Focus, planning, and implementation

October 13, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 2 Comments
Filed under: Act On Your Dream!, Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Downline Builders, Musings, Network Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Traffic Exchanges 

It’s a beautiful rainy day in the mountains of North Carolina. All the trees are taking a shower before putting on their finest Autumn party leaves and painting our mountains with spectacular color, making them even more beautiful than they are the rest of the year.

Today, I’m sitting at home, sipping some hot coffee, and I’m focused on planning the changes I’m making in my online marketing business.

Somewhere along the way, I lost that focus. Now, I’m working hard to regain it.

I understand business, at least enough to do well enough so that I can live as I please, set my own schedule, and be my own boss.

When I started out with online marketing over a decade ago (way back in the 20th century!), I was fully focused on business. I knew what I wanted to accomplish and I was working hard to implement the plan. It was easy for me and there were few distractions along the way.

However, a few years ago, things changed. I began to get distracted by new technologies, new social networking sites, new marketing techniques, new toys to learn and use, new this, new that, and I lost focus of my plan and many of my goals.

It’s easy to do.

I’ve written about this before, and I’ll probably write about it again. Focus and a well-thought-out plan, with goals to achieve, and milestones to gauge progress are necessary for every business that is oriented to long-term success.

When plowing with a mule or horse, we put blinders on them so that they can only see straight ahead and focus on where they are pulling the plow. That way, they don’t get distracted by other things that may be going on around them.

These days, in regards to my business, I put on metaphorical blinders before working. It helps me to focus specifically on what I want to accomplish during the next few hours.

If you are involved in online marketing in any way, you already know what I mean. All of your friends are doing different things. One suggests that you do something, another invites you to do something different, you get a newsletter in your inbox that tells you that something (like email, Google, etc.) is dead or dying and you have to do what they’re advising (and you can learn all about it by buying their new (ebook, membership site, webinar, course) product for only $47 (or $97, or $197, or $497…).

Before you even get started with what you were going to do, you’re already being pulled in multiple directions. Soon, self-doubt sets in. Are you doing what you should be doing, or do you need to do something entirely different? The more distractions, the more self-doubt. The more self-doubt, the less progress you will make.

I know this for a fact. I’ve gone through it and I’m looking back on much of what I’ve done over the last few years with a sense of amazement. I’m amazed that I let myself forget good common business sense and well-established marketing techniques and spent my time chasing all the shiny, new, red balls that kept bouncing along all around me.

One of my friends was talking to my daughter a few months ago about a mutual friend of theirs. He said she was suffering from ADOS syndrome. My daughter asked, “What’s ADOS?”

He replied, “Attention Deficit…Oh, Shiny!”

Many of us are suffering from the same thing. We’re losing the ability to focus. We expect immediate (or at least very fast) gratification. We want sound bites that coincide with our prejudices and predilections rather than in-depth knowledge and understanding. We want easy money with the least amount of work possible.

That’s no way to build a business. It might be okay for a hobby or a temporary distraction, but it’s a sure-fire way to fail in business.

Ken Evoy wrote in a recent blog post, Focus and Determination, “Very few small businesses go straight up like a rocket. Some businesses go faster, some take longer. And when you’re all by yourself at home, working and building content and getting links and progress is slow, it’s easy to have some doubt about your niche or your ability to make your website ‘work.’ Work through the doubts. Like every business, success goes to those who persevere… ”

Perseverance without a plan and tight focus isn’t enough.

You also have to put your words in front of someone who is in the mood to buy, has the resources, and finds the information you offer reliable enough to make the decision.

Whether we choose to build content-rich, hierarchically-organized websites or write a blog, we need to create something that ranks well in the search engines, and even more importantly, is something that people are looking for with a mindset of buying. It does us absolutely no good to attract a loyal group of readers, friends, and associates who like to read what we say and join in the conversations, but who are never going to be a customer or client. You need to attract people who are interested in what you’re writing about and want to buy something related to it that either solves a problem they’re having or links to something they want to buy.

Marketing to other marketers is a huge waste of time and energy. We are sellers, not buyers, for the most part. Now and then, we may find something we want to buy, but many of us are do-it-yourselvers and would rather spend the time and effort in learning something for ourselves rather than purchase something that you are offering.

You know what I’m talking about.

Compare that with someone who has a passion for a hobby or other interest. They have a good job and love spending money on their hobby. Whether it be raising dogs, gardening, travel, camping, fishing, weddings, photography, games, movie collectibles, dolls, or anything else in which they are passionately interested, they want to do more of it and they have the money to spend.

Most of them don’t care if they ever get their money back or make a profit on their “investment.” The purchase is part of the enjoyment. It’s part of the anticipation of enjoying more of what they do.

