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Bare Knuckle Basics

Posted by Andrew    Posted in BLOG, Featured, General    Posted in August 11, 2010    |    2 Comments

Hey guys Andrew Hawkes here,

Bare Knuckle Basics Its been a while since I started working from home and internet marketing and in that time I have had a massive learning curve, you know I didn't hit it out of the park with my first attempt, and by the time I started getting my head around Google they went a changed the rules and what I had learned to that point was almost for nothing. I say almost as there were lessons taken from that which have certainly allowed me to prosper and grow. Which is very important.

You know when you talk to people about what working from home is about, when you ask them what it means to them, (asking a few people) you will get a variety of answers. Now I am not talking about the outcome of what it a Homebased Business will do for them, I am talking about what type of business they're involved with. Some will tell you it is about making sure you are talking to 150 people a day, others will say it is about ranking #1 on Google, and even more (growing daily) will tell you that it is about mastering Social media... You know what? From my observations all of these people are correct. Yet you will find home business guru's out there who to their credit have made a lot of money who tell you that there is only one of those elements is really needed. And that is to talk to people each and every day... now, I don't necessarily disagree with that sentiment. However if your focus is on internet marketing then talking to prospects every day may well be a waste of your time.

Of course if your focus us purely network marketing or mlm then yes you absolutely MUST talk to people daily to succeed. I'll be honest, I have no trouble talking to people, that doesn't bother me in the slightest... lets face it though people turn to an online business so they don't have to talk to people right? Well at least not in person. Something that I have certainly found is that when you do actually have money coming in, and not just talking about it it is far easier to actually talk to people. It is easier (albeit a psychological reason) to get people to talk to. As your business evolves you will most certainly start to understand your strengths and begin to work with them rather than trying (in vane) to fight or force against them.

Anyway I am getting a little of topic here... I was merely highlighting the fact that not all homebased business's are created equally, and regardless of the money that you are making if it doesn't feel quite right then change and do something that does!

Working from home has allowed me to really connect with who I am as a person, it has given me the opportunity to gain some great clarity as to what my purpose is. As such I am involved with a couple of different organizations all of which enable me to fulfill that purpose and vision for my life. Along my journey there have been a number of facets that I have learned that have enabled me to do things that I really enjoy and I and benefit monetarily from... so you could say my time investment in my education is starting to pay off.

Some of the things that I have discovered is that there are a lot of successful marketers out there that are missing some of the basic fundamentals, the Bare Knuckle Basics as I like to say. So I put it all in a report and what do you think I called it? That's right Bare Knuckle Basics. Now I am not claiming to be a guru or anything like that... far from it there is still much more to learn. I know what I know,  All the report is are some basic stuff that I believe can certainly help you move forward.... its free and useful information... they way I think it should be, and with your feedback I can continue to improve what is in that and subsequent reports.

I sincerely would love to hear what you think so you can grab your copy of the report by clicking bare knuckle basics, oh and the best part is yet to come!!

The report does contain some affiliate links, OK so sue me! lol Seriously tho, the report is re-brandable so that means that you can change the affiliate links for your own and give it away yourself, and YOU can make the money! That is cool right? Well I think it is... ;)

Well that is about it really, so here is the link again to bare knuckle basics

As always, please leave your comments here and be sure to share this with your friends and followers on Facebook and twitter. Thanks in advance.

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To Your Success

Andrew-HawkesAbout the Author

Andrew Hawkes is an Entrepreneur that has had good times and bad, he draws on all the experiences that he has had, military and in business, to provide solid information that anyone can use and understand to improve the results in thier own life and therefore show others to imrpove thiers. He believes that anyone can make a difference in the world and that ultimately anything is possible.

Effective Marketing

Posted by Andrew    Posted in Business, Featured    Posted in June 18, 2010    |    No Comments

What is effective and what is not? Everywhere you look or at least everywhere you search you see everyman and his dog trying to tell you that they have the best marketing strategy available, they are Google Experts they can increase your conversion by 400,000,000%... OK so that is a slight exaggeration, however where do you draw the line and find out who is for real and who is just out to take your money?

It is a fair question... more to the point though, what works and what is just a waste of time and effort... I heard once that any publicity is good publicity... so on that guise it all works, however wouldn't you rather invest your time where you are going to get the maximum return for your effort? I am sorry to say that there is no magic bullet when it comes to marketing. There are so many ways in which you can do it, certainly in today's web 2.0 world, there is video, there are articles (tried and true), you can create your own newsletter (you still need an audience).

