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Writing eBooks -11 Point Checklist for Writing Your Own Money Making eBooks

By Lee Cusano in Featured

Have you been wanting to create your own information products but find it hard getting started? A successful e-book creates powerful income if you do it right. I started selling my first e-book for only $10 but I quickly raised it up to $29.95 because I heard that most people under-price their products.

Today that same first product I created sells successfully at $97. Of course it has evolved into quite a different product since then. I have made a lot of money with all my e-books in the last 4 years. They pay the rent and all my other bills faithfully. Here are some pointers to help you get started making some decent money online writing your own e-books:

1. Write About Something You Know About – Do you have a special hobby or a business that others would like to know about? If not, maybe a relative or your neighbor does. Study what other people are writing about online.
2. e-Books That Show People How To Make Money Are Popular. Before you create your product, make sure there is a market for it. I got lucky on my first book. I didn’t look for a market. I just went on faith from the advice of another publisher. My first e-book has done well since it shows people how to make money.
3. Tips Books Are The Easiest Products To Create – an example would be “50 training tips for dog lovers, “99 profitable businesses to start for less than $500″, “21 days to a new you” etc. (I better shut up. I like that last title.)
4. Write Your Sales Letter First – this helps shape your product to be what you want it to be and what you want it to accomplish. It is like building a blueprint first before building the go-cart. List all the benefits and features you want your e-book to deliver.
5. Get An e-Book Compiler Like Adobe PDF, – as soon as I got my software I got excited about the money I could make with it.
6. Use Digital Pictures To Enhance The Value – if you have a how-to type of book about a trade or a hobby, using your digital camera can greatly enhance your e-books’ perceived value and the price. Plus it helps illustrate what your are teaching with the sharp color photos a digital camera can deliver.
7. Give Your e-Book A Good Title – Just as a powerful headline can increase your sales letters PULL, the right title for your book is just as important also for sales. Make that a Red-Hot title!
8. Don’t Over-Sell Your Book – don’t over-promise or over-hype things in your sales letter just to sell your e-book or you may get too many people asking for refunds. It is better to over-deliver instead. Making it way better than they thought it would be will make them amazed.
9. Find Related Back End Products For Your e-Book – find profitable “related” info-products or services that you can add in your book for more profits. Your readers will love the added information and you will love the extra sales.
10. Enhance Your Product – offer an audio or video to the deal. Just as digital pictures add value to an ebook, so does adding an audio version of it or one or more videos to the package.
11. Lace Your Products – in time you should have several e-books you are selling online. By adding information about all your other books in the back of each one of them gives you free advertising and extra orders.

So there you go. If you want to start writing your own e-books and selling them online, it isn’t that hard at all. Remember, tip books are the easiest way to start writing and creating your info-products. You can always format it without the tips once it is structured.

Author:  This article was written by Lee Cusano. Lee has been in the publishing business since 1995 and selling online since 2004. If you would like to get started making money online check out Lee’s free report titled “The #1 Secret That Always Increases Your Sales Profits Every Time”. Just click here to get it: http://silverdollarpublishingonline.com/mds/

Ten Simple Tips for Successful Blogging

By Andy MacDonald in Featured

Most successful bloggers can offer some tips for successful blogging. Some people develop methods based on experience. Others simply offer what they’ve been told—like post often, link often, and be yourself. What follows are my ten tips for achieving a popular and successful blog within your industry, whatever it may be.

Be Real

Knowing yourself and your audience are extremely important aspects of successful blogging. Too many bloggers start out trying to blog about everything that interests them and, in doing so, quickly burn out, largely because there is simply too much to blog about when you blog about everything. Identify who you are as a blogger, what you’ll be blogging about, and who your audience will be; these are key to a successful blog. Be Passionate

Passion breeds passion. If you aren’t enjoying what you’re blogging about, it’s difficult to be passionate, so blog about things you truly enjoy. Find a voice that you enjoy writing in and stick with it. The passion that comes from writing a blog and connecting with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of readers is contagious.

What are you passionate about, and does it help you with blogging? let us know.

Write Often

Writing often isn’t just good for the blog, it’s an absolute requirement for success. Anything less than once a day (during weekdays) is abandoning the potential of your blog. Updating your blog is often rooted in two major facets of blogging: search engine “juice” and the fact that readers love new and fresh content. Search engines love fresh content and will revisit your site more often the more it’s updated. The result is that your blog will get searched regularly and will carry more weight with the search engines once they trust your ever-changing content. Link Lots

Links are called the “currency of the blogosphere.” Most bloggers link for one of two reasons: either they are interested in the subject matter or they respect the blogger to whom they are linking. Links carry an inherent value, so providing links shows your readers and users what interests you—and the higher the quality of bloggers to whom you link, the more respect readers and other bloggers will have for you and your blog. Combine that with the ability for bloggers to find out who links to them via services such as Technorati and PubSub, and you can see how a link can be a great way to show who you know and to let people know that you exist. Many of the top bloggers I know have confessed that the way they most often find new blogs is after those blogs link to them.

