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How Much Should You Spend on Marketing?

Evan Carmichael — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:17:52 +0000

This post brought to you by American Express Canada. They have recently launched their Amex for Business Canada Facebook Page where you can access the latest news, information and resources for Canadian entrepreneurs.

When I was at the Dx3 show last month at the American Express booth I asked for your questions and received over 100 comments! There’s only so much you can write in a Facebook reply so I thought I’d take one of the questions from GMG Public Relations and turn it into a blog post.

The question was:

“Evan, what do you recommend as the formula for figuring out how much a company should spend on marketing each year? Percentage of gross sales? If so, how much?”

My quick reply was:

“Good question! Especially for entrepreneurs, we need to make sure our marketing investments pay off. Those are hard earned dollars! So for me I don’t look at a percentage, I look at roi. If it’s making more than I’m spending including my time, then I keep doing it and increase my budget. The key is tracking everything and knowing what’s performing for you.”

Let me now expand:

The purpose of marketing is to get more people to know about your company and buy your products or services. Each dollar you invest into marketing should yield more than a dollar in business and should be profitable for you after you deduct your costs of doing business.

Measure Your Marketing

Always ask new customers how they found out about your business so you know what’s working for you and what isn’t.

It’s important that any money you spend on marketing is measured so you can determine what your return on investment is.

If you’re buying pay per click ads, set up goals in your analytics software to see exactly how many sales are being generated. If you’re taking out an ad in the newspaper, direct people to a landing page so you can track how many people who see your ad end up becoming customers.

Always ask new customers how they found out about your business so you know what’s working for you and what isn’t.

Measure Beyond the First Sale

Figure out the lifetime value of your clients for each marketing channel.

For those entrepreneurs who do measure their results, many of them only track the first sale. As you get more of a track record with your business it’s important to track the lifetime value of your clients for each marketing method you use.

For example, do people you meet at trade shows end up buying more often from you and stay loyal to your business for years? Do people who find you from online searches only buy from you once and never come back?

The more data you have about your customers and how they found you, the easier it is to make decisions as to where you should spend your marketing dollars. Figure out the lifetime value of your clients for each marketing channel and you’re on your way to attracting ideal customers who will stay with you for the long term.

How Much Should You Spend?

Figure out your costs of doing business and what the minimum return you need from your marketing dollars is to make it profitable.

Some people will suggest spending a certain percentage of your sales on marketing. They’ll say you need to spend anywhere from 3% up to 20% of your revenues on promoting your business.

My answer is: it depends.

Looking for an exact number is an easy way out. It often forces entrepreneurs to spend money and not measure their results, which leads to a lot of money being wasted.

My suggestion would be to figure out your costs of doing business and what the minimum return you need from your marketing dollars is to make it profitable.

For example, you might need to get a $4 return from sales for every $1 you spend on marketing to cover your costs to produce your product or service.

How much do you spend on marketing? If it’s making you $4 or more then do it and keep spending more. Increase your budget if you can handle the business because it’s profitable for you. If you’re not getting that minimum $4 return, stop. It’s as simple as that.

This is your hard earned money and you deserve to keep as much of it as you can.

Start With Small Tests

Start small, bootstrap, and hustle when you’re launching any new campaign.

Whenever you’re starting a new marketing campaign, start small and test immediately.

Interested in seeing if online advertising will work for your business? Start with $500 and see if you can get a return on it. It’s not too hard to find $100 Google AdWords credits for first time advertisers so you’re a fifth of the way there!

Can trade shows help boost your sales? Partner up with someone who is already going and see if you can get a part of their booth instead of dropping thousands of dollars on your own. See if you’re getting a response from people and then you can make an educated decision on future trade shows.

I hate spending money until I’m making money and there’s a lot of ways to spend spend spend on marketing without getting a return.

Start small, bootstrap, and hustle when you’re launching any new campaign. Test the results, tweak your campaigns to optimize their performance, and make sure you’re getting a return on investment on every marketing dollar you spend!

Good luck and also don’t forget to check out the Amex for Business Canada Page!

Photo Credit weddingssc1

3 Success Tips from Guy Laliberté (Cirque du Soleil founder)

Evan Carmichael — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:07:53 +0000

My name is Evan Carmichael and welcome to a special video post brought to you by American Express Canada. They have recently launched their Amex for Business Canada Facebook Page where you can access the latest news, information and resources for Canadian entrepreneurs.

I believe that the fastest and most effective way to build a business is to model the strategies of people who have already done what you’re trying to do. I call it Modeling the Masters.

Today we’re going to look at how a young entrepreneur went from performing in the streets and sleeping on park benches to becoming a billionaire who plays high stakes poker and is a space tourist in his spare time. This is the story of Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté and the top 3 lessons that you can learn from his success.

Must Watch Video

“I bet everything on one night. If we failed, there was no cash for gas to come home.” – Guy Laliberté

Guy Laliberté, (born September 2, 1959) is a Canadian entrepreneur, philanthropist, poker player, space tourist and the founder of Cirque du Soleil. When Laliberté was 18 years old he left Canada for Europe to become a street performer. He played traditional Canadian music on an accordion with a hat for donations and slept on a park bench by night. He also met other street performers who taught him how to breath fire, juggle, perform magic, and walk on stilts before returning home.

Unable to find a 9-5 job back home, he started a business that would create large-scale street shows. After 3 years of successful shows in 13 Canadian cities, Laliberté wanted to get bigger. In 1987 his company was booked as the opening act for the Los Angeles Arts Festival. He spent all the money he had to get to Los Angeles and prepare for the show. If it didn’t work out he’d have to perform on the streets to get gas money to go home. Luckily for him the gamble paid off – his performance received standing ovations and ticket sales came flying in.

With an estimated net worth of US$2.5 billion, Laliberté was ranked by Forbes in 2011 as the 11th wealthiest Canadian and 459th in the world. In 2006, Laliberté was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and his company now employs over 5,000 people – not bad for a hustling entrepreneur who started off sleeping on park benches because he couldn’t afford to pay rent.

Action Item #1: Have a Greater Purpose

Is your goal to make a lot of money or to change the way something is done? If you look at the most successful entrepreneurs in the world you’ll find that they started their businesses to have an impact. Sure they had to make money, but it wasn’t their primary objective. Strangely enough, if money is your only goal then it rarely comes to you but when you focus on a greater purpose you’re much more likely to become successful.

Laliberté’s goal isn’t to make money; it’s to touch people – even if it’s only for a few hours on a single day. He goes to great lengths to help people open their imagination, be awed like a child, and see the world in a slightly different way. He transformed the circus industry from being large-scale amusement park shows designed to make people laugh to a full out experience that expose people to new cultures and ideas.

According to Laliberté, “We are in a position of financial and social power, and we could be agents of change in our society. Without pretension, I believe we could be a nice little gardener who takes care of the garden, and hopefully our neighbor will do the same. Then, maybe we’ll achieve a better world… Inside every adult there’s still a child that lingers. We’re happiness merchants – giving people the opportunity to dream like children.”

Action Item #2: Foster a Creative Workplace

Very few entrepreneurs can’t benefit from an influx of creativity into their businesses. When you and your team and creative, you’re coming up with new ways to solve problems, unique products and services to sell, and interesting ideas to fuel your future success. Think about your own success. Did you have your best ideas when you were in a creative space or when you were stressed out and overworked?

Laliberté believes that if you create a creative place to work, you’ll be rewarded with unique ideas that will help grow your business. He’s resisted the urge many entrepreneurs have to go public because he wanted to prevent shareholder pressure for short-term profits. He also invests 40 percent of profits back into research and development, twice the average for his industry. His hands-off management style allows his team to be as creative as possible without his interference and he only provides feedback in the final phases of production.

According to Laliberté, “I believe that the profits will come from the quality of your creative products… Business is difficult. But it could be approached two ways: Seriously, or with the same way you’re doing your job, with entertainment aspect, with pleasure, with fun. And we decided to try to make it as fun that we do our creativity… I believe in nurturing creativity and offering a haven for creators, enabling them to develop their ideas to the fullest… We are each but a quarter note in a grand symphony.”

