Create A MySql Database
By · CommentsCreating MySql databases is one of the most difficult jobs that you’ll ever have to do when you’re working in Internet Marketing.
Every script that uses php will connect to a MySql database – however simple – because it’s the database that stores all your essential data like Paypal details, usernames, passwords and do on.
This WordPress blog uses MySql, my Giveaways do, my membership site does … in fact I reckon I have at least 20-30 MySql databases active across my business as I type!
So this is a skill you really need to master, and that’s why I decided to record this simple video guide.
Save it, download it, refer back to it time and time again … but sooner, or later, you’re going to need to know how to do this.
It’s really easy – you don’t need to understand all the nuts and bolts behind it – it’s just a simple process of learning and repetition.
So check out the video and slides below and good luck creating your very first MySql database 
Set up your own JV Giveaway
By · CommentsMy BIG JV Giveaway discovery
I’ve spent a lot of time in the past year taking part in and running JV Giveaways.
It’s only recently that I realised that there are two types of event like this … and they’re both extremely powerful in terms of driving traffic and building your list.
I’ve been so busy with a house move and a forthcoming product launch recently, that I simply haven’t had the time to set up and run my own regular JV Giveaway, of the type listed here.
However, what I love about these events is:
# They drive great traffic
# They help you build your list of subscribers fast
# You can make money straight away
# You build great relationships with people as a result of these events
So when I started to spot some different style JV Giveaways taking place, my ears pricked up and I took notice.
In fact a lot of my friends in Internet Marketing were already taking part in these events, but they’d passed me by altogether until this stage.
It turned out that I already had the right script on my hard drive … I’d bought it ages ago, it wasn’t the type of script I was after at the time, so I’d just left it there.
My latest JV Giveaway
The script I used was Mark Austin’s Giveaway Event Manager and it delivers a JV Giveaway in a different way from the regular event.
# These events are made up of established internet marketers working together
# The difference from regular events is that they’re closed to a small group of invited marketers
# Each marketer – usually around 10 in number – lists a high quality gift
# Each marketer promotes the JV Giveaway a set number of times
# These events may have one time offers or sales involved
# These events drive massive traffic in a very short time, they generally stay open for about a week
I have just completed my first Giveaway in this style and it’s been a big success.
My JV Giveaway
Here are the basic details of my event:
# There were 10 marketers involved, including me
# We all had similar list sizes … not the same size, but we’re all established marketers
# It was open for 10 days
# I prefer to run my JV Giveaways over 10 days, from a Friday to the Sunday evening the week after
# I used affiliate text promos on the front page
# I added a re-Tweet facility to my page (Viral Tweets)
# I moved the gifts around, to a) make the page look different on subsequent visits b) to make sure that each marketer got a turn ‘near the top’
# Each marketer agreed to mail out 3 times while the event was open
Here’s a link to the Giveaway page, but you’ll see that it’s now closed.
My JV Giveaway results
This is the bit you’ll be most interested in
Here are the headline results for 10 days and you’ll see how much traffic and activity the event created over the 10 day period.
This set of figures shows you the traffic that the Giveaway has driven over the 10 days that it’s open.
You can actually see exactly when it opens and when it closes, because of the boost in numbers and bandwidth!
The columns show from left to right, Number of visits, Pages, Hits and Bandwidth.
As you can see, for a small event which didn’t take a lot of time to set up, it did some nice steady business and drove a respectable amount of traffic.
JV Giveaways graph
This graph shows visually the same set of stats, and I think this puts the entire event into a much sharper focus.
My blog will usually show a steady trickle of traffic, as I’m not really using it for any consistent marketing at the moment.
However, once the JV Giveaway opens, you can see how lively things get, and then they drop off once again.
Now a conventional event drives many more times more traffic than this, but this is a very respectable showing for a small and collaborative event between 10 marketers … and remember that everybody else involved in the event will be seeing a similar upturn at the same time
Finally, in the image below, I have shown you the leader board with other marketers’ names removed, with the exception of mine.
You can see that I sent 442 unique page impressions to the Giveaway over 10 days, and that put me in 2nd place among the marketers taking part.
The re-Tweet figures show the power of giving away a free gift in exchange for a Twitter post … and remember, that action allowed me to drive more traffic to a second offer, see a big gain in my own Twitter followers and also encourage users to access an e-book that contains many of my affiliate links.
JV Giveaway conclusions
I hope that I’m convincing you here of the power of these events, even though they’re much smaller than conventional Giveaways.
