Internet Marketing Smarts.com

I’ve been making money online in one capacity or another for over 10 years. One of my main industries is work at home. This is a great sector to be in because it’s very profitable and everyone wants to work at home. But it has its dark side as well. Scam artist prey on work at home seekers. In fact, yours truly has been scammed numerous times and it’s how I got in the industry. I wanted to help people avoid getting scammed and help them work at home.

But people that come to my site may not know that, even though we make it clear that other trusted resources like Businessweek.com have vouched for us. Sometimes despite our best efforts, we’re just lumped with all the other jerks trying to part hard working people of their money. So with that said, On occasion I receive venomous emails and a few blog comments where people are making all sorts of accusations about my character and sites.

It always amazes me what people will say over email. In the real world I’m certain that 90% of them are passive aggressive in their every day lives. But the Internet seems to embolden folks. My good friend Ja from FightInsight.com use to refer to these people as "email thugs". They’re all tough online but I’m pretty certain if they saw me in person and faced with a 6′4", 200+ lbs black man, their tone might be a little different. In any event as human being it’s easy to get offended by the things people email us or post.

Hate, The Golden Opportunity.
But I soon learned to turn the tide in my favor. Instead of getting mad and sending hateful emails or comments back. I actually examined what their objections and feelings were. Why you may ask? After all, they’re being jerks and irrational. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in that nonsense mantra that the customer is always right. Because they’re not. But as I got enmeshed in the industry I started realizing that these people were venting frustration based on all the crap that was out there. They had a heighten sensitivity to any work at home site because of their past experiences.

I gained this insight because I actually took the time to digest the negative email or blog comment in an objective way. Of course it was hard at first because the attacks felt so personal. But it wasn’t me they were attacking it was just a reflection of their frustration and pain.

So when I realized that, I would dissect their comments and turn it around on them. So for instance if they claimed that I was promoting scams. I would make it clear that our site was heavily sponsored by advertisers that we didn’t hand pick but was served automatically by an outside vendor. Then I would provide them with the urls of specific articles and sections on my sites where I handpicked quality work at home opportunities and where I provided scam prevention tips. Basically all I was doing was using their objections to my benefit by sending them quality content that was obviously passively monetized with some affiliate links but more importantly I gave them what they were looking for!

The Internet is a different place then it was in the early 90’s when I got started. It’s all about providing the users relevancy and what they want. We can thank Google for that and we should. It’s made surfing the web a better experience for everyone.

The Big Pay Back!
The result of being proactive with negative emails and comments is the acquisition of a customer or visitor who now trusts you. I have found that the most venomous haters will be your biggest cheerleader when you take the time to help them. These folks will sing your praises at the top of the mountain which in this case is forums or sending emails to others. Because they’re known as being so tough on others, when people read glowing comments from them they follow like sheep and are more likely to now trust your site and you. This equates to more money, subscribers and visitors.

The Steps
So let’s do a quick recap of the steps.

1. Read venomous email or blog comment.

Most bloggers or web site owners will file negative emails or comments in their special folder known as the trash bin. Don’t be so hasty. Sometimes the comments are beyond repair so it’s fine to do it in those situations. But first follow the step below before deleting a comment or email.

2. Fight the urge to pimp smack the offender.

Seriously, just calm down and walk away if necessary. Now come back and pick apart their email to see what the real objections are. Ignore the personal attacks.

3. Zone in on the comments where you can be proactive and provide solutions or validation via content on your site.

For instance if they say that you’re not providing information on x widget or service. Hunt down the exact page where x widget is found and send it to them in the email.

4. Take the higher ground.

I don’t care how nasty an email is (unless it’s about your momma), I try to respond very professionally assuming I was able to achieve step 1. I always thank them in the email for providing me the opportunity to help them and I express my apology for whatever they’re feeling. I’m not saying I’m sorry for something I did wrong because in most cases I didn’t. I’m basically saying I’m sorry that they feel a certain way and I’ll try to help them through it as best as I can.

5. Get back to work.

That’s pretty much it folks. I’ve had almost 90% success following these steps. People that went in there calling me all types of names come back and say how happy they are that they found my sites and talked to me. So trust me it does work.

So stop being so sensitive. Turn lemons into lemonade.

Disclaimer: The steps above won’t work if you’re a scammer, have questionable business practices or are evil.

Cheers!