Well first of all if you are going to be doing any Marketing, unless you are recording the data so you can see what is working and what is not then you are wasting you time. There are a number of different ways in which you can track how your marketing is doing, and it was not so long ago people were actually selling user scripts that would allow you to ad tracking to your pages... well a lot has happened in a short amount of time. Google have refined their Analytics service and to be fair there is really no need to look at anything else, this does a great job for tracking... well everything you need it to... and its free!Analytics

Right so now we can track it...

Marketing is all about connecting with your Audience, so who is your audience? By that I mean who is your ideal customer or prospect? This is really quite important, the reason being that not everyone is going to find the same things appealing. So choosing or rather realising who you are talking to or targeting is going to be very important in what you put out as your marketing efforts.

One of the quickest and easiest ways in which to reach your audiences is simple, VIDEO, there are some great advantages to video, the biggest of all is that the Google Monster LOVES video, over half the traffic online today is from Video, so it would make sense to get into that as part of your marketing efforts. There are a number of ways you can do it too, most PC,s and all MAC's come with built in webcams these days, so no longer do you need to have a camcorder to be able to get your mug on the internet. However if you are a little shy or really don't want your face there to begin with until you are comfortable with having it there, there is still another way. Make a presentation in Power Point (PC) or Keynote (MAC) and take a screencast of it... again this can be done for FREE even if you don't have Power Point, Keynote or Camtasia. There are open source (FREE) applications for almost everything. Power Point for example you can get Open OfficeOpen Office, this is an open source app that has ALL off the MS office applications, so you can use this and make your Power Point presentation (I believe it is even available for MAC).

So great now you have your message to send out, you still need to capture it right? So again, there is Free Screen Recorderopen source screen capture software too, you can google it or you could use something like this BB Flashback Express. This has pretty much all the functions and usability that you would expect to find from Camtasia, only its free. It is up to you as to what you choose to use, just get in there and start.

Now you have your video... what next? OK upload it to YouTube if you don't have an account, sign up for one it is free, there is an advanced marketing strategy that includes setting up multiple youtube accounts, however that is for another post ;)

Again there are plenty of free video sites also that you can sign up with that will help you to get your message out there.

Make sure you track what is happening... and have fun with it... the moment it stops being fun... try another angle!

Let me know of your success.

To Your Success

Andrew-HawkesAbout the Author

Andrew Hawkes is an Entrepreneur that has had good times and bad, he draws on all the experiences that he has had, military and in business, to provide solid information that anyone can use and understand to improve the results in thier own life and therefore show others to imrpove thiers. He believes that anyone can make a difference in the world and that ultimately anything is possible.

Text v Graphic on Adsense

Posted by Andrew    Posted in General    Posted in June 5, 2010    |    No Comments

Google Adsense provides advertisers and publishers with the opportunity to place adverts in both text and graphic format.

As advertisers decide to put adsense into their website over banner advertising, the question still remains. Which is the best for advertisers and which is the best for publishers?

On one hand advertisers may feel that image adverts are more responsive yet less likely to stimulate a sale. On the other hand text adverts may convert more, whilst being less visible to the consumer.

Text based adverts are considered the least intrusive of the two formats. However does that mean that Graphic advertising is better? Consumers are used to graphic advertising from signing into free email accounts, and from using other web based services. Through being used to graphic advertising they have almost programmed their selves to ignore it. Through the adverts being untargeted, the consumer is used to brand advertising which they feel is generally less purposeful. This may cause the consumer to ignore the graphic advert from the assumption that it will be the same.

Text adverts are not forced upon surfers. Through being less obvious some people will not see them at all, however those who do see them, and read them are significantly more likely to click on them. This is for a number of reasons, but the first is that they provide more information. Generally, someone who is reading text on a page is not going to be fully satisfied by what they read, and if they check adsense adverts they will most likely read something which will further supplement whatever their intention is next. With an image advert, it is far more of a gamble for the surfer.

Graphic advertising is often paid per impression. This is because the advertiser may be trying to promote their brand, instead of promoting a specifically useful service. They therefore are assumed to have worse conversion rates, and with this text adverts are in the consumers eyes more effective. However, if the text contained within an advert was placed in graphic format, which would be the most effective? Well firstly it can assumed that the surfer will be more likely to view it, however if their were multiple image adverts appearing next to each other they may feel overwhelmed.