Remember too, that if you have ten marketers each with a list of 10k, you’re going to drive massive amounts of traffic to your event … it’s all a matter of scale.
In fact I know of an established marketer who added over 350 new subscribers overnight in one of these events.
Even I added a couple of hundred over the course of the week, which isn’t a bad boost for a small event.
If you need partners for an event like this, head for the Warrior Forum or JV Notify Pro and find suitable partners there.
Or, alternatively, you can hook up with people of similar list sizes by using a resource like Safe Swaps which is not just a great place to ad swap, you can also find people who are at the same stage in their marketing as you are.
I shall be holding one of these events again as it did everything an internet marketer would want from a JV Giveaway.
:
# Allowed me to work collaboratively with some marketing friends
# Generated income
# Drove traffic
# Built my list
# Generated multiple affiliate sign-ups through bonus page offers
# Added multiple Twitter followers
# Generated traffic to my blog and lots of comments and interaction
# Pushed the Alexa.com ranking up for this blog by over 30k places
For more information on regular JV Giveaways, check out this blog post called How To Hold Your Own Giveaway Event
5 Essential WordPress Plugins
By · CommentsI added this in response to a blog comment elsewhere on the site, but thought I should make it a post as I’m sure it’ll be very useful to anybody setting up their first WordPress blog.
These are part of a basic blog toolkit, and you may or may not already be aware of some or all of them.
All in One SEO Pack: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
# Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines
# Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
# Generates META tags automatically
Comment Luv: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/commentluv/
# This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve a selection of their last blog posts, tweets or digg submissions which they can choose one from to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
# It has been found to increase comments and the community spirit for the thousands of blogs that have installed it. With a simple install you will immediately start to find new and interesting blog posts, tweets and diggs from your own blog and community.
Google XML Sitemaps: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
# This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog.
# With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently.
Sexy Bookmarks: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/
# SexyBookmarks has proven time and time again to be an extremely useful and successful tool in getting your readers to actually submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites.
Akismet: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/
# Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.
Your suggestions for additional plugins
Subscribe to Comments: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/
# Subscribe to Comments is a robust plugin that enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries. The plugin includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to unsubscribe to certain posts, block all notifications, or even change their notification e-mail address!
5 Different Traffic Generation Techniques
By · CommentsI signed up to Alex Jefferys ‘Marketing With Alex 3.0′ coaching program a few weeks ago, and one of the tasks we’ve been set is to try different techniques for driving more traffic to out blogs.
This is a summary of some of the techniques I have been trying.
Technique 1: Hold a competition
Funny enough, I used to use this technique before I even had an auto responder or a proper web business, so I thought I’d give it another try.
It brings traffic to your site, but not targeted traffic so it’s not the best technique on earth.
I made the prizes specifically related to Internet marketing to knock out as many freebie seekers as possible and added an entry level opt-in offer once competition entries had been completed.
Here’s the competition page.
I used Google Forms to create the competition form here.
This technique is responsible for the number 3 and number 4 best traffic referrals so far (1 and 2 are organic referrals and Google referals so it’s been a good deliverer of readers so far.
I think that if I listed the competition in a more IM oriented area this might do even better for me in future.
Technique 2: Use Giveaways
The new Giveaway Manager 3 script allows upgraded marketers to create an ‘About Me’ section and as The World Cup Giveaway is being held by a friend at the moment, and I got a full upgrade, I decided to try it out.
Basically this funnels Giveaway participants through my blog and Twitter page.
I’ve never tried this technique before and when I checked out Google Analytics, this is actually my 6th best source of referrals.
Nothing earth shattering you understand, but certainly worth the effort, and at least this is highly targeted traffic, the referrals coming via a site which caters specifically for the IM niche.
Technique 3: Using ads in Giveaways
I thought I’d give this one a try to see if it brings in any decent business, and the jury is still out on this one.
I haven’t been upgrading in a lot of Ultimate JV Giveaway hosted events recently because the quality has been fairly poor.
My promo is the one that says ‘Want to host a Giveaway?’
I’m delighted that David Walker and Paul Wilson have just launched their World Cup event as I’ve upgraded in this one and got access to text ads in what will be a busy event if David’s last one is anything to go by
So, a promising strategy for driving traffic, but I’ll give it a proper whirl now David’s event has launched and see how it goes before Alex’s traffic challenge comes to a conclusion.
Technique 4: Forum footers
I have been going round any forums that I’m active in, making sure that my profile links clearly to my blog, especially in the footer text.
My Google Analytics stats tell me that this has been a particularly successful technique in the Alex Jeffreys forum, but also elsewhere such as JVNotifyPro where I am also quite active as a poster.
