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7 Internet Marketing Gurus That Have Influenced Me! Part 1

Cory Rudl has to be top of my list of influential marketing gurus. If it wasn’t for Cory I wouldn’t be writing this post now, in fact this blog wouldn’t exist. Quite simply, Cory introduced me to the world of Internet Marketing!

It was about 4 years ago when one lunch time I was sat at work in my office, staring out of the window thinking …

“there has to be more to life than corporate life!” …

so I turned to my computer, pulled up Google and typed in the words …

“how to become a millionaire”

That’s how I stumbled across Cory’s site … MarketingTips.com … At first I was sceptical about the hype and the claims, I hadn’t heard about Internet Marketing and really wasn’t sure whether it was just a get rich quick scam, it all sounded too good to be true … after all could one guy really build a $60 million business selling on the internet … $60,000,000

Although sceptical, I was blown away by what I read, I couldn’t stop thinking about it all night and the next day I went back to his site … and spent $170 on one of his products! I’d hardly ever used a credit card online back then, and when I had it was on sites I knew about … not on internet marketing sites I knew nothing about … I certainly didn’t rush home and tell my wife that I’d spent it!

Just over a week later the package arrived at home … two huge binders full of information … I was relieved! It certainly looked value for money, not like some of the 30 page ebooks you get these days! I started reading it straight away, and in a couple of days I had read both binders … (I remember lying to my wife about its price when quizzed!)

It was completely eye opening … I’d never heard about affiliate marketing, autoresponders or email marketing! I knew very quickly it was something I had to give a go …

But instead of getting started straight away, I just spent the next couple of years buying more ebooks and reading and researching … looking back I wish I’d just started publishing there and then … by far the best way of learning is “doing” … learn from your mistakes …

It did prompt me though to buy a pc for home and I taught myself Frontpage so that I could design sites … but it was only when I bought a specific product from the Guru I’ll talk about tomorrow that I really got started publishing and entered the world of internet marketing properly!

In 2005 I was gutted to hear of Cory’s death, I read it on a forum and it stopped me cold … Cory was only 35 when he died in a motor sport accident … but in those 35 years he changed the lives of many people and amassed a personal fortune … how many of us can say we’ve achieved that … and to die at 200 mph in a Porsche is not a bad way to bow out … it’s just a shame for his family and friends that it had to be so soon …

Cory’s memory will live on for a long time, the MarketingTips web site lives on with Derek Geyl at the helm … the products they offer are still as strong … I highly recommend you take a look if you haven’t before, they offer lots of great tools and resources for all levels of marketers …

If you’re relatively new to online marketing, you could do a lot worse than buy the updated version of the product I bought four years ago … The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet

The two ring binders provide you with over 800 pages of instruction on how to set up a marketing site, set up affiliate schemes, choose and develop products, write sales copy, drive blog traffic, build lists and lots more … they cover everything you possibly need to know to be successful online … I still dig my binders out four years later for quick refreshers …

I know Cory will always be one of my favourite marketers for the reasons outlined above … he got me started and his products are top quality … his tragic death was a incredibly sad, but at least he lived his life to the full … I’m sure we’d all like that as an epitaph … thank you Cory …

In Part 2 tomorrow we’ll be discussing how Brad Callen has influenced my online fortunes …

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It was about 4 years ago when I first became aware of the Internet Marketing business. Since then I’ve bought loads of ebooks and subscribed to lots of mailing lists (many of which I’m no longer subscribed to!)

During this time I’ve read the work of many marketers, but I can honestly say only a handful have really “influenced” me positively to any degree. Over the next few days I’m going to tell you about the 7 guys that impress me most and why …

So who are they …

Well in no particular order …

1. Corey Rudl
2. Brad Callen
3. Martin Franzen
4. Mike Leibner
5. Chris McNeeny
6. Mark Joyner
7. Willie Crawford

Whilst I also subscribe to the blogs and lists of people like Ed Dale, Paul Smithson, Jack Humphries and Gobala Krishnan, the 7 guys above have influenced my online activities significantly over the last few years …

These guys have all provided me with a lot of knowledge and tools that have tangibly had an impact on the amount of money I’ve made to date. All of the products and services they offer are the real deal, and all “give away” tools and information as well, they don’t just bombard you with offer after offer … sure they’re all in it to make money, but they offer you considerable value in return … when I see advice, tools and offers from these marketers I take note …

Tomorrow I’ll start with the internet marketing legend … Corey Rudl, I’ll explain exactly how he had such an enormous impact on my life …

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When I chat to people about my interest in Internet Marketing, they’re usually sceptical at first about how much money can really be made from marketing online … and I guess I was too when I was first introduced to it via the sales page of Cory Rudl.

