You can imagine I was (to put it mildly) pleased about this because, on a personal level, I love the site and read it avidly, and on a professional level, it shows my content and my message matters to some people.

The benefits of having my article mentioned on Marketing Profs had some additional benefits, quite a few extra visitors and some kind people even hit the retweet button at the top of the article.

You are probably wondering what this has to do with ‘the pursuit of perfectionism‘ so let me get to my point.

The article I wrote was about trying to game spam filters by intentionally misspelling words in the email subject line and body text. This encouraged someone to leave me a comment along the lines of:

“If misspellings challenge credibility, Karl might do himself a favor by checking the word ‘flair’.”

Now, I did misspell flair (I used flare by mistake) and I have corrected that now so “thank you” for pointing that out.

My content had a minor error, it was not intended to ‘game’ anything unlike what is happening with how some marketers’ are writing their email marketing campaigns.

Why did this compel someone to leave such a comment?

Maybe the message I was putting out tapped a raw nerve, maybe ‘he’ engages in such email marketing activities and doesn’t know any better, maybe he is on a quest to rid the world of misspellings and feels this to be another personal victory, or maybe he just didn’t get the point!

If you are engaged in content publishing of any kind, and you get any type of buzz, you will get attention. The attention you get will turn some people into fans who grab your RSS feed, retweet your work, add you to their bookmarks, sign-up to your newsletter and may even tell people about your website.

Some people will come and leave again unaffected by your message, neither liking or disliking your work.

Others will feel the need to throw a bit of negativity your way.

I’m not perfect, I make mistakes but I will not let the fear of NOT being perfect stop me from sharing content that is of value to my readers.

There are 101 very successful product launches in the Internet Marketing realm that would never have seen the light-of-day if the product creators had to check everything was ‘perfect’ before sharing their content, sometimes good-enough really is good-enough.

Please do not let the fear of someone’s criticism or negativity stop you from sharing your content.

Making sure your content is 100 percent perfect all the time will slow you down and decrease your productivity, ’so just get it our there’!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

Disclaimer: No words were intentionally misspelled in the making of this article.

There are two types of people that this web analytics package is especially useful for, newbies and geeks (and yes, this does apply to me as I am a self-confessed geek).

Clicky is ideal for the newbie who has discovered the importance of visitor tracking and is finding Google Analytics too complicated.

The more experienced stat geek (I love my stats) will also love Clicky because they track more elements than Google Analytics. They even provide the stats in such a user-friendly way that you can get a stat fix with just a quick glance (this can seriously increase your general productivity, I have lost too much time reading through my website data!).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not coming down on the big G, their Analytics program is amazing, is packed full of features, is better than 99% of website analytic packages on the market, and ultimately, is free.

But, and this really is a big ‘but’, the learning curve is very steep for someone who can be considered a ‘newbie’. Additionally, quite a few people who are running a small business and have an accompanying website do not always have the time to work through the given ‘how to’ pages that Google has kindly put together.

So, why is Clicky a more powerful alternative?

Clicky Web Analytics has the traditional features you’d expect but let me share with you a few of the additional features that have me excited!

• Juicy Visitor Details
• Twitter Analytics
• Dedicated iPhone Clicky Analytics
• URL Shortener Integration

If that still hasn’t whetted your appetite, how does this sound:

• Dedicated Wordpress plugin (yes, you can track you stats directly from your Wordpress dashboard)
• Spy on your visitors

The Wordpress plugin is for self-hosted Wordpress blog users and has recently been updated by Joost De Valk, over at Yoast.com. You can download the plugin directly from the Clicky website.

A great additional feature of the plugin is it can also be configured to update your Twitter account each time you upload a new blog post; this also includes a URL  shortener. as stated above, and tracks your links.

The ‘real time visitor tracking’ [*] is what gets me really excited! This feature allows you to literally spy on what your visitors are doing on your website as they are actually doing it. This is a bit like watching a Twitter stream but instead of tweets, you are watching the pages of your website update as your visitors navigate from page-to-page.

All you need to do now is head on over to the Clicky website and sign-up for an account. You’ll gain instant access to a trial period of a pro account (no credit card required to gain access) and will be downgraded to a free account when the trial comes to an end.

To get the complete access to the full range of services I recommend you take them up on their pro account offer, it only costs $59.99 for a whole year giving you a whole 6 months for free.

The do have other packages so I recommend you visit their site now to see what is the best fit for your website.

