And the “advantage” of something like this rolling out now – in Aug/Sep – is that surfers will get used to it and perhaps some “banner” blindness will set in.

What the heck am I talking about? This:

Today we’ve launched a change to our ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site. For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site (source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/08/showing-more-results-from-domain.html)

To be fair, Google is reacting to Microsoft’s Bing search engine here and has been testing this new multi-listing for a while…

And it looks all innocent when you’re searching for information about the exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History. But what about when you’re looking for an HP printer or a Dyson vacuum?

You can click on the image and see that above the fold, only Google shopping and hp.com URLs are being displayed.

What about Amazon.com? Or your niche website selling HP printers? Pushed down in the results.

Now, there are multiple forms of this listing display and I’ve tried to show both examples.

With the AMNH case you had AMNH.org sites taking up the SERPs *and* you had a directory listing at the main AMNH.org result.

All this takes up valuable screen real estate and despite all the social and web 2.0 properties out there, most users hate to scroll if they aren’t really engaged in the content above the fold.

We can craft all sorts of evil conspiracy theories about Google doing this to drive up Adwords revenue but that doesn’t really help.

What you need to do is start monitoring the SERPs for your sites and for related brand/product affiliate sites. The Google May Day update had an effect on search results for long tail keywords and this modification is addressing the shortest tail brand-category type pages.

The best information will come from watching your traffic deltas in cases where Google is now favoring a brand name website.

If you were ranking for brand-category type keywords like (‘dyson vacuum cleaners’) before you want to take special note of shifts in the rankings and how this is impacting your long tail traffic to things like your page on the Dyson DC 25 Ball Vacuum Cleaner.

If you see dramatic changes then it’s time to consider more advanced SEO techniques like third level push and variants to get more juice to the interior product pages and perhaps give up on the category.

This is a grossly simplified piece of advice – the bottom line is that you’ll have to revisit your internal linking and your link building and (re)focus on what you can reliably rank for given Google’s changes.

As Cosmo says in Fairly Odd Parents… “good times… good times…”

Note: I’ve been busy lately creating a new version of the 0toCash blog and finishing up a series of reports (free) on “money models” for subscribers. So here I am tweaking and changing my local copy of the site here and I come across a bunch of “draft” posts… Posts that I wrote and didn’t edit, or didn’t finish or just never pressed the “publish” button. Below is one of them. And it’s about my favorite marketing time of the year – New Year’s.  Enjoy…

Good affiliate marketers rejoice come Labor Day (that’s the first Monday in September for you folks not in the US)… why?

It’s the start of the holiday season. That beautiful time of the year when people open their wallets a bit wider than normal and buy all sorts of stuff online and off.

Brick and mortar stores look forward to “Black Friday” and of late e-ecommerce vendors count the days until Cyber Monday. Both of these are great days to cash in on your efforts as an affiliate marketer but they pale in comparision to another day…

New Year’s.

I couldn’t say this any better than smaxor did last year…

There are two things that make the New Year a fantastic time for affiliate marketing

1. All the brand advertisers that were buying and bidding up prices leave the market place. So reps for ad companies actually want to talk with us again and have time for us affiliates.
2. New years resolutions. It’s a new year everyone wants to stop what they’re doing and start doing something better.

If you doubt that New Year’s resolutions are prime hunting ground for niche affiliate marketing, get this.

(source: http://www.oooff.com/php-affiliate-seo-blog/affiliate-marketing/explosive-formula-for-affiliate-marketing-in-the-new-year/)

Here’s the US Government’s list of top New Year’s Resolutions. Complete with links to (mostly) public domain content you can use and refer to:

• Drink Less Alcohol
• Get a Better Education
• Get a Better Job
• Get Fit
• Health-e-Cards for Holidays and New Year
• Lose Weight
• Manage Debt
• Quit Smoking Now
• Reduce Stress at Work
• Reduce Stress Overall
• Save Money
• Take a Trip
• Volunteer to Help Others

Look familiar?
Pretty much this is a who’s who list of information product niches…
and their interest peaks around January 1.