Graphic adverts are also harder to regulate. Let’s consider Google allowing adverts to be changed frequently and without regulation. The advertiser could claim affiliation from the website they are advertising on, and contain keywords such as “ipod” which cannot be contained within a text advert. Although more regulation and quality control could be in place, a pornographic image for example could be made to appear in an advertiser’s adverts unknowingly.

Text adverts also have a broader market appeal, as advertisers don’t generally have the in house resources to create an image advert, but do have the in house resources to write a text advert. This could mean that a wider array of advertisers find text advertising accessible, through text adverts being less burden on the advertiser, and being easy to change.

Text adverts are also cheaper for the advertiser to create, where as a graphically designed advert may cost in excess of $200. Through removing this fixed cost advertisers may be willing to allot a higher rate to advertising itself; thus benefiting the advertiser and the publisher.

Text advertising appears to be the preference of the advertiser. They pay a CTR (click through rate) and only receive targeted traffic. This removes risks from businesses that previously had to worry that adverts were not only seen, but clicked on and stimulating sales. As CPC (Cost Per Click) is more relevant to text adverts, advertisers are able to gain exposure without needing a high click through rate to be effective.

The big brands are willing to advertise in both formats however the broad market appeal of text inevitably makes it the winner. As flash websites disappear with image adverts, it is becoming clear that text and information is the preference of the website users.

To Your Success

Andrew-HawkesAbout the Author

Andrew Hawkes is an Entrepreneur that has had good times and bad, he draws on all the experiences that he has had, military and in business, to provide solid information that anyone can use and understand to improve the results in thier own life and therefore show others to imrpove thiers. He believes that anyone can make a difference in the world and that ultimately anything is possible.

SEO for Adsense

Posted by Andrew    Posted in General    Posted in June 3, 2010    |    No Comments

If you’ve been using Google’s AdSense on your pages you obviously feel the need to somehow generate even more traffic for your website, which in turn would translate to more AdSense click and a higher income.

But who do you do this? Well, the major way you’ll get visitors to see your website (other then using AdWords, which is encouraged as well) is to use some techniques to have search engines send more and more users towards your page, by ranking high in search results for your topics of interest.

Believe it or not this is a technique, better known as search-engine optimization or simply SEO. So here are a bunch of tips that come handy under every amateur or professional optimizer’s belt.

The first thing you need to take care of is the actual source code and layout of your page. This has to be kept as simple as possible. The problem comes when AdSense and the search engines themselves begin to have troubles in extracting the most relevant keywords on your site because of a too complex layout.

Secondly, try to have each one of your pages target only one specific topic. This way it is a lot easier for them to get indexed properly and for the AdSense ads to be consistent with the content of the site itself.

Also, try not to include too many hyperlinks in your page as well. This also means you should try not to use too many AdSense ads on your page either.

If there are certain keywords you wish to target, make sure the word you wish to target is present in the title, in the first paragraphs as well as in the name of the file. While you’re at it you might want to ensure the word springs up in the page’s last paragraphs.

And of course, it’s very important for your content to have original and compelling content. How do you do this? Well the easiest way to do it is to find something you’re really passionate about. That way, providing you give it a lot of effort you’re bound to have a great page quite fast.

If the content you use in your site is in the public domain (which is highly discouraged) make sure that you at least give it an original title, and add an opening and a closing paragraph of your own.

This takes a little while, but if, after waiting, you still can’t find your page near the top, you should try rewriting your title and your first and last paragraphs. It doesn’t take much, often just changing a few words will give you the right results.

And of, course there’s the use of keyword tools that may aid you in finding some good keywords to include on your page that will drive visitors to your site more and more.

So those are about the basic techniques in search engine optimization. You can find a lot of computer tools to aid you in doing this, and of course, Google is a great place to search for this.

In the end, you’ll find that SEO is a complex topic, and entire books have been written on the topic as well. You might find that you have a lot of optimization you need to do in order to get more and more visitors to your site and clicking those precious AdSense banners.

To Your Success

Andrew-HawkesAbout the Author

Andrew Hawkes is an Entrepreneur that has had good times and bad, he draws on all the experiences that he has had, military and in business, to provide solid information that anyone can use and understand to improve the results in thier own life and therefore show others to imrpove thiers. He believes that anyone can make a difference in the world and that ultimately anything is possible.