Those are the people you want to attract. People are searching billions of times a day for something in which they are interested. You need to learn what they are looking for, evaluate your competition, and then do a better job of providing information, products, and services that all these people want.

The best way to do that is to identify something for which you have a passion (or at least a strong interest), research the topic, identify what people want related to that niche, and then find a way to be found by them.

There are many ways to be found. The least expensive and often easiest is to rank well in the search engines for the terms for which they are searching.

Other ways include traditional advertising, coupons, newsletters, mailing lists, interviews, radio, TV, and all the other ways of inserting yourself and what you offer into their attention.

If you haven’t read “Guerilla Marketing” by Jay Conrad Levinson, do it this week. It was written before the Internet and the Web, and it still offers outstanding advice for selling what you are offering.

With my Murphy Gold site, I’m focused 100% on locally-owned small businesses in the rural area surrounding Murphy, NC. Most of my marketing will be done online, but I’ll also be using what I’ve learned about local offline marketing, too.

Most people do not live in the online world as much as many of us do. They don’t spend hours on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever.

No. Really. I’m serious.

They have real lives that don’t involve blogs, websites, social networking, social bookmarking, and may not even know what an ebook is.

And many of them could become your best customer if you find a way to offer what they want and put yourself in front of them when they’re ready to purchase.

One way to do that, in both the offline and online world, is to offer something free.

In Internet Marketing, people offer free ebooks in return to get you to sign up for their mailing list. This has been effective in the past, but is getting less effective as time goes by.

How many free ebooks or reports do you have on your computer that you’ve never read or even skimmed? I’m willing to bet there are quite a few. If you ever took the time to read them, you’d quickly discover that a very few are outstanding and offer great information. Some are good and worth a read or quick skim. Others, and I’m willing to bet they are the majority, are worthless. They were put together quickly with little quality control, lack of any depth of knowledge of the subject, or any other intention other than offering you a bauble to get you to sign up to their marketing list.

And, then, to top it off, most of those marketing lists are just as bad. In fact, I’ve seen more than one “marketing guru” advise giving anything away to get someone to sign up for your list, and then you can “market” to them (nearly) for free until they buy what you’re selling or unsubscribe from your list. When they do buy, add them to the next list in your marketing funnel and repeat the process with something more expensive that offers more profit. Ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Don’t fall for that.

Yes, some successful businesses have involved and very profitable marketing funnels and they do well for the owner. I am not disputing that. If that’s the way you want to live, then go for it.

I don’t.

When I talk about offering something for free, I’m not talking about giving something away to get your readers to sign up for your mailing list.

I’m talking about building a site with lots of free, high-quality, authoritative information about a topic you really know and in which you and your reader are both interested.

I want to develop real relationships (perhaps friendships) with real people about something I really care about. I want to offer the best information I can to them for free and also give them ways to purchase things they want.

I have not done a good job of that. Why? Because I was not focused on doing business. I was distracted by “online marketing.”

I’ve come to view affiliate marketing as more than just advertising. You probably will disagree with me on this, and feel free to do so.

Over time, I’ve promoted a lot of things. I had to learn the ropes, make my mistakes, learn from some of them, and try not to repeat those same mistakes.

I got sidetracked into downline builders, traffic exchanges, and social networking on lots of sites that produced no (or very small) results. I tried multilevel marketing. I tried all sorts of ways to build traffic and turn visitors into dollars.

Then one day, I put on my blinders and walked off those treadmills. I was making what lots of people would call a good income, but none of us were getting anywhere from it. It was a treadmill that lead to nowhere and all we were doing was trying to run fast enough to bring in a trickle of income.

Yes it works. I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m saying it’s bad for me. It’s not something I can look back on with pride and satisfaction knowing that I helped others. If anything, I’m responsible for sucking some of them into that same “running on the treadmill to nowhere” scenario and calling it a business.

I stopped doing all of that and I’m canceling accounts on hundreds of sites.

Mea culpa.

Would I want to get my best friend, parent, sibling, or child doing all of that just to earn a few (hundred) dollars per month? No.

So, I asked myself, what DO I want to do? What can I do that will be satisfying, helpful, and real?

I took a close and not-too-comfortable look at myself and started shedding lots of things I had “learned” from “marketing gurus” and “online business mentors” and “coaches.”

My new criteria is this: Would I offer something to my mother or my daughter?

If the answer is no, then I won’t offer it to you.

That greatly simplifies things for me.

Getting back to Murphy Gold for a moment…

I will only promote businesses on that site that I would recommend to my mother or daughter. Each business on that site is a personal recommendation from me. I’ve turned down several business owners because I don’t like the way they run their business or treat their customers.

