Urchin visitor tracking is now renamed ‘Google Analytics’ and is available to everyone for free! For those of you lucky enough to have signed up in the early stages, Google Analytics will open up a world of information you probably never knew about visitors on your site. For those not so lucky, you’ll have to wait till Google gets their act together and reopens the doors for new sign-ups to the analytics system.

Why you need Google Analytics website visitor tracking

Google Analytics provides free information about the way visitors to your site interact with it. It is an invaluable tool that all webmasters should use if they don’t already have some form of visitor tracking solution in place. Here’s 10 reasons why you need Google Analytics on your site:

1. It is free. And it offers just as much if not more functionality than most expensive visitor tracking solutions!

2. You need Analytics to understand how visitors use your site

3. You can identify where visitors leave your check-out or sign-up process and modify it to prevent losing leads

4. You can identify which pages and links visitors click on most and spend most time on, and position these pages and links appropriately

5. Analytics also tells you which sites users came to your site from

6. You can find out the most popular keywords users type into a search engine to find your site, thereby helping your search engine optimisation efforts

7. Visitor segmentation by new vs returning users, geography and referral source will offer invaluable insight when planning future business

8. Analytics integrates seamlessly with Google AdWords so that you can have almost end-to-end visibility in your search advertising results

9. Analytics allows tracking of other non-search-engine marketing media

10. Analytics will save you money and help you gain more customers

Pros and cons of Google Analytics

The benefits of using the Google Analytics solution are numerous. The fact that it’s free is mere icing on the cake.

* The setup is very straightforward and takes hardly any time

* It is a great solution providing a wide range of reports with a lot of flexibility

* Multiple sites to be tracked under one login

* Tracking campaigns from a wide variety of media is possible

* A/B ad testing is easy

* It integrates with all marketing media and can be used as a single portal to track multiple campaigns

* In depth reports on site navigation and use are invaluable

* Ecommerce tracking is included

Whilst the Google Analytics package provides a vast number of useful bits of information, it lacks two major features which most search engine marketers need – the ability to track individual user activity or trace activity back to an individual user level and the ability to track activity akin to click fraud. The eCommerce tracking features are not very straightforward to use.

Most irritatingly, though, just like any other Google product offering, the customer service associated with Google Analytics is abysmal, if not completely non-existant!

How Google Analytics might change search engine optimisation

By offering a free web site analytics solution, google have made a very sneaky and superbly calculated move in the war for search engine supremacy. Now that they have visibility not only into how Google users search for your site and whether they convert into sales on it, but also into how all visitors, even from Yahoo and MSN reach your site, how they use your site and whether they leave your site without making a purchase. Armed with that sort of usability information, Google could not only undermine all your search engine optimisation efforts, but also use the data they collect about MSN and Yahoo! search results with respect to your site and use it to strengthen their stronghold on the search landscape.

Albert

You Can Profit By Watching Some Online Marketing Trends Closely…

Of course, you don’t just profit just by watching but by following a systematic way of doing things. Putting things into action and then measuring and improving your results overtime. Here you will be handed the keys to the kingdom of how masters profit immensely from online marketing trends. Learn and apply for it is what you do that determines your destiny.

Step 1: Identifying Your Contribution Potential

Before you even take a step out to fill that loophole in being to dominate the online marketing trends as a main provider you have to be just that – a good provider. You can’t just expect to be a master profiteer online without doing anything. For instance, you have a passion for cars and you have a certain knack for tuning certain car engines for maximum efficiency. That is a skill you can contribute to society in return for what we call, income.

Step 2: Observing Growth In 6 Months

What you should probably do is first to identify with MSN Trends (you can search this using Google) a certain keyword that fits your niche. Then, tweak it to see the number of searches for the last 6 months. If there is a general uptrend that’s a good sign. If it is otherwise, it could mean either there isn’t enough buyers in that niche or that is a new niche. Either way, you will have to decide if you want to go for new market domination or just to profit immediately.

Step 3: Executing Your Marketing Plan

Just being able to identify which niche is the one you should go for by observing online marketing trends is not enough. You also must find ways to fit certain tasks that can boost your sales results. Such as the mapping of your marketing plan and that includes methods on how to attract traffic to your website, establishing trust among your visitors and the end result getting the sale.

No One Is A Newbie

If you are reading this then it is the evidence that you are not a newbie. Being able to go into certain online marketing trends and making a small profit is an exciting prospect. Just remember to always give, give it your all.

Albert

How to make $1000 a month online from scratch – Part 8 of 8

Over the past 7 weeks I’ve been outlining the plan of attack for making your first $1000 a month online. Completely from scratch.