Leave Comments on Other Blogs

Creating a community of interest is key to blogging successfully at the business or personal level. For most businesses, the community will be a mixture of existing bloggers, news sources, and influential people in the industry, combined with employees, partners, suppliers, and customers. Your community of interest is the community in which you are interested as well as the community that is interested in you. By commenting on blogs in your community of interest, you are letting existing bloggers, and their readers, know that your blog might be of interest to them. One of the most common ways that people find new blogs is through links in comments—get involved, and you’ll reap the traffic rewards and build relationships with other bloggers and their readers.

Try it out today. Leave a comment for this post, and you will almost certainly receive some traffic and interest as a result.

Have Fun

Blogging is meant to be fun. Yes, it’s serious business that will radically change the way your business is presented online while also changing the way your customers view and relate to you, but it’s also about having fun. Try new things and link to fun and interesting sites.

Do you actively enjoy and have fun whilst working and posting on your blog? how about promoting your blog? what do you enjoy about being a ‘blogger’?

Push the Envelope

One of the challenges with blogging is that it’s relatively new. Try something unusual, and if you do the “wrong” thing, it will get you some attention (bad or good). Any new communications tool that remains stagnant ultimately dies, so don’t be afraid to make changes and ask questions. Entirely new types of cutting-edge communication, such as podcasting and video blogging, were created when someone asked, “Why does blogging have to be just text?” Ask your own “why” questions and see if you can come up with exciting ways to use blogs.

Ping

Pinging is something your blog software does to tell several services that you’ve posted something new. This quick note, or ping, is used to produce lists of the most recently updated blogs to let Technorati and PubSub know to come by and see what you’ve posted and generally to make sure the blogosphere stays connected. If you ping only one service, make it Ping-O-Matic. This neat, and free, little tool by the creators of WordPress allows you to ping Ping-O-Matic, which then pings all of the most important services for you, instead of you having to do it. This cuts down on your effort, but it also means you don’t need to worry about whether you’re pinging the right places. Ping-O-Matic takes care of it for you.

Use Feeds

Whether you choose to use full-text feeds or provide some of the text, make sure you are providing feeds. I’m a big fan of full-text feeds, because they create less of a boundary for your customers to read your ideas. Feeds make it easy for people to read your content on their own schedules—while travelling on an airplane, via audio as they’re driving home, or generally however and whenever they want to hear what you have to say. Feeds are all about lowering the barriers to getting at quality information, so do whatever you can to make sure you aren’t putting up any artificial barriers.

Create Meaningful Titles

Titles are absolutely essential to blogging successfully: good titles mean search engines find you and send you more traffic; attractive and useful titles entice readers to read your stuff, and this translates into more links. Every blog post title should give readers a reason to want to read the entire post. If you own a fashion company, for example, “Exquisite shoes” is probably a bad title, while “Ferragamo designs exquisite shoes!” is far more descriptive.

So what type of blogger do you want to be? A successful industry leader, who takes part in the blogosphere, links out to other blogs and has fun whilst blogging. Or a blogger who does none of the above, receives little traffic, and lacks direction. I’m still relatively new to blogging so I’ll let you decide. Leave us a comment telling us your thoughts, ideas and what you can take out of this post to make you’re blog more successful. Maybe we can all learn a little from the comments you leave.

Author:  Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS.

Article Marketing Advice: Increasing the Readability of Your Articles

By Hunter Waterhouse in Featured

When it comes to writing articles to promote your online business, it’s important to consider more than just your marketing goals: it’s essential that you also focus on writing articles that people will want to read. In other words, you don’t just want to use words; and you don’t want to market and sell your business directly. Instead, you want to make an effort to be engaging and influential.

The first tip that will help you to increase the readability of your articles is to write with the reader’s concerns in mind. If you are unsure of exactly how to do that, you may want to look into article ghostwriters who understand article marketing and who only focus on writing articles for Internet audiences. When you work with article ghostwriters, you can focus more on your business and know that someone else is working hard on your behalf to write articles that will be read.

Getting The Best Results From Your Article Marketing Campaigns

Still, if you want to keep article writing within your company, rather than outsourcing it, here are some tips for getting more out of your article marketing campaigns:

1. Hook your readers from the start. Article writing is a lot more effective for marketing your business when people will actually read the articles. The best thing that you can do is to catch their interest right away. Your article title will determine if people will open your article, and the first paragraph will ensure that people keep reading the article.

2. Avoid the temptation to overwhelm your readers with a lot of information. Article writing is not about telling the reader everything that there is to know; it’s about sticking with a central focus and giving your reader an introduction or overview of the information they want and need to solve their problems. In an article that probably won’t be much more than one thousand words, you will never be able to tell the reader everything they need to know to solve a problem, but you can help put your reader on solid footing for moving forward towards a workable solution.

