I’m not really the type of person that has ‘idols’ - and the word guru is enough to give me the chills. In fact, there are very few people I actually follow in their daily or weekly actions. I rather take things as they come. Successful products and brilliant ideas often come from people you’ve never heard of before, while I’ve seen more than one so called ‘big name’ deliver a product that wasn’t worth even a single dollar.

So I try to keep an open mind and try to not to get influenced by a marketer’s name when I look for info or check out a new product.

There’s one exception, however…

Ever since I first laid my hands on one of Robert Plank’s eBooks (I think it was ‘Sales Page Tactics 3′), I’m a huge fan of his work.
And with me, loads of others.

I’ve decided to move all posts concerning JV Giveaways to the blog at my JV giveaway directory (makes sense, no?).

So if you want to read part 2 of my ‘I’m a JV giveaway Dinosaur’-post, you’ll have to head over to the other site. You can do so by clicking here)

Feel free to leave your comments!

Miguel Alvarez is putting on a gigantic contest on his blog: The Blog Boost Giveaway.

On September 20th, one lucky winner (plus 3 additonal winners) will receive 1000s of dollars worth of the most coveted prizes a blogger could possibly desire. The list of prizes is way too long to add it to his post, but you can everything that’s included here.

Entering this contest is easy and free. All you need to do to earn a ticket is subscribe to Miguel’s email list. You can earn additional tickets by:

• blogging about the contest
• adding Miguel as a friend and following him on Twitter
• Dig, Stumble, Twitter, … Miguel’s post about the contest
• [Read More]

Good luck!

Here’s the link once more:

http://www.marketingfactor.com/blogmarketing/blog-boost/

These last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time working on my blog(s). During my research, I came across ‘Entrecard‘, a blogging network that lets you advertise your blog for free.

Entrecard claims to be a an internet business card. Just as in ‘real life’, you can leave your business card at other sites. Every time you leave your business card, you’ll earn EC (Entrecard Credits), which you can use to purchase advertisements on thousands of blogs or to shop for hundreds of products and services in the virtual marketplace.

You also earn Entrecard credits when others drop their card on your site, or when they buy advertising space on your site.

The site works through a widget you can easily add to your blog sidebar (several versions of the widget are available). You’ll find my Entrecard widget in the sidebar under ‘Leave Your Business Card’.

It’s common knowledge that the best way to build your list is by offering an incentive. Just recently, I connected my blog feed to my Aweber account (I’ll tell you more about that later) and now people can download my new ebook  if they subscribe … by email.

Knowing there are many people who don’t want to give out their email address, I started looking for a way to give away the ebook in return for reader subscriptions.  I thought it would be best to add some sort of a footer message to every outgoing feed, but when I turned to the Feedburner site, I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

However, a Google search learned me that it was actually possible, and although Feedburner makes it sound so complicated, it’s quite easy, really. And now I’m glad to be able to announce that now EVERY subscriber can receive a free copy of my ebook. 

For The Niche Giveaway 2, I used an exit survey tpopup, in which I asked leaving visitors why they were leaving the site without subscribing.

On The Niche Giveaway blog, you can read what people had to say. Afterwards, I summarized the survey results, and noted down some of my thoughts. I’d like to ask you to do the same by leaving your comments, thoughts, tips and ideas. Together, we might be able to keep the concept alive…

See The Results & Leave Your Comments Here

Today, I signed up for a new JV giveaway event and I was shocked to see the upgraded membership being sold for only $7. This upgraded membership allows people to get all the gifts without having to sign up for any list besides the main JV Giveaway member list. So with every member that upgrades his or her account, the JV partners lose a potential subscriber.

For The Niche Giveaway 2,  I decided not to offer upgraded memberships. On the giveaway blog, I posted this message to inform my JV Partners:

In my opinion, the whole idea of giving people direct access to the downloads is not really fair to the partners - after all, it means less signups for them…

Back in January, I expressed my fears concerning the fact that the JV giveaway concept was due to die from its own success in a blog post.

Today, I submitted a message to my list, with the links to 4(!) new JV Giveaways that have opened their doors. (You’ll find the links on my ‘New JV Giveaways‘ page.)

At the same time, I kept thinking: how on earth will I ever find the time to check out all the gifts inside?? The truth is… I probably won’t. :o(

Ok, many of those gifts I’ve seen a thousand times before, and most JV Giveaways I end up downloading one or two products, but if I don’t go and check out the list, who knows what I’ll miss.

I’m spending way too much time in front of my computer…

Tonight, we rented a movie - Untraceable - about some psycho who’s torturing people live on the web. The more hits the site gets, the faster his victim dies. While I was watching, I found myself thinking ‘Wow, what if he had put an ad or two on his site… He would not just be a psycho, he would be a rich psycho…‘

I really need to take some time off…

Anyway, the story illustrated one of the basic laws in marketing: All you need to attract people to your site is an idea that is appealing to many…  It doesn’t have to be a good idea - as long as it’s something people WANT to see.

Just a short post to let you know about a free video I just bumped into.

It was created by fellow marketer Albert Hallado to explain how you can track your blog traffic using Google Analytics.

I won’t go into the importance of tracking your traffic here and now, ‘cos loads has been written about it already. I just wanted to show you the video.

(I couldn’t add it to my post, so you’ll need to head over to Albert Hallado’s blog to watch it)

I hope you will be able benefit from this info!