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some-flyleaves · 6 years

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when I pick up a book called What the #@&% is That? I know I’m in for a ride, for better or for worse

conclusion: inconclusive, but you can get quite a variety outta the prompt “a character has to say or think the phrase ‘what the [fuck] is that’”

So this book came in the library a few months ago; checked it out, read one or two stories, drowned in schoolwork, returned it, and have since read it on and off when things are slow and I got nothing better to do. (Yeah, I get paid to sit around and read sometimes. It’s a good gig.) Finally finished it tonight and, well. It’s a thing!

Aside from the titular phrase, none of the stories are connected - different authors, different writing styles, hell even different genres. Have some bullet-point thoughts.

“Mobility” by Laird Barron is... weird. I vaguely remember reading that the guy is a master of cosmic horror, and if this is how the genre usually works then I’m in no rush to read Lovecraft. Surreal imagery turns into pretentious metaphors turns into torture porn turns into surreal pretentious metaphors. Not a fan.

“Fossil Heart” by Amanda Walker is, uh, gay? I think?? I’d need to reread this one to get a better grasp on it but I’m in no rush. From what I remember, it’s about a woman who’s literally haunted by her past (got her girlfriend killed or drowned or something?) and then... changes that. somehow? I guess??? The prose is dreamlike, present tense, and while I’m all for not spoonfeeding the audience, I feel like I don’t remember this one as well because I didn’t really understand what was going on. It was one of the earlier stories I read, to be fair, but I also recall other early stories much more vividly.

“Those Goddamn Cookies” by Scott Sigler is clever as hell, and while the progression is a tad predictable post-twist reveal, I was definitely not expecting a little space scifi out of this book. There are some nice characterization touches throughout, the intersection of thoughts and narrative gets intense when needed, and honestly? Would not have called the ending when the intro has the protagonist smelling fresh-baked cookies.

“The Sound of Her Laughter” by Simon R. Green is apparently forgettable enough I needed to skim it again just now to remember what the hell it was about. There’s a couple. Unreal stuff happens, I guess. Characterization was alright...? Uh. Yeah. No dislike but not impressed.

“Down and Deep in the Dark” by Desirina Boskovich is at least memorable, albeit for mixed reasons. Narrated by a snarky teenager(/young woman? I forget the age) whose brother is getting married, the story finds narrator whatshername in charge of babysitting her near-future nephew. It doesn’t seem particularly horrific until ~things go wrong~, something with animals turning up dead by the hotel the family’s staying at and rooms in the hallway that shouldn’t be there.... The first-person and initially casual tone were a nice change of pace, but once the buildup started, it kinda just seemed like creepy stuff for the sake of Creepy Stuff. And of course the aforementioned nephew gets to be a creepy child, because of course he is. I have a habit of reading spoilers before actually getting into a piece of media, which in the case of short stories means skipping to the end before reading from the start. Sometimes the buildup and resolution is very clever, and at least one story later still caught me off-guard once I knew the context of the twist! But sometimes, as with this story... Stuff Just Happens.

“Only Unclench Your Hand” by Isabel Yap is mildly haunting with an ending that, while not exactly thought-provoking, sports just the kind of... not bittersweet, but it’s got a hesitant, uncertain vibe that I can’t quite put into words but always appreciate. Also narrated in first-person by a youngish gal whose name and exact age I forget, the story finds her studying abroad in a small village where everyone knows everyone, for better or for worse. The family she’s staying with has a couple daughters, one around the narrator’s age and the other younger but thankfully not in the “obligatory annoying sibling” way. And then Shit Goes Wrong(TM), but in a less random way than the previous story, and from what I remember it’s not even that heavy on the supernatural stuff until later! Overall a good read with an interesting twist. Also canon gay, I think. There’s a pleasantly surprising amount of Gal Pals(TM) in this anthology.

“Little Widows” by Maria Dahvana Headley also has gals who are friends (not romantic though), cults, and... dinosaurs, I guess? Its premise is interesting enough - “sisters” raised in a cult encounter their “Preacher” and Comeuppance Ensues - in a way that begs to be taken seriously but... can’t, really, imo. Weird Religious Cult(TM) is already asking or some suspension of disbelief from me, since while of course they exist they’re a lot less common than their prominence media would suggest, but fuckign. dinosaurs? when the story up until then has been grounded enough?? Yeah, nah, ya lost me.

“The Bad Hour” by Christopher Golden is BRILLIANT. That thing I mentioned about skipping to the end first? applies here, and this is the story that still floored me once I finished it. An army veteran visits a closed-in town for reasons that aren’t revealed upfront but make for some great fridge logic, and I can’t say much else without spoiling but it’s very much worth a read. Great atmosphere, interesting characters, holy shit.

“What is Lost, What is Given Away” by John Langan is another story I had to skim just now to remember and even then Iiiiii got nothin. The narrator attends a high school reunion and eldritchy stuff happens to a guy or something. I vaguely remember thinking some moments were clever when I was reading but apparently not too clever. V: Also, it’s long. Next.

“Now and Forever” by D. Thomas Minton is about a father protecting his family from a mysterious Fiend in a vaguely post-apocalyptic setting. Until he isn’t. Can’t say much else without giving it away but while it does its job, I wasn’t a huge fan. Spoiler alert: unreliable narrators aren’t my favorite trope, though I appreciate that we didn’t learn right off the bat the guy wasn’t actually doing his job as well as he thought he was. Or was he. For obvious reasons, the circumstances are left vague; presumably you can pick up a few more worldbuilding details on a reread, but I think I’ll pass.

“#ConnollyHouse #WeShouldntBeHere” by Seanan McGuire is creative as all hell, and even if the scares given are kinda flat, I gotta give it points for format alone. As the title might suggest, the entire story is told in a series of tweets from @boo_peep, including timestamp, hashtags, and retweets from @friends as they, as part of a regular haunted house exploration gig, delve into the titular Connolly House. The format makes for a breezy read, and a certain twist will probably have you rereading just to catch some fun little details. Which is impressive, considering character limit is (presumably? I ain’t counting) obeyed throughout. And when Boo Peep isn’t SCREAMING about the hell she’s seeing, there’s an awful lot left to the imagination. #FunTimes

“The House that Love Built” by Grady Hendrix is also forgettable. There’s a guy. He dates women. People die. Wheee. Actually, it was this or the other one with the couple where I at least liked a couple characterization tidbits. Maybe both? But yeah, not my favorite. Movin’ on.

“We All Make Sacrifices: A Sam Hunter Adventure” by Jonathan Maberry is, on one hand, a cookie cutter story about a cynical vigilante-ex-cop, and honestly I kinda regret looking up the author’s other work after reading because it pointed me towards reviews calling out his writing for being so tropey. Because while reading? Might be that I’m not too familiar with the mystery genre, but it was a heckin fun ride. Great characterization, both on behalf of the titular protagonist and the various side characters, even if the antagonist being described as (paraphrasing) “pretty much your typical entitled rich boy” gets a little grating. The story is cliche but shamelessly so, and eh, I usually don’t care for that but it got me anyway. Also, Hunter is a werewolf. That’s fun and it spoke to my old flame of werecanine appreciation but shhh.

“Ghost Pressure” by Gemma Files is... kinda all over the place? a bit? Horror, now at a senior home. I wasn’t entirely clear on who the narrative was following, and while the means of Supernatural Horror is interesting, it leaves a lot to be desired. Ah well, shout out for being about the older among us, I guess? Come to think of it, it could’ve done something thematically with the whole “no one wants you anymore/the people who take care of you are dead” idea, but it... didn’t. discernibly. to me.

“The Daughter out of Darkness” by Nancy Holder features a misogynist unreliable narrator, presented as a sort of case file. Does its job I guess, but lost me at the “letter from an asylum” setup.

“Framing Mortensen” by Adam-Troy Castro is one of if not the favorite story of mine in here, because holy SHIT, is it vivid in all the wrong ways. The narrator has a hellish grudge against Mortensen, for reasons I don’t quite remember and that aren’t terribly important anyway. The real horror (and call for suspension of disbelief) is in what he does with the guy, both in terms of “murder” because of course he does and subsequent, er, treatment. It’s dawning on me this makes it sound like a necrophilia nightmare but it’s not torture porn I swear. Also, if the opening story failed at eldritch abomination-type horror, this one more than compensates by the end. Another good read, would definitely recommend.

“The Catch” by Terence Taylor also features a rather despicable narrator, and while I’m tired as anyone of ~ooh no serial killer who has no feelings what a [insert outdated psychology buzzwords here]~, I gotta say this surprised me. It’s... weird. Not really pornographic but because of Reasons it may raise some eyebrows. Can’t say more than that without giving away the big twist, but I’ll admit the ending threw me for a loop and not for unforeshadowed reasons. Bonus points for fridge brilliance in the title!

“Hunters in the Wood” by Tim Pratt is gay, now with dudes, and also trying really hard to be a hunger games spinoff while lampooning the very premise of the hunger games and dystopias like it. (Side note: I have not actually read or watched The Hunger Games. Writing style didn’t catch me, not too interested in the movies.) Take the self-aware commentary from the Sam Hunter story, boost it way up in some expository worldbuilding, throw in some vague eldritchy stuff, and you get this. Mind, it doesn’t last, but it was just annoying enough to me while it did that I wasn’t too invested in the rest of the story. Ah well. I just wish it was bigger on the eldritch and smaller on the totally-not-social-commentary.

“Whose Drowned Face Sleeps” by An Owomoyela and Rachel Swirsky is, for lack of a better word, haunting. Like “Fossil Heart,” it’s got an almost dreamlike narrative style while the actual events are... sorta down to earth? more or less? Except not really, but once the weird stuff starts happening, you’re in the appropriate mood. I found the execution much better here though, between most events being much less vague & more grounded characters. And while exactly what happens and why is unclear, it blurs that line between psychological “haunting” and real life disaster in a way that reminds me of Paranoia Agent. Mind, I read this one tonight and the earlier on months ago; to really compare/contrast I’d have to reread both in one sitting. (Also, could have done without the allusions to sex scenes but At Least It’s Lesbians(TM).)

“Castleweep” by Alan Dean Foster is the closing story of this anthology and boy is it a “love, hate, or love to hate” narrative. A rich tourist and his girlfriend are taking a trip through the ~jungles of Africa~ and he’s about as entitled as you might expect. The narrative doesn’t bend over backwards to condemn the guy because it pulls no punches letting his thought process speak for itself, whether he’s talking his guide into a side trip to a forbidden castle or sticking to his pride when the detour soon proves less than worthwhile. By the time the horror kicks in, you may or may not want the fucker dead anyway - the story seems aware of this and lavishes on the grotesque details. Which... I found unnecessary, and the reasons for the castle being haunted as it was were decently foreshadowed but heavy-handed as hell. Decent enough read if you wanna see a snobby dude and his girlfriend (the latter of whom deserves better, tbfh) get brutally mauled...!

Overall, for a cover and title that promise top notch eldritch horror, the actual stories range from generic spooky shit to really clever but not necessarily scary plot twists and story developments to... what the fuck did I just read. Seriously, a good amount of the phrase drops weren’t even at some big moment of Monsterening - there weren’t even monsters (in the nonhuman creature sense, blablabla ~humanity is the real monster~) in like... half of these? So if that’s what you expect, back out. Also, none of these are gonna keep me awake at night, and I wouldn’t say I have a particularly high tolerance to horror (good ol’ fashioned creepypastas and jumpscares can and have given me all-nighters), but YMMV on that.

However!! Despite my middling reviews on most of these, there are a few that really stand out, and I’d say the anthology is worth checking out just for those. Not a read I regret, overall. And everyone didn’t even die at the end!

(Oh, and did I mention it’s pretty gay? I counted like... at least three Gal Pal duos and one #YesHomo couple, and while I’m definitely not about to get into a story just because it has ~representation~ and the m/f couples probably outnumber 'em by a long shot, it was still a nice surprise. Just sayin’.)

#tonight on 'I need a tag for spontaneous media reviews'#.rtf #this is partially for my own reference because I wanna revisit some of these stories #but like hell if I'll remember them by name alone

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chrysanthemum-brush · 4 years

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Do the same task with another person 25 times; document the process

There needs to be more of a transition here i think. It goes straight from the pictures in the house to the final bus stop

Maybe instead of describing the photo, think of why the photo would be needed to be described. ex. "Jack ran his thumb over the red timestamp in the corner, the old frayed edge catching on his fingertips."

Hes interacting with it, that gives us reason to describe it in more detail- since that's the way Jack sees it

Why would he take the photos out when he knows he will get teary-eyes and put them back again? The readers might need another reason for him to do this

Ooohhh that explains it. Maybe this needs to be hinted at more in the beginning

hehe steal that from real life?

As wonderful and thoughtful some of these room descriptions are, i think this one is one too many. This section could do well without it~ but no worries if not!

I can't help but fall in love with the tone you keep consistent throughout this story, it keeps me on my toes even though nothing intense is happening- theres always a lingering feeling of the characters (especially Hylla) tip toeing through the life they've found themselves in. The mystery that comes with Hylla is amazingly engaging even though we've only seen just a little bit of her- its like there is so much information you're holding back from the reader and (as frustrating as it is because im so eager) its genius and what makes her so intricate to write. Keep up with this method of writing!! This identity you've found is brilliant

Think about what you would do if you were in Jacks position. Would you immediately notice the details of your cousins face as she talks to the general or would you take in you extremes change in your surroundings first since you literally just TELEPORTED. Emphasize how awestruck he is to be experiencing something that should otherwise be impossible. Switch this section about the characters with the section after this taking in the scene around him- this would make it more realistic!!

THIS POOR KID

One Short Daay in the Emerald Cityyy!

Yep the cat is out of the bag, I repeat: THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG

YES this paragraph really dives deeper into the dynamic and turmoil between the lines. Love love love this

Hehehehe

This scene gives me Diagon Alley Harry Potter vibes and I’m thriving

How else is he feeling at this moment?This is all so new to him, so is he adjusting surprisingly well? or still nervous about the understanding the world his cousin just thrust him into? Say just a lil something here so the readers are reminded of his coping process here :P

It might be just me, but I doubt a king would use the term 'girlfriend', probably lean towards 'partner' or something a bit more formal- unless he's a chill, slightly more open and progressive king, but so for those are not exactly the vibes he gives off considering his uncertainty or sternness towards Jack

Is this FORESHADOWING??!

I really hope Damien and Jack’s relationship blossoms more in the future, their characters bounce off each other SO WELL- more of this development!

NICE SEGWAY

does Hylla have a close relationship with her troop? maybe add a little detail about how she interacts with them here- that she is apart of this universe outside of just Jack

gh this is so powerful

Edgar = fridge lord

I LIKE THIS BIT

puzzels?? oo

The above excerpts are comments I made on a friend’s book she’s been working on for years. Many are comments of criticism while others are just fun reactions to the text. She’s mentioned to me how much the critiques help in terms of thematic consistencies, but also how funny comments (as if outside readers were emotionally reacting) really helps put her in the shoes of the reader as well as potentially putting a smile on her face. Writing can be intense and a break from overthinking the inconsistencies by reading a comically simplified version of the text can be relieving in some circumstances. When I write for fun, she leaves both types of comments under my work as well- we’ve discussed the writing process and how to get over blocks, finding creativity, and dealing with hard exposition while balancing it with fun scenes. It’s impossible to have as much passion for one scene as you do another, I’ve realized. I feel that that’s where art and writing deviate from each other. I’ve never encountered a time when there was a part of a project that I hadn’t felt as passionate about. Maybe that excruciating part of the process lies with technical work such as still-lifes, anatomy practice, or very detailed tonal work. The practice you must do before getting to experiment with the skills you’ve already built up. Then again, I’ve never done any intense or huge projects with many moving parts. I have a feeling my opinion on this will dramatically change during my time at RISD and I look forward to reading this reflection back a few years from now.