Imagine that…

Now, if you weren’t around back in 2004 and 2005… it was ‘da bomb (or something like that). Basically you had two big camps in the IM world: the Adsense folks and the niche marketing information product folks. Frank and Ed were the spiritual leaders of the infoproduct crowd and dubbed their method the “Underachiever Method.”

It was based on buying Adwords traffic (“never pay more than $0.05 a click…” was an infamous rule) using a bazillion keywords and driving traffic to a flycatcher page. The “flycatcher” was a simple survey that asked the visitor their most pressing question about whatever niche you were in.

This did two essential things:

1. PROVED beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could drive traffic to your landing page
2. TOLD YOU EXACTLY what the market wanted in an information product in that niche

You didn’t actually create the ebook/audio/video until AFTER you had enough feedback from your market.

So what did you do next? Simple – take the burning questions your market told you about, get an information product built, slap up a sales page to replace the flycatcher, and start selling.

Traffic was cheap back then and being into lots of tiny niches was the fashion. Ed even made a big splash when he sold 39 of his niche sites for something like $4 million.

Now, the Undies concept – which begat the original 30 Day Challenge, the Ultra Underachievers coaching program, and skads of offshoots and variants – is evergreen. Information products are a GREAT business to be in. Always has and always will be. People always have a problem to solve and a “how to” book, ebook, video, or audio will always find an audience with good marketing.

The Undies approach on the other hand has gone through massive revisions over the years thanks to the 30 Day Challenge and other programs.

But if you want to see what everyone was talking about back in the day (at least half of the IM world) – here’s a link to an old Underachiever’s Newsletter.

I have no idea what Russell’s going to do with Undies in 2010 but you should head over to http://UnderachieverFormula.com if you’re interested in a little bit of IM history and what’ll probably be a good product launch.

By “works” I mean that it gives you TARGETED traffic to your landing page of choice and helps create the right kind of social ‘buzz’ in a non-spammy and scummy way.

I know… an automated Twitter app that isn’t spammy. Who would have thunk it?

The best thing is that Keith tells a great story about how he learned about the software, gives you a personal case study of how it worked for him in something like 17 nanoseconds and THEN outlines 5 ways you can monetize using this.

Oh, and he also gives you an EXAMPLE of one of this affiliate review sites focusing on a particular brand of protein shake called Shakeology (you can see how he’s set up his site here: Shakeology Review Site).

OK, so for spit nothing you get:

1. great blog post that you can model
2. info on what looks to be ‘freakin great non-spammy Twitter marketing software
3. an actual case study complete with traffic and the site!

Ummm… what are you doing here? Go to Keith’s Affiliate Radio site now and read the post

And there in lies the birth of the famed “7 Day e-course”

The 7 day course model was THE model new internet marketers were
taught…

And most people thought it was as simple as loading up the autoresponder with your course chopped into 7 pieces and your link in each message.

There are a couple of problems:

• this isn’t 1999
• 7 is not really a magic number

Online commerce was brand new in 1999. It was a bit harder to make a sale – especially for infoproducts. These days things are different – ebooks are outselling harcovers over at Amazon.com and people are very comfortable with buying online.

So how many times do you need to touch someone?

Well, the question is actually the wrong one to ask. The right question to ask (and Corey asked and answered this for his massive lists) is what is the lifetime value of someone that subscribes to my list?

I mean, is it worth capturing the email, making the lead magnet, yada yada if I am only going to make $0.02 a person on my list lifetime? Some shit just works better as a straight transaction.

The other thing is that “7″ isn’t a magic number. It’s a general number and it’s more than correct for what it is, but you have to take it in context.

Now, for a launch (we didn’t have those back in the day young ‘fella) you may only need 3 messages.

For a normal list building affiliate/product promotion there’s no real magic anymore to 7 messages.

