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How to use the Google Trends Website
The Google Trends Website was made public in 1996 but many marketers on the Internet don’t know about it. Some know but don’t understand it and so don’t get the benefits out of it that are possible.
The Google Trends website is a service offered by Google to users that want to get some fantastic data about keyword searches in the Google search engine. For example if you wanted to know how popular Levi jeans were over the past 6 years you could type in “Levi Jeans” and get data that would show you the search trend for Levi Jeans. It will not only give you the search trend but you can begin to focus the searches on country, city or even by language.
For anyone looking for a Niche to market and make money Google Trends is something they should not do without.
* How to use the Google Trends website Practically?
a) PPC Marketing
If you are primarily a PPC marketer Google Trends is going to help you in your geo-targeting. I was involved in a niche that was hot in the United States but it gradually tapered off in the USA but got real hot in the Japanese market and so you set up your Adwords campaigns to target Japan. Thank you Google for saving me money on advertising and making me money by knowing where the buyers were.
b) Spying on Competition
To the right of the trends graph there are a list of links that show you articles that are ranked high for the keyword that you chose. Look over those articles, get some ideas, spin it and submit it. Have you seen our page about Online Article Marketing?
c) Hot Trends for Bloggers
Google Hot Trends is a separate service and URL. When you are blogging you are in need of content and if you want to have something relevant to your crowd that is timely with world events or something else you can use Google Hot Trends to see what is real relevant. Not long ago Tiger Woods went through his hardship with his family and the reporters. If you type Tiger Woods into the Google Trends website you will see the spike that was created over the bad press. I would not use Hot Trends to determine a niche because it is only reporting the hot things that are very current and as we know, news is changing all the time.
d) Keyword Analysis
The Google Trends website should be a part of your keyword research in conjunction with a program like Traffic Travis (download Traffic Travis for FREE) and the Google external keyword tool. Google trends will save you money from choosing keywords or a niche that is no longer active in a particular country that you may be targeting.
Another cool part of the keyword analysis that I should mention is something I saw in a webinar. The Google Trends website was used to compare “table tennis” and “ping pong”. Which do you think is more popular? Which country would you think either is more popular? Curious? Well I am not going to tell you. Go to the Google Trends website and check it out for yourself. While you are there play with it and see if you should alter some of the marketing that you are doing.
Remember that this is only Google traffic and does not account for the traffic on other search engines like Ask, Yahoo and Bing. Clearly Google dominates as a search engine and gives a good picture of what is most likely taking place in the other search engines.
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How to Increase Google Page Rank
Visit any internet marketing forum and you are bound to find at least a few discussions on Google page rank. But what exactly is Google Page Rank and what do you need to do to increase it?
First of all Page Rank is a value that Google assigns to a web page based on the importance of the page. It is determined by the number of incoming links to that web page and few other factors including the page rank of the page giving the link to you.
There has been discussion recently asked to the importance of page rank. However one thing to consider is this, if Google thinks page rank is important than page rank is important.
Remember Google gets over 65% of all the search traffic on the Internet every day. If you were to take 10 websites that were all optimized for the same keywords, typically you would find that the page with the highest page rank would rank higher in the search engine results than the other pages.
* So what are the best ways to increase your Google Page Rank?
1. One of the first things you should do is aim to increase the numnber of backlinks that you have pointing to your website. This fact alone can increase your link popularity and ultimately increase your page rank. Combined with that is the fact that the more back links you have pointing back your website for more potential traffic you will get from it.
2. As well as increasing the quantity of links to your website you should also try to get your links on high quality web pages. This means getting your link on pages that are ranked as high or higher than yours. When you do this some of their page rank can be transferred to you which ultimately helps increase the page rank of your site.
There are lots of ways to increase your page rank, but the most common methods are posting in discussion forums that have a high page rank, article marketing, submitting your site to directories, commenting on blogs and distributing press releases.
You should also try to get some deep links in addition to the links to your home page. Deep linking means linking to internal pages on your website as opposed to always linking to your homepage.
There are many other methods that you can use to improve your page rank, but any time you spend on getting links is well spent!
It is worth noting that the page rank displayed on the Google toolbar is not up to date. Although Google is always internally updating the page rank of web pages, the toolbar page rank is only updated every few months.
You should also be aware that just because a web page has a low page rank it doesn’t mean that getting a link on that page isn’t worthwhile. The page rank could increase on the next toolbar update.
Finally, it is worth remembering that a good Google Page Rank on its own is not necessarily going to mean lots of traffic. You also want to ensure that you have chosen good keyword phrases and have optimized your website.
3 Important Questions to Ask Google Analytics
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, June 25, 2011
3 Important Questions to Ask Google Analytics
With dozens of free web analytics tools available in the market, Google Analytics stands out because it provides data like no other tool does. Just add a few lines of JavaScript code to your website’s footer and you have access to a vast amount of metrics you can slice and dice.
This data is useful to develop and implement fresh website marketing strategies and understanding the behavior online of your web visitors.
But before diving into Google Analytics, prepare a list of the most important questions you want answered from this tool:
1. What do you want visitors to do on your website?
Every website has a purpose. It may be to provide information, build a brand or sell products online. Set your goals for the website and build it accordingly.
The Goals category of Google Analytics helps you to understand the number of goals achieved in a day, week or month. All you need to do is set your goal URL in the analytics settings and watch the data pour in. The funnel visualization sub category provides this type data:
* How many visitors completed my goals?
* How many visitors abandoned the goals to move onto other URL?
* Which internal pages did visitors came from to the goal webpage?
2. What is the Visitor doing on the Website?
Analysis of this data enables you to track the visitor’s action on the website. You can find out whether the visitor completed the goal you set. Accordingly you can make the changes which will reinforce goal completion. The content category in the left sidebar of Google Analytics provides important data:
a) Top Content: It contains a list of the content viewed by the visitor, arranged in descending order. This lets you know the most popular pages of the website and how to leverage them.
b) Top Landing Pages: These are the pages visitors land on, before going ahead and browsing the website. You can view the browsing path for each webpage and find a pattern.
c) Top Exit Pages: It contains a list of web pages which failed to generate interest among the visitors and lead them to exit the website. Revamp the exit pages with these details and aim to convert them into your top content pages.
d) Site Overlay: The Site Overlay opens a new web page which contains a small progress bar over every link. This bar shows the percentage of the number of clicks on that link. As the number of clicks on a link increase, the percentage of the progress bar increases.
3. Where is the Visitor coming from?
This is one of the most important data elements you can work on to get insights into the visitor. The ‘Traffic Sources’ category displays the websites and keywords which send traffic to your website. This category can be segregated into:
a) Direct Traffic: This contains the number of visitors who came to the website by entering its URL into their web browser. Direct traffic is also used to determine the popularity of the website.
b) Referring Sites: Referring websites are the ones which link back to a website using some content and a link. The visitors get referenced from the source website and land on the target website using the link provided. Referring websites can be used to judge the success of social media marketing techniques.
c) Search Engines: It contains a list of the search engines which send traffic to the website. Google Analytics also lists keywords which were clicked upon by the visitors. A high percentage of visits from search engines indicate a successful search engine optimization strategy.
The answers to the above questions coupled with custom reports and segmentation provide rewarding insights. These metrics can be used to model the website around the desired goal and achieve higher conversions.
The Google Gadget that Makes Selling Online a Snap
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, June 23, 2011
The Google Gadget that Makes Selling Online a Snap
If one or all of the following applies to you, please raise your hand – “I want to sell something on the Net”, “I have no technical or coding skills”, or “I don’t want to be bothered with a merchant account”.
Do I have your attention now? How about if I told you that there’s a quick and easy solution to your online selling problems? Well, thanks to Google, your prayers have been answered. Google Labs is a testing ground for new services thought up by the geniuses who work there. One of their latest concoctions is called “Google Checkout Store Gadget”. Its basic function allows you to copy and paste some code onto any webpage or blog, and become an instant merchant selling your own products.
Let’s take a look at the “man behind the curtain” to see how it all works. The very first step is to open a Google Checkout Merchant account, which is easy to do by going to http://checkout.google.com/signup Fill out all of the required information, and you’ll also need to input a bank account where your hard earned sales funds will be sent to. Google Checkout will process all incoming orders for you. The orders will appear under the “orders tab”. On another note, make sure to uncheck the box that says, “my company will only post digitally signed carts”, then hit the save button. Also, make sure to write down your “Merchant ID” number as you’ll need it later on.
The next step is done using a Google Docs Spreadsheet which will track all your inventory. Google provides a template that can be copied which can be found here, http://tinyurl.com/yhebl4y . Take out the “dummy” product information and replace it with your own. There are separate columns for each item, even for shipping information. Each product can have its own separate shipping charge if need be. Keep in mind when filling it out that it can be viewed by the general public, so don’t include any private information in it.
After you’ve entered all your items, hit “share” in the upper right hand corner, and publish as a “web page”. Also, check the box that says “Automatically Re-Publish when changes are made.”
Google makes it easy to set up your online store by using http://storegadget.googlelabs.com . It takes you through the process step-by-step, and when finished you click on “start publishing” and select where you’d like to embed the code, for example your website, Blogger, etc. Copy the code and paste it where you want the gadget to appear. There are no coding skills necessary, and anyone can do it. Really, it’s that simple.
If adding to a Blogger Blog, go under “edit layout”, add a “gadget”, then click “add your own”, and paste the gadget code. Now you’re selling items from your Blog that quickly.
So what’s all of this going to cost? There is a small transaction fee charged by Google Checkout for any monthly sales as follows:
* Under 3,000.00 2.9% plus .30 per transaction
* 3,000.00 to 9,999.99 2.5% plus .30 per transaction
* 10,000 to 99,999.99 2.2% plus .30 per transaction
If you’ve been putting off getting up a store front because you thought it was too difficult or technically complicated, Google really has simplified the process. With “store gadgets” even a child can sell online.
For more information see these resources:
* http://googlecheckout.blogpsot.com Checkout Blog
* http://tinyurl.com/ybd8ksk Google Checkout Store Gadget Forum
* http://tinyurl.com/n2c2dy Google Docs blog
Link Building in Online Marketing: Tougher Than It Sounds
You probably don’t need to read the latest advice from the online marketing consultants to figure out the basic idea behind link building. Without links, your site won’t develop authority. Without authority, it won’t move up on the search engines. But even the most savvy online marketing consultant would have to admit that doing that is just not as easy as it sounds.
* More Is Not Better In Link Building
Just going out and getting a bunch of links won’t necessarily help your site. You need quality links to get higher search rankings. But sometimes figuring out what makes one link better than another is tough. This is where you do need to keep up with what the online marketing consultants are recommending or you may just be wasting your time.
* Targeted Anchor Text Is A Must
When you start pursuing links on sites, you need targeted anchor text. However, you don’t want to use the same text everywhere. Google will notice that in a bad way. You want to use two or three different phrases and the proper name of your website. If you can’t get anything but an image link, make sure the site owner puts your anchor text or the name of your site in the ALT tag of the image.
* Pay Attention To Links In And Out
Google looks at the site where your link appears and decides how much benefit your site gets back. A site with a lot of inbound links passes more authority to your site. At the same time, being linked on a site full of low-quality, outbound links probably won’t help you much.
* PageRank Isn’t Everything
Don’t be one of those site owners who sees nothing but PageRank. A site with high PageRank can still have low link value. This is especially true of sites that sell links. Steer clear of sites that use phrases like “sponsored by” or “paid for by.” Google may not let that site pass PageRank at all. Move on. They’re not worth your time.
* Concentrate On Site Relevance
Let’s say your site is about red widgets. You get a link on a site about purple doohickeys. That link isn’t worth as much as one on a site about red widget management. Make sure you’re pursuing links in relevant places and look at how those places are optimized. If a site owner gives you a choice of having a link on a page titled “About Us” or one with the title “About Red Widgets,” which one do you choose? The link on the optimized page, “About Red Widgets,” has more value.
* An Online Marketing Consultant Checks What’s Not Obvious
Take your cue from the pros and check sites in ways that aren’t obvious. For instance, in any search engine, you can type in “cache:” followed by a site url and find out if the site has been indexed and when it was last crawled. But what do those dates mean?
Chances are good that if the site hasn’t been crawled in 30-45 days, it’s not a good place for a link. But some domains have more value than others. For example, links from .edu domains are better than from a .com, but .info is worth less. All these factors should be weighed in judging a site’s worth in your link building efforts.
* Does Social Networking Matter?
We’ve all seen the little link bars under blog posts and in forums asking people to Digg or Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. Do you need to try to get links in places where social networking can happen? Yes. Alone those links may not have a lot of value, but Google is increasingly looking at the “active Web” in determining site authority.
It’s time consuming, but participating in forums and social sites and getting blog owners to run your articles with your linked anchor text included can be worth your time. But remember, relevance is a basic rule in online marketing consulting.
* Are You Getting Clean Links?
When you get a link on a site, do you go look at the page’s source code? Is there anything extra in the “href” tag on the link? Is the site using redirect code? Is there a “nofollow” in the site’s meta data? If there is, the link is useless to you. It won’t pass any authority to your site because that code tells the search engines not to follow the link. Make sure you’re getting clean links.
When you’re on a tight budget and trying to develop your site and get higher search rankings, it can be a tough decision to work online marketing consulting into your thinking. The Web used to be pretty much a do-it-yourself place. That all started to change in 2004 when people began talking about “Web 2.0.”
It’s harder than ever to judge quality link building in the new world of Web applications and social networking. You can do it, but try to stay up to speed on what the online marketing consultants are recommending as good strategies. The Web is changing all the time. Good link building takes time and effort; you don’t want to waste those any more than you want to waste money during hard times.
“5 Tips on How To Use Google Sidewiki Efficiently”
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
“5 Tips on How To Use Google Sidewiki Efficiently”
Google launched Sidewiki on 23rd Sep 2009 as a part of its toolbar. Google Sidewiki appears as a sidebar in the browser and allows visitors to comment on any webpage. Its main aim was to collect useful information on any webpage from people around the world and therefore lead to better user experience.
For example, a person searching for a local restaurant can see its review in the sidebar by the previous diners.
Google Sidewiki comprises of an algorithm which pulls out the most useful and valuable comments from its database. This ensures that a visitor will see the most relevant comments on a webpage. Listed below are 5 steps for using Google Sidewiki efficiently.
1. Get Started With Google Sidewiki
Sidewiki is available in the options tab of the Google toolbar. Simply download the Google toolbar and select the option to integrate Sidewiki using the checkbox. It appears as a blue sidebar in the browser which slides open when you click on it. Google Sidewiki works perfectly well in Firefox. Although, Google’s own browser, Chrome seems to be having some issues in integrating Sidewiki.
2. Add Comments on Useful Webpages
Adding comments in Google Sidewiki is extremely easy. You need to log in to your Google account and click on the “Make an Entry” link which appears at the bottom of the sidebar. Enter your comments and publish. It is advised to add something which ads more value to the content. If your comment is relevant to the topic, then it can be placed on the first page of Sidewiki for that web page, unless you are the website owner.
3. Claim Your Position At The Top Of All Comments
If you want to place your own comment at the top, you need to verify ownership of the website by using Google Webmasters Tool. If verified, as the page owner your entry is placed at the top entry for that page. The top slot can be used to leave a note for anyone who is yet to comment.
4. Share Your Comments With Everyone
Each comment in Google Sidewiki has the option of being shared on Twitter, Facebook or emailed to any user. This enables everyone to read the Sidewiki entries without using the Google Toolbar. This option is very useful if your web page has received some great comments from visitors. Sharing these comments will pull readers from others streams like Twitter and Facebook onto your website.
5. Flush Out Negative Comments By Blocking Sidewiki
Google Sidewiki does not provide an option for blocking or deleting negative comments on a webpage. Many users have expressed their displeasure with Google for not providing an option for this purpose. If your web page is inundated with negative or irrelevant comments which are harming your website, you can block Google Sidewiki. This can be done by switching from normal http:// to secure https:// pages.
Google Sidewiki is not the first of its kind. One of the first commenting add-on, Third Voice was launched way back in 1999. AddATweet and Kutano are plug-ins which can be installed on your browser and let you tweet comments on a webpage.
Despite many competitors, Google Sidewiki has risen to become the most popular commenting tool of its time. Start your week by experimenting with this comment tool.
What Strategic Link Building Means To You?
Strategic link building can gratify your desires to make it big online. Despite the fact that you might find that even a minor tweak in your site can get you enough traffic through search engines, there are other more sensible procedures to use your time and money to ensure a high influx of target traffic. For one, you could incorporate your link building campaign with competitive intelligence and see the change. Achieving this will not only double, but triple your conversion rate.
* Strategic Link Building: How To Use It?
We all know that link building is related to SEO. This is why many web users also fail to see that link building can have a separate strategy away from search engine optimization as well. By itself too, strategic link building can get you a lot of traffic for your website. Let’s discover how:
The first approach is straightforward to use. Go browsing the on the internet and zero in on the sites you like. If you like them, in all probability your visitors will like them too. Once you have a list of some great sites, set them in priority and choose the number of sites you’d like to link with.
Request a reciprocal link or a one-way link from these site owners. As all websites might not respond favorably to your request, it’s advisable to request links from a number of sites. With time and effort, you’ll notice that websites won’t refuse your requests as often.
While you’re sending requests for links, be certain you let those sites know that you’ve visited their site, liked what you saw, and find that a link with them would benefit both parties. This will make your e-mail sound more sincere and not a spammish.
The second strategic link building method involves submitting articles to free content sites. By doing this, you’ll reach those sites, e-zines and newsletters where you’ll get a amazing chance to market yourself though the utilization of your resource box at the end of each and every article you write.
With each article that you write, you can do some strategic link building by placing your website URL into the resource box. Your prospective clientele will read your articles, and if they like what they read, should click over to your website and view what you have to offer.
The third strategy involves writing a press release. If it’s very good and gets publicized on numerous websites, you might even get to publicize your work and website on TV or even in a nationwide magazine. You could begin with writing press releases for the community media in the beginning.
The fourth strategy entails posting to forums and news groups. It’s an easy and fun way to make strategic links. While going about it, be honest. Seek to post in only those forums that you like, and those that deal with topics you believe in.
The fifth strategy is to use competitive intelligence to give a boost to your strategic links. You could use the Google toolbar to know the keywords that your competitors are using, and also to know the websites that are sending target traffic to your competitors.
You’ll have to use the link called “Backward Links” on the tool bar for this work. Many of such competitive intelligence tools could help you to monitor your competitor’s traffic sources. All in all, strategic link building can make you a favorite with search engine spiders, and enable your website pages to enhance in the rankings as well.
On Google Docs
Google Docs has been around for some time now but until recently I’d never managed to find a use for it in my life and my lack of experience with the service means I’ve not felt confident enough to recommend it to readers. We are currently going through the process of getting another shop up and running in Newton Abbot which has necessitated several people working on the same few spreadsheets (costing exercises, proposed time sheets and so on) from several different locations. Google Docs has worked out perfectly for this task.
To get started, set up a free Google Account (if you don’t already have one) at http://docs.google.com. From there you will now be able to create an online Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation. As well as then giving you access to these documents from wherever you are in the world, you also have the added advantage that you can choose to share them with any number of different people. Those that you trust to make their own changes can then also edit the document, even at the same time as another user.
There are three primary types of file that you can work with:
A) Word Processed Documents
* Either create a document from scratch or upload an existing Word, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or plain text file. Files can also be saved back in to these formats for distribution in more conventional formats.
* Files are created using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Those familiar with Word should have no problems using this and similar formatting and insert tools are provided.
* Each document can have a maximum size of 500kb plus up to 2mb per embedded image.
B) Spreadsheets
* Documents can be created from scratch or imported from Excel, OpenOffice, CSV or a plain text file. In the same way as with documents, work created in the Spreadsheet can also be saved back in to those formats.
