Darren Chow Personal Blog

It’s rare that I start a blog post with a blog title that contains zero keywords about article submission and Internet marketing.

You may not be familiar with the “red packet” that you see in the title. Well, let me explain.

Tomorrow is the New Year of the Lunar Calendar. In other words, according to the Chinese Calendar, tomorrow is the first day of the New Year. And all Chinese around the world celebrate this special occasion. If you happen to find yourself in a Chinese setting in the next 2 days, I’m sure you will enjoy the festive cheer -- it’s infectious!

During the New Year, it is Chinese custom to give away red packets. The red packets (also known as “ang bao” in Chinese) are meant to symbolize wealth and prosperity. Married couples are supposed to give away red packets to those who are still single -- mostly children, teenagers, and young adults.

When someone receives a red packet, he or she is usually delighted. There are two reasons for this. Of course, anyone would be happy to be blessed with wealth and prosperity by someone else. But there is another reason -- the red packets contain cash!

The amount of cash in each red packet is not as significant as the thought and intention that goes behind giving the giver. If you are in the privileged position to give away red packets, the amount of cash in the packet may range from $2 to $100. Obviously, you want to give larger amounts to those who are special to you.

For those who are in financial hardship, any amount will do.

Actually, I think that the recipient of the red packet shouldn’t focus too much on how much cash is in the packet. Reason being, all “ang baos” contain an infinite amount of money.

How can that possibly be true?

Well, I’m going to show you.

Today, regardless of whether you are Chinese or not, or whether you are from the States, the UK, Canada, India, etc…I’m going to give you a big virtual “ang bao”. Wealth and prosperity is for everyone.

Here it is.

Okay, this red packet looks a little small. But don’t underestimate the size of the packet. Do you know how much cash this red packet contains?

Infinite.

Yes, it’s true. I’m going to show you why this is true in a moment.

But before we get to the good stuff, let’s get some quick updates out of the way.

A few weeks ago, I invited a few people to try out the blog commenting service that I was developing. Everything turned out well, and here are some of the results.

Niche: Health/Medical -- Approval Rate: 2 / 18 (11.11%)

Niche: Travel -- Approval Rate: 7 / 18 (38.89%)

Niche: Home Improvement -- Approval Rate: 8 / 21 (38.10%)

Niche: Travel (accommodation) -- Approval Rate: 7 / 18 (38.89%)

Niche: Home Improvement -- Approval Rate: 5 / 18 (27.78%)

The results are pretty encouraging. So I’m going to declare the service to be officially launched. If you are interested to learn more about how this works, you can check out the previous blog commenting test results, or visit the commenting service website directly.

Okay, I’m glad that we got that out of the way. Now, for the fun stuff.

As mentioned, I’m going to show you why this virtual “ang bao” that I gave to you contains infinite wealth.

First, you must understand how wealth creation works.

Take a look around you. Everything physical item that you see is a form of product. So how did these products come about? They didn’t just drop from the sky.

All physical items that you see around you right now, began as an idea in someone’s head. I’m sure you’ll agree with me on that. And this idea, when carried out, was turned into a physical product, which you bought, and that’s how the item landed right next to you.

Now what had that got to do with you getting rich? Well, in the process that I just described above, somebody did get rich. But that person is not you. You bought the product, which meant that you handed money to someone else. So the money landed somewhere, with someone else. Somebody did receive money for executing (I’ll discuss more about execution later on) in the process. This person (and those who took part in the various business transactions) all received money for their effort. They got richer.

I hope you are still paying attention here. The process that I’ve described sounded very simple. In fact, it sounded so simple that most people would dismiss it immediately as some “self improvement” or “get rich quick” mambo jumbo. If that happens, then I must say it’s rather unfortunate. You see, the process of wealth creation is supposed to be simple. Human beings make it complicated.

The process is so important, that I think I’m going to repeat it here.

Inspiration => Ideas => Execution => Physical manifestation of ideas => Wealth

If you understand this concept, then you will begin to see that wealth eluded many people because they get stuck somewhere along the process. Where? From my own observations, they get stuck in the IDEA stage.

I’m sure you yourself have been the recipient of tons of ideas, or you have met people with many ideas, but wealth still eluded them. How did that happen?

The fault doesn’t lie with ideas. It’s always a good thing to have ideas. Most people get stuck at the “execution” (the doing) phase. Or worse, some people never get to the execution phase. They have waves and waves of ideas coming to them and they do nothing about them.

Their favorite excuse? “Nah, it’s not going to work.”

That is another way of saying that they don’t believe their ideas will work. Somehow, they have managed to convince themselves that their ideas will fail,  even before they try. Sadly, they have indeed failed -- they have failed themselves by not doing anything with their ideas.

Then there are those who dismiss ideas because they judge the ideas. When an idea comes to them, they tell themselves that it’s a bad idea, so that justifies not doing anything about the ideas.

For these people, the road to infinite wealth lies in transforming their current perspective of ideas. What they think they know about ideas have to change. How do we achieve that?

First, realize that there is no such thing as “good” and “bad” ideas. Good and bad are relative -- they mean different things to different people. The assumption that the idea is bad can be erroneous in the first place. And that’s like giving an idea the death sentence.

