I am very excited to let you know that I have another Google News Website for sale.

The last one that I sold at:

http://www.shmoozewithben.com/uncategorized/website-for-sale

went for $5k.

If you know about Google News websites, then you will know how valuable they are.

Virtually every single post gets a 1st page position on Google within 10-15 minutes

You can see some examples of recently sold GN (Google News) websites at:

https://flippa.com/2638839-google-news-site-rank-first-for-any-keyword-highly-profitable-venture

https://flippa.com/2633521-google-news-site-w-front-page-posts-high-traffic-no-reserve

https://flippa.com/2622538-pr4-google-news-ceritfied-site

The idea behind a GN site is, that your news articles which you write appear on Google and Google News extremely quickly, usually within about 10-15 minutes.

As I mentioned, I have a GN site for sale which is approved by Google News. Articles were not written for a while, although I wrote a few yesterday and one of them has received over 500 visitors in about 12 hours.

You will need to add content to attract further visitors, but due to the amazing ranking advantage of Google News websites, it is very easy to attract visitors from Google for literally any keyword – target high-paying and you will be golden.

I monetise my Google News websites with AdSense mainly, although any monetisation method will work.

As I have not been actively writing on this site, I have no current earnings or traffic, but as mentioned above, the power of this site is really that it is Google News approved.

If you have been following Google News, you will also know that it is MUCH harder to be approved than before, but this is a site which has already been approved and is still actively being indexed by Google News.

I am putting a BIN price on this site for $3.5k. As there is only one available, the first person to hit the paypal button and pay gets the site. If there are more than one person who pay for this site, then any after the first will be refunded.

To protect the winning purchaser, I am not making the URL public, although am happy to use Escrow if that method of purchase is preferred.

I am leaving this up for one week from now, and if it doesn’t sell will sell it instead on Flippa.

Any questions, please post them below and indicate if you don’t want them to be seen publicly.

SOLD

If you are interested in buying another GN site or have one available then please leave a comment below. I don’t have one atm, but will let you know if and when I do.

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer

You have probably read recently about the
effect that the newest Google update has
had on a number of large sites. Most notably
those that publish large amounts of content.

I am in no doubt that some sites which should
not have been negatively targeted will be
caught up in that.

However, what is most interesting to me, is
how Ezine Articles is currently reacting
to it.

Ezine Articles is part of a large company
and overnight, they saw their traffic being
reduced by a large percentage.

This can be awful for any company, but if
you have a company which has 70 full time
staff and an office such as Ezine Articles,
then it can cause panic mode and if not
dealt with quickly can cause devastation.

I have been paying very close attention to
what they have been doing in order to see
what I should be doing with my own sites.

What is important to note, is that Ezine
Articles has huge amounts of data to sift
through and is therefore able to have a
better hold on real world SEO than me or
you or in fact almost anyone on the internet
bar the search engines.

In addition, any decisions which they make
will have a large effect on their business
so it is likely, that they won’t make any
decisions unless they are 99% sure that
they are the correct ones.

This is of-course weighed against the fact
that they MUST make decisions fast or their
whole business may find it difficult to
survive (remember the expenses as mentioned
above).

So, what I want to do, is to look at the
information that they have released and
see how their wealth of data and knowledge
can actually help us in order to increase
our search engine rankings.

(If you want to see the original blog post
by Ezine Articles which I am referring to,
then please go to:
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2011/02/search-engine-algorithm-changes.html
Do come back though )

1. Quite obviously, as they predict a reduction
of traffic of around 50% in the next month, it
seems that submitting an article on EZA (Ezine
Articles) is only half as effective as it was
before.

2. A reason why EZA was hit is because on each
article there was at least one external link.
Probably a sign that this is unnatural to
Google that each page on your site should
have an external link to a different site.

But perhaps more importantly, you should be
very careful where you are linking out to,
something which EZA up until now has controlled
pretty badly.

3. Try and use unique content as much as
possible. Also be wary when using article
writers that the information that they
are giving is not just regurgitation of
facts from other articles.

This is not only referring to spun articles
or plagiarized articles.