* The layout and navigation is very similar to Word and the previously mentioned formatting and formula editing tools are provided.
* The spreadsheets you can create can be up to 256 columns, 200,000 cells or 100 sheets; whichever is reached first.
C) Presentations
* Work can be imported and exported in PowerPoint format along with the facility to save as a PDF file.
* A familiar looking WYSIWYG editor is provided to allow you to easily format your slides as well as inserting images and videos. Those used to using Word or PowerPoint shouldn’t have any issues.
* Presentations can be a maximum of 2mb in size when uploaded.
I have been massively impressed with how fully featured the Google Docs applications actually are, even though nothing needs to be installed or downloaded. The sharing functionality which is incredible and really helps Google Docs to shine; it’s quite surreal to be working on the same document as someone else and seeing the changes they are making in real time. A revision history helps keep track of amendments that have been done on a document as well as rolling it back if necessary.
Since all the work you create is saved online there are potential issues with regards to privacy and security however I don’t believe that most would have any real cause for concern. Members of MI5 may want to consider sticking to conventional offline storage methods for the time being, although that having been said, it is much harder to leave an online document on the train.
How to get Started With Google Analytics
* Set up a Google account
If you do not already have a Google account you will need to set up an account to continue -click on the link “Sign-up Now” and complete the requested information.
Once your have established an account, login. Click on the “Sign Up” button and you are on your way. It is important to note before proceeding that you must be the owner of the website that you are wishing to track or have the permission of the website owner.
Blog sites such as WordPress often will have resources that will allow you to place code on your particular Blog page(s).
* Setup Google Analytics
You will be directed to a couple of input forms that will ultimately provide you the coding to produce tracking data for your website.
- General Information – On this page you will be asked to submit your website’s URL, a name to serve as a domain identifier and finally your country and time zone. (You can elect to identify your locality based on your physical location or your target audience/primary user location.)
- Contact Information – This will simply request your name and your physical location.
- Accept User Agreement – Naturally, Google will request that you approve their Terms of Service. If they are acceptable to you check the box and click on “Create New Account”.
- Add Tracking – Finally, Google Analytics will produce a Javascript code for your domain. This should be added to each page of your website at the very end of your page coding between and .
* Tracking your website
Once you have inserted the information onto each page, you will return to the Google Analytics page. Click on the link for the website you are wishing to review. This will bring you to the main “dashboard” and provide a wide range of general information including – daily usage, bounce rate, new visits, geographic locality of users, most viewed pages, etc.
You can receive more detailed information by clicking on various menu items. Detailed information will include specifics like what browser your visitors were using, by what means they accessed your page (directly, search engines, etc.), what keywords were used when accessing via a search. Google Analytics offers an area for users to establish goals to focus on specific areas of interest and particular campaigns.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool which offers the user such a wide range of in depth data the greatest risk is becoming overwhelmed by the amount of information received.
“Five Tips To Increase Your Backlinks”
Getting a top position in the search engines is no easy task. The key to achieving this is constantly building links to your site – here are five simple strategies…
1) Put Pen to Paper
Whatever industry or niche you’re in, you should have an above average knowledge of that topic, so put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard!) and write some informative short articles (300 – 500 words) that would appeal to your target market. You can either syndicate these articles through article directories, or head to the publishers and try to get them published on high ranking sites. Doing both is always a good idea. Every time your article gets published, you score free links – so get going now!
2) Social-ize…
Explore the realm of social bookmarking and get your links featured on as many social networks are possible. The potential for a viral linking explosion is huge in any social network, so work on a good value offer to promote to these networks (something free and useful).
3) Break Into the Forum Community
By registering on, and actively participating in forums that are relevant to your niche, you can quickly build up the number of backlinks to your website using your signature file (provided that they allow this and that the links are “dofollow”). Whilst the “SEO weight” of these links is debatable, you still get the benefit of publicity and who knows, you could learn a thing or two whilst online! A word of warning though – don’t spam the forums with rubbish comments purely to score backlinks to your site – you’ll get kicked out pretty quickly.
4) Follow Some Blogs
Blog commenting is quite a popular link building technique in the SEO community. You simply follow some popular blogs in your niche or industry, and provide constructive comment where suitable, leaving your link in the comment. Make sure that the blogs are “dofollow” type, as the “nofollow” ones are useless.
5) Differentiate or Die
This classic business phrase has a slightly different meaning in terms of link building. When building links (whatever method you may use), always try to differentiate your anchor text used across the web – at least to a certain degree. Having identical links and anchor text all over the web is likely to raise a brow with the search engines.
* Most importantly, commit to the journey of link building
The best link building strategy is a long term, consistent one. Set a target for how many links you want to build monthly, and aim to achieve this amount every month. Be patient and have a little faith – your hard work will be rewarded.
Google 360 Street View
For the good of mankind Google need to let the rest of us know exactly what they do to come up with such fantastic and innovative ideas. For now I will have to be content with the constant stream of material they provide me with for these articles. The most recent offering that has me climbing the walls in excitement being “Google Street View”.
I can practically imagine the meeting in which an employee stood up and proclaimed “let’s drive specially modified cars down every street in the entire world and create a three dimensional virtual representation that anybody can then browse at home for free”. In any other company you would undoubtedly be ridiculed but at Google this idea was taken on board and followed through so over a period of two years practically every major city in the developed world has been captured.
By now most computer users will have used Google Maps which has a birds-eye view of almost every square-inch of the planet. “Street View” enhances this is giving you a street level 360 view of your chosen location so can take a look around as if you were actually there.
This world was created by the vehicles photographing their surroundings at 30 to 60 foot intervals along each piece of road they are driving on, the result allows you to view the world 360 degrees horizontally and 270 degrees vertically. Additional freedom to explore is given by simply clicking the direction in which you wish to move down the street or even take a corner when you reach a junction.
The UK maps only came online very recently so the coverage is fairly limited, there isn’t any coverage of my local area in the South West. Cities added in the United Kingdom currently include London, Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Bradford, Scunthorpe, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Birmingham, Coventry, Liverpool, Southampton, Belfast, Cardiff, Swansea, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.
Number plates and faces have been removed to give users the opportunity to remove any views that are deemed inappropriate, however ‘Street View’ has given the campaigners involved with the ever present privacy debate yet more ammunition. The watchdog organisation “Privacy International” based here in the UK has issued a formal complaint to the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) requesting the service be switched off pending a full investigation. These concerns have been sparked by 200 complaints by the pubic who believe their likeness is verifiable despite the facial recognition software blurring their faces.
It seems odd to me that these two hundred individuals didn’t simply click the ‘report an image’ button to have their image removed permanently but instead choose to locate the address for Privacy International to compose a strongly worded letter of protest. For the sake of the other 60,954,800 people in the UK who haven’t felt the need to complain I hope that the service remains online as provided the privacy of the individual continues to be respected via face blurring and manual image removal tools I don’t see there being any real cause for concern.
To get started simply visit http://maps.google.com or alternative the feature is also accessible directly from the fantastic Google Earth which can be downloaded for free from http://earth.google.com
“10 Steps To Getting The Click”
There are a number of steps a webmaster can take to encourage visitors to “click” on a link or graphic located on their website. The following steps will help “get the click”…
1. Colors
Use contrasting colors for links. This makes the links easier to discern from other text on a web page. Also, avoid placing links against a patterned background, as it will make it much more difficult to read the link text. Bottom line, the link color should stand out from the rest of the web page, and be easy to locate.
2. Link Traits
Underlining is still the universal indication of a link. Using the “underline” for links will send a clear message to website visitors about which text on the webpage is just text, and which text is actually a hyper-link. And along this line of thought, you should avoid using underlining for text that is not a link, just to avoid confusion.
3. Visible
Make all the links visible. Do not hide the links or navigation on a web page. Avoid using scripting to display links, as these links will not be visible to website visitors who have turned scripting off in their browser for security reasons.
4. Textual
Text links have a higher rate of clicks than linked images. The one exception is typically a “Buy Now” button, which tends to be more effective than text-only “Buy Now” links. Keep this in mind when creating a linking scheme for your website.
5. Consistent
The location of links should be consistent as the visitor moves from page to page through your website. Do not move links around as the content of the web page changes.
6. Position
Place important links in a location that is easy for the website visitor to see without having to scroll. Position important links “above the fold” on the website.
7. Font Style & Size
In order to make links easy for the visitor to see, be sure to use a font style and size that can be easily read.
8. Graphic Links
If you use image links, the clickable graphics should be vibrant and should stand out from the other content on the page. Use bright or bold contrasting colors for the graphic. Be sure to include appropriate ALT text for each linked image, so the visitor will have an indication of the material being linked to as they move their mouse over the graphic.
9. Split-Test
Conduct split-testing by changing colors and moving links around, and then monitor and track which options and locations result in the highest number of clicks. What may seem intuitive is not always as obvious as you might think.
10. Fresh Eyes
Ask a friend or family member to navigate your website. It may surprise you to learn what they see and where they click. A fresh set of eyes will give a good indication of how others will perceive your website and the clickable content.
Milestone Tracking with Google Analytics
Web analytics is a valuable tool for website performance monitoring and measurement. Website owners and administrators prefer to use Google Analytics, in particular, because of its easy-to-use features that simplify website tracking, analysis, reporting, and corrective activities.
Google Analytics has a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) that makes it popular among expert and non-expert website operators. A wide range of features — advanced segmentation, e-commerce tracking, analysis tools, and APIs – provide accurate data gathering and reporting.
Why are tools such as Google Analytics important for website performance tracking? In the old days, website owners have no accurate means to gather data and assess the successes or failures of their websites. Google Analytics tracker scripts which are embedded into website pages gather relevant data for each accessed page. This data is interpreted and presented to website owners in varying perspectives, trends or patterns. The resulting data aid website owners in assessing whether traffic generation strategies, marketing campaigns, or whatever business goal they have set, are effectively achieved or not.
* Intelligent Data Mining and Analysis
Google Analytics is popular with website owners because it is easy to deploy and is able to gather accurate statistics on website performance. It can generate accurate reports and present it in a way that is understandable to technical and non-technical users.
Depending on the goals of the business, there are several features in Google Analytics that are useful for goals or performance tracking. Here are a few of them:
1. Customized segmentation: Website owners can use segmentation to focus on monitoring website data relevant only to the site’s business goals.
2. API packs for data manipulation and tracking: The Data Export API allows client applications development that can be integrated into Google Analytics data transformations, while the Tracking API allows for customization of the way the tracker script gathers data.
3. Analytic tools: The core strength of Google Analytics comes from the use of statistical methods making use of multiple dimensions, filtering and pivot tables, among others, to mine relevant data.
* Performance Monitoring Flexibility
Google Analytics provides customization of data variables useful in aligning monitoring activities with business goals, which are then sent as reports to website owners in aid of decision-making. The bottom line is that only needed data are presented in custom reporting, giving the convenience of browsing only useful data instead of a multitude of unnecessary information.
* Performance monitoring is made flexible and can be deployed in any of the following scenarios:
1. E-commerce monitoring: It is possible to correlate e-commerce transactions with targeted keywords and marketing campaigns, and measure customer engagement with the site, as well as identify new sources of revenue.
2. Multi-channel tracking: It allows tracking not only traditional channel access but also other sources such as mobile phones applications and websites.
3. Benchmarking and Goal comparison: Threshold levels can be tracked from sales to conversions, making it possible to assess the current performance of the website.
Using the same infrastructure the supports the Google search engine, Google Analytics assures integrity of the data gathered, as well as the privacy of visitors to the website. Together with its multiple features and ease of implementation, this is one analytic tool that can really support comprehensive and accurate site performance appraisal.
“Generate Backlinks To A Weblog In Natural Way”
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, June 11, 2011
“Generate Backlinks To A Weblog In Natural Way”
One of the toughest areas of gaining publicity for a weblog is ranking in nature for targeted key phrases. If you have only started your weblog newly, you are likely competing alongside weblogs which have been around for many years, with countless entries already listed and ranking high inside the major search engines.
It may be daunting in the beginning – a thousand-entry disadvantage right from the beginning – but with the proper blogging tactic it is potential to outrank any older competitors with only a fraction as numerous posts and backlinks.
How? It is all about quality, and the tipping point. If you maintain a very high quality weblog, your posts are picked up much more often than the ones of a relatively high quality weblog. The online audience is discriminator for that last 10% that bridges the gap between the good and the excellent.
Good content? It will go for miles, making the best way through social media sites plus perhaps several social bookmarking services.
Excellent content? You will rapidly see good – high quality articles and blogposts rank at the frontpage of social bookmarking sites, attracting much more traffic than their mildly successful competitors. Building natural backlinks is about that one thing: quality. Like several search engine optimization pursuits, it is potential to increase your way to the top spot with low quality work, but it places you in a position that is very difficult to maintain.
Low quality work just goes so far, particularly when it is spread sparingly. Give it some thought when it comes to a highly trained group of troopers facing off against an untrained military. One has influence in numbers, but is rapidly spread apart and controlled. The other is powerful not only in mass but in relatively small quantities.
While the massive military can manage ground, it is rapidly pushed away by the good – high quality troopers. Take care of your content in the same way. Whenever you are looking to get backlinks, concentrate on using good quality content to achieve your target. While countless low quality weblog posts spread over various weblogs can provide your site several linking power, they are rapidly brought down by one well-targeted opponent.
Utilize a direct, high quality method. Generate backlinks through the work of others; submit high quality content to social bookmarking sites and allow the users spread it for yourself, all through their enthusiasm.
One well written article will spread 100 times further than 10 low quality written ones, and is definitely the better backlink tactic. So next time you may need to build backlinks for your weblog or site, concentrate on the 10% content gap that actually matters. Low quality content can only be spread through brute force and ridiculous quantities of work, and is rarely a cost efficient option.
Good quality work goes far, but often falls short with regards to climbing to the top spot.
Good – high quality work may travel through social media sites, social bookmarking sites, and eventually through sheer word of mouth. That is the kind of content that builds weblog backlinks, and that is the kind of content that you need to be focusing on.
Google Analytics: Advice
As a freelance SEO consultant I always set my clients up with a Google Analytics account. This enables them to keep track of what progress is being made and adds transparency to the relationship. However, there are usually a fair amount of questions directed my way as how to understand the data, and what exactly they should be looking for or expecting to see. The main aim of using Google Analytics is to keep an eye on traffic. Not only does this mean seeing how many visitors your site is getting, but also seeing where they are coming from both in the geographical sense, and via other sites on the internet. This article goes through a few basic things can help someone who is unfamiliar to Google Analytics:
* The Dashboard
This is the first page that you will see when you enter the report. It is there to give you an overview on what is going on, and typically includes; Visitor Numbers, Site Usage Data, Unique Visitor Numbers, Map Overlay and Page View details. Any of these modules can be removed and if you’d prefer to include something else in the dashboard e.g Keyword data then you can. To add another module to the dashboard, simply view the report in question and click ‘add to dashboard’.
* Visitors Vs Unique
Visitors At the top of the dashboard you should see a large line graph spanning the page. This graph shows you the amount of visitors or ‘hits’ your website has received. The standard display shows data from the previous month, with points for each day. This can be programmed to display whatever time period you prefer. You can also view time periods from the past to help compare past traffic levels against the present figures. This data shows the total number of visits and will include yours. The number you should really focus on however, is the amount of unique visitors. To get a more accurate view, you can block certain IP addresses from the report.
* Traffic Sources
For anyone involved in SEO this is the really interesting bit. It is crucial for any online marketing that you can keep an eye on where the traffic is coming from, and also see what keywords are sending traffic from the search engines. If you are fortunate to spot a dramatic spike in traffic numbers this report will identify where they have come from. With regards to keywords, you can go into quite a lot of detail and find out not only which phrases send you the most traffic, but which ones are actually converting into customers. This is vital if you are engaging in pay per click advertising when each click is costing you money.
* Site Usage
This is the bit that confuses most people. Once you understand what’s being reported you will find this information extremely useful as it lays out a very detailed report on what people are looking at, and for how long. The three most important things you should be checking are; Bounce Rate, Average Page Views and Average Time On Site. If your site is doing well, you should expect to see a low bounce rate, a relatively high average page view and again a relatively high average time on site (over 2-3 mins is good!). For poor performing websites the bounce rate is often very high, i.e people are clicking on the website and ‘bouncing’ straight off.
Google Adwords for Your Internet Based Business: The Upside and Downside
When people need information on any subject today, the first place they will look for it is on the internet. One of the best things to come out of the internet revolution is the search engine and the most popular search engine is Google.
Having the internet and Google has made for a quick and easy method of finding out whatever it is that you want to know. Not only does Google make it very easy to search for information but it also allows for fast growth of an internet based business for anyone who chooses to use Google Adwords as a means of advertising.
If you have never heard of Google Adwords this is a pay-per-click program that was started by Google ten years ago and it can be used to generate traffic to your website and increase the number of sales that you make. The way it works is that an internet business owner will pay Google for the amount of exposure Google gives them on the search engine.
There is an upside as well as a downside to using Google Adwords that you should be aware of before jumping in and using this type of advertising:
1. On the upside Google Adwords reaches an enormous audience. According to fairly recent research approximately 65% of all internet users will resort to Google when searching for information of any kind.
With this type of exposure one would automatically assume that by using Adwords advertising on Google your website would be displayed and bring interested buyers to your website, people who will purchase the products that you have on offer.
The advantage of this is that even if you are running your business on a limited budget you can still get your brand out there at least in the online world. By setting up your adverts and your landing pages correctly you are likely to not only recoup your advertising outlay but make a good profit as well.
One other good thing with using Adwords is that you only pay per click. In other words Google will only charge you when someone clicks on your link so no clicks no charge. Remember though that the position of an ad on the Google search page is dependant on the budget you specify and that is something else to think about. If you set the budget at 1 cent per day don’t expect your ad to be positioned in a prominent place as budgets can go as high as $100 per day and those people are going to get much better exposure.
With Google Adwords you have the flexibility to make alterations according to what you prefer – this is something that you cannot do with other forms of advertising and it only takes about 15 minutes to set up an ad on Google Adwords so it is no big deal to make frequent changes to it if you so desire. You also have the option of a multitude of languages and this allows you to cater for a niche audience.
Here is the downside!
One of the biggest downsides to using Google Adwords is that you will not be able to get any information on how well your competitors are doing. Google has a policy of not sharing this information and this can make it a bit difficult to strategize the best way to advertise effectively.
The other downside is that with Google Adwords you are very limited with the amount of copy space that you can use. You have only seventy characters with which to catch to prospective customers’ attention and this can be very difficult to achieve at times.
Even though there are these downsides when using Google Adwords it can still be a very profitable method of promoting your internet based business as it gives plenty of exposure especially with the internet being as overcrowded as it is today.
GoogleApple War: What does it all mean?
For those who have been living in a cave, Google recently bought AdMob, the small but highly innovative mobile advertising company for the extremely inflated price of $750 Million. That is the gross national product of the country of Kiribati, a small country made up of a bunch of atolls. While AdMob hadn’t quite made anywhere around that amount of revenue, Google wanted to gobble it up before someone else did and to have a quick way to access the growing revenue stream available on Mobile Applicatications. Part of this strategy was to be able to access the significant population of IPHONE users. However, recently Apple came out with new developer rules that will prevent ADMob and Google Adsense from being displayed on iPhone applications… and thus a significant issue with ADMob’s revenue stream. However, perhaps things aren’t as they seem…
Let’s make this really clear, Apple is looking to break into the advertising and eventually search market. Google, as the all encompassing leader of search clearly dominates the market. However, they recently also decided to get into mobile market with the Google Android system, which while itself doesn’t make that much money for the company, the offshoots such as the product development, application development, google interfacing and even their own google nexus phone has been a significant success. In fact, according to most reputable reports, the open-source android phones are taking over as the dominant force in the market, pushing out Apple. Apple, ain’t happy about their market share being taken. They saw themselves as dominating the mobile space for a long time to come. Don’t forget also that Apple had actually wanted to buy ADMob, but the $750M price tag was way too high – they bought a competitor with just as much revenue and potential, it seems for a significantly lower price tag of $250M.
