Louey's Journal

LEARNING LESSON: Just because you're getting more social shares, doesn't mean you're getting more traffic.

I've just been testing a plugin called 'Social locker' that essentially puts your content behind a locked wall and for people to read it, they have to share you content on some kind of social media.

Tried it, looked like it was working well with clicks up by 35% BUT, what I discovered was that even though those pages were getting shared, no-one was clicking on those links. They were getting shared on things like Google+ and on meaningless facebook pages.

So, if you're trying out a social locking tool and it's producing good results in terms of clicks, make sure it's actually driving more traffic to your site...
 


What's your end game with social-sharing? Brand visibility?

I personally haven't bothered with it so far but might give it a try. But at the end of the day, I'm more concerned with capturing email addresses. Lately I've been getting comments on my blogposts too and this I think has greater value than a share in many ways because it removes the "ghosttown" feeling on my site, which is another reason not to have share buttons.

Anyhow, sharing seems to me like asking people to pay attention to a single wave as the ocean tide comes in and out. There's just so much of it that I'd rather be tossing stones back at the water, knowing that a percentage of them are going to skip from the sell to the upsell and even on to purchases beyond that.
 
Does anyone know of a decent local SEO agency / contractor in Australia?

I've got a local business that needs ongoing SEO work for local search but it needs to be solid shit. Real guest posts, skyscraper content outreach, infograph dev and outreach, that kind of thing.

Can't be anything you can find on Fiverr.

The budget for the three sites will be in the ballpark of $3k - $5k / month. The clients been told not to expect results for at least 3 - 6 months and they've comfortable with that.

They want me to do it but I've got too much on my plate to take on a client like this.

If anyone's up to this or knows someone who might be then please PM me.
 
LESSON LEARNED: Use native English speakers when doing guest post outreach

I've been working on a white hat project for the last three months focussing on getting indirect links through guest posting (building a seemingly unaffiliated website and doing guest post outreach from that then naturally dropping links to my desired site in the articles).

When we first started doing the guest post outreach, we focussed on churn and burn.

We had Ninjapino's blasting a list of suitable blogs with custom templates and the best conversion rate we were able to achieve was 3% making the cost per link acquisition at around $40.

We've recently tested a native English speaking outreach team and their conversion rate is 25%+.

Even with the increased cost of using native English speakers, with the ridiculously higher conversion rate, the link acquisition cost has dropped to $12.

The other benefit of this is that we're not burning through our list of suitable blogs as fast either.

So, if you're going to do guest post outreach, don't waste your time with non-native English speakers. Pay more and get the value that comes from it.

Oh, and one pro tip: add a photo to the website you're outreaching from of the person who's blog it is and then setup gmail accounts to do the outreach that use that same photo. Having a face to the name increases your conversion rate.
 
WANTED: Online marketing assistant

Instead of outsourcing this shit to an agency, I'm thinking about taking on a marketing assistant who I can just teach how to do things the way I like them.

THE JOB

The job will eventually be all aspects of internet marketing. You'll be doing onsite SEO, outreach, link analysis and building, viral content development, outsourcing, training, article writing, SOP development, reporting, conversion rate optimisation, and everything in between.

Eventually... At the start, you'll just be doing one thing at a time (starting with SEO), mastering that, and then you'll be moving on to the next step.

The hours will be varied depending on how much work there is but there should be at least 20 hours per week to keep you going. You won't have to work strict hours (start now and finish now) but you will have to get all you work done for the week and be online at least at some point in time in my work day (7am - 3pm Sydney, Australia) so we can talk.

REQUIREMENTS

The main requirement is that you're driven to be good at this. I'm not looking for someone who just wants to make enough to lie back on a beach drinking cocktails and hitting on waitresses that don't speak English. I want someone who wants to be a fucking boss.

I don't care if you don't know much about online marketing, I care that you want to know everything and want to be great at everything.

Oh, you also have to be a native English speaker.

Obviously, the more you know and the more you can do, the better, but knowledge isn't a prerequisite. Attitude trumps knowledge for this position.

One last thing, I want someone who's interested in spending the next 2 years or so learning. Don't worry, there'll be plenty of stuff to learn and to keep you going with in that time period but I want to make sure you don't run off once you've learnt one skill thinking that you're done and ready to be out on your own.

WHAT YOU GET

You get a fucking kickass training in most important areas of internet marketing. The combined revenue of all my online projects last year fell just short of $1mil and I did most of the work on most of them so I know what I'm talking about and I know it's up to date.

By the time you finish working for me, you'll be able to spot a niche, develop a strategy, and execute on that strategy like a mutha fucka. You'll have the knowledge, and more importantly, the experience to make fucking magic happen.

