For those of you who don’t know, Entrecard is a sort of online business card exchange that allows you to promote yourself on other blogs through a 125×125 button ad that you create. Once you have your button you can proceed to “drop” your card off at any of the thousands of bloggers’ sites with the Entrecard widget installed and your website will appear in their inbox for them to look at, much the same as if you gave a new business contact your business card. You can earn one credit for each card you drop through another blogger’s widget.

The cost to display your ad on another person’s page will depend on their popularity, the more people that want to advertise there – the more Entrecredits it will cost you. Currently, you can advertise your site on this blog for only 32 credits. I have a button ad designed already, but it’s a very pathetic attempt. I will be looking into professional design to help my ad stand out more when I decide to place it on other blogs.

I am also getting ready to launch my latest web venture, another wordpress blog with a very focused niche that relates to my upcoming transition to college life. More to come on that project soon.

[tags]shaun carter, entrecard, blogging, banner exchange, advertising[/tags]

Another potential benefit to eliminating the NoFollow on comments is increased linking to the site and will increase the PageRank of Shaun Carter dot Com, which took a bit of a hit down to a PR of 2 during the last update.

Hopefully there won’t be much spam that gets through the Akismet filter. So far traffic is the same around here, but I’m sure once the blog makes it in some DoFollow lists things will pick up. As long as you see the U Comment, I Follow badge on the sidebar you have an opportunity to get link juice from ShaunCarter.com!

[tags]dofollow, no nofollow, google, pagerank, akismet, lucia’s linky love, wordpress plugin, commenting, shaun carter[/tags]

The first one I will talk about is called Traffic Pods. On the outside their system looks very complex and confusing because it is not just a simple traffic exchange, but instead there is a string of “pods” that that you surf through and earn traffic credits for doing so. In addition, when you become a pod owner (either by upgrading to pro or being one of the top 25 non-pod owner surfers in a week) you can generate significantly more traffic from everyone surfing through your own pod. This is sort of like moving from an employee to a business owner in terms of increasing your share of the traffic the site generates.

At the very least, traffic pods is a fun and great way to generate traffic. There is also the chance to win up to $500 while surfing through a Super Pod. So, check it out and have fun surfing through the pods and generating streams of visitors to your own websites.

[tags]traffic, traffic exchange, traffic pods, shaun carter, visitors, unique, money, cash, prizes[/tags]

There must be some reason why some marketing plans outperform
others.

Said another way, if two equally skilled marketers create a
marketing plan… why does one produce 5 x as many members and
sales as the other marketer?

Is this due to who they know, or the size of their list? Or
maybe it’s the price of their product or service. Sure there
are a lot of aspects that make up a good marketing plan, but
what can make one better then the other?

The key here is *plan*.

Yes, most marketers who come online don’t plan, or know how to
plan the right way and launch a program or product with much
less success then they would have received.

There has been some fantastic information provided for people
online to create a profit producing marketing plan, but can
everyone afford to spend hundreds or thousands on this
information before they launch?

Well before we jump into the fundamentals of creating a
marketing plan we have to answer this question…

1. What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is simply a plan designed to generate your
most wanted response for your business when you launch it and
years after. In other words, if you want to make a lot of sales
fast, then you’d create a plan that was geared to sell a lot of
products in the shortest amount of time possible.

If your plan was to get as many new members into your list or
program in the shortest amount of time then that would be the
focus of your plan. You really want to consider your end first.
What you want to accomplish 3 months, 6 months, or even a year
from now.

Your marketing plan is pretty much your business plan and how
you’re going to accomplish what your business was designed to
do.

Now there are quite a few components to creating a good
marketing plan like…

Your tactics… this would consist of things like your offer,
mental triggers, sequences of events and so on. These are
important and can make your plan successful, but it’s your
strategy and how you use the tactics overall that will really
pay off for you most.

Your strategy would consist of things like list building,
Relationship building, responding to your market, and
positing your business. Now these are all very important
and I would love to cover them all in great detail, but
there’s not nearly enough battery juice in my key board
to cover them all. )

So lets answer this question..

2. Can you show me an example of a good marketing plan?

I have two I’m going to share with you. First one I put
together years ago and has generated hundreds of
thousands of dollars in sales for one of my programs
I’ve been running now for 6 years and the other plan is
one I just recently put together for a program that has
just launched.