While some people might say this is a stab at Google for getting into “their business”, there is much more here than meets the eye. Apple has no reason to actually allow Google Adsense onto their applications – because they don’t make a single dollar from those ads. Since Apple is making their own system, they need to ensure that the only way to run advertising on the system is through them. It’s pretty damn simple – Google already has an extensive database of advertisers, and they would easily overshadow any attempt by Apple to compete with them even on their own platform. This wouldn’t fare very well for Apple, if in a year a report came out that not only was Google Android overtaking Apple iPhone, but that the predominate type of advertising on the IPHONE was actually Google.
What is strange about this mobile advertising war is the investment versus the actual possible revenue being made. Everyone is talking about mobile advertising on applications and application development as if it is the “end-all” of advertising and will take over advertising left and right. However, people ten years ago pushed application advertising and ad-supported applications as the method that would take over interactive advertising. Now it’s almost impossible to find any program that actually does this and the predominate type of advertising is in the browser.
I honestly think that this is a very possible future for mobile also. As mobile devices get bigger, as the web integrates with mobile more and more, there will be a growing seamless interaction between the two mediums. In fact, if you think about it, a great portion of the “internet” users are really “mobile” – laptops are a “mobile” device of sorts, and they have become smaller and smaller, while phone screens have become bigger and bigger. At some point in the near future they will meet in the middle and we will have laptop/netbooks that are nothing but combinations of mobile phones, laptops that do everything. Most people that I know who have android phones and iPhones spend quite a bit of their time, browsing the web using it as a “little computer” of sorts and see all the banner and other type of ads made specifically for the websites.
So, does this war really matter? Perhaps for the short term, but within a few years, I can’t see it will really matter except to corner a very small part of the marketshare. Mobile as separate entity, with its own features (mobile billing, mobile applications) will become part of the entire interactive, internet, web-process. No one actually believes that ADMob was worth $750M, but sees it as one chess piece in a greater strategy that both these companies have to dominate the web. This has little to do with “Mobile”.
The Power of Google Analytics
Internet marketing efforts need to be tracked so you know if you are using your resources wisely. Google analytics is a good, free tool you can use to track traffic sources, conversion rates, etc.
Make sure you have Google analytics or some other type of analytics installed on your website.
- Traffic Sources
You want to know where your traffic is coming from and where it is not coming from. This will help you allocate your resources properly. Google Analytics is able to track where your site visitors are coming from, where they go on your site, etc.
A few examples of where your traffic may come from:
- Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc)
- Pay-Per-Click campaigns
- Twitter, Facebook, etc
- Articles and press releases that include links
- Websites that have your links
- Etc.
Having this information can help you have a more effective Internet marketing plan.
- Easy Come, Easy Go
It is easy to find out where the traffic comes from and what page they leave from. Both of these pieces of information are valuable. Knowing them can help you identify if your Internet marketing strategy is working.
The page people enter your site on is important. You want to make sure they arrive on your website on a page that has a focused message for what they are looking for (most websites have multiple entry points, each focused on a different search term). Pay careful attention to what page your visitors land on and make sure it is well designed and well written.
The page visitors leave your website on is also important because it may identify a problem with your site. If you find that a certain page is the primary exit point you want to see if there are any technical or other issues with that page that make people leave your site.
- Conversion Rates
Though it is important to learn about where your traffic is coming from it is more important to know where your sales are coming from. Conversion rates in Google Analytics are tracked by traffic source. You can see where your actual buyers are coming from so you can put more emphasis on those resources.
Google Analytics is important to add to a website. Learn about your website traffic, conversion rates and more so you can make important tweaks to your Internet marketing strategy. It’s free to use so all you have to do is go for it.
Time Spent In The Google Sandbox: Still Important To Success
Google denies that they sandbox new websites. Yet, webmasters and SEO gurus alike have been frustrated to no end by the sandbox effect noted when a new website is launched. Google does acknowledge that there may be something in the algorithm that penalizes new websites and gives them lower rankings until they have proven their value. The reasons for such a filter are many and include keeping people from putting up multiple sites with links to one another when one website is what they need. Whatever the reasons behind ending up there, time spent in the Google Sandbox is still important to success.
Whether it was a conscious decision on the part of Google owners or not, they have written into the algorithm a set of filters that manage to establish the quality of a website using time-based indicators. These indicators include the age of the web site or domain, the age of different backlinks and inbound links to the site, and other factors. One important feature to note is that not only new sites are found in the sandbox. Older sites that suddenly get a rush of inbound links are often sandboxed while the value of the links is established.
With these points in mind, many who have paid for SEO services and still ended up in Google Sandbox are wondering what they can do to get out. Sadly, the only true way to climb out is to be patient. Time is actually on the side of those who are in the sandbox. There are several reasons for this.
The first reason is that time spent in the sandbox allows the website owner to work on tweaking any problem that is found with the site so that it is 100 percent ready when page rank climbs to a point where new visitors are coming in large numbers. This is the best time to test and fix any programming errors noted.
The second reason is that it allows you to work on the content of your site and any related sites linked to it. On the internet, content is king and Google is no different on that score. New, keyword optimized content appearing regularly with links that go back to a site that has been sandboxed catch attention and increase the odds of getting out sooner. Of course, these links must be relevant to the material on the website to be of any real value.
It gives webmasters time to establish relationships with others that are considered authorities in their fields. These authorities can include links to a site in their own pages. If these individuals are recognized as authorities in their fields, the value of their links increases dramatically.
Trust is an important part of any business relationship. There are some sites on the internet that are trusted more than others. Links from these sites are seen as more trustworthy by the search engine, and can help boost page rank quickly.
Ideally, you should try for a trifecta by seeking out relevant links from sites owned by recognized authorities in the field who have been deemed trustworthy by Google and users doing business with them. These links can combine in an exponential manner to boost a page ranking significantly regardless of the page’s age.
Another trick to consider is not limiting yourself to Google when performing SEO operations. One can be in the Google Sandbox and still get good organic results on other search engines such as Yahoo or Ask Jeeves.
You can also optimize for more long tailed keyword phrases. The sandbox effect only seems to affect sites that use highly competitive keywords. Therefore, if you sell an item that can be described in the keywords, the longer keyword phrases may help increase page rank. Of course, you must choose keywords that users are likely to type into the search engine.
In a nutshell, to take advantage of these time-based indicators, you should:
1. Get links that deliver the most trust, first.
2. Start your website today and also begin your link-building task as well
3. Target quality 4-in-1 links. This means going for links that are Relevant, Authoritative, from Trusted sources and from High page rank pages.
The Google Sandbox is real, despite denials from Google. These filters are part of the algorithm that assigns page ranks and they do penalize new sites that use competitive keywords. They also penalize established sites that enter into link farming agreements and try to manipulate the rankings artificially. The filters are age related for the age of the domain, the age of the links to the pages, and other factors.
The time spent in the Google Sandbox is important for the success of any web based business. To be more precise, what is done during this time is important. This is an opportunity to work out any bugs in your website that could hurt business. It is also an opportunity to establish high quality relationships with other site owners who can provide links to your site that are relevant, authoritative, from trusted sources, and coming from pages that are ranked highly, allowing you to take advantage of their rank until your own comes into being.
Google Instant Means The End Of SEO
Initially, Google’s new Instant Search system could mean a major change in how web surfers look for information online. Instead of typing a search query into Google and then hitting return, and waiting for a list of results, Googlers now see a dynamic list of results as they type. Google considers this a positive step forward in the development of searching. Google claims this new style of response will save between two and five seconds per search query. That potentially means 11 hours are saved every second. but does anyone other than Google really care?
The internet marketing community, however, will never be very enthusiastic about Google Instant. SEO consultants, who try to get sites listed at the top of Google’s organic search rankings, and SEMs, who battle for their clients’ sites to be placed near the top of Google’s Adwords Sponsored Listings, have been blogging and tweeting as if Armageddon is here.
The SEO community is paranoid at the very best of times, and perhaps with good cause as: a small change in the Google algorithm can determine the future of many websites. In this instance, however, the reaction is not necessary, essentially the results are the same, the sole change is you can see potential results of each word as you type it in, so if you are typing in ‘Italian restaurant’ you will observe everything Italian prior to getting to the restaurant results and then you will have to include your location unless you are very flexible about your travel arrangements, so in fact long tail key phrases are far from dead.
And this time round the latest Google scare is ‘much a do about nothing’ or will it be? There isn’t any denying that Google’s original innovation in search transformed how the Internet worked and made the business of finding stuff considerably quicker and easier. It also created an enormous market – one Google still dominates – that allowed companies to market us things depending on whatever we had entered in that box and all was well, for a while.
But something happened. Social networking, social media, whatever you want to refer to it as… suddenly, content was coming right at us, without us even looking for it. We couldn’t escape it. Several hyperactive egotists in each community began curating content and spewing it out to their friends. People were sharing photos, stories and links so we found that we were spending less and less time foraging around for things and increasingly more time sitting back and allowing it to wash over us.
Fast forward to 2010, and we’re being assaulted by more stuff than we could possibly consume. Facebook, Twitter, and email are shoveling pictures and video down our throats more and more quickly. Feedback loops enabled by sharing and retweeting functions imply that each of us has now changed into an over-sharer as well as an over-consumer. If you are not confused and over loaded with information, you soon will be.
Google Instant Search for Marketing
Google recently introduced their “Instant Search” feature which starts to populate search results the instant you start typing into the search box. At the same time, Google suggests alternate search terms as you type to help narrow your search without forcing you to enter entire search phrases.
The main idea behind this new feature is to save users a few seconds on each search and cut down on misspellings for search terms, business names or product names. Users may not notice much difference in their overall experience, however, for small businesses and online entrepreneurs, this new search method carries a few interesting ramifications.
Since Google clearly ranks as the “900 lb. Gorilla” of the online marketing world, acting as de facto gateway to the Web for millions, any change to their system makes businesses nervous. Many have expressed concern that this latest change will force users of Google’s AdWords program, the search giant’s lucrative pay-per-click marketing arm, to pay for more expensive keywords.
They reason that since the most popular search terms appear in the search box first, and that most people will opt to accept Google suggestions, those most popular searches will carry the highest click prices. In other words, businesses that depend on Google to show their ads fear that Google will force them to pay more money by recommending more expensive keyword searches.
I disagree.
The suggested search term feature actually appeared on Google quite a while ago, and all that’s really changed is Google starts to display the actual search results AS you type. With the old 2-step process, Google made suggestions as you typed and then you clicked the search button to see the search results.
Instant Search just creates a FAST way to see the results for different search variations without forcing you to click the button each time to see those results. This process makes it simple to see the results, change your mind, and not wait for the results each time you change the phrase.
My experience shows that most people always start with a broad search and then narrow it by including more descriptive terms (often called “long-tail” keywords) to better find what they want. This new process won’t change that.
In fact, it will give people more chances to refine their searches on-the-fly by providing Google more details of what they want. Instead of posing a threat, I believe this new Instant Search feature creates an opportunity for any business to perform high-speed market research to look for possible opportunities and trouble spots.
The following four steps will help any small business use Google’s new feature for instant results.
1. Go to Google and search for your business as if you were a consumer.
2. Make a note of the keyword suggestions Google offers as you type.
3. See if those suggestions give you any ideas for your own marketing (since they should represent the most popular phrases).
4. Note which competitors show up and where you appear in relation to them.
These 4 simple steps make a great barometer for taking a read on your local market, fast.
Who appears consistently?
Who shows up hit-and-miss or every once in a while?
Who shows up in Google Maps?
If your competitors show up and you don’t, you’ve got some work to do!
Bottom line: as a small business, use Google’s new Instant Search to quickly get the big picture when it comes to your business, industry, and local competition.
The Buzz about Buzz
If you haven’t treated yourself to a lovely shiny new g-mail account, then you are missing out. Not only does it have endless memory, quick processing of large attachments, and a lovely search function of deleted e-mail; it also has a super cool new function called Buzz.
Buzz functions like many other popular networking sites, but it has a few new perks. Instead of friend-ing someone, like on Facebook, with Google’s new Buzz you follow them. So you want to get as many people following you as possible. Start with friends, family, and people you network with regularly on other social web-sites. Now for the cool part: any website that you have attached to your Buzz account generates posts via Buzz. Websites that you can attach to Buzz include Google Chat Status, Picassa, Flickr, posted via Buzz@gmail, Google reader, and Twitter.
Once you have connected any of these websites to Buzz, anything you post on the other website automatically appears as a post on Buzz. Anyone who is following you will be able to see these posts. You get twice as much exposure with half of the effort. You can post information about events, a sale your business is having, or a gig your band is playing. Buzz will get the information out.
Buzz also has some other nifty features, similar to other networking sites. You can comment on someone else’s post or a post of your own. You can like a post. You can re-share a post, e-mail a post to anyone (whether they have Buzz as well or not), and finally, and probably the most cool, is one of your contacts is online and has their G-mail account open you can reply to the post by chat, which is conveniently built into G-mail’s website.
- How Does This Affect Pay Per Click Marketing?
Buzz taps into Google’s AdSense program with a more refined algorithm. If someone clicks on an add while on a Buzz screen, then the logic states that their friends might also like similar ads, articles, and websites. This adds a powerhouse punch to pay per click advertising. Much like harnessing the power of Facebook, PPC advertisers now have new avenues opened before them. Unlike fishing on particular keywords, potential customers are assisting in the event. Using this analogy it is like having fish help teach you how to fish.
This sort of advertising momentum can take your marketing campaign to the next level. Couple this with analytics tools and your PPC approach will be unstoppable. All PPC Google ads permits companies to set their advertising budget down to an exact dollar amount. In fact, the minimum required daily budget to advertise with Google through PPC Ads is one dollar. As always, the advertiser only pays when an ad is clicked, and Buzz doesn’t change that, it only helps to harness the power of social media for the purpose of ad refinement and dissemination.
Tips For Google Adwords
One of the best Google Adwords tips I can give you is to not consider this a do it yourself type of traffic tool. Adwords has many elements to it and if you want to make more money than you spend you will need to find someone, or some course, to teach you how to get the most out of it.
Pay Per click (PPC) can work exceptionally well at getting hordes of very targeted traffic to your website virtually instantly. Of course, you may be asking, if it’s so good, why doesn’t everyone use it?
That is the crux of the matter. PPC is not an easy thing to learn how to do. It will take time and you need to be willing to invest not only the time but the money too. You will need to carefully test and track various elements of each ad that you place. In the start you will spend way more money than you will earn.
Another challenge is that Google isn’t really worried to much about you or your advertising budget, they are more concerned that their searchers get what they are looking for. The searchers on any of the search engines are the real customers and if they don’t find what they want they’ll go elsewhere. That is why Google wants to make sure to keep them happy by providing them with just what they’re looking for.
To do this, Google will periodically change the way they do things. They will rewrite an algorithm or make other changes and if you’re not right on top of those changes you can find that the ad that once made you a lot of money is now costing you a lot of money.
Here are a few tips that you can use to optimize your PPC campaigns:
1. Find a course or a mentor who can teach you the ins and outs of PPC advertising. If you try to just jump in and figure it all out on your own you had better make sure you have a lot of time and very deep pockets.
2. Carefully choose the keywords you use. Don’t even try to compete for the one or two word keywords since they will almost always have so much competition you’ll be spending way too much per click. Instead focus on the keyword phrases that have 3, 4, or 5 words in them. These ‘long tailed keywords’ can fly under the radar yet still get you some decent click through rates (CTR’s).
3. Always test your ads. You can do this by having several versions of each ad running at the same time. Find out which headlines get the most clicks. Which body text gets the most clicks, etc. Keep testing until you’ve got a winning ad. When testing make sure you only change one element at a time otherwise you won’t know which change really made the difference.
Out of all the Google Adwords tips I can give you the one I think is the most important is to find someone to show you the ropes. PPC is effective if you know how to do it right, but if not it can very quickly become a money pit.
Google’s Need For Speed Means You Need to Check Your Website
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Google’s Need For Speed Means You Need to Check Your Website
Not too long ago Google released a new search tool “Google Instant.” Google Instant tries to speed searches by anticipating what you are going to type next based on what you have searched in the past. When you start typing Google offers you a selection of results and you can watch the results change with each letter typed. Google claims that it will save 3.5 Billion global seconds a day! I don’t know about you but I feel better knowing that I won’t be searching for the same thing fifteen years from now.
Putting aside the privacy issues and the file Google has on each and every one of us, let’s look at how this will affect your website and your search placement. In that same Google interview they stated they will pursue all options to shorten search times. At the top of the list was site load times and robot read times.
We already know there are rules to govern the code to content ratio, keyword density and placement, and content quality but this rule goes right to the foundation of every website. This rule speaks right to the background code, which by the way, has changed a lot over the years. Under this new rule the load and read speeds of your website will have a direct affect on your ranking.
How do you know if your website needs to be updated?
1- Web code standards and browser capabilities have advanced a lot in a short time. If your site is pushing five years since the last tune up, it is time to look.
2 – Was the original site written with outdated or obsolete WYSIWYG software? These are notorious for adding tons of erroneous code (Google already penalizes for this).
3- Copy placement. Search bots only read so many words in to a website. It is important that these be the important words. We call that “strategic copy placement.”
4- On-page optimization. Is your website easy for Google to find and more importantly, understand where you want to be listed? Older sites have little or no optimization at all. This is especially true with WYSIWYG and templates.
How do you fix this problem? Sorry, there is no short answer. The best thing to do is find an experienced website designer and get an evaluation. Not an artist turned developer but a good design / code / search optimization team. I have argued this point many times in the past and won’t go into here. But, other than the graphic design there are two other components to a website. These two parts together are the most important components. First, the way the site is written and second is the search optimization, which includes current market research.
What the code should look like, again that is too deep to cover here. We coined a phrase a couple of years ago “search engine positive code”. This is how your website is presented to the search engines. You need to give it to them the way they want it. This is now critical to website placement and that is important in this competitive environment.
Once you have the evaluation tackle it one step at a time. You can re-do the code with minor changes to the design. Another option is to just re-do the index page. The occasional overhaul is part of the normal evolution of maintaining a website. Technology changes and you have to also, you can bet that your competition will.
Most people in the world don’t know just what cloud computing is actually. The thought can be extremely confusing, but I will try to apparent that will upward for you personally. Cloud computing is essentially technology that will allow people to usage of making use of selected applications upon just about any laptop or computer. These types of programs won’t have to become attached to your personal computer. Providing some type of computer has Access to the internet it’ll be able to utilize the application form. This is extremely wonderful since you don’t have to be over a certain computer or even spot to take a step. You could take a step which should be done properly aside in the home in lieu of needing to go right down to the work location.
There are many different forms of cloud computing. The previous that individuals can discuss is SaaS. This specific type is really a single request. This kind of computing is fairly easy. While there is just one application it is extremely simple for the business to take care of. This also signifies that the price less difficult below an alternative type with plenty of forms of software. For the client there isn’t an energy production as far as machines or software accreditation.
An additional type of cloud computing will be power computing. Very good regarding cloud computing is booming. This sort of computing is generally used by organizations regarding requirements that aren’t consequently critical. This type of computing generally is a extra type of computing for an organization. Sun, along Microsystems and IBM tend to be 3 firms which can be truly making this type of computing very well liked and has effectives exams designed for the teaching purpose like 000-280 & 000-032. For the reason that acceptance is booming, utility computing could become not only an extra sort of computing device. It may become a core concentrate for a company’s computing wants.
