I watched a video created by Matt Cutts, the head of the Google anti-spam team, which I have embedded below for you.

The focus of the video is about a recent change to the Google algorithm, and in particular the way they rank pages for the long tail keyword phrases. I’m interested to hear what you all think about this.

However what I think may possible be the outcome, is sites that Google see as not authority sites will no longer find it so easy to rank for long tail keyword phrases.

What is an authority site? Well I think it’s one that has a substantial amount of information on it, and is regularly updated with new content. Perhaps the sites that will be affected the most are small sites with a handful of pages, that are solely focusing on getting easy traffic through ranking for specific long tail phrases only.

Form what Matt Cutts says in this video, I think that Google will rank authority sites for long tail phrases even when they are not trying to target the keyword directly. I realize this happens already to some degree, but perhaps it will be more apparent.

So what should you do?

Well I think the key thing to take from this video, is that it’s important to build quality sites, that demonstrate that you’re an authority on the topic, and avoid creating fly by night flimsy sites, that only target a few long tail phrases.

What do you guys think?

Matt Carter

Having a varied readership to this blog, some people being complete newbies and other having more experienced, I think it’s a good idea to first explain what Outsourcing is. Outsourcing is where you pay someone else to do tasks for your online business that you don’t need to be doing, so that you can move your overall operation forward much faster.

What to Outsource?

The first thing you need to decide is what to outsource. Now this will vary, depending on what marketing approach your pursue in your business. However some of the main things that I outsource are link building and article writing and spinning. I also outsource graphic design too, but this is not on a regular basis.

When to Outsource?

Often people ask me if they should outsource jobs for their business straight away, and my answer to this is “no”. The reason I say this, is because in order to get the best result from your outsourcing, you need to know how to do the tasks that you want outsourced first.

Before I outsource any link building or writing job, I always make sure that I have done the task myself. Before I hired any staff to work for me, I did everything myself. I wrote and spun all my own articles, built all my own links and websites.

There’s two reasons I do this. The first one being, that if I have done the task myself, I know how long it takes to complete, and number two, I know what kind of results to expect. By doing this I know what is reasonable to expect from my outsource staff.

Not only that though, you can also offer advice and solutions to your workers if they are finding the task difficult, as you’ll have experience doing it, and be aware of the common difficulties and how to overcome these. I also advise people to wait until they are making money online before they outsource any tasks.

When you are starting out in Internet Marketing, it is important to keep your costs low and your profits high. So hold off on the outsourcing until you can see money coming in, and it doesn’t have to be much, what is more important is that you know how you did it and could easily make more money if you replicated what you did.

One lucky sale is not really a good indication that you have worked out a good system to replicate.

How to Outsource?

Once you are ready to get some outsource staff working for you, I recommend that you go over to Odesk, as they have a huge number of workers for you to choose from, and they can work for you on a per project basis or ongoing. That link to Odesk is an affiliate link  by the way, however I am a user of this service so believe me it’s quality.

I HIGHLY recommend that you look for people in the Philippines, as my experience with workers from here is very good. However make sure you read their background information carefully and select people right for the job.

When you have shortlisted a few people that you think will be good for the job, what I recommend you do next, is set up a 30mins test for them to complete, so you can assess how competent they are and how well the follow instructions.

One of the best free tools to help you communicate with your workers is Jing. I did a post on Jing recently and I recommend you read that to learn more about it: Using Jing.

Also I always request that my outsource staff be available on skype, so that if I need to contact them with changes or feedback, I can do so easily.

My closing outsourcing tip is to make sure you check the work of your outsource staff early on. Don’t make the mistake of waiting until they have done 20 hrs for you, and then review their work. I’m only telling you from experience, because I have had a few disasters in my time. So make sure after the first day of work, that you get them to send you what they did.

I hope these outsourcing tips for Internet Marketing were helpful!

Regards

Matt Carter

As you all may be aware I am releasing a brand new article spinning and rewriting tool, plus my Backlink Blueprint course on April the 27th at 3pm EST, so mark it in your calendar now!!

As part of the lead up to this I have been running a contest for the best comment on the pre-launch blog. Thanks to all those who participated, I had nearly 500 comments in total and over 5000 downloads of the free SEO report I was giving out.

The lucky winners have been notified and they are….

Leiif, Dwight, Anna, Brad, David…and I squeezed one more in with Ray, as I was feeling generous!

Thank you all for your comments, I greatly appreciate it, and remember the launch date is 27th April and the first 300 people get a special discount.

