I get weekly e-mails from Costco because I subscribe. I received my weekly e-mail this evening listing all of the affordable specials from my favorite warehouse store.

This one really caught my eye. Check it out. I guess I should hurry and place my order since they only have one available.

Here are 3 sites for this week that I found pretty darn cool for different reasons.

I have bookmarked these for my own use and I thought I would share them with you.

Alibaba. If you want to buy pallets of merchandise from China, use this site. It also looks promising if you are wanting to start stores on Ebay and need some product. Buy cheap, sell high. It’s also a great place to [...]]]>

Here are 3 sites for this week that I found pretty darn cool for different reasons.

I have bookmarked these for my own use and I thought I would share them with you.

Alibaba. If you want to buy pallets of merchandise from China, use this site. It also looks promising if you are wanting to start stores on Ebay and need some product. Buy cheap, sell high. It’s also a great place to find new keywords if you are into internet marketing.

Ebookling. This site deserves your attention if you have any desire to publish an e-book.

Issuu. A very cool site for anyone who publishes. Ebooks, magazines etc. Upload your own documents and this site will make it pretty. They provide you an embed code so you can place your documents on sites in a unique way.

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I’d like to show you an idea today about how you can make money by using video ads on your website. If you know how to produce a video, let me throw out an idea to you about how to make money with your videos. First of all, you do not have to be a video expert. You do not need your video to go viral on Youtube to do this. As a matter of [...]]]>

I’d like to show you an idea today about how you can make money by using video ads on your website. If you know how to produce a video, let me throw out an idea to you about how to make money with your videos. First of all, you do not have to be a video expert. You do not need your video to go viral on Youtube to do this. As a matter of fact, you could do this without shooting any video at all. You could easily do this if you know how to make a power-point presentation into a video.

Ok, here is your moneymaker.

Video Ads

Do a search for the local community websites running in your town. If you already own a community site, great. All the better. These sites are a great place to begin a video ad network.

Inquire if the website owner be willing to run online video ads on their website if you brought the business? If they say yes, you have just found a partner in your new business. You see, a video needs an audience and a distribution platform. You just found both. Inquire at multiple sites and get yourself a group of partners. There is power in numbers.

Think about it, Dawn Dishwashing Soap needs a distribution platform. Wal-Mart gives them their distribution.

Local business needs a distribution platform. Local community websites provide the platform.

At this point, approach your local businesses as a representative for the individual websites and offer a very unique video advertising opportunity. Hell man, make a business card so you will look official.

This scenario just happened to me. I was approached by a video advertising network who had a video marketing client that wanted to place some video ads on my site. That was cool by me. I charge the marketing company who approached me. The marketing company charges their client. There are 2 separate deals going here. I have no idea what the company charges their client. I only charge $65/month for a sidebar ad on my site.

You can negotiate lower ad rates with the website owner. You put the difference in your beer fund.

You can charge your client 2 ways. Charge for the video production. I would recommend keeping it fairly modest. You can charge a higher ad rate to the client than you negotiated.

At this point, you could be the deal maker and hook up the client with the website owner, take your video fee and walk away. That would be a mistake. That’s not where the real money is.

However, the smartest thing would be for you to stay the middleman and make a residual monthly income from your client. The website owner charges you $50 per month advertising. You charge the client $100. You earn $50 per month residual income. Go get yourself a bunch of clients and pretty soon you are making real money the easy way. You do the job once and you get paid as long as they continue to advertise.

Set up Paypal so you get paid every month and on time. I would not recommend sending an invoice and waiting on a check. If a client will not do this, move on. Paypal the website owners their money and you keep the rest.

Here is the video ad appearing on my website. It’s a short video. Notice at the end of the video a clickable graphic appears that goes to the client website. That’s some of my secret sauce added to the video to make it more attractive to the client.

This is a real business idea that you can grow to whatever level you desired. Short video ads. As part of the deal, make sure that each site will allow you to place your own ad on these sites for free.

Don’t restrict yourself to only local sites, video ads will work for most any type of site.

The beauty of it is that the site owner makes money with his site with no effort. Community website owners are desperately trying to figure out how to monetize their hyperlocal websites.

You make simple 60 second video ads. You work the job once and create yourself a residual income with multiple website partners.

Create an email list. Start a Facebook Page for your services. Each time you post a new video, send it out via email and post the new video on Facebook. Anyone who told you no when you approached them may loosen up and see the light.