1 / 3, along with the final form of cloud computing being mentioned, is Web services within the foreign. This sort of computing is incredibly close to the kind of computing that is finished with SaaS. On this type of computing the World Wide Web will be used because of its functionality. Applications aren’t actually provided with this form of computing. Providers can provide items for instance discrete organization providers, and other types of APIs that are offered by such techniques for example Yahoo and Google Roadmaps. This type of computing may be used for any number of reasons, and by various firms.
If you would like to know anything about the tests listed below you can easily find it on IBM web site.
10 Steps to Triple Your Prospect Conversions with an Email Mini-Course
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
10 Steps to Triple Your Prospect Conversions with an Email Mini-Course
For years, I’ve been giving away a PDF ebook as my client attraction device to entice prospects to sign up for my list. This strategy has served me well as a way to grow my list. However, what I’ve discovered during that time is that many people download my ebook and then never open it. So, as you might imagine, my rate of converting a customer prospect to a buyer isn’t as high as I’d like.
Just like the people who join my list, I, too, often don’t open a PDF ebook when I download it. What I have noticed, however, is that when I subscribe to an ecourse that someone is giving away as a client attraction device, I’m much more likely to pay attention to it, since I’m getting emails every day with new information in them. And, all indications are that the conversion rate of prospect to customer is higher, as well, for this same reason. Your mini-course helps you automatically build a relationship with subscribers and drive sales of your products and services.
Here’s how you can create your own client attraction ecourse to help you triple your conversion rate:
1. Buy autoresponder system. In order to create your email mini-course, you need to purchase an email marketing system that has autoresponder capability, which is the ability to pre-set emails to go out at a periodic interval when someone opts into a list.
2. Determine your theme and catchy name. Your ecourse needs to have a theme or subject. What is it that you want to teach your prospects? Once you determine the theme, your ecourse needs to have a catchy title. Typically, you’ll want to focus on solving a problem or the result someone receives by enrolling in your mini-course.
3. Create content. Your ecourse should consist of 8-12 emails. The bulk of these emails need to contain valuable, actionable content that will help your prospect solve her problems. In a couple of the emails, you can break up the content delivery by introducing your prospect to other resources you offer that will help them, as well. In my new mini-course, I simply re-purposed a number of articles I had already written, paring them down to 400-600 words each, in most cases.
4. Add your soft sell. Rather than hammering a prospect over the head with sales hype, I did three things in each of the followup emails. First, I included a resource box at the end of the email with a link to the call to action I want my prospect to take or a postscript (P.S.) that included a link to the call to action. Secondly, in the body of the email, I made a natural transition based on the content of the email to ask people to buy the product I wanted them to buy. Thirdly, at the end of each lesson, I added, “In our next lesson, we’ll talk about…” to keep the reader engaged and anxiously awaiting the next email.
5. Format and upload your ecourse. In order to best track your open rates of each segment of the ecourse, you’ll want to format each email as HTML. This means that you’ll want to have a header designed and template created so that you can simple copy and paste the content into a properly formatted HTML template. To increase the likelihood that your ecourse will reach its destination, also format a plain text version of each segment of the course, as well.
Next, create a catchy subject line to entice your reader to open that email. Lastly, copy your ecourse into your autoresponder system and create the followup sequence. Ideally, you want your prospect to receive one email from you for a 8-12 days.
6. Design your opt-in box. Your email marketing program should provide instructions on how to create an opt-in box for prospects to join your list. Typically, all that you want to request of your prospects is a first name, last name, and email address. Once you have created the opt-in box, copy the code you’ll need to add the opt-in box to your web site.
7. Create a graphic. To make your email mini-course more appealing, have a graphic designed that visually represents the ecourse. I simply had a spiral book cover designed that contained my name and the name of my ecourse.
8. Create your landing page. To entice prospects to sign up for your ecourse, you’ll want to create a landing page that “sells” the mini-course. In today’s world, you have to “sell” free just like you do something for a fee, so create a short list of the benefits that someone will receive by signing up for your course, and add the code for your opt-in box. Since anyone opting in for my ecourse is also added to my ezine list, I make sure that all prospects know this at the time they sign up.
9. Copy the course content to your web site. To prevent your prospects from emailing you that they are missing some number of lessons in the ecourse, copy the content to your web site. Then, at the bottom of each email lesson, you can add a note that if they have missed any of the lessons, they can read them on your site. You can create one page for each lesson, or a couple of pages containing a few lessons.
10. Track and measure. The only way to realize the success of your mini-course is to track and measure. Create a simple spreadsheet with the open rates of each email and the unsubscribe rates. If you notice over time that many prospects are unsubscribing from your list when they receive a certain lesson, you need to review the content of that lesson and change it until your unsubscribe rate diminishes. And, of course, you need to track how many sales result from your ecourse.
Create an email mini-course to help you establish a relationship with your prospects and lead them to taking the action you desire. You’ll discover that a mini-course is the most effective way to convert a prospect into a paying customer.
7 ecommerce strategies for standing out in a digital world
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, May 16, 2011
7 ecommerce strategies for standing out in a digital world
Even in a dismal economy internet sales are growing. As people become more confident with ecommerce transactions and savvy with search, selling online just makes good business sense. The drawback is that more and more businesses are vying for a piece of the pie. As your customer reach expands so does the level of competition. The internet is gigantic and your customers are an impatient bunch.
* Be unique or go home
That is why it is so important for web marketplaces and ecommerce stores to differentiate themselves from the crowd. It’s no longer sufficient to declare you have the best prices or selection, because the fact is, your visitors can compare these statements faster than you can spell them out on the page. The good news it that technology and creativity now make it easier than ever for small web stores to offer a shopping experience second to none.
Here are 7 ecommerce strategies for standing out in a digital world.
1. Use expanded descriptions, multiple product views to convey the real value of your products. You wouldn’t nail down shirts in a clothing store so why would you only offer one view of your products? This doesn’t have to use elaborate or expensive technology, multiple views, close-ups and live use photos can provide a lot of information other stores don’t bother to share.
2. Invite customer opinion with customer product reviews and real life testimonials. Consider adding customer comments as audio clips. Adding customers audio testimonials can be a simple as taping a phone conversation. (With permission of course) Using audio clips is simple, inexpensive and does not require technical expertise or expensive online tools. By itself an audio testimonial may not make the sale but it is a very effective tipping tool, helping to nudge reticent buyers over their hesitation and into a sale.
3. Offer relevant information that doesn’t sell. You heard me right, give people information for free without trying to sell them anything. Remember that the main reason people are online is to get information -period. That is the primary goal especially before they buy. Statistics show that the longer people stay on your website the more likely they are to buy from your store (even if they decide to buy at a brick and mortar store) Use an irresistible giveaway to capture emails of people not yet ready to buy and use your content to keep them engaged until they are ready.
You can write articles, give teleclasses, offer whitepapers, provide downloads, share interviews, recipes or helpful hints. Make sure the information is informative, entertaining and relevant to your customers rather than a veiled attempt to sell. People can smell hype a mile away and this is the kiss of death online. Always remember your competitors are only a click away.
4. Get into video. A brief welcome message that shares your value proposition can give s a call to action can engage visitors and move them down the buying path. Use videos to educate your visitors on product uses or assembly. Create a short comparing product features or demonstrate the product in use. Keep your videos short (under 3 minutes) and clear. Host your videos on public sites like Viddler or Youtube and post them on your website. Here are a few examples talking about connecting with your website visitors.
It might seem that video clips within product descriptions are a luxury but I foresee video product descriptions as being the norm within 5 years. According to Internet tracking firm comScore’s Video Metrix, Americans watched about 14.8 billion videos in January 2009, or roughly 101 videos per U.S. Internet user. Todays online shoppers are using alternate avenues like YouTube to research product. Get a jump on the competition by giving your online shoppers a bigger experience, not by lowering your prices.
5. Put a face on your store – people buy form people not computers. Yes they use the computer to do it but they want to know there are real people who will back up their purchases, especially with higher ticket items, or products they are not sure they need. This will become increasingly important in a slow economy because buyers are not as willing to risk a purchase if they feel their concerns will get lost in cyberspace.
Consider adding human pictures to your about us page. Include staff picks or reviews and encourage your employees to write on the blog, social media sites and to contribute articles. After all these are the people your virtual customers will interact with. Don’t hide behind a virtual storefront – don’t be afraid to let your customers get to know the people they are buying from.
6. Make sure your online store has a clear value proposition that speaks to your target market. This value statement must answer the question that is on your best customers mind; “Why should I buy form you over the other guys?” If your website cannot convey this critical piece of information then your visitors will definitely miss it. Your ideal customer should immediately recognize that they are in the perfect place when they land on your ecommerce site.
Many online stores resist crafting a clear value proposition that targets a particular type of customer for fear of alienating other visitors. Look at your statistics and you might see that you make most of your money from a niche group or groups. A clear value proposition targets these customers and tells them exactly why you are the best solution to their problem.
7. Use social media to establish relationships and get feedback. Believe it or not your customers are hanging out in communities online. No, you may not visit Facebook or Linked in but social media sites are doubling every year. They aren’t just for teenagers anymore. The purpose of social media sites is to share opinions and interests. Connect with target market through blogs, twitter, linked in, Facebook, Stumbleupon or any of the dozens of niche social media sites.
Your customers are having conversations with or without you so schedule in an hour a week to schmooze online. This is a way to make connections, not sales – keep it authentic , informative and reap the benefits of worldwide word of mouth referrals.
The way people buy has changed forever with internet ecommerce. The world is literally your marketplace and customers can live just about anywhere. Using just one of these suggestions could immediately increase your ecommerce store profits. Now imagine what implementing all 7 could do!
These simple ecommerce strategies can help your online store stand out in a digital world.
5 Factors That Influence Buying Decisions Online
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
5 Factors That Influence Buying Decisions Online
People who purchase products online aren’t much different than people who purchase off line. They may be a little more cautious with how they spend their money, due to security and privacy reasons, but for the most part they care about the same things, foremost among them being value. The following five factors that influence buying decisions are important considerations if you expect to close the sale on your website.
- Factors That Influence Buying Decisions
Online consumers today are more sophisticated than they were ten years ago, or even five years ago. They’re not afraid to make a purchase online, but they will go out of their way to make sure they get value and are very concerned about privacy and security. If you expect to close the sale on your website then you need to consider the following five factors BEFORE you ever ask for the sale:
* Security
* Privacy
* Value
* Approach
* Emotion
- Customers Buy From Secure Websites
Online consumers are very concerned about security. They’re also educated. They have read up on cyber security and you should too. If you cannot convince your site visitors that your site is completely secure and that their financial information will be handled with care, they will go leave your site and go somewhere else. Security is one of the most important concerns for online consumers, especially today.
- The Growing Concern Over Privacy
In addition to security, online consumers are concerned about privacy. They will guard their e-mail addresses and other personal information with great care. If you want to build trust for your brand then you should start with assurances. Make sure that you put your website visitors’ minds at ease with constant reassurances that their private information will not be sold or shared with third parties.
Regard for privacy online has been growing for the past couple of years. Some European countries have sued Google over privacy issues and Yahoo! announced last December that it will not store search information on searchers beyond 90 days. Privacy is important to online consumers. Having a well thought out and clear privacy policy on your website will go a long way to building trust and confidence in your business.
- What Do You Offer Of Value?
Many consumers would still rather drive to pick up an item for purchase instead of making that purchase online for less money. In order to convince online consumers that purchasing your product online is safer and better for them, you’ve got to go out of your way to establish value in their minds.
Even then, providing a local retail outlet where consumers can order online and pick up their items later is a viable business model and could be the way to go for many online retailers. Still, value is in the forefront of consumers’ minds. In order to get them to purchase online you’ve got to ensure that you offer loads of value.
- What Is Your Approach?
How you approach online consumers determines to a great degree how you build trust. I still see veteran Internet marketers make the mistake of talking down to their customers or making basic assumptions about behavior to that lead to dismissal or rune behavior. Just because a person has not made a purchase in the past does not mean that she won’t make a purchase in the future. But how you treat a consumer with your content may determine whether they do business with you at all – now or next year. Check your approach and ensure that you meet the emotional needs of your readers before you ask for the sale.
- What About Emotion?
People buy for emotional reasons and defend their purchases logically. If you want to close the sale online then you’ve got to make the most basic emotional appeals and meet a real need in the minds of your readers. You have to connect with them on a gut level. Sometimes that takes more than one touch point. Pre-sales is just as important as closing the sale and savvy Internet marketers are learning how to set the stage for the sale down the road by spending a large amount of their time on pre-sales communication that builds trust and confidence.
- Conclusion
Different people buy for different reasons, but at the heart of every consumer action is emotion. If people trust you they will buy from you. If you fail to earn their trust then it doesn’t matter how well you do everything else. These five factors all contribute to whether or not a consumer trusts you enough to exchange their hard-earned money for your product or service.
The Advantages of Using PayPal As Your Shopping Cart
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, May 7, 2011
The Advantages of Using PayPal As Your Shopping Cart
Any e-commerce application needs a good shopping cart to handle any purchases and payments for subscriptions. Of course you want the best shopping cart you can get for your blogs or websites, but there are so many options online, all promising you the world, that it can get confusing. Still wondering what a shopping cart is on website?
There are several points to consider, but the simplest description that all of us will recognize is the shopping cart in grocery stores. While that one has squeaky wheels and gets pushed up and down the aisle, the shopping cart on your website is a set of scripts that track what your customers buy so they can pay for the entire selection with one click.
All the shopping cart does is keep track of any items you have placed in it for purchase. Without a shopping cart your customers would have to pay individually for everything they want to buy. After your customers press the “Buy” button on your site, their transaction is transferred to a payment processor to collect the money owed, send it where it belongs and enables the download if required.
It’s not quite that simple, but it is a quick explanation of what happens behind the “Buy” button. There are several processes that are sending and receiving the request for payment on a mouse click that ends with the download instructions for your customer. It gets confusing when you start searching for a shopping cart for your own sites. A simple search will probably send you several hundred choices, all claiming to be the premier shopping cart for your needs.
An excellent choice would be PayPal’s shopping cart. For several reasons, using PayPal’s shopping cart will streamline your customer’s payment processes by letting you accept credit and debit cards and direct bank account payments. Some benefits for your customers include purchasing more than one item at a time and paying for them with a single click of the “Buy” button. It’s good customer service. You don’t want to irritate customers ready to spend money with you.
Other PayPal benefits for your customer include the ability to browse your entire collection of products and check out a list of what they bought before they click on your “Buy” button, which gives them the opportunity to modify the list. Ease of installation which does not require knowledge of CGI scripting is one big advantage of PayPal’s shopping cart. Opening an account is free of up-front costs and you are charged the same fees charged when you get other PayPal payments.
To find the fee schedule, check out the bottom of any page, even the log in page, for a link to “Pricing” or “Fees.” Some of the technical benefits of using PayPal’s shopping cart include being able to set shipping rates, if necessary, and tax rates. You can let your customers make donations to charities of their choice. You can easily convert your “Buy Now” buttons into “Add To Cart” buttons to make multiple purchases seamless to your customer.
Their free 410-page PDF, “Website Payments Standard Integration Guide,” has all the in-depth information you might need about using “Buy Now” buttons included. You can find a comprehensive list of services on PayPal when you click the tab, “Merchant Services.” If you click on the tab, “Products and Services,” you will find a link to the ebook. For your business records, PayPal will keep detailed transaction records on their website for your use when you need them.
You will also find details needed to integrate PayPal with your site, including how to pre-populate your customer’s sign-up forms. It might be a good idea to download their free PDF User Agreement for your records. You can find a link to the document at the bottom of almost every page on the service. Look for “Legal Agreements” and click that link. PayPal is easy to use with whatever application you need. It has been time tested for a longtime as eBay’s payment processor.
Besides being highly recognizable as something that a lot of people use already and have a comfort zone with, another undocumented benefit of using PayPal’s shopping cart is your own peace of mind in knowing that your business income is in good hands.
Use Coupons to Gain Customers & Create Conversions
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, May 5, 2011
E-Commerce Storeowners: Use Coupons to Gain Customers & Create Conversions
With the current state of the world’s economy, people are routinely looking to do whatever they can in order to save money. People will go to lengths that they previously would not go to so they can save a buck. You can easily make yourself stand out from the competition by offering valuable coupons for your products and services.
Many owners and operators of companies large and small have a tendency to either forget about or overlook the use of coupons as a promotional and marketing tool. Coupons are often thought of as thing of the past, with memories of parents and grandparents huddled over a stack of newspapers, scissors in hand, searching for the next big bargain.
With the Internet becoming the modern marketplace and the slow death of the traditional newspaper, coupons have evolved beyond the print media. The online coupon has become a formidable method of promoting a business while simultaneously saving the cash-strapped general public some money and encouraging competition between businesses.
Coupons are a powerful way of branding and gaining publicity for a business. By highlighting sales and current promotions, you can drive quality traffic to your online store. Traffic originating from a coupon is the kind of traffic that leads to conversions and this is the type of traffic that an online storeowner needs to generate, especially in this current economy.
There are currently a number of coupon sites online and they are becoming increasingly popular. They make their money from selling ads on their sites because of the staggering amount of visitors that check out these sites in search of money-saving purchases. Since the websites are making their money by selling ad space, there are generally no charges or fees for businesses placing coupons on these sites. Not to mention, all of the stores that have coupons on these popular websites are receiving high quality backlinks to their site. This is a surefire way of building links, page rank and climbing up the SERPs (search engine results pages).
A smart coupon strategy is to create a coupon that directs visitors to your Clearance or Sale page where discounted goods are already listed. You do not even have to go out of your way to fabricate a special sale.
The use of coupons can be a highly successful method of promoting your online business. Coupons do not need to be thought of strictly in the traditional sense. There is a whole new market for modern coupons.
The Opportunity of Web eCommerce: Fact or Fiction?
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
The Opportunity of Web eCommerce: Fact or Fiction?
If you own a bricks-and-mortar retail store, a distributorship, or a manufacturing facility, imagine the potential for increased sales if you offered your products to a global marketplace by simply setting up a website with your catalog on it. After installing an ecommerce shopping cart system and the ability to process payments online, some aspiring Internet moguls just sit back and wait for the orders to start flying in. The idea of suddenly having access to hundreds of millions of credit card wielding customers can certainly be intoxicating, but the reality of ecommerce success is that it’s not nearly that easy!
Maybe there’s some glamour associated with being a “renegade entrepreneur”, adopting a take-no-prisoners mentality and making up the rules as you go along. In some cases, being unconventional and aggressive can certainly help an online store stand out in the crowded Internet marketplace, but skipping steps and ignoring proven business principles is a guaranteed recipe for failure.
So if selling stuff on the Web represents a huge opportunity, but most people fail at it, then what does one have to do join the ranks of the successful “webpreneur”? While there are always risks inherent in starting any business, beginning your journey with an up-to-date “roadmap” (or virtual GPS) can help assure that you won’t get lost, miss an ‘exit’, or fail to reach your destination on your way to ecommerce success.
Imagine this scenario (and it happens all the time): An awesome-looking web site with marketable products and competitive prices goes online, but makes no sales or performs far below expectations. What happened? Well, there’s a veritable checklist of possibilities that could explain abysmal sales figures, but it often boils down to two things: a lack of attention to search engine optimization (SEO) and sales conversion factors.
The Essence of SEO and Online Sales Conversion Tactics
In a nutshell, search engine optimization means that steps have been taken to demonstrate to Google, Yahoo, and Bing that a web site is highly relevant for certain keywords, and that it deserves a top-10 ranking when searches are performed for those keywords. What a sizable portion of ecommerce website owners do not realize is that if their web site isn’t among the first dozen or so listings on the search engine results pages, then, for all intents and purposes, their web site is invisible to thousands of prospective customers.
