Big Seminar Oct 3-5 2008 is a Must Attend

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Aug 22, 2008

Whenever the conversation turns to Internet Marketing one name comes up more often than any other name…Armand Morin. Armand is the Expert that the experts turn to and watch for direction.

I first met Armand in 2000 at a conference where he was NOT a speaker. Yes he too was once an “attendee” sitting in an audience learning form other speakers. And, that’s my point. People are always asking me, “Marty, HOW do you learn this Internet marketing stuff?” And, I tell them how much I spend a year on attending conferences and buying educational materials.

In the BIGinning
The BIG Seminar is the place where it all starts. It’s the only Internet marketing conference I attend EVERY time. Why? Because Armand only picks truly cutting edge presenters and gives them plenty of time to deliver tons of content I usually begin implementing throughout the weekend of the conference! Yes, I don’t even wait until I get back to start. I’m too energized to wait! While others are partying at the bar, I’m up until 3am trying out what I learned on my laptop.

Who Attends Big Seminar
The audience is made up of about 40% that are brand stinkin’ new to the web, but you could be sitting next to a multi-millionaire who has dozens or even hundreds of websites. And, that’s one of my favorite things about Big Seminar. You just never know who you’re going to meet.

Money Tight?
If you are strapped for cash, Big Seminar is the ONLY conference I would recommend you attend coming this October 3, 4, and 5 in Atlanta Georgia. And, if you can’t afford a couple thousand dollars toward your own education, you NEED to attend more than others! It’s the only conference I can honestly say pays for itself, for me, within the first week after the conference. It’s that good.

Now, let’s be real…
Big Seminar has an affiliate program. That means if I refer others to attend, I get some of the bucks. Basic sales and basic Internet stuff. And sure, when you register, of course I want you to Register Here through my affiliate link. But, there’s something more…

I always offer to my clients that when they attend the Big Seminar, if they’ve registered through my link (which they always do), they will get to meet with me as a small focus group on Friday and Saturday night in a private meeting room where we can go over what was covered during the day. I answer any questions they have and it really helps to have someone to put everything together into a summary of steps and fill in the blanks. Then, when we get back (because I always fly home on late Sunday afternoon), we schedule a conference call to go over what was covered on Sunday.

See, going to something like Armand Morin’s Big Seminar is not only overwhelming from a content and learning standpoint, but just the sheer experience of it all requires some savvy to navigate through. After all, you’re in an audience with typically 500 or more people. Just meeting the one right person you needed to meet could change your whole life…and your income! But, how do you navigate through Big Seminar?

You need a guide. Someone who’s been there. Someone who knows most of the presenters, staff, and a good chunk of who will be in the audience too. Let me be your guide.

Not Sure Yet?
One of Armand’s trademarks is having phone interviews with the speakers leading up to the conference. Would you like to sit-in as Armand talks with other experts and they discuss their Internet Marketing Secrets?

You can…and it’s free.

Every Tuesday and Thursday up until the BigSeminar Armand will host a FREE training call with one of the expert  Faculty from his upcoming Big Seminar.  They will discuss what they’re doing on the Internet and how they do it.

The calls are FREE…click here now to register for the calls.

Calls times, phone number Passcode etc. will be immediately sent to you via email.

In Summary:
If you’re wondering where all those Internet marketing folks go to learn what’s new and what really works to build a business and increase sales, Armand’s Big Seminar is the place to be. I hope you’ll join me and take me up on my invitation to attend the after-hours meetings to go through things. After you register, be sure to let me know. You can contact me through the Ask Marty contact form.

And, I hope to see YOU at Big Seminar October 3, 4, and 5 2008 in Atlanta!

Best Online Chat Software

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Aug 22, 2008

Online chat is not only the communication mode of the future it’s the sales conduit of “NOW!” Sure, it’s great to be able to offer 24/7 support to your customers but the right online chat program can also allow you watch visitors as they arrive on your website. You can actually watch them migrate from page to page. Then when they get stuck, you can send them a little pop-up message that invites the to talk to you online.

At first thought, this is scary! But, once you get a feel for your audience and the questions they’re asking, it’s really not that hard to guess the right way to approach your website visitors. Do it right and it pays off!

The online chat software I use on multiple sites I own is not free, but is somewhere around $100 a year, which is a small price to pay for what they offer….

