Bill Gates Leaves Daily Show In A Hurry

Time for something different…

Tags: bill gates, daily show, video

Don't Miss Out On Free Traffic!
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Doing a call this afternoon with Mark Hendricks

Want to hear about some of the adventures of “FTR Man?”

There may or may not be room on a call I am doing today with Mark Hendricks on the latest tactics I’ve been using to drive targeted traffic to this here blog ‘o mine.

Give it a shot - you might make it in if you call in early.

Despite the title of the page, we are not giving away free joints on this call.

Tags: mark hendricks, social media marketing, targeted traffic, targeted traffic teleconference

Lost in the wilderness of the web? Stop Waiting For Gurus To Save You!

Jack’s Targeted Traffic Survival Guide

Forget “social media,” “social networking,” social this…social that.

Forget about the buzz words for just a minute. Forget there is a widely used name for people networking through newfangled websites.

I won’t even mention the name in this post. It’s been beaten to death.

Forget all that and just start looking around at places like MyBlogLog.com, StumpbleUpon.com, SpicyPage.com and others I will list below.

Sites like mine, and tens of thousands of people who are serious enough about their sites, we build communities.

We network and look for new players coming up in our niches and new sites to read and learn. .

Surviving in the Wilderness of the Web

In my former life I was into wildlife tracking and wilderness survival and conservation in a big way. Full time. Professionally.

It was common to hear about people dying in the wilderness after getting lost, hurt, or stuck.

Most of the time it’s not their fault, but many people whose lives end sadly, alone in the wilderness, die within mere yards of everything they needed to survive and make it out.

They just didn’t know anything about wilderness survival.

Most websites are like those people. They are dying because they don’t know the things that will save them are all around them.

Everyday someone whose site is about to die, a person who is just about ready to give up all hope of having a successful, high traffic site, passed right over several of the sites that could save theirs.

And they don’t even know it.

In the rush and panic to find a guru to save them, they are totally blind to the things they could do today to bring in traffic IMMEDIATELY and start making sales, advertising revenue, PPC income, and affiliate product sales.

You Could Be The Next One To Go…Or Not!

Start thinking for yourself.

Start being a student of the things people in your niche are doing to kick the tar out of you in the search engines and with traffic from all over the place.

Start “tracking success” and see what the other “animals” are doing to survive in the wilderness of the web. Not the gurus. They are artificially propped up on the web and have fading memories of what it was like starting out.

That’s why much of the time their advice falls on deaf ears and doesn’t work for startups because they have advantages that you don’t yet.

They have a place to sleep out of the cold of the wilderness of the web.

They have heat, plumbing, a bed, clothing, food, and a roof over their heads.

You are in the middle of nowhere, cold, wet, with nothing more than a dull knife and boots with holes in them.

Stop looking up the mountain for answers and start looking around you, where you are now, for firewood, water, and materials to build a temporary place to keep you warm and dry.

The Internet Marketing Guru Is Dead

We, the survivors, killed him. We stopped waiting for him to understand our plight and started thinking for ouselves.

You don’t need an internet marketing “guru” or expert’s latest ebook to successfully drive traffic and build a loyal following online anymore.

I have learned more from people like Divya about building community, readership, a following and customer lists than all the Guru expert training, teleseminars, and ebooks I have read, combined. (That’s a lot of reading folks!)

Does Divya have an ebook I can sell you? NO!

She, like so many others I have been tracking and bumping into at site after site, are showing me through their actions how they are successfully using interactive, user controlled “social” sites to drive serious traffic to their own sites.

They are the people who show up everywhere I surf!

Remember in Power Linking when I talk about “showing up everywhere your target market surfs?”

People are taking that thought to heart and actually doing it without waiting for someone to come out with an easier way or creating software to do it for them!.

Their goal is to drive traffic, build a following, and brand themselves and they keep doing it because the work never ends.

There is too much to do to sit around wondering which traffic generation tactic you are going to use.

Everything you need to drive targeted traffic and survive another day in the wilderness of the web is laying all around you, right on this site.