In fact, a better number might be 20 or 30.

Yep – 20 or 30.

Almost every test done shows better conversion the more you mail the list.

As long as you have something to say.

As long as you have a good “hook”

Let’s talk a little about hooks. These are your leverage points
with your subscriber.

This is what makes YOU interesting to THEM.

Here are some snippets from Andre Chaperon’s Autoresponder Madness 2.0 in the section on “hooks” in week 1:

(shit, I didn’t mention to Andre that I am publishing these
so don’t go diming me out!)

“… Without a hook you’re just another average
schmuck marketer peddling more stuff.”

“… The hook is that little opening where I can
jump in and add REAL UNIQUE VALUE.”

“… The trick is to do it in a way that’s unique
and makes your marketing stand out from the other
schmucks promoting the same product … but with
no angle at all.”

“… Use your “hook” to grab the attention and
interest of your prospect or customer.”

“… This is all created with open/nested loops.”

“… Most (like the large majority) of marketers are
lazy. Their marketing is bland and one-dimensional.”

For the “how to” implementation details and all the nitty
gritty details you have to actually get ARM 2.0

It’s worth it.

http://0toCash.com/go/arm2story

Now, if you’re wondering what kind of super-duper ninja bonus I have cooked up for you, it’s simple.

Get ARM 2.0 through my link and email me the receipt (or use the help desk and open a ticket).

I’ll PERSONALLY work with you on your “soap opera” sequence – that’s the magic sauce that lets
Andre crush it online in markets big and small with these tiny lists he has.

I’ll help you lay out the sequence, work on the drafts and tighten the thing up.
We’ll work together soup to nuts.

Cool?

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

If I had a broad brush I could paint the internet marketing world – and the entire marketing world in general – in two colors:

1. transactional marketing
2. relationship – or engagement – marketing

With transactional marketing there is no “lifetime value of the customer” – there is no list building, follow up, or focus on getting anything other than the sale (or the Adsense click).

A lot of people get drawn to affiliate marketing because of the transactional model – no customer service, no need to communicate with anybody. Just put up some pages and wait for the money to come in. Adsense is the same way. Hell, the entire Adsense model is based on this arbitrage approach.

What’s important here is that this is an immediate gratification approach to marketing.

And that’s ok. It is what it is.

When someone comes to your site you need them to do one of three things:

1. buy
2. bookmark
3. leave

Now, the BBL model applies to most any type of direct marketing but here the “buy” is really “B-U-Y”. It’s not just take an action like download a free report or subscribe to a list, etc. And that makes all the difference…

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Engagement marketing is different.

Here you’re some marketing version of a tantric Woody Harrelson or Sting and you delay your “gratification” (money) for a deeper and more lasting experience (money).

Now, you can pimp this model out and try and fake it. Does this sound familiar?

Squeeze page to a free report (or free access to software, etc.) -> OTO (one time offer) pages trying to upsell the visitor -> final download or “member” page…

Yep. Butterfly marketing.

Or how about:

Low priced $7 – $27 offer -> bucket offer (“get these 10 books for less than the price of 3″) -> final download page…

The point here is that the list you’re building here – whether it’s a buyer list or a freebie list isn’t the focus of the activity. You’re just trying to score on the first date so to speak.

AND.. any conversations you have with the person afterwards is really just to score some more. This isn’t really even “Friends With Benefits” marketing. You aren’t friends. You just want the cookies (money).

So I need to get something out of the way… this shit works.

Hammering your list with offers and deals does work. And if you peel back the clock 10 years it’s the dominant way the gurus taught any internet marketer to model. This was THE WAY Frank Kern – Mr. Mass Control – taught legions of followers to market. The funny thing is that Frank didn’t quite follow his own advice. Or better put – he was massively successful because he DIDN’T always follow his own advice. Kinda. More on that in a bit.

To be clear – hammering your list is NOT engagement marketing (at least not the way 99.98% of folks do it).

