Internet Marketing Magazine July 2014 by Internet Marketing Magazine

JULY 2014

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> MARKETING TIPS FOR PINTEREST P28

> GROW YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL VIEWS P33

COVER STORY:

> OPTIMIZING YOUR BLOG ARTICLES

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> MILLION DOLLAR ECOMMERCE BUSINESS P16

> GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS VIEW

MASTERING YOUR NICHE & CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE

DAN FAGGELLA >> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, KINDLE FIRE, ANDROID AND THE WEB

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MEET OUR EXPERT PANEL Jayson DeMers is the Founder and CEO of Audience

Bloom, an internet marketing firm specializing in SEO and social media marketing for small to medium-sized businesses. You can contact Jayson on LinkedIn, Google+, or Twitter. Read his article on SEO-Optimizing Your Blog Articles on PAGE 13

Jock Purtle

is an online business broker specialist, who owns and runs the full service website brokerage Digital Exits. He specializes in helping online business owners find a buyer when they want to exit their company. Jock personally exited his online business in 2013, and is on track to facilitate over 20 deals in 2014, ranging from $100,000 to up to 5 million dollars. Read his article on Million Dollar eCommerce Business on PAGE 16

John M Lynch

is the Director and Founder of 360 Agency Ltd., specialists in image based digital content, Local Search Optimisation and a Google Trusted Agency. John has consistently been one of the top producers in the “Google Maps | Business View” programme across Europe, Middle East and Asia. 360 Agency Ltd. services a wide ranging client base in Canada, Ireland, UK, Europe and the Middle East providing 360 degree solutions of the highest quality. John is also a moderator and advisor regarding “Google Views” and “Google Maps | Business View” for Plus Your Business - an online community advising businesses on best practice in Google+. Read his article on Google Maps Business View on PAGE 21

Zack Fagan

is the inbound marketing manager at StoreYa. com, a Social Commerce Platform designed to increase engagement and conversions across social networks, mobile & online stores. Zack loves all things digital and am always looking for the latest social marketing scoop. Read his article on Marketing Tips on Pinterest on PAGE 28

CONTENTS

1Expert

commentary on what are the big plays that have recently happened online and how they affect you.

1Dan

Faggella talks about niche marketing, and mastering customer lifetime value in an exclusive interview with Internet Marketing Magazine.

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Steps to SEOOptimizing Your Blog Articles

1Know

What Makes A Million Dollar E-Commerce Business

1Guide

View

1Learn

Till Boadella

is the C.E.O. of FreedomSyndicate.net and the C.E.O. and Editor-in-Chief of TigerFreedom.com. He’s a normal dude in his mid-twenties, passionate about personal development and living the freedom business lifestyle every day. Read his article on Increasing Youtube Channel Views on PAGE 33

internet marketing magazine july 2014

to Google Maps Business

the 9 Marketing Tips for

lHow

to Grow Your YouTube Channel to 160,000 Views a Month Within 1.5 Years

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

elcome to this, the July issue of Internet Marketing Magazine. I know it’s the middle of summer for many of you, but damn it is cold here in Australia right now.

Everywhere we turn at the moment the talk is about Funnel Optimization. The current trend that has really been made popular by the Digital Marketer folks is what I call ‘Day Zero Funnel Optimization’ – where you design a series of opt-ins, tripwires, up-sells and down-sells to monetize your traffic on day 0. This trend to monetize your traffic or break even on your traffic costs on the day you realize the marketing spend really is a massive game changer as it allows you to scale without having to constantly put your hand in your pocket for more advertising dollars.

Still on the Funnel Optimization theme - Russell Brunson and his team have put together a very clever value proposition at ClickFunnels.com. We are testing it in our labs now and my team and I believe it’s a big game changer of a play in the industry as it effectively replaces many other tools such as split testing tools and landing page tools, whilst allowing you to quickly build complex day zero type funnels. It’s certainly one to keep an eye on. We are also meeting more and more entrepreneurs who are fully embracing niche eCommerce and doing very well out of it. Shopify seems to be very popular at the moment with many smaller to medium sized eCommerce stores for it’s rapid development time, good support and rich feature set. We are currently doing many builds this way with our coaching clients at the moment. The only thing we don’t like about Shopify is that you can’t modify the checkout design at all, so it’s a bit limited in that regards. In this issue check out the audio interview with the very sharp Dan Faggella as he talks all things niche marketing, email marketing and customer lifetime value optimization. For those with iTunes the Podcast version may be more convenient. If you haven’t got access to the member’s area please feel free to do at http://internetmarketingmag.net/ become-member/ (it’s free). Our Google Play App is now live and working well. It gets updated roughly one day after the Apple Newsstand issue. So please feel free to check it out if you are on Android. We are working on a way to make it get automatically updated the same day as Apple Newsstand, so I’ll let you know if that comes off. A special thanks to those who have left reviews in the apple platforms as it really helps us out. If you are getting good value from Internet Marketing Magazine and you can spare 1 minute of your time to click this link to give us a quick honest review that would be greatly appreciated (click ‘view in iTunes’ then scroll down and click ‘write a review’, thanks :). New this year: Send us a screenshot of your review in iTunes or Google Play (info@internetmarketingmag. net) and we will send you some great Internet Marketing Training resources.

Greg Cassar Regards,

Internet Marketing Strategist & Editor – Internet Marketing Magazine internet marketing magazine july 2014

INTERNET UPDATE

THE STATE OF THE INTERNET In this section of Internet Marketing Magazine our editor Greg Cassar cover’s the facts and provides expert commentary on what are the big plays that have recently happened online and how they affect you. > GOOGLE TO GO HEAD TO HEAD WITH GODADDY Google is getting into the domains business in a move that will see them compete with the current largest domain registrar in the world GoDaddy. http://domains.google.com is still in Beta test mode and isn’t open to the general public yet.

> AMAZON TO GO LOCAL Amazon is chasing local services as its next eCommerce battleground. The news broke earlier this month that Amazon wants to make a push into local services and launch a marketplace that will connect local businesses with consumers needing anything from an electrician to a babysitter. Shares of Yelp and Angie’s List, who are the two dominant players in this space in the US immediately experienced a downward fall. Early speculation is that it will be a marketplace - like the one offered by Thumbtack which is rich in functionality as consumers post a job and professionals can then bid and compete for the right to that task.

Google’s research showed that 55% of small businesses still don’t have a website, so this is a play to capture a lot of that market. The Google Domains platform looks as if it will use a wizard to step business owners through how to register their first domain and then up-sell them to ways to build their website or eCommerce store without needing a developer by using platforms such as Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly and Wix.

internet marketing magazine july 2014

An example from the Comparable Thumbtack Marketplace

INTERNET UPDATE

> CANADA’S NEW ANTI-MARKETING LAWS That headline is a little tongue in cheek, as it is actually new Antispam laws that Canada has rolled out as of the 1st of July 2014. Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) changes the game for the worse – hopefully other countries won’t follow it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does set a precedent. CASL affects any businesses and marketers sending email to Canadian citizens. Unlike CAN-SPAM, which accepts an opt-out model, CASL requires an opt-in model. This means you must have explicit (not implied) permission from the recipient in order to send email marketing to anyone in Canada. Effectively you need to get all the Canadian people on your list to double opt-in within the next 3 years. Although the law went live on July 1st, you have a three-year grace period to obtain explicit (double opt-in) consent from the Canadian people on your list.

