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Google Adwords Top Tips – Part 1

By Dave McEvoy in Featured

Welcome to part 1 of this 5 part series on Google Adwords.Google AdWords is one of the best advertising tools on the Internet, but only if you know how to implement Adwords properly to achieve maximum potential. So what exactly should you be doing to ensure that you get the best possible results from Adwords?

We have put together the following tips to help you get those all important click throughs and conversion rates.

1. Use targeted keywords

Never go with the full list of keywords that Google suggests. Pick the keywords that closely match your business. What would people search if looking for your products. Time and time again we see unrelated keywords in campaigns that companies run. For example, if you sell real estate in Florida, don’t buy the keywords ‘Florida’ or ‘real estate’, buy ‘Florida real estate’. Simple, effective, and won’t waste your money. Keywords really are the central hub of your success on AdWords. Take your time, and read every tip below that has anything to do with keywords before you start.

2. Search for the keywords that you are buying

Type the keywords into Google. See if your competitors are showing. If the page that shows is unrelated to your business then probably it is not a good search for you.

3. Get some keyword clues from your competitors

Companies that know what they are doing in the area of search will have their page titles loaded with their best keywords. Have a look at the good performers in your market. See what keywords they are using in the page titles (the text that appears in the top bar of the browser window). If you are familiar with viewing the source of a page, you can see the keywords they have placed in their ‘keywords’ META tag.

4. Use lots of keywords

Think of as many ways of saying your product or service as you can. This will enable you to buy more specific keywords. It is much better to buy a specific keyword such as ‘buy Reebok running shoes’, than expect to catch this search on a broad match of ‘running shoes’.

5. Use keyword research tools

Google’s tool is good in that it suggests similar searches. Google’s tool is available as you set up your AdWords account. You type in a search and the tool will return similar searches. Some of these will be irrelevant so be careful.

Yahoo has a tool that allows you to type in your root term and it shows searches that include this term. It also gives exact search volumes on Yahoo for the previous month for that term. It is an excellent tool when looking for negative keywords

6. Use Global Negatives

If you’re selling something, you don’t want people finding your ad when they’re searching for free stuff. This sounds obvious, but do some searches and you’ll see it happening. Use the word ‘free’ in your campaign global negatives. Add any words you don’t want your ad associated with to this list. Using negative keywords is especially important if you’re using broad matching.

7. Create lots of ad groups

An ad group should contain a small number of keywords (10-40) that are targeted around a certain theme. These keywords will all show the same ad. Ad groups should be created for dominant search terms, different product groups, often individual products if they are well searched. The choosing of ad groups and grouping of the keywords is a difficult area so be prepared to restructure your campaign after a couple of months because your first attempt was not good.

8. Test different positions

How much of a difference will being in the first position, as opposed to the second, third or sixth position make, for your net profit? The answer is that it depends on your creative, industry and who else is bidding on your keywords. Test your creative in each position and work out where it will be most effective, from an ROI point of view. Remember also that the AdWords ranking algorithm works on a bid price x CTR (click through rate) basis (it’s actually more complicated than that, but this gives an idea as to why out of two ads with similar bids, one will be higher because of a higher CTR).

9. Test different creatives

You can also test your creatives (the ad text). Write two or three different ads and Google will rotate them in this ad group. The creative that gives you the highest ROI is the one you should go with. You need to give the test long enough to produce statistically significant results. How long this is depends on the search volume and the number of conversions you achieve. Use common sense as to when you think the results show that one ad is better than the others unless you know your stats.

10. Rotate ads evenly

In your campaign settings one of the options is to rotate ads evenly or to have Google optimize for you and show better performing ads more frequently. The default setting is for Google to optimize. Change it! Google optimizes based on clicks, not conversions. In other words, it shows the ad that brings Google the most money, not you. Many times we see ads that have lower click through rates getting a better ROI because they appeal to buyers, whereas other ads with higher click through rates appeal to the masses.

Look out for more top tips to improve all the important features and get the maximum profit from Adwords in Google Adwords Top Tips Part 2
Author:  Dave McEvoy is an Adwords expert with years of experience in ppc management. For more information please come and visit our site.

A Secret Guide to Blog Techniques For Better SEO Traffic

By Darren Dunner in Featured

Many online business owners that I talk to have tried many SEO tactics and no matter what they do, they can’t make their way into the top of Googles search engine. What they all have in common is what I consider to be “old school seo”. Yes, old school seo, because they are using techniques that worked several years ago. At the rate of speed the search engines change, what worked 1 year ago doesn’t necessarily apply today.

Many websites who have been online for several years and not seeing what they want in traffic results or even new sites trying to figure out where to start, this article will give you very detailed information that if you follow it, will see results in less then 3 weeks. Just so we are clear on this subject we are talking about online marketing with blogs. Notice I said “blogs” meaning more then 1. Do you want to climb your way to the top?, it revolves around blogs.

