There is no doubt that Viral Marketing can bring a flood of customers and sales. It can also be some of the highest quality traffic you can obtain.

The problem is, for most marketers, it’s the old, “Easier Said than Done!”. And rightly so, it’s tough. Most folks don’t have the resources or the relationships with other marketers to get the ball rolling in the first place. I am a firm believer you can do anything you set your mind too, so I am not trying to be negative. I should probably say, many marketers have a disadvantage, which in reality, most times, is just in their own mind.

So what do you do? How do you level the playing field? A inexpensive little script I found today, might be the road towards getting that viral flood you’ve been longing for.

To be honest I was and still am very excited about it, I can’t wait to use it myself. It’s a very unquie twist to viral marketing.

They call it, “The Bride Machine“. What does it do? Why is it so good?

It’s similar to a Refer-a-Friend script. But so much better and better still, it’s verified referals.

With a Refer-a-Friend script, your users or customers enter their friends e-mail address, to refer them to the page. Problem is, most of those scripts do not and can not verify the entered information. Many people will enter bogus information so they can get their reward.

The Bribe Machine not only bribes surfers, ethically of course, to vote for your page or pages on Digg and StumbleUpon, but more importantly it verifies they actually did the task, before they receive their reward.

Not only are your visitors building traffic for you, they are also building great link backs. Seems to be a win-win situation, doesn’t it?

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Cooking for a family can be tough. My wife and I often run out of ideas, seems like we always have the same-o-meals over and over. Lucky our kids are not too picky, except for our son, he could live on mac-n-cheese and nacho’s if we let him.

The reason I bring up cooking is because I just happened to think about it, kinds makes sense, that cooking is like running your own business. It really is… stay with me a second…

To try and come up with something new or different for dinner, I often visit foodtv to search out recipes. What I’ve noticed, there could be 10 different recipes just for Empanadas, for example. They don’t vary greatly but usually have some differing ingredients from chief to chief. While they might put different stuff in the pot, it still comes a tasty meal.

See where I’m going?

You don’t have to do exactly like the Latest Joe Guru and his million dollar, can’t live without, money making plan. Simply put, if you use enough of the right ingredients, you’ll come up with a success. It’s doesn’t always work on the first try. My wife is a great cook, but there have been some less than edible meals in the past, not many though.

The first step is to get your ingredients and get cooking! The meal is not going to make itself and it’s not going to make it’s way out of the fridge without your help.

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If you’ve ever studied copywriting, you’ve surely heard or read that famous title many times over. Of course it was by the talented John Caples. Thing is, it was written back in 1926, but it’s just as powerful today, as it was back then.

Why do i bring this up?

I was searching for some recipes the other night when I came across an advertisement banner for one of the diet companies. I think it was for eDiets, but try as I might, I couldn’t find the ad again before writing this.

What caught my attention was the working on the ad, can’t remember it word for word, but…

“Losing 60 Ponds was great, but the romance that followed was..”

To make it even more dramatic, they had a video or annimated clips of a lady in major tears, tears of joy of course.

As soon as I read that title, right away I thought of the famous Caples ad.

Goes to show, some things never go out of style. While there are new words these days, as evidence of the ad, some things still work, even 80 years later.

So… Next time you find a old copywriting or advertising book at the local new and used, better grab it because I might be right behind you.

I’ll try to find that ad again, and post it if i do, now it’s bugging me.

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If there is one thing, most likely the biggest factor that stops people making money online, it has to be not getting started. Bare none, no other “problem” comes close. If you’ve read my blog you’ve probably heard me say it many times. Why do I keep repeating it? Because some people still don’t get it.

Hey, I’ve been there, it’s tough to get going in the begining, even down the road I’ve been less than motivated. It’s even harder to be motivated when you really need the cash. Oh boy, I’ve been there.

So how do you “get going”?

Start with smaller tasks, like I talked about the other day, small victories, it’s the best way I’ve found to get on the ball. Funny thing happens, after you get in gear, it seems a little easier to stay in motion. Hard to believe but true. Some times I’ll even completely clean off my desk, like a fresh start, to get myself going. Every one is different I guess

this is one of the biggest challenges of working your own business, you do not have a boss looking over your shoulder, you don’t have the same urgency to work to make sure you get your check.

You have to figure out what gets you in motion, like I said, every one is different, and keeps you going. I wish I had some magic formula, but I don’t.

I can make you one promise, if you work enough, your bond to find success.

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Okay, while I’ve had a facebook account/profile for some time, I never put much into to, actually very little. Guess I had one just to have it.

