Guest Blogger – Terry Whalen On PPC Marketing For Micro ISV’s
PPC marketing can be a powerful online marketing channel for software products. But there are several ways to help make your marketing dollars work harder for you. For those of you that already have active PPC campaigns, here are a few tips for better PPC campaign management.
PPC KEYWORD DEVELOPMENT
I think people sometimes try to over-think keywords for their PPC campaigns. The truth is that the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a great starting point for keyword discovery. Since a majority of searchers use Google and its partner network, the idea is to ‘go to the source’ for kw lists based on actual user search queries. Simply input seed kw’s and Google will spit out additional relevant kw ideas. Access the Google Keyword Tool at the top of the kw list in any ad group.
Use the Search Query report to further expand and refine your kw lists. This report has been much improved, and now displays more granular data. Users of the new AdWords web interface will have noticed that Google now shows search queries within the management interface. For better efficiency, however, I still recommend pulling the data all at once from the reports section. Focus on search queries that have received conversions, rather than just impressions or clicks. Filter for queries with match type showing as ‘broad’ or ‘phrase’ and then add these as keywords into appropriate ad groups. Bid according to search query CPA and average CPCs.
Additionally, mine Google Analytics, Omniture, or other web analytics reporting systems for kw ideas. Just as with using Search Query reports, focus on (organic) kw’s that have resulted not only in clicks, but in conversions, goals, and measurable value. In Google Analytics, select Traffic Sources, then Keywords, then click on non-paid, and lastly select the Goal Conversion tab.
Lastly, use all 3 kw match types: broad, phrase, and exact. Using all 3 match types gives the advertiser greater visibility and control into campaigns. Add phrase and exact match versions for kw’s that show a high volume of impressions, clicks, cost or conversions – or for kw’s that are core to the products that you sell.
PPC AD CREATION & TESTING
Test Keyword Insertion (KWI) in your text ads. KWI automatically inserts the user’s search query into the text of the ad. KWI can be used in headlines or in lines 1-2. Test KWI cautiously, and only in ad groups that exclude high-volume, broad match keywords. Example headline: {KeyWord:Morphing Software}.
An often-overlooked detail is to set ad-serving to rotate. Ads must be rotated evenly in order to be tested properly against each other. AdWords defaults to serve higher-CTR ads more often than lower-CTR ads; this makes more money for Google at the expense of the advertiser. This option is found in Campaign Settings.
Lastly, remember ad text basics: highlight the advertiser value proposition; incorporate relevant ad group kw’s within ad text; use a compelling offer (e.g. Free 30-day Trial) and include a call-to-action or implied call-to-action (e.g. Learn how to improve your PPC campaigns – Free white paper).
PPC CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE
A simple PPC account structure benefits day-to-day navigation, management and bid optimization. Consider separate campaigns for breaking out geo-targets, differentiating between different target metrics, or for reporting purposes. Always run Content campaigns separately. This is acknowledged best practices, since Content is an altogether different medium vs. Search.
ADWORDS EDITOR
Download and use AdWords Editor (AE) for: bid optimization; ad creation and optimization; creating new campaigns; adding kw’s in bulk to multiple campaigns and ad groups; modifying destination URLs for conversion tracking, and much more. Download AdWords Editor here.
GENERAL APPROACH FOR EFFECTIVE PPC MANAGEMENT
Start simple and small, and go where the data takes you. PPC is an iterative activity. The data determines next steps. If you started with one campaign composed of five ad groups, expand the ad groups that show click and conversion activity and leave the others for later. Over time, advance to complex and large. Expand kw’s, ad groups and campaigns based on what has worked. In terms of time and effort, feed the winners and starve the losers. This approach will help you best focus your time and make you (or your client) more money!
—Terry Whalen from CPC Search, a paid search agency
About Terry:
Terry is a partner at CPCsearch, a full-service PPC Management firm that optimizes PPC campaigns on behalf of its clients. CPC Search is a Google AdWords Qualified Company. Prior to running CPC Search, Terry led marketing initiatives at Citrix’s GoToMyPC.
Doing Things Differently – Online As A Micro ISV With Integrated Marketing
Being a “micro” anything tends to be a tough road to hoe. Software, where micro is actually pretty common, is no different. On this blog I frequently toss established wisdom out the window, throw the baby out with the grey and sullied bathwater of software history and in general take careful aim at the standard Micro ISV marketing techniques – and fire.
Frankly I like most Micro ISV’s. They’re generally pretty decent people, smart, innovative, honest and it has to be said, prone like the rest of us, to accept some things on face value or because “…it’s what’s done.”