Most people don’t remember it but back in the day Stephen Pierce was a hot-shit internet marketer. His “Whole Truth” ebook was a massive success and Stephen parlayed his talent and experience later into becoming more of personal development and success coach. He even travelled with Tony Robbins for a time on tour. In fact, there’s a GREAT audio with Kern and Pierce where Frank goes through 7 secrets of internet marketing – or something like that. Massively good audio if you can dig up a copy.

Anyway, Pierce had this theory of emailing his list. He called it the “breathing” theory. It’s was simple:

Pimp every other email. Deliver content in between.

Now, a crude person like me might call this the “hug and fuck” model of internet marketing but that makes it seem like something base and crass. It wasn’t (and isn’t). With the H&F breathing model (heh heh) you focus each message on EITHER pre-selling or delivering massive content.

You can (and would) include affiliate/product links in the “content” messages – but that just isn’t the focus.

In a lot of markets this worked better than just pimping and hammering the list. But it still wasn’t a full engagement model for 99.98% of the people that tried it. And that’s why it flops with a lot of people.

Why? There’s no personality

Engagement Marketing

Engagement marketing is about 2 things:

1. the persona (“avatar”) of your ideal customer
2. the persona you are projecting in your messages

Get these two things right and you kick ass in ANY market you enter.

Want some examples? Let me give you three great examples of wildly different people and niches:

Underground Hypnosis (Trey Smith)

Combat Conditioning (Matt Furey)

Double Your Dating (David DeAngelo aka Eben Pagan)

You should be on EACH of these email lists. They’re very very different but freakin masterful in their own ways. You’ll learn TONS just by reading and re-reading each message.

NOTE: These guys are always testing so you might go to the homepage and have to look around for the subscription box to get onto their list. It’s worth the tiny bit effort though, trust me.

Let’s break this down. With engagement marketing you want a crystal clear picture of who you’re selling to.

Are they male or female? Age? Single, divorced, married, or engaged? Kids at home? In school? Great job? Make $150,000 a year? In debt up to their eyeballs? Secretly sneak in a little porn most nights online? Would rather camp than spend the week at the beach on vacation? Member of the NRA? Listen to NPR a lot? Did they backpack across Europe or do they work in the family business?…

Get the idea? Now, a little secret – most people really are living lives of “quiet desperation” just like Thoreau said. In fact this has been the cornerstone approach of folks like copywriting legend John Carlton for decades.

It’s common sense that you wouldn’t talk to J’Money and Nate Dog – two 23 yr olds just out of college and ‘livin the life – the same way you’d approach Gordon Gekko. BUT… here’s the key:

Everyone is insecure. Everyone is bored. Everyone wants to be distracted. Everyone is avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. (Not to get all Tony Robbins on you).

You get into their mind. You tap into who they are and what they want deep down inside. You ENGAGE those emotions – or at least provide some distractions from daily life…

And you cash big fat f’ing checks.

Oh, and along the way you can actually help people. Seriously. It isn’t all about capitalism and manipulation.

The next part is hard. It’s a simple question really – who are you?

I don’t mean this in some philosophical existential way. Nah, I am being a lot more practical. Who do your subscribers and visitors and customers link you are?

Truth be told I think “personality” and engagement is important in blogging and most forms of online marketing. But I think it’s CRITICAL for email and your lists.

Here’s why – if you’re an A list blogger people are coming to you. They get to TiVo when they access your content. So sure, you need to be engaging and provide good content and escape and all that. But fundamentally your blog readers are making a CHOICE to come to your site. They’re taking action on their own.

That’s HUGE because it basically means they are pre-sold.

With email, it’s a “push” model. You are sending your content to them and vying against their Facebook updates, the latest dirty jokes, and Amy’s zucchini bread recipe.

So… you need a personality in order to keep them opening the emails, reading (or at least skimming) them, and taking action by clicking on your links.