Here are some of the tools and materials that will keep you warm and dry another day in the wilderness:

MyWebTop
Netscape
StumbleUpon
SpiceyPage
MyBlogLog
Digg
Squidoo

Bloglines

Marketing Related
MarkTD
PlugIM

Old Guard
Myspace
Delicious

Articles

• 7 Truths for increasing your blog’s social likability!
• Links and Traffic
• Authority Sites Dominate With A Bird’s Eye View Of Their Markets
• Targeted Traffic From Social Networks…
• Marketing on Myspace

Tags: community marketing, getting links, getting traffic, social marketing, targeted traffic

Are you trying too hard?

Seth Godin has an excellent post about the different levels of marketing.

I think I fall into the level of appearing not to try many times.

I never want to appear desperate for anything, and, in truth, (or as a consequence) I’m not.

Wonder if that is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Because my nature is to have people “love me or leave me” it is like taking a step backward and having people subconsciously step forward toward my sites and products.

It works not only for me but for a lot of sites on the web, many of which are probably in your bookmarks precisely because they didn’t appear to care whether you bookmarked them or not!

Tags: 4 levels of marketing, advertising, marketing, seth godin

Ziney Pro: Email and Article Formatter Review

I have been using Ziney for years. It is one of the first things I put back on my computer after a crash or when I buy a new computer.

Writing newsletters and needing articles wrapped at different line lengths, without all the junk that Word puts in its files, makes this clean tool one of the core tools I use.

In fact, there isn’t anything other than Frontpage that I have used since the beginning of my business in 1998!

The Pro version of Ziney has been like 3+ years in the making and it has some cool new features I like including a headline brainstorming database (there are tons of really good headlines in there sure to help you no matter what niche you are writing for) and several other improvements over the original version.

I have bought tons very expensive software over the years that I don’t use anymore.

This inexpensive but crucial piece of software has been with me for years and I’d never run an email newsletter without it.

I don’t even know how people DO properly formatted newsletters without it!

Ziney Pro is now available. Get it.

Tags: email formatter, email software, newsletter formatter, wrap lines, ziney, ziney pro, ziney review

Links and Traffic: StumbleUpon.com and AnooX.com

Yesterday I noticed a bunch of visits from StumbleUpon.com. Weird because I had never gotten any before. Then all the sudden about 30 visits in the last 24 hours.

I checked the referring link and it was from someone who bookmarked me and people were checking out his bookmark. Simple as that.

So I signed up for a StumbleUpon account and started bookmarking some stuff myself.

Now more traffic is coming in from people “stumbling” upon my site.

Pretty good for about 20 minutes worth of checking my stats, tracking the referrer, and getting involved.

AnooX.com

Once in awhile I check to see what’s going on in the paid link directories. Many of them aren’t worth dealing with if they don’t have real visitors using them to find stuff.

AnooX caught my eye because they have recently added a twist to the tired old “list yourself in our directory” thing.

They now have a system where readers can rate the links they find. This adds the social, interactive element people are starting to see pop up all over the place, and it lends a lot of respect and credibility to the engine because it is user-rated content.

The engines will like them more for it, send them more traffic, and trickle some of that traffic to you and me by being listed and rated highly.

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Authority Sites Dominate With A Bird’s Eye View Of Their Markets

Want to know the number one tactic authority site publishers use to dominate the market?

One common trait I have noticed across the board among people who have killer rankings, regular readers, die-hard customers, and flat out fans of their sites is this:

They know everything that is going on in their niche from top to bottom.

How do they do it?

They dedicate a good portion of their time prepping delectable content their visitors want badly by reading every significant source of news, tips, tactics, buzz, press, and blogs in their niche on a regular basis.

Hey, if you aren’t interested in your niche enough to do that, someone is going to be and they are going to kill you on every front in your niche.

Sounds like a lot of work?

I see people doing stupid time consuming things trying to trick their way to the top. Why not use the time more wisely and earn your way to the top in the same (or even less) amount of time?

Authority is Earned

The top sites on the web in all niches are sites where an obvious amount of time, energy, and resources has been spent to get them there. It’s no secret and the evidence is in plain view, even if, on the surface, the resulting authority site seems like a no brainer.

They ALL seem like no brainers in hindsight! And no one knows the work that went into getting them to the top except for the owners/staff.

Back to the “how.”

