Month: December 2008

Banner Advertising 101

by

With the recent release of Instant Banner Creator by John Merrick & Soren Jordansen I thought I would say a few words about how to take advatange of banner ads to advertise your websites.

To read my recent review of Instant Banner Creator and see some of the banners I made click here.

Banner advertising has been around since the mid 90s and provided the economic foundation for Internet marketing during the late 90s.  Today, many people see banner ads as an annoyance and are often ignored making it difficult to generate decent traffic from them.  However the real value of banner advertising comes when they are used for the purpose of branding.

Banner advertising is cheap.  For a few dollars a day you can buy thousands of impressions to get your banner seen across the Internet.  Even though you won’t be getting much direct traffic from these ads when you promote banner ads that include your picture or company logo you are creating a brand awareness that over time people will begin to recognize.

When people see a commercial on TV they don’t generally jump off the couch and run out to buy the product being advertised.  However the next time they are in the store and they see that product they might be more compelled to buy it.

With Instant Banner Creator it is very simple to create a banner that allows you to brand yourself or your company.

Before doing any banner advertising I would suggest signing up for a free banner rotator like the one offered by IntelliBanners.  Even if you only plan to promote one banner I would highly suggest you use Instant Banner Creator to make a few extra banners that you can test against one another.  With IntelliBanners you can track how many people are clicking each of your banners.  You can then determine which banners get the most clicks and delete the ones that don’t work.  You can then make more banners and continue testing them against each other to find out which ones are the more effective.

IntelliBanners will also help you determine the best sites to advertise your banner ads.

Here’s my IntelliBanners list of the top 10 sites showing my banner ads:

Source Hits Unique Hits % Unique Clicks CTR
01 traffic-splash.com 74281 15500 20.87% 18 0.02%
02 startxchange.com 62533 22108 35.35% 16 0.03%
03 dragonsurf.biz 25001 7793 31.17% 30 0.12%
04 bootscootintraffic.com 18040 4161 23.07% 6 0.03%
05 blue-surf.net 14902 4331 29.06% 7 0.05%
06 fasteasytraffic.com 13442 1523 11.33% 3 0.02%
07 trafficbunnies.com 12236 531 4.34% 1 0.01%
08 hitsafari.com 11898 2106 17.7% 4 0.03%
09 royalsurf.com 9234 1683 18.23% 2 0.02%
10 ilovehits.com 8268 3568 43.15% 10 0.12%

It’s easy to see here that Traffic Splash and  StartXchange.com brought me the most impressions but Dragon Surf and ILoveHits by far have the best click through rates.

I get a lot of my traffic from traffic exchanges because it is extreamly cheap and it fits into my niche.  If you don’t have time to surf for credits you can also use the IntelliBanners advertising co-op to show your banners for you.


Click Here to Join IntelliBanners



Instant Banner Creator Review

by

Happy Monday!

Today I got a chance to sit down with John Merrick & Soren Jordansen’s new Instant Banner Creator website and play around with some of the some of it’s unique features.  In case you don’t already know, John & Soren are also the guys responsible the success of Tweet My Blog and Floating Action Button which are two tools I use almost every day to promote my sites so my expectations for Instant Banner Creator were pretty high.

For the record I suck at graphics.  I can drive traffic to websites, write copy, and make pretty decent splash pages but I am almost totally lost when it comes to photoshop.  I can get little things done but I usually need to set aside a few hours to figure out how to make photshop do what I want it to do.

Since I am like most people I skipped the Instant Banner Creator tutorials and jumped right into creating my first banner.  Probably not a good idea since I jumped right into the advanced “Do It Yourself Template” and proceed to make a 10×10 banner that was practically invisible to the naked out.  Oops.

For the record, you can make a banner almost any size you want you want with the DIY template and it’s always a good idea to either watch the tutorial video and at least skim through the pdf file.

I tried again with one of the default templates.  Keep in mind, one of the things I hate about doing graphics is how much time I can spend tweaking the smallest things that don’t matter.  Instant Banner Creator was created to save you time by making the process of creating a banner simple but still give you the tools to be a little creative.