Pay will be negotiable based on skills and experience but it will be a paid job.

If this sounds like something you're interested in, PM me with your email address and we can have a conversation about a few more of the little details.
 
Here's the thing Louey, I can't PM.

However, I'd still wrestle an alligator with an over-sized duck attached to it, while a koala is riding it, with butter in my hands just to get a chance at this.

So lemme know if there are any other options for us to get in touch.
 
Artex said:
Here's the thing Louey, I can't PM.

However, I'd still wrestle an alligator with an over-sized duck attached to it, while a koala is riding it, with butter in my hands just to get a chance at this.

So lemme know if there are any other options for us to get in touch.
Click to expand...

I'm sure that if you really wanted this position, you could get your post count up to PM...

Go on, impress me.
 
Louey37 said:
WANTED: Online marketing assistant

Instead of outsourcing this shit to an agency, I'm thinking about taking on a marketing assistant who I can just teach how to do things the way I like them.

THE JOB

The job will eventually be all aspects of internet marketing. You'll be doing onsite SEO, outreach, link analysis and building, viral content development, outsourcing, training, article writing, SOP development, reporting, conversion rate optimisation, and everything in between.
Click to expand...

Thanks to everyone who applied. I've got all the applications I can handle so please don't send any more through.
 
Just wrote this on another guys journal but thought it would be good to have here:

How to find native English speaking articles writers for $1/100 words

1. Post the job on oDesk and be VERY specific about what you want. Put the $X/100 word rate in the title so everyone knows what the fuck you're about. Also, put one criteria inside the job post that at the very top of the application, they must write a specific word. That way, you can filter out the ones who haven't read the job description without having to read their application.

2. Don't wait for people to apply. You'll never get anyone good like that. Get out there and find people to invite to the job. Every high quality writer I've ever found was invited to the job. I filter the people with the following:
- In the 'writing' category
- Must have been active in the last 2 weeks
- Choose native English speaking countries
- Must have a rate less than $10/hour

Then, scan through the list and find people who're passionate about writing. Don't go for the ones who claim to be experienced, fulltime writers with SEO experience. They tend to write very formulaic articles that lack passion and personality. Go for the people who have a passion for writing. You'll get FAR better articles out of them and they're more than happy to work for less.

Interestingly, these writers are usually the ones with less experience so don't be afraid to hire inexperienced people. Most of the staff I hire have less than 20 hours experience on oDesk. You can get much better quality for far less this way.

Once they're really experienced, they tend to push their rates up and don't work as hard.

I typically invite around 50 people to apply.

3. When the applications come in, do a Skype interview. If you have a personal connection with them and they like you, it means they're more likely to do better work for you.

4. Choose at least 6 to test. Get them to write test articles for you. Typically, 50% won't complete the test article so you'll have at least 3 to choose from. If they're all good, hire them. If none are, go back and invite more people to apply. That way you won't be stuck waiting for someone to reply.
 
QUESTION: How do you price leads you're selling?

I'm just getting into my first lead gen project and I have no idea how to price the leads. Is there any kind of ballpark formula that at least gives you an idea?

I get that you can sell leads only for as much as people are willing to pay but I'm just looking for some rough figure to know where to start negotiations.

In case it helps, the CPC is $27.

I have no idea what the average customer lifetime value is but I'm guessing it's between $500 and $2000. Conversion rates on the leads should be high - at around 30% - for anyone who knows how to sell anything.
 
THE REASON YOU STILL HAVEN'T MADE A FULL TIME LIVING IN ONLINE MARKETING

(WHAT I'VE LEARNT FROM INTERVIEWING 19 NEWBIES WHO HAVEN'T MADE IT BIG)

I've just spent the last week interviewing the guys who applied for my internship - all guys who've dabbled a little before but haven't been able to make it work.

It was interesting to talk with all of them and see the commonalities in all their projects that haven't yet taken off.

There was only one real thing that was missing: commitment. Not a lack of knowledge, not a lack of time. It was simply that they didn't go all in.

So many of the guys had started a project. They had an idea, found a niche, and started something. But every single of one them just hadn't pushed it through. They committed a bit, did some work, but when it really came down to the crunch, they didn't commit fully.

Why? I'm guessing because they didn't think it was going to work and so were afraid of putting in so much work and not seeing a return on investment.

But, the fact that they didn't commit 100% was the very reason they didn't see a return on investment.

They half arsed it, produced something pretty average, didn't push all the angles they could find, and then gave up when things got tough. And because of that, the project eventually failed. From our conversations, the only reason I could see that I made $XXX,XXX last year and they didn't was that I committed 100% to the projects I was doing and was willing to take a risk on them whilst they gave up when things got tough.