Some people get all weirded out by this “persona” and personality thing. They think it’s deceptive and manipulative – it’s just not honest. Well, that’s bullshit. Do you talk to your buddies from high school or the neighborhood the same way you talk to your spouse? Or your boss?

There is NOTHING wrong with creating a persona that’s “close” to who you think you are. But that’s not the same as you. No matter how hard you try, you project something to people and it isn’t who you “really” think you are. After all, if this shit didn’t happen you wouldn’t have all those tween, teen, and 20-something girls saying “but… he just GETS me” (of course implying the rest of us just don’t).

Ever call someone a “used car salesman”? That stereotype is a powerful persona. How about hearing the story of the spiritual guru that was caught diddling with the young female students. Why does this creep you out? Well (1) it’s just creepy and wrong and (2) we all apply a persona to these kinds of people and “pig” or “creepy serial rapist” isn’t in the model.

So while you may be against racial profiling in airport security lines when it comes to marketing online you HAVE to profile. And you have to APPEAL to the inner desires of your profile (polite folks like me say “demographic”). Capese?

Not doing this is death. I know a guy that had this great affiliate business – website had all these top 10 rankings for killer keyword phrases. Long tail AND all the high traffic short tail ones. His site was an authority site and traffic was never a problem. Shit, he even had a nice list of prospects and buyers.

But the list converted like shit. Why? No personality. No emotion. When he did mail (which wasn’t often enough) it was dry and bland. No strong call to action. No entertainment value. Nada. What a waste.

Now I’m telling you this for one simple reason:

Engagement marketing may be the road less traveled but it indeed makes all the difference. It’s a more stable business model. And for most folks it is CHEAPER and EASIER to execute (with a little practice

Frank the Barber

When I was growing up I only got my hair cut at Frank’s Barber Shop. I think I was 15 and Frank had sold his business before I even walked into another barber shop let alone one of these franchise unisex beauty places.

Why? The atmosphere. The personality. You walked into Frank’s and you were walking into the neighborhood. All the older men were there, reading the paper, getting their haircut, Talking about the Yankees, their wives, this and that.

Frank had a plate – a silver platter I’ll never forget it – filled with liquor. You’d go in, sit down, have a little drink, and talk sports and life. Now, I was too little to have a drink but my grandfather used to let me have a sip or two…

But my point here is that you didn’t go to Frank’s because he was the best barber, or the closest barber, or even the friendliest barber – sometimes Frank was a real bastard.

You went to Frank’s Barber Shop… because of Frank. And because of the people that went there. You IDENTIFIED with Frank’s.

Know what? That’s pure engagement.

Here’s the funny thing.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew Frank. Shit, people 20, 30 miles away knew Frank. The place – and he – was iconic back then. Time passes and Frank gets sick. He takes on a partner and eventually sells the busines and then dies.

Things were never the same. If you went to Frank’s you didn’t all of sudden go to Jimmie’s or Pepe’s or Mike’s. Everyone scattered here and there. I think most of us gave up and just started going to those unisex places.

Here’s that “funny” thing though – they published Frank’s obituary. It was long. Frank was a husband, father, business owner, tennis coach, and opera singer.

WTF!?

Frank was an opera singer. Never a star but he had bit parts here and there on a regular basis at the Met and nearby. Opera was “his life’s passion” along with coaching tennis.

Not cutting hair and shooting the shit with the guys. Not listening to the same 12 Sinatra and Dean Martin records. Not laying out a platter of bourbon and whiskey for everyone.

Fucking opera and tennis.

Who knew?

(Actually I knew about his love of tennis but that’s not part of the story.)

Frank was as Italian American as the rest of us. And his customers were hard working blue collar guys that liked the New York Yankees, a good drink, a paper, and spending a little time away from the wife and family.

And Frank.., well, he was “one of us.”

Get it?