To put things in perspective, millions of web pages are competing with each other for a top-10 Google ranking for most common keyword searches. So, to stand a chance of gaining any visibility in Google (the dominant search engine), an ecommerce site has to contain keyword combinations for which customers are actually searching. Not only that, but the phrases have to be strategically placed on the web page, and, ideally, the most important keyword phrase should be in the domain name and in links to your site from other web sites (that’s where it gets a bit tricky). Once all that has been accomplished, then your ecommerce web site is geared up to begin competing on a level playing field with other similar web sites trying to be found by customers on the Internet.
Another common ecommerce blunder is failing to make the most of sales conversion opportunities on a website, which can include everything from including trust-building factors and a hassle-free checkout process to offering easy site navigation features and plenty of clear “calls to action” — which refers to what you want the customer to do before leaving your web site (such as, call your toll-free number, leave their email address, or order a product). A good ‘rule of thumb’ in ecommerce, which also applies to do business off-line, is that “a confused customer is a lost customer”. So to maximize the sales conversion potential of your ecommerce online store, instill your visitors with a sense of trust, a clear path to placing an order or getting more information, and an incentive to take action now.
How to Satisfy Small Business Clients?
A lot of us web business gurus tend to miss something important: Most money changes hands in the real world, not online. Depending on who you ask, U.S. online sales total $200-400 billion annually. Not bad, right? Sure, but the total of all transactions in the economy works out to $14 trillion or so. Online sales, impressive as they are, only account for two to three percent of the total economy at best.
Most of my clients are small businesses with fewer than 100 employees. One thing the proprietors have in common is that they do not spend much time online. Whether the client is a dentist or a pet groomer, the only thing they care about is that their online presence brings warm bodies in their doors, preferably warm bodies with credit or insurance cards at the ready.
Those of us who spend a good portion of our lives tilting the plane of cyberspace in favor of our clients’ businesses tend to lose sight of the real world. You know the one – the one you can actually smell. Conversely, our clients tend to regard cyberspace as a distraction or a frivolity because they are caught up in the day-to-day drama of running their businesses.
My clients and I live in different worlds. I actually have paying customers whom I’ve never met in person and, quite frankly, I don’t care to meet them. All I care about is that their checks clear and that they are pleased with the results of my efforts. For their part, all they care about is the influx of business that occurs after I “do my thing.”
So what is my “thing” and how do I do it? There are elements of the secret sauce that I simply will not reveal without being paid a handsome sum, but I will give you a basic sketch. In fact, I’ll give it to you step-by-step:
1. Listen to what the client wants in the real world but tune out what they say about the web because they generally don’t know what they’re talking about. I always bring the conversation back to the real world. “So Fred, the flashy website with all the nifty widgets and gizmos sounds cool, but the ultimate goal is for the phone to ring, or perhaps I’ve misunderstood…” They know what they need in the real world, but you are the expert when it comes to web design, SEO, social media, PPC, video marketing or whatever else you’re going to do for them. The only exception to this rule is when they have a very specific business need for a web application that will streamline their operations. If a physician tells me she wants patients to be able to schedule appointments and pay their co-pays through the website, that is precisely what I give them.
2. Talk turkey early in the game. Ask straight-away about their budget, and tell them what to expect within those constraints. If their budget is $500 a month, show them how you will generate an extra $2,000 in sales for them each month. The worst thing you can possibly do is promise them the moon if their budget will barely buy a dead Soviet satellite. A lot of times, I gain clients by offering to do a small project on a small budget so that they can get a taste of the potential before committing to a bigger campaign.
3. Design a custom plan and never – ever – use a cookie cutter. Small business people are often visionaries. Learn as much as you can about their philosophy, their customers, their products, and their plans for the future. Build a web campaign around that. Make it about them, not you.
4. Execute the plan. You’ve done this a thousand times. You know it will work. Now do it.
5. Track the results. This one can be difficult. I can say with total honesty that every single client I have ever worked with has seen an increase in business within a very short time of my efforts. I can also say with honesty that they often chalk it up to coincidence. That is to their detriment when the contract period is up. It feels awful, like you’re pulling the rug out from under them. The funny thing is that they do not chalk the resulting decline in business up to coincidence and often come begging at that point. Best to avoid this, however. Track results. Show them how their increased website traffic or video views correspond to increased sales. It makes the renewal process much more pleasant for everyone involved.
This deserves an article of its own, but it needs to be said: Getting warm bodies in the door is not the same as gaining maximum exposure. SEO does no good if the site tells the wrong story. Viral content can be effective, but only if the message is clear and the target market reached. Helping small businesses is all about delivering the message that the business owner wants to deliver to the people that want to hear it.
Remember that while you and your client inhabit different worlds, one thing you do have in common is that you want the same end result. Focus on achieving that, and everyone will be happy.
How To Find The Perfect Price?
How To Find A Price That Sells Lots ….
How do you decide the best price for a JV product?
I’ve read a lot of very complicated, scientific theories on this. And I’m not sure any of them work. So here I’m going to run through a few very simple tips which I think you will find very useful.
Firstly, you need to know the economics of your business. You’ve got to know the price of your product and all your other overhead costs – like mailing, fulfillment and your partner’s JV commission. And you’ve got to add on a little bit …. well preferably a lot …. as a profit margin. It stands to sense that your perfect selling price has to be at least what all those amounts add up to.
Now what about the price in terms of marketing pull. Well, although it seems logical, charging the lowest price you can afford to charge is probably not the best strategy. You have to understand a bit about your product and your customer to know how price pushes their buying buttons.
To give you an example: I’ve seen modern art for sale in fashionable, posh-part-of-town art galleries at $250, $350, $500 and even more. Presumably someone must buy them, because those sort of upmarket businesses seem to do very nicely thank you. Then again, I’ve seen much the same thing up for sale in discount stores for $15 …. but they just sit gathering dust for months. You see, there’s something about the fashionable gallery environment that attracts the higher spending customer and persuades them to spend more on what they want. It’s just the same for lots of other JV-related products.
With every product there will also some level of price resistance. Together with various price points which the customer is happy to buy at. In the information manual and DVD business the first price point might be $29.95 – a point where sales drop off if you go beyond it. However, once you pass that point there might be no significant difference in sales conversion rates between $39.95 and $79.95. That means that if you can’t price it at $29.95 you might as well price it at $79.95! There are other variables of course, such as the exact contents of the package, but many times it works like that.
Every product or service has its own range of price points. You have to take some time to find out yours.
What about ‘full pound’ prices – $30 versus $29.95 or even $29.99. This is one of those great marketing talking points. Often I find that a price ending in .95 works better than .99, .89 works better than .95 and odd pound figures almost always outsell even pound amounts.
If you sell on installment terms or finance you might not headline on the total price at all. I have seen lots of courses sold on offers such as ‘3 Monthly Payments Of Only $27.89′. In these cases, it’s important to get the installment price right rather than the total price. (Which in this case is a totally bizarre $83.67, but you might well find that it works very, very well.)
I will, however, make this very important point: The skimpier the sales job you do the lower you cap your price. And if you’re very limited in terms of time and space then the price gets a lot more important.
Try this great technique for seducing your customers! If you think your price seems a bit high and you want to make it look fantastic value then consider using price comparisons, like this ….
In top brand designer stores you’ll probably pay $180 to $200.
In popular discount stores you may pay as little as $49 to $69.
But our direct valued-customer price is just $27.97.
OK, so let’s try and summarise the secret of great JV pricing in just four simple points:
* The economics of your individual business decides your lowest possible price.
* Knowing your product and your customers will tell you how little they would like to pay – and also how much they will pay.
* Know your individual price points. Testing will help. If you can’t stay within one price point you might as well push your price up to the next one.
* How you present price can make a difference.
Improve Online Reputation Management with Proactive PR
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, April 25, 2011
Improve Online Reputation Management with Proactive PR
Practicing online reputation management is a must for any public relations professional who believes his or her company may face a corporate crisis in the future. As our news gathering and reporting moves online, online reputation management is becoming more important. Now, news stories and blogs are being indexed by search engines, and many times, if a company makes the news, that can sometimes be the first item found in the search engine rankings.
Proactive PR is important for online reputation management, because it means you are creating positive search engine results, which can keep negative search results from ever appearing. You can focus on positive content-generating activities, rather than putting out fires via reactive management.
Here are five ways to improve your online reputation management:
* Start a blog
Fill it with as much positive information as you can find. News releases, product and service descriptions, customer questions, employee interviews, and anything else you can think of. The more content you can create, the better your online reputation management efforts will be, because you will have a central location you can direct people to.
* Create a Twitter profile and a Facebook page
Fill your networks with customers, journalists, and anyone else who would have an interest in your company. Answer customer care questions, link to your blog posts, and be a valuable resource to anyone you interact with on these networks. An important part of your online reputation management will be to create positive relationships with people. This way, if something ever does go wrong, you’ll have a group of people who are willing to support you, or at least forgive you.
* Use your own face and name on your company’s social media profiles
While this may not be possible for a large corporation, it’s crucial for a small business. An important part of your online reputation management will be to put a personal face on your corporate brand. People will be able to relate to your company more easily, which will make your online reputation management efforts much easier.
* Join a niche social network for your industry
Start communicating with people on the network, especially answering questions and providing information. You can help your online reputation management by becoming a trusted resource among your industry peers and customers. Form relationships with people on the network, make referrals to people inside and outside the network, and work to become a regular, well-known presence in the group. If there is a crisis that hits the media, you may end up finding allies in your industry group who will speak favorably about you.
* Good online reputation management includes effective search engine optimization
Do all of these other steps with an eye toward SEO. Your ultimate goal is to win all searches on the big three search engines; Google, Bing, and Yahoo; which will help keep negative entries off the front page. If you’re already sitting on top of the mountain, it will be harder to unseat you. But if you aren’t even on the front page when an incident blows up, you’ll have a hard time getting to the front page let alone the top of the results. And the longer you wait to begin, the harder it will be.
It’s important you begin your online reputation management efforts immediately. If you ever find yourself in a crisis, and the news results hit the search engines, it’s too late to start thinking about online reputation management. You’ll be playing catchup for days, weeks, and even months later, trying to overcome every news story, blog entry, and tweet that other people have been posting while you’re still setting up your first Twitter account.
The key to online reputation management is to do it before you ever need it, and to create a positive online brand. Follow these five steps and you’ll be ahead of the game.
The Greatest Lies Ever Told About Internet Business
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Greatest Lies Ever Told About Internet Business
Starting an Internet business can be tough. Especially if you have never owned your own business in the past. Not only that but your family and friends can discourage you from ever starting your business!! They will tell you, that only a few people ever make any money and it is a HUGE waste of time!
Sadly, though they may be half right. Unfortunately, only 2% of the people who ever start an Internet business will make any money whatsoever. The people who do make money online are not any more skilled that us…NO! Instead they were fortunate enough to know the 5 great lies of Starting an Internet business.
1. Starting An Internet Business Is Expensive
An Internet business can actually be started for ZERO cost! That is why this is the very first great lie of Internet business. When you are getting started in your online business you can start with something as cheap and simple as affiliate marketing. Affiliate Marketing cost you nothing to get started, and your only job is to drive traffic to a website that you don’t own. Then once people purchase a product from that affiliate website, through your link, you get a commission. And here’s the best part: There are MANY free ways you can learn about to drive traffic to a website.
2. You Can “Get Rich Quick” With An Internet Business
Many people have a “Get Rich Quick” mentality when they first start their Internet Business. These people think that having their own Internet business is easy and does not require any work. Do not believe this because it is a fools hope.
Often times the people you see who are “overnight successes” on the Internet, have spent months if not years perfecting their business. Very rarely will someone truly be a “overnight success”, and when that does happen, it is almost all luck. So the bottom line here is, your Internet business is exactly that…..a business! Treat it like one, work diligently on it, and never give up. Success takes time.
3. You Must Know HTML, Programming And Graphic Designing In Order To Start Your Business
I have to admit that this is one thing that held me up a little personally. I am NOT a tech savvy web guru by any means. In fact, I could not put together a web page if you held a gun to my head. However, what I found was that there are people who are willing to do this for you…..for cheap!
Sites like Elance, and Odesk are sites where you can hire people to do all of this work for you. And here’s the best part, it’s really cheap! Most of the bidders at Elance and ODesk are from India and will be willing to do the programming work for you, for as little as $6.00 per hour!
4. You Don’t Need To Know How To Sell Anything
Think about the logic in that statement above. It doesn’t make sense. Of course, you need some salesmanship abilities! How on earth do you plan on selling things on the Internet without being able to sell? Now don’t panic, if you don’t currently know how to sell. This is all stuff that can be taught. However, you must go into your Internet business with the knowledge that you will need to learn how to sell.
5. You Don’t Need To “Build A List”
Have you ever heard the phrase “The Money Is In The List”? Building a list is essential to having success with a Internet business. Without a list, you won’t make any money! Building a list is important because it builds your list of people that you can market and sell to! Not only that, but you can sell to the same people multiple times.
The 5 great Internet lies listed above are all things you must know and accept. You have to be smart in order to really achieve success that you could possibly imagine.
Success is like enlightenment. It is a path and not a destination.
How Will You Handle Customer Support for Your Site?
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
How Will You Handle Customer Support for Your Site?
There are many ways to deal with customer support at your website. Which method you choose will depend on how large your company is, what your customers want, and what you feel most comfortable with.
One of the classic ways of handling customer service and support is via telephone. This is often the preferred methods for customers, because they can usually get their problems resolved much faster than they might using other methods.
Unfortunately, providing telephone support probably isn’t realistic unless you have the staff to handle it and your product or service is selling at a price that covers the often huge additional cost of staffing an inbound call center. If you’re a solo operation, phone support may well be out of the question. So what other options are available to you?
The two major alternatives are e-mail and support ticket systems.
Email support lets you answer support requests in your own time, but it may upset some of your more impatient customers. There will always be people who will fly into a rage if their email isn’t answered within 5 minutes, even at 3am on Sunday morning!
The other problem with e-mail support is spam. If you make an e-mail address available for support it won’t be long before you’re starting to receive significant qualities of spam and ultimately the e-mail address can become completely unusable. Even with spam filters installed it’s difficult, even bordering on impossible, to stop at least some spam coming through. The last thing you want is to have to spend more time deleting spam than helping your valued customers and that’s exactly what can happen if you’re not careful.
On the plus side, e-mail is easy to handle for both the sender and yourself. It’s easy to set up standard replies for commonly asked questions and it’s also possible to reroute e-mails to different addresses should the need arise (e.g. when someone hasn’t received a shipment and you need to bring this to the attention of your shippers).
An alternative to e-mail that is well worth considering is a support ticket system.
More and more people are starting to turn to support ticket systems, or help desk software as it is often known, to handle their support requests. Although this is generally one of the best methods for the companies that use them, they can be troublesome to the customer.
Many help desks require the user to register in order to submit a request. This takes time out of the customer’s busy schedule, and may annoy them further if they’re already upset about something related to your product.
Some of them even require the user to verify their email address before they can log in to submit a request. This could be particularly upsetting if your server happens to take longer than a minute or two to send out the confirmation request.
Customers can be very impatient, especially if they haven’t received something they paid for or if they have a problem with something they did receive. Once people reach their maximum tolerance level, the hassle will usually no longer be worth it, and they’ll ask for a refund and that’s obviously something you don’t want to happen.
Support ticket systems do have some advantages and these can easily outweigh the downsides.
Ticket systems are an excellent way of managing the support work-flow. They keep everything in one place and make it very easy to see all the previous messages relating to any support issue. This is useful for both the customer and yourself as it saves having to search through old e-mails (some of which may well have been deleted) to find previous correspondence.
Ticket systems can also help you to get a real handle on what the major issues are. In an e-mail support system it’s easy for this to be hidden in the deluge of e-mails whereas in a ticket system it is usually possible to categorize incoming tickets so that matters pertaining to a specific subject can easily be monitored.
Ticket systems also usually offer far more robust reporting than a standard e-mail system. This makes it easy to see how many tickets are opened/closed each day and who dealt with them.
Another benefit to ticket systems is that they can avoid the issue of non-delivered e-mails. The problem of valid e-mails not arriving at their destination is one that all companies face on an increasingly frequent basis. By providing a ticket system that people can view whenever they like means you don’t have to rely solely upon e-mails getting through.
No matter which method you choose, it’s important to respond to requests as soon as possible. Due to the very nature of the Internet, people expect immediate gratification. Since the Internet is available 24/7 in most places, people tend to think Internet businesses are also open 24/7 and that is rarely the case, even with very large companies such as Microsoft and Apple.
These expectations may be unrealistic, but that is the reality you face as an Internet marketer. Some people will expect you to be available at all hours of the day, even on weekends or holidays. You can’t alleviate this problem completely, but by dealing with incoming support requests as promptly and efficiently as possible you will go a long way to satisfying the needs of the vast majority of your customers, and that is what’s important.
The Internet is a Dangerous Place for your Data
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Internet is a Dangerous Place for your Data: Debunking the Myth
We’re always being warned about the many perils and dangers lurking in the deep dark recesses of the Internet. Those of us with children are constantly being urged to protect them from ‘Stranger Danger’ and Cyber bullying on chat rooms, instant messaging and social networks. According to the media, dating websites are full of predatory strangers waiting to murder us or empty our bank accounts. Scams, Identity Theft, Spam, Spyware, Adware, Malware, and Computer Viruses: the list of hazards goes on and on. It’s not just a web, but a veritable labyrinth full of pitfalls and hidden traps for the unwary.
So it stands to reason that a web-based, or SaaS system, for applications such as Document Management and Project Planning and Time Reporting, must be inherently unreliable, and the Cloud must be a bad place to store your data, right? Wrong! Entrusting your personal or business data to an outside company is a risky undertaking, isn’t it? Not necessarily!
To entrust your irreplaceable, confidential data to an external agency is a leap of faith, no doubt, and obviously you must choose your SaaS system very carefully. Choose a well-established and reputable service provider, however, and your data will actually be more secure than it would be on your own company’s data server. It’s not the Internet that is dangerous: it’s the people who use it, and the way that they use it. You wouldn’t hire a nanny for your children without checking out her references. You wouldn’t go on holiday and leave your house with the doors and windows open and unlocked. You wouldn’t leave your wallet on the bar counter while you go to the washroom. You wouldn’t lend your Credit Card to a stranger. At least, I sincerely hope you wouldn’t do any of these stupid things…
The beauty of SaaS is that it frees you up to access all your projects, files and folders any time and anywhere in the world, and sorts out all your security issues at the same time. It’s much more secure to use a SaaS service, when traveling or working from home, than it is to rely on portable storage devices such as laptops, CDs and data sticks, which are easy to steal, easy to lose, and are regularly left on trains, buses and in taxi cabs.
Still worried that the Internet is a dangerous place for your company’s confidential data? It’s very prudent of you to be aware of Internet security issues; we all know about the risks of hackers, viruses and Internet fraud. In order to fully benefit from the advantages of having your projects and documents online, you need to ensure that they are fully protected from hardware failure, good old human error, and from cyber attack. Look out for SaaS systems which offer additional security features for controlling file access and permissions. These will allow you to decide who can access your data, and also to control the level of access they are granted.
Any reputable SaaS provider will be ISO20000-certified, and will regularly back up all your files and folders. All data transmitted via the internet should be fully secure and encrypted. Your data should be stored in a secure server environment equipped with fire protection, climate control and using multiple internet connections with a range of internet providers. Before you sign up for a new SaaS system, check out that these safeguards are all included. With a reliable SaaS system in place, and all your security controls set up, you can relax and let your service provider take care of day-to-day chores like file back-up and data encryption. That will leave you free to spend more time doing what you are good at – running your business!
How To Skyrocket Your Perceived Value?
It is of great importance that your visitor “see,” the bargain within your offer. There are ways to enhance this perception. People often observer Sales pages with a “what is in this for me,” mindset. Your offer needs to clearly show them what is in it for them.
When someone does form their first impression about your site, would you not want it to be a good one? When we present our product or service to visitors, it is vital that they see the value within as important to their desire to prosper themselves.