First off, the PageSwirl.com marketing plan. Here’s the
situation… I took over ownership of PageSwirl in April of
2002 and wanted to come up with the best way to re-launch
it and gain a lot of new members that would upgrade to Pro
and be able to generate some residual income from.

When I took over PageSwirl it had 90 Pro members and only a
couple thousand free members. After this plan was implemented
and followed through with, we generated over 200,000 new
visitors, brought in 2,000 new free members, 329 new customers,
and at the end of the year created a profit of close to
$15,000. That was years ago and today PageSwirl has over
45,000 thousand members.

Now this was before I had really established myself online and
didn’t have all the resources and contacts I have today. So I
tapped into my current resources available to me at the time
and asked some of my closest business associates if they would
help me re-launch PageSwirl.com

So what was this plan and how did we make it all happen?

My plan consisted of an individual investment of $40 per
JV partner. In this plan I set up a schedule for each of my
partners to mail their lists at a different time of the month.

I split up the JV partners into four separate mailings on
different days of the week. Five people would mail their list
on one day (then follow-up a week later) and then five days
later another five would mail their list, and so on.

What I was trying to achieve was an Internet buzz that would
last the entire month. You see, I know that a lot of
subscribers are on the same lists and when my JV partners
spread out their mailings it gave the impression to the
subscribers that this was a program they wanted to be apart of.
It worked great!

The other part of the marketing plan consisted of an Ezine
co-op and traffic from banners and traffic exchanges.

It went great! I kept them updated and informed through email.
What was in it for them? New members, commissions, and the
feeling of being part of a special team.

I was excited and they saw that, and wanted to be a part of it.
They caught the vision and were more than willing to help make
history. And that we did, we ended up increasing the PageSwirl
membership base by 2,000 and increased the Pro memberships
by 329 within 30 days!

Now that was a great plan…

And before I give you some tips on how to set one up yourself
let me share with you a new plan that’s being implemented today.

This plan was created to launch a new Traffic Exchange called…

http://www.GladiatorHits.com/?rid=2342

If you’ve never joined a Traffic Exchange or used one to
advertise online you’re truly missing out on a fantastic
resource for advertising your business online.

Traffic exchanges have been online for a decade and have
quickly become the number one resource online for generating
large amounts of free traffic. We’re not talking crappy traffic
either.. this traffic has been responsible for producing
millions of dollars online for business owners all over the
world.

So back to this new marketing plan. This plans goal is to
generate 10,000 members within 6 months. Now in case
you didn’t know most traffic exchanges never reach 10,000
members in 5 years, let along 6 months. So this is a pretty
high goal.

It is reachable though and with a good marketing plan it can
be done.

First part of our plan is to build a JV team consisting of 50
partners.

Each of these partners will commit to spending only $50 dollars
to advertise GladiatorHits within 10 traffic exchanges. Our
plan is to Saturate 10 traffic exchanges with traffic, banner
and text link advertising. Each partner will spend $5 for each
traffic exchange purchasing 1000 credits for $5.

They will use 800 credits for the main page view section,
100 credits to be exchanged for banner impressions and
100 credits used for text link advertising.

They will also send out an email to their lists on the launch
day and follow up with their lists when we hit 1,000
members.

This will create a lot of social proof and Buzz about the
program. We will be offering this JV team 50% commissions
for all upgrades and sales from the members they refer.

On top of that we’re doing something that’s never been done
before. We’re paying members to join. That’s right… we’re
offering $5 for the first 500 members who join GladiatorHits.
Wow! Yes, this will grow the membership base super fast.

Then once we hit 500 members we’re going to be paying the
members and JV team $.50 – $1 for each new member they
refer. Which will make each JV team member and GladiatorHits
member promote even harder. This will stay active until we
reach 1000 total members.

Once we reach 1000 members we plan to implement a few
more promotional tactics that we’ll announce at that time.
Also included in this plan is for the owner to position his
program into downline builders within as many traffic
exchanges online.

His goal is to build relationships with TE owners and buy,
trade, or sell advertising within his program and theirs.
It’s called networking.

Again I would love to go into every step of this marketing
plan with you, but there’s not nearly enough time to cover
it all. Just know that GladiatorHits is a program that will
become successful and a resource you’re going to want to
join and take advantage of.

3. How can I get started with setting up my marketing plan?

Once you have your product or program ready for launch you
need to create your marketing plan. Sometimes it can be best
to start your marketing plan before your product is completely
ready.