There are more than one way to make money with video. You should consider adding video ads to your list.

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When I first watched this video last week, I thought I would lose my $hit. I watched it so many times I lost count. I could not even think about it without laughing out loud. This video has over 4 million views.

I thought this would be an excellent video in which to practice some “on and off page SEO.” There is a lot of talk about video and SEO in the internet marketing [...]]]>

When I first watched this video last week, I thought I would lose my $hit. I watched it so many times I lost count. I could not even think about it without laughing out loud. This video has over 4 million views.

I thought this would be an excellent video in which to practice some “on and off page SEO.” There is a lot of talk about video and SEO in the internet marketing world.

I want to offer my SEO services today to all makers of urban and rap music. There are some keywords that you definitely want to add as you make your videos and build your articles if you are in the rap music business.

Here is my SEO advice to this young hip hop music entrepreneur. If you look at his eyes in the beginning of the video, it’s obvious that this young music genius is most likely under the influence of a recent hit from a crack pipe. Because I am an expert internet marketer, I am extremely observant of such detail.

Everyone knows that to rank in Google, you need links with anchor text. Here are my free recommendations for anchor text as you build your rap music empire.

I recommend that this genius rapper silo all of these articles to build Page Rank.

I also recommend that all rappers let their Ho’s do the street dancing.

Use the following anchor text in your rap music articles and video: I’m throwing in some longtails for free.

• Rap
• Rap Music
• Dumbshit Rapper
• Retarded Rapper (my apologies to actual retarded people)
• Moron Rapper
• Idiot Rapper gets hit by truck
• White people who laugh at dumbshit rappers
• Never dance in traffic while making rap videos
• Never make a rap video after smoking crack pipe
• I just be got hit by a mother#ucking ice cream truck
• I aint gots no #ucking insurance card
• How to make mo money with an additional government disability check

Bonus longtail anchor text link I would recommend:

• How to make a crack pipe from a Schlitz Malt Liquor can

There you have it. This is a good SEO start for this Rapper. I would love to hear your recommendations for good anchor text as this budding rap music star builds his online empire.

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Be careful when embedding a Youtube video on your website, you may be helping your competition.

I recently had a client call me because he was very concerned about the Youtube video on his website. I had made this client a simple video about his business and it’s been running on his site for about 2 years.

He had recently watched the video and the Google ads appearing on the video, were those [...]]]>

Be careful when embedding a Youtube video on your website, you may be helping your competition.

I recently had a client call me because he was very concerned about the Youtube video on his website. I had made this client a simple video about his business and it’s been running on his site for about 2 years.

He had recently watched the video and the Google ads appearing on the video, were those of his direct competitors in his city. He got in touch and there was a little bit of a panic. His competitors were obviously buying PPC ads and his Youtube video were displaying those ads.

To solve his immediate problem, I uploaded the video to my Amazon S3 account and we replaced the Youtube embed with the embed code from my hosting account. We left the video on Youtube because in the description, we link directly to his website.

Now there will be no ads appearing on his video as well as related videos or the possibility of a viewer leaving his site by means of the video. That is a great advantage in hosting your own videos.

My advice to you is to periodically check the Google ads running on any Youtube videos you have embedded on your website. You do not want to give your competition inadvertent help.

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Since I am a marketing genius and you probably are not, I thought I would break down the new marketing plan behind the new 32 oz. coffee size from Starbucks called the Trenta in a simple, easy to understand way.

The Trenta holds 32 ounces of delicious addictive Starbucks coffee.

The human stomach holds 32 ounces of stuff that will eventually be flushed down a toilet, thus making room for an additional 32 oz [...]]]>

Since I am a marketing genius and you probably are not, I thought I would break down the new marketing plan behind the new 32 oz. coffee size from Starbucks called the Trenta in a simple, easy to understand way.

The Trenta holds 32 ounces of delicious addictive Starbucks coffee.

The human stomach holds 32 ounces of stuff that will eventually be flushed down a toilet, thus making room for an additional 32 oz of crap we can put into our bodies.

Starbucks saw the relationship between the two and devised a very clever marketing plan.

The Starbucks Marketing Plan is simple. Implement the plan, rinse and repeat.

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That’s not a statement, I’m posing a question to you. I have never been very interested in email marketing. I know there are a lot of internet marketers who swear by email marketing and attribute their success to it. They like to build lists. But are those days gone?