I think this is one of those traffic techniques that ‘part of the furniture’, it creates a steady ‘drip-drip-drip’ of traffic, rather than any great surge.
Incidentally, blog commenting is also working well for me, I’m getting a lot of clicks in from other blogs these days.
Technique 5: Driving traffic from my list
I’m lucky to have a list of over 4000 subscribers built up in Giveaway events, so I am experimenting with new techniques to engage better and offer more value.
I have recently been asking my subscribers to tell me what content they want to receive from me and this has been my most commented on blog post so far.
The post was called ‘What information do you want?‘ and as well as driving subscribers to my blog, it is also giving me invaluable data for either future emails or a ‘subscribers only’ report.
I have tried a similar thing with my recent blog post ‘How to hold your own Giveaway event‘ which has also been doing okay for comments, even though this is a more ‘Evergreen’ post ie it has a longer shelf life.
And on that subject, the blog post that generates the most organic traffic is one which I wrote specifically because I saw that other people, as well as me, were searching a for a solution to this problem and not finding one.
‘How to process GoToWebinar video‘ is proving to be a popular post and is my 5th most popular post now, with no promotion, just Google searches bringing the page back for specific searches
Conclusions
The best deliverer of traffic using these ‘alternative’ techniques is running a competition, but it’s not targeted traffic, so I need to do better there.
I think I’d say that all of these techniques accumulate to bring in steady traffic, so I wouldn’t discount any of them, they all play their small part in keeping the blog actives and regularly visited.
Please leave a comment below to tell me which traffic techniques have worked well – or failed – for you.
This page was part of a competition to win a free mailing to my list.
I selected a comment at random from those submitted by 8pm GMT on Thursday 3rd June 2010 and you can see the selection process in the short video below.
Julie Fletcher won the free mailing to my entire list, congratulations Julie!
I just made a promo video on Animoto.com
By · CommentsOne of my Internet marketing friends sent me a video she’d made on Animoto.com earlier this week, so I thought I’d give it a try.
I’m currently experimenting with new ways of driving traffic to this blog and I’ll be writing a detailed post on the techniques I’ve used very soon.
In the meantime, here’s just one of the traffic generation techniques I’m trying.
This video has been posted on my YouTube channel, on Google Buzz and my Twitter page and on my Facebook page.
Giveaways success interview
By · CommentsI’ve just been interviewed by an internet marketing colleague from Alex Jeffreys MWA 3.0 students and I thought I’d place the audio here as it reveals lots of top secrets about taking part in Giveaways .. among many other things.
Chris Jenkins runs onlinesuccesswithchris.com is a really nice guy and carried out a very revealing interview … I don’t think I’ve ever given away as much information about my Internet Marketing background as I did here
Check it out, see what you think and please leave a comment below … and please make sure you pop over to Chris’s blog as well, as he has a pile of great internet marketing tips – as well as some freebies – for you there.
In this interview I reveal:
- The thing I’m really rubbish at when it comes to IM … it’s my biggest Achilles Heel!
- The years in the wilderness I experienced before I even realised I had to build a list
- How I got started in Giveaways and almost stumbled across them by mistake
- My BIG plans for 2010
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How To Hold Your Own Giveaway Event
By · CommentsI get a load of inquiries from people these days asking me:
a) if I will set up a Giveaway event for them
b) what’s the best way to set up a Giveaway
I thought I’d write a post on this as it’s obviously something that a lot of people want to know.
First things first, I’m afraid I don’t set up Giveaways for other people.
It was something I dabbled with early on in my Giveaways career, but I have moved away from that now, so I’m very sorry, but I can’t set up a Giveaway for you.
So, what do you do if you really want to host your own event but you don’t have the technical skills to do it yourself?
Here are my tips to get you started …
Get someone else to do it
There are some people on the Giveaways scene who will set up an event for you at a very reasonable price.
I would actually suggest that you do this first anyway, just to get the feel for what’s involved in an event.
There are two people that I personally know who provide this service, and I’ll mention them here.
Hans W. Castiglioni regularly runs Giveaways using the Giveaway Manager 2 script.
You can find out more about the basic service here which costs (at time of writing) $97.
I can’t believe that Hans offers the service at the price he does and it’s really worth considering if you’re on a tight budget.
Have reasonable expectations though … at this price, you get a basic Giveaway service, don’t go demanding ‘bells and whistles’ because that costs
If you’re struggling with the special offers set-up, Hans even offers an add-on service to help with that – check it out here.