Come to find out, Internet Marketers are really eating it up. Not hard to see why, as you it is a much better marketing tool compared to say, Myspace.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook become more popular than Myspace. They are not very far behind, Alexa lists them as the 8th largest site, just behind number 6 ranked Myspace.

It’s a marketers dream because you can, well actually market your business. You can add your blog feeds, form groups, add friends, list your websites and most importantly make contacts. You could even gather more Twitter followers by adding the app to your profile.

So what are you waiting for? At the very least get an account just to check out how marketers are using it to increase their business.

While your there, stop by my profile: Ron Killian and add yourself as a friend or just leave a message on the wall.

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When you really look at Myspace, when you really get down to it, user MySpace profiles are nothing more than web pages.

Not exactly a new or brilliant concept. The brilliant part was the addition of social interaction, making it a seemingly new and amazing place to hang out.

I remember way back when you could get a free website from a place called Geocities. Am I the only one that remembers them?

But it was just a plain old website, nothing fancy and the biggest ineraction your visitors had was a guestbook, if your visitors even used it. While it was cool to have your own webpage back in the golden years, they were… well, boring.

How often do you hear about Geocites these days? Can’t remember the last time I saw the name mentioned.

I think part of it was timing, but Myspace sure hit a cord. It was no longer checking out some one’s home page, it was actually interacting with people. They could leave comments, you could leave comments. You could post pictures, trade question and answer polls and more.

It sure helped to make it easier for people to create their own space on the net. In the past you had to know how to make web pages, you had to know some html, not exactly easy for many people.

If you think Myspace was some new incredible concept it’s not, but Myspace is a perfect example of making an old idea better.

So the question is, what could you make better and become the next Myspace?

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The biggest obsticle I’ve come across, even to this day, is getting motivated enough to take action on what I needed and know I have to get done, or finished.

I know I am not the only one, it plagues all at one time or another. Some more than others.

Though I’m not perfected yet, one way I’ve found to get myself out the “not-doing-what-needs-to-be-done” rut is to start with small victories. That is doing little tasks or chores that are easy to actually finish.

Right now I have a new traffic e-book to finish and I need to get a bunch of viral freebies to get going. So how am I getting myself in the groove today?

Doing the laundry. Ya really.

I’ve been the laundry boy here in my house for a while, every since it was admitted that while my wife was great at doing so many things, including getting the laundry started, she had a strange aversion to putting it away. Bless her, she is a fantasic wife and mother, just washing clothes is not her thing. We all have our own.

But this chore is something I can finish and I can feel good about it, more importantly, it’s something that is getting me to take action, which will get me taking action in other area’s.

Works for me.

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Lately I’ve been reading around the net and there are a few people that get it. But only a few, it’s a short list.

Before I go any further, this is not a doom and gloom post, not by a long shot.

Also, I am not spouting off about things I don’t know or only making guesses.

I know about affiliate marketing because I’ve learned the hard way, mainly through trial and error since 1998. I don’t say this to impress any one, I only say it so that you know I’ve been in the trenches for a long time.

I also am in no way an expert. There are things I still do wrong and some things I don’t do, that I should be doing.

Clear as mud now?

When I say affiliate marketing is not a long term income, I am talking about the traditional form of affiliate marketing. That is, gathering and sending as many potential buyers to an affiliate program and hoping for the best. Which is how the majority create their income, least they try to.

The problem with this scenario is you send off all your customers, never to see them again. Either they buy or they don’t. Simple enough and probably the reason it’s the popular route. I have to confess, it’s probably the reason why it’s been my plan of attack for some time.

Here’s where the problem comes in…

You work your butt off sending all your visitors to the affiliate program. Hey, this is cool, they are buying, I’m making good money. I like this deal.

Then comes the bad news, your sites are no where to be found in the search engines, for no good reason. Or just as bad, you see your sites on page 2 and beyond. To make matters worse, the same thing happened to 90% of your linking partners. Two major traffic sources down the drain. And here you thought you had an authority site and you were safe. Not so my friend. There is not such thing as immunity even when your busting your butt for the search engines.

Does this happen? Yep. It’s exactly what’s happened to me in the past.

Since I was taking the easy way out, I now had little to show for my work, except for depressing sales stats.

What can we learn from this more than real scenario? Don’t send your visitors away without getting something out of them. At the very least, get them on a mailing list, then send them off. If you have a list, you still have potential customers for the future. Take away the traffic and your still in business.

In addition, you could also create and sell your own products so these customers become your customers, not your affiliate programs customers. Now who gets the back end sales?

Do the above with products that over deliver and your building your own customer base and word of mouth advertising, that will last long after the search engine and link trade traffic vanishes.

Johnny site builder is right behind you in the ranks and might be working a little harder and smarter than you.

