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What site would you prefer to go to? A site that has 100 pages of content but has not been updated in a year, or a 50 page site that keeps adding new content once a week?

Search engines think the same.

As you start to build out the content on your site, space it out and try to upload a new 200-500 word page every week.

Each one of these pages should go after a different keyword or keyword phrase. Use the top keywords from your PPC campaign.

We’ll repeat this point since it is so important: a website that is stagnant and has not changed content over the last year will never lead the pack in search engines.

What are the easiest ways to add fresh content to your page?

A) Build a site that is easy to update and change.

We recommend that you build your site in a modular way. Just think of a site built out of Lego blocks. Every page on your site will consist of a lot of Lego blocks and you can use the same Lego blocks on each of your pages.

Let’s say for example you want to change your top header. Most websites navigation bar at the top. If you are using a modular site that uses Lego blocks, then one Lego block would be for your top header. Now you can just update this one Lego block and the header on all of your 68 pages is automatically updated.

This will save you hours of work and make it far easier to update your pages and keep them fresh. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a programmer to use this. Building a modular site with Lego blocks is very easy. We cover this in detail in the module on Site Design.

B) Add dynamic content into your site.

Dynamic content is content that automatically keeps changing. In the past, adding dynamic content used to be very hard but with new advancements it has become super easy to do.

Here’s an easy way to get updated content into your website effortlessly. Let’s say that you are trying to build an expert site on “web design.”

In this case, you could go to a site such as BlinkList and automatically add the latest “web design tutorials” that people are finding online to your site. To do this, all you would have to do is:

1. Go to BlinkList
2. Look for the instructions on the sidebar to BROADCAST the content.
3. Copy and paste the javascript code that is provided by BlinkList into your site If you did the above, you would have a section on your site that would constantly show the latest web design tutorials that people are discovering online.

This is not only great content for site visitors but would also keep your site fresh and help significantly with SEO.

C) Attach a blog to your site.

Blogs are very easy to update and should be a key part of every search engine optimization. Search engines like Google love regularly updated, content-rich sites ‘ which is exactly what blogs are!

Most blogs are updated with new articles and information on a daily basis; over time the search engines recognize them for their wealth of information and boost their ranking.

Blogs also contain a rich supply of links. Since bloggers are always looking for ways to keep their blogs fresh, they are likely to use links rather than create all the content themselves.

Links to quality sites, including blog search engines and directories, can lead to high search engine rankings.

If you have a great site with excellent content that visitors love, this will start to work in your favor. If you are just spamming search engines and not providing value for the visitors, then Google will eventually catch up with you.

Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how his FREE course can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com

Tags: Web Design, website

Now that you’ve attracted bidders with your auction title, you have to get them to bid on your item by telling them why they should bid. What you are essentially doing is writing sales copy. You want to get them excited about what you are offering.

You should start off with a headline and a sub-headline. This is something that most eBay sellers fail to do is use a headline to begin their description. A good headline should create a problem that the reader can identify with and stress the main benefit of your product in solving that problem. It should also generate excitement and a desire to learn more about your product.

After the headline, you introduce your product with an overview. The overview shows the value of what you are offering and shows them why it’s a great solution to the problem you introduced in your headline. Then you describe your item in detail. You want to include all pertinent details of your item, such as brand, make and model, condition, warranty, packaging details and any other relevant information. Tell any interesting features about the product that make it stand out, what you can do with the item, and so on. All this will help demonstrate the value of the item.

After you describe the features of the product, you should translate these features into benefits. A feature is an attribute of an item. A benefit solves a problem for its owner. In other words, benefits answer “What’s in it for me?” for the buyer. It answers why they should bid on or buy your product.

It’s very important to establish your credibility in the eyes of potential bidders. There are several ways this can be accomplished. If you are positioning yourself as an expert, back up everything you say with details of your experience, qualifications, or awards in your chosen category or industry. Do this by placing a link to your About Me page or My World Page where you can include details about your background. Be honest when describing your items and don’t leave out anything. Be up front about any defects will boost your credibility. Use testimonials from people who have bought from you before by using your eBay feedback. Last but not least, use proper spelling and grammar. If you present a sloppy image with bad grammar, you won’t encourage people to bid on your item.

