Exactly how to turn random visitors into readers/customers?

This should be pretty obvious. The correct answer that's worked for me and many other marketers is a simple three part formula:

• targeted (=interested) audience
• interesting, captivating headline
• great content (web copy)

1. Targeted audience

Many people tend to think that just slapping a web site online and buying some untargeted traffic will somehow get them rich. Nothing could be further from the truth. When I was just starting out, I had a similar mindset. I put up a web site and joined several surf for credits/cash sites. I thought that by putting Adsense on that page would bring me great profits. That page had well over 1000 page loads a month, but clickthrough was so bad, I had to think of something else. I made an average of $1.00 A MONTH. A disaster.

And even after optimizing the website for the best clickthrough and writing a great headline, it was still very bad. $3.00 a month at best. You see, I didn't use the first rule: creating targeted traffic for my web site. It took me a long time to figure out exactly how to do it. I talked about it in several of my posts here and will write the best methods in my free ebook that is soon to come.

Although a lot of untargeted visitors could make you some money, the key to success is in targeted visitors. Promote your web site to people that could actually care about what you have to say. Focus on them. Don't waste your time and money on untargeted traffic.

WARNING: most, and by most I mean almost all, "cheap traffic sites" will bring you a bunch of uninterested visitors that in most cases won't even see your web site as they usually bring traffic to you via popups that get blocked 90% of the time. It's a waste of $10 or even $5 for 1000 of such useless "hits".

So, how to get quality, targeted traffic then?

Reading this blog is one good idea. You'll learn how to optimize your web site/blog for search engines, where to put your ads (free and paid), the pro's and cone's of several marketing techniques etc. It's very hard to get solid and working free information nowadays. Ofcourse! Would you freely share what works for you. Didn't think so. Well, I've decided to do it as the internet is still very big and there's enough room for many more of us ;) plus and added bonus is, it's also the third step of the formula I'm talking about right now. While I am not allowed to share all the secrets (and also don't want to as I'm paying for the best and freshest information), I will tell you a few things that I thought of, influenced by the great ideas I got there.

If you want your site to be swarmed by targeted visitors by the millions (and that's NOT an exaggeration) for free or almost free, I would suggest you subscribe to the #1 best print newsletter on freshest, best traffic building techniques online. The monthly newsletter is called Trafficology. Read the site after you finish this post.

Don't worry. If your budget is a bit tight right now, you'll also get a lot of quality information to get you started really well here.

2. Interesting, captivating headline

This is also a very important key. Did you know that almos 75% of decisions to buy a product online are made by reading the headline? It's true. And also almost all the visitors will read on only if the headline somehow captures their attention. Cool graphics will also help, but to get people to really read your site, you need a killer headline. Really think it through. The best marketers spend hours if not days writing a headline. And they do it BEFORE they even write a single paragraph of their web copy!

For examples of the best headlines that work every time, follow this link.

3. Great content (web copy)

I said it before and I'll say it many times again. Content is what makes or brakes the web site. Not only will it get people to read everything you write, it will also tell the search engines your sites are worthy of indexing and placing very high. For that you'll also have to do some optimization. The info on that is also here on this blog. Just search the previous posts a bit.

To start creating superior articles or sales letters, I suggest you read the following web sites:

Advanced Hypnotic Writing

How To Write Hypnotic Articles

Killer Copy Tactics

These are all resources of finest quality and will deliver what they claim. However if you're into Adsense advertising and don't want to spend much time on writing your own articles, you can also read the my post on content creation.

Well, these are the three most important steps you need do right if you want to turn your visitors into customers.

Have a great day.

Low Cost Affiliate Website Templates – Is there Anything Better?

Hi, below is an article that I thought affiliate marketers would like to read. Enjoy.

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By Bill Schnarr

If any of you reading this have plans to be or are interested in affiliate marketing (and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you be?) then sooner or later you are going have to start looking for some good template sites to boost your productivity.

Let’s face it; as with any job you work from home, time means money, and why waste precious hours developing your own web sites when you easily purchase website templates designed specifically for affiliate marketers that you can simply drop your text and graphics into for instant professional looking websites.

If you are looking for just such a template for your affiliate business, then you need to know what to look for in the low cost template market.
Professional looking templates need clean design, easy navigation and downloading, ease of use, and simple, straightforward support such as online help and tutorials to get you moving.