The Reason To Talk To You

Now, the reason to engage with someone is up to you. You can be the expert and dish out sage advice and wisdom. You can be the reviewer – a regular Rodger Ebert – and provide honest and insightful reviews on the “best” stuff out there. You can even be the lazy underachieving surfer dude that makes money almost by accident.

The important thing is to identify your ideal customer and talk to them in that voice.

And the cool thing is that you don’t really even need a reason to talk to them – pretty much anything will do.

Like that episode of Top Chef you saw on the DVR? Mail your list.

You think Rafael Nadal needs a hair cut? Mail your list.

You’re worried about the latest diet fad you read in “Diet Fad Monthy”… Mail your list.

Sometimes you can report on stuff – just follow shit with Google trends and tell people about interesting things.

Sometimes you can recommend.

But almost all of the time you’re telling stories.

That’s the key. Stories. Remember – you’re readers want to be distracted. They want to escape and enjoy and smile and laugh and be taught (and led).

Hitting them over the head with “buy my shit” emails doesn’t cut it for long.

Now, I can count on my fingers the people that I think are really, really good at this. And my buddy Andre is one of the best.

He’s got this ninja mind control way of promoting products that he calls “soap opera” sequences. It’s pretty NLP and persuasion cool.

The thing is – he’s doing this with TINY lists. In internet marketing and other competitive lists. It’s really unreal.

What’s even better is that he’ll teach you some of the magic.

There’s two things you need to do:

1. Read Andre’s story of how he crushes affiliate offers with these tiny lists of his -> http://www.0tocash.com/go/arm2story

2. Then read the report he put together for you. There’s a big honking PDF image in the middle of the story. Click on it to read. Or here’s the shortcut -> http://www.0tocash.com/go/arm2story#report

Let me wrap all this up with one thing…

Listen, there’s no “one way” to make it online. Everything works, except when it doesn’t. But having a list and engaging with your people is an asset that pays you for years. It can’t be slapped by Google and it doesn’t rank one day and vanish the next.

Engage people. Make money. It’s not quite that easy but it can be pretty freakin’ close.

Remember:

Andre’s story -> http://www.0tocash.com/go/arm2story

Andre’s report -> http://www.0tocash.com/go/arm2story#report

Ryan Deiss launches Perpetual Traffic Formula today and you can expect the promotions to be HUGE… There’s a sportcar and a whole host of sweet gifts on the line for the affiliates that can bring home the bacon.

Now, I only have a couple of things to say. If you’re on my email list you probably already read this (so apologies)…

PTF may not be for you.

Seriously. This isn’t some reverse psychology “bad news” thing. I am being 100%  straight up with you.

Here’s a quick video I did (2:25) talking about PTF and what might actually be better options for you right now.

http://0toCash.com/ptf-launch

p.s. Don’t get me wrong. I love Ryan’s courses. Wholesale Traffic Formula was brilliant for instance. But bottom line – you may not be ready for Perpetual Traffic Formula.

How many do you have?

If you’ve been doing any kind of search engine optimization you know hoe important links are.

And not just any kind of links – quality links.

Sure, you can get by for a while – 6 to 10 weeks usually – with profile links and pligg submissions direct to your money page. But it doesn’t last long.

Authority Codes is a new free report that gives you a list of high quality authority sites to get backlinks from.

Here’s the deal. Download the report and shoot us a ticket at  http://0toCash.com/support and I’ll give you a private report from my personal spreadsheet with at least 39 additional authority sites that you can post links on. I say at least because I am not sure how many of the 1,724 sites I want to give up.

So I’m bribing you to read a free report. What kind of world are we in?

Seriously – read the authority codes report. Send me a support ticket. Score more high quality authority linking sites.

1. the email structure itself. It’s a GREAT presell and attention getter.
2. you HAVE to watch the Vishen presentation that Yanik put up. That’s the first link Peter gives you.
3. TAKE SOME ACTION and look at the posts and structure of Vishen’s site. That’s the second link.

