Marketing Jobs, Traffic and Why I Hate Stupid People

Last Saturday I started a new marketing/sales job.

Today, I realized that this probably isn’t my thing. At least, not working for this company.

I’ve always been a big fan of the ‘work smarter, not harder’ philosophy. It just makes sense that if you know of better ways to do things, then you should do exactly that. However, I’m not happy now because the company I’m with seems to be doing the exact opposite.

We work out of two different retail outlets: one is an electronics store, and the other is a large discount warehouse. Considering that the product we sell is a technological product, one would assume that the electronics store is just a better target market, even though they get far fewer customers every day. I mentioned this to the boss, and I was told that “marketing is a numbers game…sure it seems easier to get someone to talk to in the electronics store, but at the other store, you’ve got hundreds more people that you can talk to, and that means you have more chances to get a sale”.

I call BS on that one. Look, anyone who markets online will tell you this: lots of traffic is great, but targeted traffic as opposed to crap traffic is FAR MORE VALUABLE.

Here’s another example of what I’m talking about. Last month, I sent out a few thousand emails to a list of people via The List Auction. Let’s say, probably about 5000, with some thoughtfully written sales copy (hah) and a link that took them to my squeeze page. In total, I got maybe 15 hits from all of those emails. What’s the problem? While I’m sending to a decent sized crowd, most of the people using that service are there because they paid for a program that told them that they could make a ton of money and/or build up their mailing list with this service for free. And for some people, I’m sure it works. The fact is that using that traffic source allowed me to send about 5000 emails to 5000 people who didn’t really give a crap about my product. They only wanted to click the link to give them credit to their account. And of those people, it appears only a couple of them even went that far.

This is why I say that MORE traffic isn’t always HIGH QUALITY traffic. The same rule applies in the offline world. Just because the big retail club has a lot more people coming through the door doesn’t mean that we will have more luck selling our product. It just means that in order for us to find someone who will say ‘yes’, we will have to work a lot harder to weed out the people that will say ‘no’.

It’s like comparing a banner exchange or traffic from a GPT site to traffic from Google AdWords. One is targeted to people looking for what you have to offer, the other…not so much.

All of that, and I’ve still made no sells. I’m not sure if I have to work tomorrow or not, either. So much uncertainty really bothers me.

 


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Happy New Year from The Sugarbuzz Project!

Photo by Optical Illusion

Photo by Optical Illusion

Welcome to 2010, everybody! It’s time to look ahead and see what kind of goals we can wreck…er…set for this new year. But before we do that, let’s take a look at our goals from the past year and see how we did.

So my biggest goal was to see if I could make $1000 on the internet this past year. If you recall, back in 2008 my goal was only $500, which I reached. Doubling that amount really was easy to do, especially thanks to a stellar CPC campaign that I found over at Logical Media. Unfortunately, that campaign is now a thing of the past, but with that single campaign I ended up pulling in over HALF of my goal. Not bad for $0.10 per click, right?

2009 was definitely the year of Twitter income for me. Not only did I find a beautiful CPC campaign to (ab)use on Twitter, but I found many other avenues that worked great for monetizing my Twitter account. If you want to know a bit more on how I made money on Twitter, just click here.

Another major goal was to start building my Twitter following. If I remember correctly, my goal was to have 1,000 followers. What can I say? That was easy.

So what about 2010?

I’m glad you asked. Here’s a short list of goals for 2010:

1. Instead of increasing my monetary goal twofold like I did last year, I think keeping it at the same level will be a good idea. So my goal for 2010 for web-based income will stay at $1000.

2. Find creative ways to do some marketing. I would actually like to have a decent side income from my web activities. I mean, I realize that this blog is really just a hobby, but if it can help me pay my bills, why not? Especially since my job is at risk and I’ve been dealing with some very serious personal issues. The more money I can make the better. My goal is to actually find new techniques that work.

Really, those are my two goals for 2010. I have proven to myself that it is doable. Now I just have to do it.

Outside of this blog, my goals are to be a better role model to my children and friends. This year has been personally devastating for me. I’ve pretty much lost everything that I held dear; namely my family. So now that I’m dealing with a painful divorce, it’s been difficult to keep myself motivated as I should be. The last six months have been hell on earth for me, and I plan to do better for my children as well as for myself. The last thing they need is a dad who they perceive as someone who doesn’t care about them. And right now, the best (if not only) way I can do that is to work hard, pray hard, and just try to do the best I can.

I’ve also submitted my application to go back to college, so we’ll see how that works out. I’ve got about 14 days left to sign up for classes, and my car is dead where it stands. I’m working on a plan to get another car right now, so that should be fun if I can get it going.

Well, that about wraps it up for this year. I hope you all have the best year ever in 2010!

 


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Twitter Testing Was An Epic Win

The other day I was reading through a web forum that discussed some very interesting alternative marketing tricks, and I came across a person who had created a tool for automatically posting messages to Twitter. I wanted to see what this could do when you combined it with my current Twitter marketing strategy.

In a word, wow.

At this time I won’t divulge the actual name of the tool, since it has been upgraded and I will be testing out the newer application soon. Probably today, actually.

In a nutshell, my strategy includes one CPC link that earns $.10 per click. Now, when I post this link, I normally make $1-$3 each time. Well, with the autoposter, I had it set to go off every two minutes. By the time I ended the test at 11 PM CDT, I had made $67.50. Not bad, eh?