Make use of as many images as you can get of your item. The more the better. Make sure you use good lighting and make certain the images are clear. This especially true for high value items. It is a good idea to acquire some good lighting equipment and a good quality digital camera. The picture don’t have to be professional quality, but they need to show as much of the product as possible. If you are having items drop shipped for you, ask the supplier to provide you with several pictures of the item to use in your description. Or you can order one item as a sample and use it in your pictures.

It’s also important to give clear terms and conditions. List your terms and conditions such as payment options, bidding and shipping restrictions, shipping and handling fees, taxes and duty, warranty and refund policy, feedback guidelines, contact information, and delivery details(clearly state when you will ship the item).

Add a strong guarantee. Offering a money back guarantee is a proven marketing technique that is an excellent way to increase bids and sales. It may be tempting to place a time limit on your guarantee, but these guarantees don’t carry much weight. It is far better to not include a time limit because it will send a strong message that encourages more bids and sales. If someone has had an item for more than 30 days they are not likely to suddenly turn around and send it back. If someone does send it back, it’s usually because they have a genuine problem with the item and it’s only right they get a refund. You may get a few returns, but they will be outweighed by the extra sales you will generate with your guarantee.

Create a sense of urgency to encourage immediate bids. Auctions are urgent by their very nature but it’s a good idea to create a sense of urgency in your auction. One way to do this is to repeat the benefits of your item. If your item is no longer being made or is hard to find, emphasize its rarity and the fact this might be the last chance to buy it.

Now that you’ve written your description and offered a guarantee, you now need to ask for the sale. You’ve convinced the buyer they want the item and you need to ask for the sale. It doesn’t need to be long, just compelling. You can restate the benefits of the item and ask for the bid.

This is by no means a complete course on writing sales copy, but it will give you a good place to begin writing auctions that will improve sales.

Allen Owen is an enthusiastic home business entrepreneur and engineer. Have a look at his eBay tips e-zine: http://www.thedigitalresevoir.com

While we all dream of building that website that will be a home run, and make us rich, here’s an easier way to establish a dependable income stream.

It’s a lot easier to set up a simple website that generates just $10 - $20 profit per day. Imagine if you had 100 of these. That would be $1000 - $2000 per day. That would be $365,000 - $730,000 per year. Now that $10 to $20 per site, per day, doesn’t sound so small does it.

This is sort-of like owning a vending machine route. The route owner realizes that no one of his machines is likely to make him wealthy. However, week after week, the cumulative sales from a route of… say 100 machines… provides a very nice living for him and his family. I do know people who own vending machine routes, and they do earn above average incomes.

Getting back to setting up these website “vending machines.” It doesn’t have to be very complicated. In fact most of us make things so complicated in our minds that we never even get started.

Let me give you a plan for setting up one site a day over the next month. We need to get you to commit to yourself that you won’t make excuses. We need to get you to commit to yourself that you won’t look for reasons why it “might not work.” Instead, you need to decided that it can work, and then just do it.

Here is your fast and easy plan for the next 30 days:

1) Identify 30 profitable niches, or topics, that you can build a simple website around. To make it really simple, these can be websites of only a few pages. I’d recommend a homepage which can be a direct sales page, or a blog. Off to the side you can post some articles related to your topic that you can write yourself, or find on a site like EzineArticles.com The articles, or blogs, are “search engine bait” and are what will bring in free traffic for you.

2) Locate 30 products that you can market from these websites. Ideally, these will be digital products that you earn a very high commission on. To make that even easier, let me GIVE you 30 products that you can (with just a little reworking) market as your own new and unique products.

Go here, and grab at least 30 private label rights products, with totally unrestricted private label rights: http://TheRealSecrets.com/Free-Private-Label-Rights.html

You’ll be able to sell these products as is, just by putting your name on them, but I recommend spending an hour or two: - Renaming each one - Creating, or having created a new graphic for each one - Doing minor edits to each one

3) Register 30 keyword-rich domain names at your favorite registrar. You can register all 30 at one time, or do one at a time.