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When I first found the theme for this blog, seemed it was perfect, just what I was looking for.

Since then I see more and more bloggers using this exact same theme. Of course it’s a free public theme, any one is welcome to use it. But I don’t want my blog to look like any one else’s. I wouldn’t be unique.

So… I guess it’s time to hunt up another theme or change this one enough to be different. I could also find a new one and change it as well.

Has any one else seen this same theme in use on other blogs?

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If you have a Wordpress blog, on your own server, not a Wordpress provided blog, you might want to check your security.

Few days back I was the lucky winner of a blog makeover. What a great day for me!

I wasn’t quite the make over I was looking for. My blog was hacked. Yep, lucky ducky me. It wasn’t the first time and if I was smart, it shouldn’t have even happened.

I wasn’t smart because I was using the same password Wordpress gave me when I installed the blog. I also wasn’t smart enough to study it and think to myself, gee, thats really a pretty lame pass. Sure wouldn’t be hard to figure it out. I am not going to go in to why I finally realized it was a less than secure password, don’t want to give any evildoers any idea’s.

If you installed a Wordpress blog, did you change your password, to a combination that’s near impossible to hack? I did not and I paid for it. Lucky I discovered it pretty quickly and it wasn’t hacked for long. Also lucky they just added some redirects to a few pages. Could have been worst.

So take my bad deal and save yourself, today, right now. You could be next.

How did I fix it? I opened notepad and typed in a long block or combination of letters, numbers and combination of lower and upper case. Next I went to the “Users” page, click edit for my user name and pass, then copied and pasted the new password into the “Updates Users Password” boxes. Of course I also copied the new info into a secret place on my pc.

You could even go one step further. If you’ll notice, with default Wordpress set up, you can not change the user name, it’s admin by default. You could create a new user, with a unique name of course, give that user the highest level of security for the blog. After you have added the new user, you delete the default “admin” user. So now the hacker not only has to figure out your password but now they also have to figure out the user name.

Now, for this to work, the new user name must NOT show up anywhere on your blog. You’ll have to remove any reference to the user name. This would include any “Posted by:” references on your blog. If not it wouldn’t be a secret would it?

One last thing, if you happen to get hacked like I did and they change your password, as they did to me, here is a great video on how to recover your password: Recovering Wordpress Password. I hope you won’t need to use it. Learn from me

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I’ve been testing a few Wordpress Plugins for adding Google Analytics to my blog. Last one I activated, just gave me a blank options pages for the plug-in.

Well, think I’ve found one that works pretty well. As they say, so far so good. It’s not an all out Analytics plugin, it just adds the code to your pages so Google can take your visitors. You do track your traffic right?

I’m really happy with it, so I thought I’d pass it on. It’s called Google Analyticator. The latest version even allows the new JS code from Analytics.

Did I mention it was even free?

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Life’s no fun if your not always learning.

Here’s something about Wordpress I learned the other day.

I’ve been getting into using tags on some of my blogs, why not, some easy extra SEO. Though I am not so vigilant on this blog. Wordpress even makes tagging easy with a built in Tag Cloud Widget. Course it’s not all always that great…

After posting on a number of my blogs I was starting to noticed some of the new tags I had been adding to posts, where not showing in the tag cloud. Hmm.. not good. Did I break Wordpress? Wouldn’t be the first time.

I got to asking around and come to find out, the built Tag Cloud in Wordpress has a limit to the number of tags that display. Seems there is not exact number, but the limit looks to be about 45.

Easy Fix…

Get yourself a good tag cloud plug-in. I’ve been experimenting with the Configurable Tag Cloud Plugin and working great so far. Not only can you set the limit of tags displayed, if there even is a limit, but you can also set just about anything else. You can set the colors for big to small, the font sizes and pretty much everything else.

That’s my lesson for today.

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Are you using article marketing to drive traffic to your business? If not, why not?

You’ve probably heard it a hundred times that article marketing can bring you some hot targeted quality traffic, seems every one talking about it.

Why do you think so many endorse it? Maybe because it works?

Well, if you think about it for a moment, it makes sense.

First off, it’s tough these days to get search engine traffic, and it’s sure no instant traffic tap over flowing with buyers. Even th surfers that do come from the search engines to your website, most of them, probably won’t know you.

With article marketing you can hit your mark. Not only will you look like an expert and author, but the fact that your writing is posted on the directory builds some trust with the reader. It’s almost like some one else recommending your expertise. Two birds with one stone?

If you want to get serious about article marketing, not sure why you wouldn’t, you should check out Article Domination Method. A complete guide on how to not only use this marketing venue, but more important, how to get the most of it. It even comes with some articles to get your started.

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