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jeannejcooper76 · 6 years

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NetBlaze – Behind The Scenes Of A $500k Start-Up

Hi there, and welcome to another monthly blog post here on AidanBooth.com!!

This months blog post is a little different, I want to give you a look behind the scenes of one of our companies to give you a feel for what really goes on… the company is called NetBlaze, and it’s a start-up we’ve been working on intensely for the past 18 months or so.

To get to the meat of NetBlaze, I figured the best approach was to interview Steven Clayton (my business partner), who is currently the CEO of the company.

Throughout the interview, you’ll find out how we’ve approached this project, from concept creation, through to where we’re at now, with a product that’s on the market helping customers and showing huge growth potential.

We’ve also got a fun give-away prize draw where we’re going to give away a lifetime access NetBlaze account, and $500 cash for good measure. The criteria is simple:

You must own or work in a local business in the USA

That’s it

SIDE NOTE: We hate to exclude people from these kinds of contests, but as explained in the interview, NetBlaze is currently only of use to people in the USA who own (or work in) a local business anyway.

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Introductory Video

Before diving into the interview, you may find it useful to watch this short video that walks through what NetBlaze is all about:

youtube

Interview: A Look Behind The Scenes Of NetBlaze.com

Let’s now dive into the interview, the timestamp and transcription is below:

https://fast.wistia.com/embed/medias/h6verhegmf.jsonphttps://fast.wistia.com/assets/external/E-v1.js

Interview Timestamp:

2:05 – What is the elevator pitch for NetBlaze? 3:36 – Why NetBlaze isn’t how we envisioned it would be years ago 4:09 – What was the first iteration of NetBlaze like? 6:29 – What does NetBlaze look like nowadays, how has it changed? 8:17 – How did you come to that conclusion? 9:57 – Who is the typical NetBlaze customer? 11:23 – How does someone use NetBlaze for the first time? 13:18 – What’s the platform that NetBlaze is on? 13:55 – Can you share with us any recent stories or case studies? 15:47 – Why many times it is like a very specific region that needs to be targeted 16:15 – Why helping local businesses is exactly what exactly NetBlaze does 16:35 – What do users need to do on a daily or weekly basis? 19:30 – The other things that are going on behind the scenes of NetBlaze 20:05 – Are there any reports that can be used to monitor progress? 21:31 – Why text is quite a big part of NetBlaze 23:15 – Is email messaging automated? 24:45 – What kind of investment has been needed to build NetBlaze? 27:12 – Understanding why NetBlaze is on a different scale 28:12 – What about the make up of the team? 31:20 – How do you think the mixture of people will change? 33:21 – Where are the other key team members based? 34:15 – How does the team get together? 35:09 – Have you considered outside funding or bringing on investors? 37:25 – What costs would a user pay to be able to use NetBlaze? 38:12 – How did you find and hire your team members? 40:10 – Why internal poaching is a big benefit to us 40:31 – Do you have a system in place that you use for team meetings? 41:17 – Does NetBlaze use any special project management tools? 42:55 – Do you look for any special traits or characteristics in team members? 44:52 – Do you plan to take NetBlaze to other markets in the future? 46:10 – What does the current NetBlaze marketing plan look like? 50:44 – Why it’s imperative that you can track your results 51:27 – What’s been most challenging part about this project? 54:10 – What is the toughest decision that you’ve had to make in the past few months? 54:55 – What has been the biggest challenge over the past 30 days? 55:30 – Challenges, the key is the way you deal with them 56:18 – Is there anything that you would do differently? 57:41 – Are there any open positions now or in the future? 59:14 – How does someone go about creating an account? 59:47 – How to get a lifetime account with NetBlaze and $500 cash!

Interview Transcription:

Aidan: Hey everyone Aidan Booth here, I’m joined today by my business partner Steve Clayton, Steve thanks for being on the call with us.

Steve: Yep happy to be here, how you doing?

Aidan: Now guys as you may already know, we’ve got a handful of different businesses online and most of them are actually outside the ‘how to start an online business’ or ‘how to make money online’ space which is quite likely where you know us from and just like the thing we’re going to be talking about today, it’s completely outside of that space and I thought it would be interesting to give you a look inside one of our businesses, one that we don’t talk about all that often but one that possibly has the biggest growth potential out of any that we’ve involved with right now and one that we’re certainly putting a lot of time, energy and resources into, and the idea here is to give you a look behind the curtain to see what this kind of a business looks like.

The challenges that we face on a day to day basis and just a general look inside an exciting start-up, and we want to make this fun as well so if you have a business which could use the service and software that we’re talking about here today and you’re inside the United States, then if you enter your details in the form on this page which you’ll see in probably multiple places on this page depending on where you’re reading it, then enter your information and we’re going to give one lucky person a lifetime account of the special software that we’re going to be talking about and $500 cash on top of that so that’s what you stand to win just by entering your details on this page

Now with that said, Steve let’s dive in here, now guys the software and the business we’re talking about is called NetBlaze.

So Steve give us the elevator pitch for what NetBlaze is.

Steve: Sure so NetBlaze.com is what we’re talking about here and the way we like to describe it is NetBlaze is software that functions like a virtual Chief Marketing Officer for your small business.

There are so many small businesses in the United States and these are small Mom and Pop local community businesses like the pizza parlour, the local retailer, the local restaurant, the hair salon, and these folks are busy running these great businesses, they power of the US economy for the most part but it’s kind of a catch 22 because they have so much power at their fingertips now to market with Google and Facebook and Trip Advisor and Yelp and all those kinds of things, but even though they have this power, they don’t have a clue what they ought to be doing.

They don’t know whether they should be tweeting, or posting on Facebook, or how is it that their competitors show up when people type in something where they’re looking for a business like theirs online or on their mobile phone, so they’re a super super frustrated bunch because they really don’t even know what they don’t know. So NetBlaze was designed to basically be an instant marketing department for these local small business owners.

Aidan: I know that the way NetBlaze is now wasn’t how we kind of envisioned it would be years ago, and just to give people some more background, the reason that I am interviewing Steve about it and not the other way around is because this has really been Steve’s baby from the get go and something that he dedicates a lot of his time to and I don’t dedicate all that much of my time to it because we try to divide and conquer and run different elements of our businesses.

So Steve, tell us a little bit about the first iteration or how you first approached NetBlaze the first go round?

Steve: Sure this is a market that we know a lot about and customers we know a lot about, for example when we first started online marketing, so you’re talking about almost 15 years ago, I would go to a party or a gathering or hangout with my friends or something, when I started to explain ‘hey I moved from corporate over to building my own company, and our core competencies are online marketing and we’re doing this that and the other thing’, I was amazed at how many of these people that were small local business owners, they were like ‘oh my god I need so much help I don’t know what I’m doing, I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be doing on a daily basis, it seems everybody knows more than me, I don’t even know what questions to ask’, they’re just like this super frustrated bunch that’s very under served.

So the general problem that NetBlaze is trying to solve is which is always something to keep in mind when you’re starting a business, is what problem does my product or service solve? That has not changed for 15 years, this problem has existed.

What has changed is as Aidan said, our approach to it, so we tried a few different things with NetBlaze, so for example, one of them was why don’t we just train because as you guys probably know we’re super big on training programs, we like to do that, we love to teach so one of the first considerations was why don’t we train small business owners, ‘hey here’s what search engine optimization is, here’s what reputation management is, here’s how you build citations, here’s how you go out and solicit reviews, here’s how you develop email marketing campaigns’, and while that’s good information, and would be helpful to people, what we quickly realized is these folks don’t have time to become marketing experts, they’re running their hair salon, they’re trying to make the best tasting pizza within a 25 mile radius, I mean that’s what they’re focused on and rightly so. So they just don’t have the time or the energy to focus on learning things.

Aidan: So the NetBlaze customer is clearly a large audience that needs a lot of help, and the current solution and the one that we are focused on now is obviously different to just the stand alone training that we envisioned it would be initially, so tell us a little bit about how that’s changed and what the solution looks like now and why we’ve gone with that.

Steve: I think, I know what we learned is that these customers just don’t have enough time, they don’t want to learn it, they really don’t want to spend a lot of their time doing it, and they don’t want to pay a lot for it. So the vision when we were developing the NetBlaze software and what I would always push back with the group was, no we can’t teach them how to do it, we must get the software to do it for them or at the very least we need to walk them through very very simple, push this button, type this in here, and press enter, that kind of thing.

So when we were working hard to develop the software, that was sort of the vision that we kept coming back to. Any time our software would veer off somewhere where it would start to get into more like, ‘well let me explain why this is, let me teach you how to do this’, we would just push back and say no, no, no, it has to do it for you wherever it possibly can because these people just want something done for them but they don’t want to spend a lot of money on it and they want to see results right away and they want it to happen fast but they just don’t have the time to do it themselves.

Aidan: Was that an observation that you and the team had through trying other approaches or is it feedback that you got, or how did you come to that conclusion?

Steve: Yeah definitely, we tried teaching them, and we got a lot of feedback on that like ‘I just don’t have the patience for this, again I’m worried about making my good pizza’, and we tried other things like more of a traditional agency role so for example, having someone come into their office and say OK we’re going to put together a comprehensive search engine optimization plan for you, here’s what that all looks like, here’s how it works, here are the tasks that are going to be done, here’s a PPC campaign strategy and let me show you all the metrics.

So that was more of a traditional consulting or agency role and again the push back we got from that was ‘for crying out loud, we just want to show up when people type in pizza parlour in my town and I don’t care how it happens, I want to be able to easily get reviews from my customers and watch my customer reputation but I need help’. You know what they needed? They basically needed a Chief Marketing Officer but they couldn’t afford to go and hire one so that became our vision, we’re going to create software which is essentially a Chief Marketing Officer for these companies.

Aidan: You’ve mentioned pizza parlours things like that so who is the typical NetBlaze customer, can you give our listeners or readers a few other examples for the types of businesses these people run?

Steve: The perfect customer is someone who’s got a defined generic area so it’s not for example a national ecommerce company, that’s a completely different scope of work. So this is a company that is a business that services a community, maybe they have one location, they could have maybe a couple of different locations around the Chicago area as an example but they’re really focused on a set geographic area in a community they’re servicing and that is millions and millions of businesses. Even though everything is going Amazon and Walmart, there’s still millions of plumbers, electricians, accountants, attorneys, dentists, real estate agents, restaurant owners, small retailers, on and on and on, that service these local communities, and is the lifeblood of the US economy.

Aidan: If we talk a little bit more about the actual software for a second, the first time that someone uses NetBlaze, what do they do? Can you walk us through and paint us a bit of a picture about what it’s like the first time they log on and what they might be doing the first time they log onto it.

Steve: The first thing that we do is try to make the onramp process as painless as we possibly can but they need to tell us a little bit about their company; their address, their website, their phone number and then we go out and try to find their Facebook page, we try to find their Yelp page, their Google+ page, their Trip Advisor page, if those things are applicable.

We just say ‘hey is this you’ and just to make sure we’ve got it all hooked up well and that’s really the only thing that they need to do, it really just takes minutes and obviously if they haven’t claimed their Google+ page or Google Places page, if they don’t have a Facebook page, if they don’t have a Yelp page, those are things that we will work with them to create later on but the first step is simply gathering a little bit of information, it just takes minutes and then you’re transported into the dashboard.

The dashboard gives you all sorts of information about your website and your rankings and your reputation online and any reviews that are out there, so it gives you a snapshot of what’s going on but the real meat of the software is what we call our ‘to do’ list which is basically ‘hey here’s what you need to work with, with your Chief Marketing Officer and check these things off’, like for example, claim your Google Places listing, press this button, go here, do that. Some of these things require a phone call so we just walk them through it.

Aidan: Just to fill in some of the gaps here that people may be having, what’s the platform that NetBlaze is on, is it something that you can log into on your iPad or do you have to download special software?

Steve: No it’s all web based and we also have an iPhone app as well that does all the things that the web based system does but because it’s software as a service, it’s a web based product and you can access it from a PC, a Mac, an iPad, and an iPhone too but there’s also an iPhone app that makes it a little bit easier.

Aidan: So if we talk about the actual customers now, are there any recent stories or case studies, quick ones that we could just share with people listening or reading this so they can visualize the kind of results that people using NetBlaze have been able to get?

Steve: Here’s my favorite one; there’s a gentleman in California that runs a smartphone repair center so you go to him if your phone screen gets cracked. Prior to using NetBlaze he was not showing up at all when people would type in ‘iPhone repair’ and they were in his geographic area but his competition was.

NetBlaze identified several changes that he should have made to his website. Now the way we handled that most people have gone out and dealt with someone to develop their website, most business owners don’t do it themselves and they don’t want to know all the different technical details and suggestions that NetBlaze has, so what NetBlaze says is ‘look I’ve got suggestions that you need to make to your website in order to do better in the rankings who should I send that to’?

We’ll then package up an email and send it your developer. So he did that, he followed the NetBlaze to do list and sent off an email to his developer. The developer said this is silly this isn’t going to make any difference but I’ll do it. They did it and three days later he’s number 3 in the rankings for his geographic area!

Aidan: That’s amazing, three days I guess that’s the beauty as well of these local businesses when you’re going after international or even nationwide search terms. Many times it is like a very specific region that needs to be targeted.

Steve: Exactly, it makes it much more manageable and you can be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, you can have an immediate impact in someone’s business.

Aidan: There was always the thing that I love about search engine marketing consulting is by helping these local businesses which is basically what exactly NetBlaze does, you can get that very same impact very quickly on people.

NetBlaze automates a lot of the tasks and the marketing operations for it’s users, so what does the typical user of NetBlaze need to do on a daily or weekly basis because I’m sure there’s something they need to do?

Steve: The biggest thing that they need to do is interface with NetBlaze with their customer data. NetBlaze will function as a CRM ‘customer relationship management’, meaning if you give us every day or every week the customers that have done business with you, we will in the background (NetBlaze will do this automatically), we will solicit reviews, so we’ll reach out to those customers through emails, through texts, and we don’t just say ‘hey could you leave us a review’, NetBlaze is much much smarter than that so NetBlaze is doing two big things.

The first is it’s doing what we call ‘review gating’, where it has a process which we sort of figure out if someone’s going to leave a good review or bad review, because we don’t want them to leave a bad review on Yelp, so we kind of feel them out first.

Then the second part that NetBlaze does automatically is it sends the person to make the review where it will do the most good, so let’s say for example you’ve got 25 Facebook reviews, you’ve got 25 Google+ reviews, you’ve got 100 Trip Advisor reviews but you have only 3 Yelp reviews. NetBlaze is going to say you know what we really need some help with Yelp so I’m going to try and get some reviews for Yelp, or maybe your ranking went down because of a bad review on Facebook, so NetBlaze is going to say ‘oh oh you know what for the time being I’m going to try and get more reviews on Facebook, more obviously good reviews so I can dilute that bad ranking and get it up and make it higher’. So really what people need to be doing is checking your to do list with NetBlaze and review what it’s doing for you.

It will also give you some insight and say ‘hey you’ve got a review posted, you should go and respond to it because that’s something that’s really important’. NetBlaze will tell you that once or twice a week you should make a Facebook post and NetBlaze will also make suggestions on what to post just to keep your audience engaged and things like that. So we try and do a lot for you but it’s good to visit NetBlaze maybe a couple of times a week just to make sure that you’re on board and you’re doing all the things you’re supposed to be doing too.

Aidan: We’ve spent a lot of time explaining reviews for example, but that’s only one type of thing that you’ll be looking to do because there’s social media management, there’s also getting red flags raised if some kind of potential marketing problem is identified so there’s a lot of other things that are going on behind the scenes there as well.

What about in terms of reporting and managing metrics, are there any kinds of reports or things like that that can be used by the user to monitor their progress?

Steve: We purposely don’t create a lot of reports so what they are able to see is mostly the dashboard, and the dashboard will give them again a snapshot but also some graphical representation over time of their visitors, their reviews, their scores, some of their rankings within Google and things like that. So we purposely shied away from creating all sorts of different reports and stuff.