Just to give you an example:

The current project I'm working on has been going for three months now. We've got 3 full-time staff, 3 permanent part time virtual assistants in various roles, 3 writers, and we're about to take on another three staff. That's on top of the work my business partner and I have been doing to build the project.

Our expenses so far are around $9k and we've only just hit the point where our weekly revenues are starting to cover our weekly expenses. As the revenues increase, we're scaling as fast as we can so we don't expect to break even for another two months or so.

But, the eventually payoff? Easy 6 figures a month.

This is the same as what happened with the last big project I was working on and we were making 6 figures a month by month 7.

This what I mean by commitment - going all in, committing right from the start, and giving it everything. Not just throwing up a shitty WordPress site on free hosting with a free template, writing some shitty, under-optimised copy, purchasing some bullshit link wheels from fiverr, and giving up when nothing happens.

You have to commit and you have to commit hard.

If you don't give a project 100% because you're worried that you won't see a return on investment then I can guarantee you that you won't see a return on your investment.

Your project will fail, you'll feel like a failure, you'll think internet marketing is too hard and give it up - all because you didn't give it what was needed to make it work.

"But I don't have the money to do this!"

That excuse is bullshit. Not a dollar spent of the $9k we've gone through so far has been spent on something I couldn't do and you can't learn.

You can learn to write articles. You can learn to edit WordPress templates. You can learn how to optimise your out reach process. You can learn to throw something together in Photoshop that'll pass as an infograph.

You can learn everything you need to know to make a project blow up but you have to commit 100%. You don't have to spend thousands to grow something. $20 a month on semi-decent hosting and a $50 WordPress template is enough to make a site look big-brand. Everything else you can do yourself with a little commitment and a decision that you're going to make this work, whatever it takes.

So, before you do anything else today, take 10 minutes to think about this:

1. What's one project you started that was kind of successful but didn't get the results you wanted?
2. What are the different elements you'd have to change to make that a top level, well executed, 100% professional project that was pushed to the limit in all avenues?
3. What's one thing you can do / learn today to take it there?

If you want to make a full time living in online marketing, you have to commit. You have to give it everything.

If you don't commit you're worried you won't see a return on your investment then I can guarantee you that you'll never see a return on your investment. Ever.

So, get up off your arse, get your head in the game, and make something happen.
 
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Louey37 said:
If you want to make a full time living in online marketing, you have to commit. You have to give it everything.

If you don't commit you're worried you won't see a return on your investment then I can guarantee you that you'll never see a return on your investment. Ever.

So, get up off your arse, get your head in the game, and make something happen.
Click to expand...

+rep

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WANT TO BUY: Real Editorial Links

I've been scouring through BST threads looking for high-end editorial links and the pickings are pretty slim up there.

If anyone has real links available on real sites and that they're selling, hit me up. I've got a few projects I'm looking to pimp out with quality.

Must be a quality DA35+ site with real visitors and regularly updated content.

Oh, and I'm more than happy to pay what these kinds of links are really worth.

Hit me up.
 
Such an impressive journey you've been on Louey.

I'm at the beginning of a, hopefully similarly successful, journey set out here:

http://www.wickedfire.com/newbie-qu...rst-product-review-price-comparison-site.html

I learnt HTML and CSS from scratch in a week with CodeAcademy. It's enough to make basic theme changes. Their courses are free and give practical lessons (you can even develop a website from scratch on there). I always learn better from doing.

My site's live with some terms ranking in top 40 with just social links and now it's time to seek out outreaching opportunities.

If you have chance please have a read. I'm moving from the UK to Sydney in May so I'll buy you a beer for your thoughts.
 
LESSON LEARNED: Guest post acceptance rates vary from niche to niche

We've been ramping up our guest post outreach work over the last few months and there are some interesting stats coming out of it.

We initially targeted travel sites and were getting around a 5.5% posting rate with average cost per link around $100.

We've now switched over to tech sites and our acceptance rate has jumped to 16%, cutting our cost per link by about 60%.

Same outreach techniques, same outreach templates, just different niches.

So, if you're doing outreach and you're not getting the conversion rates you want, try switching niches to see if that boosts your results.
 
QUESTION: Has anyone ever had issues ranking a page because it was too long?

I've got a page on my site that's 27,000 words and it just won't rank. It's currently got nearly 100 referring domains pointing at it and it won't appear in the serps. The strangest thing is that I've got a less linked page which has a less relevant title and content appearing in the serps but this one just won't budge.

Anyone had this issue before? And if so, did you find a solution?
 
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