So John Reese’s Traffic Jam (TrafficJam.com) has finally launched. It’s the second part of the whole BlogRush.com launch that took place earlier this year. BlogRush.com was suppose to be a great service that would provide bloggers free traffic. It worked by installing a widget on your blog. The widget would display posts titles related to your blog topic. Other blogs in return would display your blog post titles on their blogs if it was related. This was all done automatically. So it was basically a glorified traffic exchange program which seem to have a lot of potential at first.

However BlogRush.com was a huge disappointment among many bloggers. Honestly, I won’t lie, I was hating on BlogRush on the inside as well. But because I have a lot of faith in John Reese and no, I’m not a groupie. I just stick by people that have proven to me that they’re real deal and more importantly have helped me make money. So with that said I continued to use BlogRush.com on my blogs but wasn’t getting a lot of the free traffic that was initially pumped as the main reason for joining the network!

But I stayed on my grind and continued to bang out content. Once in a while I would check my blogrush.com stats and it wasn’t very promising. My blog posts were getting a lot of visibility (impressions) but not many of the visitors were clicking. This is made very apparent with the heat meter that they use to display interest in your blog posts. If you wrote great headlines then your heat meter would be on fire which indicated a lot of interest. The flip side is when the heat meter would turn blue and show icicles. It basically meant your headline sucked and thus the heat meter was colder than your wife after calling her fat.  See the image below to see what I mean.

With visuals like this, it was a great a motivator to write better headlines to get that elusive on fire heat meter. Eventually one of my headlines caught fire. Coincidentally I also saw more comments to that particular post not to mention some free traffic from the BlogRush network. So I thought to myself, this is a great way to help me come up with more compelling content. So I did what any good marketer would do. I rinse and repeated similar headlines. And wouldn’t you know it, the heat meter was on fire again. So I started to finally get some of this free traffic that was promised by BlogRush.com. But I always wondered to myself what headlines my counterparts were using that were on fire. Because if I knew that then I can rinse and repeat again. Enter TrafficJam.com!

So What is TrafficJam.com & How Does It Help Me?

I think John said it best in his email so I’ll just post it here because I think the description is totally accurate.

"For marketers, this (TrafficJam.com) is the ultimate research tool. You can monitor blogs by niche and keep up with what type of posts are getting the most interest across the Web. This will make it incredibly easy for you to know what type of blog posts you should be making to get more traffic, interest, and popularity for your own blog.

Now you’ll never run out of ideas for new blog posts!

This research data can help you identify untapped keywords and other opportunities.

This site is essentially a LIVE HEADLINE TESTING MACHINE!!! (by topic)"

- John Reese

Now I think he’s pretty much summed it up. I know just by using BlogRush.com it has helped me write better headlines but with TrafficJam.com I can tap into other people’s headlines and steal.. I mean mimic what’s working for them. This basically means more traffic for my blog because it’s already proven that it works otherwise their blog posts won’t make the top rankings on TrafficJam.com.

So if you’re looking for free traffic, more comments and even more readers to your blog, then join BlogRush.com and start visiting TrafficJam.com to learn what’s hot in your niche or others. Then just lather, rinse and repeat for your own blog.

Any marketer or business owner worth their salt will tell you the money is in the list. If all your advertising partnerships disappeared tomorrow, would you still be able to keep your head above water? A lot of businesses would cringe at the thought of this. But then there are smart business owners like our subscribers that wouldn’t even flinch because they know they have a massive list of existing customers that they can tap into.  Hopefully you’re one of these smart business owners, because you’re going to find the following article very useful.

For the others, We’re not going to get into the mechanics of building a list and capturing the information. There are great services that handle this such as GetResponse.com which is found in our tools section. But nonetheless when you become up to speed with the technical aspect of list building,  this article will still prove useful.

So let’s get in to it. Most of us have been to a dance club at least once in our lives. I’m in my early 30’s so it’s not as appealing to me anymore. Actually by my late 20’s it had lost a lot of its appeal to me. I just didn’t want to be that 30+ year old dude in the club trying to seem cool and hitting on women that looked at me like I was in a walker and wearing adult diapers. If you’re that dude, my condolescences go out to you and your self respect.

In any event, one thing I always hated about the club was that whole waiting on line business. There were a few times where I didn’t have to do this because I was on that magical "List". We all know that list all to well, for better or worst. Have you ever been outside for over an hour in the rain and then some random people just head to the bouncer and tell them they’re on the list and presto, they’re in? I won’t lie, I was so mad at these people that you would’ve thought I had just taken a "Hate"orade bubble bath that night. It was really frustrating for the person on the other side of that cool line.