Thanks again,

Chat soon,

Matt

Recently I caught up with a friend of mine and he shared with me some really great ideas on outsourcing my business, among other things.

However one really cool thing he showed me, which I was aware of already, but had never taken the time to look into, is Jing, a website video marketing tool!

In this post I am going to discuss why I now like Jing so much and how it might be of use to you also. The best thing is that it is totally FREE!! (got to love that)

After installing Jing and playing around with it for a few minutes, I realized how awesome this free tool was, and started thinking of all the ways I could use it.

My friend who told me about Jing (an outsourcing guru) explained that he was using this tool to communicate with his outsource staff in the Philippines….and that is definitely one of the ways I will be using it also, however there are some other cool things you can do with it too.

Outsourcing

First off lets talk about how you could use this tool in your outsourcing, and if you are not yet at the stage where you are hiring workers in the Philippines to work on your business yet, then when you are, this will be helpful (keep in mind that you can hire people for cheap rates in the Philippines).

Whenever I am training someone to do a task for me, such as building links or using a new software tool, I always record a video of myself doing the task. Then I save this video in my training videos library and send it to my worker.

However up until recently I have been using Camtasia, which is a paid tool, that records my screen. Camtasia is awesome, however Jing (made by the same company) does the job you need for free!!

Not only that though you can also take screen shots and Jing has simple but effective editing tools that allows you to draw straight onto the screen shot. This way you can comment on what you are viewing, and send that over to your workers for feedback too!

Here’s an example of what I mean:

Video Marketing

Most of you have probably been through my 12 part (actually about 14 now) free video marketing course on internet marketing. If you haven’t then you can sign up for it in the top right of this blog now.

The response I get from this free website video marketing course is outstanding, and the number of leads I have gained from it is mind blowing! I don’t say these things so that you think I’m cool, I say it to encourage you guys to do similar things yourself using Jing. People love video, especially when it’s free.

However I realize that not every niche will work with the style of videos I created, as they are for the Internet Marketing niche. However you can just as easily create  a slide presentation with great information for people in any niche. Really all you need to do is turn your emails into slides, add images and record it all with Jing!

This approach does require an email list to market too, but you could also you these Jing videos on your sites or blogs too I suppose, but like I said I am new to Jing myself so haven’t tried that yet.

One thing I have seen people do though, is create free PDF’s focusing on good content, and in the PDF have links to Jing videos, which I also thought was a cool idea. If you made a great PDF and it got passed around, of course making sure you had a link to a squeeze page in it too, then it could work really well!

Simplicity!

What I also like about Jing is that it so easy to use. Once you have created your video or screen shot, all you need to do is click a button and it is automatically uploaded for you and they give you a URL that you can send out for people to watch. This takes all the hard work out of having to upload it yourself!

Well that was just my thoughts on why and how I would use Jing. If you have some others ideas why not share them in the comments below, and if you liked this post please give it a Tweet using the Tweet icon at the top of the post.

Oh yeah and to give credit to my buddy who told me how to use Jing, it was John Jonas who I did a webinar on outsourcing with recently, which was a pretty awesome webinar with more awesome tips like this too. The recording of that is here if you want to watch it:

==>Outsourcing Webinar Replay<==

That’s all from me, enjoy using Jing in your website video marketing ventures and what ever other cool ideas you have to use it!.

==>Click here to download Jing<==

Matt Carter

I hope you guys are making some progress with your marketing efforts!

After many requests from people, I have decided that I will write a post explaining how to set up Wordpress, and use it for your affiliate marketing strategies.

I will be showing you, how to get some really nice, and FREE, Wordpress templates, and also some of the best plugins for Wordpress, and why I use them.

How to Set Up Wordpress Templates

The first thing you want to do is choose a Wordpress template that is going to work for you. Keep in mind that your job with any website/blog that you are using for affiliate marketing, is to pre-sell the visitor and then move them on immediately to the merchants website.

In fact on that note, I think more people would do a lot better with their sites if they just realized that point, and didn’t try and ‘hard sell’ the visitor on their affiliate sites, because you just lose all credibility by doing so.

Ok, so here is a link where you can get some free Wordpress templates that you might like to check out:

==>Click HERE for Free Wordpress Templates<==

There are more you can find also with a little searching too, but these ones are pretty good. One thing that I do recommend, is to stick to the simple themes, that are well laid out and not too cluttered or over done with flashy graphics, because they can actually be a distraction to the visitor, and draw them away from your all important ‘Affiliate Links’

Once you have a template the you like, all you need to do is load it onto your domain and you are ready to go. Most hosting companies, such Hostgator, will give you access to a C Panel, where you will find a cool little function called Fantastico. What this does is allow you to install a Wordpress blog onto your domain in a matter of a few clicks!