That was a few years ago. I was sat in my office having my lunch looking at the sun beating down outside through the window, thinking there has to be more to life than corporate life … so I typed “how to become a millionaire” in to Google and came across Cory’s site … I was immediately intrigued by his claims! That intrigued that I actually bought his $170 course!

Spending that kind of cash online a few years ago was a pretty scary thing to do …. was the site genuine? Was it a hoax? It was pretty uncharacteristic of me back then to get the credit card out and give that kind of cash to a faceless stranger! As it turns out it was a great decision!

Cory’s huge internet marketing course opened my eyes to the huge possibilities of the internet! And since then, I’ve been hooked! It did take me another 3 years of researching before I actually published my first site and started making money … aaaaaaaaaargh!!!

So how much money can you make online? Well judging by the image at the top of this post … A LOT!

I’ll be honest … I’ve not made six figures yet, I’m still in the 5 figures bracket, but I know I could if I had no “day job commitments” … time is my biggest constraint by a million miles … I’ve got loads of ideas … just not enough time … I’m not making enough just yet to replace the well paid day job … or at least that is what my wife keeps telling me!

The image at the top of the page is that of a guy called “Shoemoney”. It’s not his biggest cheque, just one that he published to gain a lot of publicity … $132,995 just from Adsense … awsome … I found the link thanks to one of my readers … Neil … who gave me the link to S.eriously.com … take a look and you’ll see a bunch more huge cheques that show just how much can be really made with internet marketing if you can drive the traffic to your web pages …

But the site goes to show that there are definitely people out there making huge money from internet marketing … huge, huge amounts of money! And we can join them I’m sure of that … I know in the next few months I can turn my 5 figures into 6 figures with more hard work …

In my next few posts, I’ll be discussing the Guru’s that have influenced my online fortunes the most … obviously Cory Rudl is one, but who are the others? Watch this space …

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Hi,

It’s been a week since I last posted … I’ve just got back from a week’s holiday in Portugal … 7 days of none stop sun and wine!! Unfortunately before I went I ran out of time and didn’t manage to write any posts to use with the timestamp feature … but no worries I’m back now!!

We stayed in a private villa in Castello near Albefura … it was superb … great pool, sun all day and lots of wine and food … the whole family loved it! The only downside was I had no internet access … had I logged on I could have been coming home divorced

And the best thing about the holiday … my marketing paid for it!!!

Anyway, back to some more meaningful posts tomorrow! Great to be back online!

Richard

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Washington Irving, an American historian and author known best for his two short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”, spoke the following wise words:

“One of the greatest and simplest tools for learning more and growing, is doing”

I really believe these words really apply to the world of Internet Marketing in particular. So many would be marketers spend all of their time and money buying and reading marketing ebooks, rather than just getting started! Research is important, but at some point, if you’re going to make some money, you’ve got to hit the “enter key”!

There really is no substitute for publishing pages and experimenting with traffic techniques. The more you “do”, the more you “learn”! It’s as simple as that.

So if you have n’t got started yet marketing online, follow Washington’s advice and publish your first words online today … it doesn’t have to cost you a penny … in just a few minutes from now you could have opened a Clickbank account, chosen a product to promote, joined Squidoo.com and posted your first promotional lens … all at no cost!!

So what’s stopping you?

What’s the worst that can happen … nobody buys through your link? So you’ve lost an hours time … but you’ve actually done your first hands on research … you can go on to a secomd lens or a blog on Blogger.com or Wordpress.com … you can post daily to them or add daily lenses on Squidoo, all promoting affiliate products at no cost to you other than time … and you can use each post or lens to perfect your copywriting …

This would be a much better use of your time than reading ebook after ebook without actually doing anything … so go you can do it !

Have a great day!

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Time for a bit of humour … although if you live in the UK fuel prices aren’t funny! £1.25 ($2.50) for a LITRE of unleaded, that’s $11.37 for a Gallon So glad I bought a thirsty Golf GTi !!

So the rising oil price means it’s even more imperative that my internet marketing efforts succeed! You need a lot of Adsense clicks to buy a gallon of petrol over here! Still my monthly earnings are more than paying for my fuels costs … but there not at the “new Aston Martin” level yet … but I’ve still got 10 months to get there so that I can have it delivered for my 40th!

My daily traffic is increasing steadily, the foundations are being put down for what I hope will see a ramp up in earnings through the second half of this year … with a full time job, time is always the problem rather than ideas … ideas are just not a problem!

Online marketing is a great option for anyone looking to make an additional income in their spare time, or for someone wanting to work from home full time … the internet holds endless possibilities for anyone with the vision and time to put in …

To see what’s possible take a look at my free ebook below … you’ll be blown away!