So don’t go telling yourself an idea is good or an idea is bad. Ever encountered good ideas that turned out to be a not-so-good idea? Or ever experienced a bad idea that turned out to be a blessing in disguise? I’m sure that happened to everyone at some point. And it’s happening because we label ideas as “good” and “bad”.

To avoid this trap, we must first stop labeling our ideas as “good” or “bad”. Instead of thinking of whether ideas are good or bad, start thinking of whether the ideas work or don’t work.

In other words…

There are no good and bad ideas. There are only ideas that work and don’t work.

- Darren Chow

If you have given some thought about evolution, you know this to be true. Evolution just create, and the creations that work well in the environment continue to thrive. Evolution doesn’t “think” whether something is good or bad before creating. Only human beings do that.

As a human being, how do we know whether an idea will work or not work?

This depends on many factors. Knowledge, life experience, reasoning ability, analysis ability, all plays a part in arriving at the right conclusion.

The problem is, many people are having trouble identifying ideas that work! Why is that so? The answer is simple.

Very often, we don’t identify ideas that work because we place most (if not all) of our attention on ideas that don’t work.

- Darren Chow

How many times have you attended a meeting to discuss about things that don’t work? Then everyone is just trying to fix this and fix that.

My recommendation? Instead of running back and forth trying to fix everything, just focus on the things that do work, and then do it better!

You find that the more you execute, the more experience you have. The more experience you have, the better you become at identifying ideas that do work. Do you know what that means?

That means even if you have no clue about whether an idea is going to work or not, go DO SOMETHING about it!

Of course, you have to be smart about execution. For example, if you are unsure whether an idea will take off or not, it’s wiser to test small first instead of plonking down thousands of investment dollars in the project. Only those with an insatiable ego will do that. That’s the work of a fool, not an entrepreneur. So be wise about how you use your resources.

You can make an infinite amount of money just by focusing on what works. Amazing isn’t it?

Talking about infinite, do you now understand why you are born infinitely rich?

If you don’t, let me explain further. From the above, I hope you can now see that wealth comes from ideas. Then I pose you this question -- Are ideas finite?

You know, within you, that you have an infinite number of ideas. The only resource that is finite is time. So the worse sin you can ever commit, is to waste your most valuable resource -- TIME.

Want more money? Sure, no problem. Just complete the cycle by executing the ideas you have, and then focusing on what works.

Sounds simple? In words, everything is simple. But be mindful that you will encounter formidable challenges along the way. In fact, I guarantee you that the moment you start doing something about your ideas, some problem will come up to stop you.

Now what are you going to do about the problems you face?

At the most basic level, every challenge you face is a test of your faith. Do you waver under tough situations? Or do you steel your will and forge ahead? I certainly wish you choose to be the latter, for those with strong faith will have a higher chance of success.

Let me say this again -- the road to wealth is not supposed to be that easy. If it is, then there is nothing separating the successful from the unsuccessful.

Do you realize what I have just given to you?

I have just given to you the key to unlock the riches that have been lying dormant within you. Yes, infinite wealth.

The “ang bao” that I had just given had to be a virtual one, for no physical red packet can hold the amount of wealth that you already own.

I hope you like this virtual “ang bao” that I had just given to you -- nobody had ever done that before

After the lunar New Year, I have another new and exciting service that will help grow your business -- video marketing. (Yes, it’s finally coming!)

I thought about developing this service for ages, but haven’t figured out how to overcome some of the challenges that stood in the way. Now I think I’ve got it. It’s going to be a 100% original service that is simple to use.

I’ve already done some tests during the past few weeks, and here is a video that I’ve created and posted on numerous popular video sites. It’s about how to format articles properly for higher approval rates. I’ve leave you to enjoy the video….

And of course, let me know what you think by leaving your feedback below. Eh, and no spam please…it’s Chinese New Year you know…

Thanks for all the feedback that was given regarding this post (blog commenting feedback request).

As the feedback was favorable, I’ve decided to go ahead and develop the blog commenting service. The front end and back end has already been developed. And I’ve taken the time to perform some internal tests. Basically, I’ve used it to promote some of the sites that I own in various niches. And I’ve gotten some pretty interesting results.

But before going further, let’s take a moment to recap what the blog commenting service is all about.

• The service is a manual commenting service.
• For each order, we will post to 15 blogs based on selected keywords. Therefore, all URLs are different for every order.
• Since all comments are posted by human commenters, the comments are intelligent and relevant.
• After comments are posted, clients can login to their account to view the comments that had been posted, and they can also visit the exact blog URL to see where the comments have been posted.

And here are the test results. Note that we posted more than 15 comments when testing.

Test 1:

Niche: Shopping

Results: Approval Rate: 10 / 18 (55.56%)

Test 2:

Niche: Sports

Results: Approval Rate: 6 / 18 (33.33%)

Test 3:

Niche: Gambling

Results: Approval Rate: 2 / 14 (14.29%)

Test 4:

Niche: Gaming

Results: Approval Rate: 11 / 16 (68.75%)

Test 5:

Niche:Internet Marketing

Results: Approval Rate: 5 / 16 (31.25%)

Test 6:

Niche: Home Improvement

Results: Approval Rate: 4 / 16 (25.00%)

As you can see, the approval rates can range from a mere 14% to as high as 68%. We adopt the same policies when posting comments. There is no difference in the way we approach the commenting. The difference in the approval rate lies in the selection of URLs.

Here are is the approach that we have adopted. Perhaps you may find it useful.

