There is an SEO theory which suggests that mass directory submission will get your website into Google sandbox.

The basic idea is if your new website has too many links all of a sudden, usually due to mass submission in a short time, your website will be ‘jailed’ by Google.

Is it true? Let’s find out in this little test that I’ve done.

In my test, I built 3 40-page content websites and then did the following IMMEDIATELY:

- For 2 of the websites, I bookmarked them at Digg and Propeller (as what I usually do to promote new websites) and submit them to 1000 link directories (outsourced).

- For the third website, I only submit them to 1000 link directories. Forgot to submit to Digg and Propeller actually.

After 3 days……

All three websites got indexed in Google, one with 100% of the pages indexed and the other two with 50% indexed.

From my experience, it is unusual that new websites get 100% indexed. Usually, if your website has 40 pages, about 10-20 pages will be indexed initially. I believe this is because there isn’t enough link popularity for the new site.

But in this test, one website got 100% indexed. Is it a coincidence or it’s the effect of 1000 directory submission? Em…

How about the traffic?

There is a surge in traffic to all 3 website in the first few days. This is expected because link directories owners are evaluating the website for listing.

But after 7 days……

One website average about 20 visitors a day and the other two websites average about 40 visitors a day.

Frankly, I like what I’m seeing.

To give you an idea, my other websites with ’slow’ link building process are getting 5 to 10 visitors a day initially. These 3 websites are really having a great start.

Are all the traffic from Google?

Not really. Two websites have most of the search engine traffic from Google. One has most of the search engine traffic from Microsoft Live. Besides search engine traffic, te websites also have traffic from Digg, Propeller and tons of link directories.

The websites are now 2 weeks old and the traffic has been pretty consistent.

From this little test, I’ve yet to see any sandbox effect on these 3 websites as a result of mass directory submission.

On the contrary, I’m seeing Search Engines giving my websites more priority as a result of more initial links.

Will Google ‘jail’ the websites after some time? Well, only time can tell. But I’ll surely keep you informed.

Have you got any similar experience before? Or you ever got your website thrown into Google sandbox as a result of mass link directory submission? Feel free to discuss below.

Today I’m going to share with you how to increase your odds in online success. It’s simpler than what you think, really!

First of all, do you know that 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs will give their lifeblood and fail?

When it comes to online, I believe the same odds applies.

So, how do you ensure that you are the 1 out of 10 online entrepreneurs who succeed?

Simple. All you have to do is to be an online entrepreneur 10 times!

Mathematically, if 1 out of 10 will succeed, it means if you do it 10 times, there will be 1 time when you succeed!

Make sense?

Some of you may think this is nonsense, but it’s not.

Many people quit too early. In fact, many people quit even without trying!

I didn’t succeed in my first online business. I have registered at least 5 domain names that I hardly do anything with. I also have at least 2 ‘BIG’ websites that I’ve spent at least 2 months preparing but they are now sitting somewhere in the web, collecting virtual dust.

But so what?

I don’t need all my websites to be successful.

Even if you talk about Adsense websites (I have about 70 of them now), the highest earner can make me $500 a month and there are some that are just earning $5 a month.

Again, so what?

All I know is the more websites I have, the more money I make.

Am I disappointed with those websites that fail to perform?

I am. But that only motivates me to continue looking for other ways to bring traffic and make money online.

How about promoting affiliate products through PPC advertising? There is no guarantee that your first campaign will be a success. What if your 4th campaign is going to be a great success but you quit at the 3rd?

The good thing about being an online entrepreneur compared to being an offline entrepreneur is that you can hardly lose your shirt.

I lost $50,000 in 6 months in my first offline business. Question is how many $50,000 can you afford to lose before you hit the jackpot?

But when it comes to online, if you invest $500 on an online business, which is already considered a lot, 10 businesses will only cost you $5000. 1 successful business can easily recover all your losses.

So, if you are thinking of quitting, why not think about what your next project is going to be?

If you persists and keep improving, success is inevitable.

Many new marketers fail to start because they are not sure how to promote a new website.

So today I’m going to show you step by step what I normally do when I start a new website.

Before listing down the step by step instructions, I need to clarify that what I’m doing is to promote 15 to 40 pages Adsense website or product review website. It can be a static site or a blog.