-24/7 online chat support (Ilene knows her stuff!!)
-customization of chat window
-private labeling (meaning your visitors will think it’s YOUR program)
-customizable exit questionnaire (which is a great way to increase opt-ins to your list, if done properly)
-a system worth paying for!

Actually, when I signed up for this system, I bought two accounts.

1) for my paying clients so that they could reach me most times of the day or night (whenever I had my computer turned on) and
2) for visitors checking out my main websites. And, I can assign any of my helpers to monitor chat requests.

Online chat has reduced my email from clients by half and has increased my sales by at least 200% as I’m able to answer questions immediately as surfers have them.

Discover the Online Chat system I use daily and highly recommend.

Cuil New Search Engine has Webmasters SEO Masters Pretty Hot

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jul 31, 2008

Maybe it was the anticipation with all the pre-hype. Maybe it was the hope for something better. Mabye some just wished Google would feel some pain (not that they are without challenge anyway). The new Cuil.com search engine (pronounced “cool”) was launched on Monday and all week webmasters and SEO professionals have been in a mad frienzy trying to figure out if Cuil will be the “Google Killer” everyone in the online industry has been waiting for or if it’s just a quick throw-together search system to attract Microsoft to spending a few billion on a new company after a big hit.

Cuil was formed by some former Google employees who helped take Google’s search system to the next level. Classic case of employees getting together and leaving the company to go do their own thing and make a million bucks right? That’s where the questions arose. More on that later. First, check this out…

I’m going to throw my 2 cents into the ring about Cuil. First, let’s use an example to demonstrate what al the fuss is about. If I search Google for one of my websites MusicMates.com which is a national musician referral but based out of Colorado, here’s what I get:

Now let’s take a look at the new Cuil search engine’s results where I also searched for Colorado musician referral. Notice how there are 3 columns results instead of how Google displays only two. That’s actually my first question about Cuil is why they chose three columns? If we’ve been conditioned by all search engines to look in the top left corner for search results, wouldn’t it make sense to just have two column results? And, second, if you have three columns, and I click on one of the three columns, will the most accuarate results be going down the column or across the top? Or, did they figure my Music Mates site has the most focus so, the #1 search result is really in the middle of the page?

The next thing to consider is Cuil’s relevance of search results. Consider the image below where my Music Mates site listing is surrounded by other sites that have links to Music Mates. Now, how could a site that is so well optimized for a state be listed less in relevance than another site linking to it? I mean as a search engine, the whole idea is to showcase the main website that the links point to as the source or, in this case, the online tool.

Then a blowup of the left side of the screen with my MusicMates description in the same spot, just looking at the two left columns below now. How did that “I/disturbing photos” get there? And, how could it be more relavent than my Music Mates posting?

Then, shown to the top is a single musician referral that could arguably be in competition with Music Mates. That’s not a good percentage for Cuil in my opinion.

Now, you might think, okay Marty, so the dudes in the top left beat you out. Stop whining and optimize Music Mates better! Well, when I clicked through that link, here’s what I got. I have no idea where Cuil picked up that “Musician Referral Services” image. It’s nowhere to be found in the site that you get to after the click through. I have no idea why Cuil does not consider Music Mates to be a higher authority since that’s ALL music mates does is “musician referral” whereas this directory gets top position as shown:

Even if you click through the next page Arts & Enterntainment Music link in the top left, you still don’t get anywhere close to finding a dedicated musician referral site, certainly not one better than Music Mates (me biased). And, I can think of a dozen or so organized referrals that SHOULD be listed here but are not. Why is that if they claim to have more istings already than Google does?

Some webmasters are suggesting it’s because Cuil is listing all the crap and duplicate page content that Google has spent all these years trying to get rid of. Personally, I think the Cuil crew knew exactly what would happen. If they launched the best search results they could out of the gate, there would be little room for improvement.

With quite a few imperfections in Cuil, there’s nowhere for them to go but up. Certainly, there could be room for someone to sweep in and buy their technology, but I don’t see that as being very attractive to Microsoft. The MS search is certainly better than Cuil already and Cuil does not “yet” feature a pay-per-click model. And, that’s really what Microsoft is after…the money!

Take a look at Cuil.com and search for your website and maybe a few competitors. Share your views here. Whatever the case, it will be interesting to see what happens to Cuil in 6 months. Eithe they’ll get their act together and really become competitive by offering quality search results, or it could all just go by the wayside. Who knows, at least they got some great press coverage out it although the backlash from users was pretty brutal.