From time to time I get the odd comment on this blog, private email and ribbing on some online forums for my stance on things, like, you know – download sites… 
Yes. Those pesky peddlers of pustules of Google Adsense and their puerile self righteous justifications for existing at all. We all love them, except me apparently…
I don’t want to go into the full justifications of my stance in this article. The curious can certainly use the search feature of this blog by searching for “download sites” without the quotes or use the site-map who’s link is in the footer of every page to browse the category dedicated to them.
The Download Sites Solution Response From Matt Cutts
Rather I’d like to cover two issues which are related to download sites, quite apart from my usual rants on the subject. Those are Integrated Marketing as an mISV and Matt Cutts who usually says some pretty interesting things about SEO, but in this instance, seriously Matt, is guessing at best. I’ll explain why presently. First though – listen to Matt’s YouTube Q and A on the subject:
There ya go – the video is on the left. Listen to it and then we’ll talk a little about this, what I consider to be, rather flippant and badly researched response on Matt’s behalf…
First – Google must love download sites as customers or sellers rather – of the content of their ad network. I mean, nothing comes close to the amount of Adsense these guys can fit per pixel on any page. I hate to think what they’d do if computer monitors were theater sized! Now, I’m not implying that issue affected Matt’s perspective on this at all here. Nope. Rather I’m implying Google doesn’t punish more of these sites than they do already simply because, well, they’re economic pragmatists.
What Matt Cutts has done here is answer a “It doesn’t hurt…” by submitting and listing on low quality download sites. That’s an absolute. The problem with absolutes is nothing generally is and can be defined as “absolute”. It’s more complex than the relatively glib reply Matt gives to the Richard M whose asking the question (and for the record I’m not Richard M, though I do know who Richard M is – Hi Richard!).
An Answer To Matt Cutts’ Vague Response
History shows us in recent times that the penalty for linking to low grade sites is indeed a heavy one – and not just from Google as Yahoo using Site Advisor do a similar thing. If the download site has malware a number of micro ISV’s have had their sites listed as containing malware erroneously due to the download site or sites. It’s a carry over effect. This alone wouldn’t have been hard for Matt to research. There are specific cases of this in articles on this blog. Guilt through association.
I’d call the search engine telling people your site contains malware when it does not because of an association with a crummy download site an effect on your ranking.
Second is the proclivity of some download sites to:
- Rip bleeding chunks of your content off of your sites web pages because they see themselves above decency and international copyright laws.
- Creating sub-domains of your product name and ranking above many micro ISV’s for their own product.
That this hurts is obvious from search engine rankings of products from micro ISV’s. If – and they do – download sites outrank many, some whom I know quite well, on important keywords then you’re losing the battle. You need that customer or downloader on your website so you can sell to them. Not have a download site feed them GoogleGobble by way of Adsense.
That’s my bone of contention with Matts reply here. He didn’t research and answered a rather vague question somewhat, well, even more vaguely.
Which brings me to, what I see, as my own solution. That I need a solution, given I don’t submit to any download sites barring Download.com and don’t permit the others to link to me – under pain of a PAD file from hell – is case in point that download sites are a blight on the search engine landscape. They can and do on occasion beat me on some keywords. A temporary problem as a rule if a little common sense SEO is applied. Anyway…
Integrated Marketing
I’m pretty open about many of things I do when writing here on this blog. But rest assured I never, and probably never will, open up on everything I do. I make no apologies for that. However there is something I aimed to do for some time and in recent times put into practice and that is “Integrated Marketing”.
This is a different approach to most micro ISV’s, but it seems to be starting to pay off. Usually Google gives one a link on page one if you are relevant and optimized to the subject and you don’t try and scam them – and the market you are targeting isn’t enormous.
I state here again I loathe black hat SEO people and am not so fond of those who call themselves “white hat” or “blue hat” either. At the same time, if you’re building a company, and not just a product, it’s reasonable for sites to be listed on page one that belong to you as not one site for the keyword but two or more.
Note that each sells a different but complimentary set of products, they have in some instances the same customers, but in other instances other customers. So the relationship is a good fit. They integrate.
Before I go into specific details and explain myself it’s fair to point out that in all instances quoted here I did not start with a “fresh domain name” in any instance. I always “break a domain name in” before using it by registering well in front and providing some basic details to the search engines for them to get use to the site – to date that’s mean no sandbox treatment from the search engines. Thus ranking to page one isn’t as hard as it would be, once the site goes fully online with content, as it would be if you registered a domain, built the site and waited within the space of a week. As always it’s about planning ahead – we’re in business right? That takes planning. Something I learned after breaking every single business bone in my body – many time over.