3. Break up information into digestible chunks. Writing articles is about expressing some key points. When it comes to writing articles for the internet, what you are going to find is that many readers skim rather than read your articles. Using numbered lists (like this one) will help you to present your information clearly, and let readers find what they are looking for quickly. Similarly, if you use bullet lists or break up your text with subheadings that are in a larger font and bolded, you can be sure that after reading your article, the article’s key points will be easily recalled.

4. When it comes to article writing, particularly when you are working to establish yourself as an expert, it’s important to show that you know what you’re talking about. A great way of doing that – and to break up the text of your article – is to include quotes from more established experts. If you are writing articles and are more established, you too should quote other sources, possible letting the readers know why you disagree with another writer.

5. Focus on spelling and grammar. Just as someone who is hiring article ghostwriters should take the time to find ghost writing services that are well versed in your point of view, it’s also important to be sure that you’re writing in the native language of your target audience. American English is different from that spoken and written in England and India. Paying attention to your spelling and grammar shows that you care about what you are saying and that you are a professional.

A good example of the difference between the usage rules in British English and American English is the story of Paul Marshall from Dallas, Texas. When Paul was running his mortgage business, he had hired some Indian writers to develop content for his website. When he received the copy from his ghostwriters, the copy used the word “mortgage scheme” in the text eleven times. Paul was pissed, as you might well imagine. In British English, “scheme” does not carry any negative connotation. Yet, as you may well realize, “scheme” in American English is one of the most negative words that can be applied to any business model. It denotes “dishonesty” and “fraud” in American English. His Indian writers could not understand his anger with their choice of words, but you can understand his anger.

Professionalism In The Article Writing Process

Professionalism, unfortunately, is frequently overlooked when it comes to article writing. Great writing flows, not just for the writer whose aim is to get the words and message out, but also for the readers who are consuming the information.

Because of this, one key element of an effective article is not the writing itself: it is the readability of that article. Take the time to look at the articles that grab your attention and jot a few notes about each of them. Specifically, focus on the following:

• How did the writer grab your attention (or, if you weren’t interested in the first paragraph, what turned you off?
• What sort of spacing did the writer use in the article?
• What did you come away with after reading the article? In other words, what were the key points of the article?

Writing articles is neither purely science nor purely art – at its best; it is a good combination of the two. A great article focuses on a key issue, isn’t stuffed with keywords (you do want search engines to find the article, but too many keywords in an article takes away from readability), and is as easy to skim, as it is to read.

When all is said and done, an article that gets read in its entirety will carry the reader to the Author’s Bio at the end of the article. Ideally, the reader will read the entire article and feel a desire to visit the author’s website to learn more about the writer of the article. It is article marketing at its best, when the reader likes the article enough to click on the link in the Author’s Bio and visit the author’s website to learn more about what the author is offering.

Author:  Hunter Waterhouse is a writer and editor who has been employed by The Phantom Writers (http://www.thephantomwriters.com) for many years. Put his name in quotes and run it through your favorite search engine, to see just how well his articles have been received by the Internet Marketing community. Then, you will know that Hunter knows what he is talking about when it comes to article marketing. To learn more about how The Phantom Writers can help you with article ghost writing, please visit: http://www.thephantomwriters.com/services/ghost-writing.html

Getting The Most From Your Search Engine Optimization Efforts for Your Small Business

By Misty Rae in Featured

Trying to achieve higher organic rankings, but not sure where to start? Here we’ll have a look at a statistically tested formula for the best rankings, and stress the importance of developing a plan, sticking with it, and having just a little bit of patience to see the results. The importance of following a defined strategy cannot be overemphasized — it’s so easy, yet such a waste of time, to get distracted by every new post by Matt Cuts, every new development at Blog-a-licious, or any one of the hundreds of SEO forum and blog postings daily. This is a huge hindrance to getting the real work done. And it is work — but once you’ve got the rhythm down, the rankings increase will be sure to follow.

Let’s start with the all important formula, the 40:40:20 ratio. Through statistical analysis of thousands of sites, these numbers appear to be fairly accurate across the major search portals: 40% of rankings are a result of ‘on-page’ factors, 40% a result of off-page factors (backlinks and same site links), and 20% a result of the page URL (the exact percentages vary slightly between engines). The beauty of this is data is the resultant simplicity of the approach to achieve better search results for your important keywords.

First, on-page factors: Get your keywords in all the right places, with the right density, for each important page on your site. So what are the right places and right density? Get the keyword in the title tag, the description tag and the keywords tag. DO NOT STUFF these tags, be elegant and think about your reader. Experience has shown minor variations to be insignificant in terms of rankings, and more often than not, it seems folks go overboard with their keywords.

