Wow! What an education!

My last post was when I had decided to enter the forex niche. Seemed like it would be no big deal and the adsense payouts would be high. Not so simple!

I built a site with adsense and a clickbank product for monetization. I have posted new content almost daily. I have identified some long tail keywords that I should be able to rank for — they get a reasonable number of searches and are lower competition. And I’ve gone about building some links to the site. Traffic is starting to pick up too. Those all sound good.

But, now I’m totally reconsidering. I’ve had about 2 adsense clicks in all this time, and a few clicks on product links, but no buyers. Hmm.

My recent education is regarding Clickbank products. First, I’ve become aware of evaluating the sales pages for these products in a new light. How many loopholes does a visitor have on the sales page to go in a different direction, rather than click through to the clickbank payment page? These can be 800 numbers, links to become an affiliate, optin boxes, etc. Really any number of options.

Another eye opener is through a product called Clickbank Reaper. I got this free somehow but through a reputable referral. The author outlines a research process to evaluate the trends of a Clickbank product to determine the likelihood an affiliate will have some success selling it. It’s really cool and much more detailed than I’ve seen before.

Turns out only 2 of the popular CB products on Forex meet the criteria for CB Reaper and both have sales pages with loopholes. Now what?

P.S. I’m aware none of the links on this blog are working. Trouble with the new GoTryThis and haven’t really found an alternative I like. I’ll get it all fixed asap.

A couple months ago I became aware of a really cool video creating service on the web. It’s called Animoto.

The way the system works is you feed them a bunch of pictures/images along with some music and they create a video with a mixture of the pictures and a variety of special effects. The result is very cool and can look quite professional.

I’ll show you a sample video if you keep reading and click the “continue reading” part below. Then you’ll be able to see the video.

At the time I first heard of Animoto, I decided to create videos as a method of promotion for all of my websites. I even did some research into how I could imbed an automatic redirect to my site at the end of the video, since this isn’t a feature with Animoto yet. That’s still on my list of projects, and now I’m glad I haven’t put more work into it so far.

Here’s my initial video that I pulled together for a practice run using Animoto:

This is, of course, Yellow Dog herself. I know it’s rough, but you get the idea.

Today I learned of a tutorial on how to best use Animoto, which includes ideas for gathering the resources I’ll need. I find that it is much better use of my time and patience if I follow a tutorial rather than trying to figure out how to use new programs on my own. I can’t wait to get started.

The tutorial is here if you’re interested.

My plan is to start creating HubPages for feeder links to my sites and I’ll add the videos to these pages.

I’m also planning a bunch more social marketing. Jack Humphrey was a guest speaker at the “16 Steps to Success” webinar today, talking about web 2.0. It was excellent. Jack clearly knows web 2.0. He laid a foundation for where to get started utilizing some core sites and emphasized being a person first, to build a following, and then being a marketer flows from that. It was very valuable. Only 1 class left.

That’s all for now. Thanks for visiting.

A few days ago I mentioned that I noticed a couple trends happening in my marketing ventures lately. Actually they seem diametrically opposed (is that the right way to use that term?). The first is the forced continuity by marketers selling their products. The second is the free training being offered by a number of very successful marketers.

The first seems incredibly greedy while the second is incredibly generous. And I get to benefit.

I’ve been participating in the “16 Steps to Success” training by Sam Clark in conjunction with Jack Humphrey and the Authority Site Center. It’s really excellent. I am amazed at all the work Sam is putting into this. This course is a series of 16 live webinars detailing the steps to creating a successful authority site and a successful business overall. We just have a couple classes left after this week.

My understanding of what an authority site is has certainly changed over the course of this class. I’ve learned an authority site is not just a big site full of content. A successful authority site these days is created by someone who is or becomes an expert in the niche, does in depth research to get in tune with exactly what is happening within that niche currently on the web, and then provides the content that people are looking for, and does this consistently and persistently. This course has covered in depth how to do all of that.

Another training program that I was “lucky” enough to get into is the “Black Ink Project” provided by Jeremy Palmer. He is a master at affiliate marketing and has created a number of products that teach his methods. This time he is offering live classes that cover his affiliate marketing methods. The agenda looks intense and comprehensive. I know next to nothing about super affiliate marketing, so I’m really excited about this. I learn so much better from live instruction than I do from an ebook.

Finally, a third opportunity is being offered by Jeff Johnson. His focuses on SEO blog software and how to best use it to bring search engine traffic to your blog. Jeff is going to provide a webinar or two to show how to get the most out of the software. I crave learning about both SEO and getting traffic, and blogs are my thing these days, so I’m thrilled. The software and the training are both being offered free.

It’s an abundance and I’m really grateful. Great thanks you all you generous people…