Well I was greeted today with what I was surprised to see was an apology email from Andy Jenkins. It goes into how his newsletters had gone a little off topic as off late. He linked to a new video entitled Going Natural 2.0. Now let me say that I was merely looking for more written content from Andy and his crew. Rather I found a video that starts out with a very serious note on how StomperNet had gotten a little away from its roots of free content and how he wants to improve on that. He took the time in his video to talk about my post on newsletter marketing(link: Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon Newsletter Marketing).

Now of course I had to continue on with this video and see what it was all about. I have to say it starts out with one crucial piece of advise on increasing your natural traffic. Andy didn’t go into any SENSATIONAL CLAIMS(j/k Andy), he just talked straight about improving your websites traffic. Andy really takes John Reese’s advise on not just delivering whats expected, Andy goes above and beyond my expectations for a newsletter and for StomperNet overall. Now I’m not some huge eCommerce man, but I do find tons of value in what Andy has to say. Its great to see StomperNet going back to what it does best.

Take 30 minutes of your day and check out the video you won’t regret it.

link: Going Natural 2.0

Customer service is such a key point in internet marketing. Often times I will stumble onto a site where all I find is someone blatantly pushing people to click on Adsense. At times this is an excellent option, but more often than not its a poor choice because it just drives your customers away from the site.

Customer doesnt have to be such a retail phrase. Think of customer as a user on your site and I mean any user. If all you are doing is pushing Adsense and not providing that customer what they want all they are going to do is go away from your site to somewhere where they can find exactly what they came in for. They are looking for service. If you provide a good service for them then they will return and usually return with more people.

Lets take a real life example here. I went into a Pottery Barn Kids recently looking for some thing for my son with my wife. There were about 15-20 customers in the building. All my wife and I needed was a little help with some various questions about products, but all we found were a bunch of customer service reps standing around the store talking to each other about various little pieces of gossip they had heard. I must have walked right by three or four reps without even a hello from them. What kind of customer service is that, when you walk in and no one wants to help you get what you need. You know what that made us want to do? Leave the store. Do I want to go back there? No. Why? Because they failed to offer a service that my wife and I needed.

If you take the time to do a complete job on your service for the users of your website it will pay off. Always try to step back and see how the customer would look at your site. A good way to do that is have a friend of family member run through your site once or twice. Chances are you will see where you can improve the experience. If the experience is better you will almost always convert more sales or make a better impression on the user and that will cause them to want to come back for more.

Almost on a daily basis I get to hear some great idea or the next BIG thing. Well the problem with that is its all talk but no walk. Now I have been just as bad at times. I come up with lots of ideas. Problem is I dont have time to act on all of them. I do however test the most profitable ones as soon as I can. I try to list my ideas in order of what will generally make me the most money.

I can’t stress the importance of testing everything you can. It doesnt mean you have to go all out from the start, but just try a small portion of it. Whats the worst thats going to happen? You will actually learn something by trying. The internet game is about experience. I learned everything I have so far by actually going out and making that website or trying that PPC campaign. So take at least one hour a day if you can, even 30 minutes, and try something new. Use a new program, play with the new analytics, or try out some new method for gaining traffic. Then try to figure out how you can improve those tests to make you better in your daily work. It will pay off.

So I’m a shoemoney whore at times. I was taking a look at his blog and saw that he was giving EntreCard a try out. EntreCard seems like a good idea to sort of share traffic between bloggers. Now how effective it will be is really up in the air. I can see some people taking to it right away and some not so much. The dashboard is extremely easy to use and understand. For some reason though I get the feeling the idea is limited in some shape or form. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. I’m giving it a shot, why not try it yourself and possibly get some free advertising on Shoemoney’s site if you’re a small blog with big ambitions then this would be a quick solution to some solid traffic.

Alright so usually when I am testing things out for the first time on this site I will toss it in the sidebar. Nine times out of ten I will put it in some low position to keep it out of your face and mine. Now when I do add something thats new, I like to toss a “?” right next to it and link it to a post where I’m usually blabbing on about it. That way you can easily voice your opinion about it. If I hear that its crap, I’ll most likely take it down. Unless in the rare case I’m doing something special with it. Anyways, voice yourself about anything new on here at any time. I will make my best effort to listen.

As it stands I just tossed BlogRush up on the site. Do I expect much from it? Nah, but if I do get some traffic from the BlogRush crowd, then Welcome to my Site! Otherwise enjoy the fancy widget in my sidebar and check out some other bloggers great work.

Well I for one think so. As I have been traveling around the net for a while. I occasionally run around to a few seo/affiliate marketeers sites, I like to run over to AoJon.com and read up on his various trials through Googles new algorithm. Now not having actually looked at the algorithm I cant say for sure, but after reading Jon’s example on his site about TrustRank I have a very solid feeling his findings are 100% accurate. Just by following his trials with it on his site, you get an idea of how difficult it can be.

I have been studying link structures and MiniNets for the last few weeks. Just by his vague PR example he explains on his blog I feel I have a better understanding of how the tip of the TrustRank iceberg works. I’d rather not give away examples, but the simple matter is Jon found a way to give a semi-accurate if not completely accurate TR score for peoples websites and how to out score anyone else out there. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on a copy of the TR algorithm just to have a look at what the work would be like deciphering it. I’ll leave that for another day. Overall though the message from Jon to every person working on SEO for their site is stop worrying about PR scores. Anyways check out his blog. Its some solid info, but dont bother him about buying his TR service, its all done now.

Link: http://www.aojon.com/

Sidenote: Even if you dont care about the TR algorithm, you should read Jon’s blog its pretty fun to read about him ripping on Ebooks and various other things.

Occasionally I like to turn on a movie and just pump myself up on what I want in life and what I want to achieve. Well one of those movies is Thomas Crown Affair. No I dont want to be a thief, but nice try. I want to be at that status point. Be at the top of a company and do whatever it takes to keep it that way. I like to watch this movie just to keep some dreams going and inspire me to stay on top and keep pushing myself to the top.

What movies inspire you?