to).

The offsetting truth about PLR is that you’re never going to read a PLR article and think, “That’s terrific! I want to post it on my blog.”

The worst PLR articles are incomprehensible blather. The best are so generic as to hardly say anything.

Many people go to France every year. There are many cities in France. There are many interesting sites in France. If you want to go to France, you will probably go by plane or train or car. Here are some ways to travel to France.

OK. It’s an exaggeration, but not by much. You get the idea. A few lines of that, and I’m nodding off, and I’m supposed to be the writer.

That’s what I hate about PLR.

But that’s not the best way to use it. The other right you get with PLR is to rewrite it in any way you please and do whatever you want with it.

If that’s what you’ve got in mind, then a library of PLR articles can be a gold mine. Let’s say you really do want to write an article about France. Open that lump of vanilla and start rewriting it into something better. Pretty soon, you’ve wandered off into the Louvre or Notre Dame or Provence and you’ve got an article that’s got spice and character. It really is you. You can close the PLR now, because it’s done its job. Open it again at another time, and it might take you off in a different direction.

You can’t do that with a really good piece of writing because its character lingers after you’ve rewritten it. It’s too much itself, and plagiarism hovers in its perfectly turned phrases.

PLR is so generic that it’s everybody, which means that it’s nobody (there’s a marketing lesson there, too, but that’s for another post). And that’s its gift to the writer in search of a topic.

And if you sign up for my list on the right side of this page, I’ll send you a zip file of 6,350 good (see above for definition of “good” as it applies to PLR) PLR articles. Yours to rewrite, give away, or post directly to your blog (if you dare).

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• Using PLR in a Pinch (bloggingtips.com)

But searching for keywords without special tools is long and tedious. Get a list of keywords, check them against the Google search results, check the Microsoft’s Detection of Online Commercial Intention, get some more keywords. Do it all over again. It can take hours for a simple article or blog post.

So I took a chance on Market Samurai and was surprised at how easy, complete, and thorough it it. On the first screen, you pick out some keywords, let Google pick out some more for you. You go through the list and cull out the ones that don’t apply and click “Analyze keywords.” Five minutes, and I’m really slow.

That takes you to another screen where you can actually track the information about your keywords. It includes a complete set of data, very customizable in the presentation, and popup labels identify all of them (explaining a number of things I couldn’t figure out in Google Keywords Tool). I was surprised and pleased to find the Online Commercial Intent among the data.

It takes less than a minute to analyze the data, but you might expect to spend 10 minutes or so looking at it, thinking about what keywords are best for the project at hand. You can always go back to the prior screen and throw some more into the mix, but you’re still talking about another minute to get back to full data.

The free version doesn’t offer all the modules available in the paid version, but the keyword tool itself is dynamite. You can open and save various projects, and keep your data from one session to the next. Having just the keyword tool has escalated my writing production — blog posts, articles, domain searches. If I know what I want to write, the keywords help me find the right terms to use. If I’m not sure, they keywords serve as writing prompts.

You can save them under projects, so that if you operate in different niches, you can keep your keywords in their different categories.

In fact, even though I waited past the window to upgrade at a special bargain, I upgraded anyway and haven’t been sorry for a minute. Whether you do niche marketing, article marketing, pay per click, domain flipping, or any other online activity that depends on your knowledge of what people are asking Google, you will save valuable time in research that could be going into production.

What’s more, if you’re new to search engine optimization and keyword research, there are good tutorial videos that will teach you what you need to get up to speed in no time.

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity. The keyword tool is totally free. And the rest of it, if you decide to go for it, is a great bargain.

Google Keywords Tool results for "iPhone" (broad search)

I was exploring Google’s keyword tool yesterday and found something puzzling. Google has nothing to suggest for “iPhone.” No cases, skins, accessories, cool gear, nothing.

Google's results for keyword "iPhone accessories" (broad)

Even more puzzling, when I went to look for “iPhone accessories” specifically, it comes up with 1 million in global monthly search volume (which seems low) and “not enough data” in local search volume, which seems insane. Again, no suggestions for the phrase “iPhone accessories,” only barely relevant synonyms.

SEO Book came up with a good number (and a useful format). Wordtracker came up with a hearty 79. Keyword Discovery found 48.

What happened to Google?

Here’s what came in a “swipe file” email from the organizers.

I am not sure what all this platform is going to do quite yet, but I already know it’s going to change the way companies market online.

That’s supposed to be from me. The first part is entirely true, but the second part, I’m not so sure about. It could be an elaborate prank, in which on the Great Launch Day, the organizers say, “Punked, dude!” But wouldn’t you like to be one of the few who get that message first? Could you stand to miss it?

I couldn’t either. That’s why I joined Moneza.com. Because it’s free and because I have no clue. If you sign up under my link, you’ll have the privilege of being the butt of the same practical joke.

Sounds like fun.

Will comment for bonuses

I’ve installed a new WordPress plug-in that shows my appreciation for blog comments.
If you post a comment, I’ll send you a free video to help you build your internet presence.

It will take five minutes to install even for a complete WordPress newbie, and it’s fully customizable.

It comes preloaded with four bonuses that are automatically sent to commenters at one comment, then three, 10 and 20.

You can add another bonus, change the bonuses to fit your niche and change the number of comments required with only a few keystrokes.