If they dig deep enough, for example, one of the things we do for search engine optimization (and I won’t get into too much information here) but we’re constantly behind the scenes building citations in order to increase their rankings. So they could if they wanted to go and see every single citation that NetBlaze is building for them. They could if they wanted to go in and see every single review, text or email that goes out to customers, but it’s not really necessary, the whole idea here is for business owners to be able to log in, take a look at the dashboard and understand exactly what’s going on but let NetBlaze handle all the heavy lifting and analytical stuff that goes on behind the scenes.

Aidan: You mentioned one little word there which may have got people thinking and they may not have been aware but you said text messages so I think it’s interesting for people to know that’s quite a big part of something that’s built into NetBlaze as well, it’s not just about reaching out to customers in one way and it’s not a one shoe fits all approach here. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about the different ways that a customer may typically be reached out to through NetBlaze. So you’ve obviously got email, text message…

Steve: Those are the two big ones and then obviously we help to foster a Facebook presence that’s really the biggest social media vehicle that we look at, we think it’s the most important, we do focus a lot on the 80/20 rule because you can quickly get carried away with online marketing, you could be tweeting every day, you could be on Instagram, there’s a million things you could be doing but unless you’re a Kardashian, probably as a small business owner, tweeting is an enormous waste of your time because it’s just not going to give you that 80/20 rule where you do 20% of the work and get 80% of the benefit. So for us, customer interaction, the 80/20 rule is email/texting/Facebook.

Aidan: So what about automation and those things I’m just trying to paint a picture here for people as well. I’m assuming that the text message side of it is all automated, the same with email messaging?

Steve: Absolutely, the whole idea is that you’re interfacing with customers for two reasons; one is to get reviews, that you never have to do anything so NetBlaze is constantly working behind the scenes to communicate with your customers to solicit reviews so again making sure that we get the good ones. I’m not trying to suggest it will ignore bad reviews but bad reviews become an email to you to the business owner, they don’t become a Yelp review, or at least that’s the goal. So we don’t ignore them. So all of that the business owner does nothing.

The other way to use it is ‘hey it’s Friday night it’s raining, and as a restaurant owner I know that I’m not going to get as many visitors or potential customers so I’m going to ask NetBlaze, hey can you just run a quick promotional campaign and say rainy day special 10% off appetizer’, and then NetBlaze will send out either a text or email or both to your customers and try to get you more business.

Aidan: That’s really cool that’s awesome. The picture that’s really been painted here is that NetBlaze is designed to be a push button solution so that small business owners can focus on the other parts of their business not trying to do everything they’re currently doing as well as being Chief Marketing Offer for their businesses as well.

If we just change our focus a little bit more I want to talk to you a little bit about what it’s like running a business like NetBlaze. Just to give people a bit of an inside view what kind of investment has been needed to build NetBlaze to where it is today, over what sort of time frame are we talking?

Steve: Remember guys this is software as a service so that’s what’s being built here. It’s been depending on when you say we’re pressing start, it’s somewhere around the two year mark to really develop the software. It’s a little bit inaccurate to say, because you want to really do this within a year. What happens with Aidan and myself, we have a lot of other things that we’re doing and so I think we could have done this much much faster but for us it’s been a couple of years.

Software like this will easily be in the quarter of a million to half a million dollars to really do it up correctly so it’s not cheap by any stretch but software as a service is a powerful business model because the profit margins are generally very very high because the incremental costs to run the business, once you develop the software, as you bring on more customers, you don’t have to spend even more money to develop the software. Obviously there are some support costs and things like that but it doesn’t scale for example like a retail operation, it scales much much nicer and there’s much much higher profit margins.

Aidan: A few people may have just been a little bit shocked by the type of investment we’re talking about here but I want the readers or listeners to know that NetBlaze is a very sophisticated and comprehensive type of a software as a service as opposed to a simple web app which you can develop for $1,000 for example, so just make sure when you’re listening to that, that you are thinking about it with that kind of perspective in mind and you’re not comparing with something that it just on a completely different scale.

The takeaway from that is that significant investment from us and it’s taken a couple of years but it could have been faster if we’d really pushed it along.

What about the make up of the team, what is it like at the moment, how do you envision this changing as NetBlaze continues to grow?

Steve: Right now we’ve got a development team which does the software development and we’ve got a Project Manager/Analyst who lives in the Philippines and his role is essentially to translate our business vision into what the programmers need to hear, so he manages. We don’t actually talk for the most part to the people who are programming so we sit down with the Project Manager/Analyst and we say here’s what we want to develop, here’s the business need we’re trying to solve, here’s how we want the flow to go, here’s what we want the customer experience to be, and he takes all of that and translates that to the programmers and says ‘we need to build this’, and then they build it.

So we’ve got that whole silo within NetBlaze which is product development. We’ve got a customer service team now that does two things, it will do pre-sales customer service so people that come to the website and want to have a conversation with an online chat or they have questions about what the software can do or can’t do, those folks will handle that and then of course anybody that’s got issues or problems running the software.

Then we have a huge marketing push right now which is obviously really where I’m focused the most on right now because this is a start up, we literally just started selling the product and so the marketing team is really the big big push and so right now we’ve got people that are focused on paid advertising, we’ve got a person focused on a direct mail campaign, we’ve got a person who’s focused on inside sales which is basically telemarketing, and we’ve got a person who is focused on copywriting, branding and content management so creating YouTube videos, those kinds of pieces of content, podcasts and things like that where we can reach people and then we’re also bringing the customer service team in to help us out as when we get to a certain point, we won’t be able to do that anymore because they’re going to be busy but doing things like putting together a plan for trade shows, and public relations going out to reporters and things like that so that’s where I’m spending most of my time now is working with that team, that’s pretty much the team right now.

Aidan: So it sounds like there is a few main areas there, the development side of things, the marketing and the support which kind of roles into the marketing. As NetBlaze continues to grow, how do you think the mixture of people in those different areas will change, will it be more and more people coming into the marketing, more and more people coming into the support, how do you envisage that unfolding?

Steve: Our plan is to really expand in two areas; one is support so obviously as we get more customers we have to come up with the right metric that says for every 100 customers or whatever it is we need one support person or whatever, it won’t be 100 to 1 that’s for sure, but it’s probably going to be more like 400/500 to 1 so that’s one area.

The second area is inside sales so telemarketing, we feel like this is a product that will do very well with telemarketing so as long as that tests out appropriately where our costs per acquisition of new customers is in line with what we want it to be then it makes logical sense to scale that so it’s the same reason why if you could spend $100 on adwords ads and get a 100% return on investment, then why not spend billion dollars or as much as you can. So it’s the same thing with inside sales if we can get the right cost per acquisition, and that model proves out then we will aggressively grow the inside sales team so those are the areas we see growing in a huge way.

The good news is that the development team doesn’t really need to grow and the marketing team doesn’t really need to grow that much because you build it, you build the foundation, you get the right team and it doesn’t matter if you have one hundred customers or a million customers, you’re still doing the same kinds of marketing and development.

Aidan: You mentioned a moment a go that one of the key team members is in the Philippines, where are the other team members or who you would consider the key team members based?

Steve: They’re all over the place right now which is kind of an issue but we’ve got the Philippines, we’ve got the development team who is all in Pakistan right now, we’ve got our inside sales and customer support are both here in Chicago with me which is awesome, our paid advertising gentleman is in Ireland, our branding content and PR and that kind of thing is in North Carolina so we are kind of spread out but we are hoping to change that over time.

Aidan: Given that there are already a few of you in Chicago how does that work, I mean do you guys get together, do you have a shared space, do you just work remotely and meet online, what does that look like?

Steve: So obviously for the people that are not in Chicago we just work remotely and meet online, but for the Chicago contingent I’ve an office here on Michigan Avenue and basically what I did is leased another office a couple of doors down and so the people who live here in Chicago they come and spend much of their time here in the office which is great for me because it’s nice to have some brainstorming and people you can be face to face with when you have things that you’re trying to work out.

Aidan: A moment ago you spoke about some of the costs and gave an idea for the scope of investment required to put something as sophisticated as NetBlaze together and obviously with the team that’s in place now as well there’s going to be significant monthly overheads and this is what probably any serious start up that’s really going for it is going to come up against. Up until now this has been 100% internally funded but have you considered outside funding or bringing on investors to help lighten the load or what’s your take on that?

Steve: I think it’s always a consideration and always something you should consider, we (me and you) have been lucky enough that we have other business ventures that we are basically using to fund this one, so most people don’t have that luxury so it requires outside investment. I am still going to consider outside investment for NetBlaze, we might get to the point where we’re growing at a good clip but if we could do a Super Bowl commercial we could become GoDaddy or salesforce.com, I don’t care how well we’re doing, we’re probably not going to fund a Super Bowl commercial by ourselves.

Aidan didn’t mention this but I am the CEO of this company and as the CEO of this company I am preparing to put all our ducks in a row to have a very very polished business plan and pitch desk so that if Aidan and I decide ‘hey we want to go and raise $10,000’ we don’t have to scramble. We’re going to be very well prepared for that so we’re not planning on it right now but I’m working on right now having the resources available if we choose to go out and get outside investment.

Aidan: Talk about the costs that a user would pay to be able to use NetBlaze, how much are they paying and why did you choose this price point?

Steve: It’s $97 a month and we really chose this price point based on feedback from the customers. Just years of working with these guys in a couple of different capacities to know what they’d be wanting to take a chance on because this is pretty new stuff and what their pain point was and what their fresh-hold is, most of these folks are counting every single penny and so that is based on our research that’s the right price point for these folks.

Aidan: A few moments ago we spoke about the team working behind the scenes and there’s people all over the world, how did you find and hire these people, any special recipe for doing that?

Steve: I mean for us again we’re lucky enough I think that every single person we have on the team, not all the programmers but all the other folks have been referrals in some way shape or form or people that we’ve worked with in the past. I don’t think there has been one position where we’ve put out some kind of ad to hire someone, in fact I know there hasn’t been. So really I think that’s what it boils down to and I think the other thing that it boils down to is collecting these contacts and knowing who is kind of good athletes out there.

We have a saying here out in the United States, US football, not soccer, they have a draft every year where they get (it’s a complicated process) but maybe your team needs a specialty player, maybe your team needs a quarterback but the best athlete in the draft is a wide receiver and so there’s always a battle with management to say well we really need the quarterback but he’s an OK quarterback but we’ve got this great athlete we don’t really need a wide receiver but he’s really the best athlete out there so I’m always a big believer in collecting these best athletes because I know I’m going to need them somewhere somehow later on down the line so that’s what we do over the years and just referrals and working with people on a project basis and then finally we just say ‘hey do you want to come and join us’?

Aidan: I know that as well speaking about where our team came from and stuff we certainly did some internal poaching where we took people away from other companies that were already established and that made sense so that’s obviously a big benefit for us there as well.

Do you have a set system in place that you use for team meetings, do you just get together on an informal phone call, do you use Skype, do you use something else, and how often do these types of things take place?

Steve: We use Skype or Zoom, Zoom more lately just because Skype has been acting up quite a bit. We have a weekly marketing meeting and the whole management team really gets together at least twice a month just to check in with everybody and check in with the development team but the meat of the work that’s going on right now requires a weekly meeting with the whole marketing team.

Aidan: Does NetBlaze use any special project management tools, there’s lots out there, some of them that we use now in our other businesses are things like Basecamp is one of them for example, how does NetBlaze approach that for running it’s projects and staying on top of regular operations and communication channels?

Steve: The programming team actually has a very very disciplined approach to that and I actually don’t know what their big thing they are using now. I know they use Slack and Basecamp but I’d have to go back and check and see what other tools they’re using, but they are very very disciplined with that because you’ve got the Project Manager in the Philippines and you’ve got the rest of the development team in Pakistan and they are organised around these cycles of work that they call sprints so as I said very very disciplined. So we do use Basecamp and Google docs for the most part, but I’m a big believer in if I’ve got someone who is (which I do), is running inside sales, I basically leave it up to them to say ‘OK we need a plan but I don’t much care where you put that plan’. There are pros and cons to each of those platforms, so I typically go with whoever is in charge of that plan, I’ll just let them pick what they’re most comfortable with and that sort of gets me the best results.

Aidan: Just going back to employees a little bit more, you mentioned the analogy of these super special athletes and we’ve certainly got a few of those in our team. When looking for someone to fill a specific role do you look for any special traits or characteristics that person should have, or do you just look to say ‘these guys are already 100% perfect for this job that we want to do’, or do you see someone that’s a great athlete and say they could probably do a good job at that. Any tips for people of things you’ve picked up, not just from NetBlaze but from other companies that we’ve got as well?

Steve: I think it’s a mix of strategies I really do, I’m a big believer in collecting those athletes and you’ve seen it over the years that we’ve worked together, it allows us to get lucky later on because all of a sudden we have this urgent need and and we go ‘oh well we’re lucky because we’ve got somebody we can slot into that position’. So I’m a big big believer in that.

The other thing I’m a big big believer in is entrepreneurs, we are often tempted to hire people that are like us, entrepreneurial when in fact I’ve said this before and I’m not even joking, entrepreneurs make crappy employees. We don’t really want entrepreneurs we want people who are much more detail oriented who are not as risk adverse but we’re plenty comfortable with risk, you want someone to offset that, you want somebody who is a little bit more conservative may not be the right word but somebody who is going to come in, who is going to take somebody else’s vision and is going to really make it happen, executed detail orientated that kind of thing. You want to look for somebody who is strong where you’re weak. So that’s kind of what I’ve learnt over the years.

Aidan: Right now NetBlaze is limited to the USA geographic region, just wondered if you could share why this is and whether or not you plan to take NetBlaze to other markets in the near future?

Steve: For us the US market is so big there are millions and millions of potential customers for NetBlaze within the US so it’s just a large enough market certainly to start out with and perhaps for the whole duration of NetBlaze’s existence honestly. The other thing is that from a cultural standpoint we all understand the market, we understand how to ask consumers for reviews. We sort of just understand the context of what the businesses are dealing with because all of us are here living in the US and are from the US. So I think the jury is still out on whether or not it makes sense to move NetBlaze to other countries, I think it’s an open question right now.

Aidan: Going back to marketing because that’s obviously the key to the success of any business and in most cases ends up being the roadblock or the bottleneck for most businesses. This is something we could talk about for hours and hours but what does the current NetBlaze marketing plan look like. You hit today a few things a few minutes ago there with strategic positions that we’ve got but any light you could shed on that from a 10,000 foot viewpoint?

Steve: It is the most complicated marketing plan that I’ve ever been involved in. As I’m talking to you right now I’m looking at our marketing plan. I have this big wall that is a whiteboard, the whole thing was painted with this whiteboard material so that you can write on the wall just like a whiteboard, and my whole wall is filled with essentially a picture of what is the NetBlaze marketing plan.

So obviously we can’t go into gory detail on this call about what it is, but generally what I have on the outside are traffic sources, so I’ve got paid advertising, I’ve got direct mail pieces, I’ve got organic traffic, I’ve got PR, so public relations; so press releases, interviews that kind of thing. I’ve got influencers so we’ve got bloggers, people who have tribes on Facebook or whatever. I’ve got content, so YouTube, podcasts, whitepapers, anything content that we develop. I’ve got trade shows so there are lots of trade shows around the United States where small business owners will go.

Finally I’ve got inside sales so this is people who are making phone calls to potential customers, both cold calling, so calling people who’ve never heard of us, and what we call warm calling or calling of leads that were maybe generated from a direct mail piece, or from a webinar that we’re running or from the website or whatever. So I have all of those things outside of this diagram for lack of a better word, and then there are what I consider conversion vehicles, I’ve got our website in the middle, I’ve got a tool that we have called a ‘free scan’ tool, and this is where somebody for free can basically type in their information to get a ‘temperature check’, how is your business doing online, what’s your online presence, do you have a Yelp account, what’s your ranking there, how’s your website, those kinds of things.

