A Sponge Cake With a Tasty Jam Layer...

I was interviewed recently for a big new product that is due to
be launched in a month or two. Apart from a lot of very detailed
questions and answers, the main focus of my particular interview
was how I use private label materials to drive traffic. Each
interviewee is covering a different traffic building method.

It was a lot of fun and I gave away a ton of very useful advice,
even if I say so myself!

After the interview was over, my mind was still in 'traffic mode'
and I sat down to write up a few more thoughts - stuff that
didn't occur to be on the call, but which I think is very
important for all Internet marketers to understand about traffic
generation.

Here is the result:

What is 'traffic'?

Traffic is people. People who want an answer to a question.

Pretty much all Internet browsing (apart from the shopping
portals like Amazon or Ebay) can be broken down into a CAKE:

C: People looking for Company
(i.e. via Dating/Relationships/Chat/Facebook sites)
A: People looking for Answers
(i.e. via Search/Ads)
K: People looking for Knowledge
(i.e. via News/Reference sites)
E: People looking for Entertainment
(i.e. via Games/Gossip sites)

I'm sure there must be the odd exceptions, but in general I think
that 99% of web traffic falls into one of those 4 categories.

As Internet marketers we need to get our slice of the CAKE and as
we are mostly trying to sell things that, in one way or another,
solve a problem, that usually means our slice comes from
those seeking answers.

Our very own A-Team!

Already, understanding that we are really only interested in
finding and attracting one particular slice of the cake is very
helpful and can save us a lot of time, effort and money that
would otherwise be wasted in seeking out the wrong types for our
business.

But this is not just any old cake - it is a layer cake.

We don't want or need the spongy base. And the top layer with the
icing on is very tempting, but maybe a bit too flashy and
obvious: let the more inexperienced go after them.

The layer we really want to attract to our sales messages is the
one hidden away inside: the thin layer of jam.

As you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of acronyms. JAM, in my
marketing world view stands for 'Just About Money'. In other
words, people with cash to spend and a burning desire to spend it
now.

In a simple example, a novice might look at some keyword research
and find that the keyword 'treadmill' gets a ton of searches - 5
million a month, on average according to Google. You can make
some great commissions selling treadmills, so it may appear to be
a potentially profitable niche.

But the reality is that with such a broad keyword the likelihood
of any of those searchers being rabid, ready to lay down the cash
buyers is slim to none.

Think about how you search yourself. A very broad search like
'treadmill' is done by someone with at best a vague interest in
the subject and zero product knowledge.

An Internet marketer with a little more savvy will quickly
realize that people who are getting close to the point of
purchase have already done their research. They already know the
brand of treadmill they want. So they may target 'proform
treadmill' instead. That keyword still gets an average of 368,000
searches monthly, so it must be a money-spinner, right?

Not quite.

If 'treadmill' is a search term used by open-minded researchers,
'proform treadmill' is one used by people who are still narrowing
down their choices. But they are nowhere near ready to buy yet.


The experienced, and generally more successful marketer will keep
on looking until he or she finds keywords like 'proform 585
treadmill', 'proform 525 treadmill', 'proform 725 treadmill' or
'proform 995 sel treadmill' - keywords with 8100, 4400, 4400 and
1300 monthly searches respectively.

Why would you target keywords with a few thousand searches rather
than one with 5 million? Simple - it is way better to find the
few people in the JAM layer than to waste your time on the many
people in the sponge. That sponge will soak up your time and
energy in no time!

And that is where really well researched and written PLR articles
come in.

PLR is a very fast way to tap into the information seeking
audience because, if it is well written and well researched, it
SHOULD be targeted on a specific question - i.e. a buyers
keyword.

'Well written' is the critical part though. There is a ton of bad
private label out there and most of it will never help you to get
much traffic of any kind because it simply won't grab the
attention of either the search engines or the rabid buyers.

But good, and especially great PLR writers know how to write
articles that the search engines are predisposed towards.
Articles that are three-dimensional. Articles that are
authoritative and full of the kind of words that real people
would use.

That's the difference.

How to use PLR to get that rabid JAM traffic.

Blogs, of course, can be used. But despite its current
popularity, blogging is just one way of communicating online. And
in fact, it may not even be the best one to use with articles in
the 500-700 word range.

The essence of blogging tends to demand shorter, punchier posts
of about 300 words.

Personally, I prefer to use PLR articles on small authority
websites. Websites that have 10 pages or so of really good
question-answering content in any given section. And I continue
to build new sections into my sites as and when relevant private
label material comes up. I find XSitePro really useful for this.

So, if the site was about health, for example, I'd go looking for
some great PLR articles on stress, on back pain, on diabetes, on
weight loss, on fitness, on anti-ageing - anything that was
related to the core topic. And I'd add new stuff regularly.

PLR would let me do that easily and with an absolute minimum of
effort - nothing like as hard as writing all that content from
scratch - or as expensive as it would be to get a writer to
create it all for me. PLR is cheap, easy and very effective.

I would make a few changes to each of the articles - maybe
rewrite the first and last paragraphs a little and then put them
to work as fast as I could. Filling them with affiliate links for
people to follow.

Thinking about stuff too long is where most people fail. Get
cracking and get earning. Sometimes it works and sometimes it
doesn't but for sure the stuff that sits on your hard drive
unused will never make you a cent.

Private Label Articles are one way you can grab your slice of the
CAKE, and the more focused and well targeted the articles you use
can be the closer you'll get to the JAM layer - the traffic that
really counts.

Martin