“Why is it important to clarify on this?” You may ask.

This is because you can start many kinds of websites. Adsense or product review website is just one easy way to make ’small’ money online, but when you have 100s of these little sites, it’s more than enough to quit your job!

Other forms of website you can start include a squeeze page to build list, a mega service site like LeadsLeap, your own product site such as your own Clickbank product etc. The strategies required for these kinds of website is different from promoting Adsense or product review website.

For one, you can’t do any form of joint venture for Adsense or product review sites. You can do advertising, provided you know what you are doing. But search engine optimization is a surefire free traffic source that you can rely on and once you get such traffic, it’s going to serve you for years!

So in this article, when I say promoting a new website, I’m really talking about promoting it to get search engine traffic.

I’m not going to talk about on-page search engine optimization here. You can read it somewhere else or if you post a request below, I’ll probably discuss it in my next blog post.

Today, what I’m going to share with you is off-page optimization, which is all about building link juice to your website.

Ok, I hope by now you get the whole picture and are ready to see the simple steps that I use for all my little sites that are enough to earn me a full time income.

Step 1 - Bookmark 1 page of your website at Digg and Propeller

This is the first thing you should do once your website is ready. Just choose any 1 page and bookmark it at Digg and Propeller. This will get your website indexed by Google, usually in less than 3 days.

Warning: Don’t bookmark more than 1 page and if you have tons of websites that look similar, make sure you open different accounts to bookmark or your account may be suspended. I have my account suspended twice! Technically speaking, you shouldn’t bookmark your own website. But if you do it under the radar, it is the fastest way to get your website indexed.

Step 2 - Write 5 articles and post to as many article directories as possible

Some of the directories you must “hand” submit to are Ezinearticles, ArticleDashBoard, Buzzle, GoArticles.

Next, take up a lifetime membership here and submit all your articles there. From my experience, 5 article submissions will give you 100-200 backlinks.

Step 3 - Submit your website to link directories

There is an argument on whether submitting to link directories is still effective as a form of link building. I’ve been doing it since 2006 as an integral part of the whole process and frankly I’m not sure what would happen if I stop doing it. Maybe one day I should try!

However, one thing for sure is the links count. If you do a link search for some high PR sites, you’ll see that many links come from link directories. If you believe that every link to your website will help you in your search engine ranking, submitting your website to link directories is a great way to get tons of one way link.

You can either do it yourself, which was what I did when I first started, or if you have the budget, get a freelancer to submit for you. You can get some cheap bargain here.

Step 4 - Set up 3 way link exchange

You probably are familiar with 3 way link. Yes, it’s one of my favorite tools too. If you are new, 3 way link is a little too ‘expensive’ for you. The price is $47 a month. Get it when you have 10-20 websites.

That’s all I do whenever I launch a new Adsense or product review site. Even without step 4, just by doing step 1 to 3 will get your website to PR 2-3.

What can you do with a PR 2-3 website?

Well, besides making money from Adsense and affiliate sales, you can sell link and make another $20 a month from each website you own. You can read about selling text links in this post.

Many people can come out with innovative ideas. But coming out with innovative ideas that sell requires some skills. Today, I’m going to show you how to do it.

There are only 3 steps to follow:

1) Find a hot market with lots of buyers

2) Identify the limitation of existing products in the market

3) Think of an innovative solution to overcome that limitation (Tips: the innovative solution is usually a combination of two existing solutions!)

That’s it. If you follow these 3 steps, you will be able to come out with innovative ideas that can easily make you money.

Let me show you how others, including myself, use these 3 steps to come out with profitable ideas.

In the 90s, someone came out with a viral lead building system known as a Safelist system. In this system, everyone in the system is able to send emails to each other, and hence the name “Safe List”, i.e. a list that is safe to send emails to. When it first started, everyone was excited because suddenly, they can reach out to thousands of people for free. However, what they didn’t realize was at the same time, they were receiving thousands of other emails from other members too!

Soon, people realized that their emails were flooded and they started to think of alternatives. A simple solution was to redirect those emails to free accounts such as Yahoo and Hotmail accounts.

Guess what, the trick soon spread throughout the industry and everyone started doing the same thing.