Action Item #3: Take Risks

It almost goes hand in hand that to be an entrepreneur you have to take some risks. You’re venturing into the unknown and are creating new products and services. But when you’re betting on yourself then there’s no better investment in the world. If you commit to seeing things through until you reach your goal you’ll have the confidence to take the necessary risks and move mountains to accomplish your vision.

Laliberté isn’t afraid to take risks. He attributes this quality to his early years as a street performer where he had to be creative and daring to stand out and to survive. His first big risk was to change the way a circus was run. Gone were the dancing bears and lion tamers. He would create an animal-free circus. He then introduced the concept of having a permanent show. How could a circus survive without travelling? Laliberté would show them. He continued to bet on himself believing that the risks would pay off and he was right.

According to Laliberté, “We’re not afraid of risking what was our success yesterday in order to explore some new field. We’re adventurous. We like the challenge of unknown territory, unknown artistic field, and that’s what stimulates us… I have seen many successful people fail after they start fearing they might lose what they have built. [We stop growing] if we start being afraid of taking risks and if we start diminishing our creative pertinence. We should always aim at doing more-creative endeavors, not in terms of volume but in terms of more creativity and more sharing… I don’t believe in pitfalls. I believe in taking risks and not doing the same thing twice.”

True Story

Laliberté understands the importance of getting the right people for his company. Once a year, Cirque du Soleil engages in a hiring campaign to bring new and freshly energized talent on board. For 16 weeks, anywhere between 60 and 70 candidates from around the world are gathered together to be tested. Pushed to their limits, Cirque encourages candidates to do things they probably have never done before, evaluating not only their core competencies, but also their values, generosity, courage, teamwork and problem solving skills. Laliberté wants to hire people who are risk-takers, just like himself, and who fit with the company’s core values.

More Quotes

“It was live or die in L.A. And we bet everything on one night.”

“If you want to be good you have to connect with the best people.”

“Today, the dream is the same: I still want to travel, I still want to entertain, and I most certainly still want to have fun.”

What Do You Think?

Does your company have a greater purpose? Are you afraid to take risks? What part of Guy Laliberté’s message impacted you the most? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!

Evan Carmichael

To learn more check out my list of Guy Laliberté articles. Also don’t forget to check out the Amex for Business Canada Page!

5 Tips on Managing Your Cash Flow

Evan Carmichael — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:09:11 +0000

Today’s post is brought to you by American Express Canada. They recently launched the Amex for Business Canada Facebook Page so if you’ve liked my posts and videos in the past, please check out it out and let me know what you think.

Today’s post is on cash flow management. You can run a profitable company but still go out of business because of poor cash flow management. Cash flow is all about when money comes in and when money goes out. If you’re paying too much money out before money comes in then you’re flirting with danger.

Here are my top 5 tips to help you manage your cash flow:

1) Project your cash flow

Try to map out for the year when you expect money to come in and when it’s going to go out. The regular monthly expenses are easy to predict but you don’t want to get caught off guard by large, annual expenses that can sink your company. Government taxes, insurance, and equipment upgrades are three examples of annual costs which, if you don’t project and prepare for, can leave you scrambling last minute to come up with extra cash.

2) Try to get recurring revenue

The Holy Grail for many businesses is recurring revenue. If you’re trying to get investors into your company, one of the things they’ll look at is if your business model allows for recurring revenue. Having clients pay you on a regular basis makes it easier to plan your expenses and also helps reduce your stress levels! Try to move as many clients as you can to a subscription model where they make regular payments every month for the product /service that you are giving them. It doesn’t work for every business but you may be able to add on additional services that can be recurring revenue streams and bring in some money. That way, if you end up in a cash crunch you’ll be better prepared.

3) Follow up on your accounts receivable

How long does it take for your clients to pay you? The easiest way to inject instant money into your company is to call up everyone who owes you and ask them to pay their bills. Over the long term you should consider eliminating clients who take too long to pay if they don’t change their ways. You can also offer incentives for clients to pay earlier either through a price discount or a value added product or service.

4) Keep an emergency fund

When you’re first starting up, all the money you make goes back into your business. After you get past the point of worrying if you’ll survive or not, you should start an emergency fund. This is money that you have on hand to get you through a cash crunch if you have an unexpected expense or your revenues fall short of projections. The common rule of thumb is to have three months worth of expenses in an emergency fund so you can continue running your business and pay your staff and suppliers while you get through the crisis.

5) Cut unnecessary expenses

It’s good practice to review your expenses every month or quarter to see if there’s anything you’re paying for that you don’t really need. Look especially hard at the recurring expenses and if you have staff, dig deep into their expenses with them. Are you still using everything on your expense list and getting good value in return? If you do a quarterly check you can almost always find at least one thing that you subscribed to and no longer really need. It’s too easy to sign up for something and forget about it – make sure you examine those expenses regularly and cut out the ones you don’t use.

Bonus: Negotiate with suppliers

The common wisdom around cash flow management is to negotiate better terms with your suppliers – either try to pay less or stretch out the time period so you can pay them later.

I usually disagree with this advice.

If your supplier is a large company and when you call in they can only find you if you give them your customer number, then fine – negotiate the heck out of everything you buy from them. Usually the big guys dictate the terms though and there’s very little wiggle room once you’re in a signed contract.

If on the other hand, your other suppliers are medium-sized companies, solo entrepreneurs, or self-employed contractors, these guys will feel the pain if you squeeze them too hard.

I’m a big believer in building loyalty with all of my contractors and suppliers. I rarely take the lowest price and I almost never negotiate terms. I want them to be part of my team and think of ways to make my business better. I want them to be loyal and love working with my company.

It’s not only a lot more fun working with people you like working with, it makes sure that they deliver the best quality product or service that they can – and if you ever have an urgent problem they’re going to bend over backwards to help you.

I usually pay my suppliers and contractors as soon as they send me an invoice even if they have 30 day terms attached. It might cost you a little more upfront but if you have suppliers who love working with you and feel like they’re a part of your team, you’re on your way to building a company that will be able to get through any crisis.

Once again, today’s post is brought to you by American Express Canada. They recently launched the Amex for Business Canada Facebook Page so if you’ve liked my posts and videos in the past, please check out it out and let me know what you think.

My Favourite Book for Strategic Vision – Ask Evan

Evan Carmichael — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:09:09 +0000

Must Watch Video

Hi I’m Evan Carmichael and welcome to a special video edition of Ask Evan. Today’s post is brought to you by American Express Canada. They have just launched an exciting new contest on their Amex for Business Canada Facebook Page where you can enter for the chance to win $10,000 and a consultation with Facebook Canada but I’ll talk more about that at the end of the video.

Today I’m going to answer a question from one of my readers, Ahmed, who asked for a recommendation on my favourite books for strategic vision:

Evan,

Can you help by recommending books to me which talk about competitive intelligence or strategic vision?

Thanks for your concern.

Ahmed.

Thanks for the question Ahmed. If you haven’t already seen my page of my favourite books you should check it out!

My favourite book for strategic vision would be Radicals & Visionaries by Thaddeus Wawro. The book highlights the stories and advice from over 70 famous entrepreneurs. I’m a strong believer in modeling success so whatever challenges you’re facing right now with your business, there’s a good chance that at least one of these entrepreneurs had to overcome it as well.

Here are three of my favourite profiles that I hope you can learn from:

1) Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com

“Our vision is to be the world’s most consumer-centric company, where customers can come to find anything they want to buy online.”

If you’re looking for a visionary and someone who disrupted his competition, Jeff Bezos is a great person to model. At age 30, Bezos was already senior vice president at a Wall Street investment bank. He was making a six figure salary and was on the fast track to corporate success.

In 1994, he saw that the Internet was growing at 2,300% a month and wanted to capitalize on it by launching his own business. He made a list of 20 potential products to sell and settled on books. He realized that physical bookstores could only carry a limited amount of titles, giving him a huge advantage online. He launched Amazon.com in 1995 with over 1 million titles and called it “Earth’s Biggest Book Store.”

Today the company has over $34 billion in sales, thanks in large part to Bezos’ unrelenting vision to focus on customer satisfaction. He’s constantly monitoring trends and following his customers into new markets which have fueled the company’s growth.

2) Ray Kroc, McDonald’s

“The definition of salesmanship is the gentle art of letting the customer have it your way.”