If you are not sure what a blog is, check out the archive section of our site (click here), you will find many articles talking on the blog basics.

Pimp Your Blog

Your site more then likely needs a “blog makeover” and it is time to do things the right way. I will always recommend using WordPress as it is free and open source software. Open source basically means that if you are a programmer you can modify how the script looks and works on your site and modify it for your own purposes.

Using wordpress and having knowledge of html and php you can modify your blog to match your website. This is called “branding your blog”. This is very important because if your blog yields placement in the search engines you want people to know they made it to the right place.

If you are not familiar with modifying code then you will need to outsource someone or a team that can. This can range in price from $400.00 to $1000.00 depending on what is involved in your blog makeover. Make sure that you choose someone who knows what they are doing, that your blog will still validate as an XHTML site and that your rss feeds still validate as well. Changing the codes of the default blog can cause issues that will make your blog null and void so be careful!

Once you have your blog designed it is time for the real pimping! You will want to add some plugins to your blog and add a larger ping list to your “Update Services” Section. You will find this in your “Options” >> “Writing”, scroll down and find “Update Services” and add to your list ping servers to notify. Here is a short list to help you get started:

• http://rpc.pingomatic.com
• http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
• http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
• http://ping.myblog.jp
• http://ping.bitacoras.com
• http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
• http://bblog.com/ping.php
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

Some useful Plugins:

• SiteMap Plugin
• Chicklet Creator
• Ultimate Tag Warrior

All 3 of those include instructions and examples to help you get started. These will officially “Pimp Your Blog” and will put you well on your way to SEO success.

Start Posting Content To Your Blog Daily

Well, give your self a couple of days off on the weekends, but blog daily! Your blog content will consist of approximately 200 + words per post and will contain your keyword or phrase that you are looking to position approximately 2 times.

You don’t want to post more then 5 blogs per day, otherwise it will appears a spam and count against you. Focus on about 5 keywords or phrases at any given time. If you try to get all the keywords you want all at the same time you will never see the success you want. Stay focused til you get the results from the first 5 keyords that you are going after.

If writing is not your thing, then outsource again and hire ghost writers. Writers that have a clue and will accomplish what you need will truly help you increase your traffic. The content does not need to be compelling or so content rich that it causes your sales to sky rocket, the purpose is to gain traffic. If your blog is branded correctly with your sites design then most users will click around to get to the part of your site that they were looking for.

An important tip here is to make sure that you link keywords or phrases to your home page or service page as that will redirect the search engines to index the page you are linking to so when people do find you, they end up on your main site rather then your blog. If you don’t do this, then your blog will gain higher results then your main site.

Start Posting Daily to Other Peoples Blogs

This concept is a bit different then posting comments to blogs just to get a basic link. This is creative blogging at its best. There are several blog sites that are starting to appear on the net that run like article directories and they allow you to register so you can login and post to categories of your choice. An example of one of these can be found here: http://www.seositemanager.com/blog/ which is also by the way an article directory.

What is happening now, is you are posting seo content on your own branded blog and posting on other blogs and linking back to your site from these blogs. Again, here you don’t want to do more then 5 of these per day and you want to distribute this around on several different blogs to spread the link wealth.

Finding these can be a bit of a challenge as there is not much information out there. If this becomes a challenge for you there is a service that gives you access to private and public blogs that will allow you to create accounts and start blogging. Go to Article Underground and read up on their services and see if this is of use to you.

Which ever way you choose to go, submitting blogs on a regular basis and linking your keywords back to your, plus branding your own blog will make your site traffic increase plus you will have a higher rate of success in gaining new clients.

Author:  Darren Dunner, Editor for SitePro News, and online webmasters resources providing daily articles via our website and newsletter. If you have not signed up our newsletter service then you are missing out. You can opt in by entering your email address on the home page of our site: http://www.sitepronews.com

7 Ways To Improve International E-Commerce Usability

By Linda Bustos in Featured

When you run an ecommerce website, you have the potential to sell products to people around the world — even from your own basement. But many online retailers expect to make international sales without doing all they should to help convert international shoppers. Here are a few ideas to help make the online shopping experience smooth for your international customers.

1. Have an International Shipping page

Sure, you could have it buried in an FAQ section, Help area or some other hard-to-find place, but why not make it easy for users to find International Shipping policies by making it its own link visible from every page on the site?

The footer menu is a common location for shipping information, as is the top right hand corner of your page. Conventions like this train users to check these areas for shipping information. If it’s not there, customers might just assume it’s not available. Placing this information in one of the two areas the customer is likely to look is a good idea. Placing it in both areas is even better.

Some e-commerce websites hide International Shipping information in the “Help” section. Avoid this, as users can’t find it by scanning the page they are on, and Help may be associated with technical assistance with a site.

