Micky's Marketing Blog

Today, I consulted with some friends on Alex Jefferys’ community about bringing traffic to my website. This has always been my weakest point: I know how to build WordPress websites; I have some experience in making videos and outsourcing; but when it comes to generating website traffic, I still feel like a total newbie. So those nice community members provided me with some very good general suggestions that I plan to implement.

Four important rules for generating website traffic are as follows:

1. Focus on a few proven traffic generating tactics. Don’t try to use too many methods simultaneously. The results will be poor and there’s a good chance you’ll get overwhelmed.

2. Make a plan. Decide how you are going to implement each traffic generation method. Will you use outsourcing? Which tools and sites you are going to use? How much time you are going to invest in each method? Set a few goals and try to achieve them in a specific period of time.

3. Be patient. Bringing traffic to your website can be time consuming and it doesn’t happen immediately. Don’t expect 5,000 visitors per day right after you finish setting up a new website. As long as you’re consistent and provide high-quality content, you’ll achieve your goals sooner or later.

4. Make your site fulfilling and worthwhile to visitors.  Ensure your website’s visitors remain on your site as long as possible and make the experience fulfilling. Publish an easy-to-use opt-in form for your mailing list. Mention your free eBook in a prominent location, so visitors don’t miss the offer. Publish eye-catching videos and pictures.

5. Make your visitors return! In addition to providing worthwhile, useful content — which always makes readers want to return, — tell them about your plans for the future. Send your subscribers periodic emails, inviting them to view your new posts. Mention what you’ll be discussing in the next post and so on.

In short, prepare a strategy and follow it, step by step!

Check back soon, as in the next few posts, I’m going to discuss my traffic-generating methods and I’ll report back what’s working and what’s not.

Today, I want to talk about the method that I use to find good domain names. I call it “The Pizza Method,” because I use the same method to find the best pizzerias in town.

So how do I find good pizza? The answer is very simple: in order to find the best Italian food, the best services and best products on the market, you simply need to seek out the opinion of someone who has already tried the food, service or product. It’s a very simple, yet effective approach.

When it comes to domain names my process goes like this:

1. I think about words/phrases that are relevant to my market/product/service/keywords and can be integrated into a domain name. I always try to keep my domain names short and simple.

2. I add .com (yes, I prefer .com) and check the domain name’s availability at NameCheap.com.

3. I go to some very active internet marketing forums (such as the Warrior Forum, Alex Jefferys’ Members forum, among others) to seek out opinions and feedback from other more experienced individuals. Often, people suggest ideas that are better than mine and I don’t hesitate to use them.

4. I buy the best domain name.

And that’s all there is to it!

 I know that there are a lot of articles out there that explain how to choose the best domain names, the best hosting company, best graphic designers, etc. I also believe that many of these articles are better than any “guru’s product.” But hey, you don’t want to be an expert in everything — and you don’t need to be. Sometimes, it’s best to learn just the basics about a certain subject. Then, ask more experienced individuals for further advice, especially if it’s something that you find difficult or complicated. Since English is my second language, I find it virtually impossible to choose domain names by myself, so I don’t attempt it!

I wish you all the best of luck in choosing your domain names! You are more than welcome to share your ideas below.

Don’t worry; I’m not jumping into the deep water just yet. However, this week I learned my first lesson involving Google AdWords and I have to admit that it was fun! 

So how did I have the opportunity to work on an AdWords campaign and why should it interest you?

I’ll start from the beginning:

I work for a SEO company and last week, we started managing a Google AdWords campaign for a hosting service company. We started the campaign with a simple ad that said something like, “This hosting service is very good and cheap.”

The advertisement ran for a few days and surprisingly, it worked! Many people clicked the ad and a significant number of those individuals phoned the hosting company. It  turned out to be a big success.

Realizing that short-term results do not ensure continuing long-term success, the campaign manger decided to try several different ad types. The relevant keywords were divided into groups and a unique group of ads was created for each group.