Ray Kroc was a milkshake machine salesman and, as he approached his 50th birthday, had a successful career in sales by paying personal attention to his clients.

When he met with the McDonald brothers to sell them his milkshake makers he was impressed with how they ran their restaurant. He crafted a vision where they could go from a single location into a national chain. When they told him that they weren’t interested in doing it themselves, they sold their business to Kroc and let him run with it.

Today, McDonald’s is the world’s largest fast food company with sales of over $24 billion. To think that it all began with a single restaurant location that wasn’t even his to start with is a testament to the visionary qualities that Kroc possessed.

3) William Hewlett and David Packard

“What I’m most proud of is the fact that we really create a way to work with employees, let them share in the profits, and still keep control of it.”

Bill and Dave started their business with $538 in a small garage behind Packard’s house. They flipped a coin whether to call the company Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

As the business grew, they became known for the sensitivity they showed towards the people working for them. HP became the first company to offer flexible hours and profit-sharing. They gave their staff more autonomy and created open offices to break down barriers between management and employees. Their philosophies became known as the “HP Way” and have been used as a model for generations of companies since.

Today, Hewlett-Packard has revenues of over $126 billion and Hewlett and Packard are considered two of the most respected businessmen in the country. It all started with $538, a garage, a passion for tinkering with electronics, and a desire to build a company where everyone could take pride in what they were doing.

Summary

I hope that helps Ahmed! These are just a few of the stories that are highlighted in this book. There are over 70 profiles that you can draw inspiration and ideas from so I hope you go pick it up!

Thank you for joining me for another edition of Ask Evan. This post was brought to you by American Express Canada. Now I promised at the start of the video that I’d share with you the details about the Take Off With American Express Facebook contest. Here’s the deal. They’re looking to reward a Canadian business owner with a $10,000 cash prize and a 1 on 1 consultation with Facebook Canada to help reach more customers online. To enter, all you have to do is visit their Amex for Business Canada Facebook page and tell them where you’d like to take your business. Good luck and stay tuned for the next episode!

Evan.

3 Seldom-Used Ways to Convince Investors to Put Money into Your Business – Ask Evan

Evan Carmichael — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:01:41 +0000

Must Watch Video

Hi I’m Evan Carmichael and welcome to a special video edition of Ask Evan. Today’s post is brought to you by American Express Canada. They have just launched a new Facebook page called Amex for Business Canada so if you’ve liked my videos in the past, please check out their page and let me know what you think.

Alright, so today I’m going to answer a question from one of my readers Vinit who wrote in asking:

Dear Evan,

The problem for me is that I am an undergraduate and my total experience is approx. 24 months. The biggest problem for me is to make a business plan for investors and then convince them about my capability. Have a great day and thanks again for the information.

Regards, Vinit.

Thanks for the question Vinit – here are my thoughts for you:

1) Get Some Sales

Before I started EvanCarmichael.com I was in the venture capital business and looked at more business plans than I can remember. Most business plans get rejected right on the spot and you don’t get a chance to even come in and present your case.

The plans might have been poorly written, the idea might not have been interesting enough, or we had serious doubts about the entrepreneur’s capability of being able to make this a success.

One of the best ways to stand out from everyone else is to achieve sales. Just get one person to buy from you and show investors that people are willing to actually pay you for what you do and you’ll separate yourself from 90% of the other entrepreneurs who are pitching their ideas.

You don’t have to be making a lot of money but proof that someone is willing to buy your products or services is a great first step to establishing credibility with potential investors.

2) Build an Advisory Board

After the executive summary, one of the first places an investor will turn to in your business plan is your management team. They want to know who they are potentially investing in and what kind of experience you have.

The less experience you and your team have, the harder it will be to convince investors to give you money.

One way around this is to build an advisory board. Talk to people who do have experience and ask them if they’d be willing to be your advisors. They’re not liable like they would be if they were on your Board of Directors and the compensation for their advice is up to you. Often advisors are willing to join because they are excited about the future of your company and they don’t ask for any immediate compensation.

Being able to show that you have a solid team of advisors will go a long way to boosting your credibility and increase the chances of you getting the money you’re looking for.

3) Pass the Grandmother Test

There’s an expression within the venture capital industry around if your executive summary and business plan passes the grandmother test. In other words, would your grandmother understand the opportunity if you gave your business plan to her?

Remember that most investors are generalists. They’ll know a little bit about your industry but they won’t know it as well as you do. Too many entrepreneurs fill their business plans with jargon, complex industry terms and tech-speak, so much so that investors have a hard time understanding what their companies are all about.

If an investor can’t read your executive summary once and immediately understand what the opportunity is, then your business plan is going straight into the garbage and they’re moving on to the next opportunity. Make sure you show your plan to people who do not know your market and see if they can understand it before you start pitching investors. Pass the grandmother test!

Summary

I hope that helps Vinit! Remember if you want to increase your credibility with investors and improve the chances of them investing in your business:

1) Get some sales

2) Build an advisory board

3) Pass the grandmother test

Thank you for joining me for another edition of Ask Evan.

This post was brought to you by the Amex for Business Canada Facebook page. If you liked this video please check out their page and let me know what you think. I’d also be grateful if you leave a comment below.

Stay tuned for the next episode!

Evan.

How To Grow Your Business On A $0 Advertising Budget – Ask Evan

Evan Carmichael — Tue, 31 May 2011 19:20:38 +0000

Today’s post comes from a Facebook Page reader Angela who asked me how I grew my business without spending any money on advertising. I created this video to better explain what steps I took and how you can model what I did to reach your own success.

This post and video is sponsored by SAGE Simply Accounting’s Business Resource Centre. They offer a variety of helpful resources, tools, information and solutions to help you better understand the accounting and financial side of your business. If you’re having a hard time making sure you have enough money coming into your business, a good place to start would be their article on cash flow management: Better Manage Your Cash Flow: Top Ten Tips.

If you have any questions or want me to make a video about a different tool that I recommend, leave a comment below and let me know!

Video (click to play)

Transcript

Hi I’m Evan Carmichael and welcome to a special video edition of ask Evan. Today I am going to answer a question of one of my readers Angela who asked me how I grew my business without spending any money on advertising?

Angela’s question comes from our Facebook page. I recently posted a list here of my favorite tools and these are tools that I use to run my business and she loved the comment saying Under the “Growing Your Business” portion, I have to wonder with regard to marketing your brand, is that it? Certainly, I found you via a link from another website, with the right hook to reel me in, I found an attractive & useful website to keep me hooked, I opted for the emailed newsletter because I wanted more, and liked you on Facebook for real-time daily reinforcement of positive, inspiring stories. It doesn’t seem to me at all like you’ve wasted thousands on any advertising! Am I correct? My employer put me in charge of building our web presence, and we don’t have a big budget, nor do I have much time for this, as I have other responsibilities, but your formula here seems simple- and it works! Please advise if I’ve missed something here… You are a beacon! I truly value what you are doing!.

Well, first of all Angela thank you for the kind words. I replied below Angela, my advertising budget is $0 – everything has been done through SEO, social media, and the media and by the media I mean offline traditional media and I thought to create this quick video to expand on that a little bit more and show you exactly how I have built my business without having to spend any money on advertising. So here we go.

#1: SEO

The first thing I recommend is to make smart use of SEO. SEO is great because it drives targeted traffic to your website and it is people who are looking to solve a problem. They have searched in a keyword because they have a problem and hopefully you can help solve it but SEO starts with having really good content. So you have to think about the content that you are going to have on your site to start driving some of that traffic. When I first started my site, I was writing all the content and I really started around doing these famous entrepreneur profiles.

So here is one example of Anita Roddick who is the founder of the Body Shop and I would start writing some of this content because I found that inspiring and then one of the reasons that my business was able to grow is I delegated some of those responsibilities when I realized I can only do so much in terms of content creation. I ended up hiring somebody to help me create these famous entrepreneur profiles and now we have the largest collection of famous entrepreneur profiles online and you can see some of the people who have profiles here on this side. We then opened it up to allow in other experts who were able to write and contribute to the site and we created an article directory here where there are all these different categories and people can contribute content. If you’re a business coach you can add articles to our website that deal with business coaching and show off your expertise. Each one will get manually reviewed by an admin of our team and then we will allow if it helps improve people’s business.