The WPIncentive plug-in is in beta until its grand launch on March 17. Act now and get your commissions for helping to get out the word about it.

Here’s a quick way to produce a set of writings for your email list, blog, and article directories.

First, get an idea for the topic related to you niche. It might be a new skill you’ve picked up or something from the news.

Draft a note to your email readers about the news item. It will be very short, just 150-200 words at max. Get just the highlights and leave the details for your blog post. Sign off, but don’t send it yet.

Take the same news item email and write your blog post. It will be longer and will make all the connections you skipped over in your email. Your style is very personal, and you emphasize the timeliness of the event.

You’ll give step-by-step instructions on some aspect of the information you have to give. You can include your affiliate link, if you have one, in your concluding paragraph. Illustrate the post with an eye-catching photo.

Take the permalink to this post and add it to the email.

Now you have the basis for your article. Instead of a timely news item, though, now you’re talking about an evergreen problem. People will be reading and clicking your article years from now. You don’t want to call attention to the fact that the starting news item is out of date.

In your resource box, include a link to your blog post, noting that the reader can find step-by-step instructions to train the dog to use the “leave it” command in the blog post.

You take basically the same topic and optimize it for each genre. You keep it brief and breezy for the email, more formal and informational for the article, and more conversational and in-depth for the blog. Directories — and Google — like links going to solid information. Readers like to get an overview of what they’re going to read and if they’re interested, they can click through for more information.

I’ve gone from email to blog to article, but of course, you can do the process in any order that works for you for this topic for this niche. Expand, condense, rewrite.

In a few short paragraphs, you’ve communicated with your readers in three different directions, providing solid value in a short space of time.

A longer version of this post appears on a page by itself.

There are a lot of good conversations going on on all aspects of internet marketing.

Check it out.

In a great post, Copyblogger points out ways to write an effective sales page without insulting your reader or coming across like a huckster.

The landing page is where a link in an ad, email or article directs a visitor. It is usually the visitor’s first impression of your site. Studies have shown that when visitors arrive at a website, they’re asking themselves, “Is this what I’m looking for? Is this going to waste my time? Is this trustworthy?” A large proportion of visitors leave a website within eight seconds.

The next group of visitors leave when they decide that what the page offers isn’t relevant to what they want. A smaller group leave when they attempt to make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter and fail. And the rest “convert,” or take action on the offer, whatever it is.

From my own website searching and purchasing habits, I know that I fit into those categories, too. If a website looks like the wrong place, I’ll click off right away. If I can’t find what I want, I’ll move on. If I want to make a purchase but can’t find the “buy now” button, I’ll go elsewhere.

Here are seven tips for designing or redesigning a landing page to increase conversions.

1. Decide the one thing you want your visitor to do. When you create a landing page, you might want people to sign up for your mailing list, click through to a product offer, or make a purchase. That one thing is what we mean when we talk about “conversion.” Each landing page should have one thing that it asks the visitor to do.

2. Focus the entire page on that one thing. Every element of the page should relate to it. All the copy is about the one thing. All the images relate to the one thing. It’s a place for personality but not digressions.

3. Eliminate distractions from your one thing. Eliminate the navigation bar, unless it’s specifically relevant. Don’t have prominent links back to your website. Don’t link to another offer somewhere else. Don’t try to raise a few pennies in Google ads. There’s a place for a selection of various bonus offers, but it’s not the landing page. Some landing pages have an email list opt-in box. It’s important to build a list, but you don’t want to distract people from your product or affiliate offer (if your conversion thing is an email list, there’s no conflict). If you decide to include an opt-in box, you might want to test the page with and without to see how it affects conversion rates.

4. Know your customer. Who is buying your product or service? Study the demographics and then pick someone, as specific as possible. If your topic is weight loss, then decide whether your target audience is a 300-pound 30-something man or a middle-aged woman in the range of 150-190 pounds. You simply cannot talk to both of those people with the same web page. Solve that specific person’s problem. Write the page to that person.

5. Match the promise that brought your visitor to the page. If the ad says, “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days,” the landing page should tell how to lose 30 pounds in 30 days. It should not tell how to have long-lasting health or six-pack abs or eliminate cellulite forever. Even a catalog of all those things will lose the visitor within those crucial eight seconds.

6. All the most important elements should be “above the fold” — or on the first screen of the page. In that first eight seconds, your visitor will glance around the page in an F-shaped pattern. If they don’t see what they want, they will bail. If they have to scroll down even once to get to the thing that will persuade them to keep reading, they will never see it. This affects how tall your headline is, what your header looks like, what images you will use at the top. A good landing page has a mix of these things, but how you mix them successfully depends on your “one thing” and on your audience.

7. Therefore, you need to test and track. The elements of a landing page that have the most effect on conversions are the following (in order of importance): headline, offer, lead (first paragraph), benefit bullets, images, “look and feel” (people are wary of a site that feels unprofessional). Tweak these one at a time and compare your conversion rates, then go with the better one.

The difference between a landing page that converts and one that bumps visitors off to the link down the line is well within your ability to control. Refine the elements. Track and test. Refine some more. GoDaddy.com increased the conversion rate of its landing page by 400% by focusing on these six elements. You can, too.

Here is more information about how a professional landing page can be your key to success in affiliate marketing.