• Select URLs that are ranked on the first page of Google. Most of these sites have high page rank and are authority sites.
• Post in blog entries with approved comments in them. This means that the blog owner is active and approves comments regularly.
• The comment is either relevant to the blog post, or an attempt to join in the existing discussion.
• Whenever possible, we choose URLs that have been posted recently. – Blogs have to be active to have a higher chance of approval!
• Post in a more personalized style. This means that we actually read the post and the comments that are posted before writing our own comments.
• Comments are no longer than 2 to 3 sentences.

When we adopt this approach, we find that the commenting is effective.

From our tests, we have acquired many links from blog entries with page rank 1 to 3, and many of these entries are from blogs with homepage page rank 3, 4 and 5.

So are we happy with the test results?

Sure we are

The reason why we post blog comments is that we want to have a chance to acquire some links in authority blogs that are relevant to our own sites. And we have achieved that goal.

But I believe this question is coming up soon, so I better address it now.

Q: Is there more value in the links when compared to other link building methods like article marketing?

Here’s my answer.

You use different methods for different reasons.

Article submission service – You get the most number of links with this method. If you are looking to increase the number of back links for your site in terms of sheer volume, use article marketing.

Press release distribution – You get instant exposure due to indexing by Google News. You also get all the benefits of article marketing. Also, you are allowed to promote yourself directly with a PR.

Blog posting service – Instead of general article directories, your links will come from relevant blogs. You can also promote your own sites directly, just like a press release. And instead of having links in the author resource box, you can have links directly embedded in the blog posts.

Blog commenting service – The chance to get links from high profile blogs!

From the above, you see that all the methods are different in some way. There is no best method. My recommendation is to do a bit of everything. That way, your links appear natural to the search engines and for those concerned about IPs (I’m not), you get links from a wide range of IP addresses.

Request for Testers

So far, all the testing has been done internally. I think it’s now ready to open the door to a few clients for more testing.

If you are willing to test drive this brand new service at a price of $30 per URL, send me an email.

I’ll then send the details over to you, and guide you along throughout the process. It’s a very simple process. You do it once, and you never forget.

To make sure that the testing is 100% risk free, if you get zero links approved in 3 weeks time, I’ll refund your money.

I look forward to promoting your sites for you.

Chat later!

Darren

Time flies quickly – 2009 is about to end, and a new year comes about. Now is a good time to come up with some New Year Resolutions so that when the year starts, you have something that guides you along.

Forget about those meaningless resolutions that we don’t really mean to keep. Focus on realistic resolutions that mean something in our lives; those that we really want to dedicate our time and attention towards.

To help identify these resolutions, I’ve come up with a little exercise that you can complete. At the end of the exercise, you will have a clearer idea of what your resolutions are. I won’t dwell on the details here because the template includes all the instructions on how to use it.

Here, I’ll just post an example of how to use this template. I won’t be posting every single one of my New Year Resolution because I believe resolutions are meant to be personal.

So, here is one of mine (you will find the download link at the end).

Q: What is one quality that I can work on this year?

The quality that I want to work on is outsourcing.

I want to work on this quality because I really want to free up my time so that I can focus on running the business, instead of being caught up with all the operational stuff.

More importantly, as I continue to grow my online business, I find that I’m working longer and longer hours. Sooner or later, something will have to give. I’m afraid that something is my health. I do exercise regularly, and I keep a close tab on my diet. But I don’t think that can ever replace proper rest.

Like everyone else, I have a limited number of working hours. My realization is that time is a limited resource. So the only way to move forward without sacrificing my health is to pick up some outsourcing skills.

I understand that outsourcing entails hiring, and the process of hiring is something that I’m not familiar with. And I intend to change that. I want to learn how to conduct interviews, and how to identify good candidates who will carry out the work that I have been doing responsibly.

I also want to learn how to train new hires so that they can perform their duties effectively, with minimal intervention from me.

Therefore, my new year resolution is:

Learn how to source for new candidates, interview them, and train them.

Now it’s your turn:-

Download the Template (Right click, save as – 78k)

Oh, before I forget. If you think that this post may benefit anyone you know, please spread the word. See that little “Tell a Friend” button below?

If you click on it, you will be able to share this post via email, instant messenger, or social networks. Email, of course, would be the most direct and convenient method. Do try it out!!

I’ve been designing and testing a new blog commenting service that achieves the following:

Keyword based – Just enter a keyword phrase with each URL that you wish to promote. We will then identify a set of 15 URLs and post comments to these blogs. This means that for every URL that you promote, the blog entries that we post to will be different (i.e. keyword dependent). We avoid the problem of posting to the same blog entries over and over again.

Human written comments – All comments are written by human writers. So that’s 15 comments, for 15 blog entries. All comments are recorded in your account, so you can see the actual comments that we have posted in your account. This is to ensure that we include on-topic comments that are relevant to the post.

URLs recorded – All the blog entries URLs will be recorded in your account, so that you can go back and check if the comments have been approved to gauge the effectiveness of our blog commenting. You can always visit the blogs at a later date to network with the blog owners if you like.

Wouldn’t that be comment spamming?

Please note that if this service is to be launched (if it launches), it wouldn’t be a blog comment spamming service.

A spamming service does the following – use automated software to spam irrelevant comments on hundreds and thousands of blogs. For instance, posting “Good post.” to a thousand blog entries will be considered as spamming.