Clean Templates are Happy Templates

Nobody likes trying to navigate confusing or overloaded websites. Let’s face it; most of us don’t like reading on a computer screen as much as we’d like to think. Trying to manoeuvre around messy, flashy websites is a headache that most people would prefer to avoid.

Their discomfort means lost sales for affiliate marketers!

Online shoppers would rather close a website window than try to work their way through sloppy design. It reeks of amateur, and people who might want to shop online have no confidence in amateurs. When they have no confidence, they are definitely not going to give up their credit card numbers to buy goods or services.

Keep it clean! Keep your text to the point and error-free, and make sure nothing overlaps or looks out of place. Remember, great websites are like special effects in action movies; the less you notice them the better off you’ll be overall.
Easy Navigation: Finding Your Way to Success!

Easy navigation is a must for any affiliate marketer intent on driving up sales, and good low cost templates must be easy to navigate if they are going to do their jobs properly.

Consider this: the second a potential customer gets lost in your website and has to start pounding the “back” button, you are pretty much assured that you have already lost them. Again, this is a confidence thing; anyone unsure of where they are on your website is less likely to start checking out your links and buying stuff.

Would you shop at a store regularly if the only way you could find it was to drive around aimlessly until you stumbled across it? Why would you expect online shoppers to be any different?

Support Troops Win the War

Just like you always need to be on the ball with your own levels of support and help for your customers, so too should any web template and website design company worth its salt be on the ball when it comes to helping you.

Remember, for the affiliate marketer, time is money. Use it, as a mantra, so you’ll never forget it. The more time you spend with a confusing issue with regards to your website templates, the less time your sites will be out there earning you all the money you deserve for cashing in on the Internet’s fastest growing business industry.

Online tutorials, on-the-spot web help such as email or online chat help can be a great benefit to getting yourself organized and ready to start working on your sites. The last thing you want to do is be stuck wrestling with complicated code
issues or other template-related problems.

Support troops win the war, not just the front line guys. Keep that in mind when you are shopping for a good low cost web template company, and you should have no problems with your affiliate marketing business.
Getting Started with Low Cost Templates

A great place to start looking for low cost web templates for affiliate marketing would be http://www.goldenpinecone.com/. These guys are good enough to attract the attention of James Martell, a professional affiliate marketer and the author of the Affiliate Marketers Handbook. In fact, Martell uses this company regularly to get his long line of great professional looking affiliate sites off the ground.

Things like their Ready-2-Go website templates that come preloaded with all kinds of goodies such as SSI (Server Side Includes) and come as Microsoft Front Page for Beginners + files for beginners and Dreamweaver files for advanced and professional users.

All you have to do is drop in your text, add a title, and you’re all ready to go! No muss, no fuss!

Golden Pinecone is a business that specifically targets affiliate marketers in their business dealings. They know about web search optimization, “spider-food”, and a host of other things affiliate marketers need to carefully consider before they build a website.

They’ll work with you to implement everything you need to make your website a success, because they firmly believe that when your site looks good, Golden Pinecone looks great.”

Affiliate marketing is a great way to augment your income, or it can be an exciting career all on its own. Being prepared with the right tools for the job can go a long way in helping you step out of the mire of unsuccessful affiliate marketers and into the ring where the real winners are. Keep an eye on the bottom line, and you’ll be amazed at how successful you can be.
For more information, see www.goldenpinecone.com

About The Author
Bill Schnarr is a single parent and freelance writer who works from his home in Calgary, Alberta. As well as writing about making money with web-based affiliate programs and having dozens of online and print publishing credits, you can also look for him in the upcoming "Chicken Soup for the Single Parents Soul" due out in February 2005.
------------------------------

Hope you liked it. Have a great time. See you tomorrow. I'll write about an interesting subject...

Marketing tip

An on line marketing tip for today...

Hello, as we've discussed before in "the four p's of marketing", marketing isn't by far only advertising and getting people aqainted with the product. If you are into affiliate marketing, your job is to "presell" the product you're promoting. Your commisions will be a lot more in numbers than if you simply put up an ad and hope for people to see it. Most people tend to put marketing and advertising into the same basket. Don't do that mistake.

What most affiliate marketers don't know is that the first and main thing they should focus on is to build a relationship with their prospects. People have to trust you to buy stuff through your links! That's right. Some will still buy, but the best affiliates make very good names for themselves before they start mass promoting products.

