Happy Holidays, everyone!!!

Disaster struck.  My #2 ranking on my primary keyword has turned into not ranking at all.  I’ve only had 3 clicks on my affiliate link and no sales.  I don’t know if I’ve overdone it using my primary keyword or what, but I’m not showing up, so I’m not getting any traffic.  If I’ve really killed my traffic, than it’s going to take another couple days to recover.

I’ve completed all the steps in the report, so I’m done as far as the case study is concerned.  I can wait until the end of the day to see of a sale comes in, but for the purposes of the case study, things aren’t looking good.  Like I said, I may have overdone it with the use of my primary keyword, so my current situation is probably my fault.  Given my terrific initial rankings, I would say that this is definitely viable method, just be sure to only include your keyword were Kevin explicitly tells you to.

I’ll keep working on this site, as I’m sure I can turn things around relatively quickly.

One spot where I strayed slightly from the report is in the social bookmarking.  Kevin suggests using a service called Social Marker to make things a big easier.  I somewhat prefer Only Wire for their higher degree of automation, although they don’t work with as many higher quality sites, so I found myself still manually submitting a few bookmarks.

As far as SEO is concerned, we’re off to a roaring start.  In 36 hours, I’ve gone from nothing to getting indexed in Google and ranking #2 for my primary keyword phrase, I’m shocked and delighted.  If nothing else, Kevin’s report shows you an excellent way to pick a primary keyword and optimize for it in any niche.

I have a holiday party tonight, so I may have to postpone day 3 of the case study until tomorrow.  I’ll try to find time as I’m excited for this final step- Squidoo.  I haven’t had much luck wth Squidoo in the past, but admittedly my tinkering with them was truly half-assed.  I’m hoping the integrity of a case study, along with Kevin’s report telling me the right way to leverage it, will be motivation enough to do it up right.

I’m doing everything exactly as laid out in the report, despite knowing some tips and tricks that might help.  The only thing I’ve left out was an optional email blast if you have a mailing list related to the topic of the product you’re promoting.  I do have such a list, but I wanted to approach this from scratch.  I figure someone with an Internet Marketing related mailing list probably doesn’t need to be using free tactics only, so it was skipped for the sake of authenticity.

The blog is set up at http://learnhowtocreateanonlinebusiness.blogspot.com.  I’m linking it here for reference purposes only.  This link shouldn’t affect indexing or ranking since all links from my this blog are nofollow (Ya hear that, comment spammers?!?).  I’m not indexed in Google yet, but I’ve had one click through on my affiliate link so far, so it’s probably be from Blogger internal referral traffic.  It’s a slow start, but it’s only day 1.

Today is more writing, pinging and some social bookmarking.  I’ll post again tonight or tomorrow morning with my progress.

The report is being given away free as part of the 12 Days of Christmas Give Away- skip the video, it’s intolerably cheesy.  I grabbed my copy and did a quick skim through to see what it’s about and it got my wheels turning.  I’ll refrain from giving away too much of the report’s content, since you should really grab a copy for yourself, but I want to cover the gist and conduct a case study on its step-by-step plan to see how well it works.

The report is, at its core, about how to promote Kevin’s products as an affiliate using tactics that are completely free.  These tactics can of course be used for any affiliate program, but his products are set up for instant commissions paid directly to your PayPal account, which is totally sweet.  This method can also be effective if you have products of your own that could use a little SEO boost.

The method is about using blogs, pinging, article marketing, social bookmarking and squidoo to get a page indexed, get referral traffic and make sales in a quick and painless manner.  That list might make it sound like a lot of work, but each step in the 3 step process should take less than an hour.  These aren’t new tactics- the value is in the streamlined process that walks you through an effective way to use them all together.

I’ll start testing the method outlined in this report this evening, and keep you updated on my progress.  The next three blog posts will be a case study in how to make some quick cash as an affiliate in 3 days.

Stay tuned and wish me luck!

You’re never “done”.  Never.

Entrepreneurship, especially online, can lead to scattered efforts.  In searching for ways to make the most money with the least effort, we learn tons of different business models and techniques and we want to try them all.  We dabble in a little of this and a little of that, rarely focusing our efforts on one thing long enough to refine it to a point where it could actually earn you a decent paycheck.  Once you get to that point, the point of entrepreneurship overload, the point where everything is running, but nothing is running quite as well as you’d like…  It’s time to stop and get honest with yourself.  It’s time to ask yourself, “what haven’t I done?”

I don’t mean that you need to start planning your next income stream (you probably have too many of those laying around half-done already), I mean you need to look at projects that are “done” and figure out exactly why they aren’t.  It might seem a bit overwhelming at first, but it doesn’t need to be.  Let’s take it step by step:

1. Get Organized

Make a list of every revenue stream you own.  Every info product, every blog, every e-store, etc.  For me, I have a handful of ebooks, software, a half dozen or so blogs, and my consultancy.

