June Campbell : Writing from Vancouver

I’ve purchased Market Samurai long before the trial version is set to expire. I think its well worth the value and will pay for itself before long.

Market Samurai is software for Internet marketers. It has many functions, but the key ingredient in this software is its ability to identify and assess keyword phrases for niche markets.

I was introduced to this application through Ed Dale and the other folks from The Challenge 2010.

Here’s how it works. You enter a general keyword that interests you. Let us say that your keyword is “Halloween”.  The software fetches a long list of searched-for keyword phrases related to Halloween. You can filter this list to suit your specifications.

The developers provide complete video tutorials showing you how to filter and why.  Because of the in depth tutorials, this software is equally suitable for beginners as well as experienced marketers.

Next, you can run a search to determine the amount of SEO competition you’ll be facing.  Again, you can filter this list to meet your needs, and a tutorial shows you how.

When you locate a keyword phrase that meets your specifications for a niche market with the amount of competition that you have specified, you can then go ahead and search for a domain name that contains your keyword phrase.  This you do right within Market Samurai.

When your domain is purchased and your hosting account set up, you can, if you choose,  install WordPress in your site using WordPress Direct, an optional feature provided.

Still within Market Samurai, you can do a content search and locate blog postings, news items, Yahoo answers, Wikipedia reports and more items that pertain to your keyword phrase. After doing your research you can write your articles or posts directly within Market Samurai. If you are using WordPress Direct, you can upload your posts to your blog directly within the software. If you are not using WordPress Direct, you can copy and paste your content into your blog using the traditional method.

Other features allow you to promote your site, monetize it, install Google Analytics and more.

You Can Do All of This Manually

I should point out that everything you can do in Market Samurai, you can do manually or via other sources.   The point is that with this software, you can do it faster and easier and save yourself tons of time.

While some of the features are frills, the main benefit of this software lies in its ability to generate keyword phrases and analyze SEO competition. This can be done manually as well, but as any marketer knows, analyzing keywords and competition is an enormously complicated and time consuming activity.

With Market Samurai, you can do in minutes what used to take days.  That’s why I bought it.

The keyword phrases that it generates can be used to create a niche web site and blog, or to create Squidoo Lenses, Hub Pages, EzineArticles, etc.

Now for the Drawbacks

First of all,  if you want to use Market Samurai to install your WordPress blog, you will have to purchase an account with WordPress Direct. This account is not cheap. However, there is a free trial period that allows you to play around and see if you like it.

The other drawback I found is that Market Samurai can not retrieve data about SEO competition unless I deactivate my anti-virus software.  With the software shut down, it works fine.

I don’t consider that this really leaves me at any risk. My email is scanned for malware at the server level, Firefox has multiple security features and my modem contains a firewall that is turned on.   The need to turn off my anti virus software is more of an inconvenience than a danger.

Conclusion

In my opinion, Market Samurai is one heck of a good deal. As I said earlier, I bought it well before the free trial period expired.  If you’re involved in online marketing that requires keyword research, I suggest you check it out. Download is free and there’s a free trial period.

Bookmark to

Looking for St. Patrick’s Day Clipart?  I’ve just created a Squidoo lens with links to commercial as well as free clip art for St. Patrick’s day.

There is also a link to St. Patricks Day wallpaper and St. Patricks Day coloring pages for kids.

I’ve included some discussion of image editing software and how it can be used to modify clipart.

The link is at St. Patrick’s Day Clipart

Bookmark to

GTRends Assassin launched a couple of days ago. It’s a new affiliate marketing product that builds hundreds and possibly thousands of keyword-rich web pages automatically, based on an analysis of Google Trends.

You feed it your affiliate codes from Amazon and Clickbank (and possibly others programs). The GTrends Assassin script runs automatically, endlessly building web pages based on the latest Google trends. Essentially, its an automatic blogger that churns out more keyword rich pages than you could ever accomplish, even if you worked around the clock.

This scrips needs to be installed on an old domain that you have available, one that has not been performing well but nevertheless is listed in Google.

The publisher anticipates that you will make about $200 a month from each domain that you install it on. You might be able to earn more than $200 — possibly as much as $500, the publisher says, but $200 is a reasonable goal.

It all sounds wonderful — except I can see a few flaws.  The script will build keyword rich pages, true. But these pages will largely be nonsensical and composed of strings of text that the script has analyzed.

It’s only a matter of time until the great Google picks up on this and blocks your domain from the search results.  To keep making money, you will need to be constantly installing your scripts on different domains — and the domains have to be ones that have been around for awhile.  Unless you have tons of old web sites you no longer want, you’re going to be buying domains  from other people.

Not to mention the ethics of spewing tons of garbage web pages into cyberspace.

My prediction: GTrends Assassin will indeed make money for those who use it, but expect to be seeking new domains on an ongoing basis. Each domain will have a short shelf life until Google identifies it and drops it.