Some ideas on how to "get points" from your prospects:

• always have your prospect's interest in mind first. What do they want, not what do you want! I always try to put my image in the "he's great" part of the reader's mind. As it happens and it locks itself into that place, they trust me and I never abuse it
• give before you attempt to sell (by that I mean quality information, gifts in the form of free ebooks, software you came across and found useful...)
• NEVER sell crapy products (even if they sell like hot cakes) as you will most likely loose trust with the people that purchased a product and felt cheated. It has hapaned so many times that I was a member of a newsletter I loved to read and I trusted the person writing it and then he put a link to a "fine product in the newsletter". Great, I thought and bought it immediately. Unfortunately, it was really very bad and I bet he never even bought and tryed it for himself. Too bad as I stopped reading the newsletter and never bought through his links again. Don't do the same mistake yourself. Before promoting, make sure the product is of real quality. You don't have to buy it yourself (although I recommend doing it), but do some research. Go to related forums and read the posts that will most probably be there. Read the reviews etc.
• Don't lie to your subscribers, readers etc. By always telling the truth, people will know that when you promote something, it's really worth it
• Make it possible for people to subscribe to your newsletter. Always do that as you can build a better relationship that way. I is well known that email marketing to your private list is much more powerful than almost anything else.
• internet marketing isn't much different from off-line marketing. In fact, they go hand in hand together. Never forget your off-line prospects!

This marketing tip is not only useful to affiliate marketers, but to all marketers - webmastrs too. Yes, a web copy is a part of marketing too. How your clients perceive you and your product is an essential part of marketing. Webmasters should focus their entire attention to their web site. Let the affiliates do the preselling and promotion.

'Till tomorrow then :)

New look for marketing secrets

Hi,

don't be afraid ;)

it's still the same blog, I only changed the look a bit as some great things have happened. I will talk about it later as I have to go now.

I will post later today. Have a great day.

Search engine marketing

Search engines... hmmm, what a subject. I put some pointers about that in a couple of my previous posts (read that for bascs).

Here I'm going to talk about the two ways of doing the search engine marketing:

1. Pay per click advertising (PPC)
2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Many people when they can choose betwen PPC and SEO will automatically go for the later. But to be honest, SEO isn't what it used to be and can demand quite some investment of time and money. Of course there are ways, but like I said, it can be very expensive. For any beginning business i would suggest PPC advertising - at least until the buzz starts going around and it produces constant stream of quality traffic. In time, if the business is good, a top placement will come naturally through incoming links (more on that later). Some great tactics for PPC advertising are:

• bid on 1000's of keywords, but there's a twist. Make those keywords mistyped. What I mean is: instead of bidding on the term "search engine marketing", bid on every variety of that keyword: "sreach engine marketing", "search engin marketign" etc. That way, not many others (if any) will bid on those terms - making your payments per click very very low. On Google the smallest bid until very recently was $0.05 and now I've read somewhere that they changed that to as little as $0.01. Imagine first class, targeted visitors for as low as $0.01 a visitor. Now there's a bargain. By bidding on 1000's such keywords you should get enought traffic as typos happen a lot. There are quite some great software tools that are going to make your job easy as one, two, three. I found keywords finder to be very useful and it's very cheap too ($49.00). It's a worthy investment as you will be getting 1000's of targeted visitors for mere 10's of dollars. It's the fastest, coolest and cheapest way to generate targeted traffic.
• Never get sucked into the bidding war! It will cost you too much and it's not worth it. Rather use the advice from the post above.
• A great eBook on the topic is the famous Google cash eBook ($49.95). You'll learn masses of great tricks to become a PPC millionaire. Read the web site, it's worth it.

I've heard many internet millionaires that PPC is indeed the best sollution to quickly start generating targeted visitors and call it the best way in search engine marketing. Even the now internet most famous Rich Jerk has his unique (as usual) twist on PPC advertising. A revolutional idea, really. Read the ebook review here: Rich Jerk ebook review. He'll even give you some very useful (and NEW!) SEO tips and a lot more.

OK, now for the SEO (search engines optimization) tactics

As you probably know, the most important thing in SEO are the incomming links. In reality that depends on the search engine. Google will put the most "weight" on incomming links, comming from different domains. This is what you HAVE to do in order to get a high position. This is also called "the off page optimization". For the onopage and off page optimization read the previous posts.

Yahoo! however puts a lot more weight to the onpage optimization and the links comming from your own domain! That's good as you have a lot more control over that. you just have to do it in a smart way. Make at least 20 or so pages optimised for your keywords (use the overture keyword search tool). Than let all of those pages link to your desired page. Most times only 20 pages won't do and you will have to make 100's. Well, fortunately there is a sollution: traffic equalizer. It will generate 100's of keyword Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engine optimized pages for you in seconds. You just upload them and do the "blog and ping technique" we discussed in one of the previous posts.