Cartoons on Your Website to Make You Money

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jul 4, 2008

Seeking Alpha blog reported that Google is coming up with an “experiment” expected to launch in September 2008 where they will produce a series of 50 cartoons that are each 2 minutes or less in length. You’ll be able to add these cartoons to your website and they’ll be much like Google Adsense where you the website owner will get a little cut each time one of your visitors clicks on the link to watch the video.

This is seen as Google’s way of monetizing video for themselves. I see it as a potential new method for viral marketing. If you see a good video on YouTube for example, you might send it to a friend right? If you come across a website with a hilarious cartoon, I think I might forward the page of the website to someone too.

The problem with that is the poor advertiser. I mean, someone has to pay for all of those clicks, right? If I search for a topic and come across a page on a website that has one of the cartoons, great, I’m targeted traffic. But if I send the page on to a friend or three or four friends, and tell them to go watch this cool new cartoon I’ve found, well, the advertiser suffers.

Suddenly their targeted marketing effort gets the additional traffic, but it probably won’t be targeted traffic. So, I dunno, I’m kinda skeptical about putting cartoons on my website. But, you know me, I’ll have to give it a try to see if my hunch is right.

So, go for it Google! Give me cartoons and I’ll make a buck or two off some AdSense style cartoon ads. Just hope the advertisers don’t blacklist me for sending a bunch of people to click on the cartoon ad only to see the cartoon. Or, maybe that’s their hope.

Google Trends Helps You Spy on Competition

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jun 23, 2008

Google Trends is live and that means there is yet another free resource to help you spy on your competition. Find out how much visitation their website gets and what other websites people are viewing that are related to yours. Just go to trends.google.com and type in a domain name.

There is a lot of talk on blogs and forums about this topic lately. Seems it’s okay for all of these other sites to post competitive info (and we sure use it!) but when Google creates a similar utility, everyone

goes crazy calling Google an information stealer. First of all, what Google displays (in my view) is actually inferior to the others. Google Trends only shows 10 competing sites and 10 keyword phrases to find those sites.

We all know that the top 10 keyword phrases are going to be high-level phrases. So, that’s not such a huge help. But, where the top 10 competing sites can help is when looking for inbound links to your website. I could see doing a search for each of the 10 specifically and then targeting them for inbound links campaigns, but there are other ways to do that too.

Personally, on this review of Google Trends, I don’t see anything additional than what’s out there readily available, but it does show Google’s willingness to share information with others that their servers collect even though their privacy policy might suggest otherwise in some places.

For example, their privacy policy says: “We will not collect or use sensitive information for purposes other than those described in this policy and/or in the specific service notices, unless we have obtained your prior consent.”

Google of course terms “sensitive information” as limited to medical, racial, ethnic, or religious content. But, sensitive to ME could certainly be related to visitation statistics and keyword phrases that I’ve been fighting for to get seo positioning.

So, there’s argument either way I suppose with Google Trends producing “sensitive information” or not. Personally, I don’t think Google Trends provides enough detailed sensitive information for us to all get up tight about. But, it does set the stage for them releasing “more” details to the public in the future than we might want the public to know about when it comes to our websites and the strategies we use to go about getting more traffic. And, one day when they cross that line, the public will be there to either ban Google or get the lawsuits flowing.

What do YOU think about Google posting your website visitation stats and competition and keyword phrases? Getting too close to home? Or no big deal?

My First YouTube Video in Blog

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jun 23, 2008

As part of my blog diary, I wanted to post my first YouTube video within my blog. So, I started an account at YouTube.com and uploaded this mpg file of my 9-year-old surprising a ski instructor during a nastar race at Copper Mountain, our favorite weekend skiing hangout during the winter months. I’ll be making more comments about what I do with this video (and others), but this is the starting point.

This is the first time I’ve uploaded anything to YouTube and I was amazed how easy it really is. YouTube allows for tons of different video formats, so you really don’t have to worry about preparing your video file. I’ve not usually been very impressed with the quality of YouTube’s video output, but I can see now that the video owner is the one that is more in control of the quality. So, I’ll be experimenting with that more.

What has your experience been posting YouTube videos?  Post yours here in the comments area along with your experience.