You want to start thinking about the types of content that you can add to your site on a regular basis and what you can do yourself, what you might be able to do with other people on your team and then also potentially people outside your team, how they might be able to contribute content to your website.

So you have try to find ways to give incentives to people who want to contribute content to the site so it is not just you doing everything. This works especially well if you are time crunched and if you have other responsibilities like you mentioned so you want to make sure you can get other people involved and you want to find the incentive to do so. You don’t have to go and create a huge content site like mine but you want to think about how you can add regular content to your website.

A quick example that I can show is through my blog and on the blog you will see that I have created a whole bunch of content myself and I write on a regular basis still talking about famous entrepreneurs like my post: 5 gutsiest entrepreneur launches of all time. But then I will also get some help and will do infographics so these are pictures describing articles. We’ll do lists of top 50 blogs in a certain category and this I have outsourced to people on my team and we’ll also do interviews. So here we have an interview with Stan Prokup, another interview down here with Brad Swift, who are both experts and authors on my website and that is a great way to get content on to your website without you having to do a lot of work so you are basically asking questions and hopefully it is content that be relevant to your readers and it is a great way to generate that content and start driving traffic to your website.

So you want to start thinking about the types of content that you can add to your site on a regular basis and what you can do yourself, what you might be able to do with other people on your team and then also potentially people outside your team, how they might be able to contribute content to your website.

#2: Social Media

SEO helped drive a lot of traffic to my website. We had millions of entrepreneurs check it out over the years but now most of my time I spend actually on the social media side and I really enjoy this way to connect with entrepreneurs at a more personal level and try to build relationships with some of the people who are checking out your site – that can be a little challenging through just a SEO presence.

One of the first things you want to do after you set up your accounts, I spend most of my time on Twitter or Facebook and YouTube, you want to make it really easy for people to be able to find you and follow you on different accounts. At the top of all of my pages, you see I have a banner that looks like this. It has my blog, my tweets, my Facebook, my YouTube videos and those are my tools so you can easily find me depending on if you are more of a Twitter person, Facebook or YouTube. You want to make that really obvious for people. I find it is really helpful if you keep to a posting schedule and come up with ideas of what you are going to be able to talk about.

I tend to focus on the business side of things. I am not posting about my dog or what I am eating for breakfast but high value things that I think entrepreneurs would be interested in and find inspirational and you can see a mix of things that I post. If I click on my Twitter account, you will see that I may thank them, make few personal responses to people who have enjoyed my tweets, I post links of things that I enjoy, and some videos that I am working on. I will post quotes from famous entrepreneurs that I think are inspiring and I will usually post one to three times a day so it is not over load for people and people are not subscribing and re tweeting. It is a great way to start building connections with people who are talking about you and you want to encourage those people because they are out there telling all their friends about you, so you want to recognize them, give them the opportunity to tell even more people.

The point here of the newsletter and social media is to start building that relationship with people, you become known as the expert for whatever category you are in and a trusted resource and whenever somebody needs help they are going to come back to you to hopefully buy your service or sign up for your products or whatever it is that eventually you are able to make money from.

On my Facebook channel I will do similar things. Facebook is really good for pictures, so one of the things I have done is I take pictures of people who I am meeting with and I will put them in here, I will profile them and put a link back to their site. I will also show things such as what I am reading and I’ll ask a question of the week. I ask a question every week and get a lot of replies and it is a really great way again to connect with your community and followers and be able to follow up with them on individual basis so you want to empower your champions. You will never find out about these people normally through your SEO.

Finally YouTube is where I spend a lot of time as well and I try to create videos on ongoing basis. So here is my YouTube channel and you can see some of the videos that we have launched. If I click on see all, it will show all of them and it will show that they get some good views and they get some good comments and it is again a great way to connect with people. I try to reply to every comment that gets put up on my video and as people gives a thumb up and leave comments on it again you know, hopefully they are telling their friends and they are coming back to the site and you are trying to encourage them to be a little more sticky with the website than just come in read, one piece of content and take off.

Another great way to encourage this is through a newsletter and that is how a lot of people end up sticking on my website. I have got over here an option on all of my pages to sign up to join my newsletter and here I will send them weekly tips and advice, I’m not really selling products here but more offering value add information I think is inspiring and helpful and that is a great way to get people to come back to your site so somebody who lands on your website may be interested in something but then they go somewhere else, you may not ever get them back again so if you have a newsletter and a great way to get them to sign up to join the newsletter then you have a way to stay in touch with them.

Offer them deals, give them high value information but the point here of the newsletter and social media is to start building that relationship with people, you become known as the expert for whatever category you are in and a trusted resource and whenever somebody needs help they are going to come back to you to hopefully buy your service or sign up for your products or whatever it is that eventually you are able to make money from.

#3: Offline Media

The last point I want to talk about is the use of offline media and offline media is still very powerful I think in the online world because there are online entrepreneurs but you still want to be able to hopefully use some offline media to generate some awareness about your business and showcase yourself as expert. So I loved doing offline media. If you check out my about page. I have created a page that shows some of the media coverage that I have done. I have been fortunate to get a number of pretty high profile media coverage and you want to showcase that you are an expert so whatever industry you are in you better be good at it if you are going to become an entrepreneur and be successful. Why not expose your expertise to the media and be able comment on stories as they come out? What I have done is highlighted some of the media that I have been involved with and then show at the bottom if want to interview me here is my email address.

What I did was when I was first getting started was I made a list of all the different media lists that I could think of and started to go through one by one and find entrepreneur related news reporters who were at those media outlets and I would draft a new press release every two weeks and send it out. Every time I did that I would always get some kind of reply from somebody and the key here is when you do a press release you don’t want to just focus on you, right, you are not focusing on a product or service you are launching because people don’t care about that. You want to pitch a story and then you want to showcase your expertise in answering questions about that story and then at the bottom is where I can a get a little bit more self promotional because they want to say you are expert from whatever company.

The more you can make it a story, the easier it is for reporters to be able to write about you and if you make their job easier, they are more likely to do it.

The more you can make it a story, the easier it is for reporters to be able to write about you and if you make their job easier, they are more likely to do it. If you think about your experience between advertising and getting featured in a news story, I take news story hands down every time. If you think about your own experience reading a magazine for example, do you spend more time reading the ad or do you spend more time reading the editorial or the stories? Now which one costs less? Obviously getting in the media can be really cheap compared to taking out advertising so it takes a little bit of time to do it. You’ve got to really think about your stories but I found that to be super helpful in helping me be able to get into a lot of different media.

One of the tools I also recommend on my tools page that help me is a service called PR leads and that should be somewhere here. Right here, so under the grow your business section, there is a service called PR leads and this is where reporters will actually submit their stories that they are working on and they are looking for experts. Now there is a cost to this, it is $99 a month and I have used it to get into New York Times and Forbes and some other leading publications which that looks really good for your company.

You can put that on your website that now you have been a featured expert for whatever publication and once that starts everybody else starts coming. If you get into one publication, you will start getting calls from others and others and others and it starts to snowball until you become the expert, the guru for whatever industry that you are in. So I found offline media to be highly effective as well in helping me drive business to my website and me not having to spend any money on advertising.

Thank you for joining me for another edition of Ask Evan. I hope you enjoyed the video and I encourage you to continue using SEO, social media and offline media to grow your business. Let me know if you have any questions. If you liked the video, I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please give a thumbs up below and also leave a comment as well and stay tuned for next episode.

Thank you again to SAGE Simply Accounting and their Business Resource Centre for sponsoring this post. Stay tuned for more great content and updates that will be coming to the site in the next few months!

The Top 50 Social Media Blogs Of 2010

Evan Carmichael — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:32:57 +0000

In today’s economy, it is not enough anymore for businesses to have just an email address or customer service number on its website. Customers want to engage with companies in new andauthentic ways, and thanks to social media, now they can. From Facebook to Twitter, businesses that embrace social media are finding their new transparency rewarded with new and deeper client relationships. So just how can entrepreneurs make the most of these new tools? Check out the Top 50 Social Media Blogs To Of 2010 to hear what some of the industry’s leading voices have to say. You can also view last year’s list here.