Great ways to get inbound links to your blog or web site is by psting links on other people's blogs and on forums. Do it in a way that's not offensive. I've learned to do it in such a way that usually the administrators thank me for posting on their blogs/forums. That's because the info I post is usually very useful and they don't mind me putting a "plug" in for my blogs/web sites.

I will discuss more SEO techniques in greater detail in my new free ebook: "How to make money with your blogs". I'll tell you little known secrets I use to get targeted, organic search engine traffic to my blogs and web sites. I've never seen anyone discuss it elswhere. The book will be ready within a month, so keep comming back here to see when it's launched.

Till tomorrow then. Have a great day.

Opt in email marketing

Hi.

This post is intended more as a warning about opt in email markeing. It does, however give some great tips and tricks :)

I've had bad experience with the opt in email marketing in the past. The ones to avoid are definetely the ones you can't verify the message was sent at all. Because 99% of the time it isn't. I once subscribed to a 10 million subscribers opt in list. I was very happy as I fell victim to the ad - email 10 million daily, they said. No spam, no returning mail... Send an ad with a click of a button. I bought it in a few days (after emailing the site moderator and getting a response).

Well, I posted and ad and waited the whole night. I put one of my affiliate links in and thought... if only 1% open the mail and only 10% click on the link and only 1% buys, that's 100 sales with a click of a button. With that product I got about a $20 commission - I should get $2000 in a few days. That's perfect.

It took me an hour to write the ad, so I knew it was good. Even if only half of that is true - a $1000 a day isn't bad at all. It was hard to sleep as I was nervous. I even went to the trip for the weekend (I also knew that during the weekends there are more sales generated online) and I couldn't access my computer. When I came home, I ran, booted the comp, and went to my affiliate network. ZERO sales. WHAT? I went to my email account and there were about a hundred mails waiting for me - from other opt in email marketers.

"How in the world didn't I see that comming?", I thought and laughed a bit with a bitter taste in my mouth. DUH, I was trying to sell to people trying to sell to me. Damn...

That taught me a crucial lession. Always think those "too good to be true deals through". And get some advice from people that were there before (e.g. from forums, chat rooms, blogs ;) etc.).

Later I tested better tactics and managed to get a sale ($55 commission) so I had about 20$ profit. After that I mainly used it to get traffic to my sites (about 5-20 visits per email. Sometimes more, but that's it). If you are already on such a list, consider the following:

• Use words such as "validation" in your subject
• Start your subject with "Re:"
• Sometimes put your URL in the subject
• A good one that even got me 10 new subscribers and almost 100 visitors was: "Re: hello, what was that link again?". Another one pulled well too: "Re: hi, your link didn't work". Try it, it might still work although it became quite popular.
• Another important thing is your email content. With those subjects I started my mails somewhat like this: "WARNING: you are exactly where they want you to be. They don't want you to succeed, but to stay where you are so they can get even more rich. Read though this mail and see what you can do about it." Play a bit and see what pulls the best.
• Words like free, cash, pay, million, $$$ and so on get filtered by spam filters so only a fraction of people will actually get the mail. Try fr'ee or fr.ee instead.
• opt in email marketing is meant for marketers. So the only thing they are interested in is free traffic, make money online, affiliate programs etc. Everything else will get only a minor response if at all. Unfortunately this system has been so abused that almost no messages get read anymore. Even I automatically delete all the mails from the "opt in" service.

I wouldn't recommend buying such programs. Use the money for other purposes instead. The only good way to mass email market is through e-zines, newsletters etc. But be sure you are on the list, that the content is good (not only ads as those don't get read also) and that you actually see the ads in your mails. Usually they put an ad on the top of the mail: "the sponsored ad" they call it.

Some opt in email marketing sollutions might be OK - if you know of one, post a comment here (no BS, please) and share your experience.

• Another one that pulled wel was: "Everyone likes this: you have a post card waiting ;)" was the subject and in the mail content, I wrote: "Hi, I've arranged for a special audio post card for you. Turn on your speakers and especially check out paragraph two - it'll blow your mind: http://hypnoticmindtraining.com/postcard.html ". This is great and the product I referred to is also great. A win-win situation.

