Permission Marketing is no longer a cutting edge concept which is clear as the book was written in 1997! What is very interesting is how Seth Godin was exactly right in predicting what marketers would do. The typical opt-in page offering an incentive followed by a long sales page and lots of follow up emails. That technique combined with PPC has been used to death because it work(ed)s so well and surely was the reason for the creation of a great many Google Adsense ads.

Looking back at the book a decade after writing it Seth Godin describes it as “a worthwhile snapshot of what was happening at the time and a decent representation of the concepts involved”. I wholeheartedly agree with this.

Permission Marketing gives some timeless marketing principles and helps us understand “where we are up to” so far in the timeline of development and helps younger people (like myself) to know what the state of the advertising industry was 5-10 years ago.

It is quite eye opening into how wasteful marketing was back then and how it has been so incredibly refined by the Internet:

“Publishers with established brand-name authors had no idea which individuals were buying their books and had t start their marketing and promotions from scratch every time a new book was launched”

The book teaches that gaining permission is an investment and also that frequency builds trust and permission facilitates frequency. On the face of it that doesn’t mean much but it does have a very profound meaning. For someone to buy something from you they have to trust you and for them to trust you they have to had head of/from you multiple times. If you have permission to contact them you can ensure they have heard of you multiple times and thus build trust. Therefore permission if used correctly equals trust, which equals repeat sales.

This makes it obvious why the phrase “the money is in the list” spawned.

Conclusion

I did find myself skipping through a fair number of pages because they were out of date or not very relevent to the modern Internet, but all in all Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing Book provides valuable insights into marketing and is well worth the read.

You can pick up a copy from Amazon here

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Alex of ThousandDollarProfits is using the Reverse Funnel System and he ordered up this review.

Reverse Funnel System is the classic “pay a massive amount of money to be allowed to charge others a massive amount of money by selling the same thing”. A look at their disclaimer reveals they take no responsibility for any money you lose with them and also that the testimonials have not been verified as accurate.

I wanted to find out more about the Reverse Funnel System so naturally I Googled “reverse funnel system review”. The first result is a landing page for the system. Doing my duty, I entered my email address at the bottom to be sent to another page filled with videos, most of which were unavailable.

I endured this and entered my email address AGAIN into the box at the bottom of this page, which was required to proceed because the other ‘click here” link lead to a 404 error. I was sent an email telling me to watch another video on Youtube which contained more salesmanship and offerings of “free” DVDs and e-books. The video told me to visit long hyped up landing page, which, grudgingly I did (to fulfill my duty as a reviewer). I entered my email address AGAIN here, only to be sent back to the first sales page! (Must be the “reverse” system kicking in!)

These sales pages I just described are not the actual sales pages of Alex, who ordered this review, although he did not actually write any of his own sales pages because the person on his is called “Ty”. Alex must be an affiliate.

If you enter your email address on Alex’s ThousandDollarProfits Page, which is promoting the Reverse Funnel System it takes you to a sales page longer than the bridge of kazadoom and it is at this page I decided I shall not pass. A payment of $50 is required to receive an online “Mentorship Application” (note that is just an application and not actual access into the program).

I have 3 Pieces Of Advice To Give:

1. If you are a newbie to making money online, stay away from hyped up schemes like this one.
2. If you are a blogger, don’t write a flattering review of the Reverse Funnel System just because they paid you.
3. If you are a Reverse Funnel System promoter don’t order reviews from honest bloggers.

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After a few seconds on WordPress Modder I found a very useful tutorail for adding an Amazon Associates Store to a Wordpress blog which I will put to use immediately on a couple of niche blogs of mine to replace the ‘home-made’ store that I knocked together. (see screen-shot of the store in action on WordPress Modder below)

On blogs that are about WordPress there are two common mistakes the authors make.

The first is assuming everyone who reads it is a PHP programmer and so make their posts barely understandable to most of us. The second is the opposite, writing extremely lengthly posts filled with waffle. On WordPress Modder Adam has the balance is just right and is a quality teacher of using WordPress. See this post on How to Split a Post or Page into Many, which is one of his simple and useful tutorials.