Positioning of Adverts

Posted by Andrew    Posted in General    Posted in May 26, 2010    |    No Comments

After using AdSense for a while you must have begun to ask yourself if there’s anything you could do to improve your AdSense based earnings. But before you go on experimenting with this and that setup you have to realize a couple of things about positioning.

The first thing you should know is that there is no universal position that is guaranteed to improve your earnings. That being said, the part above about experimenting is meant to be taken literally. You have to try as many setups as you can to find the solution with the greatest benefit.

But, of course certain places usually work better then others. Of course, Google recognizes this and they publish a “heat map” of how much revenue ads placed in certain portions of the page can bring you. Experimenting is often the best way you can find, what suits the sub conscious mind of your audience.

Generally the most profitable ads are placed within the main content, generally right above it. But this is by no means a rule and there are some exceptions to it. One known exception is having a news site or something similar to a new site.

If this is your case, you will often find that you generate more earnings by placing your ads at the bottom of the content, right before comments begin. This is because as users finish reading a story, they have a short moment where they’re looking for something more to do. And your AdSense ads can offer them that something.

Also, placing ads to the left side of your page seems to work better almost all the time. Of course, this is logical because text is generally written from left to right (unless you come from certain countries where it’s the other way around).

People will finish a sentence and return their eyes to the left position, which means they have a higher chance of spotting your ads.

Also, there’s a bit more to this then just having ads visually in the right place. If you have more then one ad you have to worry about where they’re located in the code as well. And there’s a very good reason for this concern.

AdSense fills the ads in the order it finds them in the source. That means that if the first add you have in the code isn’t the one generating the highest revenue, you may soon start to lose money, rather then earn more.

This is because if AdSense doesn’t have anymore ads it will supplement your space with public service ads or just leave it blank altogether. That means that, if you’re unlucky, you could end up with your most profitable locations not having any good ads at all. To supplement your revenues

There are other issues with how many ads you should place in your site. The problem is that if you have too many, rather then generate more income, you’ll have a lower click through rate, as visitors tend not to follow ads from the places where these come in excess.

You have to constantly keep track of how the users interact with your site. Keep an eye out for where the visitors will be looking at your site most. This is generally the place where you want to use your first ads. Also try not to place ads in annoying positions as that can guarantee a lower click through rate.

Of course, you always need to have ads that blend in with your content and generally don’t make the visitor’s presence on your site an unpleasant one. The key is providing an enjoyable experience for your visitor, whilst generating revenues from their exploration.

And again, ultimately the best revenue will be earned through a lot of experimentation. Be sure to use AdSense’s channels feature and be on the look out for how certain ads in your pages are doing whilst altering the positions to better supplement your earnings.

How Adsense Changed the Internet

Posted by Andrew    Posted in General    Posted in May 21, 2010    |    No Comments

Ever since Google came up with the master idea that is AdSense, the web has transformed in a variety of ways no one would have ever suspected. Some of these are good changes others aren’t.

This is a small exploration of how a brilliant marketing scheme has taken the web by storm. It deals with the changes advertisers and publishers and even website visitors have undergone ever since AdSense has become a daily part of our on-line lives.

Even before AdSense came out a lot of people were advertising through AdWords. It ensured a lot of publicity through getting your site listed at the top in Google search queries. It took away a lot of the pain and price of SEO and the large amount of time you had to wait until you were finally on top. It made launching a website, a realistic way to instant profitability instead of a long term strategy with no immediate returns.

Through the use of AdSense, the possibility appeared of having your ads appear on just about any site on the Internet that has anything that even resembles your company is all about. And so it’s for that reason that AdSense has brought a new sense of advertising to the Internet. Before PPC poorly ranked web pages had to advertise offline to get any real initial exposure.

Companies no longer have to hire expensive professionals to create extremely elaborate advertising campaigns. There are no high costs of running your ads on websites which you have to personally look for.

All you do is come up with a couple of meaningful words for your business, sign up with Google AdWords and let Google take care of the rest of the equation. Although it requires day to day management automation saves significant time for advertisers.

Of course, probably the largest change in the way the Internet works due to AdSense comes from the publishers’ point of view. Whereas one would previously have to jump through many hoops to get a website to even support itself now people are making fortunes off their sites. This leads to motivation for content, and resources for web surfers.
That generally means site publishers have to worry more about what content lies on their site, and the overall way their pages look rather then be concerned with the economic specifics of maintaining a site’s profitability. Although time is invested in adsense, a large capital investment is not.

