2006.05.31
Posted in Blogging for Profit at 2:00 pm by admin
What makes blogs so unique from static web sites is the option for user interactivity through comments. It is the goal of every blogger that their entries spark a heated discussion in the comments forums on their site. Increased user interactivity will help to increase the number of repeat readers your site receives – coming back to check for updated comments, new poll statistics, etc, which cannot be found in your RSS feed. Each of these visits is a new page view and each of these has the chance of clicking through one of your paid advertisements. Remember, it’s all a numbers game.
Yesterday I added a new feature to CyberWyre, the CyberWyre Poll. This will permanently rest in the sidebar of the site and contain the current reader poll – I’d like to encourage all of you to participate. Adding a poll to your blog serves to add one more level of user interactivity, beyond simply comments. Bloggers love statistics and numbers (just look at the success of the high paying keywords page for an example of that) – poll results and the following analysis of these results will make for an interesting article.
How to Setup Your Own Poll
I am using the WordPress plug-in WP-Polls 2.1 (beta), written by Lester Chan, which has an excellent AJAX style voting system and great backend configuration menus. It was very easy to install (just follow the instructions and you should be okay), however I did do a few modifications myself to the PHP but this was custom to CyberWyre requirements.
When you have added a poll to your blog, take note that while a poll can help to increase user interactivity on your site, it can also demonstrate to your readers how inactive it truly is.  A low number of user submissions may give the (possibly false) message that your site is not well trafficked and discourage repeat visitors. Keep an eye on your poll and ensure that it is being used – make sure to place it in an easily visible location on your site and bring attention to it with a post to your blog, encouraging readers to vote.
Check it out for yourself and add a poll to your own blog.
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2006.05.22
Posted in eBay at 2:01 pm by admin
With a friend, I’ve recently started importing memory chips in bulk from China, direct from factory. Of course, my first thought was to sell them on eBay. Right away though, I found that the going price on eBay was only $10-15 higher than my cost. At this rate, I would have to move a lot of volume to see any sort of profit.
My friend decided to post them on the Toronto Craigslist forum and within a few days they were all gone, at nearly a 100% markup. If you are thinking of entering the eBay business and you live in a large enough metropolitan area, try Craigslist first — you’ll be surprised how many replies you receive. Your customers will appreciate it as they won’t have to pay shipping fees and will receive the product faster, and you won’t have to pay PayPal fees, eBay auction & final value fees, and won’t have any worries of credit card chargebacks.
A few tips when selling on Craigslist:
- Never post your home address or home phone number on the site. Leave an email or cell number where you can be reached.
- Meet in a public place. Try a coffee shop or gas station. Bring the item you are selling in a backpack or bag.
- Count the cash together to avoid any misunderstandings.
So far, it seems to be working for me. Give Craigslist a try and let me know how it workes out in your city.
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2006.05.17
Posted in Traffic Generation at 10:38 am by admin
The following article has been submitted by Paul J. Krupin, of Direct Contact PR. It is an excellent read for those wanting to write a press release to publicize their company or website.
Thanks Paul.
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Why News Releases Fail — The Most Common Reasons & What to Do About It
By Paul J. Krupin
Sorry about my otaku with this issue (otaku = more than a hobby, a little less than an obsession).
Many of you may know me, since I run Imediafax, the Internet to Media Fax Service. I send out over a million news releases a year for people via fax and email. You probably think that I’ve got news releases failing on me day in and day out.
Actually, I don’t. The news releases I write and send out for people do quite well. My clients are quite happy with me because they are successful with their outreach efforts.
It’s the draft news releases that people send to me that are my problem.
Fixing the problems I see in the news releases people send me takes forever. It is also very painful. I’ve seen a lot of news release failure over the years, and I now know what the key problems look like and how to fix them.
My plight as a publicist is that I spend a lot of time educating my clients trying to get them to understand the psychology of dealing with the media.
The rubber meets the road in the news release because this single sheet of paper is the key nexus for all communications with the media. The importance of the copy on a news release cannot be overstated. It has to be free of negative issues or factors that will reduce or eliminate media interest and response. One fatal error and it’s all over.
So identifying the problems and revising the news releases is crucial. I spend a tremendous amount of time and effort trying to avoid sending out news releases with problems still in them.
The issue is that when people send me news releases, it often takes a long, long time to identify and communicate the problems, and then more time again to explain and negotiate all the word changes with the clients, and more time still to finalize the news release and have it ready and approved for transmittal.
Honestly  it can be very painful for all involved. I’m quite brutal on my clients, since their success is all that matters. I don’t pull any punches. My comment process can bruise a lot of highly inflated egos of some otherwise very accomplished people, on the way to a problem free news release that maximizes the chances of success when finally sent. Lots of people think they can write a news release. Very few of them can do it very well.Â
They simply haven’t followed the media response to enough news releases to learn the errors that are made when they write news releases. They haven’t yet learned what the mistakes are, so there is no learning from continuous improvement.