4) Get a very inexpensive hosting account with lots of disk space and lots of bandwidth. HostGator at: http://TheRealSecrets.com/CheapestHosting/

will give you unlimited domains on one account for only $7.95 per month. If you put 30 domains on the account that first month, that’s only 26 cents per site in hosting fees. As you add more accounts later, the per-site fees drop to practically nothing

5) Set up your homepage on each domain and use that to promote your product. My personal technique is to make the homepage a WordPress blog where I periodically post articles, reviews or comments pertaining to the topic. You also want to post a review of your product. In the menu bar you want to post a prominent link for ordering your product.

If you do make your homepage a blog, you also want to set up another direct sales pages, on the same domain, whose only purpose is to sell the product.

Each time that you post to your WordPress blog it will “ping” the search engines, notifying them that you’ve updated your site, and the search engine spiders will come and re-index your entire site.

On a semi-regular schedule you want to post to your blog. Those posts can just be a new article, or really… anything pertaining to your topic.

6) To “plug in” additional traffic you want to write short (400 - 1000 word) articles on your topic, or product reviews, and submit those to article directories. In the resource boxes of those articles, link back to your homepage. People reading those articles will click through to your site, and the search engine will also follow those links back to your site.

This is a very simple formula that DOES work. I use it regularly. Please don’t over-complicate things.

You basically need a product that solves a pressing problem, and you need to make it easy for those who want it to find and purchase it. I’ve just told you how to do that, and I’ve told you how to do it for practically nothing.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is simply to decide to make today the day that you start taking responsibility for your own success. It’s to DECIDE that today is the day that you drop all excuses.

The easiest starting point really is to grab the free PLR products that are in step-2. That will point you in the direction of some proven profitable niches. Get those now: http://TheRealSecrets.com/Free-Private-Label-Rights.html

To me this plan is simple and do-able. However, I also realize that you may want to go at it more slowly. If that’s the case, it’s ok to put out just a few vending machines this week… but do get started. It’s far too easy to put it off, and then drift back into that world of excuses and talking negative to yourself.

You’re not going to allow that to happen - are you?

Get started now.

In case you’re wondering how the $10 - $20 per day comes into the equation, that’s an average figure per site, which actually means that most of your sites will not even need to average a sale every day. You’ll only need to average a sale ever 3 - 4 days with many of your sites. That’s even easier, isn’t it?

Author:  Willie Crawford is an internationally-acclaimed speaker, author, seminar and radio show host, and leading Internet marketing expert. When not out fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, Willie can be found sharing his 11 1/2 years of online marketing experience with members of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle. Join them at: http://TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle.com

If you are looking to buy expired domain name, you may find it very relevant and productive to carry out a thorough research to know more details about the expired domain that you are intending to buy. When you buy expired domain name, you are involving a third party and an administrator (usually the registrar) in the process of transaction. Thus, you will need to be very careful in how you are carrying out the process of buying the expired domain. There are a number of factors that you must evaluate, consider and examine, before arriving at a decision to buy the expired domain name. Expert and professional people buy expired domain name after spending enough time to evaluate the possible advantages and benefits that come attached with the domain.

Before proceeding to buy expired domain name, you will need to consider the following factors and parameters:

• Is the domain name precious for you? Is it very important to buy expired domain name in spite of perceived demerits?
• What is you budgetary allocation for the purchase of a particular expired domain?
• How quickly or how soon you want to complete the transaction?

Example: Let us say that you are in the business of selling flowers to your consumers. Now that you have enough experience of running this business and with your own personal experience, the likelihood of finding a simple, but powerful domain name is quite difficult. Thus, you want to keep aside a portion of your budgetary allocation towards buying a good domain name.

Now, you will start searching for a good expired domain name and later you will create an extensive checklist of most probable names. Let us say that you will end up in creating a shortlist of names like:

• Flowersforsale.com
• Flower-sale.com
• Flowersforsale.net
• Beautifulflowers.com

Now that you have the names at your disposal, it is the time for choosing the best name for your business and buy expired domain name of your choice. To perform this delicate task, you will now need to examine and inspect the exact use for which you are seeking the name for. Now, you can check each of the above names by entering the URL’s on the address bar of the browser and examine if any of them has an association with similar sites.