It’s no surprise that the blogging phenomenon exploded when AdSense came out a few years ago. Anyone could just write a page about a subject he was passionate about and making a living out of it through AdSense.
And thirdly, one can’t ignore the impact AdSense has had over the casual everyday web surfer. Whereas people used to not even notice banners altogether (which psychologically is a very interesting thing to observe) the situation is completely different for text ads.

People nowadays will take a long look at a sponsored ad. Why? Well because the whole setup brings forth a feeling of confidence about the advertiser. People don’t ignore a text ad as easily as they do a graphical banner.
Another thing to note is that graphical banners have become even less profitable nowadays. It is because of this that many people are walking away from affiliate type networks to AdSense.

Of course, there are bad effects as well, with people making websites solely for the purpose of running AdSense on them and just as well, with a large phenomenon of ‘click fraud’, people creating artificial clicks for various reasons.
But Google does try to control such behavior, and really isn’t to be blamed for such individuals’ actions. All in all Google AdSense is transforming the way the Internet works and it’s doing so mostly in a good way.

Now those with ideas can write them down, and make money from them. Those looking for content can find it easier, and those looking to attract a customer base can do so in a targeted way. Adsense has changed the internet through supporting the economic interests of businesses, and the utility of consumers.

Getting Started With Adsense

Posted by Andrew    Posted in General    Posted in May 20, 2010    |    No Comments

A very important element in the rapid adoption of AdSense is that it has been very easy for publishers to get the ads on their site as quickly as possible.

Integrating AdSense in your website takes only a few minutes, and you can be on your way with one or more nicely integrated AdSense ads.

The first thing you need to do is navigate to http://www.google.com/adsense and either apply or log in with your existing account and password. What follows is a page presenting the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions which you must agree to in order to proceed.

You are presented with a report page which you can use to get a detailed status on how your AdSense advertising is doing. This allows you to improve your site’s contents and layout to maximize your AdSense earnings.

On the top of your page you also have link to the setup section where you can generate the code that will need to be pasted on your website in order to have AdSense banners on your page.

You can use AdSense for text (the said ads), using a search box or with referrals. Your choice among these options depends on how users will navigate your site.

Finally, there is a “My Account” tab which allows you to set up details concerning your account, payment and tax information.

To add a text ad on your site, go back to the “AdSense Setup” tab and click the “AdSense for content” link. Make sure you have cookies enabled in your browser.

You can make a choice between ad units and link units. The former contain text and or images concerning a certain site for each unit, most with a detailed description, the latter only contain links to certain types.

Of course, it’s a bit hard to know which type you should use so you should probably experiment with both for a while before you decide.

You can also view an example of how the unit will look to the right of your page. However, you may only use three ad units and one link unit on any given page. This is believed to be a step which Google takes for quality control.

The next step is to choose your add format and colors. You can basically select any color palette you choose with Google offering some of its own if you don’t have the time or skill to create one. You can constantly view how the palette will look through the aid of an example. The one that works best in terms of appearance and revenues will vary with the look, feel and content of a website.

However, your ad formats are limited to a choice of eleven formats. There’s an “Ad Formats” link which takes you to a page that lets you see all even of these in action so you can decide best which one suits your site. Sometimes the most intrusive, doesn’t work best however again, this can vary from website to website.

After you finish with customization, you can click “Continue” from the bottom of the page.

You are now presented with a section entitled “AdSense for Content”. You can click anywhere in the text and that shows the JavaScript required to get AdSense running. This will automatically select the text in the box.

You can then copy it and paste it into your pages directly. If you use dynamic pages, you should paste this code within your template so as to ensure that it gets displayed on any page of your website. Some advertisers choose not to display Adsense on every page, and this is understandable. An example of this is a company that has adsense, may also have terms and condition which would inevitably provide legal resources which would probably be deemed inappropriate.

What is then left for you to do is get content on your page (provided you didn’t have any already). Google AdSense crawlers will soon visit your site, making sure that the ads displayed are relevant to your site’s content.

And you’re all done. For a simple page this should indeed be a matter of a few minutes, which is precisely what makes AdSense the choice for so many. Although it is quick, its mass appeal also makes it the best. Through being the most popular, advertisers and publishers alike see Adsense and Adwords as their natural first choice.

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