From a personal point of view, I would say yes to this as it would apply to most people and small business. To the expert marketers, [...]]]>

That’s not a statement, I’m posing a question to you. I have never been very interested in email marketing. I know there are a lot of internet marketers who swear by email marketing and attribute their success to it. They like to build lists. But are those days gone?

From a personal point of view, I would say yes to this as it would apply to most people and small business. To the expert marketers, no. They are experts for a reason.

As a small business, I would strictly focus on Facebook and I would not really consider email marketing.

In my humble opinion, if I were a small business just getting established, I would not even add a website until I had built a presence of Facebook. That statement will go against the grain of all conventional thinking. I’ll say it again.

A small business just starting does not need a website.

I have noticed a trend as of late by the big corporations. In their TV commercials, they are promoting their Facebook pages and not their websites. Us amateurs would do well by spotting these trends and applying them to our own businesses.

For example: Let’s assume I am starting a small dress and jewelry shop in my hometown.

Question: Should you start a website and pay those expenses?
Answer: No, Facebook is free.

Question: Should you build a site and optimize for local keywords used in the search engines?
Answer: No. Chances are nearly 100% that there is no traffic for your keyword jewelry terms with a local focus.

Question: I’m just getting started and I have very little money for marketing. What should I do?
Answer: Buy a Kodak Zi8 video camera. Under $200. Post video and still photos of your dresses and jewelry. It’s free to post on Facebook.

Question: How will I get traffic to my small business Facebook Page?
Answer: Start friending all of your friends and family. Ask them to recommend you to their friends. Friend everybody possible. Focus on the ladies if that is your target. Do this daily for 2 weeks. You should easily have 300-500 friends in 2 weeks. Friend every church Facebook in your area. You will find tons of women to friend on church pages.

Remember this. You are a store. You sell stuff. You will notice that your friends will unfriend you when they realize you are marketing your goods to them all the time. Who cares? Don’t worry about it. Keep going.

If I like the Dollar General page, I expect to see marketing of products and not much else. I know that going in.

Question: How do I get them to visit my store?
Answer: Offer specials, good only at certain times. Offer coupons on your Facebook page. Offer a drawing for everyone who “likes” one of your Facebook posts. Give away free stuff that they have to come to your shop to receive. Do a wine and cheese tasting.

Get the idea? Be creative. These marketing concepts are virtually free on Facebook. The old veterans of email marketing may disagree but if you are just beginning, I would go full force on Facebook and would not consider an email campaign at this time.

In a few months you will discover what works and does not work. You will learn what sells and does not sell via Facebook Marketing.

Conduct your marketing experiments for the first few months on your Facebook Fan page. You will be armed with information you have compiled for free. Test, test test. After a few months, you will be more prepared to make the decision if you need a website or not.

Don’t believe me? Do a search on Facebook for all of the local business in your community. Study how they have used it. Put their best practices in use on your own small business Facebook page.

Let me know how it goes.

Let me add a sidenote. Make sure you start your own personal Facebook page if you do not already have one. Separate your business from personal. Don’t blast your personal friends with marketing junk. Have fun on both of your pages and interact. The interaction will make you successful.

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Out of the 3 people who read this blog, at least one of you may know that I run a few hyperlocal blogs in the community where I live. I’ve been doing this for 2 years now and overall it’s been a great experience. I’ve learned a lot and the learning process never seems to end.

One of the hardest things to do is to monetize a hyperlocal blog. It’s totally possible, and there [...]]]>

Out of the 3 people who read this blog, at least one of you may know that I run a few hyperlocal blogs in the community where I live. I’ve been doing this for 2 years now and overall it’s been a great experience. I’ve learned a lot and the learning process never seems to end.

One of the hardest things to do is to monetize a hyperlocal blog. It’s totally possible, and there are some who make a full time living publishing a community news site. BTW, I only used the word “hyperlocal blog” for the search engines. If you write a blog about your neighborhood, well yes, it’s a hyperlocal blog. If you cover a large geographical area, it’s no longer hyperlocal. This is my opinion of course. I just prefer to use the word community website or community billboard website. Most people better understand what you are talking about.

One of the main obstacles in monetizing my sites is me, myself & I. I do not prefer to beat the bushes, make calls and devise marketing plans in order to attract advertisers. I refuse to do that. At my age, 51, I’ve already done more than most men will do in a lifetime. Call me an idiot or call me a wise man, I prefer much simpler methods even if it takes longer. I’m a patient man. Most of my advertisers have approached me and that’s the way I prefer it.