Then we’ve got our webinars, we run an automated webinar series which is about an hour to an hour and a half, of the state of the union of online marketing for small businesses and why you need NetBlaze essentially that’s really what it is. For each of those conversion vehicles we will drive other activities, so a quick example; is that on the ‘free scan’ tool once they’re done with it, they would get a couple of different options, they could just buy our product or maybe they want to talk to somebody so they can set up a call, so then that becomes a warm lead that goes to our inside sales for warm calling. Then obviously for each of these people sign up for we’ve got email follow-up sequences, re-targeting and so on and so forth.

So I think at a high level what the NetBlaze marketing plan looks like is all these different traffic sources on the outside, conversion vehicles on the inside of the diagram and then for each of the conversion vehicles we need to be able to have a funnel, some plan that says OK it’s great that we’ve got traffic, it’s great that this traffic is coming to one of these conversion vehicles, what do we do as they enter that conversion vehicle to make them into a sale and so that’s what we have.

Aidan: I think just a takeaway from that for everyone who’s reading or listening to this is that it’s imperative that you can track your results from whatever efforts you’re putting in and then you can if you’ve got multiple options and multiple ways to attack whatever it is you’re trying to do, you can tweak the approach and then try again. So if you track, if you tweak it and then if you try again eventually you’re going to end up with marketing strategies working for you and you’ll quickly weed out the ones that aren’t so I think that’s helpful.

I’d like to quickly discuss now some of the challenges to give people a bit more of a look behind the curtain a little bit of what they would not normally see from a business of this kind. So what would you say has been the most challenging part of bringing a project like this from idea into reality, the most challenging part of all of that?

Steve: I think there are three big challenges that come to mind, the first is just focus you know finding the time and the mental focus to be able to make the vision a reality when you’re busy running other businesses, or you’re busy with a day job or with your kids or whatever, it’s a challenge for all of us to allocate the appropriate time to invest in something like that, so that’s one big thing.

I think the other big thing is people, how do you find the right people to help you make this vision a reality, that’s not an easy task. We talked about ways to do that and everything and how we do it but it’s not easy even if you have a good process and sometimes you have some fits and starts and someone that’s not a good fit and you have to re-tool that so that’s problematic to make that work.

I think the last thing was trying to figure out the scope of what is a product that you can bring to market. It’s a very difficult decision because as you might imagine there’s a million things we want to ultimately do with NetBlaze, so one great example of that is that I mentioned hey it’s raining in your local area so you want to send out a a promo. I’d like to get to the point where you don’t even have to think of that, NetBlaze knows you’re in Chicago, your business is in Chicago, NetBlaze knows you’re a restaurant, NetBlaze knows it’s raining in Chicago tonight, all of those things are reasonable for NetBlaze to to know. NetBlaze should just email you and say ‘hey Joe, it’s going to rain tonight, you should run a 20% off on appetizers special, do you want me to do that for you’? Just click yes and it will do it.

But do you need that to go to market? We chose no, but it’s very difficult to figure out the scope of the product that’s good enough to actually start to market. So I would say those are probably the three biggest challenges we’ve run into.

Aidan: Just a few other quick fire questions for you here, as CEO of NetBlaze what would you say is perhaps the toughest decision that you’ve had to make in the past few months?

Steve: I think two prioritizations; one is what functionality to add when, what is the prioritization and what is the functionality, and then the other is; the prioritization on the traffic sources, paid ads, direct mail, inside sales, content, trade shows, influencers, PR, which ones get the most attention now, I think those are two of the big ones.

Aidan: Next question for you here is what would you say has been the biggest NetBlaze business challenge over the past 30 days or so?

Steve: Probably PayPal, we sold our first customer and then PayPal just shut us down, it’s ridiculous because we had people accessing us from Pakistan, who knows why they’re a pain in the ass so that’s probably was the biggest challenge.

Aidan: Guys if you are reading this or listening to this, these are challenges that everyone faces, we’re definitely not immune to them, I think the key is the way you deal with them, so getting an issue with a PayPal account, that’s easily overcome by just having a new payment gateway but some people tend to get hung up on those kind of things because it’s a real kick in the stomach when you’re just trying to get things off the ground with a new business but the key is how you deal with it and how you move forward with that. So anyway if you’ve had those kinds of things happen you’re definitely not alone and they happen to all kinds of different businesses of all kinds of different sizes and scales.

One other question here for you Steve, if you had to start over and build another software as a service business, is there anything that you would do differently, I’m sure there are hundreds or thousands of things, but any major thing you’d say if I had to do this again I would definitely do that differently?

Steve: I think it’s just we constantly underestimate the focus that’s required in order to bring something to market. I think one of the reasons why it took us two years instead of one year is we kept feeling like well we could describe it at a high level, I could really describe it at a high level to someone who could take that vision and run with it and you really can’t do that. If you’re the visionary, if you’re the person who has the product in your head, if you’re the one that is really passionate about this, you need to put everything else as a secondary priority and make sure that every single day you are driving that focus into the product that’s being developed and that has to come first. It was only when we did that, when Aidan and I decided as a team that I could do that, that’s when we were finally able to bring it to market.

Aidan: To wrap things up here a couple of last minute housekeeping things, are there any open positions now or positions that are going to be opening in the near future that you can think of and if so if someone is reading this or listening to it, and they think they’d love to get involved in a start up company like NetBlaze, how is the best way for them to reach out, let us know and essentially apply for the job?

Steve: The areas that we feel we are going to be expanding are going to be customer service, and also inside sales, so those are really the two areas, so people who have experience with customer support or with calling out to potential customers and closing business on the phone, those are people that we would be thrilled to hear from. As far as how to contact us, you can contact us here on the blog or go to NetBlaze.com. What I’ll do is create a NetBlaze address for these kind of inquiries and we’ll put that on the blog.

Aidan: If someone is reading this blog post or listening to this and they think they could use NetBlaze to help a local business that perhaps they work in or perhaps they own themselves, how do they go about maybe getting more information and creating an account?

Steve: That’s easy all you have to do is go to NetBlaze.com, it should be pretty clear on there, there should be a big button there that says ‘try it for free’ you can even try it for free today so give it a go.

Aidan: Just a reminder we wanted to have some fun with this whole content piece today as well so if you are someone that’s got a local business and you think that NetBlaze is something that could work really well for you then put your details on the form on this page, it will probably be on a couple of places on this page and you will go in the draw to win $500 cash but an even bigger deal than that there’s a lifetime account of NetBlaze which you can’t even purchase so go-ahead if you think that you fit the criteria for that and we’d love to put you in the draw and see if we can set you up with a lifetime account and $500 cash just for good measure.

With that said Steve, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day today, I think it’s going to be quite insightful for people to have a look behind the scenes of what one of these start-ups looks like and what goes into it certainly for small business owners, I think it’s going to be useful for them to find out that things like this actually exist out there, well at least NetBlaze does anyway so thanks so much for your time.

Steve: My pleasure.

Aidan: Alright guys, well leave a comment below if you’ve got one, or a question, and you know how to reach out to us if you need anything.

Thank you so much for listening and we’ll chat again soon, bye for now.

So there you have it! We’d love to hear your thoughts and take any questions, so leave a comment below.

Thanks for visiting,

Aidan

NetBlaze – Behind The Scenes Of A $500k Start-Up shared from AidanBooth.com

NetBlaze – Behind The Scenes Of A $500k Start-Up shared from Aileen Batts Blog

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lawrenceseitz22 · 6 years

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 169 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Live.

Adam: We are live. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 169. Actually, this is kind of crazy, seeing it like crank up, we’re getting … I understand we’re not close, close, but we’re getting close to episode 200, which is pretty awesome. Anyways, I like it. I’m glad everyone’s here today and we got almost all of the team here. I think Chris is out and about. He’s had kind of a shaky internet connection. Let’s just go through real quick, say hi, give some updates, and then we’ll get into it.

Hernan, how is it going? How’s the summertime for you?

Hernan: Hey, guys. It’s really good. It’s really warm today. But I’m inside with the AC, so I can’t complain. You know, one of the perks of working with you guys. Anyways, I’m really excited for this episode, for this Hump Day Hangout. Really good to be here.

Adam: That’s good. All right. Marco, how are you doing, man?

Marco: I’m good, man. We don’t need air-conditioning or heating in Costa Rica. My electric bill is like 40 bucks a month.

Adam: Well, how about for some more good news, because, I mean, it’s snowing right now, but in terms of more good news from you, how did we do with the charity drive? I know that wrapped up last week. Were we able to give what we needed for everybody?

Marco: We wrapped it up on Friday. The people who follow us, our membership, everyone, the total came to 8,200-plus.

Adam: Nice.

Marco: The total that we sent to the charity was 10k, because I told everyone that I would make up whatever was left, and so I did. But we’ll be starting a new drive soon so that maybe for school year 2019 we can send them 15.

Adam: That’s awesome.

Marco: That’s going to be … maybe we’ll set it at 20. Let’s go high. All right? Go big or go home.

Adam: Yeah, we can aim high and, regardless, we’re going to do some good stuff. From us, Marco, thank you for getting that stuff. You really did set that up and get it going and, obviously, you donated yourself. Thank you to everyone who donated. It’s a big help when we did something pretty cool there, sending a lot of people, or a lot of kids, I should say, to school and giving them the supplies they need. I know that’s pretty big thing to them.

Marco: The really cool thing is that they’re going to be tracking some of the kids. We’re going to get monthly updates on how the kids are doing, the kids that we’re helping. That’s going to be posted on the subdomain, the subs-for-kids.semanticmastery.com. We’re going to be posting monthly updates on the kids and how they’re doing. We’ll get specific details on a certain child each month during the year, which I think is really fabulous. So that people can actually see for themselves, the money that they donated, where it’s going and what it’s doing. I think that’s really cool. It’s one of the things that I arranged with the people who donated the money. It’s going to be really good seeing how these kids progress.

Adam: Good stuff. Awesome. Well, Bradley, speaking of the cold weather. How are you doing?

Bradley: All right, man. Yeah, it got stupid cold again here, which is dumb, but I guess it’s that time of the year. But, yeah, I’m good, man.

Adam: I know you’ve been busy because it’s cold, so there’s nothing else to do …

Bradley: A lot of work.

Adam: … besides working. What have you been up to?

Bradley: A lot on the marketing front. Forgive me for being kind of crude here, but I’m balls deep in the mastermind training, all the new training. I started heavy on it this week with the AdWords, the PPC campaign, because that’s module one is PPC. I’m going through … We did two webinars already, but the first one was really just a high-level overview, and the last webinar we did last week for mastermind was to kind of like lay out what the plan was going to be for, at least the first campaign, which is the CrossFit gym. Today alone, well, over the last two days, I’ve added 10 new videos to the training for mastermind members specifically about PPC.

Guys, what’s really cool about this, and this is exactly how I wanted this to go, was when we developed this new training curriculum, it’s essentially, we’re going to be basically producing an entire internet marketing product every single module. Right? This is a whole like … Basically, local kingpin is what I did when I created an AdWords training product about, what, maybe close to two years ago, a year and a half ago, whatever, but a lot of change in AdWords since. At least the interface has, the principles are all still the same.

I’m going through and I’m rerecording basically all of Local Kingpin all over again. It’s under the mastermind now. So guys, those of you that are in the mastermind, if you haven’t gone and checked it out yet in the dashboard, you should go check it out because it’s going to be a full-on training course that’ll be in there for PPC stuff. We’re just getting started.

Basically, every single module will be a whole another training course starting with PPC. Next module goes to video marketing, which includes video SEO and video PPC. Then , we’re going to get into local SEO, like maps ranking, essentially. Then from there, we’re going to content marketing.

We’ve just got so many things coming up, guys. I would highly encourage you to come join the mastermind, if you haven’t yet, because for $300 or 297 a month you’re basically going to be getting step-by-step training for all the different things that I do to launch businesses, which obviously the emphasis is on local, which includes PPC and video SEO, and local SEO, maps SEO, content marketing, outsourcing a lot of the work for the agency stuff, prospecting and sales.

There’s so much stuff that goes into that. But we’re also going to be doing direct mail, local outreach stuff, like for example, one of the things I’m going to be doing for the CrossFit gym is reaching out to local high schools and talking to their athletic departments and offering to coach free training classes and stuff like that.

There’s just all the stuff that we’re kind of combining to grow these two businesses, which is what we, as digital marketers guys, as consultants, especially when we’re dealing with local businesses and providing marketing advice to them. That’s what we need to be able to do, is help them to grow their bottom line. It doesn’t have to just be digital marketing. Does make sense?

I know Hernan and Marco are always preaching about how we shouldn’t be talking about SEO and rankings, we should be talking about producing results and, as a marketing consultant, that’s what our job is to do in any way that we can help. Do you know what I mean? That’s basically what we’re doing.

I know I didn’t mean for this intro to go so long, but I just want to show this screen briefly to tease you guys a little bit, to show you what’s going on in here. This is our mastermind. By the way, we have a QA mastermind webinar today, immediately following up the hangouts for an hour guys. Those of you in the mastermind just come to the live webinar page here and this is where the Q&A will be.

Let me just show you the content. If we go down here, this module one for PPC, starting the new training. You can see all the training that’s in here already. We had the first two webinars and now I’ve added these in just the last two days. Basically, nine lessons going through entire set up, how to set up a tag manager, Google Analytics, the AdWords campaigns, ad groups, keywords ads, all of that, landing pages.

Again, guys, I would highly recommend, if you’re serious about growing and building a business, whether it’s a local business or an online business, either way, national, local, it doesn’t matter, join the mastermind because this is going to be really, really intense training for the next year.

Adam: Awesome, awesome. If you’re completely new to Semantic Mastery and you’re just joining Hump Day Hangouts, the good news is we’re going to start answering your questions. You might also not know about the mastermind, that’s a great place to find out more. I’ll just put the link on there.

If you’re truly are new, then welcome, come to the Hump Day Hangouts, ask questions, a really good place to start, gets the battle plan. We’ve got a coupon, I’ll put that on the page in a second so you can save a bundle on that. If you don’t yet, you can go to SerpSpace.com and get your free account there. There are some tools there that you can use and that’s where we have all our done-for-you services, RYS stacks, the syndication networks, all sorts of stuff.

Then also, we want to let you know about the knowledge base because it comes up occasionally. We don’t want to seem like we’re being mean, but we may point you in the direction of support.semanticmastery.com. That’s got a lot of frequently asked questions where Bradley does his famous drawings and diagrams, and some of the more involved answers where it takes a lot of time to answer, but it’s a frequent question. We want you to be able to find that anytime.

Then, like Bradley mentioned, if you’re ready to do the mastermind and you want to build a business, see how a business is built, get your business built, and learn more about SEO, digital marketing, conversion, optimization, whatever it is, then the mastermind is there and definitely waiting for you.

Anything else, guys?

Bradley: That’s it for me.

Adam: All right.

Hernan: Yeah. That’s all for me. Sorry, if you guys haven’t signed up for the webinar that we are having tomorrow and you want to find out more about why we’re doing this, and the background behind Hump Day Hangouts, and also deepen understanding of the mastermind and how is that working, I don’t know if we have a link that we can drop it on the comments, but that’s going to be a pretty cool webinar too.

Adam: Yeah. We’ve got two because I think there’s two different things kind of going on tomorrow that we know that there are people who are interested like Hernan said, this webinar, a little bit more about Semantic Mastery, how to grow some opportunities there. Then also, we’re going to have a webinar with Bradley and Roman tomorrow talking more, and more of us, but I think those two are going to be the ringleaders of that webinar talking about the SEO ranking packages that we’ve just started to offer in SerpSpace. Okay.

This is a really, really, really, really powerful service that’s kind of undiscovered as of yet, so we want to tell people more about it. We’ve been getting some questions and we want to start answering that and kind of show you, hey, this is how you can use it. When we say ranking solution, we mean it, we want to show you what that is.