2. Include Important Information on Shipping Page

Return policies, customer service hours of operation and time zones, estimated shipping times and order tracking availability should be clearly stated. A list of all countries you ship to is also recommended. Remind customers that they may have to pay additional duties and taxes depending on where they live.

3. Make Your Shipping Policy Searchable

Make sure your international shipping page can be found using your site’s internal search engine. It’s a good idea to program your search engine to deliver this page for searches for “international,” “intl,” “international orders” and “international customers” too.

4. Show International Shipping Availability on Product Pages

You may carry some products that you can’t ship abroad even if you can ship most products. For example, certain health supplements are legal in some countries and illegal in others. It’s a good idea to mention this before the customer gets to the checkout. Sure, this wouldn’t be so bad for you if you never intended to sell anything outside your country anyway, but if you irritate a user who may buy something else from you it’s in your best interest to provide this courtesy.

5. Convert Currencies, Weights and Measures on the Product Page

North American customers may not buy clothing from Korean shops that display sizing in centimeters or a children’s toy from the UK that can support up to 35 kilograms. Providing conversion tools can increase conversions!

6. Estimate Shipping Costs on Your Product Pages

E-Commerce usability rockstars offer shipping cost tools right on product pages, which not only helps international customers but also locals. FedEx, UPS and USPS all provide API access for your web developer to make this happen. Offering the tool at the product page level also will reduce your rate of abandoned carts.

7. Send a Post-Sale Email

If you can segment your customer database by location, you can send targeted follow up emails to your international customers. For example, as the Canadian dollar rises more Canadians will shop online at US stores. Motivate your Canadian customers to visit you again by offering free shipping, discounts or other offers. Or, send an email from time to time asking how you can improve the shopping experience for international users. Even if they don’t respond, you send a powerful message that your business cares about foreign shoppers.

Of course, your own usability testing with international customers is the best way to learn about how your own site can be improved. There are even consultancies that offer international usability testing services. But these seven tips will give you a head start.

Author:  Linda Bustos is an Emerging Media Analyst for Elastic Path Software, an SEO friendly ecommerce software solutions provider. Linda blogs daily at the Get Elastic E-commerce blog about user experience for e-commerce and Internet marketing for online retailers.

5 Powerful Copywriting Tips & Why You Should Use Them

By Dan Lok in Featured

One great thing about copywriting is it’s a never-ending discovery. There’s literally no end to your copywriting education. That sentiment has been echoed by all the great copywriters through the years. And quite often an experienced writer will re-discover things learned before.

Exposure, practicing, writing and learning are the only ways you’ll make the science of copywriting second nature.

And when that happens…it becomes distilled within your personality and writing style to be expressed as copywriting art. For copywriting truly is a science and an art form.

Today you’re getting 5 must-do tips that’ll help transform your copy into power copy. Absorb them and use them. They work!

If you do your own web copy, then go back and check it against what you’re about to learn. If you’ve been writing for a while, a refresher never hurt anyone. And maybe you’ll think of something new about your self and your writing.

Power Tip #1: There are a number of valuable tests to do on your own copy during the review and edit process. Here’s just one…as you read your copy ask your self, “So what?”

Have you ever read a sales letter, email, or any written advertising and thought those two words about what you read? I’m betting you have.

Well, guess what, so does everyone else. That’s why it’s so important to do this. If you cannot give a compelling and great answer to that question about your copy, then you know what to do. Edit it, revise it, or get rid of it.

Doing that one exercise for your entire piece will only make it stronger, more compelling, and more persuasive.

Power Tip #2: Maybe you don’t know that all buying decisions are based on one or more emotions at the “root” level. It’s true. Everyone ultimately buys for emotional reasons and then makes every attempt to justify it with logic. It’s simple…

Everyone wants to be right. No one likes being wrong, or being perceived as being wrong.

If you want to accomplish this feat you must appeal to emotions. Fear, greed, anger, flattery, exclusiveness, salvation, lust, desire for love. Skillfully touching one or more of those emotions will make your copy compelling and persuasive.

But how do you know which one is best to use? The answer lies in your product and market. We’ll get to how and why your market is so critical in a few minutes.

Power Tip #3: I’ve seen some disagreement with this next point. But I’ll tell you why I feel leading with your strongest point is the way to go.

The most immediate obstacle to getting your copy read is to seize and capture the reader’s attention. And then keep it. Leading with your strongest point gives you a better chance of grabbing your reader and holding on.

You hit ‘em over the proverbial head. Make them sit-up and take notice. Then you use your copywriting skill to build on that. Establish momentum and keep it going. Then…?

Move into your second strongest point. Make it compelling and gently pull your reader along. Don’t try to force it because force builds resistance. That’s not what you want.