Now, the whole structure is not complex, most of it is entirely automated and the results are starting to speak for themselves. Searching for certain keywords on certain products will result often in two websites, both owned by me, on page one speaking about those products or related and complimentary products - and that does not include this blog. In some instances it’s three sites and in many instances spread over several pages due to different types of content. This is actually a good thing as not every “page summary” in a search engine page appeals to all people, I’ve noticed, though they be entirely connected and related to the same search word.
Again, before I go further, keep in mind that if you have only one product this technique is going to be a little tougher. Not impossible. It’s hardly revolutionary but it is sorely overlooked by most. Also – not all of the products are software, in the case of CDROO it’s audio files of music and sound effects.
So, apart from “Program X”, which I won’t name here at this time, the structure is something like the above. To understand why this diagram is significant to this discussion though one has to understand what each site does.
TwoCan Software
That’s the company name. Yes – we do know how to spell Toucan!! It’s a hammy play on words indicating that two people, my partner and I, can get this darn thing off the ground.
Updated 29 June 09 10:49 am: The domain name for the company site is TwoCanSoftware.com for those who went to look and found something less than desirable by not adding Software to TwoCan my apologies. Previously the shorter domain name was just a squatter. Now seems the usual scum and villiany have moved into the shorter URL.
TwoCan on first glance appears to be a website much like other “company” websites that lists all the products a company sells. Appearances are one thing, but that’s not why it was conceived or created. TwoCan is also an aggregate of RSS feeds of every one of the product sites – and including this blog – which works wonders with what we’re talking about in relation to integrated marketing. While it aggregates it does not just pull in the whole RSS feed, but rather the summary of each post and links directly back to the product sites blog article. Forming a a rather effective bond between it and it’s products, while serving as a nice resource for folks not specifically interested in a specific product, but in general or related issues. TwoCan does not rank at or near number one in any search engine directory. It’s not supposed to, that’d be futile as the product sites should do that, that is their purpose. However TwoCan is increasingly appearing on page one, albeit towards the middle or bottom of the page, and that’s a good thing. It gives searchers two chances to find us – and I’m pleased to say has been known to push the odd download site off of page one and onto page two where they belong…
PerforMixer
PerforMixer, compared to the other sites and with the exception of “Program X”, is a relatively new site. PerforMixer is suffering a bit of an age and nationality crises. It seems Google has recently started ranking sites with a different IP address range to the TLD below those from the same TLD IP range as the search engine. So, for example, PerforMixer does well in the Australian, New Zealand and South Pacific Google engines, but not as well in the US, CA and UK ones. Google has always done this to some extent, but recently it’s become rather acute. Not sure what’s going on there. I may end up buying US IP addresses to resolve this if it becomes permanent. PerforMixer is an interesting product in some respects. I predicted when I released it that it would be a slow seller. It has met that prediction. However it is a reasonably popular download and, probably because I’ve optimized in advance for it, receives a lot of search traffic from people looking for cracks, keygens and torrents for it. So it’s no runaway success in sales, but seems popular enough to steal given that these search terms are a daily occurrence now in my logs on all my sites.
So, back to the subject, PerforMixer is on page one for most of it’s important keywords, number one of page one in many instances and then further down the page is TwoCan for the same or similar keywords. Nice.
MixAction
The same story with MixAction. MixAction comes in first for related keywords, then TwoCan for many of those is further down the page and then, more recently, the newest player in the game:
CDROO
Now, CDROO was created to sell royalty free music and sound effects to MixAction customers primarily, with a wider view towards podcasters and online video creators. So it’s a good match and as it shares many keywords with MixAction it appears in an increasing number of instances for keywords on page one, often below TwoCan.
Program X
Another multimedia product and ultimately with a goal towards becoming our most important in many regards. The same technique as above to be used over time.
OK, that’s the beginnings of Integrated Marketing. Not download sites, they are not party of the plan beyond download.com which automatically means their affiliate sites. Just articles, content and roll your sleeves up hard work. A drovers dog could do it in fact!
Scott Kane
Quote of the day:
Sometimes people are layered like that. There’s something totally different underneath than what’s on the surface. But sometimes, there’s a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie. – Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon
Urgent Threat Message – An Outbreak Of Mono On Linux Or Has Swine Flu Infected Fanboys?
A touch of “Green” first up as a measure of respect to the people of Iran.
Now. To address the heading of this article, I’ll outright sum my own view on this in two sentences.
The threat to Linux is not Mono. The threat to Linux remains, after all these years, the fanboys and FOS fruits who hold it tighter to their heaving bosoms than a distressed four year old desperately clutches “blanky”.