Bradley: Yeah. Anybody that’s doing SEO work for a client or work for yourself too, but for clients too, this is a great way because it’s something that you can just resell, like an SEO ranking packages. And it’s hands off. I mean, it truly is hands-off, which is absolutely crazy. If you’re selling SEO services to clients, then I would highly recommend you check that webinar out because it could really seriously reduce your workload. I mean, think about it, guys, if you could go out and just focus on selling because you had basically the work done, the SEO work done, how quickly could you grow your business? So consider that and consider joining the webinar tomorrow to check it out.

All right, guys. We’re going to get any questions if everyone else is cool with it.

Adam: Let’s do it.

How Would You Localize Videos On YouTube?

Bradley: All right, sweet. “Good day and thanks for this opportunity ask questions.” Yes, of course. We certainly enjoy it. “Now that YouTube has removed the place where we can localize our videos with longitude and latitude, how would you suggest we localize our videos?” Easy. Put NAP in the description, drop the link to the Google My Business Map, share URL, Google My Maps URL, if you’ve got it, any sort of citation links. I typically just, guys, just to let you know, in every single video description, if it involves a local business or a lead gen site or whatever, I add NAP, the web address … Well, NAP is name, address, phone number, in case some of you aren’t aware of that.

So, NAP, the web address, the Google Maps share URL, the Yelp page, and the Facebook page. Those are the ones that I always put in regardless, no matter what. Then if I have a stack for it, a drive stack, I’ll put My Maps link in there, potentially the G site link, if I’ve got one of those. But usually, like, I said the top five that always put: NAP, web address, Google Map share URL, Yelp, and Facebook. Those are the ones that I put in there because all of those will validate the location.

You can always put latitude and longitude in the video description if you want. That’s fine, it’s up to you. I personally don’t. Just because it’s just an extra step. I don’t know how much of a benefit that would give it. But just put in the name, address, phone number in there, and the links out to verifying properties is all that’s really required. Good question though.

Male: I still have access to the old YouTube and I’m not giving that up on though until they take it.

Bradley: They’ll take it. It’s just a matter of time.

Male: I know, but I still have access, thank God.

How Does A Custom Lead Gen System Be Used To Acquire PPC Clients?

Bradley: Yeah. Scott’s up. He says, “Can you elaborate further on how the custom Video LeadGen System can be used to acquire PPC clients? I’m trying to acquire clients who are already using AdWords and the biggest challenge has been getting them to open the videos. I’m following the old training Bradley made with the “question about services in city” format emails. Is there a better email style to use? Thanks, Scott.” No. I mean, if you’re having trouble getting them to open the videos or getting them to open emails?

The question just above yours, Scott, is from Mohammed and he’s been doing a lot of video email stuff recently. He’s saying he’s having trouble people getting people to click the video to watch it, but not so much open it. Right? They opened it but they didn’t have time to watch it or whatever. My point is, are you having trouble getting them to open or getting them to watch the video?

Now one of the things I’ve found that helps with getting them to click the video is, if you’re using a still screenshot as the embedded video, kind of, it’s not really an embedded video, but it kind of looks like it if you do it correctly, is to have something that, you know, one of their properties in the webpage. Right? … Or, excuse me, in the screenshot, the still image. If it’s a gif, then you can put, which I recommend that you do, because it’s a lot more attention-grabbing.

It’s kind of a gimmick, guys. There’s no doubt. But it works. It works. I got a higher percentage rate of people clicking through the video when using a gif. The trick with a gif is to add … have the gift to where it’s not just like … where if it’s a boring screenshot, you know what I mean, like if you’re just looking at like a page like this and that’s the extent of the gif, then there’s not really going to be much motion. So you want there to be something that kind of stands out. Like I’ll superimpose text on to it or something like that sometimes or I’ll just have it where I’m clicking from one property to another one of their properties.

Again, these are just gifs that I pull right out of the analysis video or the audit video that I create. Right? Go to gifs.com. That’s what I’m using. I got a paid account over there so it removes the watermark. But you go to gifs.com and you can either upload the video file or just drop the video URL from YouTube there and it will import it into the application. Then, you can just select an eight or 10 or 12 second or whatever segments from the video to create the gif.

What I do is just find a section in the video where I’m switching from one of their properties to another. I use that in the gif so that they’re seeing their properties in their own email, in the email that they receive from me, and then they see the action of it shifting from one property to another. That just piques curiosity, right? Who is this person sending me a video showing my digital assets? What is this about? Right? So the idea is to try to entice them to click.

I experimented with some text overlays too, but that’s a little bit more gimmicky, that’s more salesy, so I tend not to do that. I try to make it just more look like it’s just more of an educational type video where I’m trying to relay some valuable information to them about their digital assets. That’s really what the audit is all about, right?

When you’re asking about how to get AdWords clients, now those are just some tricks, I gave you tips to try to get the video to be clicked. That’s assuming that you’re getting the videos or the emails opened, right? If you’re using tracking, you should be able to track all of this? Opens, clicks, everything.

Okay. Also, guys, remember we’re going to have the Q&A webinar, we’re having a bonus webinar, which is going to include several things, including Q&A for the Video LeadGen system coming up in a couple of weeks. I think it’s in two weeks from today actually. Just keep that in mind, guys. A lot of these questions can be answered there. We’ll go a lot more in-depth with that kind of stuff.

As far as AdWords, specifically for AdWords clients, guys, it doesn’t matter what service you’re selling. It doesn’t matter. Adwords, Maps, SEO video, SEO content marketing, web design, I don’t care what service you sell. Okay? It doesn’t matter. All you have to do is be able to provide valuable information and portray yourself as an expert when you do.

How do you do that? How do you portray yourself as an expert? You offer valuable, useful information that can help them, something that they can … I like to try to include something that they can do right away that can improve their digital presence in the audit video and then I ask them for a response, a reply to my email. Contact, right? I ask them, call me, text me, email me, just reply to me, respond to this? That’s it, if you keep your audit video that way. In your case, with Adwords, you could look at their campaigns and analyze.

Guys, remember you want to keep these rather short, these videos. Try to keep them under 10 minutes. I know, I have difficulty doing that sometimes, but try to keep them under 10 minutes. Take a look at their AdWords stuff and maybe explain how you feel that you could do better or how they’re missing potential opportunities, something like that.

I try not to criticize what I’m auditing. I try to find stuff to complement that I’m auditing at the same … but then, say, explain how it could be made to work better or improved upon. Does make sense? Because you don’t want to criticize because then you put people on the defensive. Some people have an emotional connection with their digital properties and so when you criticize them, it’s like you’re criticizing them. Right? So, don’t do that.

What I recommend doing is, you say, “Hey, this looks pretty good. These are good keywords in this ad. This ad looks like it’s written fairly well, blah blah blah. However, I feel like maybe it could be improved upon if you were to do this.” Right? Again, guys, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling, it doesn’t matter what service it is, as long as you can provide value and portray the fact that you know something about, what you’re talking about, and then just ask for the contact. That’s it in a nutshell.

All right. Good question though, Scott. I appreciate that question. Hopefully, you can make it to the webinar, if you hadn’t purchased it. I recommend that you do the updated training because we’re going to be going through a lot, even one of the gold mines places that you can find. A lot of you guys that are doing SEO and video SEO stuff, I’ve got a great source of leads, just a great source of leads. We’re going to be covering that step-by-step in the webinar.

How Do You Keep The Dialogue Rolling With Video Email Prospects?

Mohammed’s up. Mohammed said, “Hey guys. I’m having a persistent problem with my video emails. For a lot of emails, someone clicks the link, and I phone them a few minutes later and tell them I’m having problems with my email and I make sure they received it. Okay. Then they say that they opened it, but they didn’t have time to watch it. So I wait, but nothing happens! I tried sending a follow-up email the next day, but that doesn’t amount too much usually. How can I keep up the dialogue? Do I just call again the next day?”

Yeah, you can, Mohammed. It sounds like you’re being pretty aggressive and that’s how you do it. There’s really nothing else I can say about it. For a lot of the industries that I’ve worked in, I’ve always had a really good response. Not all. I mean, it’s not everybody opens the emails, clicks, but the vast majority do, especially when you use … Mohammed, I know you asked a similar question in the mastermind and I replied to you about using a gif. At that time you said, and this was last week, I think you said you had not been using gif, you were just using still images. I would recommend that you try that.

Let’s see, “They say they opened it, but then they didn’t have time to watch,” Okay, yeah. That’s all you can do. If they’re opening emails but they’re not clicking, is if you try to make that … That’s why I said a gif works better than a still image because it will entice them to click. Remember, a lot of the times these people are busy. That’s part of the reason why I like the video email system better than cold calling. Right? Because if you send them a video email, if they open it, but they’re not able to because it’s not convenient for them to watch a five or 10-minute video at the time, it’s there for them to watch at a later date.

It may be that you have to remind them that it’s there by sending it to them again in a couple of days. Right? If you follow up with a phone call after they’ve opened the email or whatever and they say, “Oh, I didn’t have time to watch it,” ask them, “Would you mind if I follow it up with you in a couple of days?” Then the very next day send it to them again. You know what I mean? The point is you’ve got the dialogue going there. Especially, if you got them on the phone and they said that they haven’t had time to watch it. Well, you still had a chance to. At least get the dialogue going and, if you’re persistent, it may work.

You’re going to piss some people off, there’s no doubt. But some people are going to be mad no matter what you do, right? What you’re trying to do is avoid those people and that you want to qualify people. Don’t chase people too much is what I’m saying, guys, because that reeks of desperation. My point is if you call them and they say, “Well, I didn’t have time to watch it,” and ask them, “Would you mind if I follow it up with you in a couple days? I think it’s important. You’re going to get a lot out of this. I’m not trying to pitch you on anything, I just I wanted to offer you some value, provide you some insight about your digital presence. Check it out when you have time. I’ll follow up with you in a couple days.” Don’t even ask him, just tell him, “I’ll follow up with you in a couple days.”

Then, the following day send it to him again. If they don’t open or they don’t click and you have to call them again and they say, “I still didn’t have time,” cut them off from your list, man. Just delete them from your contact list because they’re obviously going to be somebody that’s going to be a pain in the ass to work with because they can’t even take five minutes to try to listen to something that you’re …

Again, guys, remember, you got to step into their shoes for just a moment. Think about how many times people get pitched offers all the time. I mean, if you’re a business owner, you probably get pitched often too. So, it’s only natural for them to put up their defenses. But if you’re coming at them with trying to provide genuine value, which is what I recommend, what is your intent? Right? If you come with pure intentions, then don’t chase them too much, because there’s plenty of other people out there that will actually appreciate that. Right?

That’s my point, is don’t chase people too much. Yes, definitely follow up. You don’t want to give up on the first try because some people need a little nudging. But after a couple of attempts if … Again, with you coming at them like, “Hey, I just wanted to send you some information about how you can improve your digital presence, I’m not trying to sell you on anything. I’m just looking for a conversation. Can you check out the video? It’s under, say, it’s six minutes long, or whatever it may be.”

If they’re too damn busy to watch a six-minute video after two or three attempts, guys, then cut them off your list and move on. Don’t waste any more time. Okay? That’s why, by the way, I mentioned, guys, keep those videos really short because you don’t want to spend a shit ton of time. I’ve made the mistake of making 15 and 20-minute videos that never get watched. Right? You spend all this time analyzing and creating reports and all this stuff for people that aren’t even going to reply to you or respond. Right?

Again, that’s why I tell you to keep them short. Just provide value very, very quickly upfront, ask for a contact back. Say, “Look, I’m not trying to sell. I just want to have a conversation, see if we may be a good fit for each other.” I always like to use that. Right? I always like to use that. “I want to see if we maybe.” Because I don’t want them to think I’m chasing them. I just want to have a conversation to find out if we may be a good fit for each other. Right?

Adam: Real quick, too, Bradley, you touched on this, but put this into the mastermind newsletter. I think it goes in December, maybe. The contact point, so you definitely do want to follow up. I know a lot of people do this. But if you’re not following up, automate this if you can, because obviously, you don’t want to waste your time on people who aren’t going to respond. Most people will just contact once and then if you don’t follow up your odds of getting responses is really low. Hitting them two or three times and getting that out there is going to dramatically raise your response rate.

Bradley: Yep. Yeah and if you got a VA, I mean, that’s something you can do. When you’re doing this kind of a method guys, because it’s so targeted, it could be manually, you can automate some of that stuff using autoresponders and all that, but if you’re just getting started, you could just do it manually and then even a VA could do it. Right? Just have a VA go check replies and messages and stuff like that. If somebody hasn’t replied after two or three days, you send them another email, follow-up email. Right? It could be canned text that you send out, like templated emails, so you don’t even have to do it yourself, Mohammed. Right?

What Is Lead Gadget And How It Differs From GSite Builder?

Nigel’s up. What’s up, Nigel? He’s been coming and asking lots of questions lately. He says, “Hope you guys are all doing well. I know you’re busy grinding and I appreciate those emails come fast and furious. The SM reputation management strategy where you bump my other subscriptions out my inbox appears to be working.” That’s awesome. That’s the first time we’ve heard that one. All right. “Lead Gadget, what exactly is it versus GSite Builder? When to use either and which gets better results, ROI relative to cost?”

Well, this is a similar question on I think we had last week. Lead Gadget is a mass page generator, GSite Builder is not. GSite Builder is, I mean, you can use it in a much lesser scale and create a bunch of pages or sites targeting various keywords, but it’s not scalable like Lead Gadget would be. In other words, Lead Gadget can go out and create a WordPress site that has 30,000 posts on it or pages and posts, basically, in a matter of two minutes. It takes time to set the site up and all that, but it deploys a site really quickly, builds a site with tens of thousands of pages of posts in a matter of minutes.

You can blanket, you can target all the towns and neighborhoods and all that kind of within a geographic area and append all of your keywords to those local modifiers and just blanket for all these long tail terms. That’s what Lead Gadget is. Right? It’s a mass page generator. There’s several of them out there. Lead Gadget is like an industrial version of one. It’s got hikes. It’s got expense involved because of its industrial strength. Right? Because of its size and everything else and what it does, it can be expensive, guys. It’s like $250 a month for Lead Gadget and you have to have the servers. The idea with the servers is get a dedicated server and you just start slamming sites on these servers, building more and more sites.

GSite Builder is something that can create pages, but on a much smaller scale. Right? You can target, say, 100 keywords or something like that and that’s what you’re going to get; not 30,000. Right? Personally, I use the GSite Builder for building link networks. I don’t use the GSite Builder to try to rank the G site pages or posts. I guess you can try to do that. That’s not what I use it for though. I use it specifically just to create link networks, especially to link to other Google properties like my Google site from a drive stack, which would be my primary Google site. All the GSite Builder sites I used as like linking backlink properties. Okay? Or you can use it to link up to your Google Maps. You can use it to link to your money site, if you want. Or drive folders, or whatever you want. It’s typically how we use it though.

As far as ROI relative to cost, it depends. Lead Gadget, you can make a lot of money if you are building sites. It’s a spam method. In other words, you create a shit ton of sites. The idea is that if any sites get deleted or smacked or deindexed or whatever, you just build more. Right?

I had somebody approached me in private message in Facebook the other day asking me about, because they apparently jumped on Lead Gadget. They said, “I brought up backlinking to a Lead Gadget site and like it was everybody in the group of screaming blasphemy, like they jumped down my throat about it. ‘Don’t build links, don’t build links.‘” He says, “I want to build links anyways. Why are they like this and what type of links should I build?”

I replied, “They’re like that because it’s silly to build links to those sites when they’re churn and burn style sites.” Some of those sites might last for months, guys, or even years, but I always expect them to be slapped, deindexed at any time. Why build links to those sites when you can just build more sites, right? If you go after a set of keywords, why not build 50 or 100 WordPress sites all targeting the same keywords just on different domains? Some are going to win. I mean, some are going to rank; some aren’t. Who cares? Just build more sites. You don’t need to backlink that stuff. Right?