Happy driving!

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If you use Article Marketing to pull traffic in to your web pages, you need to structure your page titles correctly if you’re to be successful.

The above screenshot was taken on the 31st March 2008. It’s a screen capture from my Ezine Articles account, and shows that my article “How To Become Incorporated” had received 4,165 page views, not bad for just one article.

To show that it’s still pulling traffic, take a look at the screenshot below:

In just 3 months it’s attracted another 1,600 page views …

So what’s the secret to writing great article marketing titles?

Well it’s not rocket science …

Firstly, do your keyword research up front … as you probably know I use Keyword Elite for all my keyword research, because quite simply, it’s the best research tool around …

Once you have a list of keywords to target with your articles, you’re ready to write your article title. There are two rules you should follow with all your article titles:

1. Start your title with your Keywords
2. Follow your keywords with a Benefit

It’s important to place your keyword phrase within the first four to five words of your title, because these are the words the search engines will base their indexing on. So to give your article the best chance of ranking well, include your keywords to the fore of your article titles.

For example, look at the title of this post … “Article Marketing Titles: How To Write Article Titles That Pull Traffic” … my prime keywords “article marketing titles” are at the beginning of the title, and in the images above, my whole keyword phrase is in the first four words.

After your keywords, you need to add a benefit. Your keywords will get you the rankings in the search engines, the benefit will get your traffic to actually read the article! Again in my title for this post, my benefit follows the keywords, read this post and you’ll learn how to write traffic pulling article titles. In the images, the benefit is actually included in the keyword phrase.

So there you have your strategy for writing article titles that pull traffic …

First your Keywords in the first 5 words followed by your Benefit!

If you’d like to learn how I get the absolute most from my Article Marketing strategies, take a look at my earlier post “Sexy Article Marketing On Heat!” … I guarantee it will change the way you market your articles forever!

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I’ve read in a lot of places that worrying about Google’s Page Rank (PR) is a waste of time as it’s not important to your rankings or traffic. One of the main arguments put forward is that the PR displayed to the public in the Google Toolbar is historic in nature and out of date. This may indeed be the case to some degree, but I would argue that Page Rank is important for the following reasons.

Page Rank is Google’s method of indexing web pages and their content based on ”importance”. Therefore the higher your page rank, the more important your content is seen to be by Google. As Google only wants to serve up the best quality content to its users, it follows that high page rank will lead to high rankings in Google!

In general this is true. A page with page rank will rank higher than one without. Obviously, because the PR is a snapshot in time, there will be times when low page rank pages rank higher, but where this is the case, those pages will probably aquire higher page rank when the next updates are done by Google.

No one knows the exact algorithm that Google uses to calculate Page Rank. But it’s generally agreed that the number and “quality” of links pointing to your site is the main factor. Inbound links from other high PR sites will increase your own PR considerably. Google considers links to your site to be a vote of confidence for your content or a recommendation. The more important the site is that sends the link to you, the more value it will have to your own page rank.

So regardless of how and when it’s calculated, the fact that Google publish page rank to the public means that they regard it as a valuable measure of importance. And as it’s a likely indication of how well your pages are going to rank, I suggest to you that it is important and you should do all that you can to increase it for all of your sites, because ultimately you’ll rank better as a result!
It’s also widely considered that other quality factors are included in the PR algorithm.

For example, some people believe that Google measure the time that visitors stay on your site, the longer they stay the better the quality of your content, thus increasing your PR and rankings. I’m sure the quality of your content must be a factor. Therefore, it makes sense that you should work hard at improving your page rank over time, because your PR will be a reflection of the quality of your site.

In general I find that high page rank sites are usually high quality sites, therefore PR is an important indicator to your visitors as to the credibility of your site and its content. Credibility is important. When people see a high PR they will subconsciously associate your site with quality and trust. This is another very good reason why page rank is important to you as a webmaster.

Finally, you’ll find it a lot easier to attract inbound links to enhance your PR when you have a decent page rank. Other webmasters will want to exchange links with you if your PR is higher than theirs, because a link from you will pass on ranking juice to them. Plus the higher your page rank, the more traffic you’ll receive in general, which means more people will see your pages and naturally link to them if your content is good.

So there you have it, why I think Page Rank is important and therefore why you should set aside time to build links to your site and work on the quality of your sites.

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I’ve written a lot lately about search engine optimisation, in particular on what you should do to improve your search engine rankings. Well today I’ve written a short post on the opposite … what you should never do to improve your rankings, because if you do and you get caught by the search engines, your site will be banned from the rankings forever!