How to Set Up Wordpress Plugins

When you have got your new Wordpress blog loaded onto you domain, you then want to fine tune a few things, and this includes adding in some plugins to help you with your SEO.

There are a number of different plugins that you can use, and I will show you two great ones in a moment. First however I want to explain, for people that may not have ever done this, how to set up Wordpress plugins.

Once you download the plugin you want to use, you then have to upload the folder that the plugin came in, to your domain. The place you are uploading it to, is the ‘Plugins’ folder which is under wp-content. Below is a screen shot for you:

The next thing you need to so is activate the plugin so that it will work. This is very easy to do, once you are in the back end of your blog, which is accessed at:

http://www.YOUR-BLOGS-URL.com/wp-admin.

Then you will need to put in your user and password that you set up when use installed the blog using fantastico, and you will be in the back end.

Next navigate to and click “Installed” which is under the “Plugins” tab, in the left menu of your wordpress blog. Once you are in there, all you need to do is locate the plugin you have just uploaded and click ‘Activate’ and that’s it!

One of the best Wordpress plugins that I use on all my Wordpress Blogs is found here:

==>All in One SEO Pack<==

This neat little plugin basically makes doing all your ‘On Page’ SEO much easier. When you write a new post for your blog, you will see some settings under the area where you add the content. It is here that you need to add your keyword phrase you are trying to rank that post for.

A screen shot will make this a lot easier for me to explain:

In the shot above, there is three places that you MUST have your keyword phrase that you want to rank this post for in. The All in One SEO Pack, make it so simple!

The Date Exclusion Plugin

Sometimes it might not be suitable to have the date it you posts, as you might want to hide that from your visitors, and also from Google. The reason being that Google sometimes will read the date of your post and place that at the front of your description that it shows in their search results.

This is ok when the post is new, but when it starts to age, it doesn’t come across as new and relevant, and this can have a negative effect on your marketing.

This problem is easily solved, and I am going to show you how, by using this plugin:

==> ‘Wordpress Date Exclusion Plugin’<==

Once you have downloaded the Date Exclusion plugin, all you do is upload, it as I showed in the example above, and remember to activate it too, or it won’t work.

Now there will be no dates on your posts, however keep in mind that you don’t always want this, as sometimes the date may be needed, but if you are creating small yet very effective Google Sniper style Wordpress blogs as your affiliate sites, then the date is best removed.

How to Set Up Wordpress URL’s

The next thing you need to make sure that you do, is change the structure of your posts URL set up. This is super easy to do, but it is important as Google prefer URL’s in the format that I am about to show you below.

First you need to click ‘Permalinks’ which is under ‘Settings’

Then you need to select the setting for ‘Custom’ as you can see in the image below.

Once you have done that, your post name will show up in the url for the post,
which is now search engine friendly.

One more and final plugin for this post is the Wordpress XML site map generator plugin, which you can find here:

==>XML Site Map Generator Plugin<==

This plugin will create a search engine friendly site map that will help search engines to easily index your blog!

That’s all you need to do to know how to set up Wordpress. Now you just need to pick a niche, write some posts, and drive the traffic to them.

I hope that helped you guys, and have fun with Wordpress!

Matt

(Note: The Google Sniper link on this page is an affiliate link, if you purchase after clicking, my business gets a commission)

With the new FTC guidelines kicking in Dec 1st 2009, I thought it would be a good idea to share my thoughts and the practical steps that I am taking with my sites to ensure I am coming into line to what the FTC require.

Before I do though, I must say that I am not a lawyer and therefore the information provided in this post is my opinion only and not legally binding. It is solely your responsibility to ensure you interpret the FTC guidelines for yourself. Here is a link to the FTC site for you: FTC Guidelines and also read the guidelines here: FTC PDF

The first thing that I want to say is that I personally think that what the FTC are doing is a good thing, and I support it. After all they are essentially cleaning up the internet and removing dodgy non-transparent websites.

I don’t think it is fair when you read a so called testimony about someone’s experience with a product that is either completely false, or an extreme example and no way likely to be the result the average user would experience.

The classic copy writing technique of telling a story along the lines of “I struggled with XYZ also, and I tried everything but nothing helped, then I tried AFFILIATE PRODUCT, and it fixed XYZ immediately, you should try it too!!”, I feel is now a thing of the past, and rightly so.

Everybody, and I am sure you included, want a fair deal and to be told the truth, and this new policy from the FTC demanding transparency is only going to create that for us all.