I only contact business owners with whom I’ve had good, long-term relationships, or who were recommended by more than one person I trust who lives in the community and has done business with that business owner. I offer to promote them online for a fee. In the future, as I get healthier, I’ll also be promoting them offline in our community (and it won’t cost them any extra).

I have a lot of work to do on that site. I started in one direction, learned from a few mistakes, and now I’m tweaking it to make it better. I still have hundreds of pages to write, but I’ve already done the majority of the research and I’ve developed a site blueprint. I know where it’s going and how to get there. I’ve focused and planned.

Now, it’s time for implementation.

I have to knuckle-down and do the work. It’s going to take time to write those hundreds of pages and then promote them where the residents of our community (and those who are interested in visiting and/or moving to Murphy, NC) will find them, and that means both online and offline promotions.

Focus, planning, and implementation.

While most of my other sites rely on Google Adsense and affiliate links for monetization, Murphy Gold will focus on introducing real people (customers) to other real people (business owners) so that they can do what people have been doing for centuries — trading money for goods and services.

It’s real business. It’s real people. It’s real relationships. It’s real.

It’s something I’ll be able to look back on in twenty years (if I make it) and be proud of doing.

Affiliate marketing will play a very small part in monetizing visitors to Murphy Gold.

Google Adsense will play some part in monetizing some parts of the site, as long as it doesn’t conflict with the main goal of promoting local business owners who deserve it. Anyone can buy ads on Google Adwords and I don’t have much control of that, so I’ll only be putting Adsense ads on some of the pages. I don’t yet know exactly which pages that will be and it’s going to take some testing.

On other sites, such as Act On Your Dream!, Adsense and affiliate links will play a bigger role. I’ve been developing a new blueprint for that site and it will be reorganized and revitalized as I have the energy. It’s never been a huge monetary success, but it’s about a topic in which I’m extremely interested and I have some ideas on how I want to proceed with it.

Other sites will be taken down, including GeorgiaDragRacing.com, which I built for my brother. It has been a very profitable site, but his health problems have gotten to the point where he can no longer go to the drag racing events and publish the photos and information he once could. So, he wants me to burn it to a DVD and take it down. It’s his site, and I’ll do what he wants as soon as I can. (I have some technical problems involving old software and new computers to solve before I can get the database to generate a complete local copy of that site and burn it to a DVD for him.)

Over time, most of what’s in JohnDilbeck.com, MurphyNC28906.com, and other smaller sites will be moved into AYearFromNow.com or MurphyGold.com. Part of my focus is to keep the best and toss the rest. I’ll be consolidating information from my blogs and some of my websites into sites that are powered by SBI, because it works best for me.

Eventually, I’ll be off the blogging treadmill, too.

In the short term, I’ll lose some income as I take down sites that have lots of visitors and make money. In the long term, I’ll be able to focus more on what I’m doing and to implement the plan I’ve developed.

If you’re still reading this, you’re one of the few who have a reasonable attention span and I applaud you.

I know that I’m moving in a different direction than most affiliate marketers and I’ll probably move some of the information from here into AYearFromNow.com and take down this blog, too. I’ll miss some of the social interaction that comes from the comments on this blog, but — again — I’ll be able to focus more on my new business plan.

Affiliate marketing has been good to me for over a decade and will continue to be one of the larger streams of income, but it is going to change and I’ll only be promoting products and services that, get ready for it, here it comes…I’d recommend to my Mom or daughter.

I learned a long time ago to write a page with one main objective. Simple pages that offer quality information and which lead to a desired action step or alternative backup action that I want the reader to take.

Some pages are purely informational. Google Adsense is a good way to monetize them (as long as someone is advertising using the keywords for which the page is built).

Some pages are designed to get people to drive to a business, get out of their car, and go inside a store. I won’t have anything competing with those.

Some pages are designed to promote things to do in surrounding cities and they’ll have Adsense and some affiliate links on them.

For each page, I’ll have one thing I want the reader to do. Failing that, I’ll link to other pages on the site.

Keep it simple. Reduce distractions. Make it easy to read, tightly focused, and easy to navigate.

Will I be the best at doing this? Probably not. In my heart, I’m a techno-nerd, not a businessman.

I’ll do my best and continue living in a place I love and telling the world more about it.

Hopefully, it will provide a comfortable income, too.

What about you?

Have you planned your business and decided what you want to accomplish?

What is it?

Do you agree or disagree with my belief that what I promote on my site (other than Adsense ads) is a personal recommendation?

I’m interested in your thoughts about focusing on your business and achieving your goals.

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags:

Are traffic exchanges worth your time?

March 25, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 13 Comments
Filed under: Advertising, Affiliate Funnel, Downline Builders, Soaring4Traffic, Squidoo Lenses, Traffic Exchanges 

For the last several years, I’ve spent quite a bit of time joining, using, and evaluating various ways to promote the products that enable me to earn a living as an affiliate marketer.

