Deal of the Day
He Made it Big Making Fun Of White People
I don’t know his name, but whoever he is, he stumbled onto a phenomena with a little blog entitled “Stuff White People Like.” In just a few months, this blog has become arguably one of the most popular blogs on the web thanks to it’s clever and quirky sense of humor. On the blog, the author posts how white people like things such as scarves… or ivy leagues. The amount of topics he could post about is almost limitless, making this idea even better. It is all in how he words and structures his posts.
The guy even got a book deal out of running the blog and if it does well, I am sure a second one will be on the horizon. So I got to thinking one day, maybe this guy has come up with a formula that can be repeated. So here is what I think that formula might entail…
1) Choose an idea that is somewhat open-ended, but at the same time targeted enough for a themed blog. For instance, choose a country and call your blog “What makes <insert country here> great. Hopefully that gives an idea of what I mean.
2) Create your blog and give it a simple theme that does not distract too much from the content.
3) Brainstorm post ideas and try to write your posts with a humorous overtone and point out and make fun of things that are true… because that is why they are funny.
4) Try to make at least one post per day for the first month or two. It is important to post as often as possible at first so that Google begins to take notice. Also, make sure to ping your blog each time you post and work on other SEO features such as getting back-links.
5) Keep up the hard work, you are bound to gain notice soon!
6) Hope for a little luck to do as well as stuff white people like. We do the best we can to substitute for that with hard work, but some luck never hurt either.
7) Profit. 
This may not be fool proof, but it should give you a good start. The most important step is that you choose a fun topic that you can write about and just have fun with the whole thing.
Until next time, The Big Dumb Marketer signing out.
How To Get Cheap Articles
I decided to run a little test on a new way of getting ridiculously cheap article writing services. My target was to get articles that were 300 to 500 words in length written for $3 a pop. I know that $5 per article is considered cheap, so I figured this was going to be a bit of a stretch, but what did I have to lose. So first off, where is it that I thought I could have articles written for $3 a pop you ask? Everybody’s favorite free classified ad portal… Craigslist!
Basically what I did was make a short post in the Gigs section of Craigslist under “writing” in the nearest city to me. I just stated that I was looking for a ghostwriter who was literate and had average to above average writing skills to work with me, writing on various topics. The writing would be articles of 300 to 500 words and I would pay $3/article.
I did not expect to have a whole lot of replies, but by the end of 2 days, I had been contacted by 6 interested writers, all of which were actually excited at the prospect of being paid for their writing… even just $3!
As we speak, I am waiting for a sample article from each of them and have high hopes for their abilities. If it does not pan out, I can post again in a different city or in another week or two. This is not quite a sure fire way, but it is pretty close. You would be amazed the amount of work at home moms, college students or just plain bored people who would love to write for just a couple extra bucks.
Don’t tell this to too many people or the Craigslist writing gigs market could get a little crowded, but try it out for yourself and hopefully you will get as good of results as I have.
This is the Big Dumb Marketer signing out.
Why Most Marketers Don’t Make Any Money Online (Part 2)
You may have read my last post on why most marketeres don’t make any money online. Well I went back and read it again and it got me thinking of one more big big big big reason a lot of marketers fail to make any money. As internet marketers, it is in our blood to learn and devour any new information that we think could take us to that next level or make us some extra income. A consequence of this is that all too well known thing we like to call information overload. More specifically how this makes many new (and old) marketers fail is it causes us to jump from technique to technique without fully learning, understanding or most importantly getting good at it.
By jumping from technique to technique marketers never allow themselves to fully benefit from what they are learning. They may even forget about it entirely shortly after discovering it. Whether it is gold or not. The key is to spend your time learning and understanding the gold ones of course. One of the wisest things I heard most recently is that once you find a technique that you could see yourself using as a part of your business model, stick with it and get good at it. It does not serve you to learn a technique only to move onto the next one and the next one and so on and so on.
To keep this short and to the point, the moral here is to not just learn a method or technique, but to first decide if it fits into your marketing plan, then practice it and use it until you become good at it and can integrate it into your everyday marketing activities. Once you have mastered one, you can begin focusing on the next one that you find will be valuable to you and your business. Before you know it you will have a solid foundation of knowledge and techniques under your belt that will have you increasing your income by leaps and bounds.
