issue #30 - video as a sales too, adsense videos & more

Welcome everybody to a new issue of TheJungleMarketer´s monthly newsletter. I´ve been asked if I couldn´t write more newsletters per month than only one and I´m very pleased with the positive feedback and the suggestions I get from many subscribers.

Well, at least over the next few weeks, I´m trying to write a short issue every week, because we´ll have quite a lot of topics to deal with. Most of the coming lessons will deal with web traffic and go into details of how you can use the different techniques for generating traffic to your websites.

Here are today´s topics:

1) M. Cheneys “AdSense videos” review.

2) 6 ways to get free traffic to your websites.
(beginning of a mini-course series)

3) Using video as a sales tool.

4) Quick tip for WordPress users.

Enjoy !

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1) M. Cheney´s AdSense videos review

Two weeks ago, I purchased Michael Cheney´s AdSense videos, mainly out of curiosity, because he claims on his sales letter that his incredible AdSense income is generated with only 10 websites.

Obviously, this guy must know how to get tons of traffic to his sites and also how to get high click convertions for the Google AdSense ads.

Honestly, I´ve been quite disappointed by most of the videos. First off, the delivery: you can only watch the videos online - I´d prefer to have such a product downloaded to my computer, so I can watch the videos (or parts of them) and read the instructions again, without having to log into the members area every time.

Second, the content: there wasn´t really much new to me, the first view videos walk you through the very basics of the Google AdSense program: how it works, the different ad formats, how to structure a website and different ways to create content for your site.

Some other videos teach you the best converting ad formats, the best ways for positioning and blending your ads into your webpages, how to draw more attention to the ads without violating the Google AdSense terms and some other little tips to increase your AdSense revenue.

There are also a couple of bonus videos and audio courses: in the two “AdSense clinic” videos, Michael shows you a few different websites and comments about what they are doing right and what they could be doing better to earn more from AdSense. While there is no hard proof that these suggestions will definitely increase the revenue of those sites, I believe that we can trust Michael Cheney´s suggestions because he has gained a lot of experience in Google AdSense from his own in-depth testing.

The 14 minute video about testing your AdSense performance can be summed up in three words: Buy AdSense Tracker.

The traffic stampede audios were a waste of time. They only contain very basic information about seo, writing articles and listbuilding. How basic you asked ?

Look, if I told you that in order to earn money you need to build a list and to build that list you need some kind of give-away, an autoresponder and web traffic to your lead capture page, would this info alone help you to build your list ?

You see, there´s quite a lot of important information missing in this product for those who are not only new to AdSense but also to online marketing and website promotion. If this is you, I don´t recommend you buy this course.

On the other hand, if you are already earning money from AdSense, have a few sites setup which are getting traffic but not the click convertions you´d like to have - then you might find some good tips in Michael Cheney´s video course that can help you to earn more from your AdSense sites.

Hence, I only recommend Michael Cheney´s adsense videos for people who can afford to re-invest some of their online incomes to get a few great tips from someone who is very experienced in the topic.

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2) 6 Ways to get free traffic to your websites.

As said, today we are going to start a mini-course on web traffic, especially on traffic that you can get for free. After that, we might also take a look at some paid ways to increase website traffic even more.

You could try these techniques on a new website or on a site that gets very few visitors per month to see how the traffic grows. At the end of this course you will also have an opt-in stystem in place on your site, ready to build your contact list.

These are the 6 techniques for generating website traffic that I´ll be talking about in-depth in the mini-course series.

1) article submission

2) blogging

3) link exchanges and one-way links

4) forums

5) affiliates

6) listbuilding ( for repeat traffic )

Hey - what about SEO and the search engines ? Well, I´ve intentionally left this out, because I don´t recommend that you focus all of your efforts on getting top rakings for your webpages.

Anyway, the first 4 techniques above are part of the SEO game and if you follow them, you will automatically get better rankings for your webpages. Again, I just don´t want you to completely fix your mind on SEO.