Video producers will find WordPress Modder’s series on WordPress Themes for displaying videos especially useful. The video producer series is described below:

“The Video Producer theme series will feature WordPress themes that are designed from the ground up to break the “blog diary” format and allow video creators to display their work differently from what is usually seen on most blogs”

WordPress modder is only 4 months old but you wouldn’t know it from the already well filled-out categories. A wide range of topics such as WordPress news, mods, themes, plugins, blogging and SEO are covered in some detail. If I were to add to WordPress Modder I would choose to write more tutorials because they provide the most value to the visitors. On a blog about WordPress the site should be packed full of them. I’m sure Adam has plans to add more tutorials as the site grows.

Conclusion

As a blogger, learning how to modify WordPress themes is a very useful skill. WordPress modder makes leaning how to customize WordPress easy and I strongly recommend joining the WordPress modder community by subscribing to its RSS feed.

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The first thing I think when I look at Super Blogging Tips is what an active and alive feel it has. There are large numbers of comments, a solid RSS subscriber count (of which I am one!), a featured video section and vibrant images used in the posts.

Super Blogging Tips claims to help you make money blogging and I must agree that it does cut through the clutter to offer some genuinely useful advice.

Top Posts From Super Blogging Tips:

Here are my favourite picks from the blog:

• Ways to Increase Your Site’s Traffic. The 164 responses to this post show the rest of the blogosphere agree with me that this is a top-notch post.
• 10 Reasons Why a Blog is Better Than a Website
• 10 Great Bloggers Tell What Mistakes They Made As Beginners. I particularly enjoy reading the quote there from CashQuests.com, which since being sold has become little more than a happy memory.

For more of the best posts from Super Blogging Tips see the Top Posts page.

One small gripe is that there doesn’t seem to be a link at the bottom of the blog to view the previous posts, which isn’t essential but is something I like to do.

As far as the Revolution Wordpress theme that is used it is definitely adequate for the time being and does its job well in terms of usability. It is a well known theme but this doesn’t seem to have impacted the growth of Super Blogging Tips.

Future Of Super Blogging Tips

Tay has been making good use of social sites like BloggingZoom and StumbleUpon to drive traffic and so she practices what she preaches. I don’t know what Tay has planned, but I’m sure that if she keeps blogging at the same rhythm she has has so far Super Blogging Tips will continue to grow and become an even more popular blog with subscribers numbers reaching the thousands.

The content is great and Tay knows how to promote it, which is a successful formula. I strongly recommend subscribing the the Super Blogging Tips RSS feed.

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I think of growing a popular blog as the great way to experience and learn the fundamentals of business. Blogging teaches you all about branding, marketing, sales, public relations, advertising and planning. Success stories in blogging are common when compared to Dragons Den success stories!

Bloggers are fledgling entrepreneurs.

It wouldn’t surprise me therefore if many of you are just like me and love programs like the hit BBC show Dragons’ Den where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of “dragons” that they have to charm or get flamed by. The Dragons who wrote a chapter each in the book are Duncan Bannatyne, Deborah Meaden, Peter Jones, Richard Farleigh, Theo Paphitis and James Caan.

It is my favourite TV show and the book, Dragons’ Den: From Pitch To Profit is currently my favourite book (I was given 2 copies of it at Christmas - by mistake, along with 2 bottles of Reggae Reggae sauce!).

I read the entire book in 2 days, partially because it makes fairly easy reading but also because I found the stories behind each of the multimillionaire Dragons fascinating. Everyone loves reading success stories and the Dragons Den success stories are what comprises the better half of this book. The Dragons and the entrepreneurs look back on what they learned and the Dragons explain how their pitch and business could have been improved.