Here is where our USP should stand out from the crowd, giving us a keen edge over competitors. This “Unique Selling Proposition” should grab their attention and hold it – all of the way to the conversion point, whether it be to buy, or to opt-in for a newsletter.
Whether it be a capture page, where they enter their email address, or reach for a credit card to purchase, this USP is a critical point in the process in getting conversions.
How does one create a perception of value to first time visitors? In the world of sales online, everyone is clamoring for their attention flashing buy now or click here messages.
To stand alone in the crowd, and be the “first choice” in the mind of “lookers,” one has to offer “more for less,” – greater value, – a unique selling point, that compels them to chose your product or service over the many others.
This is the very reason your USP must compel them to see the greater bargain your offer has over other competitors. The way you present an offer unto visitors is of great importance. You have to “show,” them what greater value your offer contains.
Once they are looking at what you have to present, it is then of utmost importance,to have your sales copy capture prospect’s full attention. To do this, you have to be unique. You want them to transition into a qualified prospect who is a perfect position to order now.
To get them from where they are now, to the desired conversion point,(what you want visitors to do next) you must continue to position your offer in a way that flames their desire. If their attention is distracted from the momentum once started, you could lose their interest, and there goes the sale.
To keep their focus on tract, the elements of persuasion must continue to drive them forward, keenly interested, all the way to the “order now” button, or the “enter email,” conversion point.
To meet this objective, the perceived value they began with must be inflamed with focused precision. This enhances the very thing which caught their eye in the beginning.
These proven marketing methods, press their emotional “hot buttons” triggering their need to fulfill their want. This is done through positioning the perceived value in such a way, that increases the prospects interest, all the way to the point of the “how much” question.
When this is done correctly, even high-end or products or services, can be moved without objection to price, for indeed the prospect has already made up their mind.
The “I’ve got to have this, or I need that,” hurdle, has already been jumped in their thinking. They have been “sold.” They move to the “buy now” button, and proceed without hesitation.
Good copywriters know exactly how to reach each objective in the sales process. Good solid copy begins by first grabbing visitor’s attention, it then directs them into the body copy, and quickly shows them why they are in the right place. They then “know,” they are going to get exactly what they want.
If It is interesting, flows freely, is personable, and engaging, it becomes winning copy because it is not “hyped-up. It shows them perspective, and insight about why this offer is so much better than competitors.
It is punchy, clear and concise. By the time they hit the “order now” button, they are completely happy – and happy with their buying decision, feeling like they have really gotten a great deal.
How To Skyrocket Your Perceived Value?
It is of great importance that your visitor “see,” the bargain within your offer. There are ways to enhance this perception. People often observer Sales pages with a “what is in this for me,” mindset. Your offer needs to clearly show them what is in it for them.
When someone does form their first impression about your site, would you not want it to be a good one? When we present our product or service to visitors, it is vital that they see the value within as important to their desire to prosper themselves.
Here is where our USP should stand out from the crowd, giving us a keen edge over competitors. This “Unique Selling Proposition” should grab their attention and hold it – all of the way to the conversion point, whether it be to buy, or to opt-in for a newsletter.
Whether it be a capture page, where they enter their email address, or reach for a credit card to purchase, this USP is a critical point in the process in getting conversions.
How does one create a perception of value to first time visitors? In the world of sales online, everyone is clamoring for their attention flashing buy now or click here messages.
To stand alone in the crowd, and be the “first choice” in the mind of “lookers,” one has to offer “more for less,” – greater value, – a unique selling point, that compels them to chose your product or service over the many others.
This is the very reason your USP must compel them to see the greater bargain your offer has over other competitors. The way you present an offer unto visitors is of great importance. You have to “show,” them what greater value your offer contains.
Once they are looking at what you have to present, it is then of utmost importance,to have your sales copy capture prospect’s full attention. To do this, you have to be unique. You want them to transition into a qualified prospect who is a perfect position to order now.
To get them from where they are now, to the desired conversion point,(what you want visitors to do next) you must continue to position your offer in a way that flames their desire. If their attention is distracted from the momentum once started, you could lose their interest, and there goes the sale.
To keep their focus on tract, the elements of persuasion must continue to drive them forward, keenly interested, all the way to the “order now” button, or the “enter email,” conversion point.
To meet this objective, the perceived value they began with must be inflamed with focused precision. This enhances the very thing which caught their eye in the beginning.
These proven marketing methods, press their emotional “hot buttons” triggering their need to fulfill their want. This is done through positioning the perceived value in such a way, that increases the prospects interest, all the way to the point of the “how much” question.
When this is done correctly, even high-end or products or services, can be moved without objection to price, for indeed the prospect has already made up their mind.
The “I’ve got to have this, or I need that,” hurdle, has already been jumped in their thinking. They have been “sold.” They move to the “buy now” button, and proceed without hesitation.
Good copywriters know exactly how to reach each objective in the sales process. Good solid copy begins by first grabbing visitor’s attention, it then directs them into the body copy, and quickly shows them why they are in the right place. They then “know,” they are going to get exactly what they want.
If It is interesting, flows freely, is personable, and engaging, it becomes winning copy because it is not “hyped-up. It shows them perspective, and insight about why this offer is so much better than competitors.
It is punchy, clear and concise. By the time they hit the “order now” button, they are completely happy – and happy with their buying decision, feeling like they have really gotten a great deal.
How To Set Up a Blogger Blog?
Setting up a blog on Blogger is quite easy. The first thing you want to do is to set up a Google account for the blog. You can do this by going to Blogger.com and then following the link in the resources section.
It takes about 2 or 3 minutes to set up a Google account. If you already have a Google account you can use it if you wish.
After you have set up your Google account you should go back to Blogger.com and sign-in using your Google account username and password. Your username is typically the e-mail address you used when creating the account.
You can set up your account so it remembers your username and password. Only do this if you are on a non-shared computer.
Look for the “Create a blog” option on the dashboard of Blogger. The dashboard is the page you go to every time you log onto your Blogger account. You can manage several blogs from the same dashboard if they were all created with the same Google account.
You will be asked to name your blog. You want to create an easy to remember, easy to find name that makes it clear what your blog is about. Try not to have a blog name that is too long. It will be the first part of the web address of your blog. For example if you name your blog “Teds Tidbits” your URL will be: tedstidbits@blogspot.com.
The next thing you need to do is to choose your template. Blogger has a number of templates to choose from. You do not have to agonize over which template to use because you can change the template at any time.
Write your first official blog post using the template Blogger provided. Feel free to add a picture, etc. Once you submit that first blog posting you will be able to view your new blog, edit the posting, etc.
At this point you can personalize your blog so it stands out. Many different aspects of the blog can be changed, moved around, etc. Click on the “Layout” option and start to make your blog stand out from the other blogs out there. You can undo virtually anything that you do so do not be shy to experiment with different layouts for your blog.
Once you finish your layout you are done. I wish you Happy blogging!
How to Get the Maximum Number of Links to Your Blog?
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, March 28, 2011
It is every blogger’s dream: to be read by as many people as possible. But it’s not as simple as it sounds. Several things have to fall into place to capture that wide audience.
First is to get the word out that your blog exists, second is to hold visitors’ interest in what they are reading, third is to make them return for more, and fourth is for them to start referring you to others.
That is why when SEO marketers sit down with blog owners to talk about increasing audience viewership, one of the strategies they instantly recommend is to build as many links to the site as possible.
Just how does link building equate to a wide captive audience?
The equation goes something like this: links to your blog from other sites generate referral traffic and increase your blogs’s Google page ranking.
The former is possible when users go to another site and click on the link from that site to your blog. The second is when Google’s search algorithms consider the links to your site as a vote of referral from the other sites, taking that to mean that you are a site of substance, thereby elevating your page rank. The higher the page rank of your blog means that when users search via Google, your blog will be one of the first ten sites listed on the first page.
Sources of Blog Links
When you commit to link building, there are many sources where you can get these links. Below are a few of them:
- Common-niche blogs, websites, forums, and communities. Visit these sites and drop a comment or two in forum messages and posts. Be helpful by answering questions or offering information. Sign your posts on these sites with a link to your blog site. As your presence in these sites is established, so will your blog site generate more traffic.
- Social networking sites. StumbleUpon and Digg have proven track records in generating traffic to sites, so take advantage of this. Consider other sites such as Facebook and Twitter as well.
- Directory submissions. This technique is still good for link building, but you have to be careful to submit your site to quality directory sites only, because there are many directories out there that turn out to be mere link farms.
More Tools and Tips for Link Building
Link sources may be there for the taking, but the key to success is in actually keeping in mind the following rule-of-thumb:
- Link building takes time. Many sites require webmaster’s approval for links to be established. And with Google suspicious of a sudden increase in links, a slow but sure approach gets the links in the long run.
- Link building means never having to give up. Not all link-building efforts strike gold – moderators and webmasters may disapprove of your posts, or remove your link signatures, or worse, consider you spam. Continue your link-building and don’t get discouraged.
- Link to quality sites. Although they are more discriminating in whom to give their links, links from quality sites are worth more than low-ranked sites.
- Create quality content. Interesting and useful content gives your link requests a higher chance of being accepted and your blog linked to by other sites.
Successful link-building for your blog generates referral traffic and increases your blogs’s Google page ranking. The result? A bigger blog readership than ever before.
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Is There a Brand in Your Stand?
Watch out for the branding gurus. Beware of the branding police who focus only on images of brand. Fire the branding consultants who feel qualified to tell you what your brand should be. Ignore the branding zealots who proclaim “brand or die.”
Good, now that we have frightened off the undesirables let’s address some fundamental questions about branding and offer you some probing questions to consider. That first paragraph demonstrates the three rules of creative positioning as explained below.
* Should you have a brand?
Maybe. It depends on the goals of your business. You need to ask yourself some questions. Will the brand give you the return on your investment? Will you invest the resources to claim and sustain the brand?
* What is a brand?
A brand is the emotional bond that your clients have with you. Ask your best clients how they would describe you to others. Look for the common message in what they say – especially the emotion. That might be your brand.
Brand is the feeling others experience when they think about you and your product. Brand can help them think of you first – or better yet – only you. Brand can justify higher prices – or even better – make price a non-issue.
* Not Branding
Branding is not about creative logos, pretty fonts and pantone colors. Fire anyone who attempts to sell you that pabulum. Those things are only images. Have you noticed that the successful brands change these images every few years?
Branding is a marketing strategy. It is only one of many marketing strategies from which you might choose.
* Is branding an accident or on purpose?
Because branding is about creating emotional messages you are always branding. However, are you aware of your messages, are you consistent and are you effectively branding yourself?
You could create or claim your brand. Domino’s Pizza created their brand – “Pizza in 30 minutes or its free.” They own that brand. It’s simple, memorable and unique. Some companies look for an opening and build their business to create that brand. Some companies discover their brand by accident. Feedback from clients, remarks from the media or a competitor’s comment reveals the brand that was hidden in plain sight. In that case it is up to you to claim the brand and run with it.
Avis claimed their brand by turning a disadvantage into their brand when they launched their marketing campaign with “Avis is only Number 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder.” And with cheekiness they leverage further on their “disadvantage” by adding, “The lines at our counters are shorter.” That brand has been successful for over 40 years.
* How do you create your brand?
There are two ways. Like Coke, Nike and McDonald you could throw gazillions of dollars at it. Or you could use creative positioning. Look for the holes in the marketplace. Go to where your competition is not and claim that position. Take a stand like Harley Davidson, Buckley’s Cough Mixture and Nova Scotian Crystal.
Each of these companies claimed positions in the market the competition was unwilling to take. Folks either love or hate Harley Davidson. Buckley’s proudly claimed that “it tastes awful but it works” along with a money back guarantee. Nova Scotian Crystal is proudly the only Canadian crystal manufacturer and they offer an incredible one year breakage warranty. Drop your whiskey glass and they will replace it; no questions asked.
You can read the interview with Rod McCulloch, President and CEO of Nova Scotian Crystal on my “Business in Motion” blog.
Each of these companies was willing to take a position that would drive some folks away while attracting a loyal crowd of fans.
The three principles of creative positioning are best explained by UK entrepreneur BJ Cunningham, who as CEO of The Enlightened Tobacco Company sold a cigarette called “Death Cigarettes”. It was presented in a black package emblazoned with a white skull-and-crossbones logo. Just imagine how this might appeal to the rebels. Everyone except the tobacco companies knew that cigarette smoking was bad for your health. BJ did what none of the other tobacco companies were willing to do. He took a stand.
Cunningham’s three principles of creative positioning:
1. Take a polarized position.
2. Make enemies.
* Create tension
Branding starts with market review and self-examination. Standing alone can be scary, exhilarating and hugely profitable. It you are going to claim a powerful brand take a position away from the crowd. Stand where no one else is standing.
How To Create Your First Info Product in 7 Easy Steps?
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, February 21, 2011
How To Create Your First Info Product in 7 Easy Steps?
Once you’ve mastered your online marketing system and you’re growing your list on a daily basis, this is a good time to then set about creating additional offerings for your subscribers. This is where you start to look at your Product & Marketing Funnel and see where the gaps are and where new products can fit.
If you’re like most solo service professionals you’ll have something at the top (i.e. the widest part) of your funnel, which is usually your free taste, and then you’ll have something at the bottom (i.e. the narrowest part) of your funnel, which is usually your most expensive one-on-one services, but you won’t have anything in-between.
This is where you need to create products at different price points so that your clients and customers can experience your services and expertise without having to invest in your top (most expensive) service, but they want more than you are offering at the ‘free’ level.
A great first info product to create is one that sits at the second level within your Product & Marketing Funnel; somewhere between $1 and $50.
So, here is the step-by-step guide on how to create that all-important first paid offering.
Step 1: Host a Free Teleclass
Not only is this a great way to build your list, but it also exposes your audience to your expertise. You get to interact with your target market via the teleclass and they are able to ask you questions right there on the call.
Step 2: Record Your Teleclass
In addition to this being a great incentive to getting more sign-ups (if a registrant is not able to make it to the live teleclass they know that they’ll be able to get hold of the information afterwards via the recording), but this is where you’ll turn your free teleclass into your first paid info product.
Step 3: Create an Accompanying Guide or Special Report
Using the notes you prepared for your teleclass, turn these into a guide to accompany your teleclass. Or turn your notes into a special report and sell the report as the paid product and offer the teleclass recording as a bonus.
Step 4: Create a Workbook
If you also provided instructions or how-to information as part of your free teleclass, take that information and create an additional workbook. A workbook is a simple document that will allow your customer/client to make notes, write down their ideas, or plan out how they’re going to implement the how-to information that you shared with them on the teleclass.
Step 5: Bundle It All Together
Now that you have your teleclass recording, and you’ve created an accompanying guide/ebook and/or workbook, bundle all this information together to offer as a paid product at the second level within your funnel i.e. between the $1 and $50 price range.
Step 6: Create a Sales Page and Shopping Cart Link
You now need to create a sales page for your product, and associated shopping cart link. It is also a great customer service feature to create an autoresponder so that you can follow-up with your customers to check that they are happy with their purchase and are implementing the information you shared with them.
Step 7: Promote to Your List
Once you have your product all set up (Step 5), and created the sales page (Step 6) it’s time to promote it to your list and make sales! This is the exciting part! Include some teaser information in your newsletter leading up to the launch of your product, and once you’re ready to take sales send a solo mailing announcing the launch of your product. A solo mailing is much more effective than including the announcement as part of your regular newsletter.
After the initial launch continue to promote your product through your newsletter; promote it on your blog; and tell all your social networks about your product.
An Excellent Web Promotion is the key to success
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers, this form of advertising is about getting your website in front of the people who are interested in your product
or service and for such all you have to do is find the best terms and phrases that people search for who would like to purchase exactly your goods and services.
The number of internet users is on a rapid rise worldwide and internet is used by people of all age and types, internet has become a major medium for communication, entertainment and is in the process of replacing the traditional entertainment and informative media such as
television, radio, newspaper, magazines etc. WebVisible offers a range of creative services like corporate communications, promotions and branding new media, logo design, exhibitions and events, advertising, direct mail and editorial design, they are an Advertising, Marketing &
Brand Consultancy firm and work with strategic creativity, they are amongst the world´s fewest advertising firms who offer a Pay-for-Performance model for the professional fees.
WebVisible has the ability to deliver guaranteed services is proven by the fact that they possess expertise across all media be it direct, broadcast, out of home or digital media, their ideas are led with passionate and driven by making businesses a success, as compared with offline advertising the main advantage of online advertising or marketing is the much affordable price when compared with the traditional advertising costs, with a much lesser cost you can advertise on the net for a wider range of audience and geographical locations.
It is an online advertising portal that gives your ads a wider coverage and this globally wider coverage helps in making your advertisements reach more audiences, which may ultimately help you in getting better results through your online advertising campaign with a measurability and
easiness to track the conversion that makes online advertising miles ahead on the traditional advertising methods, a lot of effective analytics tools are available to measure online advertising campaigns which helps in more improvisation of the ads.
Online advertising is much faster than offline advertising and you can start sending out your ads to a wider audience, the moment you start your advertising campaign you are able to convey more details about the advertisement to the audience and that too at relatively low cost.
Take Heed of the Factors When Purchasing a Business Database
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
When being looked at in a positive manner, a business database would not only contain various entries to make a business increase its overall rate of income but it would also contain a ton of benefits for your firm to succeed. However, it is important to take a look at some of the most important points before purchasing this kind of database.
We all know that if there is one thing that most businesses have in common it is their extreme desire to make their firm stand out from the rest. To achieve this goal, businesses need to be always at their prime and to achieve success in today’s business world. Acquiring a business database for your company would definitely let the firm achieve this result and let it acquire a ton of benefits in the process.
First of all, let us take a deeper look on what a business database truly is.
A business database would contain a number of entries that contain all the necessary and vital information about a certain target market of business. For instance, if a company would like to target the technology sector within an enterprise then they can very well do so through taking advantage of this database.
Now where can you acquire such a database for your business?
There are many lead providers available all around the globe that can provide you with such a database. It is just a matter of choosing which of would be the one that is most capable of meeting your expectations with regards to the quality of the database. Therefore there are some factors to consider when you want to purchase a database for your business to get more fresh sales leads. Let us take a look at some of those important factors.
• The database should contain data entries that are always fresh
When we talk about how fresh a lead is, it means that the prospect has not yet affiliated themselves with another company within a similar industry. Doing so can let you be ahead of the competition. Look at it this way; it would look like a prospector that has finally struck gold.
• The database provider should exhibit their list of satisfied clients that have previously purchased some of their databases
Most people would want to look at how credible and reliable a particular product or service is before attempting to purchase it. This holds true for when business owners want to take advantage of this database.
When searching for the right kind of database for your business, make sure to ask the lead provider of a list of their clients that have been satisfied by the use of their database for their firm. If they cannot, then better look for another provider elsewhere.
• The entries within the database should have all the necessary information about your desired target market
The database should contain all the information that you need about a certain client or prospect. This is to allow you to effectively make your sales campaign a success by making new business opportunities for the firm as well as keeping long-term business relationships.
• The lead provider should have a considerable amount of positive feedback
When searching for this kind of database, always make sure that you check the feedback rating of the lead provider. If there are a lot of negative feedback found within the background check of the lead provider, then maybe it is time to look somewhere else for a database.
In addition to these three factors, you should always consider the price of the database. Make sure to get a database that would provide you for your money’s worth. You do not want to spend on something that would not benefit your business in any way. That is why it is very important to take heed of these factors before purchasing any kind of database for your business.
Alice Clark is a sales and marketing consultant specializing in business contact database management. Alice invites you to visit http://www.contactdb.com/ to learn more about business contact lists and databases.
Something For Nothing… It Would Be Nice Right?