I hope this has been a light bulb moment or at least a friendly reminder of something you already knew.
Until next time, The Big Dumb Marketer signing out
Get Yourself Some Free Graphics
One of the most common costs that we as internet marketers face is the cost of graphics. Whether it be header/footer graphics for your website or sales letter, ebook covers, button graphics or any kind of custom graphics we need, there is bound to be a cost. That is unless you know a few great ideas that could get you some great graphics for absolutetly free. Two of my favorites are below.
Free Graphics 1) The first method I often times use to obtain some free graphics is really quite slick. On any given day, there is a good chance their are fledgling graphic designers out there looking to build their portfolio. In order to do so, they are often willing to do very cheap or FREE graphics just to build that portfolio. When doing so, they will usually just ask that whatever graphics they create for you, they can use in their portfolio with a link to your site. So not only are you getting free graphics, but a backlink as well. It’s a win win for all. Finding these fledgling graphics designers can be tricky, but your best bet is to post on forums that you are looking for a new graphics designer looking to build their portfolio or something of that nature. You will be amazed at the quality of work you can get this way. Try it out.
The second method may be a little more difficult to find, but I have found at least one site that does this.
Free Graphics 2) The second method I have used to get free graphics is through a great site I have found that does free graphics for their visitors. Usually they will only do one or two per day, so it may take some time before your graphic comes up, but if you have some time or are good at planning ahead, this is another great method. Here is the site that offers a chance for some free graphics:
With these two methods in your arsenal, you should have a pretty good shot at getting some free graphics. Now get to it!
This is the Big Dumb Marketer, signing out.
Big Dumb Idea #2
Alright, the New Year is upon us and many of us big dumb marketers may be looking for a new business model to build upon in 2008. Something about those 2007 business models just wasn’t working. Maybe they were just DUMB… or maybe they just weren’t for you. Whatever the case, this could be a great new business model for just about any marketer.
Drum Roll Please….. brum brum brum brum… hmm… maybe thats more like a motorcycle. Anyways….
Create A Local Business Directory
Hmmm… you say, this doesn’t sound that profitable. Well with a little hard work and shameless promotion, you may just be surprised how well you can do with this model. One of the first reasons this model can work so well is that you will be targetting a very small demographic. Well, small in comparison to the whole world wide web. You will just be targeting a city… perhaps your own city. Ok, so what should you do, and how do I get the moneys?!
First you will want to pick a specific type of business that there are lots of in your area. A few of my favorite ideas target markets would be hotels, restaurants, pizza joints or bars. Most decent sized cities have plenty of these, many of which are locally owned. Ok, so lets say you pick restaurants. First you would want an SEO friendly domain such as newyorkrestaurants.com Now likely this is taken, but you may be able to find that type of domain for smaller towns. You may also want to see if .net, .org, .info, .biz or .us are available. They are not your first choice, but you may have to settle.
Now that you have your domain, you will need to create your restaurant directory. This may just be the hardest part, but it can easily be outsourced. My advice would be to find an existing directory script that is similar to what you want, and outsource to have it modified to fit your needs. This may cost a little bit to begin with, but will be well worth it in the long run. One capability you will want to have for sure in that script is the ability to accept paypal payments for listings in your directory.
Once you have your directory setup, you will need to add all of the restaurants in your city that you can to your directory. You want to have that lived in feel before you start marketing it. Add a couple as premium listings that are in a high exposure place on your homepage. Now the money part comes.
Now that your directory is setup, you will want to begin contacting all of those restaurants on your directory, and anymore not on your directory yet and tell them about your targetted service and that they can purchase a premium listing for just $XX dollars. Pricing options are up to you. You can charge just to be added, or charge a monthly fee to stay on, etc… But you have to make it seem attractive to the restaurant owners. The beauty of this business model, the more businesses you add to your directory, the more will want to join and the more your directory will grow.
That is the jist of building a local business directory. It is win win once it gets running since you get paid to list businesses, and the businesses get more business as a result.
To see a site that has done this very well, check out http://www.losangelesrestaurants.com
Until next time, The Big Dumb Marketer Signing Out!