Each Dragon tells their success story and then outlines the main lessons they have learned along the way. They each summarize their lessons in easily digestible bullet points at the end of each chapter. What I found most interesting is that each Dragon has formed their own set of rules based on their own experiences. It showed to me that there isn’t a hard line to follow in modern business and that creativity and innovation are essential.

I was pleased at the way the Dragons all openly admit and analyze their mistakes, rather than trying to hide them. Reading about the mistakes they made and how they recovered may prove invaluable to me one day.

Evan Davis, the presenter of the show wrote the most useful chapter in the book on, “the numbers”, where he outlines the core fundamentals processes all business start-ups need to go through. If you already have a degree in business this wont be anything new to you, but I lapped up all the information gladly.

Conclusion

If you are a fan of the show and/or want to be an entrepreneur and don’t already have a ‘proper’ education in starting a business then I strongly recommend buying a copy of Dragons’ Den: Success From Pitch To Profit. It is both entertaining and useful. You can pick up a copy from Amazon here

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Althaf is The Chief Marketing Consultant for Royal Forex Group, Wall Street, U.S.A. I’ve been getting to to know him a little better via instant messenger and I discovered Althaf has sold a couple of blogs before and made some good money, so he is already a proficient blogger. This time with Blogrepreneur it not all about the money. Althaf is in it for the long haul, or as he puts it:

“Blogrepreneur is my dream; a dream, to give back to the Internet society, what I have gained in the past 6 years”

He is planning to not have any advertising on the site until he reaches the ambitions but attainable target of 1000 RSS subscribers. By that stage I think we can all say that he will deserve some money for his efforts!

Althaf is not one of the bloggers with 0 real knowledge and that makes money by “evil” marketing strategies. Instead Blogrepreneur is holding a contest that has prizes I would actually really like to win. The total value of the prizes is $450 and include premium Wordpress themes and blogging e-Books as well as 1 year Wordpress hosting. All you have to do to enter is subscribe via email like I have done.

Althaf is also writing an e-book. It is an essential guide to Google Analytics. Althaf’s tells me that there are a lot of bloggers and new webmasters that do not really use any web analytics at all, thereby losing all the benefit of the incoming traffic. This book basically is his way of creating awareness among the new and aspiring entrepreneurs, the importance of tracking visitors and analyzing them.

Althaf has had more than his share of life experiences as he says, ” I took a break for the whole of 2004 in the shape of a kidnapping incident“.

I actually recommend having a read of Blogrepreneur’s about page because the story of Althaf’s life is a very interesting one. He has experienced both success and financial loss and this experience shows through in his writing. It’s not just me who thinks so because Blogrepreneur is only a few weeks old but already has 60 RSS subscribers.

Blogrepreneur is part way through a Blogging 101, i.e. a core guide to the blogging basics. While I am unsure how many people will need to know this information, Blogging Fingers started off in much the same way and it proved very useful to have relevant content to link to when mentioning a basic topic.

Conclusion

Blogrepreneur has got off to a very solid start. The site design is basic but adequate and contains everything readers need. I highly recommend checking out the contest.

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1. Sponsored ads that are at a set price you define.
2. RON (Run Of Network) ads, which are cost per click ads.

A common problem for new ad networks is too many publishers looking to make money and not enough advertisers looking to spend. This can result in low CPC/CPM for publishers or even worse - have no ads to display for them at all.

AdToll have a system that attempts to overcome this problem. They give a high earning rate of 75% revenue share (as opposed to the industry standard of 50%) that pushes earnings up. Part of their small cut of 25% goes towards marketing the service by buying sponsored reviews such as this one.

Publishers also get to set up a “default” ad that can be shown when there are no ads available for your site.

A common example many AdToll publishers use is to display Google AdSense ads as their default option. With AdToll it’s all about finding the balance to attain the highest earnings. You can “weight” the default option at 100% which means your default ad will always be shown instead of the CPC RON ads; which may prove to be the profitable option by only allowing the potentially high paying sponsored ads to be shown with your own other ads. Weighting the default option at 0% means your default ad will only be displayed when there are no RON ads available.