One solution is to make sure that the
articles that you have written are done by
genuine experts in that niche.

4. There seems to be a definite correlation
between article length and the credibility
given by Google. This could however be due
to the fact that the longer your article,
the longer on average that someone will stay
on your site.

5. On a personal level, I think that keyword
density nowadays is less important than ever
before and that the big G is probably not
even taking it into account.

Feel free to artificially inflate or deflate
it as it is probably ignored anyway.

Or ideally, artificially make it as natural
as possible (joke).

6. I find it quite difficult to understand
why they are viewing certain niches as
dangerous niches to go after in terms of
the credibility that Google gives to a site
that has them.

Surely if there are searches for a niche
then they want content which you are to provide.

My only thought on why this could be the
case, is if in certain niche like phone lookup
or acai berry you need to have a presence
already and that newer sites or articles are
looked upon negatively.

7. The most radical thing that Christopher
Knight the CEO of EZA said and I actually
had to read it twice to make sure that I
understood it is:

“My gut feeling is that those links [ie. the
links in the articles and resource box] have
carried  no real value in at least 2-3 years now.”

8. The main changes that have actually been
made so far have IMHO been extremely
UN-radical. Basically, that the title and
the link and the resource box should all be
relevant to the article itself.

So, there we have it…

Would not like to be in Chris Knight’s shoes
at the moment, but does appear to be that he
is taking action and trying to get back into
Google’s good books.

Would be interested in your thoughts on what
we can learn from the effect that the latest
Google update has had. And also (or especially)
if you agree with anything that I have said.

Please do comment below.

As always…

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer

PS. Something I noticed when looking at the
Alex ranking for EZA is that the top 4 countries
with lowest alexa rank are:

Philippines
Nigeria
India
Pakistan

Interesting, that at least 3 out of the 4 of these
are also amongst the top countries in the world
for outsourcing…perhaps tells you more about who
EZA’s audience really is.

PPS. Would also appreciate if you could hit the Facebook
Like button

Bad News

Thought that we could have some fun today and discuss some email marketing subjects which really annoy me and probably you too.

I am not saying that you should never use them. But that you should be very careful if and when you do use them. Especially avoid using them within the Internet Marketing niche where they are overused and really will affect your credibility with your readers.

1. Bad News

I think I dislike this one because of its overuse. The psychology behind it is obviously great and does get you to open an email up. I believe that Frank Kern started using it first, but now I receive emails with that subject line almost daily.

I have used this subject line outside of the internet marketing niche extremely successfully, but still receive a high complaint rate when I do use it.

2. Notification of Payment Received/CB Sale: PRODUCTNAME-1 #S3JHRFEG

Don’t get me wrong, I love it when I receive genuine sales notifications. But HATE it when I receive an email with that subject and the email says something to the effect that if you follow the advice contained within then you will get lots of emails like this from Paypal…

3. You up?/You awake?

This is a clever subject line, but once again totally overused in the last few months and also kind of irrelevant. Are you really going to trust the person who sent this to you the next time?

The other thing that kind of annoys me about this, is the stupidity of the logic of the question. If you are up, then you wouldn’t see it. And if you are seeing it when it comes in, then obviously you are up…

4. Your order is processed/pending/complete

Thing that bothers me about this, apart from its irrelevance to the email is that it is highly confusing to the receiver. It makes me wonder if I actually bought something and really does waste my time.

5. Urgent – Open me up

To me, the only thing that is truly urgent is something that will affect my family or my welfare in the next few minutes. It is possible, but doubtful whether not opening an email there and then will have a considerable effect.

6. Do not buy XXXXX…

I know that this is overused, but I have to admit that I do kind of like this one. I don’t use it and don’t remember the last time that I have because of its dishonesty. However…I do know the punchline – when you open the email it says something like “until you have seen my bonus”. So, what the subject says to me, is that there is actually a benefit from reading that email.

7. RE: FW:

I have to admit, that I am on the fence about having RE: and FW: in the subject. I have been called out for using it a few times, but also do kind of like it. It definitely does increase your open rates. And if used correctly, it’s actually not deceptive. What I do hate though, is when people use this on every single email that they send out.