Social Media News

Pete Cashmore, Mashable

1) Mashable!
http://mashable.com/ -Founded in 2005, Mashable is the top source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture. With more than 30 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific news site reporting breaking web news, providing analysis of trends, reviewing new Web sites and services, and offering social media resources and guides.

2) ReadWriteWeb
http://www.readwriteweb.com/- ReadWriteWeb is a popular blog that provides Web Technology news, reviews and analysis, covering web apps, web technology trends, social networking and social media. It has a large and highly influential readership, and is one of the world’s top 20 most popular blogs according to Technorati.

3) The Next Web

http://thenextweb.com/ – The Next Web launched in January 2008 as a spin off to The Next Web Conference. It features technology news from across the world, highlights on quality startups, and Internet trends to watch out for.

4) SmartBlog on Social Media

http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia – Designed for marketers and decision makers who need to stay ahead of social networking trends, SmartBrief on Social Media is a free daily newsletter. It delivers hard-to-find news on creative social marketing campaigns, technology, research, and best practices.

5) Online Social Media

http://www.onlinesocialmedia.net – Online Social Media was started with the specific aim to provide readers with news focused exclusively on Social Media, and Web 2.0 technology. They report on new Social Media services and Web sites, publish breaking news and offer social media guides and resources.

6) Social Media SEO

http://socialmediaseo.net/- SMSEO covers news and information that is relevant right now, from expanding on news that people are searching for to the latest technology, gadgets, and mobile devices along with anything that interests author Robert Holland at the moment.

7) Social Media News http://fastgush.com/ – Fastgush.com provides Social media news, Web tips, Entrepreneurship articles and everything to do with the latest on web. Started in only April, 2010, fastgush has garnered tremendous response from the reader community a small amount of time.

Social Media In Action

Darren Rowse, TwiTip

8) TwiTip
http://www.twitip.com/ – Written by Darren Rowse, the mastermind behind ProBlogger and Digital Photography School, TwiTip is about capturing some of the lessons that he and others have been learning about Twitter and how to use it more effectively. It covers Twitter Tips of all varieties including Writing for Twitter, Branding, Growing a Following, Corporate Tweeting and more.

9) All Facebook

http://www.allfacebook.com – AllFacebook.com is a blog that was started by Nick O’Neill. The purpose of the blog is to cover all issues pertaining to Facebook including new applications, general news, and analysis about the future of Facebook. It is an exciting time in the world of social media and social networking and it is his job to cover all of it in relation to Facebook.

Social Media Personalities

Chris Brogan

10) Chris Brogan
http://chrisbrogan.com/ – Chris Brogan is an eleven year veteran of using social media and both web and mobile technologies to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Chris speaks, blogs, writes articles, and makes media of all kinds at chrisbrogan.com, a blog in the top 5 of the Advertising Age Power150, and in the top 100 on Technorati.

11) Chris Pirillo
http://chris.pirillo.com/ – Chris Pirillo has been participating in Internet conversations since 1992. He is a personality in whom tech enthusiasts trust to answer questions and lead discussions. Get your questions answered here!

12) Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang
http://www.web-str ategist.com/blog – As a Web Strategist, Jeremiah Owyang strives to deliver insight on disruptive technologies and their impact on how companies mcommunicate with their customers. He’s been writing this blog since 1996, and it’s recognized as a top analyst blog within the industry.

13) Danny Brown
http://dannybrown.me/ – Co-founder and partner at Bonsai Interactive, Danny Brown offers social media, digital and mobile marketing solutions and applications. His blog is featured in the AdAge Power 150 list as well as Canada’s Top 50 Marketing Blogs, and won the Hive Award for Best Social Media Blog at the 2010 South by South West festival.

14) Social Wayne
http://www.socialwayne.com/- The Social Wayne blog covers: Blogging, Social Media, Location Based Services, Marketing, Gadgets, Social Networks, Events and Mobile Technology from the ever popular Wayne Sutton.

15) Matt Singley
http://mattsingley.com/blog/ - When a company knows that they need to be in the conversation that is happening online but they don’t know how to do it or what that even means, Matt Singley and his team step in. His blog will help you to understand and use the new tools that are available online, and not only get into the conversation, but teach you how to leverage and guide it.

16) Kyle Lacy
http://kylelacy.com/ – Recognized both locally and globally for his knowledge of social media, Kyle Lacy writes a regular blog at KyleLacy.com and has been featured on the AdAge 150, Wall Street Journal Online and ranked on over five global blog lists.

17) Gwen Bell
http://www.gwenbell.com/blog/ – Gwen Bell is equal parts Social Web Strategist and Discovery Agent. She teaches technologists how to unplug. She wellness professionals and entrepreneurs wanting to be online bring real presence to the Web do so.

18) Chris Garrett on New Media
http://www.chrisg.com/- Chrisg.com is where Chris posts daily (or thereabouts) thoughts and advice on the business of new media, blogging and online marketing. The aim is to teach you ways you can create compelling resources, provide your audience more value, build trust and loyalty, and generate more rewards for yourself.

Social Media Marketing

Lee Odden, Top Rank Blog

19) Top Rank Blog
http://www.toprankblog.com/ – Since December 2003, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has provided insights, resources and commentary on a range of digital marketing and public relations topics including: Search engine marketing and optimization, Social media marketing, Business blogging and marketing, and Online public relations.

20) Conversation Agent

http://www.conversationagent.com/ – Conversation Agent is ranked among the top 25 marketing blogs in the world on AdAge Power150. Handpicked by Fast Company as Expert blogger, author Valeria Maltoni is on the Advisory Board of SmartBrief on Social Media and a co-author of The Age of Conversation, a groundbreaking eBook collaboration by 103 of today’s top marketing writers. Follow her advice here!

21) Social Media Marketing Strategy

http://www.jmorganmarketing.com/ – Jacob Morgan spends a good amount of time experimenting, researching, and developing ideas and concepts around social business. Jacob’s blog is ranked among the top 100 most influential marketing blogs in the world by AdAge.

22) ViperChill

http://www.viperchill.com/- ViperChill is authored by Glen Allsopp. With detailed 2,000-3,000 word posts and updated weekly, ViperChill will help you get others to spread your message for free.

23) Social Media Optimization
http://social-media-optimization.com/ – After spending the last eight years focused on search marketing, author David Wilson discovered social media marketing, and it was the solution had been searching for. His blog will give you insight into the merging of Traditional Media, SEM and Social Marketing.

24) The Social Media Marketing Blog

http://www.scottmonty.com/- Scott Monty is the head of social media at Ford Motor Company. Visit his blog for his insights and perspectives on all things social media.

25) The Future Buzz

http://thefuturebuzz.com/ – The Future Buzz is a blog about web marketing/PR strategies, spreading buzz in the blogosphere and building long-term visibility for your brand, business, and art on the web. Bloggers, marketers, freelance writers, entrepreneurs, artists, small business owners and public relations professionals will all benefit from the content here.

26) Diva Marketing

http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/ – Diva Marketing gives you a fresh approach to marketing that’s fun, bold and savvy…but always strategically aligned with your brand’s objective.

All About Blogging

Brian Clark, Copyblogger

27) Copyblogger
http://www.copyblogger.com/ – Remarkable social media content and great sales copy are pretty much the same — plain spoken words designed to focus on the needs of the reader, listener, or viewer. Want more traffic, links, subscribers, and a profit-generating website? Copyblogger gives you the solutions you need to succeed.

28) Shout Me Loud
http://www.shoutmeloud.com/ – Harsh Agrawal is a young Entrepreneur and professional blogger from New Delhi, India, who writes about Blogging, Social media, WordPress, SEO, Internet, Computer tips and tricks, Making money online, and Affiliate Marketing.

29) Kikolani

http://kikolani.com/ - Kikolani is about the art of blogging – blogging tips, social networking strategies, and other useful information to help bloggers become more successful in the art.

30) Converstations

http://www.converstations.com/ – Mike Sansone is an independent business consultant specializing in business blogs and conversational copywriting. His experience in public speaking, sales and marketing, writing, and real-time online communication are strengths Mike relies upon in his role as a Conversation Conductor.

Social Media & PR

Brian Solis, PR 2.0

31) PR 2.0
http://www.briansolis.com/- Brian Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has influenced the effects of emerging media on the convergence of marketing, communications, and publishing. BrianSolis.com is among the world’s leading business and marketing online resources.