The way these guys get worked up you’d think it was over something that really matters. Geez, like I dunno – civilians being slaughtered in Iran perhaps? Some of the terrifying video footage of people dying in Iran before our eyes – that’s something to get worked up over!!
But Technewsworld is reporting the “real news” story is about the outrage among FOS Geeks and violation of Mono on Linux?
That’s right – the Fanboy Linux geeks are hopping mad. Like – the worst thing that can happen, the most hideous thing they can imagine in their sheltered, pathetic self interested, cubicle – or bedroom – constrained lives is whether or not Mono is a secret threat to Linux. A – eyes darting nervously under tin foil hats – conspiracy by Microsoft to “PWN” them.
I mean – the definition of disinterested, disconnected, dysfunctional, dislocated, disincarnate assholes – I ran temporarily ran out appropriate “dis” words – has to be these guys. These are guys – which includes gal’s I should hasten to add, about whom one has to wonder if their girlfriends – or boyfriends – last name actually does end in .Gif
Seriously!
They need to get a grip – and not of the patently obvious bulge they possess – and get a life!
The irony of course is that they are “PWNed” by a man who they really should be concerned about – Stallman The Stultifier.
Free Software May Or May Not Be Meritocracy. But Frothing At The Mouth Over It Has To Be Mediocrity.
I mean – it’s a forensic psychiatrists wet dream! I’m sure they’ve got a whole swathe of tests they can perform on these guys that would give them enough information to write a life time of dissertations, peer papers and paperback books.
But the comment that grabbed me – mostly because it is truly accurate – from a Jason Knight was:
“”So many of them throw around the word freedom without understanding what freedom is — they’re all for freedom so long as you don’t disagree with them…” and also from Knight “News flash, freedom is about the ability to CHOOSE, and if I CHOOSE to use an open system based on a closed one, or GOD FORBID a closed one, that’s my choice.”
Nail on the head!
To offer a quote from a counter perspective of a geek that is “outraged” at the prospect of – gulp – Mono on Linux: Radu-Cristian Fotescu on Planete Beranger writes “I can’t comment on it, as I don’t want to read it again. It hurts my guts.”
Which kind of proves the point of the headline of this article really!
But then this nonsense is gushed by the “Pirate Party” ‘I’m Advocating Civil Disobedience’ in yet another cheesy FOS Fandom thread on the same subject.
This is a joke, guys. You can’t really be this worked up can you? Really? I mean, take a look around you. The world at large needs your help. There are some really serious issues out there that need addressing, how about using your “freedom” to assist some of the oppressed and slaughtered innocents we see, not just in this weeks flavor of the media Iran, but worldwide, year in, year out, 24 bloody seven!
Struth!
Scott Kane
Quote of the day:
There are more fools in the world than there are people. – Heinrich Heine
43 Things – Should Micro ISVs Care About These In Their Business – Or Not?
Recently a friend and a fellow mISV posted a link on Twitter to the blog article I’m going to discuss in this post. On Twitter I stated the chap who wrote the article made some good points, but that it was just a little naive and that one should take such things with a pinch of salt. I wasn’t saying the blog post, or it’s 43 points were necessarily wrong. Rather that while there’s some good philosophy in them business and marketing and in particular on the Internet are not cut and dried, not simple. I thought I’d share why here in a post, not to discount the post made on MellowBusiness.com but rather to reinforce it with some qualification and a little pinch of Baby Boomer mellowed middle-age. Now, if that statement doesn’t deserve a resounding slap on the back of the head I don’t know what does. 
If you wish you can read the full blog post at MellowBusiness.com by Clicking Here.
The 43 Points And What’s Right Or Wrong With Them.
I’ve stated here on this blog many times that PR rank is irrelevant to ranking, but your page rank I do not believe is irrelevant. Sadly the geeky days of deep research on the Net where people clicked beyond page one of the search engine results are over. If you’re not on page one you might as well be invisible and most businesses are indeed invisible – sadly those businesses include most micro ISV’s.
Being visible is relevant. What I see as I observe people using, say Google, is they tend to pay attention to the first three results on page one (yes, I’ve been known to peer over peoples shoulders in offices, libraries etc). The lower down page one you are, if they are engaged in this practice, the fewer clicks you are likey to get depending on your target group.
People who researched at school (late secondary and tertiary) *seem* (this is anecdotal not empirical) are more inclined to research deeper. Joe and Jill SixPack are not. These are the instant gratification sector of the community and therefore a majority on the net these days. If you are aiming at these folks then lower than the first few results on page one is going to have some effect on clicks. However… It’s relative. Being on page one – somewhere – is certainly better than being on page two or three or three thousand and fifty six. Not all my websites pages rank on page one for all the search terms. But for major ones most of them do. With many ranking in the first three. It’s not irrelevant. I’d be inclined to rephrase the first item here as “Don’t drive yourself to distraction about PageRank but you can’t afford to treat it as irrelevant either.” Like it or not any industry involved in marketing (all really) follows the tenets of the Real Estate industry of Location, Location, Location.