This also raises the question of ‘do you now need to move all your opt-in forms to double opt-in to cater for the Canadian people?’ Or what I believe many marketers will do is check for the ‘country’ field and if it’s from Canada then send the double opt-in request email. The penalties for violating CASL are steep at up to $10 million per violation from 2017 onwards. The best way to protect yourself is to obtain an affirmative double opt-in from your Canadian recipients. Moving forwards I think all Email Service Providers will need to start auto-populating the ‘Country’ field of person records the same way that aWeber does now. I’m in the process of trying to get Infusionsoft to add this functionality ASAP. IMM

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> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

ALL ABOUT DAN FAGGELLA • Dan Faggella is a national Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champion and also a very talented online and offline entrepreneur. • Dan took his passion for martial arts and turned it into an online niche with sales exceeding $40k per month. • Dan is also the founder of CLVboost, an agency dedicated to helping startups and early-stage companies maximize their back-end conversions and email marketing communications.

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Surveying for me is all about richness in the database.

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> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

DAN FAGGELLA MASTERING YOUR NICHE AND CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE

An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar Dan, you have an interesting story with getting started as a martial arts instructor in BJJ and then morphing into the online space. Can you please share with us how that came about with your first product? Dan: For me, really, I started a martial arts gym in a very small town here in Rhode Island of about 8,000 people. I was building this gym because Martial Arts is my passion. But mixed martial arts in my town was pretty unheard of. It was also difficult to scale. So, I had to learn e-mail marketing and really maximizing my ROI from e-mail and keeping any and all leads that I had on rotation; making sure I could get them in for appointments; Triggering phone calls; triggering specific messages; Rotating broadcast offers to really get people in the door. I realized should probably have another income stream, so, we got close to about 100 students at one point there and then I sold the gym. But before then, I had recorded and productized

a bunch of seminars that I had taught in a whole bunch of areas, topics around beating bigger opponents. I then used the same really calibrated; really focused dead set e-mail marketing online. I realized there’s a much bigger audience outside of my tiny town and that business really took off online. Greg: So, you took things that you were already teaching and then just start recording them on video and selling them as individual products? Dan: Yeah, that’s exactly it. It was just me teaching in my academy. But this is a topic that, for me, I’m particularly passionate about. I laid out my best material in the best format, and it ended up being a pretty popular product. Then we spun that off to 50-plus other courses that I have online of various other martial arts products and things like that.

Once you had your products selling how did you build it from there into an authority site? Dan: This is a totally different ballgame in some respects. One of the things I did early on was I really sought out joint ventures. I would also instruct anyone else in any other kind of Internet Marketing space to do the same. What I needed to do was find a way to be appealing to joint venture partners even though I didn’t have an e-mail list. So I used my skills in writing and my graduate degree in skill internet marketing magazine july 2014

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

development and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and wrote for a lot of the bigger magazines in this space – MMA SPORTS Magazine; Jiu-Jitsu Magazine; Jiu-Jitsu Style in the UK. Then, I used that to become a guest writer on basically whatever site I wanted to. I only had 600 people on an e-mail list that had been trickling in over the course of me building my gym and sort of not paying attention to my online business. And instead of going to JVs and saying, “Hey, I have a huge e-mail list. Why don’t you mail for me, I’ll mail for you?” Instead of doing that I said, “Hey, I can get you featured on these six or eight different websites. I can give you back links and feature interview insights and techniques that’ll put you across the entire blogosphere of this martial art. All I ask is that you do x, y, z.” And that allowed me to do my first JV action and get myself up to about 5,000 subscribers.

to make them exciting and to make them different and to appeal to different people. Greg: So were you putting the continuity as an up-sell behind different front-end offers? Dan: Yes, We would do it as an up-sell. We would also just do it as one of the many things included in a downloadable package. So, we would have front-end DVDs that would include free trials. We also had binders that we’d mail out where we would do the same thing. So, the different variants of the offers was pivotal. Also you need a really good reason to have somebody be willing to pay more than one time.

You use surveys a lot in your marketing. Is it at all about segmentation? Dan: Actually, it really is. The biggest payoff is that I can pull up a list of people who are over 40; a list of people interested in MMA; people interested in self-defence; People that are under 150 pounds etc. Then I can craft e-mails that are really specific to those interests and segments. So, I don’t have to sell some kind of a back pain reduction eBook to my whole list, I can just find the people interested in injury prevention.

Continuity can be hard to sell online. You had a lot of success in this area. What do you believe that you did differently to most, if anything? Dan: We did a good job of mixing and matching our offers. So, instead of saying, “Hey, here’s our monthly program and here’s what’s included”, we always throw in a whole bunch of other material and other bonuses and incentives on top of it. We always then would find new and cool ways to be able to frame those different front ends to the offer in order

internet marketing magazine july 2014

So, surveying for me is all about richness in the database. I don’t just want an e-mail address. I like tangible, meaningful data points that allow me to communicate in relevant ways that makes them more interested in what I have to say. It also allows me to communicate offers to them that they might like, and, not communicate offers that I know they wouldn’t like. Greg: The tricky thing is, how do you get them to fill in the survey? What stage were you

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

cool submission courses if they opt in. It works out really well. But most of the time on about day 11 or something like that they’ll receive their first e-mail about this kind of 100% free bonus that I’m giving out for people that fill out the survey. Then, if they don’t fill that out, they’ll be reminded again in about a week and a half. If they don’t fill that out, they’ll be reminded again of a different bonus for really the same survey. Then, if they don’t do it again, I’ll remind them of that. Then, if they don’t do it again, then I’ll send them survey number two because maybe they just don’t like survey number one, so that’s fine. I’ll send them survey number two three times or so with a couple different front-end bonuses. Essentially they’re being exposed to some cool, free stuff, in exchange for letting me know more about them.

With CLVBoost you do a lot of automation and also autoresponder design. What best practices do you try to build into marketing funnels that you design? Dan: Whether you’re in info-marketing or any kind of B2C or even in certain B2B instances, as a general rule e-mail front-end sequences that I see are a little bit weak, and they’re often rather short.