Among the things I’ve tried are traffic exchanges and downline builders.

I got to thinking about this earlier today as I was revising a couple of my Squidoo lenses: traffic exchanges and downline builders.

It seems that some people have strong opinions about them, both positively and negatively. Some are well-informed, others aren’t.

I’m somewhere in the middle. I think traffic exchanges have their pros and cons. I’m neither a fan, nor an opponent, of them.

Let’s look at a couple of things quickly, just to get the ball rolling.

What is a traffic exchange?

The simple answer: You look at my site and I’ll look at yours.

That may have been true a few years ago, but no longer accurately reflects the changes and innovations they have undergone.

Now, I think of them mostly as advertising sites.

I don’t try to show my websites on a traffic exchange. Instead, I try to promote myself and make an impression (hopefully positive) on the people surfing the exchanges. That’s one of the reasons I use the photo holding the steel rose. I’ve been told more than one time that it stands out.

Whether that adds to my professionalism or detracts from it is a different discussion.

Still, people remember that picture and recognize me on other sites as a result.

So, I’m promoting my personal brand.

Secondly, instead of showing my sites, I promote using fast-loading splash pages with the goal of getting someone to click the link and go to another site where we can build a relationship and maybe work together down the road.

Truthfully, I’m not doing as well at that as I should be doing.

I know what needs to be done, but haven’t gotten around to doing it yet.

For the last couple of years, as Mom’s health declined and I spent more time caring for her, there were many days when I was just too tired to do anything that required much work or creative thinking.

However, surfing the traffic exchanges was something I could do, and I actually enjoy seeing what others are promoting and then deciding for myself what I think about them – both the product or service and the person doing the promotion.

Since I still wasn’t all that sure what I wanted to promote on the traffic exchanges, I spent most of my time building downlines.

What’s a downline?

I’m not sure, but I think this term comes to us from the multi-level marketing business. Also known as MLM and network marketing.

The idea is that you get paid for making sales of your own to people who are not involved in the particular company and you get a smaller commission on sales made by the people you “sponsor” into the company.

In other words, your efforts are divided between selling products and services yourself, and building a team of others to do the same thing.

This is called leverage.

In actuality, for most of us, it becomes a time sink that does not produce the results we want.

I’m not very interested in MLMs and I only promote two of them. I’m in the process of deciding whether I want to continue with either of them and will make that decision by my birthday on July 1.

I won’t link to either of them in this post, because I don’t want to get side-tracked.

So, a downline is a group of people you have sponsored, plus the people they have sponsored, going down some number of levels as determined by the company.

Let’s move away from thinking about MLMs and downlines and turn our attention to traffic exchanges and downlines.

Do you have to build a downline in a traffic exchange?

Of course not.

You can spend your time surfing and reap the benefits of your own efforts.

Or, you can introduce others to the traffic exchanges that work best for you and help them get results, too.

I seem to be much better at introducing people and persuading them to join than I am at helping them get results. I’m not proud of this and it’s something I’m working to change.

Why spend the time and effort to sponsor someone in a traffic exchange?

There are a couple of reasons.

In most traffic exchanges, you become an affiliate and can earn commissions from any purchase made by the people you sponsor. I regularly get commissions from several traffic exchanges, and the people who sponsored me are also earning commissions based on my purchases.

In addition to monetary commissions, I also earn credits based on some percentage of the pages the people in my downline surf at that exchange. The more people in my downline and the more pages they surf, the more credits I earn.

These credits can be applied to showing websites (or preferably splash pages or squeeze pages), banner ads, and text ads.

In other words, the more people I sponsor, and the more pages all of us surf, the more advertising I can do on the site.

Of course, that applies to the people in my upline as well as any of the people in my downline. Each of us has the same opportunity to build our network of people and gain the benefit of the work we all do. When I spend time surfing, the people in my upline earn credits, too.

But, will the people who see our sites read them and click on the links?

Now, there’s the crux of the issue.

If you are showing your website or blog – especially if they take a long time to load – you’re probably wasting your time with traffic exchanges.

Years ago, that was the whole point: showing your website to someone. I’d show you my website and you’d show me yours.

That has changed over the years.

Traffic exchanges now have timers that frequently run under ten seconds, and only a few now require you to look at a site for 20 or 30 seconds before you can click on the next page.

If you have multiple links or an involved page, it will rarely be read and you can’t depend upon anyone clicking on any of your links.

Well what’s the point, then?

The days of putting up websites and/or blogs and making easy sales as an affiliate are pretty much over. Sure, you can earn some money doing it – maybe even a few hundred dollars per month – but you really can’t build a business just by doing this.