Power Tip #4: Knowing your audience…your target market…means understanding as much about them as humanly possible. You need to know them because you need to know what motivates them to “want” to buy. If you don’t know what motivates them, how can you effectively talk to them? More importantly…

How can you get inside their head and ‘carry the conversation’?

Because the most powerful copy effortlessly makes the reader feel the words being read are “their own.” And when you do this in combination with Tip 2, then your copy takes on a life of its own.

Power Tip #5: How do you talk everyday? How do most people talk everyday? That’s exactly how you want to write your copy…in normal, conversational, every day words. Of course there are exceptions and that boils down to your product and target market. Some markets are a bit more sophisticated and you need to adjust your copy. But for the most part…just talk regular.

This goes hand-in-hand with knowing your target market and carrying the conversation in your reader’s head. This is so vitally important but I still see countless websites that violate this very basic copy rule. But now you know.

Author:  A former college dropout, Dan “The Man” Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to an internet multi-millionaire. Discover how you can maximize your website profits in minimum time. For a limited time, you can test-drive Dan’s Insiders Club for 30-days Risk-Free and get $1,165 dollars worth of bonus gifts. Rush cover to: http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com/testdrive.html

AdSense Farming Reaps Daily Profits

By Michael Small in Featured

You keep hearing about all these people making a fortune on AdSense. But have you ever met one of them? Same here; never.

I’ve bought ebooks promising overnight success, but never made the big bucks. Then I realized that making money from AdSense is a lot like farming. Some crops (keywords) yield a higher price than others and the more fields you have planted, the better your chances.

Of course, your “field” is a website that can be had for next to nothing so even small profits are pretty much all profit. Btw – I’m not making a fortune but I make an average of $3.50 per day; about $105 a month, per site.

I’ll show you exactly how I did it, step-by-step.

First, if you don’t already have one, sign up for a free Adsense account at http://www.google.com/adsense. But do NOT get your ad code yet. I have some tips that can triple your response rates – and income.

Second, if you want killer free information about your visitors and some really nice metrics information, get your free Google Analytics account at http://www.google.com/analytics/.

Third, sign up with http://www.WhyParkWeb.com or a similar service. Just be sure to pick one that can create content rich, search engine optimized sites for you automatically. That’s how you make your AdSense money. When I registered for this service it was $99 and would let you have 100 automatically created websites – forever, with no additional fees.

Now here are some tips from a 9 year veteran search engine optimization specialist that will put your sites over the top! Let’s do this by the numbers…

#1 Find the best keywords

Google gets more searches than any other search engine so let’s peek into their database. Check out https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in any keyword or phrase you can think of that you think your target audience is looking for.

Try to use specific keyword phrases whenever possible. If you have a web-page that deals with floral delivery, instead of “flowers”, which has 233,000,000 competing pages on Google, try “send flowers”, which has 1/10th the number of competing pages. Better yet, think like people speak (I.E./ I’m sending flowers to my mom.) As it turns out, a lot more people are searching for “sending flowers” than are searching “send flowers” and – here’s the best part – “sending flowers” has less than 1% of the competing web-pages as the search term we started with, “flowers”. Now that’s impressive! You have an advantage over about 99.5% of your competitors with just this tip.

#2 Write a killer title Google loves

Take your most important specific and general keyword phrases and put them together, specific first; general second. Let’s use “sending flowers” and “flowers”. Now separate the keywords or phrases by a pipe (that vertical key over the Enter/Return key). We now have “sending flowers | flowers”. Now go back and grab one or two more relevant keywords like “wedding flowers” and “Mothers Day” and combine them like this “sending flowers | flowers for weddings, Mothers Day and more”.

Now you’ve covered all your bases and build a fantastic keyword rich title that won’t look like keyword spamming. You can also change the Mothers Day to Valentines Day, Easter, as needed.

#3 Write a META description that gets you noticed

This is important. Not only can this tip alone get you ahead of most competitors, but it’s also what readers see of your site before they decide to visit. You need to write something for people, but that search engines will like. Don’t worry. It’s a lot easier than it sounds.

Take all of your keywords and line them up in order of importance. Since “sending flowers” gets more searches than any other, let’s start there and use the same logic for the rest. Now we have, in order, “sending flowers”, “flowers”, “wedding flowers”, and “Mothers Day.” Now improve your keyword prominence (relevance based on position) by using your best keyword in the beginning of the description: “Sending flowers has never been easier. Here you will find inside tips on the least expensive ways to send the freshest wedding flowers, Mothers Day arrangements or whatever else you need.”

We used all of our keywords without overloading the text and broke it up a little by adding some detail. It works great! Just try to keep the description at or under 250 characters (including spaces).

#4 Add great content

Why Park does 99.9% of the work for you. All you have to do is enter your keywords into the article finder provided by the “Research Your Keywords” link (located beside the keywords box.)