So you could get your own Giveaway, with nothing for you to do but make a few decisions, for $127 and let me tell you, as someone who has set up and run these events, that is excellent value!
The other person I know who’s extremely established and well respected on the Giveaways scene is Joseph Anderson, who regularly holds his own well run events and also sets them up for other people.
Joseph asked me to send people via his Helpdesk for initial inquiries and price quotations.
So there you go, two options to get you started hosting your own Giveaway events.
(Please note, I take no commissions from Hans or Joseph, they are people I have met in Giveaways and who I know to have a good reputation).
Giveaway hosts – top tips
Before you leap into the world of hosting your own Giveaway events, here are a few things to consider.
1) These events are brilliant for growing your list, but beware, if you bite off more than you can chew, and you end up having technical problems with your event, you will ruin your reputation before you even begin.
If you’re really desperate to hold a Giveaway event, but you have limited technical skills, get somebody to hold your hand first.
They’re complicated events and I really wouldn’t want you to rush in, make a mess of it, and spoil your reputation in a very fertile niche.
2) See if you can partner up with somebody who is already holding Giveaways … share the load a bit.
The trick here is to partner with somebody who’s at the same sort of stage as you in their list building.
3) Here’s my number 1 Ninja technique for making your first Giveaway a massive success.
This is what I did, and it launched me straight onto the scene.
If you’re a complete unknown, focus on how you’re going to let other people know about your event and get them to promote it.
First of all, let the people know who run the Giveaway listing pages about your event … here are 6 that I know of off the top of my head:
Giveaway Dominator here (this one is mine)
My JV Giveaways here
JV Giveaway Events here
Alex Perez-Prat’s Facebook service here
Giveaway Junkie here
New JV Giveaways here
Give people who run the listings pages a free upgrade … that way you can guarantee they’ll promote for you and list you
Next you need to go into any current Giveaways and see who’s top of the leader boards for referring JV Contributors and regular members.
Contact those people and offer them a free upgrade … get them into your event on a ‘try before you buy’ basis.
If these people get involved in your event, it will help you establish yourself straight away.
Don’t get greedy with the money … if no-one takes part in your event, you will make no money, period.
Once you’ve run a successful event for the first time, it gets easier.
By the way, I still and always will offer established marketers free upgrades to take part in my events … they bring a lot to the party, you want them taking part.
4) Ninja technique number 2 is to suspend downgrades for no promotion if you’re using the Ultimate JV Giveaway script to run your event.
Being downgraded for non-promotion is the number 1 newbie frustration in Giveaways, and it’s a very popular thing to do if you cut new marketers some slack and don’t penalize them if they’re unable to bring in hits via their affiliate links.
If you run your own event, I hope it goes really well for.
There really is nothing quite like running your own event to build your list!
What information do want?
By · Comments
Please note that this contest is now closed. You may continue to add comments, but they will no longer be eligible for the draw.
And even better, your comments below will help me to give you the information that you really want to receive to help you rocket to success in your internet business.
So here’s the simple question I want you to answer.
You signed up to my emails for a reason … so what information do you want to receive in them?
What would really help you and your plans for online success?
Just write your comment in the form at the bottom of the page, and you’re instantly in with a chance of getting an instant free WordPress blog of your own built by me.
I’ll select a comment at random, and the person who wrote it will win:
=> A WordPress blog, ready installed (done for you)
=> A domain name of their choice (1st year paid for by me)
=> The free WordPress theme of their choice (installed by me)
=> 5 essential free WordPress plug-ins (installed by me)
Value = $299 +
So, what information do you want to receive from me in my emails to you?
Just tell me below and you might have your own $299 + value WordPress blog installed for less than 2 minutes work on your part
Quick rules: 1 entry per person, competition ends on 01/06/2010 though you can add posts anytime after that on the understanding that there is no prize after that date. To select the winner I will count up the number of contributions, put that number into http://www.random.org/ and the comment number that is generated randomly will be the winner. I’ll even record the random selection process and post the video on this screen, as well as publish the name of the winner. Easy and fair!
Please note that this contest is now closed. You may continue to add comments, but they will no longer be eligible for the draw.
Congratulations to Kate for being selected in the random draw … you can see the random selection process in the video below …
How to install WordPress plugins
By Paul Teague · Comments (3)My previous post on 5 Essential WordPress Plugins has proved so popular that I’ve decided to record a video version showing you exactly how to locate and install those plugins.
The video below shows you how to install Akismet, All-In-One SEO, Google XML Sitemap, Comment Luv and Sexy Bookmarks.