A long-standing tactic we use to keep up on the markets in which we publish is aggregation. Here is an example of the blogs I read on a regular basis to keep up on internet marketing and related niches.

Most of the time you cannot get a real scoop first hand. When it happens, relish the day, because it is every content publisher’s goal to scoop a good story.

What happens instead is we scoop the scoop. It’s the law of averages. When someone else gets the story, we scoop them and get traffic from the guy who got the scoop and is presently enjoying a ton of traffic for it.

If you are going to find constant sources of ideas for good posts, you have to use the equivalent of a CB radio scanner and watch, read, and listen for what’s going on “out there” in your niche.

Do you honestly believe that your favorite blogger comes up with all those great post ideas 100% internally?

Not too realistic if you assume that blogger also sleeps and has a life on the side.

My secret is aggregation.

I have free software and services looking around the web and reporting back to me on everything going on in my niche.

I use Google Alerts to find out what people are saying about me, my competitors, and all my products and services. This is a killer way to get a scoop because often I find Google has been on top of a new page of information before most people hear about it.

You just have to have the right searches going on at the right time. Google Alerts works in the background and emails you the things it finds on the search terms you put into it, 24/7, before anyone else on the web hears about it or sees it.
I use Bloglines and MyWebTop to pull in feeds from minor and major players in my niche.

Go From Information Overload to Information Overlord

If you are not looking down on the battlefield from a high position and getting a bird’s eye view of what’s going on in your niche (no matter what kind of sites, services, products, or content you produce) you are swimming in a sea of mediocrity on the web.

Chances are you feel more overwhelmed with all there is to keep up on in your niche precisely because you aren’t organized and you don’t have good tools working for you.

And, chances are, that you’ve closed down, gone “hobbit” in your niche, and are working in a veritable vacuum away from the very information that could set you far apart from your competition if acted upon.

Use the two free tools above to aggregate the massive amount of information generated in your niche. Use them to come up with better content. Use them to inform your market research on a product idea you have or a service you want to start.

There’s not a single business online that couldn’t benefit greatly by gaining that bird’s eye view of their market.

Who knows? I may have just exposed the chink in your competitor’s armor. The one thing that might have you dominating your niche rather than picking up his scraps in 2007.

Tags: aggregation, authority sites, information overload, market research, rss feeds

Targeted Traffic From Social Networks…

I’ve been completely floored this week by the way MyBlogLog.com has taken off.

Sometimes it seems like a big company has to buy in to really get the current community to explode! And it has.

My MBL network has grown a lot this week and everyone seems to be posting comments on each others community pages like mad now.

My traffic from the MyBlogLog.com community has tripled this week just from participating and surfing over there.

If you are a blogger and you aren’t in the MyBlogLog world yet, you best get stompin’! And don’t forget to join the Blog Promotion group as your first order of business.

—

Spicy Page is also really taking off. It is really fun to watch new communities grow. And I like helping them do it.

It is a blog voting and popularity community. People who sign up seem to be surfing through the other members and commenting on other blogs, usingthe system to discover new content in the blogosphere.

I like the neat twist they put on the community system and I can’t wait to see what they do with the video hosting tab which is still under construction.

My traffic from SpicyPage.com is going up and I am getting new readers and subscribers from them.

—

I will have a list of all the new social networks I’ve discovered soon. Things are definitely going vertical instead of just large, general communities.

For instance, I found a new story posting place like Digg, but just for marketers and marketing content. It’s called PlugIm.

This site is sending me daily targeted traffic just by posting my posts and articles there for readers to pick up.

Make sure you take some time soon to “get social.” My stats are up across the board from taking a bit of time each day to interact with neat services like these, so it is time well spent.

Tags: blog promotion, mybloglog, plugim, social networking, social networks, spicy page

Spicy Page: Another Good Targeted Traffic Source?

I called it with Marktd.com. Supported them when they first started and now they are taking off.

I called it with MyBlogLog.com and they are REALLY taking off!

I am going to do it again with SpicyPage.com.

You will see on the lower left sidebar that I have their widget installed. Go ahead and click to vote and see what happens.

You’ll get the idea of how they work. It is like Digg with the voting system but it is a big blog engine with lots of neat features I haven’t seen in this type of community before.