Now, you have to build a sales funnel and carefully plan your marketing activities.

Traffic exchanges no longer lead to direct sales – they are just part of the picture.

Think of a funnel.

There is a large opening at the top and a smaller opening at the bottom.

Traffic exchanges have their place at the top of the funnel. Sales take place somewhere between the top and bottom of the funnel.

The conversion percentage for any given offer you show on a traffic exchange is rather low, and can be very low for banner and text ads. So, to make it worthwhile, you have to show not just a few dozen views, but thousands per month.

That’s why most of the exchanges (all that I know of) have the option of paying to upgrade. With most upgrades, you get several hundred credits, which means that you can show your ads (splash or squeeze pages) by buying them rather than surfing for them.

Additionally, most of the traffic exchanges offer credits for sale. So, if you have an offer that converts well enough to earn a profit from it, you can theoretically buy as many credits as your budget allows and continue to grow your business until the offer no longer converts at that level. When it becomes unprofitable, it’s time to change the offer.

So, now, we’re entering a completely different type of marketing.

The savvy marketers use the traffic exchanges to introduce themselves to the surfers and offer something in exchange for a valuable item: the email address of someone who is interested in what you offer and permission to contact them using that address.

Instead of trying to make the sale directly, the goal is to have someone sign up to your mailing list. All reputable marketers who do this use some form of autoresponder service to manage the emails and comply with the CAN-SPAM laws.

When someone opts in to receiving your autoresponder series and/or newsletter and/or blog post updates via email, you now have not just one opportunity to make the sale, but multiple opportunities to build a relationship, pass along useful information, and hopefully make a few sales down the line.

If you do it right, you can meet hundreds or thousands of people who value your opinions and the information you pass along. Offer good information and many of them will look forward to hearing from you.

On the other hand, if you do nothing but sell, sell, sell and think of them in terms of email addresses with credit cards, then you’ll fail, fail, fail.

We are people and if you respect us and help us get what we are wanting, we’ll be happy to hear from you.

If you disrespect us or take us for granted or don’t do what you promised when we gave you our email address, then we’ll click on that link at the bottom of your messages and unsubscribe from your list.

So, it’s a two-way street. We’re building a relationship, and that takes time and real effort.

Also, as you know from in-person relationships, some are long-term and others are quite short. We may meet you on your splash page and get one impression, but learn to know you better on your mailing list and see a completely different person.

Perhaps we’ll grow to like you better or we may learn that you don’t offer as much as we originally expected.

Effective marketers build a list.

The people who don’t do well with traffic exchanges are those who try to do direct marketing through them.

The people who may do well are the ones who use traffic exchanges to meet new people and build a relationship over time.

I understand this and appreciate it. In fact, I’ve subscribed to hundreds of mailing lists over the last few years, and continue to subscribe to twenty or thirty that I look forward to reading. In this case, I’m also including blogs that I can subscribe to via email.

What I don’t do as well as I plan to do is to write newsletters on a regular basis and share what I have learned with others who are interested in the same things.

I’ve taken a lot of steps in moving in that direction. I have built a couple of forums that are ready for user participation. I have a couple of social networking communities in place, as well.

I have an Aweber account to manage my mailing lists and I’ve learned how to use it.

Now, I just need to focus on building my lists, and keeping each of them focused on the information I promise when someone subscribes, and providing a place where my readers can interact with me and other readers.

To do this, I’ve had to change a lot of things I was doing so I can move in the right direction.

This blog is one example. I moved it from its old site to a new domain and now it’s powered by WordPress, which makes it much easier to manage the discussions that build as you comment on what I write about.

Other examples include static websites that I’m rebuilding over time. When I first built them, I didn’t know all that I know now and they aren’t built to be part of my marketing funnel.

So, as I have time and energy, I’m converting them into sites that offer good information and each page will also be rewritten to invite the readers to respond to one offer.

It takes a lot of time and effort to do this correctly, but I’m convinced that it’s the way successful affiliate marketers, and network marketers for that matter, will continue to be successful in the future.

It’s hard enough to get someone to visit a site, let alone purchase something on the very first visit.

It’s much easier to offer free information to a first time visitor in return for subscribing to a list. Even if the conversion (subscription) ratio isn’t all that high, it’s still better than trying to sell when you first meet.

I still have a lot to learn, and even more to implement, but I’m making the effort to do so. Are you?

In some ways, bright people who are new to online marketing will have it a bit easier – if they follow the good advice that is out there. Learn how to build a marketing funnel, focus your efforts, and do what you say you’re going to do.

When someone signs up to your list, help them learn what you originally promised.

I wish I’d known that when I first started online marketing way back in the 20th century.

I’ll say this. If you don’t want to be part of the internet marketing niche, then it is probably true that traffic exchanges are a waste of time, because you’re not advertising to the right people.