The end result was, everyone was trying to email to everyone but no one was reading any email!

As you can see, lead generation is a hot market. But the existing ‘Safelist’ solution has a big problem. People do not want to flood their emails.

Here comes the idea maker who thought of a solution to this problem……

In 2000, a renowned internet marketing guru, John Reese, came out with an ingenious system. He combined the idea of safelist and network system. In his novel system, members can send emails to their 10 levels of members. Let me explain……

For example, A1 recruits B1 and B2 who become A1’s level 1. B1 and B2 then recruit C1, C2, C3, C4 who become A1’s level 2 and so on. It’s something like your referral structure at EmailCashPro. To A1, he will be able to send emails to all the Bs, Cs, Ds, Es, Fs…. all the way to the 10th level.

This is a powerful system because in this system, the maximum number of emails each member can receive is limited to 10, since only the immediate 10 uplines can send emails to the member. But the member can email to thousands of people in his 10 levels of network. If you don’t get what I mean, take out a piece of paper and work out the maths. It’s not hard to figure out.

John’s ingenious system has shaped the lead generation industry. Today, many other lead generation programs use a similar system to build leads.

What John did was he took the safelist idea, which is an existing system but with a limitation, and combined it with network building system, which is another existing system. I hope you can see that nothing truly innovative is created here. He merely combined two systems into one in order to overcome the limitation of the safelist system.

John’s system solved the problem of members’ emails being flooded with thousands of emails. However, members in the system still have to receive emails from their 10 uplines in the system, which is still obtrusive and annoying. In reality, many people in such system still divert their emails to junk accounts.

There you have it. Another limitation that is waiting for someone to overcome.

This time, I grabbed this opportunity to create a system that allows members to build leads without having to receive any email from any member in the system. You may have guessed it by now. Yes, the system is called LeadsLeap.

Basically, I took John’s system, which is already an improved version of the safelist system, and combined it with contextual advertising system. For those who don’t know what is contextual advertising, go to Google.com and do a search for “birthday gift”. Look at the advertisements on the right hand side. Those are contextual ads.

In a nutshell, members of LeadsLeap.com will not have to receive emails from any other members in the system. They will only receive info-packed newsletters (now info-packed blog) from me.

The twist in the system is that I allow members to post their contextual ads in my newsletter. To a member, besides reading high quality newsletters, he will also see the contextual ads posted by his 10 uplines. He can click on the contextual ads in the newsletter if he is interested in the ad. If not, he can just read my newsletter and learn more about making money online.

Again, nothing truly innovative has been created. I simply combine two existing systems into one in order to overcome the limitation of John’s system.

That’s it. 3 simple steps you can use to come out with innovative ideas that sell!

Make use of these 3 steps. The next winning innovative idea can be from you!

I’m in the midst of doing some touch up for LeadsLeap sales letter. While writing the sales letter, I recalled some powerful tips Ewen Chia has shared with me (personally, over a cup of coffee).

Remember I told you that Ewen likes to compose and test different kinds of sales letters? Talking about writing powerful sales letters, I truly believe that he’s the MAN, not because he is famous but because a number of my successful clients (those who advertise with me) use his strategies.

In today’s blog post, I’m going to share with you 3 powerful tips that chances are, no one has told you before.

I’ll use one of his actual sales letters to illustrate to you how to use these 3 strategies.

1) Convert every testimonial into a headline

We all know that adding testimonials is a powerful way to increase the conversion rate. What most advanced marketers do when it comes to adding testimonials is to add a photograph, add an audio testimonial and highlight some of the important quotes.

One thing that Ewen did differently is that he will take one phrase from each of his testimonial and turn it into a headline for that particular testimonial.

Take a look at these testimonials to see what I mean.

Do you see that every testimonial has a red color headline?

Fact is, most people are not going to read every testimonial. These outstanding headlines allow the prospects to quickly grasp the gist of every testimonial. The idea is to quickly increase the confidence of the prospects in you and your product without having to go through every testimonial.

Brilliant strategy I am using now without fail.

2) Create a summary break down of the value of each offer and let the audience know what is the total value

Many marketers like to throw in lots of bonuses to increase the perceived value of their offer. This has been a known strategy to increase the conversion rate.

