Free Online Merchant Account - Read This First Before Applying

I just got done watching a live UStream video cast of Howie Schwartz and Jimmy Davis talking about a Free Online Merchant Account through Imax.  First let me say how much I like Howie Schwartz.  I think he is an absolutely brilliant marketer and I have learned a lot from him.  I don’t know Jimmy Davis but he seems like a top notch guy also.

So the main focus of this video is that there is  a company offering a online credit card merchant account with no application fee.

Sounds like a good deal.  On top of that, Howie will also give you $2000+ in bonuses if you sign up through his link.  The bonuses are 20 products that you can sell with your merchant account.  Sounds Great.

So I went and looked at this offer, because it sounded a little to good to be true.  I have been a business owner for many years and have learned the importance of reading over contracts before signing anything.  I recommend that you always read through contracts before signing.

Let me say, that if you are in the market for a merchant account, then this is probably not a bad deal and you may want to take a look.  Visit Howies site here to learn more. (you may want to read the rest of this first however)

If you are not really in the market for one, you may want to consider how important it is that you have one now, before you jump in.  I know the bonuses sound great, but reading through the fine print here is what I found.

1. Although the application is free to apply, there is a $49.99 administration fee listed.  It does not state when this applies or when it will be charged.
2. Buried way down at the bottom, it states that once the contract is finalized, you are locked in for 3 years. If you choose to cancel before the 3 years is up, they will charge you $250 for canceling.  It also implies that you could be charged an additional $250 if you breach the contract, but that part is not very clear.
3. There is a $39.95 monthly charge per location.  I don’t have a problem with that except that it is not clear if that would be each website. If you didn’t have a website immediately ready for it, would you start getting charged the $39.95 anyway?  This may be OK, it just isn’t clear.
4. On top of the $39.95 monthly charges, you will also get charged a $5.00 Statement Fee (per statement) and $5.00 internet access fee (per website).  To me it sounds like you will be on the hook for $49.95 per month per website for the account.  Again, I don’t think this is a big deal if you will be using it, but I wouldn’t necessarily get it just to have it.
5. There are also another set of fees listed under “Miscellaneous fees” , just before the $250 cancellation fee mentioned above.  Again it is not clear when or how these apply and that is what makes me nervous. $25 Documentation fee, $150 Research and investigation fee, etc.

I think the final thing that bothers me about it is there is no contact page, or even visible contact information, to be able to clarify any of these things. No phone number, no email, nothing.

I eventually found some contact information listed at the bottom of the program guide:

The bottom line is “look before you leap”. If you are in the market for a merchant account, this is probably a pretty good deal.  Their processing rates look a little high, but not terrible.  (I would try to get some clarification as to what their “Non-Qualifying”  limits are as those seem a little steep.)  Oh and another note, if you do apply, make sure you click the “review you application” section at the bottom of the application before submitting or you will get an error.

This is nothing against Howie Schwartz.  Like I said, I like Howie a lot and I have learned a lot from him and usually buys whatever he puts out.  (Take a look at his Underground Traffic Society if you are just starting out.  You will learn a lot and have access to some pretty cool stuff.)  But this isn’t one of his products, it is just something he is promoting as a (I assume) JV partner. He usually has the best interests of his students in mind, but this time, it seems a little questionable.  I hope it doesn’t come back to bite him.

So why am I telling you all of this and possibly raining on Howie’s quick cash parade.  Because I have a lot of loyal followers of this site and I will always try to protect them best I can.  I am thankful for them and want to make sure that they have the best chance at success. It may not seem like a lot of money to some, but for others $50 a month for something your not going to use is a lot.  And $250 to try and get out of it can be way to much.  Been there done that.

Personally I have been using Paypal’s merchant program for years and have been very happy with it. Their pricing is very competitive (the lowest I’ve found), their transaction percentages are low, and they don’t try to hide any extra fees from you. Everything is very up front. And PayPal integrates easily with a lot of different shopping carts because they already have it built in to them.

I hope you find this useful. Please leave me a comment, especially if you have had any experiences with this company or others that someone may be able to learn from.  A lot of people read this blog and you never know who you might help.