8. {Firstname}

I am not a hater of this really, although I rarely use it myself. I just think that it is a real gamble to use it. Firstly, people are generally aware that it is not a personal email, but that you are filling it in automatically. Secondly, if you look through the names that prospects enter into an autoresponder, you will see that often it is not their name. For example, Donald Duck and other cartoon characters are favorites – I think you get the idea.

The other dangerous thing about it, which I often see, is that people use the wrong tag and you end up getting an email which actually says

Dear (Firstname)…

9. Call your bank/Paypal etc.

The punchline here, is that you should warn them that a load of cash is coming your way if you buy a product. Enough said…deceitful, annoying and just not true

10. [Personal]

My all time subject which I get most annoyed about when used wrongly is when someone sends an email to me which has “Personal” in the subject line, but is not actually a personal email. In fact, when someone does this, I immediately unsubscribe from their list. I am happy to receive personal emails and the best way to make sure that I will read an email and that it gets through the other clutter is by using “Personal” in the email.

Dunno why, but does really make my blood boil!

Hope that you have found the above humorous/useful/interesting

I think that an ongoing theme, is to keep your subject honest otherwise you really do lose credibility and although putting something shocking may increase your open rate, in the long run it will reduce your customers’ faith in you.

What I would really like to hear from you though, is what you think makes a GREAT subject line and if you can give some examples of great subject lines together with the sender, all the better.

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer

Hi,

Going to do something today which I haven’t done for…well…ever.

I’m going to sell one of my profit making sites via this blog. The reason I am not doing it via Flippa or another market please is because I would have to reveal the URL which I feel is unfair to the new owner.

It is an autoblog that is also indexed in Google News. What this means, is that it gets huge amounts of traffic without doing anything. It is using the wprobot plugin. A licence will have to be purchased by the purchaser (under $100).

I want to be as transparent as possible, so please note the following:

1. At any point, the site could be deindexed by Google News. I would be surprised if this were to happen as it has been going for about 3 months now, however this is a risk.

2. I am no expert on adSense’s view towards autoblogs. As this site is currently monetized mainly by adSense, if this site were banned then it would rub out a lot of the present income.

3. Any bids are only to be made once you have understood the previous 2 notes. Feel free to ask more in the comments if it is unclear as all sales are final.

Please also note:

1. In order to secure this auction, the winning bidder will have to pay a non-refundable deposit of $500 by Paypal to me and then the remainder will be paid through Escrow.com

2. If necessary, I am happy to have the final transfer to the winning bidder conditional on them having their adSense code on the site during the inspection period. Obviously, this depends on the winning bidder

3. The URL for this site has never been given out publicly and won’t ever be announced by myself or my company. (If I have inadvertently left it in a screenshot, then please let me know). This is not hosted on a host where I have any other site and it has had private registration from the time that I have purchased the domain name (over 3 years)

4. It is suggested that a VPN or dedicated server is used for this domain. You are free to continue using and paying my host. I will also move this site over to your host if need be.

Alright…on with the fun stuff

All images can be clicked to see them in big. I have blanked out certain areas for privacy or because of TOCs. Nothing else has been changed.

Earnings

The earnings from Shopzilla have been around $30 for this period.

I am unsure of the earnings from Clickbank as I am not using a separate account. However, I can definitely confirm around $100 from this site from CB.

As you can see from the following screenshot, the site is earning around 8 pounds a day from adSense. This is approximately $12.58

Since 29th August, it has earned 431.35 Pounds from adSense which is approximately $678.67

Adsense Screenshot Aug 29-Oct 24 2010

The following are screenshots for statcounter and google analytics for the same dates. Once again, any data has only been blanked out for privacy.

I have tried to include as much information as I would want in order to make an informed decision, although please feel free to ask if you want any more info.

In order to make a bid for this site, please put a comment below. Unless otherwise stated, all bidders’ names will be kept private and comments will be made public. Bidding will continue for 7 days although will be increased for 24 hours each time a higher bid is submitted.

Any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask below.