Although the Big Gun websites will most likely be the target of the FTC first, it does not mean that small affiliates are exempt, and if you do get a fine from the FTC they are $11,000 each violation, so not something you really want to be messing with. However you do get a warning first apparently, but best not to go there I think.

Just in case you live outside of the United States like I do, please don’t be fooled into thinking that these new rules don’t apply to you, because if you are marketing to someone in the United States then you are liable.

What Am I Doing?

Well to be honest with you, my affiliate sites never used falsified examples and testimonials, because I never felt right about them. However I did have, until recently, affiliate links in the pages of my sites that did not clearly explain my relationship to the merchant, ie. that I get commission from this relationship.

Therefore from what I understand of the FTC new guidelines, is that they require affiliates to disclose all their links and inform the visitor that their links are in fact sponsored links, and also disclose if they have never actually used the product they are recommending.

Here’s a video from the FTC themselves:

Sounds fair enough to me. So what I have done on my websites is place a sentence underneath each affiliate link that says: ‘The above link is a sponsored affiliate link, the owner of this site is not a bona fide user of this product” I must also give credit to Mark Ling from Affilorama.com who helped me with this process.

So if you have not actually tried a product then you must make that clear so that the visitor to your website is aware of that, and they are also aware that you get paid commission from the merchant for recommending their products.

If you are a product owner then there are some more things that you need to know and once again I encourage to read the guidelines for yourself. However one key thing that I took from the guidelines is that the use of testimonials has changed. You are no longer allowed to include a testimonial and simply state that the result may not be typical, and the FTC now require ‘Generally Expected Results’.

From what I can gather ‘Generally Expected Results’ are scientifically proven, with data, and reflect an average result for a certain number of people tested. So you can no longer place any testimonial you like on your websites, and instead must do the required testing, and if you can, then include ‘Generally Expected Results’.

Check The Merchants Out!

As an affiliate you can also be held liable if the merchant that you are recommending is not meeting the guidelines of the FTC. So make sure that you review the merchants claims and ask them also if they feel they are inline with the FTC rules.

What Sites Should I Be Updating?

The most simple and safe bet is all your sites. Whether they be on social media sites like Squidoo, or Twitter posts, or Wordpress blogs, it doesn’t matter, you still must be transparent.

However if you have banner ads on your site, that are clearly advertising then apparently these are fine and do not require any further disclosure, because they are considered obvious advertising and one would assume that the website owner is receiving some form of payment for including the advertisement.

That’s all from me, and once again I am not a lawyer so please read the guidelines for yourself.

All the best

Matt

I like to provide as much quality and practical advice in my posts to assist my readers to reach success with their online marketing, and in today’s post I will be continuing with this trend, however with a slightly different twist.

I am going to introduce some extremely important marketing concepts, that I think are more important in the long run and will play a bigger role in your overall success than immediate practical techniques.

With that said we will be discussing the Marketing Mindset of successful entrepreneurs.

If you are like I used to be, then you might read that last sentence and think, “Boring! just give me the immediate marketing tactics, I don’t care for these wishing washy, you can do it, pep talks”

If so, then I seriously think you need to challenge your thinking and read this entire post, as what we are about to discuss could be the difference between you reaching the internet lifestyle of true automated residual income, or struggling to make a few sales through Clickbank.

Indecision Is a Road Block

I meet quite a few people online and offline, who are trying to grow businesses, yet when I ask them what their goals and burning desire is, many don’t really have an answer.

Usually it is something along  the lines of “I just want to get rich”. Now their is nothing wrong with that I suppose, but it’s the people that know precisely what they want and have a clear goal in mind that tend to do much better.

You see when you know what you want and you are determined to get it, and you have begun to condition your mind to do whatever it takes to get there, then fear and disappointment are not such a formidable opponent to you.

The great philosopher of success Napoleon Hill wrote:

“Do away with indecision soon and choose a definitive goal”

Once you have a clear goal that you are aiming for you will be able to focus your efforts on it, ignore distractions and only spend time on things that will help you move towards that target.

Think About What You Are Thinking About

Hill had some interesting theories, developed from his years of networking with some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. In his book “Think and Grow Rich” he states that: “Your thoughts control your actions….It is no more difficult to aim high in life and achieve prosperity, than it is to accept a life of misery and poverty”

Although I don’t agree with this statement completely, as some circumstances in parts of the world today make it increasingly difficult to achieve financial wealth, however if you live in a first world country, you may have every opportunity to reach success. What you think can play a huge role in what you actually achieve.