Once you make a survey, you can observe the following issues with your probable expired domain names and later buy expired domain name.

• The search findings are related to your domain names and there is actually a thriving business with some of the web sites found on the search engine. In such a case, you may find it very difficult to find a suitable expired domain name.?
• The search findings relate to your probable domain names and there is a thriving business related to some of them, but these web domains do not use a primary URL. Under such a scenario, though it is quite difficult to buy an expire domain, you can still find one that is good for your business. ?
• The search findings relate to your prospective domain name, but the searched material contains old and out dated materials. Some of the searched domains may display broken links, wrong pictures and other sundry notices. Here, your chances of finding a good expired domain name will become brighter and easier.?
• The searched domain names relate to your list, but most of the searched domains link to one or more affiliate programs. Under such a scenario, you may find sourcing an expired domain name little easier.
• The searched list will always point to “Domain for Sale” page: Though this scenario offers plenty of opportunities, it could still be the biggest challenge in front of you. You can buy expired domain name that is most suitable for your business.

However, ensure that you will never buy expired domain name that imitates or mimics a popular web portal; when you buy these kinds of expired domains, you may land in deep legal and copyright trouble.

Author:  John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is the owner of the path breaking web site called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.

In the past, audio was typically used on websites as background music to increase the “WOW!” factor, but it didn’t really help in communicating with customers.

These days it’s a different story. With broadband becoming ubiquitous and streaming audio technologies getting more advanced, you can now easily convey spoken word over the web. Well crafted audio messages can help you add a personal touch to your website which will make customers feel closer to you.

The presence of your voice welcoming customers, answering questions, or describing the benefits associated with your product or service can boost customer confidence in ways that text and images alone can’t.

Most people have computers capable of playing streaming audio and will find it a refreshing change from boring text. Increased use of the internet along with improved technology now make it easy for you to add streaming audio to your website and create that personal bond with your customers.

Reasons Why You Should Have Audio on Your Site

1. Customers remember what they hear more than what they read. Did you know that people remember only 20% of what they read while they remember an astonishing 70% of what they hear? That’s three and a half times more! Your audio message will help you to stick into the minds of your customers longer.
2. Audio boosts your credibility. The sound of your voice adds personality to your website and helps customers identify with you. Customers buy from people who they feel they know and trust, and using audio can help you achieve this.
3. Audio keeps customers on your site longer. Audio can keep customers on your site longer and you give you more time to make the sale. It can be used as an additional resource or tool for customers to familiarize themselves with your product or service while browsing your site.
4. Audio increases your subscription rate. Using a personal audio message to get customers to sign up for your newsletter can raise subscription levels by up to 400% more than using traditional subscription marketing techniques. You can also use audio as a part of an online course that people can subscribe to. The lesson that includes an audio in our free online meditation course gets opened most, leads to the largest number of sales and receives the best feedback.
5. Audio enhances newsletters, ezines and blogs - which leads to profits. You can spice up your newsletter, ezine or blog by using audio to provide special tips or product updates that keep customers interested and motivated to buy.
6. Audio puts you light years ahead of your competitors. Using audio successfully on your site gives you a competitive advantage. Most internet businesses overlook using this effective marketing tool so be sure you’re not one of them!
7. Audio is easy to use. Being able to put audio on your website isn’t limited to just techies - anyone can do it! Many of the programs available don’t even require you to know HTML or flash. They’re designed to be user friendly so you shouldn’t have any problems taking your website to the next level.
8. Audio is cheap. You can add audio to your site for as little as $19.95. More advanced audio solutions will only cost you around $97 - a small price to pay considering the many benefits it provides to your website and your customers.

In short, audio gives you an edge over your competitors and allows you to build a personal bond with your customers in a way that’s not possible with traditional websites. When customers feel they know you and can identify with you, they will be more likely to buy from you.

Author:  Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how he can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com

Every time you take your car in for an oil change, most shops give you a 15- or 30-point checkup when they change your oil to alert you to any other potential problems you might experience in the future. In the same way that your mechanic conducts a regular inspection of your automobile, you need to conduct an annual checkup of your website.