We don’t do that. We hire human writers to post intelligent comments to blogs that are handpicked (URLs are selected by human beings based on the keywords that you enter). You are also free to network with the blog owners based on the URLs that we have included in your account.

Are the blog URLs DoFollow or NoFollow?

A lot of information has been put out by the Internet marketing community about DoFollow and NoFollow links. The common perception is that the search engines only count DoFollow links. So everyone has been asking for DoFollow blog commenting.

This has been a difficult decision for us because our own tests show that NoFollow links are counted by the search engines as well. How do we know? Well, the links show up in our Webmaster account, and our sites have been ranked (and some have acquired page rank) in the search results.

So rather than go with the flow, we’ve decided to follow what works – participate actively in the blogs, and be rewarded with higher search rankings.

I also noticed that the focus on Dofollow and Nofollow takes the fun out of blog commenting. Blog commenting is never meant solely for SEO purposes. That is why I don’t encourage blog spamming, which arises out of SEO. There has to be a participating element involved, which is why we have chosen human written comments.

Since our test results show that NoFollow links are counted, we are going to go against the flow and include both Dofollow and Nofollow blogs. This may mean an uphill climb for us in terms of marketing, but in the long run, I hope customers can see the value in the work that we do.

Current development stage.

As of now, the prototype of the service has just been developed, but it is far from being a full fledged service. I am able to accomplish all of the above – identify blogs, write comments, and post comments. That’s about it. Right now, that’s good enough as the prototype allows me to test the effectiveness of the service. I can also monitor the approval of the links.

Commercial viability.

I’m having a lot of fun with the prototype, and have yet to decide whether to release it as a service or not. Well, the purpose of this blog entry is to determine the commercial viability of this service. Although I’m convinced that the service will benefit me, I’m not sure if you are convinced as well.

You should stop reading the rest of this post…

• If you are looking for a blog spamming service that will spam hundreds of blogs with irrelevant comments, then obviously this service isn’t for you.
• If you are only looking for high page rank DoFollow blog posts with 100% approval rate.
• If you have a lot of time on your hands and would like to post comments on your own.

Read on if you are looking to hire someone to represent your Company and participate in high quality blogs…

The key challenge when developing this service is to have intelligent blog comments that are relevant and on-topic. As it stands now, there is no software in the market that can read a blog post and then generate an intelligent comment that’s on-topic. So comments will have to be written by a human writer.

To engage a human writer means there is a cost involved. To get a person to sit down, read the blog post, and then write something intelligent can be time consuming. We can hire someone to do that, but how much are we going to pay that person?

So if you are using our blog commenting service, it’s as if you are hiring our staff to post blog comments on your behalf. Of course, we do all the dirty work. All you have to do is to place orders with us.

After doing our sums, we realize that for us to offer this as a commercial service, we have to charge at least $30 for each URL that we promote.

That means for $30, we will identify 15 blog posts that allows blog commenting, and post 15 unique comments on your behalf.

The problem is, I’m not sure if you will find such a deal to be attractive. Of course, you can hire your own staff to do blog commenting. If they can do a better job than we do, for less than $30, then you should hire your own staff.

But if you want to do away with having to hire staff, handling staff, identifying blog entries, writing comments and then posting those comments, AND you don’t mind paying $30, then you may wish to consider hiring us.

So before I take the prototype further and develop this into a full fledge commercial service, I’d like your feedback on this.

Do you think this service will be useful to you?

Send us your feedback by leaving a comment below. If you’d like to send us a private email, use this contact form.

If response is good, we will continue developing the service. If we receive a poor response, we will just continue to use the prototype privately, to promote our own sites.

So let us know what you think. I look forward to hearing from you

Best regards,

Darren Chow

P.S. If you don’t think blog commenting is for you, you can always continue to use our blog posting service.

Thank you so much for your continued support. As mentioned in an earlier email, I wanted to revamp the blog templates of the blog posting service to improve the click through rate (CTR) of the blog entries.

Here is what we have done:

1) Use simple and uncluttered designs. – We have gotten rid of all templates with fanciful headers that look distractive and unprofessional.

2) Use visible blue links. – Links are converted to blue, underlined links to increase link visibility.

3) Use width 800 template. – Some templates are simply too large! Width 800 px looks just nice on a simple template.

4) All URLs remain SE friendly. – Permalinks will remain the same.

Screenshot preview of some of the blogs in the network: –

There are now a total of 7 live networks. The newest network is the Shopping and Fashion network.

You can check out the networks available at the blog network page.

The networks that are marked LIVE are ready for posting.

To start posting articles, purchase from the blog posting service registration page.

The plan for these blogs is to groom them into authority sites. Here is what I’ll do (or have been doing) to promote the sites.

• Article marketing.
• RSS syndication.
• Guest posting.
• Forum posting.

If you have bought distribution credits when the networks have been released, you should be enjoying the link benefits by now. You can check that your links are counted by the search engines via 1 of 2 methods.

Method 1: A quick search in the search engines will reveal the exact pages that your links are on. Please wait for the pages to be indexed. Search links are included in the dashboard. This can take anywhere from 3 to 4 weeks. When your article has been submitted to all the blogs, you will receive an email report with links to all your blog entries, so you know where your links are.