Everyone wants to be part of the cool list. We all have this high school mentality of wanting to be part of a popular crowd even when you lied to yourself and said that you didn’t. Deep inside you did. Well the visitors to your website have the same mentality. It’s not something we shake off as adults. We still want to be accepted and part of a crowd. So you as a blogger or content producer must play on this primal emotion.

How To Get People To Flock To Your List!

1. This goes without saying but you should always have a call to action on everything you write. Don’t just have a subscription box on your homepage and call it a day. You want that call to action at the end of every piece of content you write.

2. Make the call to action sexy though! When you go to a club you’re trying to look as "fly" as possible. Well most of us do. Your call to action should make your users feel like they’re missing out by not being part of your list. There has to be some unique selling proposition. After all you put a lot of effort in your ad copy, right? Well subscriptions are just as important as sales because they can lead to more of them if you manage your list properly.

3. Make reference to your cool subscribers in your actual content. Remember people are like sheep they want to be lead. So when writing content always make reference to your subscribers in a positive way and link to back to the subscription page. So for instance here’s a sentence you might use. "It amazes me how many people fall for that scam. But fortunately my subscribers already know how to spot these type of scams a mile away." I basically implied that my subscribers were smarter and thus cooler merely for the fact they’re on my list. It’s very easy to do this every time you write. In fact,  there shouldn’t be a time this isn’t employed in your articles or content.

By the way, I’m not only a client, I use these techniques in this and other blogs. If you re-read this article again, you’ll see exactly where I used tip #3. So if you treat your content like a dance club you’ll have people dying to get in but the difference is that you welcome them all.  Unlike the hottest dance club your users won’t have to grease the bouncer, get frisked or deal with a meat head’s delusional visions of grandeur.

Party is over, lights are on, now go back home and employ these techniques. And for God’s sake stay out the club. Aren’t you a bit too old for that?

Your article or blog post headline is like the cover of a book. People judge your whole article based on it. Sure your article may reveal the secret of life or how to become a millionaire instantly. But if your article title reads like an obituary then people will never actually read what you’ve written. You literally have several seconds to get their attention.

Your Supermarket Can Write Headlines For You!

So how do you write headlines that will pull your users in? Don’t! Just steal them from the best copywriters in the world! We’ve all been in the supermarket standing on line behind that lady that seems to be buying groceries as if she’s preparing for armageddon. It drives me crazy.

So I tend to occupy myself with the magazines and books that have been strategically placed around the counter. I would love to think that the magazines are placed in that location to help violent people like myself from busting slow customers in the head. But the real reason is that the space near the counter is one of the most valuable in the whole store because consumers are captive. They have no choice but to sit there and wait as other people get checked out by that annoyed teenage cashier.

The owners of these magazines are aware of this so they spend huge amounts of money hiring the best copywriters in the world to grab your attention in
seconds. How do I know it works? Because I don’t know anyone that has ever been to a supermarket that hasn’t picked up a magazine near the counter. I
would argue 90% of us do it.

It’s no coincidence. Those magazines whether it’s about women issues or Michael Jackson’s baby momma drama will pull you in. Most of the time in my regular life I would ignore those stories but on the check out line I get sucked in because I have nothing better to do. But I would also argue the real reason is because the headlines put you in a trance where you want to pick up the magazine to read. That’s just basic good copy writing. So let’s talk about how you can have the same effect.

5 Easy Steps To Create Winning Headlines Like The Pro’s

Step 1. Visit Magazine.com

Step 2. Select the magazines geared towards women like Cosmo or O.

Step 3. Click on the Magazine covers to enlarge them.

Step 4. Note which headlines immediately made you want to know more.

Step 5. Steal the headline and change it to fit your own topic.

That’s pretty much it. It’s really that simple. Sometimes just reading the headlines will give you topic ideas for your own industry. So now you have no reason
to create crappy headlines. The steps I’ve laid out can be followed by anyone in any industry. You just need to be a little creative but not much since the
copywriters did all the hard work for you. By the way,  if there is still any doubt that the titles are effective, just watch what you and others do at the check out
line next time you do your groceries. 

My final tip, please ignore the temptation of smacking the bejesus out of the person in front of you on the check out line. Instead be productive and read those
magazine titles and stories, it may lead to greater readership and money for your site or blog!