My personal philosophy is 2 parts. #1. Nothing is stupid until you figure out it doesn’t work. #2. Build something for yourself that others want to be a part of.

I do make a check every month from Google Adsense from my community websites. I also get quite a lot of side work with video and video related work. I probably have turned down more opportunities than I have taken. If you have a skill that is marketable in your local area, you are crazy not to start a community website. As the site grows with a local audience, you have a wonderful platform in which to market yourself. Plumbers, electricians, photographers just about anyone who does service work for others could benefit from running a community website.

Before I digress too much, I thought I would share with you a new marketing idea that i am implementing on my site.

I was approached by a band who plays a lot of weddings and community festivals. They were interested in advertising. My initial thought turned to a video advertisement for them highlighting the band and their music.

They had some videos posted on Youtube but what I needed was a 2-minute highlight video which they didn’t have. I put together clips from their online videos. Below is a screenshot of how their ad appears in the sidebar on my site. I have a graphic that is click-able to their website with a highlight video just underneath.

I made the video only 300 pixels wide to fit in my sidebar. The cool thing about the video is that at the end of the video appears a click-able “call to action” that will direct a viewer to their website. Below, you can play the video for yourself.

Well, what is your opinion? Would a video ad like this be effective on your website? Are video ads better than a plain graphic? Is a visitor more likely to click on a video ad?

Time will tell if video ads are effective for community websites. I have a feeling in my gut that these type ads will be highly successful. If I can prove this to myself, I may even get off my ass and do some selling.

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I want to continue today talking about Local SEO and a few local marketing tips that can help you gain rankings in your local area and make a good first impression to possible clients for your business. Everything that I will describe can be done for free and it only takes a little time and effort on your part. You will get out of it what you put into it.

Do not be afraid. [...]]]>

I want to continue today talking about Local SEO and a few local marketing tips that can help you gain rankings in your local area and make a good first impression to possible clients for your business. Everything that I will describe can be done for free and it only takes a little time and effort on your part. You will get out of it what you put into it.

Do not be afraid. Anyone can follow these tips and implement them on your own site. You do not have to be a technical coding geek to do this. So, breathe easy and keep reading.

For this example, I’m going to use a friend of mine’s chimney sweep website, HomeSaverChimneySweeps.com. His name is Mark Ferraiolo and we have been friends for many, many years. He lives in Pennsylvania now and has allowed me to use his website to illustrate a few examples that one could use to make their sites better in the eyes of the search engines.

Mark has done a pretty good job listing his site on Google local. Below is the screenshot of how it appears.

At first glance at his Google local listing, I would recommend that Mark ask more of his customers to write reviews about his business. He is only showing 1 review. I know for a fact that Mark has many satisfied customers and he should be asking each customer to go online and write a review. Word of mouth and testimonials are very powerful.

Here is what I observe and what I think Mark should do to his listing:

• Be more descriptive about what your business does. Mark only has 2 sentences describing his business.
• Post more photos showing your work. Google allows up to 10 photos to be posted.
• Post youtube videos of his chimney sweep work. Google allows up to 5 videos to be posted for the listing.
• Add coupons to his listing. The coupons will appear with his business listing on Google maps.

Wrist slap #1
Here is where I’m going to fuss a little bit at Mark and slap his wrist. When I visit HomeSaverChimneySweeps.com, Mark does not have a blog on his site. As we all know, the search engines love fresh content.

Wrist slap #2
Add video to your site Mark. You and I have discussed this in detail. Start a youtube channel. Youtube is the #2 search engine in the world next to Google and unfortunately, Mark is not taking advantage of this.

There is no evidence of any social media presence for Home Saver Chimney Sweeps such as Facebook & Twitter. Do you think that Mark could benefit from using Social Media in his chimney sweep business?

Google Insights:
The next thing I would do if I were Mark, is to visit Google Insights to search for the top terms I could use to help customers find me. I searched for the term “chimney” and used the filter of the state of Pennsylvania and all metros.

A quick search using Insights turned up a ton of useful information that Mark could use. The screen shot below shows regional interest for the search term “chimney.”

The screenshot below is the pot of gold for Mark. Google Insight shows all of the top searches related to “chimney” for the entire state of Pennsylvania. It also show the top rising searches for the term.

What should Mark do with this information? It’s simple. He should be incorporating these terms into his site. There are many other things that Mark can do also. Start posting youtube video and tagging his videos with these search terms. Posting photos on his site using “alt tags” with these terms.