1. Never “stuff” your pages with keywords
2. Never use hidden text or hidden links on your pages
3. Never cloak you pages to deceive the search engines
4. Never use pages “loaded” with irrelevant words
5. Never build a site full of “virtually” identical pages
6. Never allow links from “blackhat” sites
7. Never use free link farms for your inbound links

Most of the seven rules above are self explanatory. For example, most marketers know that over populating your content with keywords will be seen as “stuffing” and will harm your rankings. Most people also know that using hidden text, ie: white text on a white background will be seen as cheating and again will damage your rankings. Link farms that provide you with hundreds of irrelevant links will be damage your rankings.

The golden rule at all times should be, that if you want your sites to succeed longer term, follow the 7 rules above.

You may be thinking that you’ve actually seen sites on the Web that have done just about all of the “don’t do’s” above and yet have still managed to rank well … well that maybe true, but they won’t be there for long, the search engines will catch up with them!

If you want long term online marketing success, always stick to publishing quality content on your pages, with keywords in the right places and with genuine inbound links!

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When you’re trying to achieve high search engine rankings, search engine keyword placement is important. Keywords define the subject of your web page or blog post, and are used by the Search Engines to categorise your pages.

In order to rank well, you “must” include your keywords in the following places:

1. Your Page Title

You must include your keywords in your page title, it’s by far the most influential “on-page” optimisation tactic you can employ. The fewer words (other than your keywords) you include in your title the better, otherwise you dilute your keyword phrase importance. Where you do include other words, try and include your keywords at the beginning of your title

2. Page Header

Include your keywords in your main page header to emphasise it’s importance again. In your html code, your page header is identified by H1 tags.

3. Opening Paragraph

It is very good seo practice to include your prime keyword phrase within the opening sentence of your first paragraph. If possible you should also repeat the phrase several times further down in the body of your text, preferably without spoiling how your content reads. Finally, try and include it at the end of your content, possibly in your page summary.

4. At the Bottom of Your Page

It’s good practice to include your keywords at the bottom of your page as the last words the search engine robot sees. A lot of people add them after their copyright wordage.

5. Meta Tags

Although meta tags carry far less ranking juice these days, it’s still makes sense to include your keywords in your meta tags or as your blog post tags. In terms of meta tags, some search engines still apply some weighting to them.

6. Your Internal Links

Your keywords should appear in your internal links to your pages. For example, in your site menu, your links should be keyword rich.

7. External Inbound Links

Similar to your internal links, you should encourage other sites linking to you to use your keywords in their anchor text. Along with your page title, having keyword rich anchor text in your inbound links is the most important keyword placement you can do.

These are without doubt the most important keyword placements you can employ for high search engine rankings. How well you succeed will depend on how competitive the keyword phrase is you’re targeting. Keyword placement is important, but primarily the number of competing pages and how well they’re optimised will determine how well you rank!

In terms of analysing keyword competitiveness, your keyword research really is the “critical” part of your optimisation process. I highly recommend you read my earlier post on Keyword Competitiveness.

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Whilst doing some keyword research the other day, I noticed that “free meta tag generators” is a very popular search term each month … so if you’ve found this post via the search engines, I’ve written it especially for you!

Before I give you the urls for some free meta tag generators, let’s discuss what “meta tags” are and why you should use them …

Meta Tags

Meta tags are used by some search engines to determine page relevancy. Basically, meta tags take the form of hidden HTML code that detail to the search engine spiders specific information on your page’s keywords and page description.

In the early days of the internet, marketers would stuff their meta tags with hundreds of keywords to improve their page rankings. As the major search engines became wise to these “spammy” methods, they changed their algorithms accordingly to exclude pages with stuffed meta tags, and in general reduced the importance previously given to meta tags.

Even though the importance of meta tags for ranking purposes is not what it once was, some engines still apportion some weighting to them, and therefore you should still use them in all the pages you generate. In general, it’s good practice to keep your meta keywords tag below 1,024 characters long and your meta description tag below 150 characters.

You need to put some time and thought in to your meta description tags in particular, not for ranking purposes specifically, but because a lot of the search engines use your meta description in their search engine results pages (serps). You therefore need to make your description inviting to the searcher so that they click on your site … there is no point in optimising your pages and getting them onto page one of Google if nobody actually clicks on your link!

There are a bunch of sites offering “free meta tag generators” on the web. Basically these generators take the effort out of creating the required html code, you just input your keywords and the code is generated for you to copy and paste into your page’s source code.

Here are a couple of sites that offer “free meta tag generators:

http://www.free-webmaster-tools.com/Meta-Tag-Generator.htm
http://www.submitexpress.com/metatags.html

I hope you found this info on meta tags useful …

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