Let’s look at the latest data for the ‘sweet spots’ for on-page ranking factors. A 10 to 20% density keyword density for the tile, 10% for both the meta keywords description is optimal. The keyword at or toward the beginning of each of these is optimal, but not necessary. What’s this mean? If we use the term ‘essential oils’ again, an optimal title tag might be ‘Pure Essential Oils and Accessories for Natural Health Professionals’. The keyword list would be ten to twenty words, comma separated, with the most important words at the beginning, and ALL words should appear in the body text of the page. The description can be (but doesn’t have to) a well written, attention grabbing sentence — it will likely be displayed in the organic search results, so you’ll want it to be both SEO and customer friendly. Again, 20 or so words, keyword near or at the beginning. Keyword can appear twice, but no more than that. Body text: 1000 words or so (+/- a couple hundred), with a 2% keyword density, and the keyword (or words) appearing near the beginning, in the middle, and near the end of the page code (not just the output text). There are tons of density analyzers on the web — pick one, focus on the body text number and ignore the rest.

Briefly, other notable on-page factors are image alt tags, H1-H6 tags, bold and italic text, and the number of outgoing (inter and intra site) links. Here’s the scoop: Alt tags matter. Get your keywords in them, but don’t overdo it. Don’t use H tags, as according to the data, they’ll bring your rankings down. Use bold and italics if it suits the design and readability of your site; they may be a positive factor, but not a huge one, and don’t stuff your keywords in them. The higher the number of links on a page, the better. One hundred links seems optimal, but don’t sweat it. Always keep in mind that usability and aesthetics are crucial too. Having javascript on the page appears to be a positive ranking factor. Finally, page size (all the text, minus the images) is optimal at 50-60k. This number is shown adjacent to the page in search results. A note on on-page code in general, a balance is important — the search engines don’t care what your page looks like from a design standpoint, they only see the code. But your customers do. And while data is not available, it is more than likely the major search portals are noticing how long a visitor stays on the page, recording whether they return to the search results to find another page. Strive to make your site clean, useful and engaging — this will pay off in more ways than one.

Off page factors — these include links from within your site and ‘backlinks’ from other websites. You MUST get backlinks to rank well, and it’s probably the most challenging of all search engine optimization to do. You’ll need to continuously acquire backlinks, or your rankings will stagnate, or even slowly drop. Optimally, you’ll get a few links a day, with a steady increase in the total number. The two most often used routes are link exchange (asking for links from other sites, and putting their links on your site in exchange) or article distribution. There’s lots of information on the web about exchanging links, read some, develop a plan and stick to it. Once you’ve got a system in place, you’ll likely be able to hire someone to help you. Article distribution is another matter. Articles should really be quality, readable, helpful information for prospective customers. You’ll get to post links within the author resource box, which serves both as an enticement for readers to visit your site, a means to give credibility to your internet business, plus search engines will also see these links and use them in their ranking algorithm. An effective linking program will utilize both these link sources. Remember, it’s not the total number of links, but a consistently increasing number that has the greatest long-term results.

Some caveats about links — links from within your own site should be text links with the keyword in the link. So the Aroma therapy site would use ‘essential oils’ in all the links to their essential oils page. Off-site links should also use keywords in text links, but not always the same words. Mix it up. Here, for example, some of backlink text examples would be ‘pure essential oils’, ‘organic essential oils’, ‘aroma therapy essential oil’, and ‘essential oils’. Further, about 30% of your links should just include the webpage address, like ‘www.johnnysessentialoils.com’ or ‘www.bestbathproducts.com/essentialoils.php This helps your backlinks appear naturally created, rather than machine made search engine spider spam. A final note on backlinks, all pages that link to yours are not weighted equally. The older and more relevant the page, the more weight your link will garner.

With that we’ll describe the last 20%: the URL. Web pages with the keywords in the address, be it the homepage or any other page on the site, rank better. If the If you’re just starting a site, getting your primary keywords in the url is useful. If not, and it makes sense to do so, use keywords in the filename like www.homepage.com/essentialoilspage1.html. Again, it appears better if the file does not have only the keywords in it, like the title and meta tags. Use a 301 redirect if changing the names of ‘old’ pages. Hyphens are still questionable — short filenames and shallow directory structures appear best.

A few final notes — each search engine has different algorithms and different update frequencies. According to the data, ALL follow the 40:40:20 formula closely enough for you to ignore the differences. A site or page that begins to rank highly on one engine may take months before it ranks highly on another. Patience and persistence are crucial. The age of a page is a factor; wasting your time on minor tweaks, rather than writing a quality article, will lead you nowhere. ‘Close enough’ is close enough with the on-page factors and urls. Once these are done, try adding quality pages to your site regularly, and get backlinks regularly — if this is happening, free your mind to work on your site, or business plan, or product product photos, or whatever you think best. Traffic is only part of the equation for a successful internet business. Visitors plus a well-designed site, excellent products, competitive pricing and superior customer service is the real formula for success.