Method 2: Setup a Google Webmaster account (http://www.google.com/webmasters/). From the dashboard, you will be able to see a section named “Links to your site”. Click on the numeric figure and you will see a list of back links. You will notice that our blogs will show up

So now you know your links are counted.

But how do you know whether there is any value in those links?

Simple. I did a quick and simple test with one of the networks – the Internet Marketing network.

The blog posting service has a domain name that says blog content syndication. That is the primary keyword. I’m getting organic search traffic for terms that are related to “blog syndication” and “content syndication”.

To test out the blog network, I wanted to see if I can rank for a new keyword – a keyword that ranks nowhere in the search results. So I chose a related keyword – “blog posting service”.

I then added the secondary keyword phrase to the title of my homepage. I forgot to add the tags to my Meta tags though, but the results are interesting…stay with me.

Next, I wrote a 100% unique article and post it to all 11 blogs in the IM network, making sure that “blog posting service” is the anchor text for all my links.

A week later, my website showed up in Google (hooray!).

Is it receiving traffic? Sure!

Currently, it’s moving up and down between the 10 and 12 positions (page 1 and 2). I have no doubt that with more articles and links, it will eventually move up the search rankings.

So I did a premium article submission. On the first page of the search results, you will notice that one of the articles is written by me. Hopefully, the site will do better in the coming weeks.

I later got a pleasant surprise when I saw that one of the IM blogs started to rank for the keyword as well! It’s on page 2 of the search results though, but I’m happy.

15% of the blogs have acquired page rank. But note that many marketers have mentioned that Page Rank has got nothing to do with search rankings. I observe the search results carefully and find that to be true. It’s more important to implement on-site and off-site SEO properly and to upkeep the quality of the site. Your site may have a page rank zero but still ranks well in the search engines. Having said that, we expect all clients to post quality articles to the blogs. To groom them into authority sites, these blogs should contain expert articles that are human written and unique.

That’s all I have to say about the blog post service for now. Hope you find the content useful.

Before I sign off, I would like to take this opportunity to give you an update on what I have in store for you.

Upcoming in the next few weeks.

1) Backstage tour – I have been working on a blog post about what happens on the backend once you have approved the article for distribution. The blog post will be on a password protected page, and the password will be emailed to you. So look out for it in your Inbox.

But note that the backstage tour is ONLY for existing customers of the article submission service that we run. If you are not a customer yet, do try out one of our article submission plans as soon as possible.

2) I worked with Tim Owen on an SEO copy writing report, and I want to give it away to you for free. The release date is 27th Nov. There is nothing to sign up. It’s a PDF direct download. The report has been completed. Tim even created the audio version of the report. However, the audio version is for sale. BUT BUT BUT, it’s going to be at a crazy price (I promise).

3) Christmas is just round the corner. You don’t think I would forget that would you? I have plans to send you some free gifts…don’t want to reveal too much at the moment, so I’ll leave it at that.

This is Darren Chow, signing off.

Have a great week ahead!

As an online marketer, I’m bombarded by advertisements left right center all the time. Many of these advertisements are about making money on the Internet. I don’t have a problem with advertisements. But I do have a problem with making money by hook or by crook. Let me tell you what happened…

A couple of weeks ago, I started doing joint promotions (internet marketers call this an Ad Swap) with other marketers – i.e. you give away something free to my list of subscribers or customers, and I’ll do likewise for you. The end result is that we end up with something that everyone wants – a larger list of prospects and/or customers. It’s supposed to be a win win situation for both parties.

But before I agree to do a swap, I always go through the following process:

1) Join the list of the other marketer to see what is being offered.

I think it’s every marketer’s responsibility to always act in the best interest of the subscribers. There are two goals I want to achieve here. The first goal is to make sure that the materials are a good fit for the people on my list. It doesn’t make sense to send something that my customers are not interested in, even if it’s free.

The second goal is to get to know the other marketer – his or her background, achievements, future goals, etc. Here, I want to make sure that this marketer knows how to serve my customers (which is you) well. I don’t want to send you to a marketer who doesn’t know how to respect and treat people with decency.

2) Work on the ads.

Usually, when an agreement is reached, both parties will exchange ads – I’ll send out yours, and you’ll send out mine. The problem I’ve encountered is that many marketers are looking to build huge lists, so they join every promotion that comes along. Most of them use cookie cutter ads.

Unfortunately, I’m quite stubborn on this issue, and I sometimes refuse to budge. That’s because I understand the customers on my list. Different lists have got different profiles, so I’m confident to say that the cookie cutter approach just doesn’t work. Which is to say, there is no one-size-fits-all.

People are different. The fact that these marketers continue to use cookie cutter ads says that they know very little about the background of the people, and they do not show a strong enough interest in people to go find out. To me, this is unacceptable.

Let me give you an example.

The ads that I come across are usually along these lines.

A) Give away something valuable for free (as a sample or for self introduction).
B) Give away something that is on sale (e.g. a $47 ebook) for free (as a gift to build goodwill).

That’s fine, provided the gifts offer a genuine solution to the problem that the customer is facing. And you can’t really do that if you have zero understanding of the customer. For this reason, I always download and read the materials before agreeing to a joint promotion.

This marketer I was working with has already agreed to go ahead with a joint promotion. He has 5,000 leads on his list, so that sounds like a fairly lucrative deal. All I had to do was to take his ad, write one for him to send, and then send out the ad on a date that we both agreed upon.