Conclusion: opt in email marketing is in my opinion a bit of a waste of time and money. However there are some great programs out there for sure, so don't loose hope. Be sure to thoroughly check them all out before subscribing. Some people I've heard of have done very well with opt in email marketing.

The Rich Jerk ebook review

Hello.

First of all I'd like to say, I'm very excited to be introducing you to this ... OK, now to The Rich Jerk review.

The book in question is a very famous, and a very new e-book called The Rich Jerk

After reading soooo many books on making money online and marketing it almost hurts; and being thaught almost nothing at all, I was at first very sceptical of this very heavily promoted new e-book (August 2005). But after getting a recommendation from several top internet marketers and also people I know and trust and have bought from before and have never failed me, I've decided to give it a try. "One lats time", I said, "if it's that buzz worthy that almost evey marketer is talking about it, then it at least deserves my attention".

So I went to the web site.

It was a very unique and good looking website with a real Rich Jerk picture looking at you. So I reviewed it. It had a Trust-e seal and the webmaster could be contacted. That was a good thing.

The guy was very obnoxious, but in a funny way which I found refreshing. I started reading the copy and found a couple of interesting elements in it. "The Rich Jerk knows his stuff", I thought and continued reading. I just hoped he would reveal some of his secrets in his book - unlike sooo many others I've read.

Finally I came to the end and saw the price. I was a bit sceptical as most of the ebooks I've read that cost only that much ($49.00) were really not worth the disk space they took on my computer (and it was never more than a few kilobytes). So I went thoruhg the site again, looking at what might convince me of buying. Don't get me wrong, the web copy is exellent, only I've bought too many of such books based on their web copy and was almost always sorry I did.

In those books I always found the following:

• Very outdated information
• Stuff that just didn't work
• Nothing was "exactly" as they did it, but rather a "blueprint" - general, useless information I could find on any forum for free
• Stuff that I wouldn't dream of actually doing, plus it took way too much time and effort for not so many results
• A lot of fluff, fillers, millions of links trying to convince me to buy other stuff from them etc.

So as I was going through the copy again, one bullet made me a bit curious. It said:

"I'm not going to waste your time with general marketing info that you can find anywhere. EVERYTHING you need to succeed like me is included in my ebook. Nothing more, nothing less."

"Well, wanna bet?", I said and went to the Order now button. Rich Jerk, here I come...

Purchase went smoothly, as always with ClickBank, and I came to the download page: "So you do have brain after all", it said. Funny, but we'll see. I instantly downloaded the ebook and opened it with my Adobe Acrobat reader. A nice picture stared me in my face and I started reading. Congratulations... millions... make money online... Table of contents. Great, let's see what he talks about. Hmm, I lifted my eyebrow and got that funny feeling in my stomach. I got a bit of a rush. It looked promissing. It even includes suplemental info for beginners.

So I went to chapter one and wanted to skim through it. But I was stopped dead in my tracks on the second page. WOW, real information. Great. So I read and read and read. There are actual examples you can copy and you're done. Even some useful scripts you can use. Nice, Rich Jerk, my review could even look good.

The other chapters were just as good and I devoured the whole book in one reading. What a strain on my eyes. I printed it and went to bed. The next day I took the printed material and started re-reading it. Good information at last, I thought, and immediately twigged one of my web sites. "Didn't know THAT was important. Thanx ;)"

Conclusion to The Rich Jerk review: In my opinion this ebook is a great value for it's money. It really could sell for $195 and would still be worth it (I heard that the price will soon go back up, so I recommend you go for it quickly). The information inside is fresh, exact and acurate. There are very few fillers (if at all - I'm very strict on this one :) ) and even though the book is "only" 47 pages long, it contains information that many other 125 pages ebooks don't even think of mentioning. I think that by investing in this ebook and implementing what it teaches, you will start making a lot of money online.

One last thing: I don't agree with one of the techniques as it's not quite "legit" if you will, but it's very efective and he warns you about it, so it's not that dammaging to the book.

Here's the link again: The Rich Jerk

I wish you a pleasent reading,


Blaz Banic

P.S. You can use the techniques presented in the rich jerk ebook immediately.

One more traffic idea I just thought of

Hi,

I was just reviewing my stats and saw someone visited this blog through a MSN search. And above all, my post showed on the second page of 502,264! It looks like that they realy like fresh content after all (one of the previous posts). It instantly hit me (see how good it is to track your marketing efforts :) ).


You see, after every post, I ping yahoo! and get my post to their index (exact strategy revealed in one of the previous posts). MSN is also snooping around and pickes up new posts as Yahoo! indexes them. Interesting.

