Internet Marketing Secrets – Podcast #135 – Transcript #3
Prefer to listen instead? Get the Traffic Generation Podcast Part 1 here.
Michael Campbell: OK, with me now is Ginette Degner, also known as webmistressG. She is a programmer and account manager for one of the major affiliate networks, and she’s also one of the smartest technologists and webmasters that I know.
Michael: Hello Ginette and welcome to the show.
Ginette Degner: Hi Michael. Thanks for inviting me.
Michael: Lets have a little chat about traffic generation. What are your three favorite methods for generating traffic, and why?
Ginette: Well, the first one I like to use is Facebook. I like it, because I can discuss different URLs that I’m working on, and I can do it with different groups of people that actually share the same interests. I also used it to help raise money for a rescue dog that needed surgery, so that was kind of cool.
And the other one I use is You Tube. I like to create some viral videos. I’ve also created simple "what’s in the box" videos for products, and you post it up there and it helps drive traffic, and search engine traffic as well, because it all gets pulled in.
The third one is press releases, and these are just invaluable, and I don’t think people really realize how valuable they are. They have a nice life in Google, and they generate more interest from local news and community, if you know how to write them to capture that interest.
Michael: OK. That’s really interesting. You said that Facebook was critical in helping you to raise money for a rescue dog that needed surgery, so there are groups of these people? And then what, you would join their group and appeal to them with stories that they might be interested in?
Ginette: In Facebook there are groups that would be part of — like there’s an SEO group, there’s a dog working group, there’s dog fanciers. People make discussion groups and you join them, and they have discussion areas in them. But in Facebook itself on your own profile that you are adding to a network, it’s kind of like networking. You can write information, and whatever you put to working on, everybody else that’s in your network can see what you’re doing.
So it just kind of snowballs, where you have this one small thing you do, and then everybody you know sees it and they tell other people what’s going on as well. And if you’re working with the discussion groups themselves, as long as you’re not spamming them or off-topic, it’s usually welcome and you can open a dialogue and even more people see it as it becomes more popular there.
Michael: OK. Now you mentioned You Tube and something called "what’s in the box" video? Could you explain for the listeners, what is a "what’s in the box" video?
Ginette: For example, one of the clients had a radar detector, and it was actually an anti-radar detector device. And one of the most common thing is people wanted to know what came with it, how easy it was to install, and what was it? So we actually had him tape it, showing what’s in the box, what each component was that came with it. So there was no question, if you were buying it online, what they were going to get.
And then we had him do a second series of videos showing people where the install goes.
Michael: That’s a wonderful tip.
Ginette: Because when you’re selling stuff online, especially something that the user or the person who purchases it has to put it together, that’s one of the "stop" things because, "Oh, maybe I don’t want to buy this here because there’s nobody to install it." This is a way to overcome that by using these videos.
Because even the simplest things can seem difficult to people. So you want to give them every advantage so there is no reason for them not to buy from you.
Michael: That’s an excellent idea. So someone who has an affiliate program, for say, GPS devices, can show how easy it is to unpack the thing and look at it, and then they can show how you flip up the back and that becomes that antenna, and how they stick the suction cup on their dashboard and how the GPS attaches to it. And then maybe just a little bit of the basic operation. And you could probably sell a whole lot of those things just through the simplicity of the video. That’s fantastic.
Now, in the press releases, that’s priceless, because very few people realize how powerful that is. I spent $350 to do a press release four months ago, and it’s had over 192,000 impressions, because it just gets caught up in all these RSS feeds and it gets put in RSS to Blog kind of thing or ends up in software like Carp, that will take a feed and make an HTML page out of it.
And it’s all keyword based, so they’re actually scraping keywords from the title of my press release, and putting the headline of the press release on their website. And even though it sounds expensive to spend $350 on an ad or that press release, because so many people have clicked on it, it’s down to two cents per click, is that press release has cost me now. And it’ll just keep on going.
Ginette: Nice.
Michael: Yeah. You’re right; press releases are one of the biggest secrets.
Ginette: They’re especially useful when you start writing them around your product and something currently in the news, because then you can get even more out of them.
Michael: Yes, they get picked up by people who are interested in that story and they want to discuss the story, then they reference your press release and it takes on a life of its own. And then bloggers pick up the story and it can just spiral.
Ginette: Yeah, it can be visible for years afterwards.
Michael: Now what about advertising? Do you do any pay-per-click or advertising on other websites, or perhaps newsletters and publications?
Ginette: I’ve done some PPC, but I like to stay with really focused keywords and phrases. I really have to see that return on investment for it. I also like to use current news and events and write content that features emergent products from doing an affiliate program in relation to a current event. Then I’ll go ahead and do some PPC and put them on that page, just to get it out there.
