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I’m watching the StomperNet DVDs in my car, well listening to them anyway. They contain the stage presentations from the Orlando event held earlier this year that I missed out on because I was on a plane back to Australia at the time.

While 95% of the content in the presentations isn’t teaching me anything new, in almost all presentations there’s one or two really powerful points that make watching worthwhile (some of the best stuff was about eBay selling - but that’s another story).

There’s one tip I’d like to pass on now from Dr. Mike, the real life doctor turned Internet marketer, who builds niche sites. He talked a lot about how he uses pay per click traffic to initially test his niches to see whether they can turn a profit. He covered some standard PPC stuff, like beating the Google Slaps, setting high maximum daily spend limits and choosing keywords, but there was one point that I hadn’t considered before that I thought was quite clever and something I suspect most PPC users don’t do.

How To Target High Priced Keywords Using Parallel Markets

Dr Mike called his method “Parallel Marketing”, which is a PPC technique you can use to tap into lucrative markets without paying the high per click rates.

As you probably know, Google calculates click prices factoring in demand for the phrase. If a lot of people are willing to buy certain keyword phrases then the price increases. This usually happens for the most lucrative markets, like mortgages and insurance etc. Anything where the lifetime value of a customer is high.

The Parallel method simply means to target complimentary industries using PPC at lower per click prices to attract the same type of customer who would be interested in buying the lucrative products and services.

The example Mike used was related to reverse mortgages, which are apparently targeted at seniors and retirees (must be a USA thing?). Tapping keywords related to this niche is costly due to the competition and customer value, but if you find markets where the same type of customer has an interest, you can use PPC to drive traffic and build a list at lower click prices and then sell the higher priced items.

Taking the mortgage example, seniors and retirees are often interested in RVs (campervans) for holidaying, which will have a lower click price than mortgages. In this case you build a campaign targeting PPC traffic searching for RV related information, build a list and eventually promote the higher paying mortgage related products.

Think Laterally About Your Marketing

This strategy should work in any market. If the PPC cost is high, think about other things the target market are interested in and go after the traffic there. You need to be clever in how you market your offers because the message won’t be as perfectly aligned if you use complimentary industries to tap the traffic, but if you are clever you should be able to carefully weave in related offers without turning away your audience.

Think laterally and you should be able to come up with many things your target market are interested in, then set up PPC campaigns to tap into the traffic there at a much lower cost. It’s simple, so it must work.

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Vittorio Bosio, the very first member of Blog Mastermind, sent me an email today about releasing some new videos on his blog in response to the advice I gave him in a video case study (in fact the first ever video case study I did for members - Vittorio had a lot of firsts!).

When I went to check out his blog, TechSavvyMarketer.com, I was very pleased to see the changes he had implemented since I did the case study review for him a few months ago. He had taken my advice and implemented it perfectly, so well in fact that I decided to do a video today to show you how to use a blog, or in this case a video blog, to drive opt-ins to your email list.

Vittorio has set up a great process, where he offers free video content, which drives people into an opt-in process for more, higher resolution video content, and it’s all done quite simply with his blog. Watch this video to see how he does it…

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This is a guest article by Corinne Edwards, who is following the training she has received in Blog Mastermind by submitting guest articles to help build her traffic.

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I had a TV show for eleven years and did more than 400 interviews for a major cable station. I was fortunate to have a great interviewing coach so I thought I would share some of the techniques and advice I was given. Take what you need here to put together a great interview.

1. This is probably the most important point. Your guest is the star of the show. Not you. Do not give your opinion on anything. Do not tell stories about your experiences. People are listening because you have an important guest and they want to hear what that person has to say. What you have to say is on your blog. You can write a follow up later if you like.

2. Your podcast is on your blog so the listener already knows where they are. Do not spend more than one minute introducing yourself. Just a warm welcome and thanks for being with us today and your name.

3. Your introduction should obviously be longer when introducing your guest. Give their credentials. Also, ask for a bio in advance so you know what they like to stress about themselves. Ask them. Do not mention why you asked them to be on your show. That’s about you. This interview is about them. Thank them warmly for coming on.

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Those who know me well, my friends, family and colleagues, read the claims I make about my blogging and laugh.

As per the Blog Mastermind sales page and throughout the Blog Profits Blueprint, I claim that I only work two hours a day to generate the around $5000 a month income from my blogs and related projects (forums I purchased with profits from my blogging).

The people who see me on a regular basis would tell you that I work a lot harder than just two hours per day.

So is my claim a marketing gimmick? Is it something I state just to lure people in with dreams of an easy working life for a high financial return? Am I using some kind of trigger to convince you that my program is the answer you have been looking for?

Well yes and no.

Yes in the sense that having a claim that is desirable and something compelling enough that people would hand over money to learn what it is all about, is a requirement for my offer to be successful.

If I used something like - Work 40 hours a week and if you are lucky you might just make a full time income from blogging - not many people are going to join. Heck, I wouldn’t join either, who wants to work 40 hours a week for $35K a year!?!

The reality is that my program is designed to teach what I really do - I really work about two hours aggregate per day on my blogs to produce about $5000 a month in income. However I spend a lot of the rest of my time doing other work, which tends to add up to 4-10 hour “working” days on average, including weekends sometimes too.

How Many Blog Posts Are Enough?

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This review is by Robert Kingston.

As you may have heard, keyword research is one of the fundamental parts in the process of search engine optimization. I know a lot of the readers of this blog seem to be interested in drawing more search traffic so I found it only fitting to take on this sponsored review.

Today, we’re going to be taking a look at the relatively young (~1 Year old) keyword research tool Wordze, as I performed keyword research on one of Yaro’s sites that I manage – MiniRiders.com.au.

What is Keyword Research?

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