Author:  The author is a jack of all trades and master of none, including search optimization for natural health websites, including The Ananda Apothecary at www.anandaapothecary.com a source for aroma therapy and essential oil information, and www.wellnessisnatural.com, the homepage for Boulder naturopath Tarah Michelle Cech.

Recession Marketing Part 2: Beating the Recession

By Jonathan Cox in Featured

Last time, we talked about the four major categories of marketing and the importance of balancing your marketing effort. So where do you begin? If you had the time and resources to only pursue one avenue of marketing, make it internet marketing; it’s one of the least expensive and most effective ways to get your name out there and it has the potential to reach the full spectrum of your client demographic.

There are four crucial investments you need to make to ensure a long-lasting return on your internet marketing. These include a professionally designed website, press releases, articles, and social media marketing.

Think of your website just like you would a brick-and-mortar location. What are some of the most important considerations when opening a store?

1. You want a good location that’s easy for your customers to find. 
2. The storefront should have good curb appeal; it should capture the attention of prospective customers and be pleasing to the eye.
3. The interior of the store should be easy to navigate, and customers should be able to find what they want quickly and easily
4. Maximize your layout by positioning items so that customers can find other products or services on the way to their original objectives.
5. You should have a quick and painless means of capturing customer information so that you can follow up with them in the future. (Ever given your name and phone number to a sales rep while checking out?)

The same timeless principles above apply just as readily to your website.
Location: Your domain name should be short and to the point. The longer and more difficult it is to spell or remember, the less likely it is that the customer will ever make it there.

“Curb appeal”: Your front page is your image. It should convey the order and professionalism you want your company to convey to your customers.

Layout/Navigation: Your website must be easy to navigate. Customers who can’t find what they want generally leave a website after SIX SECONDS, never to return.

Optimization: Buddy up your products. If you have a product that sells very well and a product that’s suffered in the past, place them close together in your site navigation. Coupling a popular product with a lesser-known product will dramatically boost your traffic and sales for less popular lines.

Lead capturing: Placing your company’s phone number in a highly visible location on your front page and placing a tasteful contact form in a prominent location will increase the amount of leads you get by as much as 300% in many cases. Better still, offer coupons, a free quote, a free newsletter packed with useful tips, or a chance to win a product or service to entice visitors to complete contact information.

Now that you’ve finished your website, you need to get the word out to customers. Of course, you’ll want to do this in the most powerful, long lasting way possible for the least amount of money.

Well written, internet optimized press releases and articles are an incredibly powerful means of getting publicity, generating buzz, and attaining highly qualified leads for your business. Unlike running an article or a press release in a print publication, press releases and articles on the internet stay on the web permanently, getting you traffic and qualified leads for months or even years to come.

An experienced PR firm will get your press releases into venues such as Google News, Yahoo News, MSN News, and Reuters, and your articles into high traffic information sites such as about.com, ehow.com, and work.com. If the pieces are properly optimized, they’ll include a link back to your website and tastefully include keywords related to your business to boost search engine results.

Lastly, we have social media marketing. Think of it as business networking online. By utilizing pre-existing networks such as Face Book, MySpace, LinkedIn, and business forums, and even creating your own business blog, you can forge partnerships, acquire affiliates, and generate word of mouth with thousands of prospects and business owners. Better still, you can repurpose all of those excellent articles and press releases as blog content.

Author:  Jonathan Cox is a marketing analyst and consultant for Xeal Precision Marketing. He has ten years experience in the marketing, design, and IT industries. www.xeal.com

Long Tail Keywords Convert Better

By Robert Cerff in Featured

You’ve built a state-of-the-art website expecting it to be your little nest egg.  But the thought that runs through your mind now is how you are going to get people to see it. The first thought that comes to mind is to gain top rakings with major search engines and anyone else for that matter.  This leads you to the next question, which is “What keywords are you going to target?”

This can be a tricky obstacle at the best of times.  You expend countless hours into researching the keywords and phrases with the highest level of popularity.  Now, with the hard work done, sleepless nights and agonising wait over, you finally see your website rank for these keywords and phrases.  While this does start to generate quite a bit of traffic you notice that it hasn’t made that much impact on the bottom line.  Why aren’t they buying, signing up or downloading your product or service?

Even after doing all your homework, identifying what were “money maker” keywords you simply aren’t making any.  Could it be that you aren’t bringing in the best-qualified visitors?

As a web design, hosting and marketing company, we at PropData based in South Africa, undertake the promotion and maintenance of all of our clients’ websites.  The better the website performs, the happier our clients are and in tern, the happier our clients the more likely they are to refer us to other interested or needing parties.

Recently we made changes to one of our largest clients’ websites and it was decided that rather than try and hit generic search terms that we would prefer to target longer tail keywords.  The reasoning here was that while searching for real estate online, the average search would include both location and dwelling type (apartment, house, etc).  The results were astounding!  When comparing the statistics against a previous record month (a month in the past 6 months that had recorded the highest number of visits) we noticed a few very interesting points:

1. Traffic had increased considerably, while number of pages per visitor decreased.
2. Enquiries on listed property had increased.
3. Mailing list subscriptions had doubled!