Without using any imagination at all, I found 172 articles in a few seconds…

sending flowers – 5 flowers – 151 wedding flowers – 16

Total Articles: 172

Add “roses” and get another 59! That’s 231 articles in 10 seconds. You get the idea – more general related keywords can take you over the top and give you a huge, content-rich search engine friendly site, in seconds!

#5 Use the best-pulling AdSense ad style and color combination

My click-through rate (CTR) tripled when I switched to this format.

Select ad size 336 x 280. If that’s too big, try 300 x 250. And try to make your ad border and ad background colors the same as your Website’s background color. It helps it blend in and take away some of the “advertisement” feel. It’s also usually best to go with the standard blue hyperlink color for the actual links.

#6 Get submitted to major search engines fast and free

I use this place all the time. They submit your site to 40 search engines instantly, for free http://www.submitexpress.com/.

You’re ready!

You can do this – Good luck!

Author:  Former Information Technology manager for Harvard University, Michael Small is the author of several well-known search engine optimization books including the SEO Answer Book – http://www.SeoAnswerBook.net

How To Use SEO Or Search Engine Optimization For High Google Listings

By Peter Nisbet in Featured

If you know how to use SEO to get a high listing in search engines, or are an expert in search engine optimization for high Google listings, then you need read no more of this article. Your website obviously has at least one page in the top 10 of Google, MSN and Yahoo, and you have as much traffic as you need for your success.

However, if not, then you need some advice. You need to understand the basics of search engine optimization. Incidentally, what the basics are to you may not be basics to others. Basics to some are the correct use of LSI (latent semantic indexing), of internal linking strategies and of other techniques designed to lead search engine spiders by the hand and convince them that their site is the tops. Can you do that?

If not, then here are one or two tips. Good SEO is a lot more than just having your page title in title tags and your heading in H1 tags. It is more that just having the correct keyword density – do you know what that is? The vast majority of people don’t have the slightest clue about keyword density or what it means. Formulae said to relate to keyword density and the number of words in the key phrase as a function of the number of times the phrase should appear in a web page are mediaeval in internet time.

Do you know what? Google doesn’t give a toss about your calculations. Google cares about the service you are providing to Google customers and how relevant the content of your web page is to their needs. To find that out, Google applies a statistical mathematical equation based on statistical analysis of semantics as related to the specific keyword being used by the searcher, and the semantic content of your web page.

Google doesn’t care if you have exactly 15 incidences of your keyword every 500 words – in fact if you do, you have no chance because that is now excessive. Keyword stuffing or keyword spamming they call it! Yet people still write articles packed full of keywords in the mistaken belief that it will be good for them. Who is still telling them that?

So let’s forget keyword density. It’s old SEO and no longer relates to Google’s needs. Internal linking: now there’s a new thing to most people, even though it has been relevant for the past few years. By intelligent use of internal linking you can lead your friendly neighborhood spider down any web you can weave for it. And you will benefit greatly by doing so, if you know where you should be leading it.

Internal linking strategy is a different concept entirely to an external lining strategy involving one way or two way reciprocal links back to your web page from that of another website. Most people are involved in that, but also most don’t know how to do it properly, and therefore lose out. Let me give you a simple example.

You have a website with a page rank of 4 for your home page. Note that it is not your whole site that gets a Google PageRank, as it is properly written, but each individual page in your site is individually ranked. When you come across a website with a PR of 4 or even 8, it is the page you are looking at that has that PageRank. That will generally be the home page, and when you agree to a reciprocal link, guess what! Your link will be placed on a ‘links page’ in that site with a PR of zero. That’s right, a Google PageRank of zilch: and that’s the benefit you will get. Zilch!

If you place their link on your home page, or any other page with a PR of greater than zero, you lose out. Even if your page has a Google PageRank of only 1, THEN YOU LOSE OUT!! They get a share of your PR of 1, and you get a share of their PR of zero!

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, and then tell me I don’t know what I am talking about as many have. Some of these many are so-called internet gurus and SEO experts that fleece you by promising you a Google Page 1 position for your site, when they can’t even get one for themselves.

If a site offers you a top 10 position, check out their position by using their URL. If they were so good, wouldn’t they be in the top 10 for their URL? I would have though so! But NO.

So, do what you can to understand what Search Engine Optimization is. What it really is – not what some would want you to believe what it is. Check out the source code of successful sites and compare it to the unsuccessful sites and try to spot differences. If you cannot, then it is the linking strategies that make the difference. Whatever strategy you use, however, make sure that you fully understand it and that you are using it as it should be used. There are links and links – some better than others. Some can give you positive results, and some of your links can be very bad for you.

Do you know how to tell the difference? Most can’t, and so are led by what they read online. The problem is that since ‘most can’t’, most of what is written online is garbage. It is difficult to spot the truth from the opinion. It is truth that gets you a good Google or Yahoo listing, not opinion. The problem is that more people believe opinion than truth since they don’t know what truth is, and most of what they read is false opinion.