Nigel, if you’re on your own, if you’re not running an agency, I wouldn’t recommend Lead Gadget. I recommend sticking with GSite Builder, unless you know what you’re doing with Lead Gadget, in which case, yeah, use it. But if you’re running an agency, Lead Gadget is a more powerful tool for spamming and driving traffic. GSite Builder, I would still use a link building tool. Anyway, it’s good question. I appreciate the question.

What Is The Fastest Way To Monetize Your Site If You Have New Assets With Limited Traffic?

He says, “What is the fastest way to monetize when you have new assets with limited traffic and how can it be done cost-effectively in conjunction with the initial digital asset break-in, seasoning period?” I’m not sure what you mean. Are you doing affiliate, are you doing local, or what? “For local, when you have limited traffic, how can you monetize?” Well, with LeadGen, if you got limited traffic, but if you’re still providing leads or still producing leads, you sell the leads. Right?

If it’s a digital asset that you own that you want to do a rank and rent, then you can lease it out, even if it’s limited at the beginning. Right? You can actually lease it out as you’re trying to get it ranked, if you can at least produce some leads with it, that’s something else you can do.

If it’s an affiliate site, I’m not sure. Maybe start using it to build an email list. If you have limited traffic, I’m not sure. You got to get your traffic up, really.

You guys have any ideas for that? Any good suggestions for that one?

Male: I’m trying to think, because I think that one, what you suggested, Bradley, “Monetize when you have new asset with limited traffic.” I guess you can definitely start building list right off the bat. I always, always recommend that. I mean, when you have … Because the main point of these websites is to catch as many long tails as possible and then funnel them to … to a funnel, or to an offer rather.

I’m trying to think maybe, I haven’t done much with Lead Gadget, but what I always, almost always suggest is that you can start building lists right off the bat. This can be done with PDFs or whatever on the sidebars or even field ones.

Bradley: I don’t think that this question specifically has to do with the first question. I think he was talking about having a digital asset that has limited traffic that’s not monetize. How can he monetize it?

Male: Right, right, right. Well, in any case-

Bradley: If you have limited traffic, it’s going to be difficult to monetize because that’s where the monetization comes from. Right?

Male: Yeah, for the most part. Unless you have or you find a high ticket offer for that traffic. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. In any case, if the … yeah, for some reason, I thought that the two were together. But if you have a low amount of traffic, yeah, that’s going to be hard unless you find a high ticket offer for the traffic. In any case, you will need a kind of a funnel to build it, to sell it actually.

Male: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult to monetize the site that doesn’t have much traffic unless it’s super targeted traffic and you have a super targeted offer.

Male: Right.

Bradley: He says, “I am looking for insight beyond the where to start of Battleplan. By the way, great stuff. I need a low dollar entry point that provides an expedited one in a row win. Is it $5 Facebook ad, YouTube video, an affiliate offer, for example?” I’m not sure. I’m not really following that question, Nigel. I apologize. He says, “What would you do? A brief real-life three-figure example would go a long way.” I’m not sure. Are talking about spending $5 a day on Facebook ads, YouTube videos? I’m not sure I understand the question.

Hernan: He’s got new assets, right? It hasn’t been around for a while. He’s built stuff, so what would be the low dollar entry point to start winning with?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Maybe he got traffic to that asset, maybe that’s what he’s asking about?

Hernan: Yeah. Kind of a $5 Facebook ad or YouTube video campaign, $5 a day would give him some results. At the end of the day, it’s always the same, Nigel. You either have money to spend or you work hard to get the organic side of things growing. Right? Yeah. You need to have a balance. If you have a lot of money right in the bag, you can buy a lot of data out of Facebook or YouTube or Google AdWords to pay traffic. If you don’t have a lot of money, the organic/”free,” because there’s no such thing as free traffic, but you have to put the time to build that, right?

Bradley: Yeah..

Hernan: So you either have time or you have money, which are kind of the same thing. But the main point here is that, it still remains. I would definitely for $5 a day from Facebook Ads, I will try to buy it to build a list. Because when you have a list, you can sell them CPA offers, you can sell them your own products, you can sell placements on your newsletter for other companies, et cetera, et cetera. At the end of the day, it’s going to take you longer. It’s not like you can magically make money. It’s not like it was 10 years ago. It’s not that anymore. You either put the time and a little bit of money or you put a lot of money and a little bit of time, or both.

It’s up to you how long and how long and hard you want to work. If you’re building, for example, blog and you’re trying to rank on Google, it’s going to take time. Right? It’s going to take time to get those results and to get that traffic going. In the meantime, $5 a day can accelerate your results. I wouldn’t say do one thing or the other instead of either or do both.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Hernan said that he would spend $5 a day on Facebook traffic and I would spend $5 a day on YouTube traffic, so there. What I’m saying is, pick whatever works for you. Like me, I don’t want to run Facebook ads. I know it works, but I just don’t want to do it, so I would run YouTube ads. Either way, just figure out something that’s going to generate some traffic. Five dollars a day to generate traffic, if you’re targeting is right, can produce some decent some really good traffic.

Hernan: Yep, I agree.

Should You Stick To One Internal Link Per Curated Post?

Bradley: Okay. James says, “I always get so much out of these. Thanks guys.” Well, thank you, James, appreciate that. He says, “When it comes to internal link building within curated posts, should I stick to only one internal link per post? There are times the content just begs for additional links to other pages. Is this causing issues if I have two to three internal links?” No, not at all, James. Absolutely. Especially … Okay, so here’s the thing. First of all, don’t not link to other content that makes sense to link to. If it’s relevant, it’s on your site, and it’s useful to the reader, then why not? Why not link to it?

Here’s the thing. If it’s within the same category, so essentially the same silo, like if you’re trying to link to two or three other posts or pages in the same silo, then yeah, link to as many as you want because it’s fine. You don’t have to worry about no-follow or follow links or anything like that, it’s all internal. Leave it the way that it is, right? Just link to them, if it’s all within the same category. If it’s outside of the category, which sometimes it makes sense, like if you’re mentioning something that’s in another silo, another category on the site that you have content about, published about that particular topic or subject or whatever, then yeah, you should link to it. Just no-follow the link. You know what I mean?

The reason why you do that is to keep the silo theme very, very tight. If you start linking from one silo to another with do-follow links, then you start to bleed the theme and it kind of ambiguous that entire silo, the keyword theme of that category, of that content stack, Right? What you want to do is try to keep any do-follow links within the same category, the same stack. Okay? Other than that, yeah, absolutely.

Because, guys, remember, the way I look at it is even a no-follow link … Remember, no-follow link, Google still crawls the destination. Right? Whatever it links to Google is still going to go crawl that other page. They’re just not going to pass pagerank through that link.

Who cares if you have a link to another page on your site that’s relevant content that you’re linking to from the article or post or page, or whatever that you’re linking out of to that other piece of content? If it’s relevant, it reinforces the overall theme of whatever your content was about to begin with. Even if it’s in another category, just no-follow it, because Google’s still going to read the page that it links to and it’s going to make the association between those two topics. It’s just not going to pass pagerank, right?

Again, guys, internal links are incredibly important. Follow or no-follow, it doesn’t matter because it’s just a way to reinforce your overall theme and relevancy of whatever it is that you’re trying to tell Google what your content is about. Okay. Also, from user’s standpoint, the visitor’s standpoint, a human’s standpoint, it makes sense to do so. So you want to do that as well. Don’t worry about the two to three internal links. Don’t worry about it, guys. I mean, just think about it. You want to interlink from within your site as much as possible without going in excess. As long as it makes sense, it’s logical, do it.

How Do You Make “Near Me” Keywords More Natural In A Curated Content?

“Do you use ‘near me’ keywords in your curated content and link it to money pages? If so, what’s your strategy for making it sound natural?” No, I don’t. I don’t do any “near me” SEO, unfortunately. It’s just something I haven’t played with. I do the “near me” stuff with AdWords because it’s just so easy. But I don’t do any “near me” targeting. I don’t target “near me” keywords via SEO. I know it can be done, it’s just not something I’ve done.

Does anybody else have any experience with that?

Male: Yeah, question and answer format. You ask the question, I don’t know, whatever product or service “near me,” and then in the answer you use “close by” and “nearby,” which Google directly relates to “near me” and now you’ve given the bot everything that is looking for as far as the “near me” term is concerned.

What Are Some Best Link Building Practices You Recommend For A Syndication Network And Extended Products?

Bradley: There you go. That’s a great advice, a great suggestion. Okay, next. Good questions, James. Harold says, “What are the best practices for link building with my network and extended products, example, citations and press release. What is best to build links to and how much and how often?” Okay. I’m going to give you a couple answers here, Harold. A great question, by the way.

Citations, absolutely. What I’d try to do is find out the best citations, the most powerful, according to Google. The best way to do that is go search for the company name, plus the phone number, or any two data points from the NAP. You can search company name and address, company name and phone number, address and phone number, whatever. I usually just use company name and phone number. Then, just do just go do a Google search: company name, phone number. Then, look at the top two pages, extract all of the citations, or all the properties, period, the Google is listening for your brand, plus the phone number on the top two pages. So, the top 20 results, right?

You want to grab all the citations and directory sites or whatever the list because that’s what Google determines are the most important for your brand, at least for that search type, which would be in my case, what I just mentioned, was the brand name and phone number. I use those. Those are great to start hitting those with links.

Remember, you’ve got to pay attention to the ones that have do-follow links. Once you’ve extracted the top two page results, just manually go through them, unless you know already which ones have do-follow links, which ones have no-follow links. Just be mindful of that because if you have do-follow links from a site and you hit it with a shit ton a kitchen sink spam and you’re over optimized anchor text, it can cause problems. So you just want to be careful with that.

Typically, what I do, just so you guys know, is I bunch all of them together, whether they’re no-follow links, do-follow links, I don’t care. I put them all in the same link spam campaign and I just make sure that and it’s … Now I don’t even do it, I have my link builder do it, [Darya 00:41:16]. I just send it to him and say, “Here’s all the things,” and he knows to set up the links in the anchor text in such a way that it’s not going to matter whether they’re do-follow or no-follow. It makes no difference, right? It’s not going to be harmful. Okay. I would recommend citations over press releases, unless you know which press release sites specifically you’re going to be targeting that don’t get purged. Right? I’ve talked about this many, many times.

Guys, we got a press release course coming out next month, in February, I mean. We’re going to be doing the press release course then, guys, and we’re going to go into that in much greater detail. There are a lot of sites that purge press releases. They delete them. Right? They scrub them from their sites after a period of time, and it varies. Some lasts as much as 180 days, some 30 days. Right?

What’s interesting is even some press releases will last three months and then the same site with a different press release in 30 days is deleted. So, it’s hit or miss. What I recommend is that if you’re going to be link building your press releases is that you identify press releases that are going to stick around for a while or that don’t ever get deleted and use those as target URLs instead of …

Here’s the problem. If you go build a shit ton of links to a press release that in four months is going to be deleted from their site, didn’t you just waste all that time and effort and perhaps money on building links to a press release that no longer exists? So, don’t do that. Right? Citations are typically going to stick. Press releases, some will, but you got to identify which ones will and then use those as link targets. Okay?

One of the best things you can do, guys, is if you’re using a press release distribution service that gives you a company or organization page, is used that. Right? Because that’s typically going to list all the press releases that have been published for that particular organization. It’s usually a page that’s going to exist indefinitely so that you can just hammer that with links over and over again. Every time you publish a new press release the new press release will benefit from it because it’s listed on that page, if that makes sense. Okay.

“What is the best build links and how much and how often?” With citations and press releases, both, you can be really aggressive. I mean, super aggressive.

Marco: Any Google property.

Bradley: Yep, and any Google property. That’s right. Yeah. Guys, don’t worry about any sort of link velocity issues for citations and/or press releases. Just hammer them to your heart’s content.

Is It Effective To Build Quality Links Directly To GMB For Local Search Rankings?

Scott says, “Is it effective to build quality links directly to GMB for local search rankings?” I do, Scott. I am currently using citations and press releases. I do it all the time. I build links directly to the Google My Business share URL all the time. Okay. As far as I know, it’s effective because it’s one of the things that I do and I tend to do very well with ranking Google Maps.

How Do You Manage The Erratic Rankings Of A G Site Optimized For A Medium Level Competitive Keyword?

Vitally says, “Hello. I was trying to rank G site for the medium level competitive keyword. The site is two months old. At first, it got high in rankings second page. I added around 15 links to the whole silo. Got to the first page. Added few more links to the page I was trying to rank. Then it dropped to the fourth page and later to sixth the page. Has not moved after few weeks. It is possible that it triggered some algorithm no manual actions?”

Yeah, it is very possible. Remember guys, most inbound link penalties are like filter type penalties. They’re not going to produce a manual spam action like a message in search console. Most of those, they’re algorithmic filters, algorithmic penalties, which means you’re not going to get a notification. Those are mostly link type things, guys, which are considered like penguin stuff. But, yeah, if it happened that’s what I would … It sounds like you may have been in … But it’s a Google site, so it doesn’t seem like it’s a velocity issue.

Marco, what would your comment be on this?

Marco: I’d build the drive stack iframe, the properties that we teach in RYS Reloaded, and that’s internal. Right? It’s both internal and external because then you can send it anywhere you want. But you would add all of that relevance, the keyword relevance. You could target whatever page it’s sticking now and at fourth to sixth page in the SERPs. I would just add a … I don’t know if he did a drive stack, but this is totally looking for a drive stack for more relevance. Then, that will go ahead and take care of any over optimization issues or heavy anchor text use, because you’re just adding so much inside the drive stack, so much relevance.

Bradley: Yeah, okay. Cool. Possible course of action, besides what Marco just mentioned, Vitally, you say, “Just wait.” Personally, with Google sites guys, I’ve experienced the whole big dancing issue multiple times and I’ve just been patient. I’ve learned to just be patient with G sites because a lot of the times they do some really weird, like they’ll bounce in and out of the index entirely and then they’ll do some really wild swings in their positioning as well. Then after time they just, boom, they just come and they rank well and they stick at that point. I’ve seen that, I’ve experienced that a lot. Now sometimes they don’t ever rank well. Period. I’ve experienced that, too. But I’ve had more often that when I see a lot of wild dancing like that, that it’s just a matter of time until they come back.

That said, “Build more links to diversify anchor profile.” Yes, you can do that. I would do that over option number three any day of the week. I would also do what Marco said because you can use drive stacks to diversify anchors as well. But to change anchor text, no, don’t do that because Google’s already indexed those pages that your links are sitting on. If you go in and start swapping the anchor text from those links, Google recrawls that page and checks it against its cached version. It knows that you’re in there modifying anchor texts. Who does that kind of stuff? SEOs do. Google knows that, right? Normal webmasters don’t do that, SEOs do that.

Changing the anchor text is a clear indication that you’re an SEO trying to manipulate search rankings. So I don’t ever do that. Okay. I don’t say I don’t ever do it, but I do that very sparingly. I would rather dilute the anchor text, the inbound anchor text profile with additional links. They call that “pillowing.” Right? You can do that with press releases, by the way, it’s a great way to do it.

“Drop the links?” No, I don’t think I would drop the links yet because, again, that’s another signal to Google that you’re an SEO. Right? The best thing you can do is just dilute it.

“Move pages to another location and start over.” That would be my last resort. I’d still be a little bit more patient first.

Marco: We saw this exact behavior during our one million link test where we hammered a G site drive stack with a million garbage backlinks and this was the exact behavior. It moved up and then it dropped to whatever, sometimes couldn’t even be found, you’d get that NA in the rank tracker, and then they came back and just started ranking in maps and organically for everything.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: Sometimes, as Bradley said, you just have to be patient. When it went to the first page and you hit it you could have triggered the Google dance algorithm. Right? So now you just have to be patient and see when it decides to move back, if at all, if within, I don’t know, I’d give it 30 days. If it doesn’t come back, do what Rob does. Just keep hammering it.