 The campaign manager had two goals:

1. He sought to determine which ads brought the best results after a certain period of time. Under-performing ads that fail to deliver would be deleted.

2. Aligning the advertisement keywords with the information that the clients are seeking. For example, if you search for the term “cheap hosting,” you will see an advertisement that says “our hosting is cheap,” instead of an ad that says, “we are the most professional hosting service.” The ad must align with the client’s search query.

My job was to create groups of keywords and then, I wrote a suitable ad for each group. Therefore, I got a great explanation about the whole process.

But why am I telling you all this?

I learned a valuable lesson after working on this AdWords campaign. I was surprised to learn which ads were successful and which ads were skipped over. It was very unpredictable and surprising.

However, the trial and error process used to determine which ads were most successful was associated with a decline in the number of clicks and calls that the hosting company received.  Unfortunately, the client became impatient and literally demanded that we stop testing different advertisements; instead, they wanted us to focus on the one successful ad that was launched at the start of the campaign.

My boss wasn’t all that upset when he told me about this. After all, his company got paid, and the client‘s demands meant that he had to do much less work. However, as an experienced internet marketer, he realized that the client’s approach was problematic. “In order to get the best results, you have to go through a long process of trial and error,” he explained, adding, “Skipping this process might save you a few dollars on the short term, but after a few months, you’ll find out that your results are not very good.”

That was my first Google Adwords lesson: Mistakes, errors and even failure are essential if you want to succeed. Being afraid of failure won’t get you anywhere and no, two days of testing just aren’t enough.   

However, there is another important lesson here: if you pay an experienced expert for guidance or assistance, you should be willing to try the expert’s recommended method or approach. I don’t know why the hosting company owner ignored this rule. But I do know that his attitude has resulted in the loss of more than $120,000 that was spent on past Google AdWords campaigns. As my boss showed me the data, he noted, “He hired us to help him advertise more efficiently, but he decided to ignore our advice. It’s just impossible to help him unless he changes his way of thinking.”

I agree with my boss this time – and I’d love to hear what you think.

Hi everybody and thank you for stopping by!

When I started my internet business, I didn’t have a clue about how to set goals, so I simply skipped this very important step. And the result? No results!

Do you know this feeling? Have you experienced a situation where you tried and failed  to make any progress whatsoever? I’m sure many of you have experienced this situation. And it’s even worse when you have lots of knowledge about WordPress, traffic, blogging, etc, yet success was elusive.

Recently, I found clarity when I changed my way of thinking. Instead of looking for new and exciting opportunities, I established a few goals and then, I developed a plan for achieving those goals. I decided to ignore other strategies and methods;  I focused on working toward my goals.

What are my four main goals?

1. Providing the best value I can  

Selling is important, but the most important thing is to establish a positive relationship with your readers, subscribers and future clients. If they trust you, learn from you and really benefit from the information provide, there is a much better chance that they’ll want to purchase something from you in the future. And so, my first goal is to provide a great value in my writing, while simultaneously helping others.

2. Building a group of readers and subscribers

I’m striving to provide very helpful information and I’m going to do it for free. I’m also going to ask the readers what they want to know and I hope to learn what bothers them in the internet marketing world.

3. Creating my first product(s)

Right now, I’m trying to achieve the first two goals by using other marketers’ products (the ones I actually use myself). However, in the future I’m going to develop both free products and products for sale and I’m going to offer them to the visitors on my site and to my group. These products will be based on my experiences and they will  address the questions, obstacles and suggestions that are put forth by the readers

4. Making Some Money

This is not the first goal, because in order to make money, you must first prove your worth by providing useful and practical advice or information. You want to be viewed as a giver. You don’t want to be viewed as a “taker” or as an aggressive seller, and you definitely don’t want to be viewed as a scammer or spammer.  I am going to make some sales along the way, but I will only sell good quality products that I believe in. I know that the best way to do this is to sell items that provide others with high-value benefits, profits and happiness.