However, I didn’t agree to the ad that he wanted to send out because I know my customers wouldn’t respond well. It was unfortunate that this particular marketer thinks that he knows my list better than I do and wanted to send out a cookie cutter ad that was full of hype.

The ad contained words like “pleading, begging, awesome, snagged”. In my opinion, that was overselling.

And do you know why marketers tend to try too hard sometimes to sell?

The main reason is that the people on the list are not buying enough from them. It could be that the list has stopped responding. So the marketer tries even harder to sell them something.

Or maybe they are buying, but from the marketer’s perspective, it’s always not enough. Everyone wants more sales, more money, more dough…so they hype up everything in an attempt to sell more.

If you have read any of my previous materials, you know that I’m a big fan of this “C” word known as “Conscience”.

People buy from me because they trust me. I do not believe that they buy from me because of how I hype up my marketing. I don’t. If I do so, maybe people will stop buying from me because I have become one of them – chasing after money without really caring about the customer.

The marketer that I was working with was adamant about a little thing like the subject header of the email. He said that he had tested his headline and he has gotten the highest click through rate because of that headline.

I could see how he behaved in this manner. And I don’t blame him for being adamant. You see, he was taught to market in this manner. That’s why he believed so strongly that the subject headline matters so much, to the point that he shuts out everything else.

In the end, I had to reject the deal.

Do I earn less? Maybe. But I earn enough. And I’m happy to announce that I earn enough to have a good night’s sleep without having to worry about my conscience coming back to haunt me.

I never try too hard to track open rates, click through rates and stuff. Sometimes, I don’t even track at all. But the funny thing is, I always get sales.

Let me ask you this question.

Before you open an email, do you open emails from

A) Someone who is genuinely interested in you and your goals OR
B) Someone who is just interested in selling you stuff?

Don’t tell me the answer. I think you already know the answer. It’s quite obvious actually.

Sure, dangling a bone in front of a dog may work – for a while. But when the dog realizes that it is never going to get the bone, the trick will stop working. In other words, sooner or later, people are just going to stop responding to those emails, especially if they are sent by people who are just after their pockets.

But if you know that the email is coming from a good friend, a sincere associate, you are more likely to open the email, no matter what the subject header is.

When was the last time you open an email from an unknown source?
I bet you delete them without opening.

When was the last time you open an email from a good friend of yours?
I bet you open every single email.

There you go.

I don’t see pro marketers like Sean Mize and Janet Cole putting lots of hype into their sales letter.

And you know what? They are making a really good living without all that hype.

Sure, a little bit of hype wouldn’t hurt, but it’s there just to get your attention. These marketers never sway far from being honest and truthful. Just take a look at the people around you – your friends your family members. Chances are, you learn the most from those who are honest and truthful with you. You know, deep in your heart, who you really wanted to work with.

At the end of the day, the best marketers know that you cannot run away from honesty.

If you ever go into marketing, make honesty the center of all your marketing efforts. Your reputation will improve greatly, and you will have more successful marketing campaigns down the road. That’s a guarantee.

What you don’t want to do, is to manipulate or resort to tricks. I remember one marketer I approached. I think she was trying to protect her subscribers, but she was doing it wrong. (Another true story by the way)

She wanted to have good content for her customers, but her definition of good content is some “trick” that will help her customers. A trick, by its very nature, is gimmicky. Sometimes, a trick may even be classified as black hat. That’s where you need to be a little careful here.

This marketer thinks that her customers are already very knowledgeable, so they won’t respond to the usual materials. So she thinks that if she can send them some “tricks”, they are more likely to respond.

Unfortunately, if she is not careful, her good intentions may back fire and affect her reputation adversely. First, I want to say that the assumption of customers knowing everything may well be false.

Even the same “boring” materials can be useful. How? For example, you can send good marketing fundamentals to remind your customers that they exist for good reason. People tend to forget after a while, so it’s useful to send reminders. You see, same knowledge, same materials, sent at a different time, can be useful.

Another alternative would be to send materials with more depth. In fact, I think that there is no such thing as knowing everything. For instance, I specialize in article marketing. So I sent out a report on article approval to show my customers how they can improve their article approval rates with just a little more effort.

(Download here: http://www.fastsubmitarticles.com/download/article_approval.pdf)
(Right click save as to download)

More depth means you include information and details that the average person would not have paid attention to. By giving out information with more depth, you show that you really know what you are talking about, and that you are in a better position to provide solutions.

See? There is no need to resort to tricks. Really.

Ok, I think I’ve rambled on long enough. Time for some official business.

The Games and Entertainment Blog Network has just been released.

The 2 for 1 promotion is now on. Here are the details:

* Min. 3 distribution credits must be purchased in a single order.
* For every 1 purchased credit, you get 2 free.
* Offer will expire on 11 Sept. 2009 (one week from now).
* To claim your free credits, make a purchase at http://www.blogcontentsyndication.com/register.asp
Then email me from the website. Remember to include your login email.

That’s all I have to say for now.

Remember to look out for more free stuff as I send them along to you from my partners.

Hope they’ll help you achieve your goals more quickly.

Enjoy the content!

To your success,
Darren Chow

A brand new website, by the domain of latest breaking news has been added to the Press Release and Article Submission network.