This series made the following assumptions:

• You will have 5-10 hours a week to work on the business.
• You’ll have very few, if any, technical skills.
• $400 to invest.
• A willingness to work hard, stick to a plan and resist distractions.

If you’ve followed through and taken action on my instruction you should now have:

1) The right mental attitude to pull this off.
2) Selected a niche topic with the “right stuff”.
3) A traffic pulling website with at least 10 articles on it (and growing).
4) A strategy and process for converting that content into dollars.
5) An info product you are selling that helps out the folks interested in your niche topic.

If you’ve got all of that together, you should be very happy with yourself. You’ve worked hard and you’ve achieved something that most people lack the discipline to do. Well done.

However, I warn you. This is the most dangerous time for your new business. If it’s anything like 99% of other projects of a similar nature, there still isn’t much happening on the income side of things. It’s often very disheartening.

You may be feeling a mix of emotions including:

• Did I select the right niche?
• This isn’t worth the time I’m putting in here.
• The economy must have caused this not to work.
• Maybe my design isn’t right?
• I’m not cut out to make money online.
• This sucks.
• Jay sucks.

This is natural. It’s the nature of traffic.

We know because we’ve seen it over and again. As an example, we followed this same methodology for a site of our own. The first month saw just 11 people visit. The second month just 39. Pretty disheartening stuff. In over 8 weeks we’d seen just 50 people hit the site.

However, by just keeping at it we started to see growth. By the third month we’d had around 1300 people hit the site and by the eighth month we cracked 10,000 visitors.

Many people who witnessed the same kind of stats would have given up at the end of the second month. It’s hard to make much money off 50 people in 8 weeks. Nonetheless we didn’t give up. We just kept plugging away at it until we saw some solid growth.

Once you see your site growing fast, it’s a strong motivator. When you see your site making money, it’s an even stronger motivator.

Mental toughness

But the hardest part is keeping the pressure on when no one’s visiting your site and you’re not making a cent. This is why I created this chapter. You need to keep pressing through and have some mental toughness to keep doing it.

It reminds me when I used to race mountain bike cross country. These were normally hellish 2.5 hour races that were comprised of 7 laps. The starts were absolutely furious as you were in the red zone just trying to establish your position. Your heart rate was through the roof and your legs were full of lactic acid.

However, this first lap wasn’t the hardest part of the race. The second lap was.

In the first lap your mind was ready to fight and your body fueled with adrenaline. However, in the second lap your body was paying for the first lap’s punishment. Your mind was saying, “I can’t do this . . . I’ve still got 6 laps to ride and I’m feeling like I could die . . . maybe I should stop.”

It was easy to dig yourself into a mental hole and feel like pulling out.

But then as you complete your second lap you begin to settle into a rhythm. Your body recovers and you get some momentum. As you begin to pass other people you get your confidence back and those mental doubts go away and you refocus on the task at hand.

If you’ve completed all the steps in parts 1-7, you’re probably hitting lap 2 about now. Keep focused. It will only be a matter of time before you see some positive results.

Building momentum

In the meantime, I recommend you keep following the formula of building momentum I outlined in Part 6, “The Traffic”.

During this period I recommend setting yourself the following goals. It will help you get through this little rut.

1) Write 1-2 articles a week (following the principles in Part 7).
2) Get 2-4 new links a week (following the principles in Part 6).

Just consistently keep doing this. Do it without expectation for at least 6-8 weeks. If you’re still not seeing growth then I would bet that you are doing something on your site that is actually inhibiting traffic.

Check the following:

1) You’re not doing anything that violates the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
2) See if your site is being indexed correctly by using some of the webmaster tools provided by Google.
3) Ensure that you have links pointing to your site.

Once you’ve started seeing some growth, you’ll feel more motivated to keep driving forward.

The basic formula for growth is easy. Simply:

1) Develop more content on a more diverse keyword group that people love and want to link to.
2) Develop more content that can be monetized via affiliate links and your own product. For example via reviews and case studies.
3) Improve your sales letter for your product by writing more compelling content, adding testimonials and building trust. Remember, if you can take your conversion rate from 2% to 4% you can double your income.

If you methodically follow my advice there really should be no reason why you can’t reach your $1000 a month mark. Of course you can use this to have an amazing family vacation each year, start a college fund, support a new member of the family or really whatever you wish.

Perhaps you don’t want to dream big, but it is very possible to earn much more than your $1000 a month. The next major hurdle is to take your site from a part-time income, to a full-time, day job replacing income.

The simplest way is to focus on the 80/20 rule as much as possible and automate this process as much as possible by outsourcing the processes. Simple mathematics say that if you could replicate this 10 times or make 5 sites twice as profitable, you can earn $10,000 a month.