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, February 7, 2011
Of course we all look for better ways of getting our jobs done, but I am sorry to burst any ones bubble… There is no such thing as something for nothing. Why am I taking the time to burst your bubble today, you ask. Well I had an interesting experience with a potential customer today and I wanted to share it with you.
I met with a gal who is spending thousands of dollars creating a website for her company. She is a real estate agent and is interested in showing up first when the words real estate and her local area are typed into Google. She is working with a company to help her SEO and here is the plan she has designed. Each time a property is listed it generates a new URL with in her page and then each picture of the property also generates a new URL. She is working to make it so each page is flagged with her specific key words, with the idea that it will increase her websites SEO. She says she will be creating many website each with link backs to the brokers main page as well as each page having keywords. Its brilliant right? She has created a system that generates many pages each with keywords and links to her page.
With this in mind let me take a step back and give a little bit of information regarding SEO and what Google thinks is important.
1: Original Content
2: External Link Backs
3: Traffic
Now of course Google may have thousands of things they look for when determining true SEO, but these three items are extremely important. What this gal is lacking is (1) she is not creating content, sure it’s a picture, but the value in comparison is very low. (2) She has no external links back to her site; each of the new created sites are internal pages which gives no SEO value. Google expects all your internal links to link to your-self. What Google is looking for is external good quality sites linking back to you for SEO value. (3) By doing what she is doing she is not creating traffic, its creating a lot of website (internal pages) but its not creating SEO helpful traffic.
When working to become a powerful presence with Google remember Google does not hand out ranking for free. You need good quality “original” content, you need this content to be found on many “different” URL’s each that link back to your website. If you spend your time coming up with quality content to use in your blogs, articles, videos and so on you will have much more success when it comes to SEO.
Again there is nothing for free, SEO work can be fun, just let your potential customers know about you and your products and services with good quality content. Good luck to you in your blogging and other marketing efforts.
Top Notch Athletic Performance With Truth About Quickness
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The Truth About Quickness Insider’s System is the combined knowledge of two speed training experts: Alex Maroko & Kelly Baggett.
Alex is a young trainer who is also the creator of the Effective Ball Handling Program. Kelly is somewhat of a legend within the sports activities coaching community, and his most well-known work is the Vertical Jump Bible.
Kelly is extremely educated as well as experienced in relation to speed training, but he’s not that good at communicating his ideas. Alex makes up for his lack of expertise with superb communication skills. Combined, they deliver a terrific training program.
I am not saying that Kelly can not communicate or that Alex does not know speed training. In truth, they each do that better than ninety nine percent of the coaches around. What I am saying is that what one lacks, the other one makes up for, and more.
The Truth About Quickness program is very easy to grasp and simple to follow. It also helps that the exercises are actually short, and you can literally finish every exercise in roughly 10 minutes. You also get videos of all of the workout routines so you understand precisely the best way to do them, plus the charts show you how to keep track of your exercises.
The only liability that I might uncover with the program is that the video quality appeared low. It was taken in a rugged fitness center, which seems like it has been utilized by a number of athletes. However, simply because the videos were not taken in HQ doesn’t do anything to diminish from the truth that the Truth About Quickness is a superb speed training course.
Listed below are 3 of my favorite basketball training workouts for blazing on-court speed:
1. Low, On-Off Box Jumps
To do this training, find a low stair or box about 2-6 inches in height. Subsequently, stand in front of the box, and hop on and off the box as easily and rapidly as possible. Do that for 2-4 sets of 10 reps (hopping on top of the box after which off it counts as one rep).
2. Lateral Line Hops
To accomplish this exercise, draw a straight line on the ground or use a piece of adhesive tape. Next, stand on one side of the line and hop horizontally forwards and backwards across the line. Perform the jumps as rapidly as you can. If you would like more bounce in your step, jump slightly higher above the line and concentrate extra on timing and smoothness than simply speed. Do that for 2-3 sets of 20 repetitions (1 jump across the line is counted as 1 repetition).
3. Pogo Jumps
To accomplish this training, you’ll want to leap as high as you can, but concentrate on getting all of your hops out of your plantar flexors (ankles). To do that, maintain your knees and hips almost locked, and just use your ankles to propel yourself into the air. Really concentrate on bouncing off the floor, and reduce your ground contact duration. Do that for 2-3 sets of 15-20 repetitions.
Aston Martin, the great British sports car manufacturer has been producing the DB9 since 2004; it is best described as a GT Sports Coupe. The DB9 is the first model to be built at Aston Martin’s Gaydon production facility in Warwickshire, UK. The DB9 is the predecessor to the DB7; both of these models have been designed by Ian Callum. The “DB” initials stand for David Brown, who owned Aston Martin for a significant period of time in its history.
Here is a little bit of humour and fact, the very popular British motoring TV show Top Gear decided the Aston Martin DB9 Coupe was too cool for its famous cool wall. So, the DB9 received its own category called “DB9 Sub Zero Fridge”, which as it sounds – was a mini fridge with the car’s card within it.
The DB7 was based on the Jaguar XJ-S but, the XJ9 is a completely new and different car hence it was decided to be called a DB9 rather than a DB8. If named DB8, then it may have seemed as more of an evolution of the DB7 rather than a revolution. The DB9 also comes with a V12 engine, not a V8, so the DB8 name may have suggested it comes with a V8.
Both the coupe and convertible variants of the DB9 come with a 5.9 litre V12 petrol engine. The sheer size of the engine produces diesel like low end grunt, helping the DB9 pull away even at low revs. The DB9 is available with a manual and automatic six speed gearbox, the auto box is also available as a paddle shift set-up.
The DB9 is a fine example of British Sport cars; it is beautiful, elegant, reliable and powerful. It appeals to everyone from a young city worker to a retired businessman.
Five Easy Ways To Improve Your Brochure Graphics
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Friday, February 4, 2011
Do you not know what to do and how to improve your brochure printing graphics? Well let me give you a couple of tips and professional practices that you can try out.
Using a decent enough software application for brochure printing, these tips can easily be done without too much trouble but with guaranteed great results. So listen well and remember these five easy ways to improve your graphics.
1. Get the original high-resolution source – Sometimes, all that it takes to improve the look of your graphics is to get the original high-resolution source. Many newcomers to design think that the low-resolution graphics displayed on the web are enough. However, in many cases, this will net people some very bad brochure prints since those pictures tend to get fuzzy when printed.
By getting the real high-resolution source of all your images and graphics, you will get the most clear image rendition once they are printed. You will need to either create or buy and acquire those images yourself to get those original graphics. As long as you scale and crop that image right, it should turn out a lot better than any web images that you might have wanted to use.
2. Adjust the brightness and contrast settings – Another simple way to improve your images is to adjust its brightness and contrast settings. This might sound basic, but believe me it does a lot in adding quality and energy to most images. Of course, you have to be careful not to burn the image with these adjustments, but typically adding 10-20 on either setting or both settings can make the image look more vibrant and appealing. Most design software should be able to handle this so try it out.
3. Cropping properly and beautifully – Sometimes, it is in the cropping that can make the images more beautiful and appealing. I have seen many people improve their color images simply by re-cropping their images precisely so that it is balanced and complementary with the content.
All it takes really is an eye towards the proper composition of the picture. You should have the crucial elements at the top 1/3 of the frame since that is where most people look at first. With the right cropping, you will see a distinct improvement with your images, so make sure you compose and test out your images well along these lines.
4. Flipping or inverting the orientation – Another easy way to improve the images is to simply flip it or invert it. This especially applies to graphics that will look okay even when converted, inverted or flipped. Many special design applications have “free transform” features that should easily let you handle this, and this tool is perfect when you want to balance out certain elements when placed on the sides.
5. Applying some light or color filters – Finally, you can apply light or color filters in your custom brochures to make them look better. If you look at most image-editing software today, you will probably see special filters that add special effects to that image. From black and white effects, sepia, color tints, flushed light etc. there are tons of special effects to choose from. This can add that extra character to the images and all it takes is a simple filter application.
Therefore, those are the five easy ways to improve graphics. Even absolute newcomers can do these things really, as long as one is determined to learn. So take note of all these and try to apply them in printing.
Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of the developments in brochures and brochure printing that help businesses in their marketing and advertising campaigns.
Microsoft understands the fact that it is almost impossible to introduce any software product to the contemporary market without its customization and integration into other systems. With the sound understanding it brings out Microsoft custom application which can further develop existing products and integrate them into customer’s existing systems. Moreover, where necessary, it develops brand new applications, tailored specifically to the needs and budget of the customer.
.Net is one such Microsoft custom application which is used for custom application development. Before the application development a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the business needs of the client, preparation of design specifications, initial design concept, programming, testing or validation, client support (Training & support material provided) and ongoing development and maintenance, etc. is done.
Consisting of common Language Runtime which provides an abstraction layer over the operating system, .Net has Base Class Libraries – which in fact is a pre-built code that is used for common low-level programming tasks. Moreover, considered as Microsoft’s platform for building applications that have visually stunning user experiences, it helps in seamless and secure communication. It is also known for its ability to model a range of business processes.
Microsoft .NET Integration & Customization is used for developing integrated applications on top of Microsoft .NET Frameworks. Used for architecture design & planning, it helps in creating scalable infrastructure, platform and application architectures for customer’s solution. Moreover, custom application development wherein Visual Studio 2005, C#, ASP.NET and .NET Framework, etc. which in turn are in vogue these days.
Microsoft custom application for integration strategy & deployment in which custom and middleware based solutions for integration with back office, legacy, other web applications and web services are implemented offer executable solution. Notwithstanding, Microsoft custom applications are secure as they secure the platform and applications with hardware, product, services and guidance around the customer’s security requirements.
Software development companies use .NET solutions to meet customer’s current and future requirements and build world-class .NET solutions that are cost effective and offer measurable ROI. Moreover, they also help in migrating customer’s existing application to .NET with the least possible disruption to the business. Integration into new functionality or extension of the functionality of customer’s existing application using .NET technologies is a leading feature of Microsoft custom application.
Microsoft is also known for offering training services to software developers on .NET technologies and provide valuable consultancy and best practices in .NET. Moreover, it supports and maintains customer’s critical applications. There are various reasons behind the popularity of Microsoft custom application and one of them is that it is a low cost solution which has low TCO or Total Cost of Ownership.
Some other features that a Microsoft custom application possesses are cross language inheritance, memory leak and crash protection, multi-device support, rich output caching, easier deployment, better scalability & improved performance, etc. However, the most crucial one is that the .NET Framework helps customers build applications that work the way they want in the programming language they prefer in terms of software, services and devices.
Direct Marketing Tips: What to Focus On?
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
There are many different forms of direct marketing, from leaflets to telemarketing.
However my direct marketing tips will focus on using email marketing. Email marketing is the most cost effective way of direct marketing and is easily automated. But it is also easy to get wrong.
Once you’ve managed to build a targeted mailing list, from an email capture form on your blog or site, you are ready to start broadcasting messages.
Below are my direct marketing tips:
1) Keep regular contact with your mailing list, sending out helpful information like “how to” videos and articles.
2) Don’t over sell to your list. One marketing sales message per month.
3) Prepare your readers for the sale. Tell them that you’ve found something that’s pretty great but you don’t want to tell them what it is yet because you want to make sure works.
4) Don’t over do it. I personally hate it when I get messages from the same guy every day, even if they are helpful. Two emails a week should be fine.
5) Be a leader. One of favourite direct marketing tips is telling people to act like a leader. Start acting like a leader now and before you know it you’ll actually be one. This is when people start coming to you and actually asking to buy what you sell… crazy.
Remember to keep your emails basic and to the point. The title is very important because you need people to actually open the message. Try using Re: at the beginning because it makes people think they’ve had previous correspondence with you. It’s a bit cheeky but it works.
Direct marketing is an easy way of reaching out to lots of people, but it can be difficult to make those people convert. So take your time and learn as much as you can. If you’re new to this you need to realise that you won’t convert well at first. Not many people will open your messages, let alone buy something because of them. It’s once you’ve managed to build up a decent sized list that you will really see the rewards.
Even if you have a small list don’t worry about getting started with broadcasting your messages. It’s best to do as much as you can now so that you can learn and build confidence because it will pay big in the future.
Top 3 Best Online Backup and Storage Services
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, January 31, 2011
An online backup service is pretty much the same thing as physical backup software that you may have on your home PC. The only difference is that all your data is stored at an online data center, allowing you to access it even if you are not at home, or at your office, or wherever you would normally keep your physical backups.
There are literally dozens of options out there for online backup and storage services, but there are three that really stand head and shoulders above the crowd, in terms of both usability and price. Do some research for yourself before committing to anything here, but this quick list should at least get you started on the right foot.
1- Mozy
This is easily my favorite backup and storage service out of the few that I’ve tried personally. Mozy personifies all the requirements you should look for in a backup service: reliable, automatic backups, inexpensive, and exceptional ease of use.
To set up an account, just go to the Mozy website and sign up. Then you need to download the software and specify the file types that need to be backed up, and let it do its thing. MozyHome is only $4.95 a month for unlimited storage and backup space.
If you don’t have much to backup, MozyHomeFree will give you 2Gb of backup storage on their servers for absolutely no charge.
2- IDrive-E
Very similar to Mozy, although the software takes a bit more getting used to. They offer a wide range of features which is why I included them in this list, including file sharing and mapped drive support. They have unlimited service for the same $4.95 per month, although here’s the catch…”unlimited” in this case is limited to 150Gb.
IDrive-E Basic offers a free 2Gb of online storage.
3- Carbonite
Just like the first two, with Carbonite you simply sign up for an account and download the software from the website. Compared to the other two, Carbonite software feels a little clunky, and it doesn’t offer as many features as either Mozy or IDrive-E. The reason I felt it made the top three is because of the low annual price. $49.95 per year, making this easily the best option if you need an online backup or storage service for a long time.
One Way Link Building Can Help You Gain Higher Site Visibility
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, January 30, 2011
All site owners want to be ranked at the top in the search engines. The top ten on the result pages are prime real estate. When you hear the old theme of ‘location- location -location’ it’s very much like that with result pages.
Whenever you hit the number one slot, it means a lot more traffic for your site. This is what the whole game is about. You have to get lots of traffic if you want to be successful with your site. And targeted traffic is the only kind to deal in, they’re the ones who are already interested in what your selling, and will result in more sales for you. One proven tactic for getting yourself to the number one spot on the results page is one by way of one way
links.
Page Ranking Goes Up From Traffic Sent From High Page Ranking Sites – This is one of the beautiful things about getting one way links from quality sites.
Page ranking is an essential part of the game when it comes to search engines.
Whenever a high page ranked site links up with your site, your page ranking goes up. But it’s not just a one-shot deal. You need to acquire as many of these as possible, because not just the quality of the link is considered, but so is the number of them you have, the relevance they have, and how popular your article marketing sites are, will all factor into the equation.
So a site that has a page rank of 35 will beat out one with a page rank of only 5.
Know That Traffic Increases Traffic – You want to link up to sites that are already getting a good amount of unique traffic. If you link yourself up to one that’s generating a couple million visitors every month, the search engines will see the high volume of traffic as a sign of relevance, because so many people go there. And people will show up if a site keeps good fresh and relevant types of content on their sites. That’s what brings them in. You can get much more traffic from this type of site if you can manage to get your one way link from there.
Ensure You Get Relevant Types of Links – It’s good to get a link from a popular site, and it will always increase your traffic, but if it’s not relevant to your site, it won’t send you ‘targeted’ traffic. If you are
selling pet supplies, then a link from a dog trainer could help you out. But if you are selling pet supplies and get a link from a car mechanic site, even if it’s a good one, the traffic from there won’t net you much. And the search engines don’t like sites that don’t match up, and you could get penalized for doing it. So it’s not a good idea.
If you’re not well-versed in SEO, then sometimes it pays to hire professionals to do this type of thing for you. Find yourself a reputable link building service to launch your campaign for you.
3 Steps to Grow Your B2B E-mail List More Effectively
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Friday, January 28, 2011
B2B marketers say that their internal e-mail lists are seven times more effective at generating quality sales leads than third-party lists. However, most also say that their e-mail lists aren’t large enough to drive the volume of leads their sales organization needs.
What they’re missing is a list-growth strategy that attracts a lot of high-quality names without undermining list growth and vitality. If you follow these three tactics, you should begin to see genuine list growth soon and avoid the dangers that lie in wait when you try to grow your list too fast without the proper controls.
Step 1: Work With Your Sales Team
Traditionally, sales teams and e-mail marketers don’t seen eye to eye over list growth. In fact, most salespeople are reluctant to share their contacts with their e-mail teams. They fear “marketing” will hurt their sales relationships by bombarding customers or prospects with too many confusing or irrelevant e-mail messages.
Smart B2B e-mail marketers are transparent with their sales teams and work with them to define goals and objectives for the e-mail program.
- Offer details regarding the messages you’ll be sending out, including the frequency, call to action, and message points that you’ll use for the campaigns.
- Explain exactly what data points you define as necessary for complete and accurate lead data and what questions you’re using to segment respondents for sales classification and follow-up.
- Listen to the feedback from salespeople. If they say, “That isn’t going to work,” discuss their ideas and make changes, as necessary, to the program to support the sales process and ultimately boost conversion.
Once you’ve established comfort and trust within sales, you’ll be amazed at how many e-mail addresses you’ll find available for your internal list and lead nurture program. I recently worked with a client that tripled its list size in less than three months by opening new communication channels with its sales organization.
Step 2: Build Your List Organically
Most e-mail marketers have mastered e-mail list-growth basics such as promoting e-mail sign-up on your website, in all of your online and offline marketing collateral; asking for sign-ups at trade shows; and capturing e-mail addresses at the time of purchase.
However, you can have many other creative tactics to build your list. Consider these ideas:
- Think beyond the trade show booth: Develop a thought-leadership series – webinars, white papers, e-books, even one-page takeaway articles with Q&As or best practices lists. These give your prospects and customers valuable answers and advice. Require the customer or prospect to register to access the content and ask for opt-in e-mail marketing permission at registration.
- Leverage search and social media marketing: Provide a simple e-mail opt-in in the header and footer of each paid search landing page and social media shared content. Then ask prospects and customers to share e-mail and Web content with their social networks and make it easy for network members to become subscribers.
- Identify offline opportunities to drive people online: Southwest Airlines has mastered this technique. It promotes e-mail sign-up with a call to action on everything from its schedule boards and jet bridges to in-flight magazines, drink napkins, and even its peanut bags. Consider where your customers might be standing around doing nothing and seize the opportunity to promote e-mail sign-up.
- Utilize QR (quick response) codes: QR codes are small, barcode-like images that smartphones with digital cameras can scan and send to a mobile website. Create a QR code that directs customers and prospects to a special landing page to view more information and sign up for e-mail. Include the code on business cards, marketing collateral, airport ads, and print ads so prospects don’t have to type in a Web address or remember a URL.
- Implement Facebook Connect: The Facebook Connect API gives you access to the information prospects have already added to their own Facebook pages when you offer them the option to sign on to your website using their Facebook accounts. They will be asked to provide permission for you to access their public information, send them e-mail, and access their Facebook profile, which you can use to send more targeted e-mail messages.
Step 3: Don’t Turn to List Rental in a Panic
Avoid renting lists as much as possible. Third-party lists are expensive and typically do not perform well. You can spend $10,000 to $15,000 on a highly targeted, high-quality list, only to fall far short of your intended goals.
If your organic list growth strategies still haven’t moved the needle as much as you hoped, invest in carefully targeted paid search campaigns that will drive people back to your site and build your own list.
The Last Word
Remember, generating high-quality leads must be the goal and result of good B2B e-mail list growth. Make sure you track the opt-in source and continually analyze which sources bring the best leads. Continuous tracking will allow you to optimize your list growth efforts and learn which sources to avoid.
When you succeed, you will have a high-performing internal e-mail list that delivers highly qualified prospects that your sales organization can turn into revenue.