It would seem that while going broad and targeting generic search terms we had missed the most important factor; that the average searcher is looking for something specific.

While in this particular case there was a noticeable increase in visitors, the number of page views didn’t grow in accordance.  While many might be concerned that we had lost traffic, and targeted traffic at that, the increase in mailing subscriptions as well as enquiries would suggest something better.  We no longer simply had the random visitor having a look about but that the average visitor was now someone who was actually looking for a specific listing.  They were going straight to the listings that met their needs.  But most important – this visitor was now converting.

The client was very happy to see such positive results.  With a constantly growing mailing list of prospective clients, their latest listings are being viewed by an ever growing audience.  This in turn can only result in further business.  While in real estate it is difficult to make a sale through a website, we consider a direct enquiry on a listing a success. 

The same principle and model applies to all websites.  If you sell mobile phones from a single manufacturer then don’t try and target “mobile phones” as a key phrase.  Rather if you are selling Nokia phones target “Nokia mobile phones” or better yet even target each listing by model too.  At the end of the day, someone searching for “mobile phones” is simply going to look through your website, possibly enquire on a few listings but will have very little commitment.  However someone who is searching for a “Nokia communicator 9300i mobile phone” is in a much better position to make an impulse purchase when they find your website.  At this point they are specifically seeking that which you have to offer.

I would like to add that while your meta description tag won’t aid you in rankings this can be crucial when it comes to making that conversion.  A well thought up and informative description tag can often in itself convert a good search engine ranking into a click through.  Once again it comes down to being precise rather than just having a standard generic site description.

While many webmasters and website owners congratulate themselves on gaining a high ranking or high volumes of traffic, it is always important to remember the purpose of the website.  For most of us a website is a means to make sales or gain further interest in our services.  Either way this translates into us wanting more business.  If your traffic isn’t converting then it is really the same as owning a shop in the busiest mall with nobody ever stepping through your door.

Author:  Robert Cerff is a search engine analyst and marketing consultant for Prop Data Internet Solutions. He has ten years experience in e-commerce, online marketing and web development. www.propdata.co.za

The Importance of a Properly Designed Website

By Keith Walden in Featured

You might not know it, but whether your business is online or off line, your website is one of the most important things that you have in order to be a success.

You want to be sure that you have the best website that you can possibly have, and that you are able to maintain it correctly. This is going to be what might get you your business, so be sure that you are working hard on it.

The first thing that you need to do is to have a good design for your website. Remember that this doesn’t have to be something that is the most complex possible.

When it comes to websites, lots of people want to be looking at a site that is neat and clean and that they can easily navigate. The best sites may seem to be very simple, but they will all be sites that you can navigate easily, which will make them very popular.

There are lots of reasons that you want to be sure you are able to get your website as clear as possible. It is important that you are able to have a website that you can run on your own, even if you have someone else design it.

Therefore, you should talk with the person that designs your website and see if they are able to show you how to update it on your own. That way you can have constant control over what is on your website and what you will be able to do with it.

The other thing that you want to be able to do is have enough web space so that you can get as much out of your site as possible. It is important that you are able to have a well organized site for this. It is important that you have a hand in the organization of your website, and that you are able to get as much out of it as you can.

Remember that it is important that you can easily navigate this site so that when you are ready to have it open and accepting for your customers, you want to be sure that you are able to do this easily.

Your website is going to be one of the most important things that you have for your business. Therefore it should be something that you invest in. Remember that you are going to have lots of competition with your business, no matter what type of business you have.

You have to be sure that you are able to get all you can out of the website, and you want to be sure that you are able to spend the money that it takes to make sure that this happens.

Even if you have to spend your time designing your website and the money that it takes, it will end up being worth it, if you are able to take advantage of the business that might come from a well designed web site.

Some quick dos and don’ts…

Don’t have music on your website unless you are in the music business. Especially if you plan getting repeat business. There is nothing more tedious than going to back to a website and hearing the same song or songs over and over again. Also, not everyone has the same taste in music and you run the risk of turning off potential customers.

If you are going to use videos, again, don’t go overboard and make sure they are relevant to your website and consistent with your message.

The same is true of a lot graphics and flash animations. They may look great, but if they take forever to load or are too distracting, they may cause your visitors to leave before really seeing what you have to offer.

DO ask your visitors make a decision and ask at least twice if not more. In order to get the sale, or have them sign up for your newsletter etc., you have to ASK them to. I know this seems basic but this is often overlooked.

It is a good idea to google search the terms “sales ad copy” or “sales letters”. In fact, if at all possible, you should have a advertising professional design the content of your site. Remember, just because someone designs websites for living, doesn’t mean they know how to craft a sales message that works.