So I spent about a minute going through all the default templates to pick out one I liked.  Since i’m all about branding I wanted to make a banner with my picture on it.  I spent about a minute resizing a picture of myself and placing it on the banner.  I then spent about 3 minutes picking out a font I liked for the text (there’s a lot of fonts to choose from).  The result:

Ok, it’s no Dogs Playing Poker but considering that only took me 5 minutes with 3 of those minutes being spent picking out the font (it’s called “World of Water”) I don’t think it’s that bad for a first try.

I figured now that I had the hang of it I thought i’d try something more advanced like an animated banner.

With Instant Banner Creator you can make an animated banner just by making two regular banners and setting the delay in between.

I spent about minute picking out a better looking background (that last one was kinda boring).  Since I had already uploaded my clip art it took me 5 seconds to drop it back on my new banner.  I looked for a better font but I really liked that water one.  This time I added a little shadow which took about 30 seconds to see what they would all look like.

The “Click Here” part of the banner took another 4-5 minutes picking out clip art and a font so it took less than 10 minutes total to come up with this:

Possibly the best thing about Instant Banner Creator is that they will host your banner for you.  That means you don’t have to worry about having your own webhosting or dealing with ftp’ing files.  You save your banner and Instant Banner Creator generates a link for you to start promoting.   Of course you can save the banner to your computer but for people who don’t have hosting this is a great option.

I haven’t even begun to play with the custom buttons and peel-away ads.  I had avoided doing my own graphics for a long time but now that I know I can make a good looking graphics with only a few minutes of clicking I will probably find myself using Instant Banner Creator quite a often.

Grab your Instant Banner Creator membership now, while it’s still free!

Click the image below.


The Pizza Plan – Internet Marketing Success on a Budget

by

Hello and Happy Monday!

Today is an exciting day because I finally got the chance to read Jon Olson’s new ebook called “The Pizza Plan“.

Yes, it’s a funny name for a book about Internet marketing but well worth reading because it contains Jon Olson’s exact budget and marketing plan that he used to go from dead broke and working in a pizza place to earning well over six figures a year.

During one of our weekly online seminars I got the chance to hear Jon talk about the system he used to do this and I was stunned by how simple it was. Anybody can do this!

I planned on blogging about it right away but he made us swear not to reveal it to anyone because he wanted to release it as a professional ebook for anybody to use.

Well, it’s finally done and you can now download a copy of The Pizza Plan for free!

The Pizza Plan will show you…

* The Only Three Tools You Need For Success
* How to Create Profit Circles
* And How Do It For Less Money Than The Average Person Spends on Junk Food

…And you can follow his exact plan for less money money than what the average person spends on junk food.

Grab your copy of The Pizza Plan by clicking on the image below.

Enjoy!

Jerry

PS – Once you get The Pizza Plan straight from the horse’s mouth and see how powerful and life changing it is, you will want to share it with others. So, don’t let the opportunity to rebrand it, slip away from you!

The Pizza Plan

Avoid These Common Email Marketing Mistakes

by

Email marketing can be one of the most effective ways to promote your Internet business. It can be a little tricky though if you don’t know what you’re doing so it is very easy to make some common when you are first starting out. This can be very frustrating as it can cost you a lot of money while not generating any sales. Here’s a few common email marketing mistakes you should be aware of when starting your next campaign. Following these simple steps will make your marketing strategies much more effective.

Your readers always want to feel like they are a real person and not just a statistic to you. This is why it is important that you take the time to address each email you send personally. You will get a much better response if you avoid starting your emails with something like “Dear Customer”. Also, try not to use dollar signs in your emails. It can be a real turn off to your readers who might look at it as if you are only interested in getting their money.

Remember, you readers probably don’t have a lot of patience! Your email should jump out at them as soon as they open it. Put the most enticing information at the beginning with the rest of the details later on. They are much more likely to read your entire email message if you are able to get their attention right at the beginning. Also, each reader is going to be different. That includes their computer setup as well as the kind of email program that they are using. Don’t assume that every email send will be receive through the same email service you are using. You should test the receipt of your email on several popular email services to make sure it displays the way you want it to.

Confidentiality is also a very important issue to your readers. Always make sure that your email sign-up form contains a disclaimer that clearly states that you will not abuse their email address in any way. You will be amazed by how many people won’t sign up for an email promotion if this bit of information isn’t given to them. There are many rules and regulations out there regarding what can and can’t be done when it comes to email marketing. Make sure you are familiar with these rules before you start your next campaign. The often vary by country so if you are doing a global marketing campaign be sure to check the regulations for each area you are sending to. Failure to do this can lead to huge fines for your business.

