Google is Your Friend

[Rosalind Gardner]

This post is a reply to a question posed by Viraj in the 'Meet and Greet' section at http://www.netprofitstoday.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=52#52:

[timhouston]

Yes, add value and Google will smile upon thee.

[johans]

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hello All,

Johans wrote:

[Lynn Terry]

I've tried out WebMerge, and it really is powerful. I do love datafeeds and all this other great stuff that they are offering now to make our jobs as affiliate marketers easier! Of course, the easier they make it... the more people that will try to throw things together straight "out of the box" - creating a lot of unattractive, duplicate (useless) websites.

I like the fact that Google is constantly weeding out the junk and making their results as relevant as possible. On the one hand I want to rank rank rank! - but on the other, I am a searcher too!

The difference between "junk" created by a program, and a "quality website" created by the same program, is the time and energy that the site owner puts into their project. If they invest in it, get creative with it, etc... that certainly shows, and pays off in the search engines (and in the conversion rates!).

I havent read the article (yet, have it open in a new window now!), but this was a great topic!

[Keith]

Hi to you,

Seems like it might be another hurdle for the newbies out there.
Although there is unlimited amount of info to help....what looks
good to the newbie might not be enough.
How was your first site? Would it pass the test today?

Even the likes of Corey Rudl's first site,might not be up to par
for today's standards,but people still found what they were looking
for.

After all,people have gotten rich from other people's so called junk.
As the old saying goes, if you don't want to watch,it's easy to change
the channel.

Best of luck to all,

Keith

[johans]

Hi!

It's funny to think that a post that took me a few minutes to write, and that I had since forgotten about, made it into the most recent NPT newsletter.

The intention of my post was to legitimately question whether or not Ros raving about "quick sites" was appropriate in the context of a post explaining how Google was de-listing affiliate sites of little or no value.

Are 1,000-page affiliate websites created in mere seconds the smartest way to build long-term success on the web?

Both Allan Gardyne (of AssociatePrograms.com fame) and Ken Evoy (of Sitesell.com) would likely argue that long term success on the web cannot be attained via a 1,000 page affiliate website created in mere seconds.

Ros, your success on the web was not created in mere seconds. Even websites such as eBay and Amazon were not built overnight with the click of a mouse and some strategic datafeeds.

But.... there will always be a marketplace for people (and I was one of them a long time ago!) who are too new to fully appreciate the level of effort required to build a sustainable source of income on the 'web.

Those are the people who are more likely than not to be attracted to "quick sites" that promise to deliver 1,000-page affiliate websites in mere seconds.

Anyway, just my thoughts!

Johans

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hello Johans,

You introduced an article written in February about the capabilities of Webmerge into a discussion about Google trashing crap affiliate sites.

One had nothing to do with the other, yet I agreed that I should have added the 'quality' message to that article, which is something I've talked about at every turn. I discuss it regularly, 'cause that's what I DO for a living.

You raise the issue again, and I think you may still be missing the point.

As discussed in today's NPT, you can add your own content into a spreadsheet, and process the pages through software like Webmerge to create a directory, rather than hand-coding pages individually.

You still need to create the content, and for the example I used in today's NPT, my own marketing-tools directory... it took me the better part of 2 days to put that spreadsheet together, whereas creating the pages took just seconds.

Anyone who takes a 1000 item merchant datafeed and processes it through Webmerge without adding their own content... does so at his or her own peril.

Anyone who has read my book, or the NPT for any length of time, knows that I have always advocated honest product endorsement/review sites supported by the *work* of building subscriber lists with regular newsletters as the most lucrative approach to affiliate marketing.

I have talked endlessly of late about the hazards of building crap affiliate sites, those which do nothing but waste a visitor's time and use promotional techniques that are guaranteed to fail sending poor unsuspecting affiliates scrambling for jobs.

Indeed, the subject of my talk at the upcoming Affiliate Summit is about how to build REAL affiliate content sites.

I won't however condemn useful software as being the problem, when in fact responsibility lies fully in the hands of its users.

Cheers,
Ros

[Rosalind Gardner]

A few additional thoughts on the matter...

Really, for me, the point about Google's favor or lack thereof (because I add a directory of merchant products to my site), is completely moot.

Search engine traffic is a bonus... not the life of my business itself.

Like any real business, I advertise my affiliate sites, and that is the traffic that I count on.

It shows up 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

To make advertising worthwhile, your site has to be of benefit to your visitors. To do that you add reviews, content, community, and whatever else it takes to get them to stick around and check out your offers fully.

The only time you should fear being out of favor with Google, is if you're not marketing your site using advertising and every other method available to you.

The type of affiliate who counts solely on search engine traffic, is the one that doesn't trust his or her site to convert their visitors to customers.

If that's what you fear, then it's time to get back to work and build a real content site.

For those of us that advertise our content sites, having a directory of merchant products - whether built with our own content, or a merchant datafeed - justs ADDS to the mix, and is nothing to be afraid of.