And then I’ve also found, with small magazines for instance, I do Schutzhund — a sport for dogs. And there are two organizations, one’s USA and one’s DVG. And both of them put at a magazine every so many months. These are all potential customers if you have a dog. I mean, you have dog products, you have any of these things that these people would use, even travel arrangements because most of the shows you have to travel and they are looking for dog-friendly hotels.
So I have actually been able to put ads in for like $95 for a full-page ad for a joint supplement product and it goes out to 35, 000 people, who actually look at these things. A full-page ad, even if it is black and white, it is a full-page ad and that is pretty cheap. And you know, magazines hang around, they get passed around.
And so these small niche magazines and publications, like they have them just for babies, parents, they have just for dog people; for certain breeds and you just keep going, in sports, photography, all of it, these little things, even just agility for dogs. And the advertising in them is really inexpensive.
Michael: Now, where do you find these magazine publications?
Ginette: I actually will go to Barnes & Noble and if you just walk into the magazine section and you will see like "special interests" and just kind of pick up a few that would be related to products you want to sell. And you will even see ads for other organizations or foundations or memberships and you can look there and most of them have publications and now you start hunting online for them.
Michael: Excellent. Now let’s talk for a moment about SEO, do you optimize your pages on the fly while you are creating them or do you not really pay that much attention to SEO and just strictly write it for the readers?
Ginette: Well, I actually start off with keyword research and more behavioral and when I start to write. And what I want to do is, I usually will go ahead and write out like the top 10 questions that I am seeing are queries in regards to that product or service. And then I try and answer those questions in the page.
So the pages become valuable to the readers and to the search engines. But it is more important for me to have the page actually be useful to the reader and then engine because the engines are the ones that are going to change. But the reader and the users, the ones that are actually going to put money in my pocket, are the ones who really are going to bookmark the page. They are going to pass it on and they have the best potential for actually helping me in the engines long term with bookmarking and just how they use my page, because it is valuable to them.
Michael: That is an excellent tip. You go to the search engine or your keyword research tool and you look at the top 10 ways that that search is being performed and look at the query. So someone is asking a question 10 different ways and you use the page to answer those top 10 search queries. That is an excellent angle. I have never heard that before. Now are there any traffic generation schemes that don’t work, so in other words it could backfire and become a big mistake?
Ginette: I really think some blogs can backfire, especially when people are doing it for link baiting purposes, you can end up giving the wrong impression or turning off a potential customer. I have seen it where somebody is out there promoting somebody, but they actually made a comment that was nasty about a competitor to generate, it was all done to get people to talk on their blog, but it didn’t help them in the end, it actually hurt them.
Michael: That stuff is best kept away from the public eye. So, I agree, there is no real reason to be putting people down or calling people down. And that is personally why I don’t look at any forums at all. I belong to some private sites, but when it comes to public forums, there is just too much name calling, mudslinging and it is just a big waste of time.
Ginette: Yeah, for the most part for me in forums, I usually will not post and will not post in forums. I will usually private message or I will just kind of read and see what I can take from it, but I very rarely will post.
Michael: Excellent. Now is there one secret say that you could share with the readers and listeners, like a method that you use or something that few people know about or they don’t realize how powerful it is?
Ginette: I would say submitting things to Download.com. If you have software applications and it can be as simple as a unique screen-saver or even a unique wallpaper piece. Now they host the files at Upload.com, but years ago, they didn’t. And when they didn’t, we had so much traffic for just one product.
We made a screen-saver, it was the American flag and it was so popular and it was there just like right before 9/11 and everybody wanted that screen saver. It actually ended up taking our servers down. We actually had to remove the listing; we were getting that much traffic just from that one submission. So we do it now, but we make sure that it is actually at our Upload.com account, which is free.
Now they have a paid version where you can get your software in and evaluate it and everything else into their directory and listings within a short amount of time like three to five days, but their free one is like 15 to 30 days.
Michael: So you don’t go to Download.com; that is where you download. If you go to Upload.com, you can setup a free account and then upload things like software, screen-savers or…
Ginette: You will go to Download.com first and you will click on "submit software" on the bottom and then it takes you to Upload.com to do it.
Michael: I see.
Ginette: You can go ahead and set it up, but that’s a really – it gets you into all CNET’s networks. There are also some really nice tools in there.
Michael: Do you know if they still take text files and PDF files? I remember a long time ago, maybe 10 years ago, they were taking PDFs, do you know if they still do that?
Ginette: I didn’t look to see if they still do, I know you can put stuff up there for it. Most of the ones I am submitting though are exe’s or tools.
Michael: Excellent tips. Wow, that is very fantastic. Thank you so much for being here today and sharing your traffic generation tips with the readers and listeners.
(Find out more about Ginette, her strategies, tactics and affiliate marketing ideas at the AffiliateIdeaFactory.com )
Download the Podcast: Traffic Generation Part 1
Get the Show Notes: IMS Podcast #135 Show Notes
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