Jim Edwards Dumb Mistakes
I just finished reading Jim Edwards new Article “Make Big Bucks With Real Surveys“, and in it, he tells the story of how he used to make lots of dumb mistakes!
“In a former life I believed in doing things the hard way and learning (or maybe not learning) from mistakes.”
In this article, Jim discusses surveys, and how powerful they are when it comes to giving your customers what they REALLY want, rather than letting your ego dictate what you “think” they want (but often find out you are wrong!).
I first met Jim last year, in December, when my business partner Clayton & I flew to the USA to attend the “Jim Boat” cruise he put on, with his good friend & business associate Mike Stewart.
Jim’s a fascinating guy in many respects (plus his mother & father are just lovely folks), but I think one thing I got really strongly from Jim was that he’s a no-nonsense “tell it like it is” kind of guy.
Down under, we’d say he’s a “no bullshit bloke”, but that would be rude, so I won’t say it! 
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is simply that Jim’s advice is pretty damn solid. He’s got PLENTY of runs on the board, so far as creating financial success goes, so I’m inclined to follow his advice when it comes to Surveys.
One thing I have learned in my last 2 years of working at Australia’s top SEO firm is that too many people venturing into online businesses make the mistake of NOT surveying their customer base (or their future potential customer base) for what it is that they want.
They just get it in their mind that the market wants “x”, and then they invest lots of time & money into producing “x” and building a website to promote it, and so on & so forth, and then when it comes to them actually selling any of their product/s, they bomb BIG time!
I have seen clients spend 10s of THOUSANDS of dollars on this fools game, only to end up at the other end of the journey broke & devastated that it didn’t work. In all cases, they blamed the website or Google or something else, but in all cases I know for sure that it was because THEY failed to provide what the market really wanted.
I always encourage new clients to run a small Google AdWords campaign, just to test the market place & see what happens. After all, why not spend a few hundred dollars in testing BEFORE you waste $10,000 & 6-12 months of time, just to find out if you are wasting your time or not.
On the other hand, a small adwords test can sometimes show up where the holes in their idea are, and you can then move to fill the gaps and create a success after all.
It all depends on your mindset & willingness to be wrong AND whether your ego is getting in the road!
So, after you’ve read Jim’s article, why not set up your own customer survey. Find out where they’re at and what they do & don’t want, and then take things from there. You can use a survey tool such as this to achieve this, and drive some traffic with adwords.
If you want some help with setting up a basic adwords survey and using the survey tool I recommended, check my Adwords Management offering out and send me an email to discuss the details. I can put together something for as little as $220 + your adwords costs.
Email Marketing Success Tips
I was reading through a forum just earlier tonight, when a poster asked the question:
“If my website’s main goal is to get their name and email, then how should I use a sequenced email campaign to bring them on as customers?”
After spending quite some time preparing an answer, I decided it might be worthwhile posting that answer on here for anyone seeking some tips on setting up a successful email autoresponder sequence. Enjoy.
Pimp My Google Analytics!
Well, it seems our friends at Google were getting bored, because I just logged into my Google Analytics account and it has been given a MAJOR makeover!
Totally different, much more user-friendly look & feel!
Fantastic effort Google. I always found Analytics fairly painful to use, and certainly not very intuitive, but this new “generation” is very slick, modern looking and much more simple and obvious.
Here’s a pic of the dashboard, courtesy of the Google Analytics Blog:
Not everybody will see the new look straight away - in some cases, it might take several weeks to activate it in your account, according to their blog. Guess our MCC account does enough turn-over to get priority eh?!?!?! LOL 
For a smooth transition, here are a few helpful resources specific to the new version:
- Take a tour of the new version
- Report Finder Tool: will help you see where data from the previous interface is located within the new version (it is also linked to from within your reports on the left navigation menu)
- FAQs for more details about the new version
- New version features page
And as always, the Help Center, the Google Analytics Authorized Consultant program and the Analytics Help Forum are available to help you.
The new version of Google Analytics is easy enough for a layperson to understand, but also offers the sophistication experienced users need.
OK, that’s it for my first post in ages. Sorry about the long absence - I’ve been busy with other projects, but you can expect to see more posts on a semi-regular basis from now on.
Have a great day and please leave your comments about what you think of the new-look Analytics once you’ve had a chance to play with it.
Google Adsense is still working
I keep seeing & hearing rumblings about Adsense earnings going down across the net, especially from the adsense site builder brigade. At times, I have also expressed concerns about what’s going on with adsense, and whether its even worth hitching your trailer to their wagon…
Well, I just want to let you know that it is DEFINITELY still working, and I have seen it with my own eyes.
I have a client at work to whom I suggested he use adsense on his site. He has been trying to crack Google, Yahoo & MSN for a while, but he’s playing in a very competitive market, and its taking a lot longer than he had hoped for, to achieve the results he would like. Hence, my suggestion that he put adsense on his site, and hopefully collect a small token from the Adwords clicks he has been paying to send people to his site.
He started slowly, with a few bucks here & there and it picked up a little, but nothing drastic.
However, he rang me on Friday to ask me how much he is spending on Adwords at the moment. When I told him the figure, he gleefully told me that his adsense earnings for March have finally surpassed the amount of money he spends on adwords. In other words, his earnings from adsense are going UP, and even though he spends money on Adwords PPC ads to send traffic to the site to purchase his product, he is getting a proportion of them clicking on his adsense ads as well, and has now managed to jump ahead of the cart!
My next experiment is to see if we can better integrate his ads into the site so that his CTR goes up (it’s currently below 5%). If this happens (and I have every reason to believe it will), he may well double his earnings per month, without increasing his traffic by 1 new unique visitor per month!!! My adsense sites average about 10-12% CTR, so if we can at least double his CTR, potentially he will get a huge ROI on his current free & paid traffic!
Here’s the basics of his situation:
1) He has 1 website (not 10 or 100).
2) It is built around a specific niche topic and looks nice and has some good content on it - most of it unique.
3) He only gets about 2000 visitors a month so far, and he pays for nearly 50% of them via Adwords PPCÂ - yet, he has almost earned twice as much in adsense income this month as what he paid for the clicks!
4) His site is now self sufficient
My lessons for the day:
1) Build sites around a theme
2) If possible, have a significant percentage (20%+ if possible) of the content be unique
3) Grow slow but steady (drip feed)
4) Publish articles & get 1-way links to your site (do this slowly but steadily. A mad rush of links & articles that die out quickly tends to spook the SEs)
5) Integrate adsense properly into your site, so that it is not so obvious that they are ads.
6) Have a big site - lots of content is GOOD… Small sites rarely rate well on google, except perhaps for a semi-unique keyword.
7) It takes time to get results
8 ) Experiment to see if quantity or quality is better when it comes to how many sites you build. Quality takes longer but usually pays heaps more per site AND doesnt get kicked out of the SE index’s so quickly, if at all…
Experiment with your sites people. Don’t just make them cookie cutters of each other with the same 50 articles that everybody else uses, etc. Try different ideas. Track your results and see what works best.
I’m even earning money implementing adsense on mainstream commercial websites now, thanks to what I have learned from building my own Adsense sites. If you want some help doing this to your site, or someone you know, send me an email and I’ll be happy to chat with you about it.