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer

Helpdesk: http://www.replytoben.com

I’m sure that I am going to get a lot of grief for this, but I actually have a product to tell you about today.

Or as we used to say at Marketers Anonymous: Hi, my name is Ben Shaffer and I run a successful business online

Last time I told you about a product was 2 weeks ago and even that was free.

So, if it upsets you, then I sincerely apologize and feel free to post an angry comment below. I will ‘approve’ it in moderation.

Why don’t I promote products every day like some people?

Choose A,B,C,D or E:

A. I actually hate money and would prefer that my family do not benefit from any affiliate promotion that I do

B. No one ever asks me to promote their product

C. Cos it is rare that I see something really good to promote and would prefer to promote nothing than something really crap

D. All of the above

E. None of the above

(Once again, feel free to put your answer in the comments below. If you are humorous, I’ll even reward you)

If you chose C, then you are probably right.

Some nights, I actually have dreams that people would create high quality unscammy products which would help you in your success online – not quite true, but you get the idea.

Today is one of those day.

Please do not watch this video below if:

a. You are offended if it is suggested that you purchase a great product

b. Video crashes your computer or you don’t have have sound

c. You totally disagree with me offering you bonuses if you purchase

You have been warned!

Anyway, click on the play button below and CLICK HERE after.

Click Here To Continue Purchase

IMPORTANT: This is not my product. I am recommending you buy it cos it is a product which I have checked out and consider high quality. Just saying…

UPDATE 2: Just found a backdoor link which reduces the price for you Have changed the link/s above.

As always, comments are appreciated.

Watch this video and then let me know in the comments any takeaways you have:

I was just reading a new product brought
out by Peter Spaepen called Nanosense
when I came across something which I
hadn’t thought about and goes against
a lot of what I have done successfully
in the past.

However, the more that I thought about
it, the more that it resonated.

First, a quick explanation of how Adsense works
with keyword pricing. Advertisers pay
different amounts for different keyword
phrases. It depends on a number of factors,
but the main was is how much competition
there is amongst advertisers to rank for
that keyword phrase.

Therefore, what you want to do is to build
websites which target certain keyword phrases
which are higher paying.

Please note, that this is a general explanation,
and no-one really knows (apart from google)
exactly how Google itself works. However,
in my experience, there is an extremely
strong correlation in how much advertisers
are bidding for keywords and how much you
are ultimately paid as an Adsense publisher.

Anyhow, through no fault of your own, it is
often the case that the visitors you receive
to your website have arrived there using
search engine keywords that are lower in
value and therefore you are not paid as
much per click as if they had arrived looking
for content with higher valued keywords.

Stick with me here….

Generally, if your site is ranked for
a particular keyword, it is because the
content on your site is optimised for
that keyword.

Let me give you an example of two keyword
phrases which comes directly from the Google
Keyword Tool:

For the keyword “glow mineral makeup”,
advertisers are paying around 5 cents
per click. Whereas, for “glo mineral makeup”,
advertisers are paying $2.38 per click.

Although nothing is for sure when it comes
to Google and their algorithms, it is likely
that you would earn much more per click as
an AdSense publisher if your page was optimised
for the second keyword phrase rather than the
first.

However, it could be the case that there is
lower competition for the cheaper keyword
phrase and therefore you are able to get much
more traffic to a page optimised for that
keyword phrase.

What is clear from the above example, is that
1 click from the higher paying keyword phrase
would pay you more than 40 clicks from the lower
keyword phrase.

You can try messing about with the on page
optimisation for your page, however in my
experience you will probably end up reducing
the traffic and even then, not getting the
‘right’ traffic to your new page as it will
be harder to rank for that keyword phrase.

What Peter suggests therefore, is to remove
your Adsense from your page, but instead, the
call for action on that page to be to go to
a second page which is optimised for the more
expensive keyword phrase and therefore showing
the more expensive Adsense ads.

Your click through rate on the first page
showing the cheaper page will go down to zero as
there is no longer an ad there.

However, the likelihood is that many of your
visitors will go to the second page and therefore
click on your more expensive ad and ultimately
making you more money than before.