This would be a dream for many folks and could be a good pathway for you.

However, if you want to hit these kinds of figures and higher, there are probably more efficient ways to go.

Now they aren’t easier necessarily. You need to be more skilled and possibly take more risks.

Article Series
This article is part of a series. Other published articles in this series so far are shown below:

1. How to make $1000 a month online from scratch
2. The required mindset for online success
3. Choosing a niche for your online business
4. How to plan your online business
5. How to start your online business
6. How to get traffic to my website?
7. How to get my site to make money 

Albert

In regard to making money on the Internet, everyone is always looking for the quick fix. They want to sign up for a program, place an advertisement, and make hundreds or thousands of dollars instantly. While this may be possible depending on your circumstances, the most direct and guaranteed path to success on the Internet is to stick with the fundamentals. 

A friend of mine who is an athletic coach for kids in the city where I live reminded me of this lesson. This guy is actually so passionate about kids and athletics that he coaches 4 different sports: basketball, soccer, baseball and football. Of course, he has a kid of his own on each team. But what is remarkable about this guy is the results he gets with his teams. 

He was recruited to coach the 8th grade football team where his children go to school. After 27 years of losing seasons in a row, the first year my friend became the head coach the team won the district championship and repeated their championship run the following year. This past weekend he coached 12 different games and won all 12 of them. As you can tell, this guy is extremely dedicated.  

But the funny thing is that he and the kids he coaches are not totally hung up on winning. If they lose a game, they feel equally good about themselves as they would if they had won. What matters most to them is how well they played and lived up to their potential as a team.  

The real question is how my friend’s teams continually perform on such a high level and beat nearly anyone they play even though they are often smaller and younger than their competitors. I asked this question to my friend the other day and he told me that it’s all in the fundamentals.   

In his practices, all he works on with his kids is keeping a positive mindset and practicing the fundamentals. He told me that his teams never scrimmage or strategize about upcoming games during practice. They simply work hard on all the fundamentals of whatever particular sport they are playing and do so more than any other team they play. This constant practice and improvement of the
fundamentals is what allows his teams to progress faster than his competitors. While most other teams get caught up with how to win, out-strategize, be stronger than and intimidate their opponents, my friend’s team is just so good at the basics that they blow everyone out of the water when game day arrives. 

This got me thinking about my own Internet business and why I’ve been able to succeed on such a high level while most others who have tried to do what I do have failed. The answer is not really surprising. 

Most people who try to build a successful Internet home business are looking for the quick fix. They want it to work IMMEDIATELY and so they usually fall prey to business opportunities that promise to help them get rich overnight and advertising scams that promise to deliver thousands of hungry prospects to their website in the next 24 hours. Of course, these opportunistic schemes are really
just geared to steal people’s hard earned money. You see, when someone is desperate and looking for an INSTANT solution, they will often be taken advantage of and their chances for success with an Internet home business are slim to none.  

However, while there are thousands of business opportunities on the Internet and millions of different ways to advertise and promote your website, I personally practice the fundamentals in my Internet home business. I do this by sticking with the business opportunities I’ve joined for the long haul and promoting my website consistently with simple, affordable and easily maintained Internet marketing techniques.  

In fact, one of the techniques that works best for me is writing articles like this one and getting them published on other people’s websites using article syndication tools and software found online. 

By writing articles and getting them published on other websites online using powerful tools like those mentioned above, I’m able to get my name and website address in front of thousands of people without paying a dime in advertising. Of course, the key to this strategy is that I write and distribute articles consistently in this way. It’s one of those “fundamentals” that doesn’t cost anything but a little time and effort. Fact is, it’s this price of time and effort that most people are unwilling to pay. They’ll gladly part with hundreds or even thousands of dollars, but ask them to do a little hard work and they say “No way.”  

It’s this understanding that can separate you from the pack. If you are willing to practice the fundamentals of your business faithfully and consistently, you will be destined to succeed on a high level. But if you can’t and you’re only looking for the quick fix, you have already lost the game before you even set foot on the field.  

Even pros like me practice the fundamentals every day. In fact, especially pros like me practice the fundamentals. The moment I stop practicing the fundamentals is the moment I stop being a pro. Think about this carefully and then renew YOUR commitment to the fundamentals of your Internet home business today. Do this and you will soar past your competition. 

If you don’t know the fundamentals of marketing online yet and want a mentor who can teach you and guide you and push you to achieve the success you deserve, join my team today and let me show you a path that has worked for me and a growing number of like-minded people in my “inner-circle”

To your success!
Albert