Similarly, make it easy for your visitors to make a decision; make your offer clear and concise. Also you want to make it easy to purchase your products or services by accepting credit cards, online checks, paypal etc.

In closing, your website is the most powerful sales and marketing tool that has ever been created in the history of business. Make sure you are treating it as such.

Author:  Keith Walden is a home based Entrepreneur who earns multiple streams of income and helps others do the same. Get a copy of his FREE E-book, which exposes the lies, myths and hype to help you make money online. http://KnowTheTruth.biz . Visit his Blog, The 20 Second Commute for more home business ideas and strategies . Note: You have permission to re-publish this article on your own website or newsletter.

Harnessing Marketing’s Awesome Power

By Dan Lok in Featured

If you’re brand new to doing business on the internet, then you have an excuse for not knowing the sheer power of information marketing. If done right… it’ll make you as much as your heart desires. Among other things, information marketing is scalable.

What does that mean?

Here… say you have a pay-per-click campaign going and you’re selling an ebook, which is information. You’ve done your homework and your campaign is into profit. And you’re spending $10 a day on your clicks. What’s next?

Start selling another product? No, silly. You find ways to kick your existing campaign into high gear. You ‘scale’ it up!

Reinvest… did I say, REINVEST? Yes, put your money back into your campaign and UP the voltage. Buy more clicks. Increase your daily budget. Find new keywords and phrases. Create more PPC campaigns for the same product.

How about taking your winning ads and moving into other search engine PPC marketing areas? How about taking those winning ads and doing some offline marketing like… classified ads! Hey…

Those ads work on humans at G, MSN, and Yahoo. Think they’ll work on humans reading a paper? YES!

Marketing is never-ending. Did you know that? You should do something to market your products every single day. And then…

You do the slightly tired and overused cliché… rinse ‘n repeat!

Yeah! R ‘n R is the operative phrase, here. That’s another thing about information marketing that is SO great. It’s great because there are so many products you can market as an affiliate. And now that you have a successful campaign under your belt, you start another one. R ‘n R, baby!

And if you’re new to all this, here’s a suggestion…

Why not try dipping into affiliate marketing first before trying to create your own product? Just an idea. But here’s why I suggest it.

So much is already done for you! Product? Done. Marketing materials? Usually done and available. Payment processing? Forget about it… done. All you need to do is market it. And it’s a great way to introduce your self to online business. And then?

It’s cool to start thinking about creating your OWN information products. Of course it’s entirely ok and up to you if you want to do that first. What else…

What about pricing for your own information products? Lets talk about that…

You have to think about the problem your info product solves. If it’s something that people want NOW because their problem is so great… so painful, annoying and awful, then your price point can be higher than usual.

But your product MUST deliver! Your products should always be good to high quality. Your product must make good on the promises you make in your sales material. If you have those items together, then test your pricing and find what the market will bear.

What else is so great about marketing information products?

You don’t need a warehouse to store them! Unless you’re selling info delivered via CD’s or DVD’s. Most info marketers like going with downloadable info products. And if you’re starting out, you may want to consider doing that. But again, it’s up to you! If you cut your marketing teeth on downloadable info products, then you can start thinking about serious profits with physical info goods.

Building a list for your products, even as an affiliate, is where your own personal gold lies. And I can show you how to build a list as an affiliate. But that’s another story…

You probably already know that info products delivered as books, CD’s, or DVD’s have a higher perceived value than a downloaded product. And it’s something you should remember and explore because very serious money can be made on the backend.

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

Making Smart Choices With Affiliate Programs

By Stephen Wright in Featured

Before you jump into just any affiliate program there are a number of key questions and considerations you should address first. It can be complicated, but armed with some of the more important issues you will be able to avoid the more common pitfalls. So, before you sign up, consider these questions:

The time to ask questions is before you join an affiliate program. Especially, for those that charge fees or other miscellaneous costs. Do a little research about the choices of programs. Will it cost you anything to join? Most affiliate programs being offered today are free of charge. So why settle for those that charge you some dollars before joining, unless there is a crystal clear benefit for the investment.

When do they issue commission checks? Every program is different. Some issue their checks once a month, every quarter, etc. Select the one that is suited to your payment time choice. Many affiliate programs are setting a minimum earned commission amount that an affiliate must meet or exceed in order for their checks to be issued.

What is the hit per sale ratio? This is the average number of hits to a banner or text link it takes to generate a sale based on all affiliate statistics. This factor is extremely important because this will tell you how much traffic you must generate before you can earn a commission from the sale.

How are referrals from an affiliate’s site tracked and for how long do they remain in the system? You need to be confident on the program enough to track those people you refer from your site. This is the only way that you can credit for a sale.

The period of time that those people stay in the system is also important. This is because some visitors do not buy initially but may want to return later to make the purchase. Know if you will still get credit for the sale if it is done some months from a certain day.