How to Destroy Your eBay Business
Don’t be fooled. What you are about to discover could prevent your eBay business from failing. Reputation is everything when selling on ebay and when tarnished with the wrong type you will forever struggle to regain buyer’s confidence. Be very aware of the following and by ensuring you are never guilty of any of these, you have every chance for eBay success.
Untruths: If it does not work, don’t sell it. Don’t say it’s in perfect condition when it has a defect of any Lind. Honesty will be rewarded.
Your auctions end anytime: If your auction ends say during the middle of the night, how many potential bidders do you think will be around to create that bidding frenzy? How many will be around to ensure that they are the winner?. Ensure your eBay auction finishes at a “profitable” time.
Why would you ever sell rubbish?: If you would not be prepared to sell it elsewhere else, don’t expect a rush of bidders just because it is eBay. If you think that you can make good money selling anything that you can pick up then think again. EBay buyers are just as discerning as any other buyers. And they won’t buy rubbish either!
Never give discounts: Ever considered that a special deal might just seal a sale to a very happy and grateful customer that will make them return to your site to buy again. EBay is still like the real world, discounts and special deals are always good incentives to make sales. Don’t ignore their power.
Unattractive listings: The easiest way to make a potential bidder click the back button is to have your listing full of noise, clutter, colour, capital letters, wrong font. You get the answer. Just because it is eBay, does not mean you can be bold and brash with your listing. What listings are professional and successful? Look at them and copy their ideas.
Photos. Who needs them?: You do! Never, I repeat, never make an auction listing without the benefit of a photo of the item. All eBay Power Sellers use photos, so make sure you do to. As a customer, you will want to see the item that you are buying, so have the same atitude as a seller. And the more photos the better. Leave no question unanswered by the use of photos.
Only use a short description: Never think that a two line quick description shall do.The more information that you give the potential bidders, the more inclinded they will be to place a bid. EBay is all about giving as much information as possible so an informed decision can be made by the person as to whether they wish to bid or not. Never let a potential bidder click off because they did not have enough information on which to make a decision.
Ignore emails: A potential bidder may want to ask you a specific question about the item. This person could be the winning bidder; they may start what could turn into a bidding frenzy. You don’t know, so don’t restrict your opportunities by giving poor service by ignoring emails. If the customer does not receive a reply from you, how likely is is that they will bid?
Posting at your leisure: An ebay customer will remember, they will post bad feedback and your reputation will suffer all because your mailing of the itemjwas not efficiently dispatched. A last point, don’t overcharge on the posting. There is a fair post charge and there is a blatant money making postage charge. Don’t antagonise the customer, here is someone that is liable to buy from you again so treat them well and that will be rewarded.
10 Profoundly Effective Steps to Internet Marketing Success
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
10 Profoundly Effective Steps to Internet Marketing Success
Over the years, I’ve read thousands and thousands of marketing articles, both online and off. But to this point, I have never read any article that was what I considered to be 100% idiot-proof – meaning even a dunce, moron, or complete idiot couldn’t screw up the process.
So I decided to write such an article. And if you read and judiciously apply the ridiculously simple, but profoundly effective and proven success steps presented in this article, I am 100% convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that anyone can absolutely, positively make money with Internet Marketing.
Why am I so confident in these steps? Because these are the exact same steps I’ve used to build nearly 100 profitable websites of my own, in a very short period of time. Here are the steps:
1. Brainstorm Your Domain Name
This is an important process, so don’t rush it. Even if it takes you weeks or even months to come up with a domain name you’re satisfied with. Take as much time as you need. Your domain name is that important.
I’m a firm believer in creating generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords. For example, NewyorkCityHotels.com or NapaValleyWines.com. Having a generic domain name serves two crucial purposes:
First, it will attract a more targeted audience to your website. A targeted audience will give you a much higher conversion ratio – allowing you to make maximum use of the traffic you receive.
Second, generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords will help with your search ranking. While SEO experts have opposing viewpoints whether or not this actually helps, based on my own personal experience, I can tell you that it does.
By the way, because of the astronomical number of domains on the Internet, you may have to get a little creative in order to utilize your primary keywords in your domain name.
For example, if your first choice, NewYorkCityHotels.com is already taken, try playing around with different variations of your keywords.
For instance, try this variation, HotelsinNewYorkCity.com…or this one, CityofNewYorkHotels.com. Also, don’t be afraid to use hyphens in your domain name. Using this technique allows me to utilize my primary keywords 100% of the time.
It also allows me to use the much preferred .com domain. You should try to use .com domains whenever possible, because most people will automatically put a .com on the end of a domain when they type it into a search engine. This puts you in prime position to pick up traffic from domains in your category that utilize extensions other than .com.
2. Register Your Domain Name, and Forget It
After you decide on a domain name, don’t build your website right away. Register your domain name, and forget it.
Why? Because in my opinion, you should never build a website without having a plan to promote, as well as monetize your website. Develop a well-thought-out marketing plan going forward, then when you build your website, you can hit the ground running.
3. Develop Your Marketing Plan
I’m a member of several small business forums, and without fail, the two questions that get asked most often are:
“How do I promote my website?” or, “How do I get free traffic to my website?” Those two basic questions get asked every single day.
That’s why it’s so important to develop a marketing plan in advance. You need to know the answer to those questions, before you build your website. You can’t get to your destination, if you don’t know know where you want to go.
4. Your Budget Determines Your Marketing Plan
If you have thousands of dollars to work with, then you have many more options when it comes to promoting your website. For example, you can buy ads in offline publication, as well as online publications.
A word of advice: Unless you are an experienced marketer with extremely deep pockets, stay away from pay-per-click advertising. PPC advertising will eat up your advertising budget quicker than Usain Bolt breaks world records.
In reality, most people coming online don’t have thousands of dollars to work with. In fact, most people coming online have little or no money at all.
But that’s the beauty of the Internet. Even if you are broke, you can still promote your website effectively, if you know what you’re doing.
For example, you can participate in social media networking, and promote your website via mega-popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and a host of other social media websites.
Other free and highly effective promotion methods include article marketing, forum posting, guest blogging, RSS feeds, volunteering your expertise on Question & Answer sites like AllExperts.com and more.
5. Learn How to Implement Your Marketing Plan Effectively
Starting a business – any business without having even basic marketing skills is downright foolish. Competency in marketing is the most important business skill that you can have.
If you become proficient in the art of marketing, it will allow you to become profitable that much quicker. And there won’t be anything that you can’t accomplish.
Some of the greatest sales and marketing books ever written are located right under your nose, at your local library – and they’re free. Do yourself a favor and study the classics. Many of the marketing techniques being used today are based on sound marketing principles established many decades ago.
A few of my favorite marketing books include The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy, Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joe Sugarman, Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy, Magic Words That Bring You Riches by Ted Nicholas and How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor O. Schwab.
If you can’t find these books at your local library, you can pick them up for just a few dollars on Amazon.
6. Apply What You Learn
It’s not enough to just read the classics, you have to apply what you learn. Otherwise, what’s the point? That means reading the books more than once – several times if necessary.
Actually, you should read the books as many times as it takes for the information to sink in and become second nature to you.
You should also take copious notes, and practice writing ads over and over and over again. You should give yourself regular written exams on the information in the books, and each time you test yourself, your goal should be to score 100%.
Sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? It is. The question is how hard are you willing to work to get what you want?
7. Monetize Your Website
There are a number of ways that you can monetize your website – from selling advertising on your site to affiliate programs. My preferred method is affiliate programs.
Why? Because affiliate programs are completely hands-off for you. No billing, no inventory, no hassles. You simply choose from among the thousands of affiliate programs available on the Internet, select your program of interest, and promote the living daylights out of it. Then take your checks to the bank…that’s it.
8. Take Your Income to the Next Level
Once you start making $50 per month with affiliate programs, build another website, and start promoting another affiliate program. And when that website starts making $50, build another website and another and another.
Why? Because if you have 10 websites making $50 per month, that’s a monthly income of $500. And therein lies the secret to making money on the Internet.
Why beat yourself up trying to make hundreds – or even thousands of dollars with a single website? Take the path of least resistance. Build a bunch of websites that make just $50 per month. If you can build fifty websites in a year, that’s a monthly income of $2500, or $30,000 a year.
Does your current job pay that much? And the beauty of this method is you can keep giving yourself a raise. If you build another fifty websites the following year, you just doubled your income to $5,000 per month.
And if you can build another fifty websites the following year, you just tripled your income to $7500 per month.
The key to making this method work is building simple, low-maintenance websites. Just add content once or twice a month, and forget about them.
Think it can’t be done? Think again. I’m doing it, and so are thousands of other smart and resourceful entrepreneurs.
9. What About Content?
The key to having a website that other websites want to link to is having quality, content that is relevant to the overall theme of your website. You can either produce the content yourself, import it from somewhere else, or a combination of both.
If you elect to import your content from somewhere else, you can either use free content from article directories like EzineArticles, or you can purchase PLR articles, which I don’t recommmend.
Why? Because hundreds of other people purchased the exact same PLR package as you. So those articles have to be completely rewritten, which is a time-consuming process.
Whichever way you choose to go, just remember, it’s important to have lots and lots of relevant content on your website.
How much content? The more the better. After all, the more content you have on your website, the more often your visitors will return to read that content.
10. Build Your Website
Okay, now that you’ve properly laid the foundation for success, it’s time to build your website. The type of website you build will again depend on the amount of money you have to play around with.
I have a bunch of websites that I paid absolutely nothing for. And I have websites that I paid hundreds of dollars for. My recommendation: If you don’t have to spend money on a website, don’t.
Nowadays, it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money to get a decent looking website.
But whatever you do, be sure to purchase your own domain name. You definitely don’t want the name Blogspot, WordPress or Homestead in your domain name. It just looks amateurish.
I buy most of my domains through NetworkSolutions.com, because I’ve been using them for years, and I’m comfortable with them. Their domains cost a lot more, but they more than make up for it with great customer service.
That’s something you just can’t put a price on. That being said, I’ve also purchased $10 domain names from GoDaddy without any problems.
One last thing, don’t beat your brains out worrying about SEO. Just make sure your primary keywords appear in your title tag, and you’ll be just fine.
The FTC Needs to Shut Up!
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is one of the most unique
parts of our government. It has a wide range of powers given by
law, which encompass among other things the ability to pass
rules and regulations against unfair and deceptive acts or
practices. The FTC often issues “guidelines which are no more
than notices that they will push for prosecution or civil action
against individuals in violation their guidelines. Although
these guidelines are often up for public debate, they are not
passed by any governing body such as Congress, yet affect us
often more than any newly passed law would. While many people
see that the FTC is a consumer rights entity within the
government, a growing number of people see that the FTC is a
part of a growing, overreaching government that is interfering
with the ability of businesses and often individuals to conduct
business in this market economy.
I’m not claiming that the FTC should NOT prosecute obvious
fraud, where consumers are clearly being scammed – such as not
delivering a product as promised or the mass distribution of
unsafe toys. That being said, the FTC’s guidelines and civil
actions are quickly crossing the border of infringing not only
on our ability to do business, but our First Amendment Rights to
Free Speech. The Right to express one’s self and opinions,
whether it is political or business related is an inherent part
of our society and the foundations of our business community.
The courts have ruled that advertising is a form of free speech,
which cannot be infringed upon anymore than any other opinion,
written or spoken.
Recently the FTC issued guidelines (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/
10/endortest.shtm) (which means, as said, we plan to bring action
against someone) that regulate bloggers. Bloggers are a unique
part of our economy, a throwback to the creation of this Country
when people would often hand out pamphlets to express their
opinion, in order to get attention to their cause. Bloggers are
often people, like myself, who have taken the initiative to put
their feelings down and write, taking the power away from larger
media organizations, and putting it into the hands of the
individual. As one knows, blogs often express anything from
political opinion to diet tips. They are sometimes political,
commercial, religious, or just something someone did in order to
express their frustration at their parents. Whatever the reason
is, they are a wonderful expression of our First Amendment
Rights.
Yet the FTC believes that bloggers are so unique, that they
need to be regulated in a way that has never been proposed to
mainstream media. The FTC recently issued regulations in which
they clearly state how bloggers who engage in commercial
activity, should clearly state how they are related to the
product, and make it obvious they are engaging in business, or
have been paid to endorse the product. This uniquely affects the
interactive advertising community, because it could easily be
interpreted that any link, any mention of a product that would
in turn create a sale (such as an affiliate link) would have to
be clearly mentioned as an advertisement or state the nature of
the relationship.
Additionally, more and more the FTC is engaged in the business
of deciding what is considered an “authentic or substantiated”
claim by an endorser or a product. While they have for the last
decade or so, been more involved in cases in which they believe
unsubstantiated product claims have been made, they are
specifically targeting bloggers – and their opinions. This
growing trend is more and more disturbing, as it gives the
government the right to make assumptions on the quality and
accuracy of claims of businesses – and then in theory, the
accuracy of claims of individuals. It asks businesses and
bloggers to basically “prove” what they are saying is correct,
even if it is an opinion. They must substantiate according to
the FTC, all their claims.
This is unique in nature, because it places an undue hardship
often on small businesses and bloggers, who cannot afford to
hire research teams or a huge law firm to assist them in the
creation of their materials. A sole-proprietor who discovers
that perhaps his home-made fig bars have lead to increased
weight loss and energy, in theory, will have to prove and
substantiate his claims before he could buy advertising on
Google that states that these bars can help in weight loss. It
could prevent a small business owner from selling knitted goods
on Ebay, because the claim that they have kept her warmer than
any other coat she owned, might be subject to scrutiny. They
have to worry that the government, the FTC might intervene at
some point and bring action against them based on perception and
supposition. It gives bureaucrats, non-elected officials an
extreme amount of power over small businesses in this Country.
The right of Free Speech in this Country is quite interesting,
because it allows people to express their opinion, even if they
are wrong. It assumes that no opinion is inherently wrong and
opens up the possibility of debate. It also assumes that most
adults are intelligent enough to make their own decisions
regarding their dislikes, their opinions and the products they
want to buy. The government, acting as “Big Mommy” is more and
more interfering and saying that they want to regulate what we
see and hear – that despite a huge Internet with tons of
information, we can’t do our own research and decide if a
product is what we want. We are giving the government more power
than has ever existed before: the ability to sanitize what we
hear and see before it’s released to the public.
“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big
enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows
us that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” – Thomas
Jefferson
Internet Marketing – Misconceptions That You Must Consider
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:00 AM
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Internet Marketing – Misconceptions That You Must Consider
Internet marketing is seen as a get rich quick scheme by many newbie marketers because of the ease and convenience linked to the world-wide-web. This is however misleading, as the success that you achieve whether online or off line, is directly linked to what you put in.
It usually takes much time, tribulations, steep learning and also some failures before you will succeed in the internet marketing world. It is advisable to take heed of the following misconceptions.
Cash will flow in very quickly
Internet marketing takes a substantial amount of work. Spend lots of time learning the ropes, but do expect the odd failure along the way. Your success is entirely up to you and you usually reap what you sow.
You will not make any money
Life is an issue of balance, and your input towards any business venture, will determine the output. The supreme goal for internet marketing success will only be reached by consistently applying yourself in a disciplined manner. If you are prepared to learn and accept the occasional failure whilst learning from your mistakes and apply that knowledge, the money will come.
Anyone is suited for internet marketing
If you adopt the attitude of telling yourself there is nothing to this, you are already starting of on the wrong footing. A venture such as this takes a lot of discipline and you must be willing to learn. Have an open mind get rid of your preconceived ideas and be willing to embrace new thoughts as they come up.
It is too difficult
Have you ever taken a deep look within your self to discover where the true potential lies? Is there a potential internet marketing guru waiting to come out? What do others need that has not been created yet? The answers to these questions are only the beginnings of your ability to differentiate yourself from the crowd.
It will only require a few hours work a day
This is possible but in the beginning, long hours are not unheard of. You must be prepared to spend up to 18 hour days in front of your computer. The compensating factor however is that at some point in the future you will be able to automate most of your efforts.
It takes many years to learn online business
This is not true and if you apply yourself in a diligent and consistent manner, your learning can be accelerated without compromising on the quality. Study hard, read newsletters and articles, join online forums and listen to those who are already successful within the internet marketing field.
Internet marketing is a real and authentic business venture, but be prepared for the many skeptics and other people who will look at you in a funny way.
They react in this manner because of not seeing you leave your house at 8 in the morning and returning at 6 every evening. Remind them that you are just as exhausted from working and researching all day as they are from slogging in the workplace or office all day. If you work on your business model and ignore the misconceptions, then you will succeed.
Need to increase website revenues this month? Affiliate programs have been a boon for the Web and a salvation for many Web-prenuers since the beginning of the commercial Internet. There are an endless number of ways to generate revenue from affiliate programs — and just as many sites and solutions to choose from. So finding a reputable and quality program that works within the scope of your business model is a serious challenge. Choose wisely and ’Net riches are yours. Choose poorly and you may be wasting your time, energy and resources. There are more fly-by-nights in this industry than anywhere else.
Website Services Magazine has put together the following list of 50 of the most popular affiliate industry sites on the ’Net — from directories to wildly popular individual programs. Research for this report is provided courtesy of Ranking.com — the Web’s largest provider of website popularity metrics
and detailed website information on over one million online destinations.
Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc
By Mark Yarrobino
If you’ve been online for any amount of time, then I’m sure you’ve heard many of the success stories about internet entrepreneurs, and how they’re making millions every year, and you’ve probably heard how easy it is for you to do it, too.
And the truth is, it actually is kind of easy, but not as easy as most salesmen
Why Profitable Keywords are the Cornerstones of Your Internet Marketing?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 9:33 AM
Saturday, April 25, 2009
By Titus Hoskins
Keywords are ground zero. They are essential to your online success. You must get your keywords right or it’s game over before you even get started. Mainly because keywords are the most important element of your online marketíng.
It can’t be emphasized enough, especially to beginning online webmasters or marketers, choosing the right profitable keywords will largely determine
Internet Marketing Tactics For These Tough Times (From Google and Me!)
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 11:11 AM
Friday, March 13, 2009
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009
As we enter into what many enlightened souls are calling the most dire economic times since the Great Depression, online marketers need all the help they can get – regardless of the source. You have probably heard of Google; but chances are almost 100% certain, you have never heard of me. Lucky you!
Actually, the only thing you need to know about me is that I am a full-time online affiliate marketer and I make a very comfortable living from the web.
Using Keywords as Part of Your Internet Marketing Strategy
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 9:17 AM
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Whether your internet marketing strategy utilizes websites, blogs, article marketing or press releases correctly using keywords is an absolute must.
Anyone involved in an online business will tell you their marketing efforts are dramatically reduced if they haven’t optimized their published content correctly with the right keywords.
Keyword optimization is a very integral component of an effective online
Internet Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 9:30 AM
Monday, February 9, 2009
In this economy, any marketing tool you can use to find new customers is worth considering. But perhaps the best marketing tool available to many small businesses is a yellow-pages-style web site. Such a site means prospective local customers looking for a business like yours know that you’re in business and ready for their patronage.
But a word or two of explanation… While the traffic statistics of the typical small business web site may not impress Google, eBay or Amazon.com, many small business web sites do generate significant numbers of prospects compared to the other marketing tools available. Commonly, for example,
In twenty years’ time I’ll be pushing fifty and I’m without a clue as to what could be happening by then. In the shorter term, though, I think we’ll see lots of fun stuff develop. Here are three growing trends that I’m excited to watch over the next few years.
Even more web-based applications: Web-based apps have been around for awhile, so this is a no-brainer, but I think it’ll go gangbusters once popular apps reach the mainstream. Thinking about great web apps like 280 Slides, the Aviary graphics apps, Google Apps, and Photoshop Express, I think it’s fair to say that we’re well on the way to a world where everyone — not just us
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