David Leigh

I seem to have been busy with everything except doing any real work for a while, and the lack of new posts on my blog is indicative of that.

One thing I have done since the summer though is to go through John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0 and Stompernet’s Stomping The Search Engines 2.0. As a reminder, TS 2.0 cost $500, caused me a few problems and had lousy customer service, STSE 2.0 cost $10 or $20 postage when I subscribed to The Net Effect, Stompernet’s new magazine, so while there is no contest in terms of price it is interesting to compare them side by side.

Traffic Secrets 2.0

I must admit I was expecting big things from John Reese, as I’ve benefited from some of his pearls of wisdom in the past dispensed in interviews etc, but TS 2.0 didn’t do it for me. There is far too much filler and quite frankly I couldn’t concentrate on the videos for long because of that. The content was added to the website in MP3 format, which at least allowed me to listen at the gym, but still, it is all too vague and lacking the killer content I was expecting to find although maybe I’m not who it’s aimed at, so perhaps there are people who have genuinely benefited.

I also got a couple of DVDs from Frank Kern with Traffic Secrets 2.0, which are quite something. If you’ve come across Frank in the past you’ll pretty much know what to expect, but he really holds your attention and has a completely off the wall sense of humour.

Stomping The Search Engines 2.0

I’ve had issues with Stompernet in the past and for me they come across as being far too corporate for their own good, but I thought I’d check out STSE 2.0 anyway - for that price I’d have been stupid to miss it. I had listened to the original course, so had an idea of what to expect. The course is far more compact that TS 2.0, and better for it IMHO.

Among other things it really gets down to the nitty gritty of keyword research, on page factors, off page factors and a very strong section on link building by Dan Thies. I’ll also say that I had no problem with the order process and delivery of The Net Effect and STSE 2.0, although there are many people who have had issues and are really fed up with Stompernet for it - one of my big complaints previously.

Why is good customer service so elusive?

It seems to be a common problem for internet marketing companies to have extremely poor customer service, and I don’t know if it’s genuinely because they are taken by surprise by the number of orders they receive, poor planning, scalability issues, they’re let down by delivery fulfillers or they just don’t care, but one essential piece of the marketing jigsaw is customer service - get this wrong and it can crucify you.

And I’m amazed that it isn’t talked about more, until just recently I came across Lynn Terry through Internet Marketing This Week, also with Ed Dale, Paul Colligan and Michelle Macpherson. Lynn’s big bugbear seems to be lack support for both customers and affiliates, the latter of which resonates with me as I have been unable to sort out an issue with the Immediate Edge affiliate program that I first raised in September. To be frank, that is pissing me off and I really hope that it is sorted soon and while I value my membership of Immediate Edge, I certainly won’t continue to promote it, let alone push it more.

Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the last few weeks, this won’t be news to you, but I’ll say it anyway: Stompernet is taking on new members.

As usual they have some well produced videos, but my experience with them is that they don’t really deliver on all their promises and are far too corporate. If you do want to join then go join through Ed Dale’s link as you get Immediate Edge membership and some other cool stuff thrown in too.

And if you are an absolute beginner to internet marketing then neither of these is for you - join the Thirty Day Challenge, which is FREE.

I’m most of the way through Stompernet’s latest video, the first of their Going Natural 3.0 series and blown away. Presenting the story of how Brad Fallon’s multi-million dollar business was blown away when it was dropped from Google’s organic listings and how Dan Thies headed up new research into AdWords to save that business from certain catastrophe, this is a really fresh look at how the AdWords game has changed and what to do in 2008.

One of the tools mentioned - in fact the only tool so far - is Microsoft’s Commercial Intent tool, which has yielded some surprising tools for one of my niches.

In fact, I’m going to see what happens if I use it to screen keywords in the Thirty Day Challenge/Immediate Edge niche research stage, as it may help identify really strong keywords that are off the radar at the moment. (more…)

Technorati Tags: stompernet smarts, stompernet, seo, social bookmarking

Ed Dale has a new podcast on the Thirty Day Challenge, which as always is worth a listen too. I’m just back from the gym where I was listening to Ed’s dulcet tones

Some good advice as usual - he talks about how increasing your typing speed to improve productivity, and I certainly find that sometimes I can just brain dump a load of stuff while typing at around 300 mph and it is great. The problem for me is getting into the frame of mind for the brain dump though, so although he’s right, that isn’t the whole story.

He also talks about scribd, which I think I’ll avoid talking about from now on as I think I’ve been crossed off Andy Jenkin’s Christmas card list for good, not to mention probably closing for good any opportunity to join Stompernet in the future. C’est la vie.