Really look at the posts in Google Reader. DECONSTRUCT his business.

Seriously. This is one of the most powerful videos and exercises you can do. Full stop.

Hey – it’s Peter,

When I wrote Nanobloggers last year, I did it with the intent to help create better personal businesses for people. The model obviously works, I’m living proof of that and so are the many people who REALLY put NB to work.

The NB concept is easy – but it requires work. Every solid, long term business requires work. I don’t deal in one-hit-wonders and neither should you.

I find it quite amusing to see that some NB buyers have pimped out Facebook profiles where they yap all effin’ day long with their 2,000 or more “friends” …
but when I visit the Nanoblog they build 5 months ago, I see nothing but virtual tumbleweeds and hear nothing but the sound of crickets.

When I ask them why that is – they say that they didn’t “get” Nanobloggers, that it’s too difficult for them.

NOTE: Click on the link below to keep reading. I have some killer commentary that’ll help your business apply this very notion after Peter’s email finishes up.

Listen, Einstein … has it occurred to you that “Facebooking” and Nanoblogging are VERY similar? Just saying!

Do me a favor – go read up on the original NB manual again. Go read up on the oodles of mile-long posts I put up in the forum. Maybe this time a lightbulb will go off in your head. Maybe this time you’ll notice the difference between traditional “internet marketing” and the Nanobloggers concept.

Had to get that off my chest – onwards…

Here’s a guy that totally gets the concept I desperately tried to bring to y’all with Nanobloggers. He gets it to the tune of a cool mil in a year (like one of the guys in my Golden Six group).

Now – he is not explicitly talking about Nanobloggers but the concept is exactly the same. (he even uses the “fake” persona – grin).

The video is 28 minutes long and there’s nothing to buy – just listen to his story. THAT is what NB is all about!

Here’s the video -
http://lin.sh/VLY (no affiliate link)

After you’re done watching the video, check out the blog he is referring to in the video -
http://lin.sh/VRV (no affiliate link)

Now do this – grab the feed URL of that blog and plop it into Google Reader. When the feed loads, scroll down and you’ll see that the message says (loading more items…). Keep scrolling down until the total feed items show up. I’ll tell you how much there are — 200 posts … that’s it!

200 posts and a cool mil in his pocket. Got that?

Hopefully you heard what Vishen said in the video – he took other people’s posts, added a bit of value and politely linked back to the original author. Sound familiar? It should!

He is merely curating other people’s work and “fattens” up the content with his own stuff. Brilliant! I told you guys this 6 months ago. Remember?

Did you notice what “Michael” is doing on that blog? He’s taking names, baby! He has built a big, fat list of over 70K people.

I call that leverage – no no no, I call that genius!

THAT is how you build a business – you don’t build a business by pimping Russian brides CPA offers on Plenty of Fish! I hope I made my point clear to you and, if I haven’t, scroll all the way down now and unsubscribe because I will keep repeating this same stuff to you over and over again.

I’m persistent like that

Another guy who immediately snapped up the importance of NB was John “X” Barker. He actually bought NB the day it came out and he told me a couple of times that it changed his view on business. To be totally honest – it didn’t happen at first, I had to nudge him a little bit.

When John said he wanted to run a couple of webinars for his peeps who bought NB through his link, I immediately jumped on board and said I wanted to be on those webinars to help and offer more insight.

The result was .. well .. kinda unexpected.

Of all the Nanoblogger webinars – I missed one. I think there are 5 or 6 total. The ones where I’m on – we kept going for around an hour to an hour and a half each. Nothing was sold on there, it was all about NB “insights” and conceptual strategies.

At the end of the webinar series John said to me: “I learned a lot…”

For a hard core marketer like X to learn a lot, that must mean I delivered quite a bit of goodness.

It’s about how I use Nanobloggers. If you’ve ever listened to my, now notorious, BTS audios with Keith Baxter – well,  the ones with X are similar but have much more “meat”.