Profitability crushes all these metrics. I can’t fault this. The only real value to this data is for comparative reasons such as A/B testing, or if you’re a consultant marketer who needs stat’s to impress their clients in order to sell the effectiveness of their services. For micro ISV”s I tend to see, and it’s not a new trend, it stretches back to the 1990’s, a focus on how many downloads you get and the ratio of downloads to purchases. This I would argue is irrelevant to most of us. It’s sales as a whole that are important. Whether the business is profitable, expanding as and where you want it to, and of course how big your target market is to begin with. Small vertical markets often generate higher download to sales ratios, which renders the often quoted “industry standard” of approximately 1.3% meaningless. In some markets, for example one I was in at one point, the ratio was greater than 3%. But that 3% wasn’t necessarily profitable.
3. “The latest marketing gimmick. Fundamentals > everything else.”
This is a classic example of black, white and gray. Some marketing “gimmicks” are only “gimmicks” because they are new – the latest – and ultimately a select few settle down to become stock standards. As in all things in life it’s a judgement call. Judgement calls are best tempered with testing, experience and an open mind. RSS was widely viewed as a gimmick. Web 2.0 was largely viewed as a gimmick. Pet Rocks were largely viewed as a gimmick. All of these “gimmicks” have made a lot of people a lot of money.
4. “Achieving meaningless monetary milestones. Money is worthless unless it has a purpose.”
OK. This, as a philosophy is actually quite sound. As a philosophy.
As a guiding principle for living your life I like it, I subscribe to it. But make no mistake – if you don’t have milestones, yet want to achieve, then money or anything else you value is meaningful providing it takes you to where you want or need to go.
I shudder at the “Business Secrets” pyramid peddling, get rich schemers and their “Steps to…” <insert favourite scheme> too. But we can’t dismiss common sense because an idiot with a penchant for over simplification (the pyramid sellers) with another simplification. Moderation, focus and balance are meaningful and like it or lump it, unless you’re aiming to be a shirtless pauper you’re going to have a time of it in this world if you want to move forward in business, unless you have set goals and an idea of where you want to be and how to get there. Perhaps that’s indeed what he means by “meaningless”?
5. “That feeling of guilt if you work less than other people. Only feel guilty for working too much. “
As a rule for workaholics this is quite sound. As a rule for the slacker masses – its’ an Epic Fail!
Horses for courses. You have to decide where you fit on this one.
OK. This is completely wrong. Simple A/B testing for those who like evidence will quickly reveal why. Meta Tags are still important in SEO if they match natural content.
Now natural content means naturally written and not stuffed full of meta keywords in order to reinforce the tags – the old black hat SEO technique. Rather it’s the Meta Tags that should compliment the content because the content is about that topic. It does work, works even better on our sites if those Meta Tags are reinforced to more information on the topic on the site related to those tags via links that contain those keywords.
It’s very easy to simplify these things and make sweeping statements one way or another. But even in software development there is a finite limit to simplification. So it goes with these idea of meta tags. The search engines do use them, they are important but they’re not the end all and be all they were in the 1990’s and we’ve got the scammers, pyramid sellers and search engine spammers to thank for that.
The test? If you were a blogger you’d be able to test it daily…
OK. This is where my inner soothe comes out.
I can guarantee that I can predict what will happen if you don’t care about what is happening.
Epic Fail!
But there is nothing unhealthy or bad about looking to the future and learning from experience the likelihood of a given outcome. We have names for such things and for good reason. “Budgets” are, whether personal, business or government, an exercise in “what could happen”. They are a fiscal forecast. It’s similar with product. If you can’t predict possible trends, or don’t try, into the future, based on past experience and current trends you’re not proactively running your business. As humans we shape our destiny. When we are young the future is indeed all rosy generally. It’s shiny and new. It’s “all out there”. As we grow older we have these pesky darn things called “experiences” and urgent, painful encounters with “reality” and “disappointment”.
After several decades of these one learns that to avoid a good many of them, never all as we are only human and “sh%$ happens” – we do this by “What if Analysis”, or “What could happen”. It is one of the main reasons why political figures and business leaders are generally, with a few very good and esteemed exceptions, leaning to the gray and wrinkly side of “older”.
8. “Search engine optimization in general. Seriously: set up a blog, install some plug-ins – boom! You’re done.”