This is where the blood, sweat and tears of the copywriting business is truly found. It gets even tougher when another professional publicist wrote the news release for the client. Now the client is getting opposing advice from two professionals. One says “Make it Hot†and the other says “Cool itâ€. What’s a publicist to do?
So my motivations for doing this article are really quite selfish. I want to spend less time doing this. My life will be significantly improved if my clients send me news releases that take less time and energy to fix. Very simply, for each and every news release that comes in and doesn’t have these problems, I’ll free myself to spend more time doing things that are more profitable for my clients and me.Â
The issues listed here have all been identified as reasons for the failure of a news release. This is based on over 20 years of experience in dealing with the aftermath  the actual number and quality of responses generated from the transmittal of a news release.Â
So here are the most common reasons why news releases fail:
1. You wrote an advertisement. It’s not a news release at all. It sells product. It fails to offer solid news of real tangible interest, value-added information, education or entertainment.
2. You wrote for a minority, not for a majority of people in the audience. You simply won’t compete with other news releases that clearly are written for a larger demographic of the media audience.
3. You are the center of attention, not the media audience. You focus on your business and your marketing, instead of things the editor and his or her audience will be interested in.
4. You forgot to put the five W’s up front. (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and WHY THE AUDIENCE WILL BE INTERESTED). You didn’t clearly and succinctly tell the media why the audience would be interested in this.
5. You are too wordy and text dense. You focused on details and minutia, instead of the most important ideas, issues, factors, facts, and news angles. You fail to address the real significant impacts your story has on people.
6. You place too much information on one page  the one page news release has a font size so small an editor needs a magnifying glass to read it.
7. You included corporate logos and other non-persuasive low value added graphics that distract the editor from your key message. You may have also used an unusual fancy font or a file format that turns to gobbledygook when it goes through a fax machine.
8. You wrote a personally biased article for the media to publish, instead of pitching the idea to the media and the objective reasons why the media audience will be interested.
9. You wrote about features and facts, and forgot to explain what it means to real people. Tell a story about real people. Add in real life human interest.
10. You wrote about how your news ties in to someone else’s fame and glory. Forget it. Never stand in the shadow of someone else. Make your own light. Tell your own story.
11. Your news release responds to something that just happened. You’re too late. You’re behind the eight ball. Forget it. Get out in front of the news.
12. You included too much hype, self-laudatory praise, pithy quotes, useless testimonials, jargon or gobbledygook. Get rid of it.
13. You may have also identified prior media coverage, which indicates it’s no longer a new issue. Get rid of it. Let each news release stand on it’s own two feet.
14. You tried to impress and be clever or innovative but you come off naïve, less than expert, biased, flippant, arrogant, or crazy. Tone it down. Get straight.
15. You made vague and unsubstantiated claims, or wild and outrageous claims, or you included a statement that simply rubs the media the wrong way. Get rid of them.
16. You are trying to be different, just for the sake of it, but you come off eccentric. Forget it. Don’t create a false or inflated image. Be yourself.
17. You wrote a rant and rave, worthy of a letter to the editor, instead of a problem solving tips article, worthy of a feature story. Decide what you want, put your best effort into it.
18. You are simply not credible. It could be your ideas are simply not well thought out, or that you’ve offered old well-worn material, or that you are too extreme or controversial, or not qualified. You may not be expert enough, or sufficiently qualified, to make the statements, compared to others in your field. You need to present information that qualifies you properly and adequately.
19. You provided poor contact information. You need to identify the best single point of contact and the correct phone number so interested media can reach you and get the best possible attention and response from you to meet their needs. One key person, one phone, no fax, one email address, and one URL (with no long string addresses).
20. You did not include a clear media call for action. You didn’t tell the media what you want them to do with your news release. You need to tell them what you are asking for or suggesting or offering. Then you need to offer the media incentives value-added reasons to do so, like free review copies, free test samples, interview questions and answers, media kits with story angles and stats and data, relevant photographs, etc.
21. You did not incorporate and integrate a primary response mechanism. You need to include a value-added reason, which motivates the editor to publish or mention your contact information, which will generate calls, traffic, interviews, or requests for more information. This usually means something unique and of special value to the audience, that the editor feels good about mentioning. Use an offer for a free problem solving report.
22. You sent the release to the wrong media. Target the media that your clients read, watch and listen to when they are in the right mood, that is, receptive to hearing about your news, and willing to take action when they get your message. Work with your publicist to target the right media.
23. You rely on a single fax or an email to produce an avalanche of media calls. You conduct no follow up. Get real. Follow up properly and you can triple or quadruple your media response rate. Better still, you can ask the editors “what can I give you to support a feature story and meet your needsâ€.
Finally, the biggest reason for news release failure is one of attitude. How do you define success or failure? It’s called unrealistic expectations.Â
Get real. You won’t get rich off one news release. You’re chances of getting famous are just about as slim.
You might be able to break even.