Update:
A friend recommended a new company to me, expensus.com, that looks like it may be ok. I don’t have any information on them. Does anyone have any experience with them, good or bad? Mail this post

Technorati Tags: bancard, credit card merchant account, credit card processing, free online merchant account, howie schwartz, imax, jimmy davis, merchant account, merchant services

PPC Ninja Review: Ancient Secrets Of Pay-Per-Click Revealed

Another new product from fellow internet marketer Christian Weselak.  PPC Ninja.  I have enjoyed watching Christian move up in the ranks  in internet marketing circles for the past couple of years.  One thing I noticed when talking with him a various events is that his ideas are so simple, but so effective at making money. No big tricks.  No big secrets.  But so obvious that most people either miss them, or dismiss them.  They think, “that’s to easy. There is no way that will work.”  But lo and behold, it does.  I have used many of his methods that I have gotten out of him over the years to make a bunch of money in PPC.

Now I know that PPC is not something that is for everyone. So if PPC is not your thing, then I recommend that you skip PPC Ninja and stay with what you are comfortable doing.  There is nothing wrong with doing what works for you.

But if PPC is your thing, or you would like to learn how to make a pile of cash in PPC marketing, then I would highly recommend taking a look at PPC Ninja.

Click here to visit PPCNinja website!

I called Christian up a couple weeks ago and convinced him to let me have an advanced copy to take a look at (ok really I just asked). Here is what I have to say about it.  WOW! I was actually surprised at how many of his methods he included.  He definitly didn’t hold anything back.  I figured like most people, he would have kept the best ones for himself, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Thanks to my advanced copy (remember kids, networking is very important in this business) I was actually able to try a couple of his methods to see how they worked. I was able to start generating a solid $200 a day after about a week.  Certainly not the most money I have made online, but a nice little addition none the less.

Alright you are probably wondering what exactly you are going to learn from PPC Ninja.  Well here is a quick rundown of what you will be getting.

Pay Per CLick Ninja eCourse
OK when I said there were no “secrets”, that wasn’t entirely true.  What I should have said is that to the people that have been doing this for a while, like me, there aren’t any (or very few) secrets. But to someone just starting out, or maybe only doing it for a couple of years, there are actually quite a few.  Being able to learn them now without having to go through the pain of trial and error like most of us…that is priceless.

Anyway, I am not going to list out everything that is included.  You will be able to read all about that in the sales letter.  No point in being redundant.

Pay Per Click Ninja Video Course
These are a set of 7 videos of Christian showing you his complete thought process from beginning to end. A lot of good information in here.  I was able to pick up a couple of good ideas from these that I started using.

Again, I’m lazy and don’t want to write out everything in them. You can read the sales letter on launch day if you are really that interested.

And here are the bonuses that he is giving you with PPCNinja:

Bonus #1: Google Content Network Domination

Bonus #2: Interview with Michael Campbell

Bonus #3: How to make money with PPC and CPA offers

Bonus #4: One Year of Updates

The first 3 bonuses are nice to have, but not really necessary to making the most of PPCNinja.  The real meat of the course is in the first two items. And actually you will find enough information in just the eCourse to let you quit your day job.

The forth bonus (updates) I think will be very beneficial.  The internet marketing landscape is constatntly changing, so being able to keep abreast of new techniques can be extremely helpful. Most of us “old timers” share stuff with each other at events, but these are $5,000-$10,000 events that most people don’t have access to.

As much as I would like to freely share some of these things with you on this site, I just couldn’t do that to a friend.  Maybe after the newness wares off and these things are no longer considered “secrets” I may let a few nuggets of wisdom out here and there, but you certainly don’t want to wait that long.

Click here to visit PPCNinja website!
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Keyword Research: Find The Best Keywords With Free Research Tools

Keyword Research: What You Need To Know About Keyword Research

Keyword research is the most important aspect when deciding which are going to be writing about. Of course you can writes about things that you are interested in, but if you are concerned about being ranked in Google, then keywords is where your initial focus needs to be.