Here are 7 critical areas that need to be checked yearly on your site:

1. Copyright notice. In years past it would take me until March or April to update my copyright notices primarily because I had to go in and update every single page of my site. More recently, however, I’ve used an includes file, which is one file that can be inserted in many pages to hold my copyright and contact info. Consequently, when I need to update the copyright info, I open this one file in my HTML editor, update that file, save and upload it. Once it’s revised, the new information miraculously appears on all the pages in which it’s included, updating them all at once.

2. Opt-in forms. The beginning of each year is a great time to ensure that all of the opt-in forms are working on your site. Do you need to add additional fields to the opt-in form to collect mailing addresses, for example, or to ask how visitors found your site? Is the information contained on your confirmation page (the page to which a visitor is sent upon her initial request to opt into your list) still current and relevant? How about the thank you page (the page to which your visitor is sent when she has confirmed her desire to join your list)?

3. Autoresponder followup. Next, review the content of the autoresponders that you’ve set to follow up the opt-in. Are they still current? Do they mention offers or upsells that are still available? Do you need to update any copyright or contact information contained within them? Are they making it through spam filters? Use this tool to ensure that every email gets into your contact’s inbox, SpamCheck from SiteSell, http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/

4. Signature files. Does your email signature file contain a call to action that’s still working for you, or does it need to be updated? Have you changed any portion of your contact information? After you review your signature files in your email client, do the same check of your email signature file in your shopping cart program or autoresponder program.

5. Client attraction device. Take a look at the free giveaway you provide to your visitors in return for them opting into your list. Whether it’s a document or an audio or video file, update the copyright and content information in it and review any biographical/profile information that you list about yourself or your business. Is the content you provide in this giveaway still valid and current? Do you want to keep the current call to action, or does it need to be updated to better fit with your current business model?

6. Missing images and dead link check. When your website fails to properly display images, your business appears unprofessional. Tour your website to ensure that all images are displaying as they should. If you link to or make reference to many resources on your site, run a dead link check annually to weed out or update those that no longer work. You may be able to do this with your HTML editor. If not, try the free weekly link checking service offered by iNetDog, http://www.inetdog.com/link_checking.php

7. Order forms. Be sure that your order form works all the way through. Most online business owners, when checking order forms, stop at the point where they need to enter credit card information. If your merchant account agreement prohibits you from using your credit card to order from your company, ask if they have a test card number you can use, or have a reciprocal agreement with a colleague to check each other’s forms. Check your followup autoresponders that are set to go out after someone makes a purchase, as well, to ensure that they are still up-to-date.

Websites that are obviously out-of-date or aren’t working properly are a huge deterrent to doing business with you. Check these 7 key areas yearly on your site to convey to your visitors that your site is regularly updated and maintained.

Author:  Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at OnlineBizU.com . Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at AskDonnaGunter.com .

If you aim to establish your site as a serious ecommerce player, here are 3 things you need to do:

1. Create and put up a privacy policy.
2. Process orders on a secure server.
3. Get 3rd party verification to increase credibility. Each is easy to do - but many ecommerce newbies underestimate their importance.

These 3 elements are important because they help build trust at the most critical point of the visit -at the point where the visitor is about to complete a checkout and convert into a customer.

1. Create and put up a privacy policy

If you don’t have a good online privacy policy, it’s time to get to work! Clear and easy to read privacy policies are essential in building customer trust. They essentially tell the customers what you will do with their information. A good privacy policy will therefore calm any customer fears in that area.

A lot of visitors read the privacy policy in detail before they decide to submit any of their information.