Another important point is that I will create this mini-series with those people in mind who are on a low budget and can´t afford yet to invest money in all kinds of tools. Hence, you don´t need to worry that I´m only trying to sell you up on a bunch of expensive software tools.

Take a look out for my next e-mail with the first lesson of this mini-course, coming at the end of this week.

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3) Using video as a sales tool

This month, I´ve spent a lot of time “shopping around” for a new (used) car. The family´s growing, we are expecting our third child in november and now we definitely need a bigger vehicle.

From the beginning, I knew which type of car I wanted and I went to a big online portal for used cars, entered the search details and read through many offers, taking notes and printing out a couple of good ones.

I found it really frustrating that most sellers only provided a few outside pictures of their cars and only put the main features of their cars in the description. Frustrating, because I wasted precious time visiting a few sellers to take a look at their cars just to find that either the interiors of their cars were totally neglected, certain parts heavily rusted or other defects.

Why the heck don´t people provide close-up pictures of important parts of their cars and the interior in order to make it easy for me to see in which state their cars are ? Why don´t they accurately describe their “products” ?

I thought to myself:”what would I do if I had a car or other goods for sale ?” - I know that I would have loved a video showing more details of a car, so that I could have made a better buying decision without having to visit the seller.

While I only believe that video can help you to sell certain types of products better, Ed - one of my subscribers - knows it from his own experiences selling cars and car parts on eBay.

Ed also pointed me to a study by SellersVoice.com that shows a large increase in selling price of an item when audio is added to an auction. Video should increase the price even more.

One effect of both, audio and video, is the personal touch that they add to your product description. Remember that people buy from someone they know rather than from a stranger. In the online world with its sometimes dangerous anonymity, hearing your voice is almost like getting to know you.

You think if people would really like to see videos about certain products sold in online auctions or directly in online stores ?

Well, Ed told me that he recently sold an old Regina Phonogram for $2,000+ as a consignment seller and he had only audio added to the auction. Over 50 people emailed him and asked for a video !

There are a couple of free video hosting services that you can use to upload your videos. Some of the services Ed has been using for personal use, eBay business and short online presentations are:

DailyMotion
StreamLoad
Blip.TV
Putfile

Here are some more:

Guba
YouTube

and of course:

Google Video

Google now allows you to upload videos with no limit in length and size and you can choose from a lot of different categories, there´s even a category for promotional videos.

They now accept vidos in the formats: AVI, ASF, QuickTime, MPEG and Windows Media. Unfortunately, they don´t support flash yet, but it might be added soon.

To produce videos for Google Video, you should use a minimum frame rate of 12 frames per second and your videos must be at least 10 seconds long. Google recommends interlaced MPEG2 for the encoding and a video size of 720×567 or 720×480.

To upload a video, go to the upload page and login with your existing Google account information (or create a new account if you don´t have one yet). Then just fill out the fields and press the upload button.

I recommend that you come up with a few keywords that people might be using to find your video and include these keywords in the description of your video.

Once your video is uploaded, it´s very easy to include on your own website. On the right side of your video you will find an “embed” link. Click on that link and you´ll get the HTML code that you can then simply paste into the source code of one of your webpages or into the post editor of your WordPress blog.

Or if you are selling items on eBay, paste the HTML code for your video somewhere inside your auction description.

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4) Quick Tip for WordPress users

Did you know that you can use the AdSense Deluxe plugin to manage more than just your AdSense ads inside your blog posts ?

You could create all kinds of ad blocks featuring products that are relevant to your content or content snippets and manage these “ad blocks” from one place - the AdSense Deluxe plugin setup page.

This is especially useful if you want to include the same “ad block” into more than one blog posts, because if you once need to make changes, you only need to edit one page.

Here is an example of an ad on my blog included with the AdSense Deluxe plugin.

That´s it for today. Talk to you again in a few days.

Sincerely Yours,

Guido W. Stiehle
TheJungleMarketer