The best advice you can have is to check out the websites that have succeeded and copy what they do. However, that is not as easy as you think since the off-site linking strategy that you cannot see is as important as the on-site SEO that you can see.

Author:  If you want screenshots of a website that succeeds, then check out Pete’s site Article Services that varies from #1 and #4 on Google for the keyword ‘article services’, and then find the screenshots and explanation of how he does it on Improved Search Engine Rank. That is how to learn: from successful sites.

6 Keys to Building Momentum in Your Online Network Marketing Business

By Dave Sherwin in Featured

I have people in my organization who have built a group of hundreds of people in their online network marketing group in 6 months, and others that only recruited a dozen or so people in six months. And I think I finally figured out why.

I think the “secret” can be summed up in one word: momentum. And momentum doesn’t seem to be created by massive effort, “big breaks”, or charismatic, flamboyant personalities. As a matter of fact, from my own experience I can’t find many common denominators between the leaders I know in the field of online network marketing. There are men and women, old and young, people from blue collar backgrounds as well as white collar professionals.

So how do you create momentum? Here are six keys that I have identified in people that I personally work with, in and out of my organization:

1. They have a vision of what they want and a plan to get there. Their “why” is strong. They usually have very specific reasons that they are building their business, and they are serious about achieving their goals. They have a business plan, and act from that plan, which includes their goals, strategies, and marketing methods.

2. They treat their business like a business, not a hobby. They are willing to invest in their business. These are the people that don’t complain about the cost of marketing. They may not have large budgets, but they are willing to invest $200-$300 a month or more to achieve their dreams.

3. They are consistent. They work their business every single day, at least 5 days a week or more, where those that are unsuccessful work their business once or twice a week, if that. In Jim Collins amazing book, “Good to Great”, he compares building momentum to getting a huge flywheel spinning. The first push doesn’t do much, or the second or third, or even the hundredth. But over time, if you are consistent and never leave the task, you get it spinning so fast that even if you grabbed hold of it with all your might you couldn’t stop it. Building an online network marketing business is just like that, you have to give it consistent effort over a reasonable period of time, usually at least six months.

4. They take 100% ownership of their business. They aren’t waiting on anybody else to do anything for them, they just dig in and get to work. You will never hear these people say, “I could be successful if I had a good sponsor”. These people are going to get it done even if they have the worst sponsor in the world.

5. They are students of the business, constantly learning and studying. They spend time not only in personal development, but they are students of business and of marketing. They also invest a fair amount of time in trial and error, and discovering what doesn’t work to find out what does. They’re not afraid to fail if they learned a lesson in the process.

6. They are passionate about the products. It’s rare to see somebody create a great online network marketing business if they aren’t really passionate about what they’re selling. These people are not only fans of the products, they are usually on the “big” autoship and are proud to talk to anybody about the products they represent.

I believe anybody can activate their membership with a company they feel good about, and simply apply these six principles for six months and have success. It’s not that hard, it’s just that most people don’t understand the power of consistent effort, with the right attitude, for a reasonable period of time. So if you want success in the online network marketing world, just apply these six fundamentals to your business and get ready for the bonus checks to roll in!

Author:  Dave Sherwin is a Network Marketer who won the “Rookie of the Year”award in a large international network marketing company in 2006. He is the co-author of “Lighthouse Marketing”, The Art And Science Of Attracting People Into your Network Marketing Organization. Learn the Lighthouse Marketing secrets at: http://www.trker.com/go/15596/momentum

Creating A Profitable Newsletter

By Chris Haycock in Featured

Do you want to use email to market your business to consumers? It can be difficult designing a plan that will generate interest and additional sales. It can also be hard to determine how often you want to send an email to consumers. Have you thought about creating a business newsletter and emailing it to consumers? This is a great opportunity to keep your business name in their mind. You can also send the newsletter on a regular basis. A monthly newsletter is very common, but some companies choose to send one weekly while others do it only every three months. The choice depends on the type of business you have, the amount of content you have, and the time and money you have to invest in the project.

A great way to get consumers interested in your newsletter is to ask them what they are looking for. Let them know you encourage their questions, suggestions, comments, and feedback. Make sure they know you will address their concerns as well. Make sure you use some of these consumer replies in each newsletter. This shows you care about them and their satisfaction. It is also a wonderful way for your business to know what is working and what you still need to improve on.

An effective newsletter talks about various aspects of the company, upcoming events, sales, promotions, and new products. Try to arrange the information so that it is informative without appearing to be directed at only sales. You want the consumer to look forward to your future newsletters. Keep the information informative for the reader while laying the ground work for future sells. Always remember who your target audience is and write articles that will appeal to them.

