Red Wagon Designs » Internet Marketing

Internet Businesses

Mark Knowles — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 07:37:01 +0000

Many Internet businesses will fail in the first year of operation, and at least 50% of them will have failed withing 5 years. Which – if you think about it is not much different to the real world. At least on the surface – how many Internet marketing operations/ businesses or whatever you want to call it go completely unregistered? I would like to bet it is a substantial amount, because it is almost completely un-necessary to register a business like this unless it is making a decent income – in which case, the IRS will make certain to help you register.

So – I draw the conclusion that most (hard to put a definite number on it) internet marketers and firms will fail within 2-5 years. Why such a high failure rate? Simple really – lack of research and poor motivators. If your sole reason for setting up an internet business is to make money online, you will be faced with several challenges. One – it is soul destroying to sit in front of a computer all day and discover that you earned 3 cents an hour because you failed to properly research your market and two, the competition is becoming stiffer every day. Whatever your market, you are probably going to discover that the competition has noticeably increased between researching and launching. This is definitely something I take into consideration beafore advising a client on probable rewards and time frames.

You are not alone on the Internet, and something a competitor does or does not do can have a drastic effect on your business. One way of coping with these issues is to get involved in a business you have a genuine passion for. I think the best internet businesses come from doing this and recommend taking a long hard look at your motivations before starting anything. There are plenty of internet marketing tools available to properly research almost any subject as well.

More Free Blogs and Web 2.0 Sites

Mark Knowles — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 07:25:57 +0000

Some time ago, I compiled a list of free blogs to use either as a stand alone blogging platform, or as promotional tools. I am not a big fan of just dumping poor content on these sites, but they certainly have their uses as far as promoting your website is concerned. No matter how you make a living online; whether you are writing blog posts to make money online or some other fashion – one key to being successful is to generate traffic to your webpages, and one component of doing that is getting links to those pages.

The best links are those links that grow organically – i.e. some one else finds and likes your content and links to it. But – getting people to find your content in the first place probably means “cheating,” and creating a few links of your own. Most Internet marketers (myself included) have several blogs which they use to post links at. I keep a number for my clients to use, and there are any number of free blogs and sites that are available. I realized I had built a list of free sites and this is that list.

Do not simply dump garbled content on these sites. If you treat them with respect and add value to their site by adding decent content – they will treat you with respect by not deleting your account. I have also added a few article directories – the same applies – treat them with respect and do not dump spam links. Enjoy.

A selection of the top article directories:

Internet Marketing – How To Get An Education

Mark Knowles — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:47:11 +0000

The Internet marketing field has become something akin to a grocery store aisle with too many options. Too often – we make a decision based on criteria that has absolutely nothing to do with the product in the box, and everything to do with an outside influence. Or there are so many choices we get fed up looking and take the one with the best packaging.

Too many choices

Educating one’s self as to what works or does not work in Internet marketing can be a costly affair, and often times the most attractive strategy is the apparently easiest one. I see many, many “Internet gurus” selling strategies that will no longer work, and they are selling them based on the fact that they were sold that idea that it works, and they have not actually tried and tested the method – they just want the commission on the product/software/ebook download/whatever.

My own thinking has always been to start with quality product or content and go from there. I also believe in working ethically – and this is self serving – because eventually the search engines discover a “black hat “ technique and when they do – it stops working. If you have approached your Internet marketing using ethical techniques – it will always work. If you paid an Internet marketing company in India to dump millions of comments on blogs – that may have worked the first few million times it was done – but you are asking to have your hosting account shut down if you try it today.

So – where to go to educate yourself? You can always use the tried and tested “suck it and see” method, but many end up sucking so many approaches that they are broke before they find the magic bullet. The fact is – there is no magic bullet. Why would Internet marketing be any different to any other field? An ethical and honest internet marketing entrepreneur will always be ion a position of strength over the long term when compared to a spammer. It also helps to have clearly defined goals – and this is where I see a lot of failures. If you do not know what you want – how can you go out and get it?

Here are a few places where you can educate yourself for free, and a couple of resources that will always be at the forefront of ethical SEO. And they are taken straight from the horses’ mouth so to speak.