A sample of Dan’s survey

introducing that? Dan: There are actually a few different places. I have some squeeze pages where the direct thank you page of the squeeze page is survey number one. In this case we offer them a whole bunch of special,

Anytime I’m trying to sell a thing, I like to think about it like multiple swings. For me, it’s always, “How can I reframe the benefits of this same product and hit it again? How can I add some additional bonuses or tweak the value proposition or tweak the way that I’m explaining it to give it another go? Back it with more testimonials? Bolster it with more educational, great content that people can learn from? Frame it in a different way that shows its real utility and shows some great case studies?” And let’s take at least three swings.

internet marketing magazine july 2014

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

So, my supposition is any funnel whose main job is to sell one product. If you don’t have at least three parts of that funnel where you are really thumping for that product, where you’re going for it, then you’re missing out. Because if you’re getting a 12% open rate or something like that, sometimes, people just didn’t see your real push on e-mail.

over to the offer as well as just straight up e-mails about the offer? Dan: Yes, I tend to do this. The three ingredients of any auto-responder in my mind are education, some kind of social proof/ testimonials and then explicit calls to action. Which normally are to a sales page of some kind. So, normally, I’m mixing that in a nice sort of a balanced diet, so to speak. But at certain points, during an e-mail funnel, I will be very clear and overt that I do have something to offer. I don’t insult anybody, I don’t tell them they have to buy anything or I’ll be angry with them.

They missed that great testimonial. They didn’t watch the educational video. But e-mail 18, if they do end up watching it and you end up framing it in a different way and there’s a testimonial that relates to them, then bam. That’s when the credit card comes out. So, taking at least three swings, which oftentimes, is going to be at least two dozen e-mails, to mix it in with education and testimonials, is a nice quick fix. Anybody out there with six e-mails, move it to two dozen. Make them good, make them educational, make them great case studies. Convey the value. Convey it in different ways. Present different front-ends. One thing I don’t do and I don’t condone is making it cheaper as they go along. What I’ll do instead is I’ll throw entirely different offers. Sometimes, they’ll be slightly more, slightly less expensive, but they’re entirely different offers. Greg: With those, you’re talking about a combination of giving content and linking off

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But I just say, “Hey, this is this thing. This is how it’s helped other people. You haven’t gotten in on it yet, but this is what we have to offer” and I’ll really lay it out there. So, I think that a lot of the time, there will be a lot of dribbly e-mails that sort of might get to the point or might have a PS link that links to something. But I’m a big advocate of having some e-mails that are thumpers. That really do the job. Their job is to sell. I believe you should have multiple swings like that. Not one e-mail, not e-mail number six and then, all of a sudden, it’s broadcast land. Give them e-mail six and seven and then go back into mostly education and testimonials. With your social proof, it doesn’t always need to be testimonials. It could be outside validation, it could be outside research. It could be an explicit testimonial from a big name, from a small name. Whatever the case may be, it all fits in that big bucket of social proof that’s an inevitable part of a really effective sales funnel

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

ROI is really what it’s all about. I know you’re really strong in the increasing customer lifetime value (CLV) space. What are key areas that you see money being left on the table for a lot of businesses that you work with? Dan: A big one is not engaging with past customers and clients. If there are people who have paid and are no longer paying, what is the automated or what is the regularly executed methodology of reengaging and getting the wallet back out again? CLV can be lifted rather swiftly by reengaging those folks in a more rigorous fashion. Another one that oftentimes neglected is that richness to the database. Being able to have a very big bucket of people that you know a whole lot about allows you to continuously rotate really interesting stuff and have folks that haven’t bought in eight months all of a sudden come back to life and spend some money. Greg: So, I think a lot of what you do and what you teach is really about ‘relevance’. The relevant message and the relevant offers to the right people, and not hitting everyone with everything. Dan: Yes, that’s the ideal – it’s a really significant win-win. Your list is happier because you’re providing them with stories, content, learning’s and product that actually would matter to them and might help them. At the same time, they’re not being exposed to the opposite of that and feeling as though they’re just being bombarded and deciding they’re just going to turn off from you completely. Dan can be contacted at CLVBoost.com and dan@ clvboost.com IMM

internet marketing magazine july 2014

SEO

10 STEPS TO SEO OPTIMIZING YOUR BLOG ARTICLES By Jayson DeMers readers can easily scan through it and still get the point. 3. The Killer Headline After you have an outline of your article, you need a magnetic headline. One that that attracts links, retweets, and social shares. Some great powerful and magnetic headlines include:

EO copywriting is, essentially, writing copy that resonates with users, moving them to share and link to your content, and be moved to take action. In this article, we’ll explore the elements that makes online copy SEOoptimized. 1. Perform Keyword Research Use keyword research tools to help you find keywords that have: 1. low competition and; 2. a good amount of search volume. There are many free and paid keyword research tools, but all you really need is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Google’s own keyword research tool lets you find keywords that have low, medium and high competition, as well as local and global search volume. 2. Write for Skimmers I bet lots of readers now are just skimming through this very blog post. That’s how most people normally consume online content, and why it’s important that when you write copy, you first create an outline of your points so that

• A number (ie, “Top 7 Ways to…”) • A “How To” (ie, “How to Grow Your Business by Guest Blogging”) • A one-stop-shop (ie, “The Definitive Guide to…” or “The Ultimate Guide to…”) • Help for beginners (ie, “A Step-by-Step Guide to…” or “7 Steps to…” or “Onsite SEO 101: A Basic Guide for Beginners”) • The mythbuster (ie, “7 Myths about SEO”) • The bold or shocking claim (ie, “5 Things Your SEO Company is Lying to you About”) The targeted keyword should be included within the headline, which is usually tagged with the H1 tag. 4. Sub Headlines Subheaders usually come after the main headline and before every major section of the copy. They should summarize important points of the copy (remember the scanners?). 5. Highlight, Bold, Underline and Italicize When you highlight, bold, underline and italicize a key point, you add emphasis to the main points. This helps readers (especially the

internet marketing magazine july 2014

SEO scanners), and has the same effect on search engine crawlers. Emphasizing the keywords by underlining or bolding them sends a signal to the robots what the content is about, and what the most important elements of it are. 6. Drive the Point Home with Bullets The important or “listable” sections of your copy could also be emphasized with bullet points. Distilling your points into smaller chunks also makes your copy easier to read and more engaging. 7. KISS – Keep it Short and Sweet The first line of every paragraph should be the most important, followed by a couple sentences to expand on those important points. Keep your paragraphs short for optimal readability and scannability. 8. Include Primary and LSI Keywords While writing your article, your primary goal should be on delivering extreme value. However, if your keywords aren’t included in the body copy, it’ll be very difficult for it to rank well. Be sure to identify LSI keywords and include them within the copy to boost the relevancy of your article for all keywords related to your primary topic. 9. Include Images Images provide several distinct benefits: • They visually support concepts or ideas in your article, adding to the readers’ understanding • They provide an opportunity to gain search visibility in Google Image Search • They cause your post to have visual appeal when the link is shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social channels • They create an opportunity for your

internet marketing magazine july 2014

post to be pinned on Pinterest, creating inbound links and maximizing the reach of your post Always ensure your image filenames are named properly. For instance, if your image is of a red Ferarri, then the image filename should be “redferrari.jpg.” Similarly, it should have an alt tag that describes the image (ie, “Red Ferrari). These clues will help search engines properly index the image and understand what the image portrays. If your blog post is about a red Ferarri, then including an image of one will provide extra value to readers; search engines will reward this value-add with a higher relevancy and quality score for your post, resulting in better rankings.