What kind and type of affiliate stats available? Your choice of affiliate programs should be capable of offering detailed stats. They should be available online anytime you decide to check them out.

Constantly checking your individual stats is important. To know how many impressions, hits and sales are generated from your site is critical data. Impressions are the number of times the banner or text link was viewed by a visitor of your site. A hit is the one clicking on the banner or text links.

Does the affiliate program also pay for hits and impressions besides the commissions on sales? It is important that impressions and hits are also paid, as this will add to the earnings you get from the sales commission. This is especially important if the program you are in offers low sales to be able to hit ratio.

Who is the online retailer? Find out whom you are doing business with to know if it is really a solid company. Know the products they are selling and the average amount they are achieving. The more you know about the retailer offering you the affiliate program, the easier it will be for you to know if that program is really for you and your site.

Is the affiliate a one tier or two tier program? A single tier program pays you only for the business you yourself have generated. A two tier program pays you for the business, plus it also pays you a commission on the on the sales generated by any affiliate you sponsor in your program. Some two-tier programs are even paying small fees on each new affiliate you sponsor. More like a recruitment fee.

Lastly, what is the amount of commission paid? 5% – 20% is the commission paid by most programs. .01% – .05% is the amount paid for each hit. If you find a program that also pays for impressions, the amount paid is not much at all. As you can see from the figures, you will now understand why the average sales amount and hit to sale ratio is important.

These are just some of the questions that need to be clarified before making the important program selection decisions. Hopefully, this information will help you in making good choices and getting your online marketing efforts into high gear!

Author:  Stephen Wright is President & CEO of InternetMarketingUSA.com Do you own a work at home business opportunity website?! Already have a website, need more traffic and revenues? Visit InternetMarketingUSA today for information and techniques proven to make you successful. Get Started: http://www.InternetMarketingUSA.com/pips.html

List Building – The Two Key Elements You Must Have

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

One of the most important factors to online success is list building. No matter what goals you’re pursuing with your online activities, building a good healthy contact list is vital for a successful outcome.

List building plays a major role in developing good relationships with your site’s customers, clients and visitors. It can be used to get more traffic, leads and sales for your site or business.

For these reasons contact building should be high on your list of priorities when you’re marketing or promoting on the web. Fortunately, list building is an easy process that any site or webmaster can quickly set-up as long as you understand two simple, yet well-proven principles of list building.

To be really successful, your list building must incorporate these two key elements. Without these two main ingredients you will probably find building your contact list difficult and slow going. So it is worth your while to fully understand and utilize these two factors in your list building.

Any list should have these two key elements:

VALUE

Your list should have value. It should offer something valuable to the one subscribing. It should offer important information, quality content, special deals/discounts, and more importantly, it should offer a valuable relationship or connection to an expert in the subject area of the list.

Subscribers join a list for the benefits it will bring them, whether it be valuable content, special deals or a connection to an expert in their area of interest; your list must have value for the subscribers. They must benefit from joining your list.

If you’re building a list, just write down all the benefits someone would receive from joining your site or list.

• receive important information
• get special valuable content
• receive special deals/discounts
• get training videos/workshops
• get timely announcements or news

Make these benefits your main selling points when you’re building your list. Don’t forget there may also be a psychological reason for joining your list – many people like being part of a group or membership site. It’s human nature, we all want to be emotionally involved with certain topics or causes, so don’t ignore this aspect when building your list. Everybody likes to feel included – lists can fulfil this emotional need.

Simply give your subscribers something of value and you will build your list quickly and easily.

FREE

Whatever you offer – make sure it is Free. The quickest way to build any list is to give away free valuable content, information, videos, reports, ebooks, discounts, prizes… everybody loves a free gift. Just make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Some marketers argue that giving away free items will attract the “wrong kind” of customer or subscriber – people that will never buy anything because they will expect it to be free. But this has more to do with the nature of your gift and the kind of contacts you’re building – giving away free buying guides on how to purchase real estate, fast cars, LCD TVs, laptops… will definitely attract the right “buying customer”. If you’re into selling, you just have to adjust your marketing to incorporate the free element correctly.

Besides, giving away something free is the first step in starting an ongoing relationship with your subscribers. It gets the ball rolling. It is one of the most effective ways to build your list quickly and easily. Just make sure you’re giving away something of value to the person receiving it and they will turn to you, time and time again, to find what they’re looking for on the web.

So the next time you’re building a contact list make these two key elements the center of your activities. Just remember “give them value and make it free” and you should have no problems with list building.

Author:  Get a Step-by-Step Guide that will show you How to Start, Build & Manage your OWN HUGE Opt-In List! Click Here: www.bizwaremagic.com/opt-in.htm Or Our List Building Toolkit: www.bizwaremagic.com/List_Building_Course.htm The author is a full-time online marketer and has used list building to produce a very comfortable online income. 2008 Titus Hoskins.This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.