Matt Cutts Blog
Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s Webspam team and works on search quality at Google. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Ebay Partner Network BlogThe Ebay blog talks about best practices for driving traffic to ebay, but is applicable to any market.
Offical google blogSome of the comment sections are enlightening, if only to see what people complain about when Big Daddy G makes a change to their search algorithm.
Microsoft adcenter blog for publishersInteresting blog – with perhaps too much information at times, but worth taking a look at occasionally.

These are all advertising networks or search engines. They spell it out clearly what is going on in Internet marketing, and are a great place to get a feel for the industry and what works. And – yes – there is a feel to doing this. Combine what you learn from these blogs with well written code – and my personal favorite to build any website is to use semiologic wordpress – and you will be laying a good ground work for your success.

Further reading that may be of interest:

How to make money onlineThis is an article I wrote some time ago, and the models I describe here still work today.
How to make money blogging.
Another article I wrote some time ago, but also applicable.

Good luck out there.

Bad Internet Marketing and Due Dilligence

Mark Knowles — Fri, 28 May 2010 09:50:49 +0000

Having spent a few years online now, slowly my email inbox has begun to fill up with unsolicited emails from a number of companies, and the latest trend seems to be sending unsolicited emails to owners of newly set up sites – if there is a contact option.

I am always setting up new sites – either for myself, as potential niche sites for sale at a later date when they have “aged” or for clients. So – I get a lot of these emails.

If it is not some Russian spammer with 200 links in the text it will invariably be from an “SEO expert” offering their services and will usually read something like this:

Name: Milton Lake

Email: miltonlake22@gmail.com

Website: http://www.yahoo.com

We are interested to increase traffic to your website, please get back to us in order to discuss the possibility in further detail.

Time: Thursday May 13, 2010 at 7:51 pm

IP Address: 122.162.178.27

Are you kidding me? Now – this is not just bad Internet marketing – this is horrible. Why on earth would I consider using an internet marketing company that does not have a web presence and uses disposable email addresses? Do I seriously think some one like this can increase my web traffic ?

I would not touch this person – not in a million years. But - I can only assume – judging from just how many of these I get when I set up a new site – there are people who do use them. In which case – I will say this – If you use an ” SEO expert ” such as this – You are going to be ripped off and it is all your own fault. Seriously – avoid these people like the plague and do some due diligence before signing up and spending money with any online marketing “expert.”

Whether you choose to use me or some one else – check them out before hand. Check me out before hand. Look me up on the Internet – see what my reputation is. What sort of work do I do? Is it ethical or not? If you cannot find me – what does that tell you? Would you use an Internet marketing company that you could not find with an internet search? Exactly.

Can you contact me? Do I respond in a timely manner? Am I using disposable email addresses? These questions apply to me as well as any would-be SEO expert.

Then – and only then - if you are satisfied I am what I say I am and my reputation is good – use my services.

Free blogs

Mark Knowles — Sun, 09 May 2010 20:53:56 +0000

Wanna free blog?

Have I got something for you – the biggest, baddest list of free blogs in the known universe. These are the best free blogging sites currently.

For some reason, there seems a fascination with getting a free blog and the amount of free blog sites has mushroomed along with the blogging phenomenon. Free blogs are appearing left right and center. But – beware – some of them do not stay free, some of them offer revenue sharing that mysteriously stops with your account closed and some of them will be gone tomorrow or the day after. There is a danger of losing your work should you choose to use a free blogging platform instead of your own hosted blog, but – they also serve another purpose. You can use them to create links back to your own sites and if you set up accounts at multiple free blogging sites, this means links from multiple, geographically varied sites, which is crucial if you are making money blogging.

So, after much wandering around the internet, setting up accounts at dozens of free blog sites, I have decided to compile a list of free blog sites that I consider to be trustworthy and likely to be around for a while. I will not be including article writing sites such as Squidoo or Hubpages – this is for blogs only, and may well turn into the biggest, baddest list of free blogs in the known universe. Or – I might get bored half way through because there is a lot of them. Just kidding – this is the definitive (until next Wednesday) list of free blog sites. The criteria I have used to compile this list is that each site needs to:

Have an intuitive interface
Be search-engine optimized
Have good page rank
Cost no money
Give the impression they are here to stay

Of course – I could be wrong and some of these will go broke taking your hard work with them – but I personally would not put anything on a free blog that I could not afford to lose. You have been warned. I am not affiliated with any of these blogs and I see them solely as a means of networking and building links back to my personal sites. Some of them have a specific focus, others not. Some of them offer revenue sharing, some of them do not, but none of them will cost you a penny unless you upgrade to a premium service. You can also open multiple accounts at them, although I recommend using several different email addresses if you are using them solely to promote another site.