10. Ask for Feedback The end of your article should ask for feedback from your readers to generate and spark discussion. Comments will improve the SEOvalue of your article, so ask for them! Readers who feel compelled to comment on articles are also more likely to share them, leading to rank and brand-boosting social signals.

Conclusion Whether you’re writing onsite content or guest blogging, I hope these tips help you write amazing articles. IMM

internet marketing magazine july 2014

ECOMMERCE

WHAT MAKES A MILLION DOLLAR E-COMMERCE BUSINESS? By Jock Purtle

s e-commerce business brokers, we get to see and value a wide range of e-commerce businesses, both good and others not so good. Owners come to us in every situation possible. Growing, declining, and anywhere in between, so we get to see a lot of different businesses. Typically e-commerce entrepreneurs approach us wondering what their business is worth and what it may sell for. Based off that experience and data, we believe the following eight factors make a million dollar e-commerce business: 1. Profit The number one driving factor of a million dollar e-commerce business is profit. The accepted valuation approach for e-commerce businesses is a multiple of earnings valuation methodology. What this means is the value of an e-commerce business will be a multiple of the profit the business makes. A buyer will likely pay 2-3 times earnings. This means your e-commerce business has to be making between $333,000 to $500,000 in net profit per year to be valued over $1 million dollars. There are many factors that will alter what multiple is paid, therefore it’s important to get a proper valuation to determine the true value of your e-commerce business. We will use 2-3 times as the benchmark valuation multiple for business under $5 million sold on the open market. Factors brokers use to determine what multiple is paid include: • Profit

internet marketing magazine july 2014

• • • • • • •

Growth Website Traffic Brand Business Model Income Streams Age Business Risks

2. Growth If you had three example businesses: one growing, one that was stable, and one that was declining, the growing business is going to demand the highest price. This is best represented in the graph below. Sell when your site is growing or at the early states of maturity. The reasons buyers pay more for a growing business is they can see future upside and a quicker return on investment. The general assumption buyers make when looking at financials is assuming a baseline trend and then projecting that trend into the future. Let’s take this example. Joe has an e-commerce store selling scarves. His store did $2,000,000 in sales in the last 12 months and $350,000 in net profit. Joe’s business has been steadily growing at 2% per month for the last 12 months. Here is what his projected business looks like:

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say you put the business for sale for a 3X multiple which would give a valuation of $1,050,000. A buyer would then project using the past 12 months figures that the business will make $443,000 profit in year two and $596,000 profit in year three. Essentially allowing a buyer to make their money back in two years. What this is going to do if you are looking to sell is: 1. You are more likely to get a quicker deal 2. You will possibly get a higher offer What you have to remember though, is nothing in business is guaranteed. You might be sitting there thinking, if this is going to happen in my business, why not hold onto it? The likelihood that a business grows in this linear fashion is improbable, however what it does give you is a look into the mindset of how a buyer thinks about acquisitions and valuations. Their main motivation is â&#x20AC;&#x153;How can I get my money back and can I make that return on investment quicker?â&#x20AC;? This will influence the valuation that they come up with for a business. 3.Table Selection Table selection is a poker term that relates to choosing a table to play at, where the players are worse than you, therefore you ultimately make more money. How this relates to e-commerce businesses is choosing a niche where there is growth, high margins, and a defensible market position which will ultimately improve your likelihood of a higher valuation. A real world example of this is a toy e-commerce store we valued that was selling racing car products for kids. The business

ECOMMERCE

did extremely well for the two years after the toy was released, however it started to decline sharply as the product went out of demand. By operating in a market that has evergreen or growing demand your business is more likely to be able to get to a million dollar valuation. 4. Age The Internet is young, technology changes, and things come in and out of fashion very quickly that if you have a business that is one to two years old you are going to get a drastically lower price than something that is over five years old. Generally the older the business, the more data and earnings history and the lower the perceived risk of the business failing and the higher the valuation. 5. Defensibility The more defensible your business, the higher the price.

internet marketing magazine july 2014

ECOMMERCE By defensible we mean barriers to entry, the stability of your income, traffic, and supplier sources. Dropship Versus Warehouse Data doesn’t lie. A warehouse based e-commerce business model is more valuable than a dropship based business model. As you can see from the graph extracted from our e-commerce business valuations report, the multiple paid for dropshipping websites is much lower. Dropship e-commerce stores are very easy to replicate and have low barriers to entry. That is why it helps to have your own products that you have designed and developed or be known as the “go to” supplier in a specific niche. The main reasons for a higher valuation for a warehouse based e-commerce business: • Control Supply Chain • Manufacture Branded Products • Higher Margins • Ability to Incorporate More Paid Traffic • More Established • Scalability

traffic. There is a direct correlation between these two observations. We use this analogy; by relying on one leg of a table to support it’s weight you are increasing the risk of the business. If that leg get’s taken away then your table (business) collapses. By being solely reliant on one traffic source, particularly on the discretion of Google, is a losing game to play. Whole businesses have been destroyed with one algorithm update. That is why it is important to have more than one channel of traffic driving visitors and sales to your e-commerce store. 6. Systems Especially with e-commerce stores, it is the systems and processes in both operations and marketing that increases value. Technically, with enough effort someone can set up a competing store in your niche with a little hard work and sweat equity. So it is not the idea and business that creates value, it is the systems and processes that run a business that have value. Operational systems such as automation will help you fetch a higher price for your business. The less human elements in your business, the higher the amount a buyer is going to pay. Similarly if you have an identifiable, traceable, and repeating marketing system for your business (not just solely relying on Google organic traffic) then you have a more valuable business. Integrating repeatable and profitable paid traffic sources will certainly ad value.

Paid Versus Organic If your e-commerce store relies solely on organic web traffic, then you are going to receive a lower valuation than if it has multiple traffic streams. The above graph shows that drop-ship e-commerce businesses sell for less. 90% of drop-ship websites rely solely on organic

internet marketing magazine july 2014

7. Clean Books Poorly formed or non-existent financials will be a big problem for a potential buyer. The first two questions 99% of buyer will ask are: • What is the gross earnings? • What is the net profit?

> And if you have no way of proving this, then it is going to be hard to value your business. Having all that information collected beforehand will ensure a smooth and speedy transaction.

Too help this process sometimes it’s a good idea to pay taxes. Who knew? What I mean is that instead of writing off every single expense in your business it’s a good idea to run your business lean for one year to show the true operating profit of your company for buyers, not for the tax man. What I just described is the perfect case scenario but isn’t always possible. So what needs to be done is to calculate the true net profit of your business. Even if you haven’t run your business lean for the last 12 months, there are ways of calculating the true operating profit and loss of your business in order to increase its valuation. This is something a broker does when providing a valuation on your business. 8. Which Platform is Best? There is no conclusive data that suggests which platform is best. There are multiple reviews on the pros and cons of each e-commerce platform you can read online, however from a business sales perspective there is not enough data to come to a conclusive outcome.