You may well be wondering what on earth I am getting at here, and how this post is related to internet marketing, so let me explain.

Making money on the internet can be challenging, we all know that. I am a little wearing when people offer me a magic formula that requires me to do nothing and get rich, as I am sure you are. However reaching success online is most definitely achievable, and creating a lifestyle where you call the shots and work on your terms, is well within anyone’s reach.

However your thoughts and what you believe about yourself play a big role in what you can achieve.

Yes People

One of the biggest lessons I learned in my marketing career, was to always have a ‘yes’ attitude. By this I mean having a positive outlook, so when a situation occurs that could potentially be a problem or obstacle, you look for the positive in it and immediately look for the solution to overcome it.

This is something that I struggled with early in my career, as I would often react negatively to challenges and resort to a place of learned behavior where I would somewhat wallow in the misery of the situation. However I noticed that some of the most successful people I knew online, would react very differently when they faced potential set backs, and that was that they would immediately look for a solution and move forward.

A positive outlook will keep you in a prime state to handle problems when they arise, because believe me they will arise, time and time again, and the only thing that can change is the way you manage them.

‘Yes’ people remain positive and when they face a problem they overcome it quickly and keep  moving forward. Where as a negative person almost subconsciously want to stay in the problem, voice how unfair the problem is and pull as many other people into the problem as they can.

This attitude is counter productive and if you lean towards it, then it may be something worth looking at. If you remain positive and have a ‘yes’ attitude you will also find that you attract people into your life that will want to work with you, and this is another crucial element I will discuss in a moment. However if you are always negative and complaining then you will just push people away.

Positive people with a burning desire are not concerned about finding fault in other people, cutting corners, wasting time or discouraged by temporary set backs.

Making money online is all about ’skill’, the more skill you have the easier it becomes. However acquiring these skills can take a lot of trial and error, disappointments and frustration. Your first attempts will most likely fail, as mine did, yet you must see these set backs as stepping stones to success.

It is the people that remain positive and look back at a failure as a great learning opportunity and view their position after a set back as actually one step closer to their goal, that will actually end up reaching that goal.

So my question to you is, ‘what is your attitude like?’

Persistence

One of the world’s most successful businessman, Andrew Carnegie, who generated huge amounts of wealth in the US steel industry said: “Persistence is to human nature, what carbon is to steel, without it you are doomed to fail with it nothing can stand in your way”

In the age we live in of instant gratification; such as microwaves, buy now pay later, lose weight without exercise etc… our minds are trained to wanting things instantly.

This mindset in business online can pose a problem, because people want a full blown profitable internet businesses but they don’t want to work at it. They want an instant business delivered to their inbox. People with this attitude, lack persistence and tend to be the ones that fade away and don’t reach their goals.

Sometimes though, marketers promote their products, to appeal to the lazy mind, in order to stimulate the motivation needed to get people to take action, and I don’t have a problem with that, because I would rather be given a push and fail, than be skeptical and never even try, that is a much worse tragedy if you ask me. After all each failure is a just one step further to reaching my goal.

When you start an internet business you will be faced with doubts, fears, negative people, perhaps even ridicule, and you will sometimes want to give up and resort back to your comfort zone of the life without risk. However if you want to reach your goals you must be persistence, and you will get there.

Two Heads Are Better Than One

The next critical element to reaching success online, is two find like minded people and work together with them. I can’t stress how important this has been to my success online. If you try and be a lone ranger and make it all on your own, you may well get there, but I assume a lot slower than people that work smart and team up with others.

Now I am not meaning that you should go out and find an official business partner, but I do mean that you should develop a network of friends that have similar goals, whether that be affiliate websites, making money on Ebay etc… and regularly share ideas.

To quote Hill once again: “No two minds come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind”

I think that sums up my point pretty clearly. So if you are not working with other people online, then make point of starting to develop friendships in forums and on blogs. By doing this you will learn a lot faster and reach your goals more quickly also.

Think about it, if you share ideas that work and tricks you have learned with people and they do the same back for you, then you will learn things much faster.

Offer to help people and be a ‘yes’ person always, and you will find that you will attract people into your life that will be happy to work with you. I receive a lot of email from people everyday, and I can’t help but be amazed every now and then by a few of them, as the tone in some emails is quite astounding, and I can tell that they have not grasped this crucial aspect of business success.

The type of emails I am referring to read something like: “Matt where is this….”, “Matt I want my…..now!!”

I am here to serve the people on my list, and to be honest I don’t mind the odd demanding email because I understand the frustrations that people go through, however I don’t really want to go out of my way to help people like this above the norm, as to me it would be way to much of a headache.