I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade here – but er – no.According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.
Now. To put that into some kind of context. Most blogs are buried, plug-ins or not, way down deep in the pages of obscurity – pick any search results of any engine. To get out of that electron pile of trash one has to post consistently and with purpose.
Google, as an engine, in particular, is not stupid – not so sure about the Microsoft engines – and if you’re not producing content crafted to the topic, aren’t using specific tags as keywords consistently and not planning for your results you simply won’t get there. Any idea how many “starting a micro isv blog” blogs are out there in the Google results? 13,900 on Google. Yet only a tiny fraction are read. The most notable are on page one – generally – not sure at all how this blog got there Like anything, point being, it takes work, maintenance and planning. Initially, particularly at the start of a trend, you’ll luck out.
But if you think by setting up a blog, tossing in some plug-ins and “boom!” you’re done is based on any kind of reality in the known universe – then I have this amazing bridge with view of a unique opera house and harbour I’d love to sell you.
Probably very true, but don’t tell my wife I said that.
10. “Launching something flawlessly. Good chance you’ll fail to do so if you try.”
There’s an awful lot of sense in this. But in trying, if you keep the premise in mind, you can realistically aim to launch doing the best you can. Being half hearted or “whatever” is as much a recipe for “failure” as trying to not have one. It’s about moderation and it’s also about accepting that so called “failures” are a learning opportunity. Treating each as an opportunity for self or business improvement is essential, which in a sense renders failures as successes.
11. “How fast your get listed in Google. Spend a couple of weeks blogging and your posts will start getting indexed within a couple of hours. It’s not that special nor should it concern you”.
OK. Yes and no, again. I know people who say it takes 3 months to rank or even get listed in Google. Others are more generous and say three weeks. I don’t like the number three. For this reason I make damn sure it takes approximately seven days to get listed and rank for something. Often, with care and planning, on page one and in some instances number one. It need not concern you if you follow the fundamentals:
Register domains months in advance of launching.
Prepare your content in advance of launching.
Have an XML sitemap ready and submitted to Google and other engines.
Have a nice starters pack of content related pages – articles in my opinion produce better results for ranking than sales and features or benefits pages (but you need them too).
Track and tweak your results.
This stuff, like many things in business, is like playing chess. You need to be aggressive, within healthy parameters, you need to plan several moves in advance and you need to know what your pieces (tools) do and how to best use them.
12. “Submitting to general directories. If there are some niche directories you can submit to then consider submitting to them, but those deals where you get 200+ submissions for $5 are a waste of money (and I’ve tested quite a few services).”
No argument from me on this one.
13. “Making sites based on fads. Arcade sites, proxies, MySpace resource sites. If you can start a side that creates a fad then you can get some quick cash, but being the follower will yield lesser returns (better to just focus on a sustainable business).”
Nor this one. The last in isn’t the brightest because the first in are invariably the brightest. But as always – there are exceptions.
14. Retirement. Care about doing something you’d want to do for the rest of your life. The idea of just getting to a certain age and saying “I’m done” terrifies me.”
He’s young. He’ll get over his terror.
15. “Blackhat techniques. Spamming, scamming and unethical practices are not sustainable and karma will come back to haunt those people involved in those practices. Build something you’re proud of.”
Absolutely agree. If it was left to me there wouldn’t be any Blackhat SEO idiots (or not so idiots) in the world. It’s not up to me (which is arguably a good thing) but don’t do it. It’s a race to nowhere.
16. “Recessions. Businesses that make smart decisions don’t go bust. Some businesses have some bad luck, and there will always be some risk but if you’re profitable, are good with finances and you’re respected then you’re not going anywhere.”
OK. The guy who wrote this across on MellowBusiness is experiencing his first recession. I’ve lived through three. Oh but it was so simple!
The reality is that each recession is different in as many ways as it’s the same as those preceding. It’s the differences that kick you in the guts.
It’s not bad luck.
You can be a wizard with finances, profitable and respected and still suffer an Epic Recession Based Fail! Ask any of the bodies jumping out windows on Wall Street in 1929.
Recessions are the financial equivalent of volcanos, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and bushfires. We know what causes them, but lack the tools (some would say will) to fix them. You can mitigate for a recession but you can’t prevent the kind of things that occur outside of your direct business or life control. Sadly those things are indeed the things that take out some businesses in a recession. In a depression they take out many or even most. It’s unfortunate but it has nothing to do with good or bad luck. In fact – my argument to point 7 above applies here too.
17 “How much money other people are making. You are not other people. Hearing about success can be inspirational but if you need other peoples success to reaffirm the direction you’re taking then you’re not following your own desires.”