But when this ideas was popularized, what most marketers did was to overwhelm the prospects with so many bonuses that the prospects lost focus.

The idea of adding bonuses is to increase the overall value of your offer. To achieve this ultimate objective, Ewen created a table that lists down every offer that he’s made and attach a monetary value to each offer. He then summed up all the values and gave a grand total value of say $2,345.00. (But for a limited time, you can get everything at just $47. tha na…..)

Click here and SCROLL UP two pages to see what I mean.

You may think this is hype. It is. But it works!

I’ve been in the advertising industry for more than 2 years now. Everyone says they don’t like hype. But the truth is they do. A hyped up sales letter sells better than a no-hype sales letter, especially in an advertising environment, i.e. strangers selling to strangers.

3) Re-emphasize the main benefits of your product before asking your prospects to buy

After reading a long sales letter, it is indeed possible for someone to lose focus on what’s your main offer.

Also, have you ever come across a long sales letter with everything under the sun but the only thing that you fail to find is the price? This is not a joke. I ever read a sales letter in which I had to use the search function to search for the ‘$’ sign so as to find out how much the product cost!

What Ewen likes to do is to put everything into a box, just before asking the prospects to buy.

Take a look at how he did it here.

First he reiterated the main product offer. Then he re-affirmed the main benefits that the prospect will receive, the price of the product and the money back guarantee.

I like his style, both as a marketer and as a potential buyer. With this summary, I know exactly what I’m going to get and what I can expect.

One last thing to note is that his call for action is never “Buy Now”. His calls for action are usually reiteration of the benefit of his product, for example, “Yes, I Want To Become A Super Affiliate Now” or to create a sense of urgency, for example, “Get in now before the price shoots up soon without warning!”.

Do you have more tips and experience to share? Add your comments below……

Last week, I wrote an article called How To Find Your Own Niche In Internet Marketing.

One reader feedback to me with the following comment:

“This article addressed on finding a unique strength and then making it into IM. But it does not address on the issue on what if the niche market is too small, and there are not enough customers to feed this niche business. Customers are a reason why businesses are successful; too small a target size of customers, and the profits will sink, together with a sinking business.”

To give you a better picture, I decide to discuss this topic again.

In my last article, I said that you should understand your personal talent, leverage on that talent and convert it into your own niche in internet marketing.

So, what if your talent or strength is in a niche market that is too small and is unprofitable?

My answer is simple; just use your talent in a niche market that is big and profitable!

In internet marketing, the term niche has been commonly used to refer to a particular “niche market” and that’s why when I wrote convert your talent into a niche, some of you may think that I’m talking about converting your interest into a business.

That’s not what I mean.

Let’s look at the actual definition of a niche. A niche is a position particularly well suited to the person who occupies it.

That’s what I mean.

Regardless of which “niche market” you are in, you can always make full use of your talent and carve a niche for yourself in the “niche market”.

I hope you see my point now.

I feel that the best is to give you some real-life examples:

Internet marketing expert, Derrick VanDyke, started as a programmer, helping some of the big names to do programming work. Today, he leverages on his programming talent and creates a system to help his members to build lists and make money. My observation tells me that Derrick’s strength is probably not in marketing. Neither is he a seminar person who likes to speak in front of the crowd. (No offence, Derrick.) But that doesn’t stop him from becoming one of the most successful and respectable marketers out there.

Todd Gross is a national on-air television meteorologist. Speaking in front of the video cam is like his second nature. Todd applies his talent to internet marketing and created PreSaleVideos.com, a powerful presale tool that converts sales like crazy.

Both of them manage to carve a niche for themselves by focusing on doing what they are good at.

So, my 3 simple steps to start your online career remain unchanged:

1) Study how the internet marketing works (This would mean joining other people’s lists, spying on how other marketers make money online, reading ebooks, watching video tutorials, spending some money and possibly losing some money. This is a stage of confusion and most people give up at this stage.)

2) While studying, see how you can fit yourself into the game. In other words, you got to find out where you can best use your talent in.

3) Convert your talent into your own niche in the internet marketing game and deploy all the best practices of traffic generation to build traffic to your online business. (Spend most of your time, money and resources to generate traffic. Nothing can happen until you start having traffic to your website.)