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The Ups and Downs of Internet Marketing
 

The one thing I've learned and that has a huge impact for me SEO wise is that depending on only once source of traffic for your sales, traffic, clicks, affiliate revenue, sign ups or whatever you do is a bad idea. SEO is the art creating a website built for search engine ranking which is basically free targeted traffic. What happens if your SEO fails?

Search Engine Optimization is the act of making changes to your on site and off site factors to promote your site well for your specific keywords in search engines. The better your on and off site factors are, including linking (off page and on page), title, content, URL structure, anchor text, simplicity, template, sitemap and other factors are, the better chances you'll have for ranking high for your keywords. This is usually true 80% of the time. The other 20% it depends on the big Three! Google being the dominate traffic source for most websites out there is the biggest variable in SEO.

What happens when you do everything right, but out of the blue your Google traffic is down? It could be Google! If you haven’t made any major changes to your site, or tried any unethical ways to gain ranking then it might be Google. And if it's Google, which it seems to be Google every few months, you can't really do anything about it but wait it out. You can make minor changes that you know will help your site like creating a sitemap, increasing your inbound linkage, adding more new and original content, but nothing major! If you risk too much change at one time, you could create a back fire for your self and multiply the effects of less traffic. Too much of anything is never good!

If your natural search engine ranking is down look for other methods of traffic. If you have a mailing list, send a newsletter every one to two weeks if you depend on that traffic. If you have Adwords, optimize your paid advertising for more targeted traffic. I can't stress enough with targeted traffic. If you're selling guides to SEO Marketing, but then you create Google ads for Internet eBook, Fast Guides, EZGuides, etc, and not SEO eBook, Search Engine Optimization Guide, or Internet Marketing eBook then you're missing your traffic. Why be vague and pay for visitors that aren't looking for your product when you have the option to target as much as you want! You're paying for it, spend your money wisely! Another way is start a weekly give away with an autoresponder. Autoresponders are cheap, and effective. Add your affiliate information between your free offer and you'll see an increase of sales with little overhead. There are literally hundreds of ways you can promote your websites,

I own and operate about 75 websites my self (it's not too much). Just recently one of my more popular websites driving a good amount of traffic to one of my selling sites lost about 50% to 75% of it's traffic almost overnight and we lost about a quarter of our sales because of it. It wasn't a huge deal, but it almost was. If I didn't have other sites for backup traffic it would have been bad. This traffic site is my oldest and most established site, and thus it was giving us the most traffic at the time. Now we have other sites giving about the same amount of traffic for other genres but for the time it was our sole targeted traffic generator.

My business used to be a 100% Adwords driven website; which is okay and profitable if you know what you're doing. It's very easy to spend and waste a lot of money. At my peak I was spending close to $400 a day in Adwords ads and making about $1000 in profit a day. This is actually pretty good for me, but then let's add-in cost for merchant and payment fees, and employees, and even stock. It was still good though.

I guess my point is it's never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket, as my idol Jonathan Leger (good keyword for him here) Marketing SEO Guru would say. Spread your self out; don't rely on one source of traffic, one source of income, one source of anything for that mater.

Aspkin

I am glad that you share your wisdom at this wonderful place- it is a pleasure to learn from you and your experience.

AndreasF

Thanks AndreasF :)

That's a solid plan Modee. To be the most effective I found being on the first page, but being on the top 1/3 part of the ads, usually the 5th or 6th ad, not at the very top, but close to it seems to be the most effective for me. If your keywords are targeted enough then your ads will pay for their self easy. I've seen people waste thousands and thousands of dollars for choosing too vague of keywords and not converting because of it. Hehe

Google isn't rich for nothing.

Wow! That's horrible. There seems to be a ton of competition for that keyword. Keywords like this usually don't have a lot of advertisers. The word it self, Diamond, is too broad. It's better to target smaller niches. Blue diamond, cheap diamonds, African diamonds, fast diamonds, and maybe name brands etc. That's where you'll see results. Also he needs to work on his SEO if it's that bad. SEO can do wonders if you do it right.

One of my best selling websites, has no paid ads for it at all. It's all SEO. It ranks well for targeted keywords. Organic traffic! Free traffic!

Are you setting up a shopping cart on your site? Which kind is it?

Sounds like you'll be making some decent money off these sales, no eBay fees to worry about, only controled google. Good job!

That's good stuff. I think your router is holding onto your modem's ip address. That was always my problem when having trouble changing my IP.

I haven't tried Google checkout yet, it seems okay but I haven't had the need for it. That sucks about your friend though, with the suspend eBay account. I would smack him on the back of the head if I were you. :p

Hey guys, not 100% sure this belongs here but since it is "other sites" related....

We've been talking about being careful not to be linked back to a previous account. If you're practicing "not putting all your eggs in one basket" and selling like items through your web page and on ebay and they're similar to said items sold under a different user id that was suspended at some point...wouldn't you be putting that ebay user id at risk listing the same types of items? For instance if you had previously had a user id, lost it, then set up a different account at another site VERY similar to that id and selling similar items, would all your promotions eventually work to hurt your new ebay user id? We talk about self promotion and using adwords and getting items on google. And now ebay has this tool that will submit your items TO google...is it safe to do this? There IS a certain comfort in anonymity and low profile even though it costs your bottom line. It's a fine line to walk. On one hand we're operating low profile on ebay to keep our id's around, but on the other hand we have to stay high profile to stay in business.

What do you suggest to make the transition easier? I don't think I'll be saying bye bye to ebay just yet, but I do look forward to the day (hopefully soon) when it is only just one profitable option.

Thanks :)

Hey Jack, sorry but I have no idea what you're talking about. I read it twice and it seems you might be talking about personal sites? Help me out..