So I encourage you to be a ‘Yes’ person and also start working with people towards your goals.

Keep Taking Action

When I was student I used to look up to an older friend/boss of mine that was an entrepreneur. I noticed something about him that was different, and that was that he would always have a go at new things and was never afraid to fail.

He owned several very successful restaurants, and one particular situation stayed with me to this day. This guy sold  a particular restaurant, made a tidy 7 figure profit, and the next week I saw him at the local area street festival selling remote control cars at a stall he had set up!!!

I was amazed and I asked why he was doing that. He replied saying “because I wanted to have a go at something different, so I did!!” You see he didn’t care what people thought of him, and he wasn’t controlled by fear, and he made millions as an entrepreneur and still does.

So I encourage you to take action, and don’t be controlled by fear of failure and you will reach your goals.

As always I would love to hear from you all, so please feel welcome to leave a comment and share your thoughts.

To your success!

Matt Carter

In this post I am going to look at what the Google Book Deal is all about, what the opposition have to say, and how it may effect information marketers selling E-books.

So What Has Google Gone & Done Now?

To provide a brief overview, Google has been undertaking a project to digitize millions and millions of out of print books worldwide, which they  intend to be the gatekeeper of. No small operation by any stretch of the imagination, however when you have the resources and economic muscle that Google has, a project like this is very achievable.

However not all is smooth sailing for the online giant, as this latest stunt has been met by some rather fierce opposition from other big players such as Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo, and many other smaller constituents worldwide, who have formed a group called the ‘Open Book Alliance’.

“A class action settlement is the wrong mechanism, this court is the wrong venue, and monopolization is the wrong means to carry out the worthy goal of digitizing and increasing the accessibility of books,” Microsoft’s lawyers wrote.

The main gist of the opposition’s arguments against Google’s book deal is the infringement on certain copyright laws, and in particular how the book deal would be one of an author ‘Opt Out’ option rather than ‘Opt In’. What this means is that if an author doesn’t want their book to be a part of the project they must opt out, rather than choose to be included in the first place.

In addition to this further arguments in opposition to the Google Book project say: ““Google Book Search is like someone following you around the library, writing down every book you pick up and every book you sit down to read,” said Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director at the Northern California ACLU. This may well be too much information, almost like Big Brother watching you.

However interestingly there is also a huge amount of support for the project which is going to play a big role in the outcome of the pending court case which will decide if Google will be given the green light to further pursue the project. Some big European publishers, like Oxford University Press, and Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck, which own Random House and Macmillan respectively, support the agreement.

There is also over 25,000 libraries, publishers and authors worldwide are working with Google to digitize the books. The argument in favor of the project claims that this will only increase exposure to their archives which is a positive effect.

Germany and France have stated that they are firmly against the deal, however one copyright specialist stated: “I would imagine the court is going to say that because you have a significant amount of big players around the world who have opted into this, then it is worth proceeding with,” said Akash Sachdeva, an intellectual property lawyer at the law firm Allen & Overy in London.

What Does This Mean For Information Marketers?

Aside from the effect this new scheme of Google’s may have on big players such as Amazon, who may well suffer by losing book sales to Google as a result of the project being approved, the next question we need to ask is will this effect the online information marketer selling Clickbank Ebooks, and if so how?

As with anything there are always many opinions being thrown around, some well thought through, others being irrational emotion based responses in my opinion. Nonetheless it is a hot topic worth discussing.

Some of the possible drawbacks would be that Google will take a portion of the online Ebooks sales away from Amazon and Clickbank affiliates.Considering the magnitude of the operation that Google is undertaking with this project, that is a definite possibility. Buyers searching online for information in different niches may have more variety to choose from and perhaps Google books will catch their eye.

Further to this point Google may well favor search engine rankings for Google Books pages, similar to what they already do with their YouTube videos. This could essentially drive traffic to Google books pages and away from information marketers.

However with that said I personally don’t think this will play too large a role and should not be anything to be overly concerned about. The first reason is that I don’t think Google is going to specialize in writing professional sales copy for these books, with bonuses etc… to increase hype and drive the conversions, like a typical Clickbank sales letter, done properly is designed to do.

If anything Google’s style of book promotion will most likely directly impact Amazon as their model will be more closely related. Remember people can buy off Amazon right now over a Clickbank Ebook, so I seriously doubt Google books will cut in on Ebooks sales too heavily, however I do think there will be some impact in particular niches.