Your newsletter should also offer tips. Customers love that. Try safety tips, unique uses for the product, etc. These all serve to keep the reader interested as well as promote your business. Offer a great promotion or discount in each newsletter as well. Make sure such promotions have an expiration date. This will motivate the consumer to make a purchase now rather than in the future.

The layout of your newsletter is important as well. The visual of nothing but a jumble of words isn’t easy on the eyes. Try using a distinct break in the articles or using a two column layout. If your newsletter isn’t visually appealing it doesn’t matter how good the content is because many readers will not take the time to focus on the information. Be realistic about the amount of content you can put into one newsletter. Don’t use the smallest font just to get more material in. Try some basics in the beginning and then expand. You can add features and regular sections as your newsletter evolves. If the newsletter is going to be your main source of marketing, then make sure you have staff dedicated to its development. Too many businesses just expect their employees to take on one more task, leading to a newsletter that is done, but not effective. If you have a team dedicated to the development and strategy behind each newsletter they will be more effective.

Take the time to test your newsletter on the various email service providers because many of them work differently. You don’t want a large percentage of your customers not being able to read the newsletter because they all subscribe to an email service provider who has a system unable to read your material. Test the main email providers out there before you release the newsletter by email to save you the disappointment of finding out later many people couldn’t read it.

Email marketing is very effective if you take the time to use an approach that is informative and builds a relationship with the customer rather than just pushing your products or services. A newsletter is a great way to accomplish this. It also opens the door for you to email information to the customer on a regular basis, depending on how often you want to create a newsletter. There is nothing threatening about a newsletter. Do all you can to make it inviting. Also, don’t forget to express your sincere gratitude to your valued customers in your newsletters as well. We all like to be appreciated. Done in this way the newsletter will become a valuable and profitable tool for you.

Author:  Chris Haycock is an information publisher, specialising in helping others set up and run their own profitable internet business. For more information on the above, and to get an absolutely no cost two hour business video, why not go now to http://www.easyebizz.com

How To Make Your Email Marketing Simple

By Chris Haycock in Featured

Email marketing is one of the most effective and least expensive methods of reaching large volumes of customers who are interested in your products or services. You will want your email marketing campaign to address each person by name to make it more personal. The customer will provide you with their name and email address but you will need to find the best way to store it and use it. Email marketing software is a great way to compile your data. It can also be used to store the purchasing history of a particular consumer. This is good for narrowing your target market on certain email marketing campaigns. What can email marketing software do for you?

It is a wonderful tool for editing text, creating promotions, and writing newsletters. It allows you to add pictures, attachments, backgrounds for colour and appeal, images, and sound. You will be able to use templates for features you intend to use regularly. This is definitely a time saver. Using email marketing software will make your materials appear professional which will make the email marketing campaign more successful.

There are many email marketing software packages available to choose from ranging in cost from $99 to $499. The one that works best for you will depend on what you are looking for as well as the objectives of your email marketing campaigns. Not all email marketing software offers the same features. However, there are some basic items you should look for. Choose email marketing software that offers 24/7 customer support. Conduct your own research to find out how effective that customer support has been for other consumers. The software will be useless if you aren’t able to use it properly. There are bound to be questions and concerns you have and maybe some technical issues. Customer support needs to be that bridge for you when such issues arise.

Every email marketing software will operate differently. The software has to be easy to install and set up or it will never help your business achieve its goals. It is important that it is simple to navigate yet allows you to be creative. You will want to choose email marketing software that offers you the choice of making a template or working from scratch. You also want simple to create email lists, based on various factors. Some software programs offer unlimited size when it comes to your mailing lists. Others set a limit from 2,000 up to 50,000. You will have an idea of the growth you want for your business and can use that to help your decision. Unless you have a great deal of experience with email marketing, choose a software program that comes with a wizard and a tutorial system. These will become your best friends while you are learning the ins and outs of the email marketing software. Bounce handling to resend undelivered emails is a wonderful feature to look for as well. It will prevent you from manually having to resend them. It is very important that your software has a quick and efficient way to remove the email address of those who choose to opt out. The law requires you to remove them from your emailing lists within 10 business days.

Email marketing is a very effective way to generate traffic to your website and more sales. Using email marketing software is a very inexpensive and effective way to create email marketing campaigns that are professional quality. Take the time to choose email marketing software that offers all of the features you will need to operate your campaigns properly. The internet is a great place to find out the pros and cons of the various email marketing software packages available. Keep in mind that you want to purchase software with excellent customer service.

Chris Haycock is an information publisher specialising in helping people start their own home internet based business. You can get an absolutely no cost two hour video on how to create your own information products in one day, without writing a single word, and start your own niche ebook business, by going to: http://www.easyebizz.com

Seven Guidelines for Website Usability

By Tony D. Baker in Featured

Usability, as you hopefully know, is all about making sure that the people who come to your website can find the information or product they want, and ensuring they can find it quickly, efficiently, and with minimal hair-tearing.