Remember that we offered the bonuses from the other affiliates to y’all for free? They were good but not great. John’s webinars are not great, they are flippin’ killer!

Today – John (finally) allowed me to tell you about the webinars. He put them up on his blog and you can get them for $50.

http://lin.sh/NBX (affiliate link)

That link takes you to roughly 7 hours of conceptual Nanobloggers insights. No frills, no fluff. Good stuff that can easily help you build a business like Vishen talked about earlier in the video.

What do you want to do? Build that long term business or do you still prefer to advertise Russian bride CPA offers on Plenty of Fish? Which one seems more viable to you?

If the first, go here -
http://lin.sh/NBX

If the latter, unsubscribe below – there are LOTS of other lists available that cater to your needs. Go join those instead.

Respect,

Peter

PS: Later this week, you’ll receive another email from me that highlights a nifty, little, kick-butt tool. Using this in combo with NB is dyn-O-mite. Watch out for a message from me in a few days.

One of the take away lessons you HAVE to get here is that Vishen’s whole model here is about lead capture. There’s NO SELLING going on in the blog. It is purely a lead capture and engagement device.

Go through the blog posts. Most of them are just “newsmastered” — an introductory paragraph or two and then an article or story (with full credit given) from somewhere else. Vishen calls this a “Roger Ebert” type of site. Whether you think of this as a variation of Nanoblogging, Goobert, Affiliate Piloting, Newsmastering, yada yada DOES NOT MATTER. This is very powerful and this is a real business here.

What I love about this is how clean it is. It’s a long term view – build a list (asset) and sell through that asset. So it’s a softened direct response model – the optin box is in the upper right and not “shouting” at anyone like a typical sticky post or presell include with WhatWouldSethGodinDo?

Now, I know full well that action messages and presell stickies shouldn’t scream at visitors. But too many of the ones I see do. And then people wonder why their bounce rate is 99.999%.

Shit you can take this model, do lead capture and then go over to LeadPile and make some bank selling them direct. (affiliate link)

http://0toCash.com/go/leadpile

I am a HUGE Lance Armstrong fan. Yeah, I know all about Lance being an egotistical, hard ass athlete. Find me someone that dominates a sport (or a business) like he’s had that isn’t a dick sometimes. ‘Comes with the territory.

Anyway, this post isn’t about Lance or the Livestrong foundation. It’s about Livestrong the website.

The Livestrong site is owned and operated by Demand Media. Demand Media owns eHow and a bunch of other web properties and has a goal of publishing 1 million content pieces a month. YES – 1 million. Gulp!

The thing is, Livestrong is the kind of “portal 2.0″ site I’ve been writing about publically and privately for a while now. Sites like Livestrong and RightHealth are huge portal directories with a lot of aggregated content and very little “original” content. And the stuff that is original is pretty light.

That’s the polite way of saying near useless.

The thing is, these portal sites have been kicking Google ass. They rank for thousands of terms and basically let you acquire authority that you can use to link out to your other money properties AND they make you bank. Serious bank with Adsense and image ads. This is SEO arbitrage as its best.

Now, as the web goes – let’s face it, this is garbage content. I’m not judging. I am being honest. In the great words of Jeremy Palmer: “Demand Media is to content as BP is to Oil Rigs”

Well, the glory days of “portal 2.0″ are closing on us. Google’s declared war on these portals and recently announced an algorithm change specifically to address these kind of sites.

I have a nice portfolio of content islands that use this portal strategy and it’s time to start watching and migrating. The hammer won’t fall all at once — it never does (usually). But it’s coming.

Don’t cry for me Argentina… the truth is I’ve never left you. Watch, learn, and adapt. 3.0 or 2.1 are right around the corner.

CREDITS: inspiration for this post (and some tears along the way as you could see it coming) comes from Aaron Wall’s excellent SEOBook blog and his post here –> http://www.seobook.com/the-spammer-lifestyle