ECOMMERCE

which platform will assist you in generating more profit. This comes down to the metrics of an e-commerce business. Does the platform allow you to tweak performance of the site to increase profitability?

Smart buyers want to know metrics and a solid platform (shopify, magento, bigcommerce) will already be designed to help you improve your metrics. And generally smart buyers pay a premium to the market because they can calculate the future potential of a business (what is really being sold) that is why it is important as a store owner to know your metrics and have tracking mechanisms in place. Whether they are automatic (analytics) or manual (spread sheets) tracking the following elements will improve your site’s profitability now and increase the likelihood of a higher valuation when you are selling. Things to monitor include: • Conversion Rate • Subscriber Growth Rate • Value Per Visitor • Average Order Size • Cart Abandonment Rate • % Returning customers Of course, there are always going to be outliers and other factors that alter an e-commerce stores’ value. However, if you use the above eight recommendations as a baseline, you will likely find your valuation above the million dollar mark. IMM

Because profit is the main driver of valuation, we need to be objective when determining

internet marketing magazine july 2014

GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS VIEW

A GUIDE TO GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS VIEW By John M Lynch Google Maps Business View launched! Since 2012 Google had been rolling out Google Business Photos (GBP) across selected countries around the world. Basically GBP was Google’s ubiquitous StreetView but for inside businesses: A fantastic idea but very labour intensive. This gave birth to the Google Trusted Photographer. These photographers were trained in the techniques of panosphere photography and a proprietary software package that allowed StreetView style tours of the interior of the business. As with all new products there was a bit of tweaking to get it right and as of March, it has come of age and has been rebranded Google Maps Business View – catchy I know! But at least there is no denying what it is – a Maps product that lets you view a business.

“See Inside”:

In a map search the Business View will appear as a tile in the top right hand corner of Google Maps and the first active image is “See Inside”

So how does it work? Business Views is attached to the Business’ Google+ Local Business Page. It is accessed through numerous Google digital real estate: • • • •

The Knowledge Graph Maps Search Pegman Search Google+ Local Business Page

A Pegman Search can bring you right in through the door from StreetView:

Throughout the Google digital real estate Business View is presented as “See Inside”. In the Knowledge Graph (this is the Panel that appears on the right hand side of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) a business with Business View will have an extra tile reading

internet marketing magazine july 2014

GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS VIEW And it appears on the about page of a Google+ Local Business Page

the content displayed when the results are shown. Business View also has a number of additional benefits:

In addition to desktop searches Business Views is compatible to mobile based searched also. Here is an example of the sames searches as above on a Nexus 5 and when you click on “See Inside” it is completely navigable:

Mobile SERPs

Google Maps Business View on a Nexus 5

Business View tour on a Nexus 5

When properly cited it will appear at the top of SERPs on a mobile device. In short Google Maps Business View populates nearly every search destination and it is undeniable that it enriches

internet marketing magazine july 2014

1. The service includes 10 point of interest photographs that go to populate the photos section of the G+ Local Business Page. These photographs also populate the carousel when the business is being searched for on the new Maps. 2. The photography is the property of the business – the photographer relinquishes all copyrights to the business. This is a very important distinction over Google Views which is consumer/hobbyist variant of StreetView. (this will be discussed later) 3. Business Views is hosted within the businesses account not the photographers. 4. Business views is stripped all personal data that may be a copyright infringement or a breach of privacy rights. Google spots checks the photographers work to ensure high standards are maintained and if the standards are not met, Google can request for the photographer to return and reshoot the work. 5. Within the Business Views programme once the photography is complete there are no mandatory re-shoots, on-going costs or maintenance fees. 6. The photography is free for the business to use in any way the business chooses (as long as the business adheres to Google’s terms of its Maps API) 7. Business View can be embedded into the businesses Facebook page or into their website, or any domain that support html iframes.

GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS VIEW

Business views can be very creative Take this tour of an office space in Manchester, England. The ‘Duck Tour’!

Businesses have chosen Business Views for several reasons: 1. To show off a luxury setting 2. Demonstrate the facilities available 3. Substitute for a site visit 4. Part of an engagement strategy

The following tour won creative tour of the year in Europe, Middle East and Asia:

Here are a few iconic Business Views that have been completed recently: Doctor Who’s Tardis:

And the following Business Views was used as a substantial piece of webart: Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley:

But their main purpose is to show off the inside of the business. Here are some examples of how Business Views have been used in the past: • Business View was used as the background to the whole website. • Business View embedded into a website • Business View embedded into Facebook

BBC Radio 1 studios:

From an SEO point of view it is good news also. It is early days yet but anecdotal evidence suggests longer page visits & lower bounce rate.

internet marketing magazine july 2014

GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS VIEW Leekes invites customers inside its new store with Google Maps Business View Challenge Leekes, a midsized home furnishings retailer in the UK, was in expansion mode.To help promote the opening of a new Leekes store in Coventry, its digital marketing team wanted to engage customers with an interactive virtual experience of the store’s interior. However, the new store had over 45 departments across two floors and 185,000 sq ft, so Leekes needed a well-organized and easy-to-navigate solution. Solution After considering several options, Leekes ultimately chose Google Maps Business View to execute its vision. Business View, which stitches together high-resolution photos into a 360-degree interactive virtual tour, offered the best choice in terms of simplicity, quick turnaround, and prominent visibility across Google. Leekes hired a local Google Trusted Photographer to shoot and upload the virtual tour to Google. The photo shoot took just a few hours, and the Business View was published on Google less than a week afterward. The virtual tour now appears across Google – in Search, Maps and the Leekes Google+ Local page. Customers can navigate and explore the entire store, whether they’re on their desktops, tablets or smartphones. “We looked at several other proprietary 360-degree tour solutions.... They were either clunky, the technology was old, or they weren’t cross-browser compliant. None of them stood out as elegantly and robustly as Google Maps Business View.” Geraint Martin, Head of e-Commerce, Leekes

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Results Leekes embedded the virtual tour on its website and used the Google Maps API to create a custom graphic overlay leading into the virtual tour. Customers can click on a department to start the Business View experience from anywhere in the store. Geraint Martin states,“Business View has attracted over 20,000 visits since the launch on our site, and average time on the Business View page is five times higher than for any other page on the website. The purpose of our page is to drive in-store footfall rather than online sales, and our Coventry store footfall is up by 20% year on year. We are expecting to relocate our store in Llantrisant, South Wales to a brand-new unit in the Talbot Green redevelopment. Having had such positive feedback from our customers in Coventry, we will definitely use Google Maps Business View for our new Talbot Green store once that project is complete.”