How much money other people are making is indeed irrelevant largely except in the context of self measurement for improvement. So on this we tend to agree.
We feel happy when people approve of us.
But I do not agree that other people reaffirming you is a bad thing or that you should not seek it. You are a human being. Humans are gregarious tribal critters who thrive and indeed prosper on the affirmations of others.
Don’t hang by the thumbs for approval, but also, you have a right to be happy and being reaffirmed can indeed make you feel happy. Feeling happy = good. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!
Easy rule of thumb. Reaffirm others as you would have others reaffirm you.
- 18. “Quick bucks. Spending $8, building a quick site and selling it for $30 may seem like an easy $22. But then again, you probably spend at least 3-4 hours building and selling it. May as well work at McDonalds. It can be fun to mess around with this stuff, but don’t expect to build a business out of it.” No argument here.
19. “Pleasing everyone. You won’t be suited for everyone. Be yourself, do things your way and similar people will find you.”
Tell that to the hopefuls on FaceBook.
20. “Your search engine rankings fluctuating. Your rankings move around and will always move around. 99% of the time when there has been a significant drop in rankings my sites have recovered a couple of days later.”
Extremely true -but then all of us know only to well of the those Google Horror stories where a site simply disappears for no easily discernable reason.
Be proactive. Don’t stress unnecessarily, but being cavalier won’t help much if Google decides you’re damaged property.
21. “The latest information product launch. Every now and then an info product with good info will launch. Don’t get sucked into the hype machine every few weeks though. Anything that provides real value will be re-launched.”
Absolutely! Totally agree.
21. “Making everything business-y. I strictly use Facebook for personal use. No business at all. Don’t feel pressured to use every web app/tool for business. Sometimes its nice to just browse Facebook idly to see what my friends have been doing. The internet is more than just a source of income. It can be mighty fun to just be a user of it.”
I use Facebook and Twitter for both. No reason why you can’t do the same. There are no absolutes here.
22. “High paying Adsense keywords. Ugh, I forgot that this is still around. You will not make money just because you put the keywords student loans on a page with Adsense. ”
Yup. That’s common sense.
23. “Sucking the profit dry. Most sites can earn more money than they’re currently making BUT that doesn’t mean they should. Google could sell front page ads for millions of dollars a year, but it’d hurt the user experience and people would hate them for it. Think about the experience the user has.”
Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t either. When I was young I had lofty ideals too. That was before mortgages, children, medical expenses that invariably grow as you get older and a plethora of other life cost factors.
Use common sense, always, but if you’ve got it “flaunt it!’
24. “Buying inbound links. Make content that is worth linking too. It’s a bit harder but it’s free and is not a waste of time.”
Depends on your definition of “buy”. A free copy of a product to a blogger? If you think you can justify the return – the blogger has the reads of the right target audience – for example then I’d say yeah, buy.
25. “Making generic “make money online” blogs. Ugh, please, just don’t do it. So…much…crap. If you have some unique insight or “angle” then go ahead and create the site, but I’ll stab the next person who writes another post about “7 ways to make $1 per day from Twitter!”
He’s right on the money here. Get rich quick schemes are always pyramids. No matter how many times they declare in their sales text they are not (me thinks you protest to much applies with these kind of scammers marketers)
27. “Badmouthing other people. Takes so much energy. If someone is legitimately scamming or doing something illegal then post about it. But most of the time people badmouth others for personal reasons. “
Except when you’re bad mouthing “Get Rich Quick” pyramid schemes on the net.
Also referred to “eating everything you see.” The internet is a wonderful tool of human ingenuity. Like all such tools of human ingenuity it’s infested with more nonsense than the stars in the galaxy of Andromeda. Pinch of salt.
29. “Knowing everything. There are people with 200+ RSS feeds in their RSS reader. No one should need to know that much current information. Subscribe to the key players in the industry and that’s it. I subscribe to 2 video shows, 2 podcasts, 4 business blogs, 1 tech blog and 1 gaming blog. You should be excited when a new item is in your RSS reader.”
Moderation is a powerful discipline. No argument here from me.
30. “Being everything. You can’t do everything really well, so just outsource what you suck at.”
But ensure you are honest in determining what you suck at. Some folks have zero self confidence, others have to bloody much! If in doubt – ask some friends on colleagues that can be trusted to be honest. No, your Mum, your wife, your girlfriend or anybody else who thinks the sun shines out of some orifice you possess is not a good resource for this.
31. “Being bigger than you are. I’d rather deal with a home business than a faceless corporation. Most people are like that. Stop worrying about being a small business – embrace it. ”
True enough – so would I. But you’d be amazed how many people would not. Particularly in business to business sales. Your judgement. Don’t lie, but there’s no need to sell people on the virtues of your “micro” ISV if they’re not actually asking either.