If you work in a different niche, then you’ll need to find a way to attract other people who are interested in that niche. Probably the best way to do that is to build a site with information that can be found when people search on Google or other search engines.

Even if you do market to a niche for which traffic exchanges are effective, you have to remember that you have to do a lot of advertising on the traffic exchanges to get the results you want, because of the low conversion rates.

So, what do you think about downline builders and traffic exchanges?

Are they worth your time and effort?

Do you have a different, and better, approach?

I look forward to your thoughts and opinions.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Instant Banner Creator Review

December 14, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 14 Comments
Filed under: Advertising, Poll, Traffic Exchanges, Web Services 

Right at the start, I want to say that I absolutely hate all the hype and commotion surrounding product launches in the Internet marketing field. I subscribe to lots of blogs, mailing lists, and follow quite a few marketers on Twitter. Today, I’ve been inundated with messages for Instant Banner Creator.

To be honest, I was prepared not to like it, but I thought I should check it out to see for myself.

The main reason I chose to do this, instead of just ignoring it, is because I respect the owners, John Merrick and Soren Jordansen. Soren has gone out of his way to answer questions I had a few years ago and he has always been responsive to my questions and suggestions. I’ve earned a bit of money promoting his traffic exchange, Dragon Surf, over the years, too.

Instant Banner Creator Review

Yes, you can use Instant Banner Creator for free, but there are some advantages to upgrading. When you first sign up, you’ll see several OTO pages (one-time offers). The first offers a life-time membership (at a pretty good price if you’re going to be using this tool a lot). The others offer discounted memberships.

Once you get inside the site, everything is well laid out and easy to use.

Tutorials

Instant Banner Creator offers two sets of tutorials. You can choose to watch video tutorials or download a written tutorial with screenshots in PDF format.

I did not watch or read either tutorial before starting, but I’ll download the PDF version right after posting this review.

Creating a banner

As you may know, I live in an area where I’m surrounded by broadband Internet access about three or four miles away, but I’m still on a very slow dialup connection. I was expecting a frustrating experience.

When I clicked the link to create a banner, I got what I was expecting.

The first time, I had to endure an excruciatingly-slow download of the available banner templates. I’m sure it is much faster if you have broadband, but I went and did something else for 10 or 15 minutes while the graphics loaded.

Once they were cached in my browser, however, the system was nice and responsive.

On many sites, when I’m downloading lots of graphics, the servers time out and the pages don’t load. There were no timeouts nor errors when using this tool.

I was disappointed with the quality of the banner templates. Most of them are dull and uninspiring, even most of the templates that can only be used by upgraded members.

Another thing that I did not like was the fact that the graphics don’t show their exact height and width, something that I think would be very important.

I didn’t find a banner template that I liked, so I went into the do it yourself section and created a simple two-toned gradient graphic template and used that as the basis for creating my first banner using this system.

I didn’t see any clipart I liked, so all I did was add some text to the banner.

The text editor offers lots of fonts, and you can easily select the size and color of the text you want to use.

If you don’t have the tools for working with graphics and/or you don’t have the talent and experience, I think you’ll find this tool to be pretty easy to use.

For my first banner, I used a large font to show the name of the product, and a smaller font for the call to action.

When adding the text to the graphic, I did not see any tools to help space things properly on the template, i.e., I didn’t see any tools for centering one on the other. So, i just eyeballed it and centered them approximately.

The programs I normally use (Photoshop and TypeStyler) offer precise alignment tools, but perhaps for most uses you really don’t have to be that accurate.

After placing the text on the template, I could drag it around until I was satisfied with the placement and then click a button to have it added to the graphic. There is one level of undo if you don’t like it.

When I was done, I saved the new banner. At that point, the system told me the link I’d need to use to show the banner somewhere. Graphics can be stored on their site or downloaded to your computer and uploaded to wherever you want to store them. The benefit of storing them on their system is you don’t have to FTP the files around or pay for the bandwidth.

I chose to leave the banner on their site.

The system then gives the option of linking to a target destination, and, since they offer an affiliate program, I chose to link to my affiliate page. When I entered the URL and clicked the appropriate button, their system gave the complete link for showing the graphic and linking to the destination page.

I choose to open off-site links in a new window or tab, so I added the target code to the HTML they provided.

Now, it’s a simple matter of copying and pasting that code anywhere I can put HTML.

Like so:

I think you’ll agree that I’m no artist. Even though I have the professional tools and have been doing graphics for over 20 years, I don’t have the artistic and design talent to make the eye-popping graphics that a professional artist can produce.

Still, in just a few minutes, I think I have a serviceable banner and it is hosted and ready to go.