Just Food For Dogs increases customer engagement with Google Maps Business View Challenge Just Food For Dogs (JFFD) wanted to attract customers who would appreciate the care and attention it puts into its high-quality dog food. The JFFD team was looking for an innovative way to engage new and existing customers, and Business View, a virtual tour of businesses using Street View technology, was an ideal solution. Rudy Poe, managing partner for Just Food For Dogs, states, “You really only get what we’re

> about once you walk in. We want to convey the genuineness of our brand, and stepping into our store is the best way to do that. We built this kitchen from scratch for the simple purpose of providing our customers with transparency in every aspect of how we do our business. Google enables us to do that with Business View.”

GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS VIEW

View is an effective tool that allows JFFD to reach people throughout the country. Poe states, “Business View is a platform for us to convey to customers who we are.... It’s that resource that helps people see before they buy.”

Solution JFFD chose to use Google Maps Business View as a way to draw potential customers from across the country into its open kitchen in Newport Beach, California. Poe hired a locally based Google Trusted Photographer to collect the imagery necessary to create the 360-degree interactive Business View. A single photographer conducted a photo shoot within a couple of hours without interrupting business operations. Business View gave Just Food For Dogs the opportunity to invite customers online to view the interior of its establishment. The panoramic view of JFFD’s interior now appears on Google Search, Google Maps and JFFD’s local Google+ page. Results JFFD experienced a 50% increase in the clickthrough rate from the search results to its website. Poe states, “We’ve been growing more since we’ve had Business View. Any future location that we open is going to have this feature. I thinks it’s invaluable and it’s going to be necessary.” Moving forward, JFFD also anticipates the importance of Google Maps Business View as a tool to grow its customer base. The company is located in Southern California, but Business

Business View helps diners decide where to eat during NYC Restaurant Week™ Challenge In the summer of 2013, 294 restaurants participated in NYC & Company’s 21st annual NYC Restaurant Week™. To help these restaurants attract more customers, NYC & Company wanted to incorporate new informational features on its restaurant listing pages. Solution To drive a higher level of engagement with participating restaurants, NYC & Company embedded Google Maps Street View and Business View on its website at NYCgo.com. In particular, Business View, which offers fully interactive virtual tours of business interiors, gives diners a valuable new way to explore participating restaurants. Results 55% of all participating restaurants had Business View and results showed that diners were more

internet marketing magazine july 2014

GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS VIEW likely to reserve a table at those restaurants. In New York City’s competitive food scene, this compelling visual imagery offered these restaurants a valuable edge. • On average, restaurant listings that included Business View had a 30% higher click through to reservations • Visitors who viewed Business View for a given business clicked through to make a reservation 50% of the time (20% more than visitors who didn’t view Business View) • 84% of 1,300 surveyed customers said Business View played a factor in their restaurant choice “For NYC Restaurant Week, we have seen that the more engaged consumers are, the more likely they are to book multiple reservations. Being able to feature Google Maps Business View, along with menu previews, as part of our booking experience has had a direct impact on our visitors’ decision to make a reservation.” Edward A. Hogikyan, Senior Vice President, Marketing, NYC & Company. There are a number of studies taking place at the moment – one of which my company is running at the moment. We have been awarded the contract to shoot a whole town (within the limits of the old town). Before the project begins we will have recorded information about site traffic for the businesses websites, the visibility in SERPs, Google +1 and other social activity. We will then be able to compare these at staged periods after the completion of the work.

Google Maps Business View versus Google Views Google have another product called Google Views (unfortunately similar name). This is

internet marketing magazine july 2014

a similar product but it is designed for the enthusiast, hobbyist and amateur panosphere photographer. It works from the camera in an android phone. These are reasonable when used in wide open space such as outdoors but the software starts to really strain when in more enclosed spaces and indoors. It is possible to produce Google Views with professional equipment and even create StreetView style tours. However, these variants remain the property of the photographer, they can be easily deleted and do not turn up in any of the Google digital real estate apart from the carousel in the new Maps and it may not even turn up there. The cost for producing the Google Views virtual tours (at professional quality) is similar to Google Maps Business View without all the additional benefits of being visible in other Search destinations. Another consideration for Google Maps Business Views can be found in Google’s Hotel Finder. If a hotel has had a Business View completed and published it will automatically populate Hotel Finder. As some of you will know Google has just launched Google Menus in the USA and it is bound to follow elsewhere. It might be reasonable to assume that Google might extend the Hotel Finder format to include restaurants and Google Views will not appear for the businesses that have Google Views.

GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS VIEW

integrated with Google analytics and also can be embedded into the businesses website.

One final feature that really makes Business Views extremely accessible for businesses and a powerful marketing tool is a bolt on or skin called TourDash (TD). TD is the only product on the market at this time that has Google’s blessing to distribute a navigation system that is built upon Google’s maps API, it is fully

Instead of navigating using the arrows, the user can select from menus where they want to go; Hotspots can be embedded into the tour so that the user can be semi immersed in a partial reality clicking on the items in the images to bring current information to their fingertips: today’s menu, the current range in that department, run videos, sound files, competitions, even click and collect. And at the time of publishing the developers were working on an AutoTour feature that would allow the business to bridge the gap between pre-scripted video and self-directed exploration. IMM

internet marketing magazine july 2014

PINTEREST MARKETING

9 MARKETING TIPS FOR PINTEREST By Zack Fagan

interest has marched onto the social media scene in a big way. In January of 2012 Pinterest became the fastest company ever to reach 10 million unique users in one month with 11.7 million site visitors (comScore). Today, just three years after it was founded, Pinterest already has over 70 million users, making it one of the most popular social networks in the world. According to OmniCore, Pinterest is crucial for eCommerce as well as 47% of online shoppers in the U.S. have made a purchase based on a

internet marketing magazine july 2014

recommendation from Pinterest. On top of that, Pinterest users are quite well off, as the average user has a household income of $100,000. Interestingly, many businesses have been slow to join the trend. As of 2013 there were only about 500,000 business pages registered (Semiocast). Clearly Pinterest is a great place for a business to set up a marketing campaign. It is a resource that has not yet been tapped into to the extent of Facebook or Twitter, so the potential is also greater. There is a lot of work that goes

> into marketing on Pinterest, but much of the strategy is the same or similar to marketing concepts for other social media networks. This article will discuss 9 tips that are unique to Pinterest, and will help you to start marketing your business on Pinterest today! 1. Use a Pinterest Business Page Be sure that you are using a Pinterest business page rather than a regular user profile. Your page will look exactly the same to viewers, but you will have access to some very powerful analytic tools that are only available to businesses. Using Pinterest’s analytics you can review how many people are seeing your pins, pinning from your website, and clicking on your content. You can also see which pins are the most popular and who shares your pins.