Here’s the link again: www.GetClicky.com

To your success,

Karl Foxley

[*] For real time visitor tracking that is recording using screencast technology visit Clixpy.com.

Twitter, everybody loves Twitter, so what on Earth could be ‘even better than Twitter’s Micro Blog platform’?

I’ll get back to TweetGlide in a minute but first let me explain my problems with Twitter.

You are probably the same as me, you understand the potential of Twitter, you love how it allows you to follow people who influence you as well as allowing those you influence to follow you.

So, you spend a lot of time promoting your Twitter profile, probably just as much as you promote your website and blog! Here’s the thing, although Twitter ultimately owns your profile, wouldn’t it be a great place to promote yourself just that little bit more than just having that one single link in your ‘about me’ area.

Okay, you can upload your own Twitter background with a few images of links but that isn’t as powerful as providing your profile viewers with a clickable link.

But what if you could? What if you could add some elements directly to your Twitter profile page that gave you extra promotional possibilities for yourself and your business? What if you could monetize your profile, wouldn’t that be great?

Some people absolutely hate sponsored Tweets but I haven’t heard much objection to monetizing the Twitter profile page itself.

Well, all the things you wished you could do with your Twitter profile just became possible!

Take a close look at the two screenshots below and tell me if you can spot any differences?

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

I bet you noticed straight away that the second screenshot has 125×125 sized banner ads. Let me share another screenshot of that particular sidebar so you can take an even closer look.

After the ads I have a widget that shares the recent posts from my blog followed by my DandyID buttons that allow people to connect with me on other social networking sites. I also, at the time of writing, have a ProfileFly button and a share on Facebook button.

Have you guessed how I’ve done this?

Returning to the title of this post, I made a claim that there was something even more important than TweetGlide! Don’t get me wrong, the desktop app is great at what it does and if you haven’t downloaded it yet then I recommend you get it now!

Here’s the link: TweetGlide Desktop Application

More important than the TweetGlide app is the accompanying blog that you also get! Why? Because it is a more powerful version of Twitter, allowing you to make the changes you only wished Twitter would allow you to make.

What’s more, the changes I made to my profile took me five minutes. Just imagine what you could do if you took the time to really play around with it.

You’ll need to download TweetGlide to gain access to your very own version of the blog.

Fire-up TweetGlide and then locate the manage blog button. Click on the button and your default browser will load your profile blog page with you already logged in.

When you click on the settings button at the top of your TweetGlide profile page you will be taken to the back-office as seen in the screenshot below.

As you can see, the elements that I have added to my profile page are managed by placing code into the individual widget boxes.

You can then choose the order of how the widgets are displayed by using a drag-and-drop panel as seen below.

You probably have lots of ideas of how you can improve your profile page so what are you waiting for, if you don’t have TweetGlide yet go and download it now.

If you come up with a customisation idea that you think is truly awesome then come back here and leave a comment with your TweetGlide profile link so I can take a look!

I think you’ll agree with me when I say that the blog is probably more important than the application itself.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. Are you following me on Twitter yet?

P.s.s Don’t forget that you can place optimised links on your TweetGlide profile using keyword rich ‘anchor’ text. Just another benefit of getting one of these blogs for yourself.

Monthly Products

Everyone knows that one of the best ways to make money online is to have your very own digital product that you can sell over-and-over again.

How would you like to create instant audio products with some of the world’s leading marketing experts in just MINUTES!

Audio recordings are some of the most popular digital products around and can usually fetch a much bigger asking price than a typical e-book or report due to the extra perceived value.

So how do you create your very own high quality audio products that you can sell in just a few clicks?

With a BRAND NEW site called Monthly Products.

Just imagine having access to brand new interview materials every month that you can use to create even more products.

Here’s the best bit, you keep any money you make selling the products.

When I say it’s point and click, it really is and you can see how simple it is for yourself by clicking here and watching the short video.

I have to admit, I’ve never seen a way to make such a high quality product in such a simple way.

Go watch the video now and see exactly what I’m talking about www.MonthlyProducts.com.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

Let’s say you have a website that is focused on selling guided walks around Derbyshire. You would create content focused pages about specific walks following all the SEO tips you’d find in our Understanding SEO article.

As your website is indexed by the search engines you would want to start checking on each of your web pages performance in the search engine result pages (SERPs), as we all know, being on the first page for a search term is where you want to be (and at the top being the optimal spot).