The banner graphic they host on their site after I saved it does not look like the banner shown above. On their site, the text is centered more-or-less and not truncated on the right as it shows here. I downloaded the graphic and it still looks right. Hmmm. I wonder if this is a problem with the CSS design for this blog. I don’t think it is, because the other banner shown a few paragraphs lower looks fine. Let me test that. I’ll get back to this later, in the comments. This center column should be wide enough for a standard 468×60 banner.

I think anyone with a modicum of talent can produce banners that get the point across, but if you want the best, hire an artist to create them for you.

While I’m unimpressed with the banner templates, I give the system for creating and hosting them a big thumbs up. I think just about anyone can work with this system and create banners you can use just about anywhere.

Of course, I’ve just scratched the surface of what this system can do. You can upload your own templates and clip art and use the system to create a new banner with different text. So, even free members aren’t limited by what’s available.

I decided to try creating a button.

Creating a button

Again, there was a very long wait while the template graphics loaded in my browser window. Once they were cached, everything sped up, again.

This time, I liked some of the graphics, especially some of the templates that are available only to upgraded members.

I’ve already described the process for banners, and it works pretty much the same for buttons.

Here’s a button I put together in a few minutes. It’s hosted on their system.

It’s not great, but it’s not bad, either.

Again, an artist could do much better, and many talented amateurs could, too. Here’s an example of one of the banners an artist designed for promoting the site:



For the rest of us, Instant Banner Creator does a good job of creating and hosting the graphics we need.

I’m giving the button creator a big thumbs up, too.

Headers and Footers

I didn’t have much more time for looking at this and decided to see what the header graphics look like. These header (and footer) graphics can be used as part of your template for creating websites, and I’m sure they can be used on most blogs, too.

Again, there was an excruciatingly long wait as the header graphics loaded. Once, again, however, when they were cached, everything sped right back up.

I played with a header, but didn’t save one.

One thing that is a big difference between the banners and the headers is that I loved most of the headers. They are beautiful. I think that’s one of the best parts of the system, out of the parts I had time to look at.

Even the free headers were very nice.

If all you want to do is create a header and footer for a new website, that would be reason enough to join and use this system.

Animated Banners and Peel Away Ads

I did not try the animated banner or peel away ad creators.

While finishing this review, I did start loading the large peel away templates, and most of the ones I looked at are beautiful, in stark contrast to the very low-quality banner templates.

I do plan to give the peel away ads a try when I have more time. When I do, I’ll talk about it in the comments to this post.

Conclusion: Thumbs Up

Yes, there was a lot of hype about this all day, and yes there are several OTO pages to go through, but I believe this system is sound and very useful. Toss in free hosting and bandwidth, and what do you have to lose?

If you plan to use this system a lot, pay close attention to the OTOs, because you can save a lot of money over what you’d have to pay with a regular monthly subscription.

Of course, I’m using my affiliate links to link to the Instant Banner Creator and I’ll earn a commission should you decide to upgrade. You can, too.

Unlike many of the tools I’ve looked at over the last few years, I feel good about recommending this service to you. Free or upgraded, it offers a valuable service to its members, and the owners are honorable, reliable, and helpful.

I have no doubt that Soren and John will be adding more features to this site over the coming months.

Hopefully, they’ll add some better banner templates, especially since that’s part of the site’s name.

Give Instant Banner Creator a try and let me know what you think.

Do you like it, dislike it, or prefer another tool or software?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Private Success Team Update

July 29, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Downline Builders, Private Success Team, SFI Marketing Group, Soaring4Traffic, Traffic Exchanges 

Ray White announced earlier today that he has made major changes to the Private Success Team sign up page, including new graphics and a simpler design.

(Update August 2009: Affiliate link removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

Starting today, new Private Success Team members will only need to sign up for two programs rather than the three that were previously required.

SFI Marketing Group remains our main affiliate program and Soaring4Traffic is the traffic exchange that will be promoted to meet our traffic needs.

Ray just announced a new email series that will provide all Private Success Team members with a better understanding of what our goals are and the process we take to build everyone’s downline in both programs.

If you wish to start building your list and promote the Private Success Team system, the email series will be available for you to copy and modify. It is highly recommended that you sign up for this email series to better understand the direction we are taking.

You are invited to sign up to my customized version of the Private Success Team message series.

You may sign up here:

(Update August 2009: Affiliate link removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

This new email series is a total of eight messages spread over a period of about two weeks. Each member will be allowed and encouraged to copy the original messages and to create a customized series for you to promote the Private Success Team.

This is a great way to promote and build your list at the same time.

Ray added that we are in the process of adding more splash pages to our system in the near future.

This new email series will be encouraging new members to join us in the forum for questions, comments, or concerns. We sincerely hope that you will join us so we can work together to help each other build our teams and grow our businesses.