Never make the mistake of thinking that you know what your readers want. If you really want to know then take the time to ask them. Be open to comments and suggestions that they give you. Letting them know that you are available to answer their questions or concerns is a great way to earn the loyalty of your readers. It is often very easy to sell something to someone but it is much harder to make them happy enough that they will come back and buy from you over and over again.

You don’t want a mailing list full of unhappy subscribers. The law requires you to provide a link where your readers can easily unsubscribe from your list. While you want to do everything possible to keep them reading your emails it is also important that you respect their wishes and remove them from your list if they choose to opt-out. They will become very frustrated if they keep receiving emails from you after they have asked to be removed from your list.

Email marketing can be extremely beneficial for your business if you remember to keep these common mistakes from becoming a part of your marketing plan.

November LCP Sign-up Stats

by

Sorry I am late.

Been pretty busy in the real world lately but I wanted to make sure I put up my stats from last month which seems to be one of the more popular features on this blog.

I’ve been doing this “list building” thing for the past few months with my own “Traffic Success Formula” ebook. Results have been very good so far but I am constantly tweaking the splash pages and OTOs trying to make them better.

If you would like to make money building your own list online I highly recommend you get a copy of “Internet Marketing Success Formula” which shows you exactly how to build a profitable email list.

Traffic Exchanges
I have been promoting with traffic exchanges for close to 5 years now and they are also the focus of the “Traffic Success Formula” book I am giving away. Unfortunately I didn’t have as much time as usual to work them this month as I normally do. As a result the numbers are a bit lower than normal but here are the top 3 sites that produced the most sign-ups for me last month:

BootScootin’Traffic – 19
Traffic Roundup – 11
SWAT Traffic – 9

A few surprises here. BootScootin’Traffic is a relatively new exchange but consistently manages to bring me new sign-ups every month.

Absent this month is ts25 and Traffic Splash. Both have been top producers for me in the past but I just haven’t had the time to surf them lately. After the holidays are over I will be sure to get back on these exchanges to get my numbers back up where they should be.

Safelists
Remember when safelists used to suck? Not anymore. The new credit based safelists work as well as if not better than traffic exchanges and don’t require as much effort (just a really large inbox).

Here’s are November’s top producing safelists for me:

List Joe – 56
List Auction – 20
Business World List – 12
Adsolution – 12
Elite Safelist – 9
Adtactics – 9

No surprise that the list builders “List Joe” and “List Auction” are at the top of the list again. The big surprise is “Business World List“. BWL is not a credit based safelist. It’s an old-school blast your ad to a few hundred thousand people and hope for the best. I decided to revisit this site on a whim and it is actually producing results. Guess you never know how well a site is going to convert until you actually try it.

Text Ad Exchanges
Wow. The number of text ad exchanges has totally exploded over the last few months. It is getting hard to find any new exchanges that offer something other than the typical cookie cutter site. Fortunately, they still produce sign-ups but it is starting to get tricky trying to figure out which new text ad exchanges are worth joining.

Here’s what has worked best for me last month:

Traffic Swarm – 22
Maximum Profits – 9
Traffic Station – 7
AdExchangers – 5
Muscle Mail – 4

No surprise that Traffic Swarm is at the top of the list again. However I believe Maximum Profits and Traffic Station are new to the list. Not phenomenal numbers but still pretty good.

JV Giveaway Events
JV Giveaways are my most recent obsession when it comes to list building. Why? Because the results are incredible. One event, which is about to close, produced 85 new sign-ups for me last month. 85 sign-ups for sending out 2 emails to my list! Very impressive.

I am a little bit behind trying to pick out what is going to be the next must-join giveaway event. I will surely post something here when I find it. In the meantime you can get a list of all upcoming JV giveaway events by clicking here.

That’s it for this month. As usual these are all my personal results with these advertising sources. Your results my differ from my own. In fact, they probably will differ but hopefully you will find a few more resources here that you haven’t tried yourself.

All stats are provided to me by HitsConnect. If you aren’t tracking your ads, how will you ever know what works? Sign-up for your own HitsConnect tracker by clicking the image below.


Click Here to Start Tracking Your Ads Now