Anything in between 100% and 0% weighting refers to how often your Default Ad will be displayed instead a Run of Network Ad. I see little point in putting the option between 0% and 100% unless you have a site of your own you want to promote part of the time while earning from AdToll.

Extra Features For Publishers:

• Wide variety of ad sizes including the attractive 300×250 Video Ad.
• Free promotion. If you offer the best deals to the advertisers your site is featured on the AdToll Homepage

For Advertisers

From an advertisers perspective there are some great bargains to be picked up. Publishers compete to get on the featured section of the AdToll Homepage in the attempt to make more sales and as a result the prices have plummeted to a CPC of $0.01 and an incredible CPM of $0.01 in some cases. You can take a look at the site directory or book an RON ad to proceed.

Conclusion

AdToll looks like a fairly promising Ad Network, especially for advertisers. Hopefully it’s business model will mean it lasts longer than the plentiful crazes that sweep the blogosphere. It is up against lots of competitors but as will all monetization the best method is to try everything and tweak it till the winning formula is found.

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How I Would Change The Yeepage Design

• Take down the RSS feedcount until the subscriber numbers don’t fluctuate below at least 100 (I first showed mine at 150).
• The purpose of the sidebar links needs to be addressed. Loyal readers will be up-to-date with the latest posts and new readers should be shown the best posts. Therefore the Recent Posts widget doesn’t serve a very useful purpose and I would advise removing it and putting the ‘Most Popular Posts’ in its place. Recent Posts is good for news blogs which Yeepage is not.
• Too much space is given to encouraging comments. The DoFollow badge, the Recent Comments and the Top Commentors widgets are all used. The best way to encourage comments is to write content that stimulates people to respond. Offering a “bribe” of a free backlink is fine but 3 sidebar items is too much. With fewer widgets on display, more focus is put on the ones that remain.
• Remove the calendar and the badges that show off the Alexa and Technorati rank until more impressive rankings are gained.
• Get a more distinctive graphical header. Personally I do like the crispness of the black header, but in terms of branding it doesn’t make it stand out from the crowd. I say this to almost every review buyer. Having a custom logo/header graphic is one of the easiest and cheapest way to brand a blog. At Digital Point Forums one can be bought for little more than $10. A free alternative would be to stick with the current header and create a square version of it to use on sites like MyBlogLog as a logo. I noticed the banner ad Simon bought on Blogging Fingers does not match the colours of Yeepage. Branding is all about repetition and this needs sorting.

Perhaps a separate blog should be started to accommodate for the scuba diving hobby because it’s hard to figure out how “buying oxygen” will interest readers who want to make money online.

I’ve come up with quite a few improvements for the design but really they are boiled down to un-cluttering the sidebar and sorting out the branding of the site. Other than those things I find the design crisp looking and a pleasure to look at.

Content Improvement Tips

• Be Consistent in capitalizing the 1st letter of each word in the titles. The simplest way is to just have them all capitalized e.g. “How To Write A Headline That Will Grab Your Readers Attention” rather than How to Write a Headline that will grab your Readers Attention.
• Stick to teaching what Yeepages has been successful in. For example there is an article on How to Sell Your Blog Real Estate but I can see that only 1 banner spot of the 6 has actually been sold (the others are affiliate banners).
• Be more selective with choosing affiliate programs to promote. Friendfinder’s Group can be a big money maker but does it really match the readership of YeePages? Also the YeePages review of TNX was very positive and based on little evidence. For readers to be compelled to take action each review can’t just contain a few basic stats and praise about the program but a personal opinion as well as criticism is essential.

Conclusion

Simon is clearly a clever guy and I can see Yeepage growing bigger and better. To summarize all my improvement tips with YeePage the issue is about choosing the focus of the site and understanding that sometimes less is more. For example on Yeepage AdSense is used alongside the private ad spots, lowering their value.

I’m sure Simon would appreciate your thoughts on Yeepage. Why not go check it out now and consider subscribing to the RSS feed.

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