32) PR-Squared
http://pr-squared.com/ – Todd Defren is recognized globally as a Social Media & Public Relations innovator, thinker & lecturer. His blog, PR-Squared, is routinely among the top 20 blogs on AdAge’s Power150.

Industry Insights

Duncan Riley, The Blog Herald

33) The Blog Herald
http://www.blogherald.com/- Founded by Duncan Riley in March 2003 as a premium source of blog and blogging related news for bloggers, the Blog Herald was the first blog dedicated exclusively to the news of the blogosphere and remains the longest (and largest) standing resource of its kind.

34) The FASTForward Blog
http://www.fastforwardblog.com/ – This site is a companion blog to the FASTforward conference and summit series and is sponsored by FAST, A Microsoft Subsidiary. The blog, like the conference series, aims to drive and deepen conversation about how today’s companies can use technology to place users in control of information, and is home to ongoing discussion about the user revolution and Enterprise 2.0 opportunities and challenges.

35) Neville Hobson
http://www.nevillehobson.com/ – As an influencer at the forefront of social media, author Neville Hobson works with organizations in helping them to understand the business benefits of using social media such as blogs, podcasts and RSS, determine what cultural impacts may arise from deploying social media, and create climates of trust that enable those organizations to successfully take calculated risks in using social media. Get all his advice here!

36) What’s Next Blog

http://www.whatsnextblog.com/ – Internet marketer, internationally known blogger, blog strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies including IBM and Cendant, B.L. Ochman heads the creative team of whatsnextonline.com. She also publishes the internationally respected What’s Next Blog, which gives you insights into what’s coming up in the world of social media.

37) 901am

http://www.901am.com/ – 901am.com is a blog that covers new media news, the web, and blogging. Check it first thing in the morning to get your daily hits.

38) The Buzz Bin

http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/ – The Buzz Bin provides a point of view on integrated communications, including PR, social media, interactive and general marketing topics. Topics range from strategy and tactics to news commentary and trend analysis. It’s not about being safe, it’s about pushing the envelope, thinking and, hopefully, learning.

Social Media 101

39) Social Media Explorer
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/ – Social Media Explorer is the online home and blog of Social Media Explorer LLC, Jason Falls’ consulting company. As a social media educator and strategist, Falls helps companies understand the social web and show them how engaging consumers online can help their business.

40) Social Media Influence

http://socialmediainfluence.com/ – Social Media Influence provides intelligence and analysis for business professionals looking to understand and navigate the ever-evolving world of online communication.

41) Convince and Convert
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/ – Social media isn’t a conversation, it’s where the conversation takes place. Jay Baer is a hype-free social media strategy consultant, speaker, and author that helps companies harness the awesome power of the social Web and develop those conversations.

42) Soshable
http://soshable.com/ – New ways of socializing are popping up daily. Soshable will try to keep up. By tapping into the minds and resources of some of the brightest stars and most knowledgeable people in the business, author JD Rucker wants to present the social internet on a golden platter for everyone to enjoy.

43) Instigator Blog

http://www.instigatorblog.com/ – Author Ben Yoskovitz started Instigator Blog in 2006, and with 14+ years of experience as an entrepreneur, he shares his thoughts and lessons learned on startups, entrepreneurship, and marketing.

44) Social Media Strategery

http://steveradick.com/ - “It’s not about the technology, but what the technology enables.” Or so believes Steve Radick, whose background in change management, strategic communications, and stakeholder engagement strategy and implementation means that his blog focuses not only on the technology and infrastructure aspects of social media, but perhaps more importantly, on the people and processes that really determine the success of social media and Government 2.0.

45) One Social Media
http://www.onesocialmedia.com/blog – One Social Media is a social media marketing firm with broad industry experience, a talented staff and a fresh point of view. They specialize in helping entrepreneurs use social media tools, sites and applications to connect with customers and prospects. Get all their tips here!

46) Social Media Club

http://www.socialmediaclub.org/ – Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells started Social Media Club (SMC) in March 2006 to host conversations around the globe that explore key issues facing our society as technologies transform the way we connect, communicate, collaborate and relate to each other. Social Media Club enables you explore your personal and professional passions by helping you connect with a community of your peers based on both geography and areas of interest.

47) Social Media

http://www.britopian.com/ – Author Michael Brito considers himself a student of social media and community building. He has worked for major brands in Silicon Valley (HP, Yahoo! and Intel) and was instrumental in driving social media programs and campaigns emphasizing authenticity and long-term relationship building. Get his advice on his Social Media Blog.

Social Media & Branding

Olivier Blanchard, Brand Builder

48) Brand Builder
http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/ – The BrandBuilder blog provides commentary and discussions about Brand Management best practices. Areas of focus are Corporate Communications, Product Design, Social Media, Change Management, Leadership, Customer Relations, Community Management, Measurement, Strategy and Planning, PR, Advertising, Copywriting, Brand Development, Crisis Management, Integrated Marketing, Quality Control, Customer Relations, Traditional Media, Enterprise 2.0, Mobile Marketing, and Experience Design.

49) We Are Social
http://wearesocial.net/ – We Are Social helps brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media. In their blog, you’ll better understand the impact that social media is having on your organization and the changes that need to be made as a result.

50) Brass Tack Thinking

http://www.brasstackthinking.com/ – Blogger Amber Naslund is a communications and business strategist and the Director of Community for Radian6. She’s a writer, professional speaker, community and social media strategist, and has worked with businesses of all sizes to solve business problems through better communication. Follow her on her blog, Brass Tack Thinking.

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From $0.30 to $300 / Day on Google AdSense Part 6 – How To Make Money

Evan Carmichael — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:35:23 +0000

It’s been a while since my last AdSense post so to continue with the series on From $0.30 to $300 / Day on Google AdSense here is Part 6. If you haven’t been following along or need a quick recap our Money Making Formula is $ = V x CTR x CPC. In previous posts I focused on:

V (Volume of Traffic)

CTR (Click Through Rate)

Today’s lesson is…

Get the Right Traffic

We’re still going to focus on improving your CTR for this lesson and where your visitors come from can have a dramatic effect on how much money you can make.

There are a number of ways you can drive traffic to your website including getting repeat visitors and finding new visitors through search engines, social media, and partner websites.

“It’s called banner blindness – the more people visit the same website, the more they know where the ads are, and the less likely they are to click on them.”

Repeat vs. First Time Visitors

Let’s first focus in on getting repeat versus first time visitors. Repeat visitors are more loyal, will buy more from you, will tell more people about your site, will link to you… but they won’t click on ads! It’s called banner blindness – the more people visit the same website, the more they know where the ads are, and the less likely they are to click on them.

Think about your own experience with your favorite blogs and websites. When was the last time you clicked on an ad from that site?

This is a main reason why bloggers can have a hard time making money through AdSense – it’s not that blogs themselves are not profitable, it’s that many of the visitors are returning blog subscribers and they won’t click on your ads. If you have a lot of loyal, repeat visitors then you’ll likely have a better time selling your own product or recommending other products and taking a commission because these people trust you and will listen to your recommendations whereas a first time visitor doesn’t know who you are and won’t care about your suggestions – but they will click on your ads.

If you want to make more money through AdSense, the message is simple: You need to focus on getting those first time visitors.

Not All First Time Visitors Are Created Equal

Now that we’ve established that you need to focus on first time visitors, the question becomes “What kind of traffic source should I focus on? Search engines? Social media? Partner websites?” I’ll break these down for you individually.

Social Media: There is no question that social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg can drive thousands and thousands of visitors to your website. I’ve had an article hit the homepage of Digg and it actually caused our servers to melt because we had too much traffic coming all at once.

“If you serve up too many AdSense ads that don’t get clicked, Google will stop showing high paying ads on your site so not only can social media traffic cause your website to crash, it won’t lead to a lot of clicks, and can actually reduce the quality of future ads that get shown on your site.”

Great news right? Unfortunately no… almost none of the social media traffic clicked on my AdSense ads. People who come from social media websites a) are generally very web savvy and quickly spot your ads and ignore them and b) are browsers looking for a way to kill time – they aren’t really interested in solving a problem and are unlikely to click on an ad that offers a solution to a problem.