There Is Always An Opportunity

As the old saying goes “Is the glass half full or half empty?” or something like that, I can never remember the saying. Anyway my point is that in order to be a successful entrepreneur you must remain optimistic and look for the opportunities in everything.

In my opinion Google will more than likely allow their ads to be placed on these Google Books pages, as they do currently which you can see in the image, and that is a great opportunity to drive very targeted traffic to your websites.

Although Google do have a books site already: http://books.google.com, they are planning on growing this into a huge project with much greater scope.

Plus I assume Google will also allow authors to give away their books for free, which again can be a fantastic way to drive traffic if you are an Ebook owner and something worth considering.

What Now?

It will be interesting to see what the outcome of the pending court case is for the Google Books project, and until then we must just wait and see. Regardless of the outcome, if the project does go forward, although I think it will have a big effect on Amazon’s sales, Ebooks sellers through the likes of Clickbank will not experience as much of the effect.

I would love to know what you guys think and I welcome your comments please!

Cheers

Matt

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons I learned early on in my internet marketing career was the concept of time being the most precious resource I had.

There is only 24 hours in everyday and that we can’t change, however what we do with our time is within our control and must be managed well in order to really be successful online.

The secret to managing your time well online is grasping the concept of leverage. This is where you pull on other resources, such as people and software to perform tasks for you.

By doing this, you can focus on other tasks and move your operation forward faster than if you were to do everything yourself. This is what great entrepreneurs like Richard Branson and Bill Gates are extremely good at doing.

I notice that a vast majority of newbie internet marketers take a while to grasp this concept, and it can be the crucial difference between someone who makes a full time living online and someone who struggles to make a few sales here and there. I liken it to trying to run in a swimming pool, or drive your car with the hand break on, you may still move forward but it will be a lot slower.

With that said let me now provide some advice on how to leverage your time effectively and produce faster results online.

Control Freaks Will Suffer

Before I provide some practical solutions for outsourcing tasks and increasing your efficiency I first want to discuss the importance of NOT being a control freak.

If you are like me then you will suffer a slight case of perfectionism. Most people laugh about this and think “oh that’s great that you make sure everything is perfect every time”, however I disagree, because although running a tight ship is good, being a perfectionist can actually be detrimental to your success!!

How can that be? Well what I battled with for a while was spending too much time going over every small detail to make sure everything was ‘perfect’. However this was eating into my most precious commodity, TIME!! By eating into my time I was essentially eating into my profits and hurting my business.

Now I am not suggesting that you do a less than acceptable job on your websites and other marketing tasks, but if you suffer from perfectionism and go over everything with a fine tooth comb then be aware of the effect it can have on your time.

The other problem that control freaks/perfectionists can suffer is not wanting to relinquish any of the jobs to other people, because they fear that the job won’t be done well unless they do it themselves.

If this point strikes a chord with you, then you are going to have to fight this and learn to outsource tasks. However don’t worry because I am going to provide great tips for helping you select top quality out source staff for very reasonable prices.

What Tasks Should You Outsource?

The next steps you need to take are working out exactly what tasks that you should outsource. Now this will vary depending on what your personal skills are and also what you actually enjoy doing and what you don’t.

I for one am not a big fan of writing content. To be honest I hate writing articles and content for websites, especially if it is on a  topic that I have no personal interest in. So one of the very first things that I started to outsource was the content creation for my websites.

I will never forget how nice the feeling was, to be able to simply write an email requesting that 20 articles were written for me on specific keywords that I had researched. After I sent the request, within four days I had all my content for a 20 page article site ready to simply cut and paste into my html editor.

By doing this I was able to focus on other marketing tasks for the site, such as the SEO and as a result the website was profitable in half the time and paid for the outsourcing fee very quickly.

Other tasks that you may want to consider getting other people to do are:

• Graphic Design
• Keyword Research
• Link Building
• Copy Writing
• Content Writing (blogs, web 2.0 sites, article spinning)

And much more….

You need to look at what you are doing in your online business and seriously consider what you can get someone else to do. I myself much prefer to come up with new ideas for websites and focus on the strategy, rather than spending hours blasting out articles.

Where Do I Find People To Recruit?

There are a number of places that you can go, to find quality outsource staff. However you may want to consider visiting these sites below, as they are very reputable and where I have found great contractors.

The Philippines is well known for having top quality outsource staff. This is largely due to the fact that they have a very high level of spoken of English and the hiring cost is low.  Therefore I recommend looking for staff there.

Contracting Sites

• http://www.elance.com/
• http://manila.craigslist.com.ph/
• http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/DotNet/default.aspx
• http://www.bestjobs.ph/

How Do I Make Sure I Get a Good Contractor?