32. Glitz and glamour. You don’t need HD video camera or the top editing software to create online videos. Look at some of the popular stuff on YouTube. Find the true core of everything and focus on that.”
Nope. There’s a reason why badly made videos work on YouTube. The popular bad ones are funny and/or are not selling product. If you are selling a product you’d better be reasonably competent. People have been educated by the media to demand nothing less. YouTube in this instance is not a good example to follow in terms of “content quality”.
Nope. Not entirely. Internet marketing in general is extremely different to offline marketing. Something the media companies have discovered and failed to act on and it’s been at their immanent peril. Yes, by all means read about fundamental marketing. But the internet is about NOW. Offline marketing is more often about “shortly”.
Well now, hold on a tick. A tool is a tool. Use a tool wisely and be moderate in how you choose to use it. A tool that takes up more time than it produces results clearly isn’t working for you. But that doesn’t mean drop the tool. Twitter isn’t a great tool, for me, for blogging, but it works very well for things like politics – believe it or not. I can see the next Australian election campaigns at the Federal and Victorian state level being conducted heavily on Twitter. It will work well for those who get a handle on how it should be done – and lousy for those who use their “minders” to do the Tweeting.
35. “Being who you “should” be. Never fall into the trap of being who you should be. If you’re yourself then your instantly unique in your marketplace, don’t have to pretend (which makes things a lot easier) and you will attract people who are like you. It’s really a no-lose situation. ”
As a general yardstick I think this makes good sense. However – if you’re a sloppy, bad mouthed SOB and that’s how you act on the net in respect of your business it’s a pretty fair bet you need to make some adjustments there.
36. “Negative people. Don’t waste your time with peoples whose glass if half empty. I believe most people choose to be unhappy just because its easier to relate to most people with complaints. You don’t want to know those people.“
Yes, you do want to know them. Not everything they say is complete negative nonsense. Balance, as in all things, is required. Glass half full types can at times be so optimistic they fail to see the smoke for the fire – and as a consequence all to easily get burned.
Oh yeah!! This is so true it should be twitted, tweeted, FaceBooked, Googled, YouTubed and RSS fed as mandatory to all micro ISV’s.
Face it. The number of micro ISV’s who conduct zero marketing, scoff at the need for marketing, cling to outmoded, outdated and often fictional theories on marketing – or worse – base their beliefs on marketing on how they, technical people, respond to marketing is positively overwhelming. They are their own worst enemies. Which is, of course, wonderful for the rest who strive to learn more and don’t rely on happy accidents, invariably causing them to erupt in peels of laughter – all the way to the bank.
Actually – scratch what I said about telling people.
.
38. “Word count. Don’t dilute the quality of content with the quantity of words. “
Can’t disagree. Though as one of those people who accidently ranks as one of the wordiest people around (read waffle) I find it hard to imagine anybody concentrating on this to begin with.
39. “Control. Don’t let your controlling nature get in the way of growing your business. Delegate work to others and let them make decisions. Let go. ”
Hard lesson for tech types, but none the less very true and very important.
40. “Time suckers. If people are unfairly sucking your time, cut em loose. Give people a chance, but there are those who will take advantage of your attention – don’t let them.”
Sadly so. The same goes for organizations and groups of people. I learned this the hard way.
41. “Internet marketing newsletters. Occasionally their might be good content in these but I find most of the time they’re just promoting products. If a product is that amazing/important you’ll hear about it at some point.”
Again this is sad but true. I receive only two these days. One of those is set to go.
I didn’t realize the original writer of these 43 points had spent anytime on the Business of Software forums.
43. “Convincing people. If you provide quality content people will want to give you money. Convincing people is becoming a thing of a past.”
Yes, that’s right. Please do not convince people of anything in relation to selling your products online. It is a thing of the past. Please stand back while myself and others concentrate on convincing them instead…
I can’t agree with this. Convincing people is not a thing of the past. There is certainly a Gen Y trend that does not tolerate the traditional marketing pushed at Gen Baby Boomer and Gen X. But that’s not the same thing at all. Persuasion has anthropological and bio-cultural roots. If it didn’t Gen Y’s theories on advertising wouldn’t have any currency amongst Gen Y. FaceBook would be empty, Google would be unsearched, blogs would be unread and the sale of mobile (cell) phones would plummet overnight.
I’d like to also compliment the original author on what I felt to be an excellent and well thought out article. Kudos to him!
Scott Kane
Quote of the day:
There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past. – George Carlin