Instant Cash Idea #1
When it all comes down to it, we are all here learning and doing internet marketing to accomplish one thing, make cash. It may not be the only thing, but it is definitely one of the main things. One of the best forms of cash that we can learn to make is INSTANT cash. Doesn’t that have a good ring to it? Instant cash, in your account, now. In my opinion, it is not a good idea to try and make all of your money this way, as passive and long term incomes are very nice as well. But sometimes instant cash is just what the doctor ordered. So how do we earn instant cash? Maybe you are having a problem earning any cash at all and wondering “How am I supposed to make instant cash if I can’t make any to begin with”???
Well there are almost unlimited ways to do it, you just have to get creative and use that thing sitting on your shoulders caled your noggin. Here is one of my favorite instant cash ideas, and I will tell you why.
It is called “Trend Marketing” and involves piggybacking on hot trends in order to drive large amounts of quick traffic to an offer page which you create. Their are several methods to use Trend Marketing, but here is my favorite way to go about it. First I find a hot trend that I feel I can find a related product or service for that I can be an affiliate of. For this, you will want to have accounts on a few of the main affiliate providers such as Commission Junction, Clickbank and Shareasale among others. This way you will have multiple places to search for an offer to use. I find that Pay Per Lead offers convert the best with trend marketing. This way, nothing needs to be purchased in order for you to gain an affiliate commission.
Next, you will need to create a page related to the trend marketing event that you have found and the offer related to it. So for instance, if 50 Cent got shot, you may create a page promoting ringtones from 50 Cent. There are a lot of ringtone offers that you can put on the page. If you do not have a lot of experience setting up web pages, you can search for an open source web design template which you can just modify to fit your needs.
Last, you need to drive traffic to your new offer. Due to this being a hot trend or event, the search volumes will much higher than normal for related keywords. Sticking to our 50 cent example, you would want to create an adwords campaign targetting keywords such as “50 cent shot, 50 cent shooting, rapper shot” you get the idea.
That is about it. You may want to do a little more research on Trend Marketing before jumping in, but believe me, if you find a hot trend and find a perfect offer, you can make a LOT of instant cash.
I hope this post has got you thinking. This is just one of many ways that you can make some instant cash. Come up and test your own and you may just surprise yourself.
This is The Big Dumb Marketer, signing out.
Learn To See How Your Customers See
When potential customers visit your website, they may be blind to certain parts of your site. Possibly even the parts that you want them to see the most, such as the buy now button, add to cart, join now, etc… Obviously if they are missing these, then you are missing sales.
Well Stompernet just released a very eye-opening (no pun intended) video that talks about just this subject, and teaches how you can increase your websites conversion rate by as much as 50% by just changing the layout.
You will definitely want to give this one a watch!
http://www.stompernet.net/goingnatural2/?vid=3
Use Your Expert Skills
We discussed last time that everyone’s an expert at something. There are things that may seem easy to you, that other marketers struggle with every day. However, I’m betting that there are also things that YOU struggle with on a regular basis.
Cheap Content - Option #5
Option #5 - Barter For Content
Many of us have skills that others find very valuable, but we take for granted. If you have a skill that others can benefit from, then you may want to try bartering those skills to have some content written for you. For example, if you’re an ace web designer, you may be able to find a writer that is in need of a website. Consider making them an offer of trade instead of cash – you might be surprised at the response you get! I you can find just one writer who needs a webpage that will also require constant updating. You could have yourself a great source of professionally written content for as long as they need website updates.
Well that concludes my series on finding Cheap Content. As a Big Dumb Marketer, we need to rely our our cunning to get things done, and now you should be equipped with the cunning and know how to get yourself some great cheap content.
As a little bonus to this series, I would like to talk a little bit about how you can use your new content, and even recoup some of the costs you may have incurred for it. Check back soon.
Until next time, The Big Dumb Marketer, signing out.
2 Free Interviews - Aaron Wall and Joel Comm
Jonathan Leger was kind enough to post a couple of great interviews he did with two very well known marketers a while back. I believe Jonathan posted these 2 interviews back around February of this year, but they are still up and they are definitely worth the read. Aaron Wall and Joel Comm are both very successful and good at what they do, and if you are a Big Dumb Marketer like me, you will enjoy hearing these two smart guys share some wisdom.
Aaron Wall Interview - http://www.jonathanleger.com/chat/AaronWallInterviewChat.pdf
Joel Comm Interview - http://jonathanleger.com/chat/joelcomm_trans.php
Until next time, Big Dumb Marketer signing out.
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