Look at your investment and compare it to what you need to break even on your investment. If you need to sell 100 books to cover the costs of a $500 outreach effort, you need ten articles because each article only produces ten sales. So that’s your breakeven goal. More books per article, means less articles will satisfy your needs.Â
You may simply have to be realistic and understand that while you are wildly interested in the topic, it may not have the broad general public interest that you have for the subject. If you wrote an article that has local interest and you expect national media to pay attention, think again.
If you want to be on the Oprah Winfrey Show, then you’d better pray because chances of doing it off one news release are very slim, near zero in fact. Get real. If she calls, then congratulations are in order. But don’t count on it.
If you wrote an advertisement and wanted a feature story and interviews, don’t be surprised if the only media to call is the advertising manager offering you a package deal. You get what you ask for. What you offer is often times what you will get.
Even if you do get publicity, it may not come out exactly the way you want it. More often than not, the bigger the media, the less likely they are to run contact information.
Often times, the quality may be there while the numbers are not.
One or two quality media responses may be what you want or need. If you get that, it’s a success.
One article in USA Today may out perform ten articles in small dailies and weeklies in the mid-west.
On the other hand, it may not. The small high quality articles may outperform the small mention in the big media.
Similarly, one quality 30-minute interview on a well-liked talk show on a radio station in the middle of nowhere out in the mid-west, will likely outsell a five-minute interview on an Arbitron rated radio station in the middle of the morning talk show in a major metropolitan area. You can’t tell the listening quality of the audience.Â
So when you write a news release please review it against these criteria to see if you’ve made any of these errors. Then fix each and every one of them yourself, and when you are done, feel free to send me your final draft. I’ll be happy to take a look at it.
So listen to your publicist. Heed these warnings and reduce the risks of failure. Fail to pay attention to these issues, proceed at your own risk.
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2006.05.04
Posted in Blogging for Profit, Other Money Makers at 8:39 am by admin
Many people have the false impression that without AdSense they will have no chance of making an income from their site. There are many reasons why a site won’t do well from AdSense marketing. For one, it might not be allowed in the program, or have been falsely accused of cheating their program, which has become a very common and quite large problem for content publishers.
The page rank of a site is determined predominantly by the quantity, and quality of incoming links a site has. If you want a way to visualize this, think of page rank as a summation of one-headed arrows pointing towards a site; each arrow has a weight, where the weight is the page rank of the linking site. Of course there are other factors involved, such as relevance of the linking site to the linked site, but that aside, this is the basic idea. You can quickly see that calculating the page rank of any given site requires the page rank of every other site linked to it, a problem solved only by those who love graph theory.
So why did we just go through that basic page rank tutorial? Because you can profit from it. If you run a site with a good PR, say page rank of four or higher, a site with a lower rank could benefit by purchasing a link from your site to theirs. When search engines re-index and see this new link, the linked site will gain a slightly higher page rank, and list higher in search results.
Text Link Ads is in my opinion the best solution for content publishers looking to sell links off of their site. Once you sign up (free to join for publishers) and register your URL, advertisers will begin to bid on, and purchase links from your site, which you have control of where they will be placed and how they will look. On the bottom of CyberWyre for example, you can see Text Link Ads which have been purchased on my site.
Depending on your traffic levels (measured by Alexa ratings) and your page rank, your site may earn between $20/link up to $200/link per month. That’s not too bad at all when you have five or six links on the bottom of your site and don’t have to worry about click-throughs. Best of all, you can have paid text links alongside AdSense ads without violating AdSense policy.
Check them out, and happy blogging.
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2006.05.02
Posted in Blogging for Profit at 1:28 pm by admin
You may have read this list on my site, in Red Herring or in Forbes and thought that it is interesting to know that some keywords actually pay $70+ per click! But can you actually see any of this money yourself? I have, and you can too.
First of all, let me tell you that you will never see a profit of $70/click credited to your AdSense account. These figures are what Google charges their advertisers. You as a publisher will only see a small percentage of this — I have seen upwards of $2-3 / click though, which is very good if you multiply that by 10 or 20 clicks a day. Traffic is the key.
AdSense tries to find the highest paying keyword which is most relevant to your content. The key word here is relevant. If you run a blog about cars for example, there is no sense in including the high-paying words mesothelioma or lasik anywhere; however, writing a blog entry about finding cheap car insurance might bring in higher paying ads. Working in the term “new york car insurance” priced at $56.75/click would also not be a bad idea. Other blog entries on the site about “personal injury” relating to a car accident, may also deliver high paying ads. Be creative, but always remember to stick to the theme of your site; Without an audience to read your blog, there is no one to click your ads.
If you think that one particular blog entry contains higher paying ads than others, use section targeting to divide the different topics on your page. This will force AdSense to deliver ads relevant only to the text within the section tags, focusing on the high paying keywords within.
The next time that you are searching for a topic for your latest blog entry, scan through the highest paying search terms, top down and pick out the first few keywords that relate to the theme of your site. Remember that we are blogging for profit, not for fun! 
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