Why not do an overture keyword search on my topic (marketing) and choose a keyword phrase that doesn't get searched on the most (let's say a couple of 1000 searches a month). Then write a long post on that topic and see if people will start pouring in. Make it keyword rich and you will probably rank high!

I will try it and keep you posted on it. Meanwhile it costs you nothing to do it yourself...

Have a great day.

P.S. If you like what I write, tell your friends about it and get a valued at $195 bonus ebook on The greatest marketing secrets of the ages.

Tracking your marketing efforts

Hello fellow marketer.

Have you started to implement some or all of the suggestions I have for you here? Did you get your free marketing e-book yet? If you didn't, do it. It's packed with superior information and I don't know how long I'm going to be just giving it away.

Anyway, today I'm going to be talking about tracking your marketing efforts. It is one of the most important aspects of marketing. How else will you know what works and what doesn't?

As you know by now, you have to test different strategies in order to really succeed with your marketing. So it is very important to track your efforts.

Before I knew that, or better yet didn't pay much attention to it some very srange things would happen to me. You see, way back at the beginning I was - and still am - very prone to experiments. I would set up a few marketing strategies and wait for the results. Sometimes a huge boost in traffic and clickthrough would happen, but since I set up dozens of such experiments, I eventually didn't know what exactly caused it. I didn't put five more minutes of effort into actually setting up a tracking system to tell me exactly what worked and what didn't.

Well, not any more. Every marketing experiment from then on is controlled, measured, fine-tuned... you should do it too. You should know where your visitors come from and why. If you know, you can do more of that. For example, if you posted your comments on 50 blogs and 20 forums and now see a great boost in traffic. Nice, but not all of them are sending you equal ammounts of trafic. Some send you 1 visitor, some 30 and one or two 100. Well, if you know which ones those are, you can go back and post some more so your link doesn't get lost in all the comments.

That's what happened to me. I did exactly that (but then in a bit smaller scale). Boom, a great boost in traffic - but from where? In a few days it was gone and I'd have to go back to ALL of those blogs and post another comment. Here's a great free tracking tool: http://www.statcounter.com

It's also a good idea to create channels with your Adsense:

That way you'll exactly know which page made you the most money and when. The more specific your reports are the better.

Have a great weekend.

Marketing with the blog and ping technique

Hello,

today I'm gonna talk about the blog and ping technique. By the way, this method is great if you want to get listed into the search engines very fast. But if you want top rankings, you have to do some other things. Click here for an exellent tool all the gurus use to get top search engines rankings. Go see it now while it's still fresh in your mind. Don't worry, this page will wait for you. Click here now.

OK, now to the blog&ping...

What is pinging?
Pinging is simply a way of telling a certain program that the content on your site is updated and it should crawl it and update the RSS or other feeds in it's network. In our case we'll be pinging Yahoo! to come crawl our site for new info. As the spider comes, it automatically goes through all the content and links and also crawls other pages that your page is linking to. This is key for the success of this technique.

How does it work?
After you've created your good content web site (see two posts back), you'll probably want all of the pages to get indexed ASAP. This is how:
First you have to create a blog. Doing it with www.blogger.com (link will open in a new window) makes this even better as Blogger is owned by Google - another search engine you want to attract. Go there, scroll down a bit and click on "create your blog now". Fill in the form and click continue.
Now name your blog. Do it with a similar name as your web site. Make sure that it includes your preferred keyword.
Chose a template. I strongly recommend you chose the minima (first one). I've tested others and it works the best for all browsers. Some browsers change certain blog's (including the one you're reading) look by puting the side bar at the bottom of the page. Plus it looks great (see an example: http://coverthypnosis.blogspot.com)

Choose "continue". Now you've created your blog. Click "start posting". Before you post, click on settings:

Write in a Title, description (Use your keywords - only one of each) and choose "Yes" for "Show Email Post Links?". Click "save settings".

Now go to "publishing" (still under settings) and choose "Yes" for Notify Weblogs.com. Now "save settings"

Go to "formatting" (still under settings) and choose "Yes" for "show link field" and save settings.

Now leave it be for a moment and set up a my Yahoo! account. Go to: http://my.yahoo.com and choose "sign up now".

Enter your information, register and sign in. Now go to the browser with your blogger account and click on "site feed". Copy the entire url of your site's feed.

Now go back to my yahoo browser and choose "Add content".

