Letters From Dan

How Google AdSense Works

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Google Tools
Posted in Niche Internet Marketing

I got asked this question this week, “I don’t understand how Google Adsense Works. I and another blogger have about the same traffic and have ads in the same places but she makes a lot more money. What am I doing wrong?”

Now this isn’t a bad question because Google Adsense isn’t the easiest thing to understand. But it was clear to me the way she asked the question, she just didn’t understand how Adsense worked.

So, let’s talk about it from the beginning. Google built a search engine that attracted lots of people. In fact, something like 70% of all searches go through Google. With all those eyeballs, Google decided to sell advertising space in the right sidebar and at the top.

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Are Brands or Celebrities Following you on Twitter?

Posted By: DanRMorris | Posted in Niche Internet Marketing

Ever want to know who’s following you on Twitter? There are several services that will give you that information.

But if you’re just looking to find out who because it would be fun, you’re missing the real value. What you really want to be looking for are the brands and personalities in your niche (or related to your target market) that are following you. These are the people who can see your tweets and engage with you.

And sometimes it indicates researching you as well.

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Monetize YouTube: External links in the video

Posted By: DanRMorris | Posted in Video Marketing

YouTube gives you one more way to monetize videos now by allowing external annotation links in the video itself. If you read our previous post on different ways to monetize YouTube, you previously had to be a YouTube partner to get external links in the videos.

This doesn’t take the place of using the annotations feature to strategically move your audience to other videos. It doesn’t take the place of the links in the description, or the call-to-action in the video. This is something new to consider in your video and YouTube strategy.

The only feature that hasn’t been enabled yet is the ability to link to any website. At this point you’re only allowed to link to the website that is associated with your YouTube and connnected Google account. So if you’re hoping to link to sales pages, build them inside your main site.

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Bounce Rate Failure is a Myth

Posted By: DanRMorris | Posted in Common Marketing Mistakes

I was over at Kyle Nelson’s blog reading about bounce rate today.

I agreed with his clinical definition of bounce rate. But our opinions diverged there.

I don’t agree that a high bounce rate is something that needs to be fixed. That’s painting with a broad brush and contributes to the myth of “bounce rate” that plagues so many. Let me start by saying:

A high bounce rate by itself does not indicate anything.
A high bounce rate does not signal website problems
A high bounce rate should make you think, not take action.
A high bounce rate just may be an indicator of great profitability
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Pinterest: How to grow faster, get more repins, and win

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Pinterest
Posted in Image Marketing

So I’ve figured out a little something with Pinterest. It’s not rocket science and it isn’t going to blow you away, but I bet you’ve neglected it and I bet you’re going to be really happy to start doing it again.

And this concept is the same for YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and any other image based account that ties into Twitter.

The concept started to sink in a bit after seeing the “likes” that Crystal Collins of TheThriftyMama.com was getting on her Instagram account. It took a bit for it to sink in, but then it all made sense.

For instance take a look at Stabiano on Instagram. He’s got 35,353 followers of his Instagram photos. And Yaron007 has almost 6,000 followers for the same reason. That reason is right here in this picture.

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Internet and DR Marketing: Do You Know Your Audience’s Level of Sophistication?

Posted By: DanRMorris | Posted in Consumer Buying Process

Eugene Schwartz, the guy who revolutionized direct response marketing – the guy who didn’t get paid enough for his copywriting skills – the genius of marketing, broke down this very important lesson.

As I reference in my previous post about understanding the buying process of your audience, it is also important to understand their level of sophistication.

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How to use the YouTube Editor

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: YouTube
Posted in Video Marketing

What’s the YouTube Editor about? Inside YouTube is a special editor that’s got a few more bells and whistles than the Video Manager. It offers free features like the ability to add text overlays, cut videos, add music and harvest creative commons material. In this video I show you how to harvest other people’s videos to take as your own.

Below the video we talk about why you would use this tool.

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Which Social Media site do I concentrate on?

Posted By: DanRMorris | Posted in Niche Internet Marketing

This is a chapter from our Marketing Calendar Blueprint product (which I’ll also be talking about at the SMAC event you see above in the blog header). The Marketing Calendar Blueprint teaches you how to strategically plan your year so you always be providing to your audience what they are looking for.

The idea is simple . . . and so is the execution. One of the chapters is about deciding which social media site to work on. . . there are so many, aren’t there? Here’s a sneak peek:

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SEO of WordPress Categories and Tags

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Wordpress
Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

We recently did our weekly call on the SEO of WordPress Categories and Tags. This is a recap of that call, but not the transcript. If you’d like to listen to that and all our other calls, you just have to register to get in at http://FreeWeeklyMastermind.com

Anyway, we covered three basic tenets of WordPress Categories and Tags. We spoke about the duplicate content issue, Google indexing issues, the compelling need to use every feature and the SEO benefits of categories.

So what are WordPress Categories and Tags? Well WordPress is content management software. The categories and tags are two of the bells and whistles that were designed into the software to make it easy to organize your content. But like a TV remote control, you don’t have to use all the buttons.

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Community Building Mistakes: Don’t make them ever.

Posted By: DanRMorris | Posted in Common Marketing Mistakes

I got asked today if I’d made any mistakes in building my FreeWeeklyMastermind community. The answer to that is yes. Darren and I have definitely made mistakes. I wouldn’t even say their obscure mistakes – but probably common marketing mistakes many people make.

The first mistake we made was altering the schedule. I made the mistake of switching nights for the weekly webinars.

Some of our audience was also pretty active in another community that met Wednesday nights. It never bothered me that some of ourcalls would be lightly attended because they attended the other call that night. It didn’t bother me because not everyone needs what we’re talking about right now. Maybe the other subject was more appropriate for them. Besides ours are recorded.

In all fairness, how can you expect to maintain a community if you are commanding them to be present? Their presence and attendance should be because they really, really wanted to be there, right?

Anyway, I got asked by the other community’s leader if I’d switch to another night (because it bothered him that sometimes the audience was on my calls that night). I decided to be neighborly and do that.

Well that was a mistake.

Sticking to one schedule that fit into the lives of my community members was the best. Their having a choice was good for them as well.

But more importantly I couldn’t make any other night a regular occurrence. Without my 100% dedication and sticking the schedule, how can I expect the same from others?

So I’ve moved back to the original night and am rebuilding that momentum.

That was clearly a mistake. I need to focus on the needs of my community, my ability to dedicate time to it and not worry about others. I thought I was. . . but I wasn’t.

Lesson learned. Can you think of any other community building mistakes? I know I can. Feel free to share here or at http://FreeWeeklyMastermind.com