Why is keyword research so important? Well, because when somebody does a search in Google, or any of the search engines for that matter, what they type in the search box is what the search engines are going to be looking for. So if your page and your content do not relate to what they are searching for, you page will not come up in the results. Remember, relevancy it key.

So what kind of keywords should you go after? Basically what you’re looking for are the keywords that you have a chance of ranking for and have a decent amount of traffic. Just because a keyword gets a lot of traffic, especially because of traffic, doesn’t mean that is a word you should be going after. What it usually means is that it is going to make it harder to be able to rank decently for that keyword.

For instance, take words like “shoes”, “insurance”, “lawyer”, “dentist”. All of those get a tremendous amount of traffic, but there are two problems with them.

1. There is so much competition for them, it would take years to be able to rank for them.
2. They are not “buying” words. They do not show that the searcher is far enough down in the buying cycle to be really serious about buying something.

You are better off to go after long tail, or not as popular, keywords when you are trying to write your articles. Long tail keywords are generally words that have 3 to 8 words in them. The benefits of long tail keywords is that:

1. There is generally less competition
2. They show more of an intent to buy

The big downside to long tail keywords is that they don’t get as much traffic.

So for example, a keyword like “shoes” may be get difficult to rank for but “red shoes in North Dakota” may be quite a bit easier. It may get a lot less traffic, but on the other hand it is something you may be able to actually rank fairly high for.

I’ll will put it this way:

it’s better to be ranked higher for a low traffic keyword and get some traffic, than to be ranked lower for a high-traffic keyword and get no traffic.

So how do you start keyword research

Well there are a lot of tools out there to help you with your keyword research. The three that I’ve found work best are these:

• Google keyword tool
• Word tracker free tool
• Keyword discovery

All three of these are free and all of them worked very well for your initial keyword research. As you get more proficient and start earning more you can go and get paid tools, even if the paid don’t do that much more for you. I still use all of these free tools even though I have tools that I pay for as well.

The Problem With Tools

The problem with any keyword tool is that all they are really giving you are estimates. They all look at different places and at different times. What they are all they’re doing is trying to guess how much traffic a particular keyword is actually getting. That is why using multiple tools for your keyword research is the safest way to begin. But you still have to use your brain to be able decide what the best keywords are going to be. There is no better tool than the one between your ears. You’ll learn this over time and will become more and more natural to you, but at first it may be a little confusing.

Basically you need to take any of the numbers that they give you with a grain of salt because you will often see wide differences in the amount of searches that they all predict. Sometimes they are pretty close, but most times they are vastly different.

How To Analyze your Keywords

There are two aspects that you need to look at when analyzing your keyword. The first is how many people are actually looking for that term (search volume). The other aspect is competition for that keyword. If there is too much competition, you will have a very hard time trying to rank for that particular keyword.

Here is the system that I follow when doing my keyword research.

First open up a browser that supports tabs, either Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 or 8, or Opera.

Open up four tabs
(if you are using any of the above browsers, just click on the links and they should open in new tabs automatically)

Tab #1: Google’s Keyword Tool
Tab #2: Wordtracker Free Tool
Tab #3: Keyword Discovery
Tab #4: Google Search Page
If you are logged into Google with iGoogle or something like that, you will want to log out, because your results may be skewed otherwise.

Go to your first tab (Google Keyword Tool) and type in your initial keyword (whatever it is you want to rank for). For this example we will start with the word “shoes”. Type in the Captcha and click on GET KEYWORD IDEAS. The initial results look like this:

There are some setting you will want to change. Up above the results is a dropdown box that says “Choose columns to display”. You want to make sure that you have “Show Estimated Average CPC” showing in your results

Your results should now look like this

The next thing you want to do is to sort your results by “Approx Avg Search Volume”. You do this by clicking on it at the top.

Now your results look like this

Depending on what your goals are and how you are planning on monetizing your page, the important columns you will be looking at will be different. If you are looking at monetizing strictly with Adsense, then you want to look at the “Estimated CPC”, “Advertiser Competition”, and “Aproximate Avg Search Volume”. If you are going to be doing affiliate marketing (not PPC) then you are mainly concerned with “Advertiser Competition” and “Aproximate Avg Search Volume”.