Now choose "Add RSS by URL":

Now paste the link you copied previously into the field and click add. After that your site should look something like his:

Click on Add To My Yahoo! and you're done. Now start posting on your blogger account. For every post, include a link to a new page of your web site (in the title of the post). Use your preferred keyword in the text.

After you posted, simply open a new browser window and write this in the address field:

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://yourblog.blogspot.com

Remember to change "yourblog" with the name of your blog!

The greatest marketing secrets of the ages

*NOTE: This ebook is no longer available*

Hi guys.

Today's post will be a bit different. I'll give you a free gift. It's a great e-book that I'll later tell the subscribers to my newsletter more about. It's a great read with tons of great information - good content/product is key in marketing, remember? :)

Anyway, the book is titled:

"The greatest marketing secrets of the ages"

by a great and very successful internet marketer Yanik Silver.

Why am I giving you this e-book?

Because, like I said, it contains great content that I think you'll enjoy very much and it's a great example of something that I will discuss to some degree on my blog and for the most part in my newsletter (you are subscribed, right? If not, do it - just look for the "newsletter" section on the left of this web site).

How do you get this $195 worth of information for free?

Simple. Just tell three friends, who you think would be interested in this web site, about us. Use the link below:

Click here to tell three friends about this web site and get a $195 bonus e-book in return. It will take you less than a minute to do that and you'll get a priceless lession in return. Just make sure that the friends would be at least a bit interested and that the e-mails are correct.

Please, don't spam and know that neither you nore any of your friends will ever be spammed by me. I promise and guarantee that.

Have a nice read.

Sincerely,

Blaz Banic

P.S. Tomorrow we'll go through the blog and ping technique.

Creating quality content for your site

»Content is king« is what I hear and read time and time again from the best money makers on the internet. An important part of marketing is how your prospects see you and your product in their mind. Which category do you fall in depends on many factors - eg. the look of your page, how did they get to know about you, how interested are they in the subject, how informative, original and new is the information you give them etc.

Here I'm going to talk about creating content for your web site. Ofcourse nothing beats the good old research and writing your own articles, but I know most people are very busy nowadays and want to start earning those bucks immediately without any work on their part. Fair enough, not everybody is made the same way and fortunately the internet has actually made that possible.

The first important thing is that the content is always fresh (the more frequent the updates the better). That will bring many visitors back for more – returning customers are easy to forget about, but are very important. They obviously liked what you wrote and are now more opened to your suggestions. You've built those great feelings of comfort and likeing in them as well as trust and curiosity. That's what marketing is about, right?

Think about it. Can you remember the last time you were very curious? Like when you really want to know something. And the more you read the more you become involved with the text and the more it pulls you in the more you want to read on and on. And come back for anything this author has to say. That's the feeling you want to trigger in your readers. Now, with that in mind as you continue to read, notice how much more opened to suggestions you are. That's good as you are going to learn something important right now...

What most newbies don't understand

The simple truth is that most top internet earners actually work very hard to have what they do. Or at least at the beginning they had to work very hard. Some a bit less, some a bit more, but they did a lot of work. But what took them five hours then, takes them twenty minutes now. It took quite a long time for me to figure that out. Don't do the same yourself.

What does that have to do with building content for my web site? A lot. You see, what I'm going to tell you just now is very good for the beginning and getting a great search engine ranking, but you will have to write your own content now and again for the visitors to come back.

Creating content with what others have wrote

You must never steal. If you cyte someone, include them in the references. That's only fair and will keep you out of trouble. But there are many sites providing great articles to include in your site. They are usually written by people who want to get te word of their web site out. The down side is that you have to include the »about the author« box where the authors usually embed a link to their website. You can loose some readers that way, but it's still quite a good way to create content. You can also use software to create hundreds of such sites in a few minutes. Those are really great as you just write a template (also included), select a few options and click »generate«. In a few minutes you have hundreds of content and keyword rich websites waiting to be uploaded. If you include a link to your site in the original template, every of those sites now points to your site. That will boost your Yahoo! ranking a lot. Most probably your site will get a top ten ranking in a few days – here you have to consider keyword popularity and using the blog and ping technique to get listed quickly (will talk about this in the next post). A few sites you can get free articles from:

Article emporium
Article city
Go articles

Article street

Also a great software for creating very keyword targeted web sites is traffic equalizer. Using it in conjunction with previously discussed software you can not loose. You will get a fast return on investment, but for beginning this software will do fine. Remember to put adsense to your template website (very easy to do) and let the software do the rest :)

Your aim should be to keep people comming back to your web site (with fresh content) and to help them spread the good word for you (will discuss in a later post).