It is a bit like arbitrage, but done in a totally
whitehat way which I assume will NOT get your
account banned as you are offering the visitor
the experience which they are after.

Adsense has openly said that they don’t like
arbitrage (using low paying keywords to attract
visitors to a page which is then optimised for
higher paying keywords) and it is fairly easy
to understand why. Google relies on offering
their users a positive experience and arbitrage
can reduce that.

However, when you offer the initial page to a
user, they are receiving the information which
they are after, so it would seem that this is
not a problem.

Not only that, but you are encouraging the visitor
to stick on your page for longer than they normally
would which Google sees as a good thing.

What I have described above, is just one way
which you can restructure your website pages
in order to increase the revenue which you
will receive.

Credit goes to Peter for the initial idea, but
I hope that you also enjoyed my extension of his
idea.

If you are interested in reading more from
Peter, then please go to:

http://www.shmoozewithben.com/recommends/nano

While this technique was developed as a direct
result of his product, in short it is the method
which Peter describes at the following URL which
is the brilliance. You can download your free report
from:

http://www.shmoozewithben.com/recommends/nano

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer
Helpdesk: http://www.replytoben.com

PS. Please do leave a comment below to
let me know your reactions and if you would
like to receive further posts like this.

Social Proof and Scarcity are two of the most powerful elements that can be used in marketing.

Especially on the internet, they can be used extremely effectively and you can even change from one to the other fairly quickly.

If you really want to know the meat about them then you should read almost anything by Robert Cialdini. However, my definitions in this context are:

Scarcity – encouraging people to buy because if they don’t then they will miss out as there are only a limited number.

Social Proof - other people are doing something so you should be also.

If you are selling (almost) anything online either as an affiliate or as a product owner then you should think how you can inject these two elements into your marketing.

Here are some examples:

Scarcity:

- only 47 left
- going up at midnight tonight
- special bonus for the next 30 customers

Social Proof:

- we have already sold 2,000 copies
- here is what our previous customers say
- successful marketers buy our product

The way that I like to think of social proof is:

“This is what the cool kids are doing…”

——————————
A word of warning though…
——————————

Both Social Proof and Scarcity are easy ways to increse your sales as they strongly encourage people to take action. I have no doubt that if you used effectively you will see revenue going up by 2 or 3 times (I do).

However, always be honest otherwise you WILL be found out. And apart from that, not being honest is bad for your karma and ultimately your bottom line.

With digital products, it is sometimes harder to manufacture scarcity for example. You need to have a pretty good ‘reason why’ that you are only going to sell 300 of a product. Unlike physical goods, stock is usually unlimited.

Here are a few ways that I have used effectively in the past to get over this:

1. On a PLR or a resell rights product you can have a very good reason for limiting sales. That is to lower the competition for the people that do buy. One thing to be aware of here though, is that you don’t want to set yourself a limit of less than you are likely to sell in the first week.

2. Rather than use the scarcity ploy on the product itself, use it on the bonus for the product. Eg. I want to reward fast-movers and therefore they will also get as a bonus x,y and z.

3. Increase the value of your product by explaining that the techniques within it are so powerful that you don’t want too many people to use them otherwise it will decrease the effectiveness.

If you are confident enough of your market then you can just use the ‘because’ option.

eg. I am limiting the number of copies because I want to…

This is pretty much what Frank Kern and some of the other big boys do and it works for them even on high-ticket items.

I have been thinking a lot about these two factors because of the latest PLR package that I released. I limited the number of sales to just 75 for exactly the reason given above and the customers who have purchased so far really appreciate the lesser competition.

Although I will probably sell less copies than I usually do (generally between 100 and 150), they are selling far faster and take much less marketing efforts on my side.

So, I win because I have to do less work.

My customers win because they are purchasing a quality resell package and have 50% of the competition that they usuall would.

To see my latest package and how I am using scarcity effectively, go to:

http://www.killerlinknetwork.com/indexspecial.asp

(There’s also a discount there for you.)

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer

I had a fairly complex job that needed doing and for this particular product didn’t have a large budget to get it done as it was for a client from http://www.theproductmachine.com .