When researching for Adsense, here are a couple rules of thumb.

1. Your average CPC should be a minimum of .75. Remember that Adsense only pays you a portion of what they are getting, so you want this number to be as high as possible to have the best chance of making the most money.
2. Advertiser competition should be has high as possible. They higher the advertiser competition, the more likely it is that the Estimated CPC will be accurate. The lower the competition, the lower the actual estimated CPC will be, regardless of what it shows in the results. You will learn that with experience.

If you are doing affiliate marketing, then the Avg CPC really doesn’t make much difference to you. You just want to make sure that the advertiser competition is high, because that tells you that there is some money in it. If there are a lot of people bidding on a keyword, there must be money to be made. Keep in mind that what Google shows you is not always accurate. Later I will show you another trick so you can check how accurate the Advertiser Competition really is.

Here is another rule of thumb I use when doing quick keyword research. I only look at keywords with Average Monthly Search Results less than 18,000. I have found, in general, that these will be the words I will have the best chance of ranking for. Remember this is a rule of thumb and not an ABSOLUTE rule. There are many exceptions to this rule that you can find if you look long enough. However, in this guide, we are focusing on FAST keyword research. After you learn this, you can take as much time as you like.

OK, so here’s one we can try that looks pretty good.

It is kind of long tail (3 words), has a CPC of over .75 (.95), has good amount of advertiser competition, and good search volume.

Now we will look at WordTracker

Looks like it has pretty good search volume (remember that WordTracker shows DAILY results)

It also looks like there are a number of other keywords that may be worth looking at as well. We will want to make note of them to research later.

Next we will look at Keyword Discovery and see what their results say.

It looks like we have a winner so far. We also notice that some of the same results are coming up in Keyword Discovery that were just in WordTracker. Again, we want to make note of that fact for later.

Well our research so far has shown us that this keyword is definitely a possibility, so we can keep going. If our results in WordTracker or Keyword Discovery had shown 0 or 1 results, we would probably want to start over with another keyword.

Next we go to Google. As I said before, if you have an iGoogle Account, you will want to log out of it first.

What you need to do now is to type into the search box, your keyword surrounded by quotes, like so:

“name brand shoes”

What you will be looking at is in the top right hand corner and will look something like this.

What we see here is that there are 386,000 other sites competing directly for this term. Here is another rule of thumb. What you are looking for are results less than 20,000 competing pages. Anything more than that and you will have a hard time trying to rank. You want this number to be as low as possible.

So looking at this, we have found out that this is not a good keyword to try and rank for. But remember the other terms we ran across earlier. We can try one of those. Lets try “discount name brand shoes” and see what happens.

Looks like we have a winner. Only 15,300 competing pages. And from our previous research we already know that it is a term that people are searching for. We could go back and double check in the Google Keyword tool, but it is probably not necessary.

Ok remember earlier I said I was going to show you a little trick to make sure the numbers Google was giving you were accurate. Here is what you do. Down at the bottom of the PPC ads on the right, there should be a link that says “More Sponsored Results”.

If it is not there that means that there are less than 10 people competing for that keyword, which is a bad sign. If it is there, click on it and see how many people are actually competing.

Ideally you want to see as many as possible, but anything over 20 is great.

So our first round of research was a success. We found a keyword with commercial intent that we should be able to rank for. Now all you have to do is lather, rinse, and repeat. And we only did this with one. You will probably want a list of 10 to 20 to do at a time. It will save you a bunch of time.

Another thing to remember is be open to new possibilities for keywords. Don’t fall in love with your keywords. If it doesn’t fit within the criteria you set, toss it out and look for something better. There is always something better out there.

Once you have your list of 4-6 keywords that fit within your parameters, you are ready to start writing your article, post, or whatever it may be.

Happy Researching

Erich Mosier

To download this page as a PDF, click here.

Please leave me a comment and let me know if this was useful. Mail this post

Technorati Tags: best keywords, free research, how to, Keyword Research, top keywords