If you want to be considered a credible online business, an excellent privacy policy is a definite must. Some of the interesting findings of the a survey of internet users and trust by Stanford University include:

• Americans appear to place greater trust in sites that provide valid content and respect privacy than their European counterparts. Americans gave much higher credibility rankings to websites that offered privacy statements, sent emails to confirm transactions, indicated the source of site content or provided credentials for its authors.
• Women attached greater credibility to websites with privacy policies, email confirmations of transactions and contact phone numbers than men. Notice the emphasis on privacy policy? Web users are getting more and more concerned with privacy and many will refrain from buying anything from a website unless a privacy policy is stated. If you don’t have one, here’s how to create one in 20 minutes. Just visit the Direct Marketing Association’s website and fill in the form to have a privacy policy customized for you. Privacy policies should be clearly stated and conspicuously posted. We recommend that you link to one in your footer. You might also want to test the effect of linking to your privacy policy at the bottom of your sign up form such as in the example below.

2. Allow secure ordering

We used to run a site that offered customers only one way to order - PayPal. PayPal has a trusted name and allows credit card and echeck transactions. Morever, millions of Americans have PayPal accounts. So is PayPal enough? As an experiment we offered credit card processing on our own secure server in addition to PayPal. We were astonished by a whopping 20% increase in sales!

The conclusion: If you’re just starting out and offer only Paypal as a quick and easy payment system - get a merchant service and a secure server ASAP.

A merchant service is an online credit card processing facility. You can sign up for a merchant service through a variety of different companies. The largest is Authorize.net, But you can’t approach them directly, you’ll need to go through a reseller of their service.

We use e-online data. They are a reputable Authorize.net reseller and we’ve been very satisfied with them.

Once you get a merchant service, you need to set up a shopping cart software that can process credit cards and is compatible with your merchant service. (Most shopping cart software programs that are sold or open source are compatible with Authorize.net.

To protect your customer’s sensitive credit card information you need to run your shopping cart software on a secure server.

A secure server is recognizable by the fact that domain names running on it start with https rather than http. To set up a secure server, you need to buy a secure server certificate and install it on your server. Don’t let

the technicalities of this bother you. Your web hosting company should be able to do this for you. You can purchase a low cost secure server certificate from Free SSL.

A secure server requires a little bit more of an explanation. A secure server runs on a technology called SSL. Basically SSL is a protocol that encrypts any communication between a server and a client. The communication is therefore not readable for anyone outside this relationship. It’s secure.

Use 3rd-Party Verification

A very effective way of convincing your visitors of your credibility and top-end security policy is by having outside independent entities vouch for you. You can show this on your website through seals of approval from these organizations.

Outside reinforcement will convince your visitors that you have put in an effort to earn their trust. Research into approval seals shows that online business that do use this method of reinforcement have higher conversion rates, lower shopping cart abandonment and a higher amount of loyal customers.

Well-established providers of approval seals include:

• Truste (focus on privacy issues)
• ValidateSite (focus on accurate corporate information)
• Thawte (focus on security)
• BBBOnline (focus on handling of complaints)
• Bizrate.com (gathers and shows ratings of users)

If no vulnerabilities are found, the site is marked with a hacker-safe certification seal.

Author:  Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how he can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com

There are 4 ways to establish trust with good customer service. If customers know they can trust your sales process, you’ll get more sales.

This is what you need to do:

• Offer free services such as trial periods, free downloads or free lessons.
• Have a fair return policy. Make buying your product as risk-free as possible.
• Allow customers easy ways to get their questions answered.
• Keep customers in the loop. Confirm orders, emails and everything else.

Some of these steps will be covered in extensive detail in other tactics. Here we’ll just cover the basics.

Offer Free Services

One of the easiest ways to have customers trust you and your product is to offer free trials, downloads or a free service

If you sell anything digital such as software, music, ebooks or online applications this part is easy.

A Fair Return Policy

A fair return policy does wonders for building trust and creating customers who rave about your product. We cover the process of creating a return policy in the tactic on Designing the Guarantee.

Allow Customers Easy Ways to get their Questions Answered

From the moment the customer has the slightest positive feeling about buying your product you must nurture this feeling and help them avoid any fears. The way to do this is to make your customer support system easy to use, fast and effecient.

This involves two things.

1. Having a well structured FAQ section on your site.
2. Having a phone or email address where potential buyers can contact you.

In the tactic on Customer Service we teach you a fast and efficient way to create a stellar customer support system that generates more sales.