Rob gets Fiverr gigs to his stuff. I mean, this is how much you can clean up stuff. But then we do both, right? We both had the drive stack and the G site before we hammer it so that you did have all of that relevance going through, going back and forth to the G site and to the drive stack. So that may be what you’re missing in this equation. That’s it. I don’t know since this doesn’t explain it, but I think you may be missing the drive stack so that the iframes pull the links into the drive stack and clean them up before they head back out.

Bradley: Yeah. Good advice. Thank you.

Do You Still Use The Tool RVR Pro?

SJ has got a good question. He says, “On your site, the bonus site, guys, you have the course called RVR Pro Case Study Bonus. I’m thinking of buying it. Do you still use this software? If so, is it still getting good results?” Yeah. I use it occasionally. Yeah, it’s a good tool, guys. Understand that it is a spam tool. Okay? It’s very similar to what I was mentioning with Lead Gadget in that you can use it to create 30 videos all at once. Right?

Essentially, RVR Rocket Video Ranker Pro, it’s a couple of apps. They’re online web apps that you can use to take a video that you have and spin it so it creates a whole bunch of different versions of it. Then, you upload all at once up to 30 videos. You can do more than that, I know because I’ve tried it, but really 30 is supposed to be the magic number, according to Bill, who’s the developer.

You basically upload, the app will upload 30 videos. That’s the same video, but it’s been spun so the file looks a little slightly different. Right? It uploads 30 all at once and all unlisted. Right? They’re all unlisted videos and it uploads all 30 of them.

Then, there’s something about the algorithm that has been, at least it has been working when you go in and you turn them all public all at once from unlisted to public. For whatever reason, they tend to rank really, really well when you do that. Yeah. Also, specially if you use the YouTube silo method, which is included in the bonus site. So, you’ll have access to that training. But, yeah if you use YouTube silo, then you create the playlist, you interlink everything, all that kind of stuff. It’s super powerful.

What I’ve experienced, and I’m going to be 100% transparent about this, guys, is what I’ve experienced with some of these channels is do not use an established channel for this, guys. Use a brand new channel that you buy. If you want to get a phone verified accounts and all that, that’s great. You can do that. But use brand new channels. Don’t tie in a bunch of syndication networks to these channels and all that kind of stuff because they rank well without all that stuff.

Just like I what I was mentioning with the mass page generators, and we were talking about Lead Gadget earlier, there’s no reason to go in and start backlinking all this stuff because they may rank really well for a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months, but eventually what I found is a fair amount of the channels that I’ve used this on, eventually, all of a sudden, all the videos just completely drop out of the index.

It’s crazy because the channels don’t get terminated, but the videos just won’t index. So, if I go into a channel … So, just to understand, it’s a turn-and-burn strategy, guys. It’s a temporary thing. What I like to do with it is I’ll use it on a prospecting side of things. In fact, I’ll go and upload a video and use set target like 30 keywords. If it’s local, I’ll target like 30 local areas and neighborhoods and things like that. I’ll upload the video, I’ll turn them all public, boom, they’ll rank really well.

Then, I’ll approach a particular client or if I’m making a proposal or a pitch to a prospect, I’ll do that because it only takes a matter of minutes to set it up. Then I’ll go turn them all public. I’ll enter all the URLs into Pro rank tracker. Then, I’ll give it about 15, 20 minutes or whatever. I’ll go back, I’ll refresh Pro rank tracker and it’ll show a handful of those 30 will have ranked. Right?

Now these are live videos, not just like with Live Rank Sniper, which I use a lot, too, which is just like a place order to schedule live event. These are actual videos. So then, I can take the ones that rank and put those into the proposal or the pitch that I’m making to a potential prospect and say, “Hey, look, I just did this in the last 24 hours to show you that I know what I’m doing.” It’s a tool that I’ve used to impress a prospect because I can show them results that are tangible. They could see right now with their very own eyes. They could click on the video and see the video and all that kind of stuff and then it helps me to close a sale. Then once I close a sale, then I go do the more traditional route of video marketing and ranking videos and doing other at digital assets, and that kind of stuff.

We’re almost out of time. Damn it. Anyways, just keep that in mind. It is a good … What I recommend doing with it, guys, is using it as instructed. Right? So using it to test for keywords and be able to get quick wins. Then, once you’ve identified those ones that were able to rank and stick for a few days, a couple weeks, whatever, now you can go actually target those with money channels. Not spam channels, but money channels, that have syndication networks and all the traditional stuff that we do to produce long term assets. Right? You use this, it’s like a discovery tool and then you go and target the ones that I’ve identified as being easy wins with more traditional stuff. That’s pretty much how any poking tool works.

All right. “You mentioned there’s a service that you build when you like a video from a channel that gets video distributed to something like 320 sites. Can you share that with me?” Yes. It’s called Syndication Academy. That’s how we do it. Right. We have a training product that teaches you how to build your own networks. If you’re curious on how to do that, that’s called Syndication Academy. You can just go do a search for it in Google.

If you want to buy networks done for you built by us to our specifications, you can do that via SERP Space, serpspace.com. Either way, you can do it on your own or you can buy them from us. I don’t care, if you’ve got time but no money, then you’re going to want to build them yourself. If you’ve got money and no time, you’re going to want to buy them.

We’ve got five more minutes, guys. Let’s see, we’re going to try to run through a few. Hey, Walt. How you doing, buddy? “Mastermind is just a little bit awesome.” Thanks, Damon. It’s awesome, Damon. Damon’s been with us for a very long time. Are we out of questions?

Marco: I think we’re out of questions, man.

Bradley: Yeah. Walt, I did mean animated gif. I didn’t realize there was a difference between a gif and an animated gif, but I’m assuming you’re right. I’m pretty sure everybody got what I was hinting at, but thank you.

“Add scarcity to your offer. Tell them that you only have two more days availability to talk to them.” That’s a good one, Walt. Yeah. That’s something I forgot to mention. You can do that. Typically, the scarcity or availability, adding scarcity to an offer for me works better on the pitch side of things. In other words, after I’ve had the conversation with a prospect and I make a proposal offer, I make them an offer, then that’s when I put a time limit on the offer. Because if I’m getting them, if they’re wishy-washy, they’re sitting on the fence, they’re stalling instead of making a decision, then they’re going to be a pain in the ass anyways. Honestly, a lot of times, if a business owner can’t make a decision, then a lot of times they’re like that. They’re one of those types of people. Right?

A lot of times I’ll put a scarcity on it. Then say, “Look, this offer is only good for a couple days. I’ve got other offers out there.” Then make them, it’s like shit or get off the pot, so to speak. Sorry to be rude again, but that’s what it is.

All right. We got three more minutes. “Google puts you on page four to test you.” Yeah. If you react … Well, it’s exactly right. This is what I was talking about earlier. That’s why, by the way, Vitally, think it was, who was asking that question or Vitality, I’m sorry. Yeah. You don’t want to go into change anchors and things like that because, as Walt is explaining right here and he’s absolutely correct, is if you react like an SEO then they pretty much know what you’re doing. Right?

We talked about being in a sandbox or on a probationary period, especially with newer sites, I don’t usually worry about it so much with Google sites, but with brand new web sites on your own domain, if you go in … Usually, they rank really well at first and then they go, they slide back. Right? They drop and then there’s like about a 90-period where they’re kind of on probation. You can do some things to help them to rank, but if they do the Google dance and you’re in there swapping stuff out all the time, then it will flag the site as you as an SEO, or the site is being manipulated. Right? Then it could permanently sandbox the site. So, that’s something you want to be very careful of.

Okay, great. We got to all the questions. I was concerned we weren’t going to do it. Thanks everybody for being here. Thanks guys for sticking around. Mastermind members, be over in the mastermind live webinar area. In the next five minutes, we’re going to start up the Q&A section. Okay?

Adam: Awesome. Have a good one, everybody.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Marco: Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168 posted first on your-t1-blog-url from Blogger http://ift.tt/2BWGzz4 via IFTTT

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brendajhensonblog · 6 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 169 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Live.

Hernan, how is it going? How’s the summertime for you?

Adam: That’s good. All right. Marco, how are you doing, man?

Marco: I’m good, man. We don’t need air-conditioning or heating in Costa Rica. My electric bill is like 40 bucks a month.

Marco: We wrapped it up on Friday. The people who follow us, our membership, everyone, the total came to 8,200-plus.

Adam: Nice.

Adam: That’s awesome.

Marco: That’s going to be … maybe we’ll set it at 20. Let’s go high. All right? Go big or go home.

Adam: Good stuff. Awesome. Well, Bradley, speaking of the cold weather. How are you doing?

Bradley: All right, man. Yeah, it got stupid cold again here, which is dumb, but I guess it’s that time of the year. But, yeah, I’m good, man.

Adam: I know you’ve been busy because it’s cold, so there’s nothing else to do …

Bradley: A lot of work.

Adam: … besides working. What have you been up to?

Anything else, guys?

Bradley: That’s it for me.

Adam: All right.

All right, guys. We’re going to get any questions if everyone else is cool with it.

Adam: Let’s do it.

How Would You Localize Videos On YouTube?

Male: I still have access to the old YouTube and I’m not giving that up on though until they take it.

Bradley: They’ll take it. It’s just a matter of time.

Male: I know, but I still have access, thank God.

How Does A Custom Lead Gen System Be Used To Acquire PPC Clients?

How Do You Keep The Dialogue Rolling With Video Email Prospects?

What Is Lead Gadget And How It Differs From GSite Builder?

What Is The Fastest Way To Monetize Your Site If You Have New Assets With Limited Traffic?

If it’s an affiliate site, I’m not sure. Maybe start using it to build an email list. If you have limited traffic, I’m not sure. You got to get your traffic up, really.

You guys have any ideas for that? Any good suggestions for that one?

Male: Right, right, right. Well, in any case-

Bradley: If you have limited traffic, it’s going to be difficult to monetize because that’s where the monetization comes from. Right?

Male: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult to monetize the site that doesn’t have much traffic unless it’s super targeted traffic and you have a super targeted offer.

Male: Right.

Hernan: He’s got new assets, right? It hasn’t been around for a while. He’s built stuff, so what would be the low dollar entry point to start winning with?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Maybe he got traffic to that asset, maybe that’s what he’s asking about?

Bradley: Yeah..

Adam: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep, I agree.

Should You Stick To One Internal Link Per Curated Post?

How Do You Make “Near Me” Keywords More Natural In A Curated Content?

Does anybody else have any experience with that?

What Are Some Best Link Building Practices You Recommend For A Syndication Network And Extended Products?

“What is the best build links and how much and how often?” With citations and press releases, both, you can be really aggressive. I mean, super aggressive.

Marco: Any Google property.

Is It Effective To Build Quality Links Directly To GMB For Local Search Rankings?

How Do You Manage The Erratic Rankings Of A G Site Optimized For A Medium Level Competitive Keyword?

Marco, what would your comment be on this?

“Drop the links?” No, I don’t think I would drop the links yet because, again, that’s another signal to Google that you’re an SEO. Right? The best thing you can do is just dilute it.

“Move pages to another location and start over.” That would be my last resort. I’d still be a little bit more patient first.

Bradley: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Good advice. Thank you.

Do You Still Use The Tool RVR Pro?

Marco: I think we’re out of questions, man.

Adam: Awesome. Have a good one, everybody.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Marco: Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168 posted first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

zigdot · 6 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 169 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Live.

Hernan, how is it going? How’s the summertime for you?

Adam: That’s good. All right. Marco, how are you doing, man?

Marco: I’m good, man. We don’t need air-conditioning or heating in Costa Rica. My electric bill is like 40 bucks a month.

Marco: We wrapped it up on Friday. The people who follow us, our membership, everyone, the total came to 8,200-plus.

Adam: Nice.

Adam: That’s awesome.

Marco: That’s going to be … maybe we’ll set it at 20. Let’s go high. All right? Go big or go home.

Adam: Good stuff. Awesome. Well, Bradley, speaking of the cold weather. How are you doing?

Bradley: All right, man. Yeah, it got stupid cold again here, which is dumb, but I guess it’s that time of the year. But, yeah, I’m good, man.

Adam: I know you’ve been busy because it’s cold, so there’s nothing else to do …

Bradley: A lot of work.

Adam: … besides working. What have you been up to?

Anything else, guys?

Bradley: That’s it for me.

Adam: All right.

All right, guys. We’re going to get any questions if everyone else is cool with it.

Adam: Let’s do it.

How Would You Localize Videos On YouTube?

Male: I still have access to the old YouTube and I’m not giving that up on though until they take it.

Bradley: They’ll take it. It’s just a matter of time.

Male: I know, but I still have access, thank God.

How Does A Custom Lead Gen System Be Used To Acquire PPC Clients?

How Do You Keep The Dialogue Rolling With Video Email Prospects?

What Is Lead Gadget And How It Differs From GSite Builder?

What Is The Fastest Way To Monetize Your Site If You Have New Assets With Limited Traffic?

If it’s an affiliate site, I’m not sure. Maybe start using it to build an email list. If you have limited traffic, I’m not sure. You got to get your traffic up, really.

You guys have any ideas for that? Any good suggestions for that one?

Male: Right, right, right. Well, in any case-

Bradley: If you have limited traffic, it’s going to be difficult to monetize because that’s where the monetization comes from. Right?

Male: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult to monetize the site that doesn’t have much traffic unless it’s super targeted traffic and you have a super targeted offer.

Male: Right.

Hernan: He’s got new assets, right? It hasn’t been around for a while. He’s built stuff, so what would be the low dollar entry point to start winning with?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Maybe he got traffic to that asset, maybe that’s what he’s asking about?

Bradley: Yeah..

Adam: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep, I agree.

Should You Stick To One Internal Link Per Curated Post?

How Do You Make “Near Me” Keywords More Natural In A Curated Content?

Does anybody else have any experience with that?

What Are Some Best Link Building Practices You Recommend For A Syndication Network And Extended Products?

“What is the best build links and how much and how often?” With citations and press releases, both, you can be really aggressive. I mean, super aggressive.

Marco: Any Google property.

Is It Effective To Build Quality Links Directly To GMB For Local Search Rankings?

How Do You Manage The Erratic Rankings Of A G Site Optimized For A Medium Level Competitive Keyword?

Marco, what would your comment be on this?

“Drop the links?” No, I don’t think I would drop the links yet because, again, that’s another signal to Google that you’re an SEO. Right? The best thing you can do is just dilute it.

“Move pages to another location and start over.” That would be my last resort. I’d still be a little bit more patient first.

Bradley: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Good advice. Thank you.

Do You Still Use The Tool RVR Pro?

Marco: I think we’re out of questions, man.

Adam: Awesome. Have a good one, everybody.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Marco: Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168 published first on https://dilatepage.tumblr.com/

0 notes

howardkuester22 · 6 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 169 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Live.

Hernan, how is it going? How’s the summertime for you?

Adam: That’s good. All right. Marco, how are you doing, man?

Marco: I’m good, man. We don’t need air-conditioning or heating in Costa Rica. My electric bill is like 40 bucks a month.

Marco: We wrapped it up on Friday. The people who follow us, our membership, everyone, the total came to 8,200-plus.

Adam: Nice.

Adam: That’s awesome.

Marco: That’s going to be … maybe we’ll set it at 20. Let’s go high. All right? Go big or go home.

Adam: Good stuff. Awesome. Well, Bradley, speaking of the cold weather. How are you doing?

Bradley: All right, man. Yeah, it got stupid cold again here, which is dumb, but I guess it’s that time of the year. But, yeah, I’m good, man.

Adam: I know you’ve been busy because it’s cold, so there’s nothing else to do …

Bradley: A lot of work.

Adam: … besides working. What have you been up to?

Anything else, guys?

Bradley: That’s it for me.

Adam: All right.

All right, guys. We’re going to get any questions if everyone else is cool with it.

Adam: Let’s do it.