2. Get The Big Picture

If you don’t already have one, I suggest downloading a mind mapping program.  Both Mac and PC platforms have free, open-source versions that will do the trick.  You’ll want to create a separate mind map for each of the revenue streams you made in step one. Do these one at a time and don’t start the next one until you finish.

For each revenue stream, make one node for the product and one for marketing.  From there, start mapping out all the major components of the product and its marketing as separate sub-nodes.  If you’re working on a mind map for an ebook, add the ebook, any bonus materials that come with it, customer support, etc.  If it’s a blog, you might want to list your posts as one item, and then list out any guest writers, resources, special features, etc.  Don’t forget to add how you’re monetizing your blog as well- ads is one node, affiliate links is another and so on.

List out all the marketing channels you’re using including SEM, SEO, email, affiliate programs, print ads, mailings, press releases, radio, tv, and anything else you’re doing.  Don’t be vague about it though, list these channels by vendor.  Working with Google Adwords is totally different than working with Yahoo! Search Marketing, so don’t lump them together.

3. Get Critical

Once you have this nice, detailed mind map of your revenue stream, it should be pretty easy to see everything you’ve done to get this thing going, and everything you haven’t.  You’ll be able to see products with no bonuses, no customer support or no mailing list.  You’ll see blogs not being properly monetized or promoted.  Before you forget any of these things, start adding notes to the items that need improvement or adding new nodes for things you need to add.  You can even print out the mind map and start writing notes on it if that works better for you.

4. Get Organized… Again.

Take all the notes and nodes you’ve made, and turn it into a to-do list.  Take each item and split it into bite-sized tasks; creating a sub list of separate to-dos.  If you need to add a mailing list, the item should be called “mailing list” with a list of tasks like “write follow up series”, “create opt-in form” and “automate lead segmentation”.  Prioritize lists that have the highest potential upside over everything else.

5. Get to Work!

Start working your way through your lists!  Do at least one thing every day.  Don’t think about how much is left to do, just focus on checking off one task each day.  Before you know it, you’ll have turned your once limping revenue stream into a well-oiled cash machine.

You might want to work on the list from one mind map at a time.  You might want to create a list from each mind map and rotate lists each day.  Hell, you might want to sit down and see how many of these tasks you can crank through in one sitting.  The point is, until you sit down and analyze what you’ve done and what you still need to do, none of your revenue streams is going to do much for you.

Analyze, itemize, prioritize, execute… itize.

I’m calling the new tactic Site Targeting on the Cheap- and it basically explains how you can litterally pick and choose which sites in Google’s content network you want your ad to be shown on, without paying the higher CPCs of traditional site targeting.  Combine this new tactic with site exclusion and some good bid optimization and you’re looking at some serious efficiency.

This morning I saw a post from my friend Miss604, about Wordle.  Wordle will analyze your blog feed and create a word cloud of its content.

Sounds cool right?

Imagine my dismay at seeing that one of the most common words used here is “like”.

I’m praying it’s the affectionate form, and not the mindless filler form…

• The original ads were fairly amusing
• The TV show was incredibly unnecessary
• The subsequent ads have just been overkill
• I’ve decided to play with bulleted and numbered lists

I find it necessary, however, to call attention to some observations I’ve made along the way.  Consider this an (unfortunately) premature post mortem of the mildly-amusing, somewhat-illustrative, ad-campaign-coming-of-age story.

1. I get it.  Saving money with Geico is easy.  I GET IT.
2. The TV show was an interesting brand experiment, but I mean… Really?  A McGruff the Crime Dog show, now THAT I would watch!  How about a superhero Mister Clean?  I bet that dude can kick some ass.
3. Sure they’re cavemen, but what kind? Homo Erectus?  Homo Habilus?  Neaderthal?  Cro-Magnon?  Australopithecus Africanus?!?!  And yes, of course that makes a difference.
4. I am, admittedly, fascinated by the none-to-subtle racist overtones.  I suppose speciesist would be more accurate.  And what’s with women finding them sexy?  If I remember correctly, the TV show addressed white women dating cavemen similarly to the way society treats white women dating black men.  WTF kind of social commentary is that?  Sheesh!  And no, none of the dating portrayed on the show or in the ads has been interracial, only inter-species.
5. Cavemen are whiney bitches!  Have you seen how they react to the mere sight of a Geico ad?  Next thing you know, they’ll be writing an over-analytical… blog post… about…

That’s all for now.  I think we’ve all learned a little bit along the way. I, for one, never thought I’d mention “inter-species dating” in a blog post.

There are plugins that provide analytics, plugins that act as form submission tools, and my new favorite has to be the one that turns your simple little blog into a real live store- seriously check it out.  I turned my brother’s information website into an e-store in like 5 minutes.

Although I like the current look of SubatomicMedia.com, with our awesome facelift here, I was thinking that something that really pushes the limits of Wordpress would be excellent.  If any of you have a suggestion of an existing Wordpress theme or a could build us a new one, I’m all ears.  Leave your info in the comment section below.