Finding a good quality and reliable contractor can be a matter of trial and error, however with that said there are a few things that you can do to ensure you screen for the best.

What I highly recommend you do is first check their past work, and ask them to provide samples of what they are capable of. Also you might want to get a few contractors that you are considering to do a small test that you give them. This may simply be writing a 400 word article in a given time frame and then assessing who produced the best results.

When you hire a new contractor, you must make sure that you check the quality of their work, and also make sure that it is not in breach of any copyright. Some dodgy/lazy contractors will go to Wikipedia and simply copy and paste and claim it to be their own work! To combat this you can search in Wikipedia yourself, or use other tools like Copyscape to check for duplicates.

Once you find a contractor that you are happy with, I highly recommend that you hold onto them, and also ask them if they know any other friends that are into the same line of work which they recommend.

Good Instructions Are Key

When you are explaining what you want from a contractor it is vital that you are clear and concise with your instructions. A few times I have run into problems where the work produced was not really what I was after. I soon realized a better approach was to provide videos, pictures and other examples of work that I wanted the contractor to closely follow.

When I started to do this, the results where vastly improved! For example you may want to get someone to do your keyword research for you. Therefore what you could do is record a video of your screen as you do your keyword research and walk them through everything that you do. This way you avoid communication breakdowns and get a much better result.

If you are hiring a graphic designer to make a header panel for a website, then I recommend that you give them half a dozen other websites that have the look and feel, and also the colors that you want.

My final point is that, other than getting people do tasks for you, I also recommend that you invest in quality software. Software that can perform a lot of the everyday tasks for you, such as link building, article spinning etc… will cut back the time you have to spend on these jobs and once again move your operation forward a lot faster.

The important thing to note is that if you always hold onto all your money and are too scared to invest in people and tools, then you will get to your destination online a lot slower. However when you start to view these things as an investment, then you are on the path to success.

Thanks!

Matt Carter

“how do I get more traffic?”

I usually reply with:

“What’s your conversion rate like?”

Often people are a little confused by my response, and unfortunately a large number of affiliates can’t give an answer. Why? because they are so focused on driving traffic that they don’t track their conversion stats at all.

When people have asked me to then critique their sites, I am left stunned that they are wondering why they aren’t making many sales. The copy used on these sites did a great job of confusing me on most occasions, and was a long way from convincing me to click anywhere accept the BACK button, let alone any affiliate links.

Recently I helped a young budding affiliate with his site. He made a few changes to his website that I recommended and within hours he made his first sale, he had waited 12 months to experience this joy!

You see, more traffic alone wont increase your affiliates sales, but more traffic with higher conversions will. So if you are not getting at least a 2% conversion rate with your pages then you seriously need to rethink your approach.

One of the biggest lessons I learned when I was a  newbie affiliate that helped increase my sales was that my role as the affiliate was to focus on the PRE-SELL, and the merchants job is to close the deal. I see a lot of affiliate sites that are trying too hard to promote the product they are affiliated with, and start taking on the merchants role.

This is exactly what I explained to this young internet entrepreneur I gave advice to, and as I mentioned when the penny dropped for him, his first sale soon followed.

With that said here are some tips for how to pre-sell effectively:

1.) Research Your Customer: It is important to know what makes your ideal customer tick. Use forums and social sites and find out what their major concerns are and what the common attempts to resolve these concerns have been. Your customer will know if you really understand their concerns by the language you use. If they smell a rat they will not listen to your recommendations.

2.) Show Empathy: Demonstrate to the customer that you understand their concerns by echoing their frustrations. Tell a personal story where you may have had a similar experience and how the product you endorse resolved this problem.

3.) Be Honest: People are not silly and when you give them the most incredible glowing review of your affiliate product, 100% fool proof etc…they will not always believe you. So one tactic is to reveal some of the minor flaws in the product. If you do this well then the visitor will view your recommendation as more credible.

This can work even better if you have an alternative choice for the visitor to select, that fulfills the weakness of the first product. I have seen this work well by using review sites where, instead of having number 1,2,3 …you actually have categories where you review the best in each category.

If you are in the learn Chinese online market, a weakness of one course may be that it doesn’t focus on learning to write but specializes in speaking. However you could also have the best Chinese writing course reviewed also.

4.) Call To Action: Of course you must still have a call to action, but again you don’t have to take the pushy sales person approach. Instead you are just recommending a product that you find useful, just like you would to a friend you know personally.

These are some tips for promoting your affiliates products without being overly pushy, that will inturn increase your conversions!