Even worse, if you serve up too many AdSense ads that don’t get clicked, Google will stop showing high paying ads on your site so not only can social media traffic cause your website to crash, it won’t lead to a lot of clicks, and can actually reduce the quality of future ads that get shown on your site. Social media definitely has a place in your overall marketing efforts but don’t count on it to help your AdSense revenue.

Partner Websites: Partner websites can be a good source of targeting traffic, assuming that the referring site is related to your own. If your website is about cars and you get linked from a beauty supply website, I wouldn’t expect too many click conversions.

Traffic from partner websites will generally have a higher conversion than social media traffic but you will still get a lot of people who are just browsing and aren’t really interested in your content or ads . It can also be really hard to get a lot of traffic from partner websites that is targeted. Remember the V in $ = V x CTR x CPC Money Making Formula is Volume of Traffic. If you can’t get many many people coming to your site then you won’t make much money with AdSense.

“Search engine traffic is the holy grail of AdSense revenue and should be your primary target.”

Search Engines: Search engine traffic is the holy grail of AdSense revenue and should be your primary target. People who come to your website through search engines are typically looking for a solution to a problem which will make them more likely to click through on ads. They are also not as web savvy as social media visitors so if you do a good job in not making your ads look like ads, they will spend more time reading your AdSense offers and clicking through on them which means money in your pocket.

To get some tips on how to improve your search engine rankings and traffic there are a number of great bloggers who cover the topic and I also write a regular series on search engine optimization as well.

The bottom line here is if you want to have a high click through rate then you need to focus on getting as many people finding your website through the search engines as possible. Google has suggested that an average click through rate should be 1-5%. If you’re not in there (or above… why do you just want to be average?) then it’s time to focus on getting more search engine visitors and the other methods I’ve already discussed to improve your click through rate.

What have your experiences been with search engine vs. social media vs. repeat visitors and their impact on your AdSense revenue? Do you have any examples to share?

I’ve love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!

Photo credit: labnol

Bloggers Generate 10-100% More Traffic Using Twitter – Twitter University

Evan Carmichael — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:05:58 +0000

In my last Twitter University post (9 Reasons Why EntrepreneursShould Be On Twitter – Twitter University) I discussed why it was important for business owners to get involved with Twitter. Today I wanted to showcase a few examples of entrepreneurs who are active on Twitter and were able to generate significant traffic increases to their websites.

On EvanCarmichael.com, Twitter has recently become the number four source of traffic. It’s Google, then Yahoo!, then AOL, and then Twitter. Twitter sends more traffic to my site than Ask, Bing / MSN, Wikipedia, Digg, and Facebook. What’s also interesting is that Twitter visitors view 40% more pages and spend 73% more time on my site than visitors from Google. I don’t have any numbers on how well the traffic converts, which is typically a problem for social media referrals, but the growth in the Twitter numbers is impressive nonetheless.

I also wanted to share with the results that other bloggers are experiencing. Let’s start with one of the most popular blogs in the world, TechCrunch. TechCrunch recently released their traffic numbers (For TechCrunch, Twitter = Traffic (A Statistical Breakdown)) and Twitter is the number two referring website after Google. Twitter accounts for 9.7% of TechCrunch traffic, up from 1.8% six months ago, out of millions of visitors. According to TechCrunch writer Erick Schonfeld:

“Some people use it to share their daily thoughts and observation. But it is increasingly becoming clear that one of the most common ways people use Twitter is as a social information filter and link distributor. Twitter is not just about micro-media. The most powerful Tweets are those which point elsewhere. Or to put it another way, the shortened link may just be the most powerful type of micro-media there is. Those retweeted links are turning Twitter into a social broadcast media that rivals any other on the Web. “

Another popular blogger who has been on Twitter is Jeremy Shoemaker, a.k.a. ShoeMoney. Shoemaker has been on Twitter for almost one year and it is also the second largest referral of traffic after Google (For Those Who Still Don’t Get Twitter). Twitter sends him over 25,000 visitors every month and, similar to results on my website, Twitter visitors look at more pages and spend more time on his site than Google visitors. According to Shoemaker:

“You would probably be surprised to learn that less then 5% of the twitter traffic came from my tweets. Just engaging in the twittosphere has been amazingly rewarding. But if you still “don’t get it” its cool. Less competition.”

Chris Brogan, a community and social media blogger, recently shared how he has managed to double the traffic to his website using Twitter (How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog). According to Brogan:

“Since I started using Twitter, I have more than doubled my blog traffic over the last several months, and I can tell you how. I ask my following in Twitter for love three times: once when I post the blog, again if it takes off well in the comments section, and sometimes a third time if I want to really amp the traffic via StumbleUpon. I mix these requests in liberally with all the various ways I help others using Twitter, and so it doesn’t come off like I’m perpetually pitching my own stuff. My current monthly rate of pitching others vs. promoting my own site is 75 / 25 in other people’s favor. That sounds fair, right?”

You also don’t need to be a top blogger to get results from Twitter. A great example is Daily SEO Blog, a website run by Mani Karthik, a self-proclaimed “Internet Enthusiast.” Karthik currently gets 25% of his traffic from Twitter and again, Twitter is the number two source of referring traffic, after Google (How much traffic can Twitter give ?). According to Karthik:

“For those of you still not convinced about what Twitter can give to your website, think again. Most of the sites, Twitter is already giving 1/3rd – 1/4th of its total traffic – those who have embraced the power of Twitter that is. DSB gets a nice 1/4th of its traffic from Twitter too, that is indeed a nice thing. What’s important is that 99% of the traffic is from other people’s tweets. So if you haven’t yet embraced Twitter, try it out this time around.”

My top nine reasons for why entrepreneurs should be on Twitter were:

It’s where your customers are
It’s where your customers will be
Twitter can drive targeted traffic to your website
People are talking about you
Connect with people you want to get in front of
Add credibility to your business
Stay on top of trends in your industry
Rank higher in search engines
Leverage the work you’re already doing

Hopefully today’s post has given you solid evidence for how Twitter can drive targeted traffic to your website and helps bring home some of the benefits of getting involved.

How are you using Twitter for your business? What kind of traffic results are you seeing?

5 Questions With 2 SEO Experts – SEO University

Evan Carmichael — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:31:24 +0000

For those of you who follow search engine news you’ll know that the biggest events that cover the industry are the Search Engine Strategies conferences. Being based in Toronto I was able to attend SES Toronto last year and am pleased to be able to attend again this year. It’s one of those must-attend events where you get to hear from the top experts in the industry, be able to directly ask them questions, and get valuable advice to help you grow your business.

“Although bigger isn’t always better, the biggest social media site is the right place to start. And at 104.1 million unique visitors, Facebook reaches a lot more segments than just college kids these days.”

I’m also fortunate enough to have been able to connect with two of the experts who will be presenting at SES Toronto this year. I asked them about what factors they see as being important for website owners in the year ahead. The two interviewees were Greg Jarboe and Amanda Watlington. Here is a little more about them:

Greg Jarboe

Greg Jarboe is the president and co-founder of SEO-PR, a search engine optimization firm, public relations agency and video production company. Founded in 2003, SEO-PR has won a Golden Ruler Award from the Institute for Public Relations and PR News, and was a finalist for SES Awards in three categories: Best Social Media Marketing Campaign, Best Business-to-Business Search Marketing Campaign, and Best Integration of Search with Other Media.

“Over the past year, the change in the search engine world that’s had the biggest impact on my business has been the recognition that the #2 search engine isn’t Yahoo! It’s YouTube.”

Amanda Watlington

Amanda Watlington is owner of Searching for Profit, a search marketing consultancy focusing on the interaction of the consumer with businesses, using search engines, RSS, blogs, podcasting, or other new media to deliver their messages. An industry thought leader and an internationally-recognized speaker, Amanda has led sessions on search marketing, web strategy, and social media at Search Engine Strategies, Webmaster World, Ad:tech, and DMA. She shares her views of where search marketing is headed on her blog, Blogs and Feeds, and as a blogger for Search Engine Watch.

I asked them both the same questions – here are their answers:

1) What are you 3 favorite tools website owners should know about that you would consider “hidden gems”?