PINTEREST MARKETING

By showing you what was or was not successful the analytic tools will help you to improve your strategy. 2. Optimize Everything for SEO Even on Pinterest you need to be conscious of SEO. There are a lot of opportunities to use keywords which will help your content to rank higher both in the Pinterest search and in a regular search engine. User name: Make sure to choose a user name that is easy to find. Ideally, use your brand name or a name similar to it. About section: You only get 160 characters to describe your company, but that should be more than enough to briefly explain who you are and what you do, while using relevant keywords. Take a look at Shopify’s about line:

In just two lines they succinctly describe the company, and make use of a few keywords: “products,” “ecommerce,” “Shopify,” etc. Boards: Boards will be discussed in more detail a bit further down in this post, but in terms of SEO you should make sure to create a few different boards that focus on specific keywords. Pins: In your pins themselves there is space for you to write a description. This is another great opportunity for you to use keywords. Uploaded Images: When uploading an image be sure to name the photo, rather than leaving it with the meaningless standard image name.

internet marketing magazine july 2014

PINTEREST MARKETING When renaming the photo use hyphens between the words, for example: Facebook-ad-call-toaction.

order to appeal to as many different people as possible, and to make your information as easy to access as possible.

3. Use the Best Image Sizes Pinterest is all about the images, so you definitely want your image to be as big as possible and to look as good as possible. The full width of an image on Pinterest is 735 pixels, so you should be sure to always upload pictures of that width.

Everyone likes something different, and no one wants to constantly see information that they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care about. By creating a bunch of different boards each dedicated to a very specific topic you give your fans the option to choose exactly which things they are interested in and which they are not.

In addition, taller images (images that are not square) attract more attention, because they take up more space in the display.

Take a look at Hubspot for example. They have 34 different boards.

Notice how most of the boards are branded or include keywords, meaning that they will all be easy to find in a search. 5. Keep up With the Times

According to research by Curalate the ideal proportion of width to height is either 2:3 or 4:5. These slightly taller images get 60% more repins than much taller images. That means that if the width is 735 the height should be either 1103 or 919. 4. Have a Number of Specific Boards Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t post on just one, two, or even five main boards. Have a bunch of different boards in

internet marketing magazine july 2014

Keep your boards up to date by having different boards that apply to different seasons or times of the year. For example, you can have a board dedicated to the winter holiday

> season. When winter comes around, bring that board up to the top of your list. Once it passes, move it back down to the bottom. Don’t delete it though, this way you can continue adding content to it over the course of the year so it will be ready by next winter. A perfect illustration of this is Sony’s Super Bowl themed board:

PINTEREST MARKETING

7. Distribute Your Content Evenly Do not only have brand related boards and do not only pin brand related content. You can certainly have a few boards dedicated to just brand related pins. For example, a clothing store can have a board for men’s clothing and a board for women’s clothing where they will only pin images of the clothes. But in addition to these boards there should also be boards dedicated to broader topics that relate to your brand’s “culture.” These culture boards can very easily mix both brand and non-brand related content very well. A great example of that is Target’s “Healthy Living” board. Here you can see a very even distribution of content.

Obviously the Super Bowl isn’t for another year still, but they have the board ready so that next year they can just move the board forward and be prepared. 6. Have Group Boards You should definitely have at least one or two group boards. Group boards enable your followers to post their own images to your board. These boards can be anything from sharing knowledge to customers using your products. It is always important to show your fans that you care about what they have to say. User generated content is also one of the most highly shared types of content. Here are a few group boards from the Food Network. You can tell if it is a group board if it has the small grey icon that looks like a group of people next to the name of the board.

Remember, Pinterest is not like Twitter. What you pin on Pinterest will stay forever, and people will scroll through it. You don’t need to worry that if you dilute your content with other things people will suddenly not see your brand related content. On the contrary. By keeping your pins evenly distributed between brand related and non-brand related, you will keep your followers interested. 8. Brand Your Pins Obviously your goal in social media is recognition. You want to reach as many people as possible. When it comes to Pinterest you want people to follow you, to interact with your pins, and to repin your content. That means that if all goes well people will be

internet marketing magazine july 2014

PINTEREST MARKETING

In order to achieve that, you should add your logo to the corner of your pins. This is a small and subtle addition to your pins that can amplify your brand’s name tremendously.

9. Use Pin It Buttons Another great way of expanding your presence on Pinterest is by letting other people do it for you. Don’t rely solely on the content you post on Pinterest itself. Much of that content probably comes directly from your website anyway. By adding hover over Pin it buttons and Pin it share buttons on all the images on your website you will encourage people to pin your content for you.

For example, I found this pin below on Wal Mart’s page, but because the image was pinned with a website on it, I can still see the source right away.

This is an additional source for spreading your content around Pinterest, because the people visiting your website might not be following you on Pinterest.

redistributing your images around the web. If that’s the case, then you want to make sure that your content still packs the same “brand” punch as it did when you posted it.

Hover Over Pin it ButtonIn this image from the Razor Social blog you can see the Pin it hover over button on the top left corner. In addition, notice in the top right corner that the website was included in the image. This is another excellent example of branding images for Pinterest. IMM

internet marketing magazine july 2014

YOUTUBE

GROW YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL TO 160K VIEWS A MONTH WITHIN 1.5 YEARS By Till Boadella

was able to grow a little niche YouTube channel to 160,000 views a month in one and a half years. Inspired by Neil Patel’s megapost on how to grow your blog to 100,000 views a month I decided to create my own version for YouTube. I’ve had a lot more success on YouTube than with blogging. In fact, it’s been my main traffic source for years. And the truth is – I didn’t even use videos to do this. I did this just by using a static image and adding some music. I’m sure you’re asking yourself in which niche I was able to do this, and get away with it. The answer is: The music industry. My first online business ever – apart from a small classified ads business that I ran straight into the ground – was me sitting in my room with a computer and some music making software. All I did is create new instrumental beats (most of them sounded like crap in the beginning) and upload them to YouTube.

Before you think this has anything to do with luck, let me explain how I started out and some of the difficulties I encountered. Growing a YouTube channel is not something that happens over night. Just like everything, it takes a lot of time, consistency and patience. My videos didn’t even reach 100 views when I initially started out. And getting my first 100 subscribers was a slow and mind-wrecking process. I posted links to my YouTube channel on Facebook and asked people to subscribe to it. That’s why networking is so important in the initial launch phase of your channel: You need to have at least a couple of friends and fans on Facebook who are interested in the content you’re publishing on YouTube. When you’re starting out, YouTube won’t give you any traffic from related videos and searches. Thats why Facebook and other social media sites should be your initial source of traffic.