Add a blog to his site and write specific articles about each search term. Mark should start building links to his site using these terms as anchor text for the links. I only see 15 links pointing to his site using the Yahoo Link Domain tool.

If Mark could start to rank in the search engines for these individual terms, combined with youtube videos of his work and customer testimonials, I believe Mark, my good friend, would have more chimney sweep work in Catawissa, PA than he could handle. Actually, I don’t think it…I know it.

Of course, this is not everything that Mark could do to help himself. These tips are quick and simple that he could start to implement today. What are some recommendations that you would give to Mark to improve his local SEO? Feel free to join in and leave your tips.

2010 Bloggerlens.com

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Local Businesses do not seem to grasp the power of the internet and local search that is right at their fingertips. There is a trend here in my town and most likely yours. With just a few simple steps, small businesses could own their local search terms in the search engines and do a better job of controlling their message. Most business owners seem to be too busy running their business instead of marketing their [...]]]>

Local Businesses do not seem to grasp the power of the internet and local search that is right at their fingertips. There is a trend here in my town and most likely yours. With just a few simple steps, small businesses could own their local search terms in the search engines and do a better job of controlling their message. Most business owners seem to be too busy running their business instead of marketing their business. This appears to be a fact for small business everywhere and could provide opportunities if someone were interested in starting a business and becoming a local SEO Consultant.

Let’s take my town of Monroe, NC and look for some examples. After you see what I will point out to you in my town, it will be very easy for you to recognize the same situation in your hometown. For my example, lets use the term “Monroe NC BBQ” and look at the results. I love BBQ and here in the south, BBQ is king.

Personally, I am drawn to the Outlaw BBQ listing. The business listings are ok, but still seem to be a bit more like a telephone book listing. Out of the 4 listings that you see, you can bet that Outlaw BBQ will definitely get a look from most people on the search. Which one would Grandma click?

Diving in a little further, I click on Bob Gibson’s business listing. As you can see from the screenshot below, Bob Gibson has not claimed this local listing on Google? Just below, Bob Gibson has about 12 reviews. Some are good and some are bad. Ol’ Bob is really missing out on some great content he could add including photos and videos. This is a Failure! BTW, the other 2 businesses have not claimed their Google listing either.

I would venture to say that Bob Gibson does not have a clue that the bad reviews are there because he has no response to the bad reviews. It’s obvious that Bob is not interested about controlling the message or possibly trying to get it changed. This one comment alone has probably driven customers to a competitor. If I were Bob or if I were working for Bob, I would have responded or would have asked what I could have done for this person to have this negative removed. At the least, I would have encouraged my customers to go online and write positive reviews about my restaurant that would drive this comment far down the line.

Here is what I did on the review. Bob Gibson’s is one of my favorite restaurants in Monroe and I go there quite often. The food is great. I took this opportunity to write my own review and to hopefully cancel the negative somewhat and to push it further down the page. If I were Bob Gibson, I would not hesitate to ask my friends or customers that if they like my place, to please go and do a review. I would hand them a free lunch card along with directions on how to do it. I would do everything possible to control the message.

If I were a local SEO Consultant, I would use what I did as a way to get my foot in the door to offer my services. I would print out what I did and maybe make a few notes on the pages, attach a business card and stop by and ask for the manager. I’d give it to him or her, speak for just a moment and probably leave. If they were not on Twitter or Facebook, I’d ask why not? I’d follow up in a couple of days and if the response were positive, I’d set up up a meeting. If you have a cool reception, I would mention that you really like Bob Gibson BBQ but if they do not want my services, I’m going to move on to one of the other BBQ restaurants and make my offer to them. I would do this in a very nice way.

Below is an example of a business owner who claimed and took control of his business listing. He’s a long time friend of mine. I advised him on a few internet ideas early on when he started his business and he’s done a great job. It’s not BBQ and it’s in another state but it’s a good relevent example of the point I’m trying to make. He owns a Chimney Sweep business, and he has done a good job for his Google Local listing.

There is a lot more to cover and I will continue in the next post about how to identify some of the local search terms and to gain ranking. Local SEO is much easier to rank for local terms than you think. I’ll cover more real life examples in the next article.

If you are a small business located anywhere in the country and you feel as if you are not making the most out of your internet presence or if the landscape is confusing, we want to hear from you at Echelon Media. Give us a look.

2010 Bloggerlens.com

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