The first hidden gem is Wordstream. It’s a new keyword tool for taking long keyword lists for search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns and putting them in buckets that are segmented intelligently. Another hidden gem is Radian6. It’s an automated solution to monitor and analyze a variety of social media, including blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. The third tool has been around for a while, but it’s unfortunately a hidden gem: Yahoo! Site Explorer. It allows you to explore all the pages indexed by Yahoo! Search and find pages that link to that site or any page.

2) In your opinion, how important is it for website owners to reduce their page load time and do you recommend they enable gzip compression?

I do think reducing page load time is important. Gzip is a popular data compression program. It’s main advantage is much better compression. However, gzip 1.2.4 may crash when an input file is over 1200 characters. (info on gzip compression here: http://www.gzip.org/)

3) LinkedIn, Twitter,YouTube, Digg, or Facebook? If website owners could only pick one to invest their time into, which would you pick and why?

I could say it depends on your target market, but that would be dodging the question. Or, I could say YouTube, because I’ve just finished writing a book entitled, YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day, but that would be self-serving. So, I’ll say Facebook. Why? According to Compete, Facebook had 104.1 million unique visitors in April 2009, YouTube had 77.8 million, Digg had 37.8 million, Twitter had 19.4 million, and LinkedIn had 12.1 million. Although bigger isn’t always better, the biggest social media site is the right place to start. And at 104.1 million unique visitors, Facebook reaches a lot more segments than just college kids these days. Plus, with more than 52,000 Facebook apps, there are countless ways to connect with social networks of friends and family.

4) What change in the search engine world over the past year has had the biggest impact on your business?

Over the past year, the change in the search engine world that’s had the biggest impact on my business has been the recognition that the #2 search engine isn’t Yahoo! It’s YouTube. According to comScore qSearch, there were 9.8 billion expanded search queries in the U.S. during April 2009 on Google, 3.2 billion on YouTube, and 3.1 billion on Yahoo! That’s game changing. We’ve also found that video content can generate more links and higher rankings than text content. In fact, The Technorati Attention Index for May 14, 2009, shows the top site with the highest number of blogs linking to it in the past 30 days was YouTube with 60,644, followed by The New York Times with 17,374, guardian.co.uk with 8,039, The Wall Street Journal with 7,513, and The Washington Post with 6,891. What does this mean to search engine marketers? You are more likely to see a YouTube video in the top results pages than a news story, blog post, or website page. That’s a change with a big impact.

5) Which session (apart from yours) are you most looking forward to at SES Toronto and why?

I’m looking forward to the keynote by Emanuel Rosen. I’ve read his book, “The Anatomy of Buzz,” and can’t wait to hear about his latest book, “The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited.” As for one of the conference sessions, I’m looking forward to “How to Speak Geek: Working Collaboratively with Your IT Department to Get Things Done.” Why can’t we all just get along?

1) What are you 3 favorite tools website owners should know about that you would consider “hidden gems”?

There are lots of tools that a website owner should know about. I personally advocate trying a large number of tools and then determining which suits the individual’s workflow best. Here are three tools that I consider really powerful: Spyfu for keyword research. It is an excellent second line of research that enhances and enriches the data gathered from Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker. With Spyfu, I particularly like the Keyword Kombat feature that lets me clearly see comparative strengths and weaknesses relative to competitors. A second tool that I consider valuable is Crazy Egg. I use this tool on a regular basis to check how users are interacting with my pages. This gives me quite a few insights into how I can improve conversion and improve the user’s experience. I must include in my tool kit the Web Developer Plug-in for Firefox. It is a super tool for analyzing sites. I use this in conjunction with YSlow to understand how a site is performing.

2) In your opinion, how important is it for website owners to reduce their page load time and do you recommend they enable gzip compression?

Page load time is important for both users and search engines. Users want to receive the information immediately and are increasingly impatient. Speed issues also impact search. Every site has a “crawl budget,” and performance issues can impede how much of a large site is crawled. Managing performance is essential to indexing for large sites. Gzip compression is a recommended speed enhancement. The choice and recommendation would, of course, depend on the site. As I indicated above I use YSlow as part of my tools for evaluating sites. Speed is an issue.

“If I was looking to promote my business, YouTube is the place that I would choose to target. Twitter is the current media darling, but I’m not sure that I would recommend it at this time over YouTube.”

3) LinkedIn, Twitter,YouTube, Digg, or Facebook? If website owners could only pick one to invest their time into, which would you pick and why?

My choice would be YouTube since the sheer volume of traffic that comes to the site is so huge. YouTube’s traffic is the second largest online. It is also readily optimizable so the site owner can ensure take measures to get maximum performance from their videos. If I was looking to promote my business, YouTube is the place that I would choose to target. Twitter is the current media darling, but I’m not sure that I would recommend it at this time over YouTube. As a professional, I would urge the website owner to have a personal LinkedIn account and a Facebook page. Both are good networking tools. I personally prefer LinkedIn.

4) What change in the search engine world over the past year has had the biggest impact on your business?

The biggest impacts have come from the global recession. As a result I have seen an increase in the demand for SEO services as businesses that previously were prepared to spend lots of money on SEM are now reconsidering the virtues of SEO. Many are taking budget from other marketing efforts to put them into SEO and SEM. There is also an increasing demand that search deliver results.

5) Which session (apart from yours) are you most looking forward to at SES Toronto and why?

I am keenly interested in the future and use conferences to tune up my radar for what is the next big thing. For this reason I am looking forward to the session entitled “Follow the Carrot: Cool Mobile Apps.” As search migrates to the phone we all need to understand mobile marketing. Overall, the session line up is so good that it will be difficult to chose one session vs. another being held at the same time. I am moderating the session “SEO Then & Now: What’s the Same? What’s New?” which should be very interesting, but at the same time there is also a session entitled “Signals: What Relevancy Indicators Are Search Engineers Watching For Today?” that should be an excellent forward-looking session. Overall, this should be a terrific conference.

Thank you to both Greg and Amanda for spending the time to answer these questions. To learn more from them you can always attend SES Toronto! If you’re planning on coming out let me know and we can have lunch together.

Entrepreneur Blog » Facebook

How Much Should You Spend on Marketing?

Measure Your Marketing

Always ask new customers how they found out about your business so you know what’s working for you and what isn’t.

Measure Beyond the First Sale

Figure out the lifetime value of your clients for each marketing channel.

How Much Should You Spend?

Figure out your costs of doing business and what the minimum return you need from your marketing dollars is to make it profitable.

Start With Small Tests

Start small, bootstrap, and hustle when you’re launching any new campaign.

3 Success Tips from Guy Laliberté (Cirque du Soleil founder)

Must Watch Video

“I bet everything on one night. If we failed, there was no cash for gas to come home.” – Guy Laliberté

Action Item #1: Have a Greater Purpose

Action Item #2: Foster a Creative Workplace

Action Item #3: Take Risks

True Story

More Quotes

What Do You Think?

5 Tips on Managing Your Cash Flow

1) Project your cash flow

2) Try to get recurring revenue

3) Follow up on your accounts receivable

4) Keep an emergency fund

5) Cut unnecessary expenses

Bonus: Negotiate with suppliers

My Favourite Book for Strategic Vision – Ask Evan

Must Watch Video

1) Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com

2) Ray Kroc, McDonald’s

3) William Hewlett and David Packard

Summary

3 Seldom-Used Ways to Convince Investors to Put Money into Your Business – Ask Evan

Must Watch Video

1) Get Some Sales

2) Build an Advisory Board

3) Pass the Grandmother Test

Summary

How To Grow Your Business On A $0 Advertising Budget – Ask Evan

Video (click to play)

Transcript

#1: SEO

#2: Social Media

#3: Offline Media

The Top 50 Social Media Blogs Of 2010

Social Media News

Social Media In Action

Social Media Personalities

Social Media Marketing

All About Blogging

Social Media & PR

Industry Insights

Social Media 101

Social Media & Branding

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From $0.30 to $300 / Day on Google AdSense Part 6 – How To Make Money

“It’s called banner blindness – the more people visit the same website, the more they know where the ads are, and the less likely they are to click on them.”

“Search engine traffic is the holy grail of AdSense revenue and should be your primary target.”

Bloggers Generate 10-100% More Traffic Using Twitter – Twitter University

5 Questions With 2 SEO Experts – SEO University

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