I am betting this site takes off. It’s a good bet since some major players are listed and active there already such as TechCrunch.com and Yahoo.

Check it out - vote for the FTR!

We’ll see how fast we can help them grow so they can attract more visitors to our blogs!

Tags: blog search engine, marktd, mybloglog, sites like digg, spicy page

Give Links to Gain Authority Status

It is quite possible that I have found a group of people who are more paranoid about linking to competitors‘ sites than internet marketers!

Believe me, the stories I have heard, like the above post on Lexblog, along with excuses as to why some people just will not link to other sites, even if they are not direct competitors at all, defies logic.

Get This: You are not marketing online unless you link to competitors.

—
Heresy Alert:
I’ve stated at least 100 times that you are not marketing if you don’t have a blog. Rather, you are not in existence if you don’t blog because your site, products, services, whatever you hope to achieve with your site is irrelevant, obscure, and lucky to have any traffic at all.
—

So you, of course have a blog. (Let’s assume that fact while some of you are running over to the Authority Site Center right now to get a blog to keep from being left out of this, and every other marketing discussion on the web today.)

One of the hardest things we have to teach at the Authority Site Center is linking tactics for the new web.

In the old days I never linked to competition. But then I had static sites and the “captive audience” thing was crucial in order to move product and get list signups.

When blogs came around, the marketing world got turned upside down and the top bloggers actually started getting more traffic and better rankings for doing the unthinkable: linking to their competition!

Under the old rules I shouldn’t be linking to guys like CopyBlogger or ProBlogger.

They teach a lot of the same things I do here at FTR. Am I insane or crazy like a fox?

Let’s look at the facts:

1) I enjoy more traffic to this site than I have gotten to any site without joint venture mailings, Adwords, and all the other marketing tactics we’ve used for years to get traffic. And it is far more regular and far more repeat traffic than I have ever gotten to any site I’ve owned in the past.

2) I currently have a 37.8% return visitor ratio. For all the traffic I work so hard to get, a full 37% come back over and over for free and no further expense in time to acquire them other than writing good content.

3) My advertising rates continue to go up because advertising today is based almost completely on page views. I get new visitor page views, but remember the 37% return visitors? My advertising is affected by that greatly.

Why do people keep coming back?

Because when there is a resource out there that does a good job of conveying or supporting a point I am making, I link to them.

Citing your sources and supporting evidence is something professional writers have done for a wee bit longer than the internet has existed.

Yet most people still don’t do this online, mostly because they’ve never been taught offline to cite their sources and supporting evidence.

If you didn’t go to college or learn elsewhere how to write professionally, how would you know this?

Yet it is crucial to the “street cred” of any blog site, especially since the mainstream media dislikes bloggers so much for taking millions of their regular readers from them.

They will do anything and everything to discredit bloggers as unprofessional and untrained (biased) “reporters” and we certainly give them plenty of fodder to make this point!

Open Up Your Niche To Your Visitors

This blog works really hard to open the web up to visitors and link to every pertinent, important site in this niche and visitors totally eat that up!

Rather than the old idea that you’d lose visitors forever to another blog, which on some small percentage I just might, the real eye-opener is that people never seem to forget who showed them all the cool stuff in the first place.

And they come back for more.

This philosophy of linking not only does wonders for gaining free targeted traffic and repeat visits, but it forces you to stay current, relevant, and on your game because you’ve risen to the task of being as good as your competition.

Your visitors have come to expect quality and, in order to keep them coming back, you can’t slide.

When you open up your niche to your visitors like this, you are saying “I’m confident enough in my ability to wow you over and over, day after day, with killer content and resources that I don’t mind sending you here or there because I know you’ll be back.”

You don’t have to accept this as a theory for your niche and “try it to see if it works.”

It’s a fact in the blog world. If you aren’t linking outside of linking to affiliate products, you are irrelevant in your niche.

Every killer blog you read knows this and practices it.

Bite the bullet and link to the players in your niche to gain authority in your niche!

Then come back here and tell us all the good that has come from your new campaign. You might just help someone else to get out of the link paranoia syndrome.

In the blog world, “You link, therefore you am.”

Tags: getting links, getting targeted traffic, lexblog, linking tactics

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