So, a website about walks in Derbyshire may have pages optimised for:

• walks with children in Derbyshire
• Ghost walks in Derbyshire
• Country walks in Derbyshire
• Hill walks in Derbyshire

Checking how each page is performing in the search engines for each of those particular keywords can be performed in a few ways but I want to share with you one of the coolest little desktop applications that I have come across in a while.

I’ve be fortunate enough to have access to CuteRank Pro, a Website Ranking Checker that sits nicely on my desktop.

You can download a free version and discover how to get CuteRank Pro by visiting the CuteRank website. The following will walk you through how to quickly set up your profile and monitor your rankings.

Visit the website and follow the instructions to download a copy of the CuteRank software.

After you have successfully downloaded and installed CuteRank you will need to load the software for the first time.

When you fire CuteRank up you’ll want to start by adding the domain you wish to monitor. Click on the ‘New’ button and select ‘new profile’ from the drop down menu.

This is where you input your the domain you wish to monitor.

1. Enter your URL that you wish to monitor.

2. Select the keyword you wish to monitor.

3. Select the search engines you wish to track your ranking in.

Now click OK.

1. This shows the rank for ‘polite seo‘ in the following search engines.

2. This indicates the same info but in graph format (techies love their graphs) allowing you to track your progress over a set timescale.

You would simply now add more keywords to monitor.

As you build up a collection of keywords that you are tracking you can start to export your data in pdf format or CSV.

CuteRank will only allow you to monitor a limited number of keywords unless you are using the PRO version.

Follow the link to discover how you can get your hands on the PRO version for free.

I would say that CuteRank is good at what it does, it doesn’t eat into your computers resources while it is running and it pulls back the results that you want quickly (I tested this up to 50 keywords approx).

Who is CuteRank for? Having tested CuteRank for over a week now I would say it is good for website owners who wish to monitor the performance of their website in the SERPs and it is also good for SEO Consultants who are managing multiple domains.

What’s more, with the current price tag being free and with the ability to get your hands on the CuteRank Pro version by following some simple steps then you really have nothing to lose; CuteRank gets a two thumbs up from me!

Here’s the link again: CuteRank Website Ranking Checker

To your success,

Karl Foxley

Email marketing can be one of the most profitable introductions to a business.

Even bricks-and-mortar businesses can see an increase in profits from collecting emails and then emailing promotions from time-to-time.

What if I was to tell you that you could:

“Triple your open rates, quadruple your clicks and skyrocket your sales from all your email promotions – using pre-tested headline templates – ninja mental triggers and voodoo graphical tricks – and build your lists by 1000’s per week”

This may sound like a ridiculous claim but not when you know the guy behind it, you see, Ryan Deiss has been making a lot of money online and email marketing has been a big part of that.

What I like about Ryan is how methodically he is about testing. He tests, re-tests, and tests again, until he can conclusively say what works and what doesn’t.

Ryan has put together the results in what he calls his ‘13 Sneaky Little Email Tricks‘.

I have to give you a word of warning, if you leave here and purchase 13 Sneaky Little Email Tricks then please use what you learn in moderation, don’t go into overkill as you will dilute the affect of what you learn, it is powerful stuff!

Oh, did I mention that the tactics you will learn are totally ethical, nothing spammy or black hat here.

Here’s the link again Sneaky Email Tricks

To your success,

Karl Foxley

One of the best blogging solutions is to attach a self-hosted Wordpress blog to your existing website. In the past the only way to do this was to download the Wordpress files to your desktop and then upload them using your FTP client followed by playing around with the configuration options; this was enough to prevent the non-techie-type from jumping into blogging with a self-hosted blog.

A real simple solution has come along that makes those manual upload days seem like something from the Internet dark ages, that solution being Simple Scripts. This guide will walk you through the installation process.

You will need a hosting account that gives you access to Simple Scripts. We use Host Monster to host the majority of our websites as they use cPanel in the user back-office. CPanel has revolutionised the ease of configuring your website, managing email clients and domains etc. The other reasons we use HostMonster is because the customer support is top notch, exactly what you need when something goes wrong with your site and you need to get back online quickly. Oh! Did I mention they are very affordable, with HostMonster you are not compromising on service either, making this a win win for you.

Head on over to HostMoster and register for an account here.