Well, I didn’t want to lose my Twitter account, so I went back and deleted all of the posts from my timeline. I especially had to do this because I used my main Twitter account. Probably not the best move.

Today I have shifted the tool to post to another, more appropriate niche-related account at a somewhat slower rate. As of right now, I’m sitting at $28.20 for the day. And yes, it’s still climbing.

I can’t wait to test the new tool, which should allow me to rotate text, rotate accounts, and basically do a better job in a better, less spammy way.

I apologize to my followers for being brutalized by my test. Hey, at least I’m sharing what I do to make money with you…you can join the bandwagon!

Anyway, I had to treat myself to some sushi today. It’s a very rare treat for me. And since I’m such a sushi noob, I thought it would be good to try to be like John Chow and get a pic. Unfortunately, my stupid cell phone camera doesn’t auto-save pictures, so that means I’ll have to go order the same thing again some day. Hmm…not a bad idea!

 


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3 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in affiliate marketing, tools, twitter

Twitter Followers Versus Blog Subscriptions

Sometimes you can find some pretty interesting things on Twitter, provided you are following the right people. Here’s a little nugget that popped up in my timeline, and I thought it was interesting enough to write a blog post about.

@danschawbel QUESTION OF THE DAY: What would you rather have 100,000 Twitter followers or 30,000 blog subscribers?

For me, this was a no-brainer. I had to go with the blog subscribers.

Sure, everyone would like to have tons of Twitter followers, and they are great to have. One of the advantages of a legion of Twits is traffic. These people are usually following you for a reason. Some of them for marketing purposes, others to grow their follow count, but a solid chunk of them will be following because they are genuinely interested in what you may have to say. When your tweet gets retweeted, that just spreads your comment around to more potential followers. And as any good marketer knows by now, twitter followers are sort of like a mailing list with less work. Of course, it is also far less targeted than a mailing list, so your percentages will most likely be lower than if you stuck with the mailing list.

While having lots of twitter followers does have its advantages, I dare say that people who subscribe to your blogs RSS feed have far better advantages.

First, people will not subscribe to your feed to boost the amount of feeds in their readers. That is just silly. People grab a feed because they want to read the content, pure and simple.

Second, there are many Twitter users out there who follow people just to get the reciprocal follow, which gives them another person to market their products or services to. RSS feeds don’t work that way. Somebody who wants to market to you will not do it through feeds (unless you subscribe to theirs).

Third, blog posts stick around. Tweets are probably not viewed beyond the ‘current’ timeline of a Twitter user. They can be gone in a matter of seconds, whereas a blog post will remain on a blog for a while in most cases. And since a post has a title, it is usually easier to find in the archives than looking for a tweet that was issued a few months ago.

Another advantage that feeds have over twits is that tweets are only visible while you are logged into Twitter (or on a client). Again, persistance is key. When you use Twhirl (or a program like it), you are only getting recent tweets (usually within the last minute) whereas with a feed reader, you are presented with posts that you have not seen that go back as far as the feed settings will allow. And while RSS readers may not actually visit your site, they are still getting the content, whether it be your commentary, marketing, or whatever.

I’m sure there are people that would rather have the Twitter followers, and that is fine. But from a marketing standpoint, it makes more sense to build your RSS feed than your follower count. Also, when you develop a loyal reader base, they will most likely follow you on Twitter, so focusing on the feed yeilds benefits that far outweigh focusing on the followers.

 


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How to Write Articles With Stupid Keywords

One of the main tools I have been using this year to try to make a few extra bucks has been sponsored posts, mostly using services like PayPerPost. The problem with services like this is that it requires you to use certain keywords. If you don’t, you will not get paid.

I get the feeling that whoever places these advertisements have no freaking clue how to write a coherent paragraph.

For example, this came from my last post:

Fortunately, the boss is a fair, kind man who decided to call it a lay-off rather than a ‘get out’, so even though I was only with the company for two months, he is willing to give me a good reference, as well as some photos of rhinoplasty. Strange man, I’m not sure if he was trying to tell me that I needed a nose job, or if I just needed to get my nose worked on. Maybe I snored when I was at work. I wonder what I’d look like…

There is no way in heck that I can logically use the key phrase ‘photos of rhinoplasty’ on this site without doing some idiotic, illogical rambling…just like that.

Another problem is that I tried to use keywords that consisted of a person’s name. It was rejected 3 times because I have to have a few sentences that are directly related to the keyword. I don’t know the guy, and would not be likely to write about him on this site. I may have to try to work it in soon, if I want to get paid, which is a good thing. Of course, it’s just the hassle that makes me want to just pour Mountain Dew on my monitor. Good thing I am patient. It’s also good that I don’t have any Mountain Dew.

I’m willing to bet that there are quite a few of you out there that have had this dilemma in the past. How can I write good posts while inserting totally unrealistic keywords?

My only solution is to just get insane with your topics. Hey, I could use the extra few bucks.

I’d like to hear from anyone who has come up with a creative solution to this problem. Sound off!

 


If you like these posts and want to stay in the loop, please subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. And if you really like this stuff, you can buy me a coffee! Oh, and if you like being an insider, be sure to join the mailing list...I never spam, but you will get some insider specials!

 

2 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Blogging, marketing