September, 2011 | Finch Sells

Shouldn’t We Just Build Websites In Chinese?

Sep 20 2011

I have a question for any bilingual readers of this blog, particularly those skilled in the art of SEO.

Do you find it easier to rank a website by building it in a foreign language?

This is something that has played on my mind for a long time now. One of the things that has always deterred me from SEO has been the sheer competition from millions of other English-speaking webmasters. I hate brushing shoulders with the urchins of Digital Point. The thought ruins my morning coffee.

It makes sense to me that somebody who has a perfect grasp of French, Spanish or German, would find life much easier to generate traffic when there isn’t such a global demand for the hottest keywords.

You don’t have to be speaking English to spend money. And most of us believe in the gigantic advantage of being first mover in a market.

My foreign experiments so far have extended to building landing pages in different languages and using the cheaper Facebook clicks to play arbitrage. This is something that I actively preach, and is rapidly becoming the best way for an affiliate to turn over a healthy margin – certainly on Facebook.

However, designing a website from the ground up and focusing an SEO campaign on ranking for foreign keywords is something that I haven’t nailed down. Surely it makes sense to do so?

It doesn’t even have to be the traditional affiliate website. Entire western web concepts can be ported abroad and matched to new markets where there is little or no competition. In some regions, that lack of competition is justified. There’s no money to be made. In other growing economies? Stepping out of your comfort zone seems like a lucrative step, dare I say it, logical even.

It’s no secret that the American economy is well and truly spitroasted, and Europe is hardly faring much better. The emerging economies of the world offer new opportunities, new growth and new demand.

Now while there are many reasons why China may not be ready for your lose weight fast campaigns, that’s not to say there aren’t areas that affiliates shouldn’t be seriously looking at and asking “How can I get a slice of that pie?”

I’m going to be running a personal experiment over the next 60 days to learn a brand new language and develop a website that caters to one of these emerging markets.

It’s going to take me to epic places that I’ve never been before (the library), but I hope that by the end of these 60 days, I can proudly showcase a sparkling new website that lines my account with pesos. Or rupees. Or magic beans.

Stay tuned to see the calamity unfold.

Recommended This Week

Are you signed up to the Stack That Money Forum? It offers coaching from two of the best CPA bloggers in the biz, Mr Green and Mr Stackthatmoney. You’ll find a bunch of follow along case studies and some very generous knowledge dumps which you’d have to be an absolute muppet not to take value from. More info here.
Lots of Ads is the latest service to offer spying capabilities over Facebook’s most profitable ads. The great appeal for me is the ability to spy on International markets including France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil and many more. Save time on translations and tap in to the most lucrative markets on Facebook. Definitely a worthy addition to your toolkit. First 20 customers only who use code FINCH11 will receive 10% off their lifetime subscription. Enjoy!
If you’re a new reader, please add me to your RSS. Also follow me on Twitter Love you long time. Thanks for reading.

Workaholism: How To Self Destruct Completely

Sep 19 2011

Maintaining a healthy balance between work and home life is something that you can only truly monitor through the reactions of those who have to deal with you every day.

If you’re being asked to repeat your name to your confused children, the alarm bells should be ringing. If your wife reacts violently to the latest admission that you’ll be spending a night in the office, maybe it’s not her that’s being unreasonable.

Maybe workaholism has you by the balls.

These are warning signs and nothing less. Entrepreneurs are often praised with the positive attributes of being passionate, determined and willing to go the extra mile. Our greatest fault is that somewhere in the thick of it, our personal identity becomes so intertwined with the projects we’re working on that to be separated fuels resentment and a shitty attitude towards those who remember the more care-free caricatures we used to be.

It doesn’t matter how many times you explain the stressful nature of your work, it will always seem like a weak argument.

Most people judge stress by the battle for oxygen on a cramped morning commute, or the constant uncertainty of how a moody boss is going to lash out at them.