Blog.com @ http://blog.com/

Blog.com sell themselves as “the choice for almost two million bloggers. Join the fray, and observe the world, from the smallest details to life-changing events.” Entertainingly, thay also say “A blog is your best bet for a voice among the online crowd.” Which – if you think about it – is utter bullshit. 2 million blogs and you can be a voice heard amongst the 2 million? Not a hope in hell. Still – it s free, easy to use and they make their money by placing advertising on your blog. Like many of these platforms, it is filling up with millions of short promotional posts which link back to another site. If you want to pay $30 a year – they will remove the ads.

Blogger @ http://www.blogger.com

This is google’s free blog platform. As such – they are unlikely to be going anywhere, and I would suggest that this is as good as it gets. There are some limitations, but you are free to monetize these using google adsense and have recently integrated Amazon affiliates. Easy to use, simple interface and very search engine friendly.

Bloghi @ http://bloghi.com

Bloghi make money by running google adsense of your pages, although you can disable that by paying. They do have an attempt at making it possible to find your blog in their directory, but with this many blogs you are often lost in the morass of promotional posts.

BloggersBase @ http://www.bloggersbase.com/

This one is interesting. Not only is it a free blog site, but there is a community aspect, including a job board which charges people to advertise. As I have mentioned in previous articles – beware certain so-called jobs. Throwaway email address + wants a free sample = lying sack of shit looking for free content. Never, ever send a free sample to a disposable mail address. Personal experience…….

Bravenet @ http://www.bravejournal.com/

Another community with free blogs, competitions, plus website hosting and drag and drop site builder if you want. The idea is interesting and they call their free blogs, “journals,” as do a few other sites. You can get quite complex here, and combine a blog with a website.

Doodlekit @ http://doodlekit.com/home

I rather like this setup – free web hosting with a blog. Pretty easy to use and you can build out quite a substantial web property. Once again they make money advertising on your website, but if you choose a paid option, the ads go away. I must be a sucker for a cute cartoon.

Easyjournal @ http://www.easyjournal.com/

Nothing outstanding here, although they have a pretty good Alexa and google page ranking. They have been around since 2004, so are in no danger of vanishing, although I do not see how they make money> The only obvious income I see is the shop that sells easyjournal T shirts and other stuff, so who knows?…..

GoogleSites @ http://sites.google.com/

Not just a blog, this is google’s site builder that works in similar fashion. You are free to build as many sites with as many links as you like, although most of the “SEO” names are loooong gone. What you end up with is http://sites.google/site/yoursitename/ . Very intuitive, lots of free templates and really easy to use.

InsaneJournal @ http://www.insanejournal.com

I rather like these guys because they appear to actually be insane, calling their blogs ” asylums” . The main thing here is they dare to be different. Although I am a big fan of wordpress, it is good to see something else. Insane Journal is built on open source software from Danga Interactive.

LiveJournal @ http://www.livejournal.com/

One of the original free blogs, LiveJournal has 25 million blogs and communities. Sometimes I wonder how anything gets found on the internet – ever. 25 million blogs just on one site? Phew!

WordPess @ http://wordpress.com/

Speaking of OMG how the Fuck does anything get found on the internet ever? And now I know why google has all the money – wordpress are claiming 288,644 bloggers, 257,636 new posts, 382,086 comments, & 58,323,268 words today on WordPress.com. Today………..Good grief! Seriously though – Wordpress is awesome. They monetize themselves with horrible pop up boxes and selling space to store photos and videos. Free basic member ship and after using them for a while, you will want a blog all of your own. Love ‘em.

Zimbio @ http://www.zimbio.com/

These guys call themselves an “interactive magazine,” and you can set up a blog under them. Heavily celebrity oriented, and a pretty stunning Alexa ranking of 386. Guess people must like looking at photos of celebrities. Goodness knows why.