All articles published will be included in 25 categories of this website. Content will be syndicated to other websites around the web.

To get your articles included in this site, simply issue a press release or distribute an article with one of our Internet Marketing services. Use these services as link building services to boost your search engines.

As the owner of a professional article distribution service (I do this everyday), I have the benefit of reviewing and submitting hundreds of articles each month.

As you probably already know, article submission is just one way to build links online. The major problem with article marketing is that it can be rather painful. Consider people who don’t write well, type slowly, or don’t know how to use software to help automate the submission process. Writing and submitting one article can take hours!

On top of that, if you don’t follow the rules, your articles may get rejected, and you’re just wasting time, writing and submitting your articles.

Here are some general guidelines. If you follow these guidelines, you will yield the best results.

WHAT NOT TO DO

• Submit articles with less than 450 words.

Most article directories accept articles with at least 450 words. Some may accept more, some less. But most will accept 450 words.

• Promote a site with nudity of excessive affiliate links.

It’s not common for article directories to reject a site that has been completed. But if you are trying to promote an adult site, or if your site contains nothing but affiliate links, your articles have a chance of being rejected.

• Use super long anchor keyword phrases.

Keep your anchor texts to 3 words max. Don’t link the entire sentence. Keep the links to your author resource box. The author resource box should not be more than 450 characters. 450 characters will allow you to write about 2 to 3 sentences. There is no need to write a short story here. Just a couple of sentences with static text links in them will do.

• Use profanity in your articles.

Don’t use any kind of profanity in your articles. Vulgar words and phrases are automatically detected by some article directories. Your articles will be rejected before they have a chance to be reviewed by a human editor.

• Submit an illegible article.

Articles are seldom disapproved because of grammatical errors, spelling errors, or sentence structure faults. But it has to be of decent quailty. In other words, readers must understand what you are trying to say. If English is not your native language, consider hiring someone to write for you.

• Use software to spin articles.

Some article marketers use software to spin PLR (Private Label Rights) articles, in the hope that the article directories won’t detect the duplicate content. Unfortunately, most software just replace words with synonyms. In the process, the meaning is skewed and the article no longer make sense. For instance, the word “market” may mean several different things depending on context.

Consider:

Original sentence: I go to the stock market to invest.

After replacement: I go to the stock bazaar to invest.

OR: I go to the stock shop to invest.

The word “market” may mean “bazaar” or “shop” – a place for buying stuff. But when you put the words into context, notice that the same sentence now sounds funny.

• Use URL as your links.

You shouldn’t be using URLs as your links. The bulk of your traffic will be coming from the search engines. So make sure you spend a little time working on your keyword research, and pick some phrases to target. Use those keywords in your links.

• Write and submit an entire report.

You are submitting articles, not reports. Every now and then, I see writers submitting articles with over a thousand words. If you have long articles, break them up into separate articles. You are not posting to your blog. You are building links with your articles. More articles equal more links.

In addition, most readers just scan articles instead of read the entire page. If you write super duper long articles, you may lose your reader, and you never get the chance to see them again.

WHAT TO DO

• Write and submit articles regularly.

If you are not building links, your competitor may just be creeping up on you. So make it a habit to distribute articles regularly – even if it’s just one article per week.

• Submit to hundreds of article directories.

Don’t just submit to 1 or 2 article directories. Start with Ezinearticles.com. Once approved, you can use the same articles to distribute to all the article directories.

• Outsource of use software to help you distribute articles.

It doesn’t make sense to sit at the computer for hours just to distribute articles. You have better things to do. Outsource all the article submissions or use some software to automate the process. Your article marketing will become way less painful.

A word of caution if you are hiring writers to write for you. Use a duplicate content check tool like CopyScape to check for plagarism before paying your writers. Some writers are just out to scam others – they scrape content off other websites and submit them as their own. Don’t be fooled!

• Focus on keywords.

Try to dilute your efforts by targeting too many keywords at any one time. Focus on two or three keywords, and write your articles based on those keywords. Once they start to rank in the search engines, move on to other keywords.

Notice that there is a cummulative effect. The more keywords you target, the more traffic you will get. But be patient. SEO does take a little bit of time, especially for competitive keywords.

• Publish 100% original articles.

Using PLR articles is fine. But many directories (like Ezinearticles) will not accept PLR articles. You have to be prepared to accept that if you are using PLR articles. Otherwise, you just have to write 100% orginal and unique articles. Unique means that your articles must not be published on the Internet before. So don’t make the mistake of posting to your blog, and then submit the articles. Once the articles get indexed by the search engines, Ezinearticles may not approve the articles.

• Be clear about your goals.

What are you trying to achieve? If you just want to build links, you can submit general information articles. If you are trying to sell something, focus on the products and talk more about the problems that your products will help to solve. Don’t give away all the answers in your articles. In that 450 words, show that you understand the customers, and that you are sincere in helping them overcome whatever obstacles they are facing. That will encourage them to click your links and visit your site.

Article marketing is simple to understand. But for some, it can be painful to execute. Imagine having to spend hours each day writing articles, just to distribute to hundreds of article directories. The distribution process can be extremely tedious and tiring.

If you’re using some kind of software to distribute your articles, that means having to let the software run on its own (if it’s completely automatic), or sitting at your comp clicking away to complete the submission process. Frankly, I wouldn’t spend time doing such work manually. It has to be automatic for me.