However, there was mention about Gtrends not working any more. I certainly found it don’t work yesterday, and when I went to Google trends it didn’t seem to work for some terms but worked for others. As of now Gtrends, Gtrends 2.0 and Google trends all seem to be working, so I think that was a false alarm.

The Thirty Day Challenge website is down at the moment, but when it’s working again you can download the podcast here.

Technorati Tags: ed dale, seo, stompernet, internet marketing, thirty day challenge, immediate edge

I noticed on another blog a post from Jason Bentley at scribd. To set the record straight he confirmed that the Stompernet video was not the reason for pulling links from scribd, but that an increase in spam in December and over the holiday period had prompted their action.

He also says that responsible marketers will be able to use their service again once they’ve completed some mods to the system.

Another point I’d like to make is that I guess I was the blogger referred to in Andy Jenkins email broadcast on Saturday saying that SMARTS had been pulled. In fact I didn’t point the finger at Stompernet, I suggested it might be related. Perhaps that was lost in my conspiracy theory joke - just shows always use smilies if you don’t mean it.

And just because the was no cause and effect between Stompernet and scribd, I stick by the point I was trying to make; the internet marketing community ought to be more careful about what they publicise, especially in a viral campaign such as this.

The other day I blogged about how Telefonica sucks due to the abuse of their monopoly. I also blogged about Stompernet spoiling the ride for many internet marketers, which Andy Jenkins took exception to, but it has drawn some negative comments in Immediate Edge and at least one internet marketer who is a member of the Stompernet faculty seems to agree in an email pushing the latest Stompernet product.

After my night of insomnia I got up really late yesterday - yes, much later than usual. After a couple of hours with internet access everything suddenly shut off - no phone, no internet.

Telefonica sucks. Worse than Stompernet.

Earlier today I found that links in my documents published on www.scribd.com no longer worked. That creates a bit of a problem since I’ve been using scribd to test new niches for the last few months. Scribd documents get ranked really fast, so it was great to be able to rank and get orders within a few days.

A week or so ago Stompernet published a video detailing this exact technique. And you know what - suddenly there are thousands more scribd pages appearing. And today this in the scribd FAQ:

“Can I include links in my Scribd documents?

No. Due to abuse from search engine optimizers and internet marketers, we have adopted a no link policy. You may place one link in the website field of your profile page. You may not add HTML links to documents on Scribd.“

Now it could be coincidence, but one possible scenario for this to happen is that the volume of internet marketers introduced to scribd after the Stompernet video brought this to the attention of the scribd admins, in which case Stompernet has spoilt the ride for everyone.

<irony>And if I were looking for conspiracies I might think it was done on purpose so that people could see how good the new Stompernet program is, get people to sign up AND demolish competition at the same time.</irony>

Don’t worry I don’t expect any sympathy, I’ll move on and do something new.

Well, I’m back. And it’s an interesting start to the year.

First I forgot to renew one of my domains. The website isn’t important to me any more as it has had a Google penalty for around 18 months, but almost all my email goes through this domain as I’ve used it since 1999.

First of all I thought that people weren’t back at work yesterday, until I looked at the website. Thinking it was my server, I checked another domain; it was fine. Finally checking the DNS details I found that to all intents and purposes the domain no longer existed.

Re-registering the domain was no problem, and the website was up and running within a couple of hours. But when I found no email this morning I began to worry. After multiple reconfigurations it might be working - it was throwing out a 550 - no relaying error earlier, but I’ve received some spam which at least is a good sign

The second interesting thing is that I’m no longer on Digg. Digg+blog has been a powerful combination in getting articles to rank in minutes, but I admit that I may have overdone it with Digg. They clearly think so as my account is no longer and my IP address seems to be blocked.

I’ve been using Digg regularly since about May for StomperNet SIMPLE; then the 30 Day Challenge; and just recently with Immediate Edge. I’ll take it a bit easier with other similar sites as I’ve been hitting them too, but it will be interesting to see how much my rankings suffer by being bigtime undugg.

Oh, the shame of it - what would Ed Dale say?

Technorati Tags: digg, immediate edge, stompernet simple, 30 day challenge

StomperNet Going Natural 2.0 

I’ve been pretty hard on StomperNet in the past after the fiasco that their SIMPLE program turned into, but have just watched the first video in the Going Natural 2.0 series after being alerted by Ed Dale, one of the faculty members. The great news is that you don’t have to pay anything, you don’t have to give your email address, all you need to do is watch, understand, make notes… and put it into action.

The video is by Andy Jenkins and although slightly technical in nature is so blindingly obvious that I can’t believe that I didn’t think of it myself. Anyway, I’m going to do something about it now, right after I’ve this post. Enjoy!