How Would You Localize Videos On YouTube?

Male: I still have access to the old YouTube and I’m not giving that up on though until they take it.

Bradley: They’ll take it. It’s just a matter of time.

Male: I know, but I still have access, thank God.

How Does A Custom Lead Gen System Be Used To Acquire PPC Clients?

How Do You Keep The Dialogue Rolling With Video Email Prospects?

What Is Lead Gadget And How It Differs From GSite Builder?

What Is The Fastest Way To Monetize Your Site If You Have New Assets With Limited Traffic?

If it’s an affiliate site, I’m not sure. Maybe start using it to build an email list. If you have limited traffic, I’m not sure. You got to get your traffic up, really.

You guys have any ideas for that? Any good suggestions for that one?

Male: Right, right, right. Well, in any case-

Bradley: If you have limited traffic, it’s going to be difficult to monetize because that’s where the monetization comes from. Right?

Male: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult to monetize the site that doesn’t have much traffic unless it’s super targeted traffic and you have a super targeted offer.

Male: Right.

Hernan: He’s got new assets, right? It hasn’t been around for a while. He’s built stuff, so what would be the low dollar entry point to start winning with?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Maybe he got traffic to that asset, maybe that’s what he’s asking about?

Bradley: Yeah..

Adam: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep, I agree.

Should You Stick To One Internal Link Per Curated Post?

How Do You Make “Near Me” Keywords More Natural In A Curated Content?

Does anybody else have any experience with that?

What Are Some Best Link Building Practices You Recommend For A Syndication Network And Extended Products?

“What is the best build links and how much and how often?” With citations and press releases, both, you can be really aggressive. I mean, super aggressive.

Marco: Any Google property.

Is It Effective To Build Quality Links Directly To GMB For Local Search Rankings?

How Do You Manage The Erratic Rankings Of A G Site Optimized For A Medium Level Competitive Keyword?

Marco, what would your comment be on this?

“Drop the links?” No, I don’t think I would drop the links yet because, again, that’s another signal to Google that you’re an SEO. Right? The best thing you can do is just dilute it.

“Move pages to another location and start over.” That would be my last resort. I’d still be a little bit more patient first.

Bradley: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Good advice. Thank you.

Do You Still Use The Tool RVR Pro?

Marco: I think we’re out of questions, man.

Adam: Awesome. Have a good one, everybody.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Marco: Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

anchorsawaytat1 · 6 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 169 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Live.

Hernan, how is it going? How’s the summertime for you?

Adam: That’s good. All right. Marco, how are you doing, man?

Marco: I’m good, man. We don’t need air-conditioning or heating in Costa Rica. My electric bill is like 40 bucks a month.

Marco: We wrapped it up on Friday. The people who follow us, our membership, everyone, the total came to 8,200-plus.

Adam: Nice.

Adam: That’s awesome.

Marco: That’s going to be … maybe we’ll set it at 20. Let’s go high. All right? Go big or go home.

Adam: Good stuff. Awesome. Well, Bradley, speaking of the cold weather. How are you doing?

Bradley: All right, man. Yeah, it got stupid cold again here, which is dumb, but I guess it’s that time of the year. But, yeah, I’m good, man.

Adam: I know you’ve been busy because it’s cold, so there’s nothing else to do …

Bradley: A lot of work.

Adam: … besides working. What have you been up to?

Anything else, guys?

Bradley: That’s it for me.

Adam: All right.

All right, guys. We’re going to get any questions if everyone else is cool with it.

Adam: Let’s do it.

How Would You Localize Videos On YouTube?

Male: I still have access to the old YouTube and I’m not giving that up on though until they take it.

Bradley: They’ll take it. It’s just a matter of time.

Male: I know, but I still have access, thank God.

How Does A Custom Lead Gen System Be Used To Acquire PPC Clients?

How Do You Keep The Dialogue Rolling With Video Email Prospects?

What Is Lead Gadget And How It Differs From GSite Builder?

What Is The Fastest Way To Monetize Your Site If You Have New Assets With Limited Traffic?

If it’s an affiliate site, I’m not sure. Maybe start using it to build an email list. If you have limited traffic, I’m not sure. You got to get your traffic up, really.

You guys have any ideas for that? Any good suggestions for that one?

Male: Right, right, right. Well, in any case-

Bradley: If you have limited traffic, it’s going to be difficult to monetize because that’s where the monetization comes from. Right?

Male: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult to monetize the site that doesn’t have much traffic unless it’s super targeted traffic and you have a super targeted offer.

Male: Right.

Hernan: He’s got new assets, right? It hasn’t been around for a while. He’s built stuff, so what would be the low dollar entry point to start winning with?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Maybe he got traffic to that asset, maybe that’s what he’s asking about?

Bradley: Yeah..

Adam: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep, I agree.

Should You Stick To One Internal Link Per Curated Post?

How Do You Make “Near Me” Keywords More Natural In A Curated Content?

Does anybody else have any experience with that?

What Are Some Best Link Building Practices You Recommend For A Syndication Network And Extended Products?

“What is the best build links and how much and how often?” With citations and press releases, both, you can be really aggressive. I mean, super aggressive.

Marco: Any Google property.

Is It Effective To Build Quality Links Directly To GMB For Local Search Rankings?

How Do You Manage The Erratic Rankings Of A G Site Optimized For A Medium Level Competitive Keyword?

Marco, what would your comment be on this?

“Drop the links?” No, I don’t think I would drop the links yet because, again, that’s another signal to Google that you’re an SEO. Right? The best thing you can do is just dilute it.

“Move pages to another location and start over.” That would be my last resort. I’d still be a little bit more patient first.

Bradley: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Good advice. Thank you.

Do You Still Use The Tool RVR Pro?

Marco: I think we’re out of questions, man.

Adam: Awesome. Have a good one, everybody.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Marco: Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

charlesswink19 · 6 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 169 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Live.

Hernan, how is it going? How’s the summertime for you?

Adam: That’s good. All right. Marco, how are you doing, man?

Marco: I’m good, man. We don’t need air-conditioning or heating in Costa Rica. My electric bill is like 40 bucks a month.

Marco: We wrapped it up on Friday. The people who follow us, our membership, everyone, the total came to 8,200-plus.

Adam: Nice.

Adam: That’s awesome.

Marco: That’s going to be … maybe we’ll set it at 20. Let’s go high. All right? Go big or go home.

Adam: Good stuff. Awesome. Well, Bradley, speaking of the cold weather. How are you doing?

Bradley: All right, man. Yeah, it got stupid cold again here, which is dumb, but I guess it’s that time of the year. But, yeah, I’m good, man.

Adam: I know you’ve been busy because it’s cold, so there’s nothing else to do …

Bradley: A lot of work.

Adam: … besides working. What have you been up to?

Anything else, guys?

Bradley: That’s it for me.

Adam: All right.

All right, guys. We’re going to get any questions if everyone else is cool with it.

Adam: Let’s do it.

How Would You Localize Videos On YouTube?

Male: I still have access to the old YouTube and I’m not giving that up on though until they take it.

Bradley: They’ll take it. It’s just a matter of time.

Male: I know, but I still have access, thank God.

How Does A Custom Lead Gen System Be Used To Acquire PPC Clients?

How Do You Keep The Dialogue Rolling With Video Email Prospects?

What Is Lead Gadget And How It Differs From GSite Builder?

What Is The Fastest Way To Monetize Your Site If You Have New Assets With Limited Traffic?

If it’s an affiliate site, I’m not sure. Maybe start using it to build an email list. If you have limited traffic, I’m not sure. You got to get your traffic up, really.

You guys have any ideas for that? Any good suggestions for that one?

Male: Right, right, right. Well, in any case-

Bradley: If you have limited traffic, it’s going to be difficult to monetize because that’s where the monetization comes from. Right?

Male: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult to monetize the site that doesn’t have much traffic unless it’s super targeted traffic and you have a super targeted offer.

Male: Right.

Hernan: He’s got new assets, right? It hasn’t been around for a while. He’s built stuff, so what would be the low dollar entry point to start winning with?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Maybe he got traffic to that asset, maybe that’s what he’s asking about?

Bradley: Yeah..

Adam: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep, I agree.

Should You Stick To One Internal Link Per Curated Post?

How Do You Make “Near Me” Keywords More Natural In A Curated Content?

Does anybody else have any experience with that?

What Are Some Best Link Building Practices You Recommend For A Syndication Network And Extended Products?

“What is the best build links and how much and how often?” With citations and press releases, both, you can be really aggressive. I mean, super aggressive.

Marco: Any Google property.

Is It Effective To Build Quality Links Directly To GMB For Local Search Rankings?

How Do You Manage The Erratic Rankings Of A G Site Optimized For A Medium Level Competitive Keyword?

Marco, what would your comment be on this?

“Drop the links?” No, I don’t think I would drop the links yet because, again, that’s another signal to Google that you’re an SEO. Right? The best thing you can do is just dilute it.

“Move pages to another location and start over.” That would be my last resort. I’d still be a little bit more patient first.

Bradley: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Good advice. Thank you.

Do You Still Use The Tool RVR Pro?

Marco: I think we’re out of questions, man.

Adam: Awesome. Have a good one, everybody.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Marco: Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

profoundbasicincome-blog · 6 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 169 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Live.

Hernan, how is it going? How’s the summertime for you?

Adam: That’s good. All right. Marco, how are you doing, man?

Marco: I’m good, man. We don’t need air-conditioning or heating in Costa Rica. My electric bill is like 40 bucks a month.

Marco: We wrapped it up on Friday. The people who follow us, our membership, everyone, the total came to 8,200-plus.

Adam: Nice.

Adam: That’s awesome.

Marco: That’s going to be … maybe we’ll set it at 20. Let’s go high. All right? Go big or go home.

Adam: Good stuff. Awesome. Well, Bradley, speaking of the cold weather. How are you doing?

Bradley: All right, man. Yeah, it got stupid cold again here, which is dumb, but I guess it’s that time of the year. But, yeah, I’m good, man.

Adam: I know you’ve been busy because it’s cold, so there’s nothing else to do …

Bradley: A lot of work.

Adam: … besides working. What have you been up to?

Anything else, guys?

Bradley: That’s it for me.

Adam: All right.

All right, guys. We’re going to get any questions if everyone else is cool with it.

Adam: Let’s do it.

How Would You Localize Videos On YouTube?

Male: I still have access to the old YouTube and I’m not giving that up on though until they take it.

Bradley: They’ll take it. It’s just a matter of time.

Male: I know, but I still have access, thank God.

How Does A Custom Lead Gen System Be Used To Acquire PPC Clients?

How Do You Keep The Dialogue Rolling With Video Email Prospects?

What Is Lead Gadget And How It Differs From GSite Builder?

What Is The Fastest Way To Monetize Your Site If You Have New Assets With Limited Traffic?

If it’s an affiliate site, I’m not sure. Maybe start using it to build an email list. If you have limited traffic, I’m not sure. You got to get your traffic up, really.

You guys have any ideas for that? Any good suggestions for that one?

Male: Right, right, right. Well, in any case-

Bradley: If you have limited traffic, it’s going to be difficult to monetize because that’s where the monetization comes from. Right?

Male: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult to monetize the site that doesn’t have much traffic unless it’s super targeted traffic and you have a super targeted offer.

Male: Right.

Hernan: He’s got new assets, right? It hasn’t been around for a while. He’s built stuff, so what would be the low dollar entry point to start winning with?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Maybe he got traffic to that asset, maybe that’s what he’s asking about?

Bradley: Yeah..

Adam: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep, I agree.

Should You Stick To One Internal Link Per Curated Post?

How Do You Make “Near Me” Keywords More Natural In A Curated Content?

Does anybody else have any experience with that?

What Are Some Best Link Building Practices You Recommend For A Syndication Network And Extended Products?

“What is the best build links and how much and how often?” With citations and press releases, both, you can be really aggressive. I mean, super aggressive.

Marco: Any Google property.

Is It Effective To Build Quality Links Directly To GMB For Local Search Rankings?

How Do You Manage The Erratic Rankings Of A G Site Optimized For A Medium Level Competitive Keyword?

Marco, what would your comment be on this?

“Drop the links?” No, I don’t think I would drop the links yet because, again, that’s another signal to Google that you’re an SEO. Right? The best thing you can do is just dilute it.

“Move pages to another location and start over.” That would be my last resort. I’d still be a little bit more patient first.

Bradley: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Good advice. Thank you.

Do You Still Use The Tool RVR Pro?

Marco: I think we’re out of questions, man.

Adam: Awesome. Have a good one, everybody.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Marco: Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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daynamartinez22 · 6 years

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 169 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Live.

Hernan, how is it going? How’s the summertime for you?

Adam: That’s good. All right. Marco, how are you doing, man?

Marco: I’m good, man. We don’t need air-conditioning or heating in Costa Rica. My electric bill is like 40 bucks a month.

Marco: We wrapped it up on Friday. The people who follow us, our membership, everyone, the total came to 8,200-plus.

Adam: Nice.

Adam: That’s awesome.

Marco: That’s going to be … maybe we’ll set it at 20. Let’s go high. All right? Go big or go home.

Adam: Good stuff. Awesome. Well, Bradley, speaking of the cold weather. How are you doing?

Bradley: All right, man. Yeah, it got stupid cold again here, which is dumb, but I guess it’s that time of the year. But, yeah, I’m good, man.

Adam: I know you’ve been busy because it’s cold, so there’s nothing else to do …

Bradley: A lot of work.

Adam: … besides working. What have you been up to?

Anything else, guys?

Bradley: That’s it for me.

Adam: All right.

All right, guys. We’re going to get any questions if everyone else is cool with it.

Adam: Let’s do it.

How Would You Localize Videos On YouTube?

Male: I still have access to the old YouTube and I’m not giving that up on though until they take it.

Bradley: They’ll take it. It’s just a matter of time.

Male: I know, but I still have access, thank God.

How Does A Custom Lead Gen System Be Used To Acquire PPC Clients?

How Do You Keep The Dialogue Rolling With Video Email Prospects?

What Is Lead Gadget And How It Differs From GSite Builder?

What Is The Fastest Way To Monetize Your Site If You Have New Assets With Limited Traffic?

If it’s an affiliate site, I’m not sure. Maybe start using it to build an email list. If you have limited traffic, I’m not sure. You got to get your traffic up, really.

You guys have any ideas for that? Any good suggestions for that one?

Male: Right, right, right. Well, in any case-

Bradley: If you have limited traffic, it’s going to be difficult to monetize because that’s where the monetization comes from. Right?

Male: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult to monetize the site that doesn’t have much traffic unless it’s super targeted traffic and you have a super targeted offer.

Male: Right.

Hernan: He’s got new assets, right? It hasn’t been around for a while. He’s built stuff, so what would be the low dollar entry point to start winning with?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Maybe he got traffic to that asset, maybe that’s what he’s asking about?

Bradley: Yeah..

Adam: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep, I agree.

Should You Stick To One Internal Link Per Curated Post?

How Do You Make “Near Me” Keywords More Natural In A Curated Content?

Does anybody else have any experience with that?

What Are Some Best Link Building Practices You Recommend For A Syndication Network And Extended Products?

“What is the best build links and how much and how often?” With citations and press releases, both, you can be really aggressive. I mean, super aggressive.

Marco: Any Google property.

Is It Effective To Build Quality Links Directly To GMB For Local Search Rankings?

How Do You Manage The Erratic Rankings Of A G Site Optimized For A Medium Level Competitive Keyword?

Marco, what would your comment be on this?

“Drop the links?” No, I don’t think I would drop the links yet because, again, that’s another signal to Google that you’re an SEO. Right? The best thing you can do is just dilute it.

“Move pages to another location and start over.” That would be my last resort. I’d still be a little bit more patient first.

Bradley: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Good advice. Thank you.

Do You Still Use The Tool RVR Pro?

Marco: I think we’re out of questions, man.

Adam: Awesome. Have a good one, everybody.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Marco: Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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