Cheers,
Ros

[julie24]

long time reader, first time poster,
here are my two cents:

johans, you're wrong for bashing the software, if that's what you were doing. like rosalind said, it's not the software's fault if someone abuses it to create a "junk" site.

rosalind, you sell internet marketing related products for a living, and probably know that you can't sell stuff unless you create a little hype and excitement and "pma" - positive mental attitude - about the product you're selling. that's just selling 101.

what johans might have been trying to say was that he thought it was hypocritical to be talking about creating value in this forum thread while somewhere else on the website promoting a product that most newbies will misuse to build a huge affiliate site quickly.

to your credit rosalind, you fessed up that you should have talked more about creating value, and have made some good followup posts about it. whether it was damage control or sincere, it doesn't matter, the info you shared about creating value was good.

as far as i'm concerned, johans and rosalind both have a point, and that this is good forum thread.

johans, you can't assume it's the software's fault if people misuse it, and rosalind, you shouldn't promote software in such a way that makes it seem like instant success is a click away without adding value, but you've already addressed that, so i think this is now settled.

[sellportal]

May I comment a couple of things as well,

First a short story about my father,

Back in 1974 I purchased the first electronic device that was possible to program, a TI calculator. The most expensive version and my father almost let me sleep outside for "wasting" a lot of money on some plastic junk.

My father loved to play around with numbers and had a lot of accounting to do (homestyle not as a pro). So that weekend I showed him the TI calculator and helped him start using it. He used it to add up sums and some deductions an no more.

But compared to the old manual monster where he had to spin a lever on one side and then 2 times on the other side for each number while clocking the mechanical levers that rotated the numeric wheels inside, the TI was heaven.

He used it to do his complete tax declaration in the new record time of 3 hours, instead of 2 days.

So I asked him, it works well, doesn't i?

Oh yes he answered

So now you see how well the "plastic junk" works?

Well, he said, it sure was ready fast, now all I have to do is to use the old mechanical calculator to recheck all numbers, as there must be something wrong in there, nothing that gets results so fast can be working correctly.

When does junk become of value?
---------------------------------------
One mans junk is another mans treasure.

Doesn't apply to websites or ...

To quote a webmaster from one of internets biggest and best forums (no, not this one, another one!),

"I work every day on my site and has doen so for the last 3 years, that guy said he only had put in a couple of months work, 9 to 5 on his site, hey it must be worthless, nothing with less then a comple of years in it is worth CENSORED"

And now before I manage to upset to many, the conclusion of this rather lengthy text.

Automation = Evil, bad, junk, worthless?

No, I don't think so. But my translation when talking about automation and site creation (everything from a couple of pages to thousands of pages) is = web site framework.

This is probably what everybody here agrees to at the end.

I'we tried a lot of them (and own a lot of them) and I really do not think that all of them creates junk sites, some does, used default from the box with the included templates.

But used in the context Rose say, building the platform where you actually paint your artistic sales art, thats another thing. Adding more content manually, selected, ads, links, reviews and so on will wake the site up and let it live.

But it can be hard to turn away from the dark side and just let them automatically created sites sit there with no added love.

So, use the tools to get a starting platform, easy and fast and then add what will make the site really work!

Kenth

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hi All!

This horse AIN'T dead yet! LOL.

I've updated the "How to Build a 1,000-Page Content Site in Mere
Seconds!" article with a cautionary.

A few more things...

Julie24 - Actually, I don't really "sell Internet marketing products for a living". I'm an Internet / Affiliate marketer, and IM products are just ONE of the things I promote... it's not the bulk of my 'living'.

I hate hype, so I don't create it. If "most newbies will misuse (Webmerge) to build a huge affiliate site quickly" then they missed every lesson on value...not just mine. That's no one's fault but their own.

Anyone who interpreted the article as meaning 'instant success is a click away with the product', simply didn't read the article.

And as for my "fessing up" being "damage control or sincere, it doesn't matter" - that DOES matter to me.

No one who knows me or has studied my work for any length of time would ever accuse me of being less than sincere.

I don't have time to play 'hide and seek' with my valued subscribers and customers so I'm the first to admit when I'm wrong.

That's also why I don't hop on the 'promote this product to your customers today' bandwagon. You may have noticed that most of the time I'll comment on a new product weeks and sometimes months after the initial launch... and in many cases, I don't promote stuff at all.

While NPT is the project nearest and dearest to my heart because I can really HELP people here, it isn't my 'bread and butter' so to speak, so I don't need to hype anything, or sell anything that doesn't meet that objective.

Hope that sets a few records straight.

Cheers,
Ros

[sellportal]

>This horse AIN'T dead yet!

Gosh, I didn't know that angel was spelled horse in French!

What happend to you Ros is what makes me say the same thing over and over again almost every time I write a long post.

It's hard to write anything that will give food for thought for more experienced readers while not leave the less experienced readers completely lost in the dark.

Kenth