Unfortunately, some people just don’t know the guidelines, or just don’t follow them. This can lead to a lot of frustration on the part of the user, and if users are frustrated, then chances are good they won’t be back to your site. Whether you’re building a new site or redesigning an old one, here are a few usability tips you should be keeping in mind.

Consistency Consistency is one of the most important aspects of usability. The page style, text style, colors and navigation should be consistent throughout your entire site. Not only does this help with usability, but it will also help with building your brand online. By using those visual cues throughout your site, people will know exactly where to look for the links they need, and they’ll always know for sure that they’re still in your site.

Navigation

According to Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, a good navigation system should answer three questions for your users:

• Where am I?
• Where have I been?
• Where can I go?

Keep your navigation consistent throughout your site, and this is one case where it’s okay to be redundant. Provide multiple ways for your users to find what they’re looking for, such as text links, graphics links, a clearly marked search function and a site map, just to name a few. Also, cookie crumbs (home > products > Product Name > features) are a good way to let visitors know where they are on your site and how they got there, so it’s easy for them to go back if they need to.

Content

Yes, pretty pages are a plus, but if there’s no meaty content to the pages, there’s no reason for users to come back. Don’t dump big blocks of text on your site. Break it up into smaller paragraphs, and organize your content with headings and subheadings so that people who are skimming the site can quickly find what they’re looking for. Giant text blocks only serve to give people headaches.

Either stick with a light background and dark lettering, or a dark background with light lettering. Contrast is the key here. Use a sans serif font (like Arial) for the regular copy, and don’t make it too small. Don’t make your information difficult to read, unless you really want to drive people away from your site.

And proofread, proofread, proofread. Nothing will damage your credibility quicker than blatant grammar and spelling mistakes.

Images

Yes, you’ve got that gorgeous flowery picture that you just HAVE to have on the background of every page. But did you ever stop to consider how distracting it could be, or how the color changes in the picture could obscure the text on top of it? Unless you really know what you’re doing, steer clear of background images.

For all images, make sure that you have appropriate ALT and TITLE attributes. This is the text that shows up in an image box before the image loads, or appears when you mouse over the image. Not only will this increase usability, especially for people using text browsers or site readers, but it will also increase your keywords, which makes search engine spiders happy.

Custom error page

It happens to the best of us. Pages get removed from sites. Links get changed. Sections get taken down and updated. People enter file names wrong. No matter the reason, it’s entirely likely that somebody visiting your site will click on a broken link. If you have a custom 404 error page, then you have a chance to let your users know what happened, redirect them to a page that might have what they were looking for, or just take them back to your home page.

Plus, that way you can keep your colors and branding consistent, even on the error page. It’s much more professional than having your site host’s 404 page show up when somebody clicks a broken link.

Contact and feedback

You should have a clearly marked contact page, and there should be more on there than just a form “contact us” box. Let your users know who you are, where you’re located, and give them options other than just email for getting in touch with you. If you do have a form, clearly note what information you require and make sure you don’t require information, like ZIP codes, that international users won’t necessarily have.

Testing

Not everybody using your site will be from North America, have a monitor with 1280 x 800 resolution, and be surfing via Internet Explorer. You’ll have international users, users with older, fullscreen monitors, users on dial-up, users on Macs, users on PCs with Firefox or other browers, blind users with site readers, you name it. That’s always something to keep in mind and a big reason why you need to test. There has to be usability across all platforms, not just the one you use to build your site.

Get real people to test your site so that you can get an idea of how users will experience it, and you can fix any problems before it goes live. Usability testing is the only way to make sure that your site fits both yours and your users’ needs. That way, you can find out what works and what doesn’t, and can adjust your site so that everybody has an enjoyable, pleasant experience browsing your site.

For a few more tips on website usability and optimizing your site, check out these blogs: (http://smbtips.blogspot.com/2007/08/website-usability.html) and (http://www.xeal.com/blog/index.php/2007/08/15/5_ways_to_optimize_your_website_for_univ).

Website usability is a vast, important topic, and it’s nigh impossible to cover all the applicable points in just one article. However, one of the most important things to remember about these guidelines is that they are just that: guidelines. You won’t get in trouble with the Internet Higher Authorities if you don’t slavishly adhere to them. Just keep your users in mind with your site design. The easier it is for them, the better it will be for you.

Author:  President and founder of Xeal Inc., Tony D. Baker is Oklahoma’s leading Internet marketing expert with more than 10 years of Internet marketing experience. You can catch Tony on the Xeal Radio Show on Sunday nights on 1170 KFAQ Tulsa. Sign up for a free 25-point website evaluation and pick up crucial tips at Xeal’s free Thursday webinar at http://www.xeal.com/webinar.