Adding Adsense Code to Every Blog Post

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jun 19, 2008

I was talking with one of my website designers yesterday about my website waves blog and told him I made $2 the other day when I finally got my Adsense code installed. Now every time someone visits my Website Waves blog and clicks on the “Ads By Google” listings, I will get a few cents or maybe sometimes a little more.  He kind of chuckled a bit and said something like “All that work for 2 dollars?” Well, it gets better, because if you’ve been keeping up with my blog journey diary, I only relaunched this blog a few weeks ago.

By following my Ultimate Blog Checklist, I’ll be able to calculate pretty close to how much traffic I’ll be getting to the blog by the end of this month and how much more it will increase by the end of August. And, by then the $2 a day will turn into $10/day…or at least that’s the goal. So, an additional $300 per month from Adsense is the goal. I’ll report at the end of August if I make the goal so stay tuned.

Today, though, is about exactly how I added the Adsense code. My designer kind of chuckled again as he asked, “Do you have to copy and paste Adsense code every time you make a post?” A firm “NO” was my answer. Once you have the Adsense code, you just copy and paste it into the appropriate file in your blog template.

Here, let me show you:

If you look at any page of the Website Waves blog, you will see a heading on the right column called “My Favorite Blogs.”  Where I show the #1 in red is the html code that gives the heading its look and color, the way my designer designed it.

The #2 shows the code I was provided by adding the Adsense Plugin called Adsense Manager (free through WordPress of course).

3) The third step is to open the template file that contains the code for the right column (or any other column, header, footer where you would want to enter Adsense code to your blog posting.

This does require some FTP knowledge so that you can open the file on your computer, make the addition, save it, and transfer it back to your website hosting account where your blog is stored.  But, that’s how it works anyway.

My designer then asked, “So, what about where you now have Adsense on every post in the middle of the post after the first main paragraph? Did you go back and manually add that code to every post?”

No again.  I told my programmer what I wanted and he inserted the code for me.  I think it took him about 10 minutes.  I can’t even describe how he did it, some Javascript thing.  But, that’s the point.  I don’t NEED to know!  I just need to know what I want and that the two most important places to have Adsense code on your blog are on the right column after your post summaries and also embedded with your post content.  It was up to my programmer after that

So, you might snicker too at my small fortune of the measly $2 I made yesterday, but now that I have the code embedded to appear automatically on every post I make, in the two most money-making places on a blog post, even on a bad day I’m already setup to make an extra $60 per month.  And, that’s if I don’t even make any more postings!

Imagine the possibilities when I have hundreds of blog posts all with Google ads appearing within those posts?  I’ll keep you, well, um, “posted!”

If you don’t have Adsense code appearing on every post in your blog, stop wasting opportunity!  Give your designer or programmer a call and if you don’t have one, call me at 303-743-0832 or send a contact request and we’ll get you setup.

Scooters Free Shipping

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jun 18, 2008

On CNN this morning, they reported a 25% increase in production for road scooters. Not the kind the kids stand up and push with one foot, but the kind you ride. We used to call them mopeds. But, then mopeds evolved into more horsepower and a sturdier ride that boasts 75 miles per gallon!

So, “scooter” it is. Now think about this. Detroit is laying off people right and left in the car manufacturing business, right? Scooter manufacturers are ramping up staffing to meet demand. Stores are selling out before you can get from looking at the website to their storefront.

Can you see the problem coming?  Sure. You get to the store only to find one or two types of scooter left for sale.  “Next shipment will be coming in next week sometime.”

So, what’s the answer? Selling scooters online of course…and the secret sauce…offering free shipping! Check it out. Here’s one of the top sellers I found where you can buy a scooter online and have it shipped to you for free.

These guys are pretty smart.  They even have an online chat feature.  Wouldn’t you want to ask people questions before you bought a scooter?  Of course.  This is the only website I’ve seen selling scooters that both offers the low prices, free shipping AND online chat.  Good job guys.

Visit this site just to get some ideas for layout or maybe you’re even interested in buying a scooter online as they’ve done their homework with making things easy to find.  If it was my site, I would have the online chat piece up top in the right corner as a main feature.  They’d double their sales in a week I’ll bet.  But, that’s just me.

Tell me what you think of the scooter website.  Or share your view/experience with the scooter craze happening right now. Add your comments below.