To see us sitting in our home offices, Spotify blaring to the max, makes it very difficult to understand how we can’t afford ourselves a simple Off switch. The ability to snap and morph in to the infinitely cooler husband, father or friend who reaps the rewards of his split personality’s sheer grit, rather than drowns in the magnitude of how much is yet to be achieved.

This type of in-fighting can prove more than destructive to a small business. Just because your home office is lacking the small red button marked “Self Destruct Completely”, don’t assume the same effect can’t be achieved through negligence and tunnel-vision.

It can, and in my case, it almost has.

One of the buzz words you will often hear mentioned alongside running a business is accountability. Without accountability, it’s impossible to drive a business forward. You won’t find a single entrepreneur in the world who doesn’t advocate the importance of discipline.

Unfortunately, discipline and accountability are double-edged swords.

If you start holding yourself accountable for the failure to realise long term goals, on a short term basis, your private life is going to suffer a body blow as you take this frustration out on everybody else. Not directly, but by allowing the workaholic in you to prosper and grow. It becomes the dominant personality.

It’s a great balancing act to be able to hold yourself accountable for short term failures, while still appreciating that when you work your bollocks off and the lucky break doesn’t materialise, patience is in order.

Self-destruction is almost guaranteed if you can’t differentiate between those elements of blame. The workaholic will grab any opportunity to dominate your life, but it’s an attitude that will never subside – even in the face of great success. It has to be controlled.

You have to hold yourself accountable for keeping the workaholic on a leash, not just exercising it regularly. Anything less and you have a wild untamed beast on your hands. Unfortunately, that beast is yourself.

Recommended This Week:

Subscribe to my new FinchSells RSS feed. And if you don’t already follow me, add Finch to your Twitter. Merci beaucoup!

Want High Quality Banners For Free?

Sep 16 2011

How many hours have you lost piss-arsing around in Photoshop and still getting no closer to a banner that is suitable for promoting your product?

How many freelancers have you paid to take away the torment?

Welcome to the world of SnackTools, a cracking suite of automation software that takes the hassle out of creating banners if you’re not already outsourcing the task.

SnackTools has a number of very handy and attractive looking apps, each designed to improve the visual presentation of your website. From professional quality slideshows, to online surveys and polls. There’s a lot to digest, and like sweet music to your ears, most of it is free.

The app most likely to capture your imagination is BannerSnack.

BannerSnack is my new best friend if I ever find myself weighted with the burden of having to produce a banner that isn’t embarrassingly slapped together like something out of MS Paint in the nineties.

The software allows you to create flash and gif banner ads using a very simple interface. It’s all drag and drop.

I consider myself a bumbling dinosaur when it comes to showing that deft touch in Photoshop, or indeed any of Adobe’s industry standard tools. BannerShack is simplified in such a way that even if you’re like me (you poor sod), you’ll be able to produce the eye-catching banners that have alluded you for so long.

Want fancy icons to give your banners that sleek 2.0 look? No problem. Want lots of direct response friendly arrows, buttons, labels and familiar visual cues to drive more clicks to your site? It’s all here.

Besides using BannerSnack to create images, I’ve adapted the software to create entire product landing pages for my affiliate marketing campaigns. Just select a custom banner size, adjust it to the size you want, and lavish the page in direct response love.

I haven't accessed ClipArt since 1997. But these arrows will come in handy for my landing pages.

Many different kinds of buttons, colours and effects available.

BannerSnack lets you save your artwork to the cloud, making it possible to drop back in and edit your creations whenever you feel like it. I have a growing assortment of banners and landing pages, all of which perform very well for me in their given tasks.

No automation suite will ever replace the genious of a super-talented designer. If you’re a designer reading this now, I’m not trying to put you out of a job. I admire you for having all the skills that I was never blessed with.

However, for those occasions where as webmasters we want effective banners ready to roll in 10 minutes, there aren’t many creative suites as fun and simple to use as BannerSnack. Check it out!

Recommended This Week:

Subscribe to my new FinchSells RSS feed. And if you don’t already follow me, add Finch to your Twitter. Merci beaucoup!