I started out using article submission software to submit my articles, but I find that such software just isn’t good enough. For one, I don’t like the idea of leaving my computer on for hours, just to submit the articles. Secondly, the article directories always seem to get out of date! So time is wasted on a bunch of error web pages.

So why would anyone in the right frame of mind get into something as painful, or as tedious as article marketing?

The answer, is traffic. When you perform article marketing, you have only one goal in mind – to drive targeted traffic to your website. If you can’t automate this process, it just means that either you have to go through a lot of pain, or you simply give up and find something else.

But I like to think that if article marketing is challenging, there has to be more value in it. I’ll see if I can help you understand why later on. Let’s get back to the subject of traffic.

When you distribute articles, you are expecting traffic to come from 2 sources:

1) Directly from your articles

and

2) From the search engines

Direct traffic from the articles.

Each article you submit, you are allowed to include 2 to 3 links back to your website. If an article title catches the eye of a reader, and he goes on to read your article, then clicks on a link to visit your website, you can be sure that the level of interest is very high. One such visitor is a hundred times better than one hundred non-targeted visitor. Why? Simply because a targeted visitor is more likely to seriously check out what you have to offer. If you are selling some product or services, he may end up buying something from you. Or if you offer information, he may end up clicking on an ad, and you earn a commission. Either way, you get some kind of response from him. That is a good sign.

Just yesterday, I received an email from Ezinearticles (the most popular article directory on the Internet) claiming that they received a total of 5.1 million clicks in January. In fact, it’s a new milestone for them.

Bear in mind that’s 5.1 million clicks to member websites in a single month. What do you think they are seeing in their Adsense account? For sure, the numbers are staggering.

From just a small handful of customers, the articles that we submitted managed to rake in 10,000+ views, with over 1,000+ clicks. That’s just from 168 articles, submitted over a period of 2 months. Let me show you.

5.1 million clicks in a month – how much of that goes to you? I really hope that you’re doing something to get a piece of the action. You can write and submit the articles yourself, or if you’re too busy, you can hire us to distribute articles for you (super strong hint).

The greatest benefit of article marketing is that once you submit the articles, the traffic streams in steadily. Even if I do nothing to my Ezinearticles account right now, the clicks will continue to climb. If I want more traffic, I simply submit more articles.

From our tiny account, we did 1k+ clicks in 2 months. If you go to Ezinearticles and check out the top authors, you will quickly learn that some of them have over 10k articles in their account.

Top 10 authors at Ezinearticles

How many clicks do you imagine they are getting?

I hope that is enough to whet your appetite a little bit.

As a marketer, you have to adopt an aggressive approach, like what some of these guys are doing. Check out some of the articles submitted by this guy: Sean Mize

I want to draw your attention to this guy because not only is he getting tons of traffic from his articles, he has also successfully monetized his traffic.

Today, he is proud to claim that he is making over $180k+ on his internet marketing coaching home page. If you ever want to learn all about how to drive traffic using article marketing, and how to convert that traffic, he is the guy you want to listen to.

Why am I promoting him?

For 2 reasons:

One, he is a customer of mine (ta-da!), so I want to shine the torch his way a little. He has also referred some really good clients to me, for which I am most grateful.

But more importantly, Sean is someone who knows what he is doing. I can vouch for him because I have personally downloaded some of his stuff, and they are all down-to-earth materials. Not overly hyped, and definitely not much fluff. You can get a good feel of that the moment you hit his homepage. Don’t take my word for it. Join the list, listen to what he has to say, and judge for yourself.

If you still don’t feel comfortable, you can always unsubscribe. I don’t think Sean will mind the least bit. You see, besides the traffic that he is getting from all the articles, I bet he is getting a fair amount of traffic from the search engines too.

Will the traffic from search engines be more than the direct traffic?

Well, that depends.

Getting traffic from the search engines.

Getting traffic from the search engines depends on the keywords that you are targeting. I talked a little bit about keyword research earlier this year, so you may wish to check out the article for a quick recap.

The essence of the article is that if you want more traffic from the search engines, you will have to target keywords with proven search volume. The more popular the keyword, the more traffic you will get. Of course, most popular keywords are harder to rank because of competition. If you can find a keyword that is easy to rank, and the competition isn’t hard to beat, you may be sitting on a goldmine.

Keyword targeting is easy. When submitting your articles, be sure to use them as your anchor texts.

For example,

[linkcode]Anchor Text[close linkcode]

Use 2 or 3 words in your target keyword phrase. There is no need to use something like “Click here to check out the best article marketing blog.” Just a simple “article marketing blog” will do.

But in the course of my daily work, I still see people linking like this:

[linkcode]Click Here[close linkcode] OR

[linkcode]http://yoursite.com[close linkcode]

When you do this, what do you rank for?

You may eventually rank for “click here” or “yoursite.com”, which won’t bring you much traffic. Even if they do bring you traffic, it’s going to be untargeted traffic.

Article marketing is a time tested method. If you do it right, there is no way you can’t get traffic to your website. It takes some effort and patience in the beginning but is it worth it? More importantly, does it PAY to be patient? Go ask Sean. I’m sure he’ll be able to answer that question for you

Whatever you are doing online this year, be sure to take full advantage of the opportunities online. 5.1 million clicks and six figure incomes – that should be enough to get anyone excited.