After you have signed up for an account simply follow the instructions to set up your domain etc. Assuming you have done this and have a website already with HostMonster then you’ll want to log into your cPanel area.

Now, how to easily install your self-hosted Wordpress blog.

Scroll down until you find the Simple Scripts icon under the heading Software / Services.

For this example I am going to attach a blog to a squeeze-page of mine for a report about how to use Joint Ventures to generate targeted traffic to your websites and promotions.

Inside the Simple Scripts area scroll down to Blogs and click on Wordpress.

Now click on Install.

Step 1 – select the latest stable install and where you would like your Wordpress blog to be installed.

If you have an existing site that you want to attach a blog to then type ‘blog’ as the subdomain or whatever else you wish to call it (blog being the most logical).

In the image above you can see that I am installing Wordpress to the subdomain ‘blog’ on the GuruTrafficSecret.com domain.

Now you’ll want to select your login details, password and blog name. You’ll also want to tick the check box where it says ‘automatically create a database’.

Lastly, accept the terms and conditions.

Now click ‘complete‘.

If your installation is successful you will see the above screen. Your login details will also be emailed to you.

To login to your new wordpress site just add /wp-admin to the end of your URL. The login for GuruTrafficSecret is now at

http://www.gurutrafficsercret.com/blog/wp-admin

Log in to your website to configure your blogs information.

To make your blog stand out from the crowd you should install a new theme at the first opportunity.

Visit the Guru Traffic Secret blog to see a live demo of a Wordpress blog and the first and only post.

I hope you found this post informative and easy to follow.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. To get the most out of cPanel and your website I recommend you sign-up for Discover cPanel as soon as you can. You can visit the site now and get instant access to a free video packed with information that you can put to use straight-away.

Have you ever wanted an easy way to remember your passwords that is safer than the post-it notes plastered across your monitor. Well, I use a tool that will be right up your street. My favourite piece of software for this is Roboform and this post covers why it a part of my ‘marketing toolkit’.

With Roboform, you just enter all your details ‘once’ and then every time you need to fill in your name and address etc, you simply click a button and that’s it, everything is ‘auto-filled’ for you.

Visit the Roboform site and click on the link that says ‘Or Start Free Trial’.

I recommend you purchase Roboform Pro straight away as you can save unlimited passwords and identities (set some up for your family members too); and the Pro version is very cheap at just $29.95. If you just want to give it a test run then go ahead and click on the ‘Or Start Free Trial’ link and an .exe file will begin to download.

The way the file downloads will depend on what browser you are using but either click on Save File or Run for the program to set up as shown in the photo below.

Now create your identity. Insert your name and click the OK button.

This will take you to the next screen where you can input all of the information that you fill out when you are joining new sites and entering into affiliate programs.

Once you have completed these steps Roboform will conveniently sit at the top of your browser as a toolbar for when you need to use it.

The free trial allows you to remember around 30 passwords.  Another amazing feature of Roboform is the ability to select a website from your saved passcards (log-in details) and Roboform will take you to the website and log you in automatically; just imagine how much time this will save you over a day of browsing.

Roboform also features the following:

• Manages your passwords and allows you to log in automatically
• Fills in long registration and checkout forms with one click
• Encrypts your passwords for complete passwords
• Generate random passwords to maximise password strength
• Back up and synchronize passwords between computers
• Fight phishing and defeat keyword loggers…

What are you still doing here, go and download your copy of Roboform and increase your productivity today.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

photo credit: Freddy The Boy

There are some things that annoy me about budding affiliate marketers! Before you shoot me down, I understand how difficult it can be to make money online, especially when you are buying into one system after another and each one promises to make you rich in record time, and in the process, emptied your pocket of some more of your hard earned money.

It can be hard, and knowing who to follow or what system teaches the best marketing methods that are both ethical and profitable can be a mined field. I understand that through desperation it can be tempting to take short cuts, but if you do any of the following, please stop!

Here they are and in no particular order.

1. DM (Direct Message) on Twitter

Okay, Twitter is a great communication tool but please do not send me a DM with a link to the latest affiliate product you are promoting. I really don’t need help to ‘explode my profits’ or ‘build a massive list’. You see, if you are promoting a product in such a way then the product isn’t working that well for you. Think about it, I got a DM telling me about a sneaky new program that will help me dominate Google. So why is this person sending me a message on Twitter instead of doing as the product promised, and flooding the search engines with his money making content?