When creating your plan you need to look at is what resources
you have available to you.

Do you know top marketers within your niche you’ve chosen to
be in?

Do you know the best places to advertise within your market?

Do you know any forums within your market you can find JV
team members?

If you know the answer to these 3 questions you’re well on your
way. Include in your a plan JV partners sending out promotional
materials to their list. This usually includes emails,
articles, blog posts, and maybe even phone calls to their
customers.

Schedule your launch date and create a web page that includes
your marketing plan in detail. On this page have a opt-in box
or a way for potential JV partners to email you if they’re
interested.

The web page should describe the steps for the plan and how it
will be implemented. It should also explain what you require
from each JV member and set a level of commitment for them.

The better the plan the more impressed and excited the JV
member will be to take part in the plan. Make sure you also
thoroughly fill them in on “What’s in it for them”. If you
don’t have enough incentives for someone to promote your
product chances are they won’t.

One of your goals is to coordinate places you plan to advertise
and saturate your program or product. If members or viewers
see your site being advertised thoroughly in the places they
visit regularly, chances are they will want to join or buy that
product. Naturally, if everyone’s promoting it, it must be a
good product. )

You want to concentrate on the places your product would sell
best and have all the JV team advertise in those places. That’s
a win win for you and the JV team. That’s also why it’s
important to know where your potential buyers are hanging out.

Now last but not least how to find JV partners. Well the best
JV partners are your potential customers. You want to find
the people who want your product. Then if need be, give them
a free membership or a free copy of your product. If they love
it they will be happy to promote it to their lists.

You can find these members on forums or from referrals of
the top marketers within your niche. Sometimes it just
takes one top marketer to review your product and like it
to get the ball rolling.

Well there you have it.. that’s about as detailed as I can get
in this article. It’s not as hard as you might think to create
a successful marketing plan.

Just take your time, contact the right people and make sure
you follow-up and follow through with the plan. Most of the
work is following through with your JV team after the money
starts rolling in and you want to take it easy.

—————————————————————-
Dan Moses is the creator and Launch Manager of GladitaorHits.
Join today and watch this exclusive marketing plan unfold.
Join Free here… http://www.gladiatorhits.com/?rid=2342

[tags]dan moses, gladiator hits, marketing, traffic exchange, shaun carter, free[/tags]

Adsense – $263.91

Kontera – $82.85

(Adwords) – $84.40

Total Income – $262.36

So, last month was not a bad start to monetizing this blog. The income was primarily earned from the significant increase in traffic this month because of the Quixtar/TEAM news that I have been featuring here, that is why I decided to try monetizing the content here. Shaun Carter dot Com received 9,616 unique visitors during August and 25,636 pageviews. The largest number of referrals came from organic Google links, Technorati and direct visits. I don’t plan on doing any Adwords in September but may as I uncover more relevant 1 cent keywords.

[tags]august, income, blogging, shaun carter, adsense, adwords, kontera, adlinks, pageviews, visits, quixtar, team, team of destiny, amway, alticor, technorati, google, text links[/tags]

[tags]shaun carter, alexa, traffic, quixtar, team, team of destiny, amway, alticor, rank[/tags]

The best part of Technorati users discovering your site is they are much more likely to add you as a favorite blog in their account and/or subscribe to your blog’s feed than a visitor from another source like a search engine. My latest Feed Subscriber update shows 20 people are reading my blog via a feed, this is a 100% increase from last week.

I use a WordPress Plugin to make adding Technorati tags a breeze. You will find that the SimpleTagsPlus plugin works great for adding Technorati, Flickr and Del.icio.us tags to your blog posts. The instructions are easy and it just takes me 15 seconds to type in the tags after I’m finished writing and presto, you have an instant traffic generating machine attached to everything you write.

[tags]shaun carter, technorati, tags, blog posts, flickr, del.iciou.us, wordpress, plugin, simpletagsplus, generate traffic, free traffic[/tags]

But consider for a moment that a Digg generates thousands and thousands of hits to a particular blog entry very quickly – the overall number of clicks received will surely outpace that of any generic Google traffic you would have received to that entry. So, while this data shows that in CTR terms a Digg is less effective than Google traffic, I think it is quite obvious that the power of a Digg is very evident both in how it will bring most servers to a crawl and the quick burst of revenue it can provide.

[tags]digg, google, chitika, blog bash, ctr, advertising, making money, shaun carter, adsense, adwords[/tags]