I happened to be reading a thread on the Warrior’s Forumand came across someone called Charles Jahren. The price was very reasonable and he promised a fast turnaround time so didn’t have a lot to lose.

The videos he created were extremely professional and he (almost) couldn’t do enough to make sure that I was happy. 48 hours from start to finish, I had the required end-product.

If you want videos for a squeeze page, salespage or for just about any other reason, then I strongly advise you to get in touch with him at http://www.SellMoreWithVideos.com

If you let him know that I sent you, that would be great, but more a case of I want him to be rewarded as he just did a great job for me.

The following was originally written as an email, but never sent out as I decided at the last minute to change my email totally. Usually, I do not do affiliate promos on this blog as I like to keep it unbiased. Ultimately, I decided to publish it on my blog as I felt that you would find it useful and it is very unpushy.

I was contacted a few weeks ago by someone called Joel who I had never heard of before. What was not unusual was receiving an e-mail asking me if I would promote his product. Unfortunately the majority of the time I have to say no because otherwise I would be sending out 10 to 20 e-mails a day and also because the quality is just not high enough. However, I realized that there was something different about Joel and his product which was worth me taking a look at.

Here is something that you should take note of if you ever want someone to promote your product:

The way that this JV proposal was offered really made itself stand out because of how professional everything was. Not only was there a special JV page, but he had created a special JV page especially for me. I imagine that he must have done this for 50 to 100 other potential JV partners as well. Not only that, but all of the information was on the page I needed and I didn’t actually have to ask him any questions about his product because it was all there including personal login details.

I had a very quick look at his product, but to be honest as it involved a lot of video I didn’t have the time there and then to go through with it. In fact, there are over five hours worth of video!

Because I had liked what I had seen initially when I next had some spare time I went back to the videos.

As a side note, I have just invested in some software called enounce which you really must take a look at if you look at videos online but like me you get impatient because of their sloq speed.

Anyways, once I went through Joel’s course I  was utterly invigorated.

You may have received advice when you first started with adSense about how to make money. This was to create one site which makes one dollar a day and once you achieve that goal do it again and also make a dollar a day from that site and keep on going to getup to a sizable amount. This worked extremely well when Adsense paid extremely well. Now there are a lot of other factors which come so it doesn’t always work so well. What Joel has done is take this idea and apply it to niche sites. His shtick is to build a niche site and to make three dollars a day from it. Once you have one of these you should then ramp it up. At first it will probably take you a day or two days even to create one of these websites. However Joel says that it now takes him between half an hour and an hour to create one of these websites. He actually has one team in the Philippines and one timing India is creating these websites. He now has over 750 off these sites making him an average of three dollars each day. If you do the math you will see that that is nearly $1 million a year of passive income once set up.

What really impressed me about Joel’s course was the fact that he didn’t assume that you knew anything. But unlike other courses which really are aimed right at the beginning he did separate videos which show the newbie marketer how to do the more simple thing without annoying the more advanced marketer who already knows these things. This is why I would say that this course is suitable both for the newbie marketer and also the advanced marketer as well. In style it very much reminded me of Steve as in Tim and Steve from niche blueprint and commission blueprint. I mentioned this to Joel and he laughed at if someone else had said this to him also. Perhaps he is even trying to imitate them.  Whatever – he does it extremely successfully and is able to deliver an excellent course.

It is difficult for me to advise whether this is for you or not however if you do like to get your hands dirty and are looking to create a passive income on a daily basis you would be well advised to take a look at this. The quality is extremely high and his tactics are easily able to be duplicated. Another thing I liked in particular was how step by step it is.

If you do decide to invest in this course I would strongly advise you to first sit through all of the videos. There are about five hours, so I would also advise you to use enounce if your time is at a premium. Once you watch through all the videos what you should then do is watch them again and copy what you does at each stage in order to build your first site. Once you have built a site even if you’ve never built a site on your own before then you will easily be able to get the next one up.

You are probably expecting this to be a high ticket costs, but if you go to: http://www.clarifywithben.com/recommends/msf

You will see that it is actually a very low priced course compared to other courses of similar quality.