Please drop by the forum at your earliest convenience. If you are not already a member of the forum, come and join us right away.

Ray has been hinting that activity in the forum can be rewarding as he has plans to reward those who participate.

We hope you join us in the Private Success Team and start promoting it right away. Let’s get back to business and work together to build this team.

By the way, don’t forget to login to your Soaring4Traffic members area, click the Downline Builder link in the left column, and be sure to enter your referral username for the Private Success Team.

We will be sending more members to the downline builder, so don’t miss out on getting a referral.

Similarly, the traffic exchange downline builder in Soaring4Traffic will be promoted for our new Private Success Team members to join other traffic exchanges. Make sure you have your referral IDs entered.

I’ve created a brand new lens on Squidoo.com to help promote the Private Success Team and hope you’ll visit and share your opinions and feedback.

Come join our Private Success Team and we look forward to seeing you in the forum.

Act on your dream!

JD

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The personalized profile pages on I Love Hits continue to improve

July 22, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Blogging, Business Networking, Marketing, Social Networking, Traffic Exchanges 

Recently, Jon Olson had a great idea and added personalized profile pages for ILoveHits.com members.

For example, here is my profile page: I Love Hits Blog for John Dilbeck.

Now, in addition to linking to several social networking sites, you can syndicate the RSS feed from one of your sites or blogs, link to a blog and/or website, and post entries to your very own blog.

Additionally, a members directory is starting to grow as more people edit their profile and add information to their pages. There is a link to the members directory on the bottom of each of our profile pages.

If you have edited your profile and created your ILH blog page, there is also a link to it on the bottom of the pages you promote on the I Love Hits traffic exchange.

Earlier this morning, when I logged in to the members page, the Locker Room, I noticed three entries from members’ blog postings. I don’t know if these are the three most recent posts or if they are a random selection. There may be other criteria at play, too.

Regardless of how they are selected, the blog postings are now starting to appear in other places and not just on your profile page. Three entries on the Locker Room page are in a prime location.

This just keeps getting better and better.

I also noticed that there is a new “Get to know me” badge with javascript that can be added anywhere you can post javascript. I just added it to the right column of this blog. If you click that badge, it will take you right to my personalized profile page.

This is a very nice addition, too.

Are you a member of ILoveHits.com?

Have you created your personalized profile page and posted to your blog there?

Act on your dream!

JD

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WolfSurfer traffic exchange makes big changes

April 7, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 2 Comments
Filed under: Downline Builders, Traffic Exchanges 

This morning, while going through my normal routine of surfing a few of the manual traffic exchanges, I went to WolfSurfer.com and noticed a big change.

It had been a few weeks since I was there. I’m not an upgraded member and I try to surf WolfSurfer at least once per month.

There is a completely new look to the exchange and when I logged in (using my old username and password), I found myself in the familiar LJ script that I like so much. Most of my favorite traffic exchanges use this script and it allows us to easily promote our sites using websites (preferably splash and squeeze pages), banners, and text links.

My sites had transferred over, but I took this opportunity to delete some sites I’m not currently promoting and to add one that has a higher priority for me now.

That done, I started surfing and enjoyed the smooth experience I have come to expect from the traffic exchanges that use the LJ script.

If you haven’t been to WolfSurfer.com in awhile, you should visit and see that all your promotions are in order.

While I didn’t dislike the old script they used, I like the current script much better.

If you’re not familiar with the LJ script, it’s used by most of my favorite traffic exchances, including Soaring4Traffic, I Love Hits, TrafficSoldiers, DragonSurf, and many others.

If you’re not taking advantage of these traffic exchanges, it’s something I think you should look into. Yes, it takes some time to get everything set up and you have to study how these systems can help you, but – if you do it right – you can benefit by driving visitors to your most important offers.

As soon as you have a business, you also have to start a traffic generation business, and traffic exchanges can work very well if you use them properly.

Want to learn how to use them more effectively?

There are two downline builder programs that offer great training and support, and both are free to join. Each has upgraded memberships at very reasonable prices and I’m upgraded in both of them, but you can get most of the benefits even as a free member. Both programs help you learn how to use the traffic exchanges to your benefit and also help you build downlines in a variety of the exchanges.

If you’re using traffic exchanges, you should be a member of VitalViral and Affiliate Funnel.

And, if you’re going to join many traffic exchanges, you should take advantage of the outstanding surf center feature offered by Soaring4Traffic. Not only does Soaring4Traffic offer this feature, it is a fast growing traffic exchange owned by a very caring and helpful owner. In my opinion, if you’re going to join only one traffic exchange, or if you’re looking for a good one to start with, I recommend Soaring4Traffic.

Act on your dream!

JD

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