Keep Customers in the Loop

As soon as a customer buys your product or signs up on your site, send an email that confirms their action and let them know the next steps. Using an autoresponder system like Autoresponse Plus lets customers receive instant notifications when they sign up or make a purchase.

Use these guidelines to keep customers in the loop for a signup or registration and a sale:

The Signup or Registration

Upon signing up, the customer should get a welcome message confirming that the signup was successful, reminding them what they signed up for and letting them know the download or activation instructions.

At the end of the trial period, or the end of the autoresponder free lesson period, the customer should get notified by email on what will happen next. Will they get a promo to make a purchase? Will their trial period end and their login get turned off? Let the customer know what’s going on.

The Sale

In the brick-and-mortar world, it’s said that the best time to do a promotion is within the first 4 weeks after the sale of a product.

In these first 4 weeks, customers are still looking for confirmation that they have made the right choice by purchasing the product. This confirmation is even more important in the online environment.

Make sure to answer customer questions within 24 hours. Stay in touch and be friendly and professional. Upon completing the sale the customer should immediately get a confirmation email.

When the product ships it’s ideal to send the customer a second email notifying them of shipment and providing tracking information. A very good practice is to further email the customer after a few weeks to see if they have been using the product and to ask for feedback.

You can also use this opportunity to upsell them on further related offerings. Why bother to remind the customer to use the product? Well many people order things and then procrastinate on using them. Have you ever ordered an exercise machine from TV and then put it aside?

Many people have. Well, these customers will often not buy from you again unless they consume or use your current product. So, encourage them to use it.

Author:  Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how he can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com

People trust other people more than websites. One of the biggest things that turn off people from buying online is the lack of human interaction and personality.

As said before, pictures of the author behind an ebook, the manager of the online store or the friendly faces of customer service staffers all help promote trust and increase sales.

Other ways to create trust using human presence online is to add testimonials to your site or include a discussion board. Testimonials show that your site and product have active customers that endorse it. A discussion community, if active, shows that you have customers and fans actively discussing your product.

Both these elements not only promote trust but help you bring in the “social acceptance” factor of sales. This simply means that people prefer to buy products that they know others are interested in - it’s also called “following the crowd.”

Lets take a look at how to use these human elements to build trust.

Using Images of Real People

Revealing the face behind the website is a great way to build trust. You can reveal:

• your own face if you manage the website and have a solid interest in the website’s topic
• faces of the people handling customer support
• the face of the creator of the product you’re selling

Think strategically when you are placing these images. According to eye studies, a human face on the web is a major attention drawer.

You should be very careful with where you place a picture of a human face. Faces added randomly can be detrimental as they draw attention away from important copy points like headlines.

Use faces to draw attention to important site elements like sign up boxes, order forms or testimonials - anything you WANT the visitor to look at.

Marketing Guru Alex Mandossian loves using the human face around sign-up forms. He believes that the combination of a virtual entity like a sign-up form combined with a real human face creates a powerful draw.

He calls this the “Sesame Street Effect” after the popular children’s TV show.

On Sesame Street, the producers found that young children were most drawn to the TV screen when they saw shots with real live actors and virtual puppets together. Shots with just puppets or just live actors created less of an attention draw.

Mandossian uses this same principle when designing sign-up forms. You’ll notice that his sign-up forms always include a picture of himself interacting with the sign up form. For a further boost of trust, include anecdotes about employees or bios of the site founders. If you can see the personalities - names or some biographical data - you can develop a greater sense of reliance and trust in the site.

Use photos of smiling people. If a person looks confident and happy it will be easier for the shoppers to relate to them and will lesson any natural distrust.

And if for any reason you don’t want to use photos of your own staff you can buy webready pictures of smiling people from iStockPhoto.com for only $1 each.

Use Endorsements and Testimonials

Busy online communities help build trust through the principle of “social acceptance.” In a nutshell, humans have a tendency to follow the crowd.

If you observe a lot of people talking about a product or using it, you conclude the product must be good. If you have an active newsletter with over 10,000 subscribers (or any other impressive number) state this on your site.

On the sign up form for your newsletter add text like “10,000 subscribers and growing.” A simple statement like that builds trust.