So how am I going to achieve these goals? That is a loaded question — one that I’m going to discuss in my future posts.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your goals, ideas and thoughts, so please leave a comment below!

Hi Everybody!

I’m proud and excited to present my first blog post in English!

Yes, my mother tongue is different from yours (you are invited to guess what it is ),  so I need the help of a professional content editor to make my posts readable. And that brings me to the focal point of this post, which deals with overcoming obstacles, the language barrier and overcoming challenges.

Overcoming Obstacles

Difficulties in the field of internet marketing are not uncommon. From the moment you start, you receive a vast array of offers, you encounter a ridiculous number of gurus and methods, and, if you are a bit like me, you end up buying too many expensive products that will probably never bring results. But as I mentioned before, my first and perhaps most significant difficulty is totally different: it is the language barrier.

The Language Barrier

Fortunately, I understand English quite well. But I still experience difficulties when it comes to expressing myself clearly and correctly. And then there’s the time it takes me to type! Just consider all the hours you invest in writing blog posts, commenting on other peoples’ blogs and correcting sales letters. Triple it and that gives you an idea of the amount of time it takes me to perform these tasks!

Recently, I decided that I would not allow my plans to be destroyed by the language barrier.  I started looking for a permanent content editor who could help me with all my writing tasks. The keyword here is “outsourcing.” In other words, if your writing/marketing/editing skills are not good, consider hiring someone else do it. A professional can perform the task more efficiently.

I learned about outsourcing from my boss, who arrived in my country from Russia; he never learned the native language thoroughly. Over the past few years, I’ve done a lot of content editing for him and I continue to do this today. As a result, I’m learning about AdWords, SEO and marketing, while my boss learns about my native language. Fair deal, isn’t it? In fact, this discussion about my boss brings me to another big issue: lack of focus.

The Lack of Focus

I have a confession to make: I’m really a glass artist. Three years ago, I graduated from an academy of art and design. Following graduation, I decided to become a real artist and not another frustrated art teacher or craftsman. But without income, money or means, I started working as a content writer and editor for a small SEO company. Don’t get me wrong — I love this company! But the work is time consuming and the salary is not high enough. So I decided to start looking for another solution which will enable me to make money, while also providing me with sufficient time for my real passion – glass art.

I used to suffer from a lack of focus each and every day and as a result, I accomplished very little.

Fortunately, I found a great solution for this problem when I registered for Alex Jefferys training program. I listened to a very good lesson about time management and focus. I’m not trying to promote him in this post; I just want to make an important point, that is, managing your time can make a difference. For example, I started making plans for the following day and I also started working with a timer for 4 hours each day. You won’t believe how these and other small changes have led to much more efficient time management!

Speaking about results, this brings me to the final issue that I’d like to discuss…

No Results = NO Money

Since I’ve failed to see results from all those over-hyped internet marketing products that I’ve purchased in the past, I’m what you’d call “broke.” I invest nearly every penny into my business and my glass studio, and as a result, I can’t even afford to rent my own apartment. So right now, I live in my parents’ house. It’s not an ideal situation, but I’ve learned one very important thing: success will come. It simply must!

Success won’t happen tomorrow and it won’t happen on its own. You must work for it; you must find good, kind people to help you along the way, and you must be dedicated and ready to invest a great deal of time and effort into your endeavor.  Passing from one method to another will not bring results. There is no such a thing as a “magic button” or “magic method” that will make you rich overnight. The key to success is endurance, hard work and commitment to a single good, proven, thorough program or strategy.

Okay, that’s enough lecturing for now!

Now, I’d genuinely like to hear from the readers! Share some of the obstacles, difficulties and problems you’ve encountered. I’d also love to hear about the solutions and strategies that you’ve devised!

Please, share your opinion with me and the rest of the readers and maybe we can help each other.

I’m eagerly awaiting your comments!