2. Instant Message on Facebook

This is just as bad as the Twitter DM. I love to chat with people on Facebook and build worthwhile connections but please don’t pop up in the instant chat with a link to the ‘latest opportunity’ that I may be interested in. If this is your first contact with me then why not start out with a ‘hi, how are you doing?’ As for your product, I’m NOT interested, sorry! The MLM crowd are just as bad when they are ’seeking leaders’ to promote a ‘new and innovative’ product in England. I’m happy with what I’m doing right now and promoting ‘health products’ or ‘recruiting an army’ of marketers who will ‘promote the products under me and make me rich’ just doesn’t work for me… I’ll leave this one here.

3. Email Marketing

Okay, you’ve just bought the latest must-have product that is going to make you a lot of money but please, test the product before you try to sell it to me. I am on a lot of Internet marketers lists, some are personal friends, others are people I follow in the industry and then there are those that were a part of my ‘early Internet marketing days’ when every one had the magic key to success (or a great squeeze page ). I get lots of products for free, due to beta invites or joint venture deals and it takes hard work to be fortunate enough to get into this position; building relationships the correct way is one of the best ways to get the invites and the offers.

Another thing that is annoying me of late is the level rigidity that people follow a new ‘trick that will increase conversions’. Example, nearly every affiliate marketer is sending out emails with RE: or FW: in the subject line as this is meant to increase open rates. This makes sense, my close family and friends send me emails with RE: or FW: so why wouldn’t it work for affiliate marketers too. Well, here is where it doesn’t work, when every single email you now send out has RE: or FW: at the beginning. You are now diluting the effectiveness of this ‘proven and powerful’ technique that was guaranteed to boost your conversion rates. Bottom line, do not overdo it (this applies to any marketing method).

4. Pre-Written Marketing Materials.

I have been guilty of this one myself in the past but I wouldn’t dream of doing it today! Why? Cause now I know better. Some affiliate programs have pre-written emails already for you to copy-and-paste into your auto-responder but that doesn’t mean you should just grab the email and send it out to your list.

I get the same promotion from hundred of marketers each and every time a new product is launched. The marketing message that always stands out are those that are original. The guys and gals that have taken the time to compose their own original message for their subscribers; try to be one of these.

While I’m discussing this I may as well also say that just because a guy makes lots of money with PPC and then makes a product teaching you how to do the same, this doesn’t now make him someone who is an awesome copywriter. Sending out emails that are not written with your personal flare may even harm your relationship with your list as the tone will be different to your own.

5. Joint Venture Email Swaps

Joint ventures and email swaps can be a great way of growing a list and making money in the process but please do not ask me to promote a product to my list of subscribers that is not your own. I will NOT send an email with your affiliate link in promoting someone else’s product when I can simply sign-up for that affiliate program for myself. This just doesn’t make sense.

Now I’ve told you what not to do, I want share with you what you should be doing. You should be a member of Opportunity.com because then you will have access to a wealth of affiliate marketing training and resources that ‘can’t fail to make you more knowledgeable about making money online as an affiliate marketer, the correct way!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

photo credit: nromagna

If you are not sure what I am talking about then just take a look at the screenshot below of Google Images holding my site in a frame.

Not all sites that hold your site in a frame are bad, my objection is when the offending site has ads plastered everywhere.

Another objection of mine is the traffic I get from Google Images. You see, Google Images brings me a lot of visitors that wish to copy my images to use on their websites or projects, yes, I have tracked the clicks on my site and some of my images show a high click rate indicating the visitor’s intentions.

The simple solution to this is to install a small plugin known as the Frame Buster Wordpress Plugin by Semiologic.

You can download the plugin directly from the site by visiting the Semiologic Frame Buster Wordpress Plugin page or, alternatively, you can download the plugin from the Wordpress Plugins Directory.

Below is a quick video showing the plugin in use. The video opens in a new window (sorry no sound)!

The video shows me clicking through to my site from Google Images, as the page loads, frame buster kicks and forces the site out of the frame.

I am yet to discover any negative effect to using this plugin or any penalties netted out by the search engines. I’ve been using the plugin for a few months now and I haven’t had any issues.

On a side note, Semiologic have a special Wordpress package that will help you dominate any niche with their out of the box solution. Click on the graphic below and you’ll see the whole host of pro-member only special plugins that you will not find any where else!

I hope you found this post useful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

For a live example of this site breaking free of a frame click here.