If you have an online community, share recent community posts on your site. An active community tells a visitor that your site has a following and a product worth talking about. If you don’t currently have a community, you can create one for free on Yahoo! Groups.

Yahoo! Groups provides an excellent email based discussion list. Make sure to make the list Public (this means people can view messages without having to sign up).

Author:  Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how he can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com

The last time we’ve identified 4 key areas where you can build trust on your site. We’ll show you how to implement trust-building techniques in these 4 areas.

The areas to focus on are:

1. Transparency
2. The Human Touch
3. Customer Care
4. Privacy and Security

So let’s get started on these 4 methods through which you can build trust.

Method 1: Be Transparent

Unless you own physical stores or happen to be a trusted brand name reseller, one of your very first hurdles in building trust is showing your online visitors that you’re “real.” All you need to do is be transparent.

On your site, clearly state your address, phone number and better yet, reveal your picture, credentials and signature. Follow these guidelines to make your website more transparent:

Show Photos of Yourself or Your Staff

All else being equal, if you give people the option of dealing with a real-live person or a faceless corporation, they will choose real people every time.

If you’re a small business, you are effectively your own brand. Use this advantage by prominently displaying your photo and signature on your website. If your site relies on your expert advice or name you might want to put the picture on the first page. Otherwise the picture could be on the About Us or Contact page.

A digital image of your signature (make one up if you’re afraid of someone copying your original signature) can also be used to create trust. This signature can be placed below your Guarantee or Sales Letter.

Create a Logo

No matter how small your business, by all means - place a logo on your site. A decent logo can be purchased online for under $100.

A logo immediately establishes trust and credibility as long as it looks well designed. Don’t worry about establishing your “timeless” corporate logo over days of brainstorming and soul searching. You can do that over time.

If you have a site up right now - consider getting a temporary logo from a logo mill and placing it prominently on the top left hand corner of your site.

Eye-tracking studies show the upper-left corner to be the most viewed section of your site and this is an ideal place to put your logo, company name and anything else you wish to sink into the customer’s mind such as your brand statement.

A logo is so important for building trust that you should fork out that $39 and get a generic logo while you build your company’s identity and image and decide on your permanent logo.

Contact Information

Display your contact info prominently on your Contact Us or Customer Support page. The contact info should include your physical address, phone number and email address.

We’ve heard of a website that saw its orders jump by 30% after it added a phone number to every page on the site.

If your site targets customers within the US but you happen to be outside the US, consider using Skype to buy a US phone number which forwards on to your local phone number. For only a few dollars a year you can have a US number being forwarded to your landline or mobile phone anywhere in the world.

Where should you place your contact information? Your complete address should be on your Contact Us Page. Also include a phone number and email. We also recommend including a phone number on the upper right hand side of EVERY page on your site.

If you do not have the capacity to handle too many calls, an email address will do. Keep in mind that phone numbers create a higher level of trust.

Your Bio or Company Profile

What should the bio or company profile contain?

1. Any piece of information that makes the visitor LIKE you. One of the first principles of sales is that people buy from people they LIKE. What’s likeable about you? It could be a unique hobby, the fact that you have grandkids, or that you love your pets. Share yourself online and don’t be shy.
2. Information that makes the visitor RELATE to you. People buy from people who are SIMILAR to them. Your gardening site likely attracts a lot of gardeners, so create a bond with them by sharing information on yourself so they can see just how similar you are.
3. Information that shows your EXPERTISE. If you’re an expert on the topic your site is devoted to - share this. People respect experts. If you do not wish to create a single face for your company, write about your business story instead. Talk about how the business was started, your vision, goals, the early hardship you encountered, the joy of running the business and the way it was growing. These all make for excellent stories. And these honest, personal stories build trust.

Language

The internet is a conversational medium so talk like a real person and avoid annoying corporate-speak. In fact, one of the surest ways we’ve found to identify incompetent businesses and experts is by observing the language they use on the web.

When a website opens with “our goal is to optimize the client-business relationship by strategically aligning core elements of your web infrastructure to create a highly convergent…..” we know this company knows little about the web business. On the Web - speak like a Human Being!

Author:  Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how he can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com