Here’s the link if you want it:GTrends Assassin

Bookmark to

I’ve recently had to download and re-install several of my WordPress plugins. Several had newer versions available but attempting the automatic install produced an error message. I checked the WordPress forums and discovered that several other people were writing about the same problem and no one appeared to have a solution.

I found some new plugins that I liked quite a bit. They’re WordPress Plugins by MaxBlogPress.

The developer has several free plugins, as well as some paid products. I’ve only tried some of the freebies, but they work fine — and they worked when my older ones wouldn’t. I am particularly partial to the Adsense Revised plugin. You can see it in action at the bottom of this post.

I read somewhere that publishers might soon start charging for plugins. It stands to reason. They have to make a living — but in the meantime, it makes sense to use these good free ones.

At least, that’s how I see it.

Bookmark to

Looking for some free gifts that you download from the Web?  Surf on over to 30 Days of Christmas Giveaway.

A number of Internet marketers, including myself, have joined together to contribute free gifts to all and sundry. Personally, I donated some PLR articles based on Internet business. You can put your name on them and publish them, revise them to avoid duplication, compile them into a report, put them in your autoresponder, or basically do anything you want with them except sell them.

That’s just my gift. The other contributors have provided free ebooks, software, membership sites, MPEG files and who knows what else.

You don’t want to miss it.

30 Days of Christmas Giveaway.

Bookmark to

That was the sad question a young black woman asked on the Warrior’s Forum, a forum where Internet marketers hang out.  She wanted to know if putting her photo on her web site would harm her sales numbers.  It’s becoming a common practice to put a photo on a sales page these days. It adds credibility by reassuring visitors they are dealing with a real person and not a nameless, faceless entity.

But does it work to everyone’s advantage?

In a perfect world, you’d hope that race wouldn’t matter. You’d  hope that gender wouldn’t matter, that age wouldn’t matter, that a physical deformity wouldn’t matter. You’d hope it wouldn’t matter if you’re plain as a box of rocks.

 But it’s not a perfect world. To some people, these things do matter. To some, the seller’s appearance and race could create a subconscious reaction. To others, it’s probably more of a direct decision.

Personally, I’m not photogenic. I agonized over putting a picture of myself on this blog and on other web sites. After taking several hundred pictures of myself using the self timer on my digital camera, I finally got an image that I thought was suitable and wouldn’t send people screaming away in fear.

But to what extent does a photo help or hinder sales?  One could debate this issue til the cows come home, and you still wouldn’t know the answer.

Doing a simple A/B split test is the only way to know for sure. By using a simple script designed for this purpose, the seller can rotate two sales pages, one with a photo and one without. The best scripts rotate the pages for new site visitors, but set cookies so they always show the same page to the same visitor, should he or she return more than once. Then, over time, you track which sales page performed the best. Services such as Google Analytics will do this for you, and Google Analytics is free to use.

When the human race evolves to the point that no one is influenced by superficial issues like skin color and physical appearance, we won’t need to test. Until then, sad but true, its probably necessary.

Split Test and Increase Conversions by (up to) 734% is an economically priced, easy to use A/B testing script. It comes with a report that explains split testing in considerable detail.  Naturally, you can and should test for a lot more than whether or not to use a photo on your sales page.

Bookmark to

This blog, like all of my web sites, is hosted with Hosting Matters. Yesterday, Saturday afternoon to be specific, I accidentally deleted the mSQL database that powers this blog. How and why would I do such a thing?  I dunno. It’s one of those times when your brain stops working but your mousing fingers don’t.

Anyway, I envisioned hours and hours of work lost. I left a message for Hosting Matters tech support. A few messages passed back and forth, and by Sunday morning the blog was up and running. Turns out only the password information was deleted on the server, not the entire database. Even so, these people worked on the weekend and saved my bacon with this.

Hosting Matters, you are the greatest Web Host

Bookmark to

I’ve discovered a free writing tool that you can use to help with your article writing.

I use Dupe Free Pro personally and I swear by it. I don’t know why the publishers aren’t charging at least $50 for this little goodie, but they’re giving it away.

Dupe Free Pro is a utility that compares two articles for duplicate content. You can use
this in two ways: First, you can rewrite an article and compare to find out if the content is different enough that the search engines will view the two articles as unique content.

This is extreely valuable if you are planning on publishing or writing PLR articles.

Secondly, you can use Dupe Free Pro to find out if someone else is plagiarizing your articles.

These two uses are the software’s main purpose, but they’re not all it does. Dupe Free Pro will also do a keyword analyses and tell you whether you need to add more keywords or remove some.

There’s still more. A click of the button and Dupe Free Pro gives you a list of LSI words. These are words related to your keywords that Google uses when it decides on ranking.

It’s a good program. It’s free. Go get it at
Dupe Free Pro

Bookmark to