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YOUTUBE wrong here”. Anyway – Nothing was wrong. It was right around the time I hit the 100-subscriber threshold and soon later the 100-videos threshold. YouTube Stats Scrennshot

1) The 100-Rule of Building a YouTube Channel Once I got about 100 subscribers on my YouTube channel from continuously posting my channel and videos on social media sites, something magical happened. I don’t know how it works or why it works, but I can almost guarantee that this is a part of YouTube’s algorithm. I call it “the 100-Rule”. From my experience, YouTube starts to send you significantly more traffic once you’ve passed the threshold of 100 subscribers. That’s when the “snowball” starts to roll down the hill and your views, engagement and subscribers start to compound over time. I also found this rule to apply when it comes to videos. In my experience, YouTube rewards quantity. Especially in the beginning. Before I had 100 videos uploaded on YouTube, my traffic was pretty low. But once I hit that 100-threshold of uploaded videos, I got another huge traffic bump. I can clearly remember the day that my organic YouTube traffic started to kick in. I had linked up my YouTube channel to send me notifications per email whenever I get a new comment, subscriber or friend request. The day my YouTube traffic started to kick in, my inbox was crammed with notifications to the point where I got this weird feeling that “something must be

internet marketing magazine july 2014

From that day on I was forced to turn off all YouTube notifications. Because just deleting all “New subscriber” and “Mr. XXX commented on your video” notifications took me a couple of minutes every day. And trust me, it gets super annoying after a while. 2) Consistency Is the No.1 Key to Traffic Once I understood how much YouTube values quantity, I figured out I’d just do more of what seems to already work. So I uploaded more and more instrumentals. Keep in mind – These “videos” were just crappy self-designed pictures and some instrumental music. Nothing fancy. Nothing that one would consider to be super high-quality. But just by uploading on a consistent basis, YouTube sent me more and more traffic. So I hustled my ass off and produced new beats and uploaded them to YouTube. I won’t lie to you, it was a lot of hard work. But I was getting around 39,000 views a month by this time. After a while I got frustrated because I wasn’t able to scale my own views. It seemed like the more I wanted to scale my YouTube traffic, the more videos I had to feed the YouTube machine. And trust me – The YouTube machine is greedy and very hungry. Here’s an example what happens when I get lazy and don’t obey the consistency-rule.

YOUTUBE

A couple of months later my traffic went from 39,000 views a month to 160,000 views a month.

Traffic and engagement drop statistics

If I go from posting 3-5 videos per week to posting 1-2 videos per week, I get a 19% drop in traffic within a very short time. So finally, I had another epiphany that allowed me to massively grow my YouTube channel… 3) Team Up and Create an Authority Channel Up to this point I was the only contributor of videos for my YouTube channel. I was like a”one man army”, producing new music and uploading new videos 3-5 times every week. Uploading the videos is really the easy part. But creating the music, that was the hard work.

The YouTube machine was happy and rewarded me for it. My channel was growing very fast. I was getting 590 new subscribers a month on a consistent basis. Which allowed me to get a total of 9,579 subscribers to this present day. I’ve almost reached the 10,000-threshold. If YouTube gives you a bump when you reach 100 subscribers, I wonder what happens when you reach 10,000? 4) Promote the Videos that Perform Best Another key to success on YouTube is to live by the “20/80″ rule. It’s a well known business principle that 80% of your results come from 20% of the efforts. All you have to do is find out what those 20% are and then do more of what’s working. Let me translate this: Find out which videos get the most views on your channel and then make sure that you boost those videos.

Making more than 3-5 beats per week is almost impossible, even if you’re a super-producer. But to scale my traffic, I needed to upload more videos. So I stepped it up and reached out to some of the best music producers I knew. I created a central YouTube channel that would promote and distribute the instrumentals of all producers. I created contracts. I studied more marketing. I changed my business model. And most importantly I eventually had a team of 6 producers total. Now I was able to upload 5-6 beats per week to YouTube. And that’s exactly what I did.

This brings me to another important topic. Not all of my videos were winners. In fact, from my 462 videos that I have uploaded to my channel, only about 10 are winners. Those 10 videos are responsible for most of my views, subscribers and engagement on YouTube.

internet marketing magazine july 2014

YOUTUBE That’s pretty shocking, isn’t it? No. It’s the “20/80″ rule. Most of my results came from those 10 videos. They were winners on all levels.

dig enough, you’ll eventually hit an oil well. Most of the videos perform poor or average, but the few times you hit an oil well, that’s when it rewards you for the rest of your life. And that’s where you can make a lot of money. On that note: Just play the YouTube lottery.

I have no idea why they were winners and I was never able to intentionally replicate the viral potential of those videos. No matter what I tried. It was always counter-intuitive

5) Be a Smart Marketer and Not a Dumb YouTuber From my 160,000 monthly views, I get around 30 new subscribers for my mailing list every day. Those subscribers enter my sales funnel where they turn from prospects into buyers and then from buyers into long-term customers. Since my YouTube channel started to take off, I’ve made at least $20,000 and around $1,000$2,000 is coming in every month consistently, just from leveraging the second largest search engine on the internet for my marketing strategy. I’ll even give you my marketing secrets.

Viral Video Screenshot

and seemed almost random. Some of my best instrumentals got less than 1,000 views, some of my mediocre instrumentals got over 120,000 views and I can’t explain it. It’s random. Whenever I crank out a winner, that’s where all my focus goes. It recently happened on my other business’ channel. Now that’s where I put all my advertising money. I leverage what’s already working. Never try to boost, advertise or overly-promote a video that’s performing badly. That’s why consistency is so important. If you

internet marketing magazine july 2014

No one talks about this, but YouTube might be the best way to generate leads for your business. It’s mind-blowing to see that no one is using this on a big scale. Even well-known marketing gurus don’t talk a lot about this. The reasons for this is because most “gurus” don’t have a successful YouTube channel, so they haven’t actually experienced the power of YouTube for list building. It’s just theory-craft for them. For me it’s how I earn part of my living. That’s why I’ve tested everything. That’s why I’m passionate about it. So, here’s my exact YouTube marketing strategy to bank massive “passive” income:

YOUTUBE

I use annotations as opt-in bribes. That’s it.

internet marketing.

At the top of every new video I place a short call-to action and a link to my squeeze page (where I collect email addresses in return for a free giveaway). If you use “http://” in front of your link, then the link becomes clickable in the description of your video.

Whenever I see a successful YouTuber with millions of views and subscribers, who’s not using this strategy, I almost start to cry. I literally start to cry because that’s millions of dollars literally left on the table. All those views, without a solid list building strategy, are lost forever.

And in the annotations of the video I place a headline and some copy for my opt-in offer.

The message is: “Bro, if you do two simple tweaks to all your videos you could have an email list with 100,000 or even 1,000,000 subscribers!” That’s basically money in your bank account, even if you’re the worst marketer in the world. But hey, now that you’ve read this article at least it won’t happen to you :-) So, implement these 5 keys and you should be able to easily grow your youtube channel to 160,000 views in one or two years.

Using annotations for marketing

It’s really as simple as that. See, annotations aren’t really annotations. They should really be called “free ad space for you”. Every annotation is like a text ad that you can place on your own video. This turns every one of your videos into a powerful marketing asset. It’s no longer just a video, it’s an ad. And if you have 462 videos uploaded that get 160,000 views per month, that’s 462 ads placed in front of 160,000 eyes.

Although my channel is over 3.5 years old, the big traffic bump happened in the last 1.5 years when I started really implementing the keys and epiphanies outlined in this article. IMM

If you’re not using this to do list building, then you’re either dumb or uneducated in terms of

internet marketing magazine july 2014

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internet marketing magazine july 2014