Hire a ghostwriter

A good, but a more expensive way is to hire a ghostwriter that writes stuff for you. That is a great way to maintain your subscription based web sites. They will also do the research and provide your site with great, very quality content!

Remember, nothing beats your own writing.

Untill next time, have a great day.

P.S. In the next post I'll explain the blog and ping technique in detail. don't miss it if you want it to realy work.

»Four P's« of marketing and beyond

Marketing is so much more than just advertising, but people (especially on the internet) usually forget this. Only sticking a site on the net isn't going to bring profits even with the fiercest advertising. Here, we'll quickly look at the »Four P's« that marketing is sometimes encapsulated as and then look at what else is important and where to get that information.

First »P« stands for »Product«
First you have to have something to sell. It could be a physical product (including software), service, or solution to a problem. You have to know your product or service thoroughly, better than your customers or competitor. The key part to marketing is to match your product to a market. Once you know your target market, you can estimate how many prospects are available to your business. But realize that not everyone who fits your customer profile will buy from you. You want to find those who will and make them aware of what makes your product or service stand out from those of competitors.

Competition in your market is a good sign. Lack of competition is a serious red flag. It means either you don't know what business you're in or there's no market for your product.

Second »P« stands for »Place«
Conrad Hilton stated that success in hospitality business is due to three factors: location, location, and location.On the internet, location is meant more as the ease of finding your business. You have to make it as easy to find as possible. That includes search engines optimization, inclusion in as many directories as possible (read previous two posts below) etc. You must also make sure that you can deliver the goods to your customers in a way they find acceptable.

Also be sure to get a good domain name (brainstorm at least a hundred ideas and then pick out ten best ones and try if they are available. Also ask other people what they think. Try to also have your primary keyword in mind here) and hosting sollution. Your host should guarantee 99% uptime, have good, reliable and fast servers and an outstanding support (trust me, you'll need it).

Buying your product should be as easy as possible with no complicated steps. Don't make them fill in unimportant data. You can do that after they've bought. There's nothing I hate more than when I click that »buy now« button and get a 30 field form to fill out. I usually then never buy such products.

Third »P« stands for »Price«
Price is a major but not the only important aspect of marketing. In most purchase decisions, price is a secondary consideration. Quality, service, availability, status, and many other factors that compose value are far more important than mere price. Very good prices are: $9.95, $19.95, $29.95, $39.95, $69.95, $97 and so on. Some software products sell for $147... A higher price can sometimes be better! Test it. Some of the best marketers are now using the »increasing price« method. They say: today the price is let's say $97, in a week, it'll be $197 and the next $297 where it will stop. »Get it now, when it's still low«, they say.

Fourth »P« stands for »Promotion«
Promotion includes all the methods we can use to reach our markets and make them aware of our products and services. These include advertisements, public relations, special promotions, positioning and much, much more. I wrote some promotion techniques in the previous posts, but I will write much more in the posts to come. There's so much stuff you can do it's amazing. So are the results.

So, these are the basic four P's of marketing. But there are at least 14 more that are equaly or more important if you want to really succeed. These four are very helpful though and have led me to a bit of a different thinking which in turn was very important for me. If you wish to explore the rest of the P's of marketing and get really good fast, I recomend the book "A Crash Course in Marketing - low cost marketing strategies that will double your sales - not your expenses" by David H. Bangs and Andy Axman. They are both very successful authors and their book is a joy to read as well as very informative with great examples and step by step "less is more" approach. An excellent investment - see the customer reviews. Here's the link:

In the next post I'll talk about great ways to quickly build great content rich web pages.

Doing the search engines optimization (SEO) part 2

By Blaz Banic

Besides the things mentioned in the previous post, it is also god to consider the following things when optimizing your site for the search engines:

• META tags. Meta tags are meant for the browser or the search engine to know certain things about the web site you want them to know. Here we'll look at the most important parameters of the meta tags: "description", "keywords", and "robots". The most important is the meta description tag. Some of the major search engines (Yahoo!) still use it for your description in the results pages. It is good to write a short description of your site and use your main keywords in them. But remember, only use each keyword once or the engine will consider your description spamming!

The syntax for this is as follows:

[META name="description" content="This site is about internet marketing."]

Be sure to change the [ and ] into <>.

Try to describe your site a bit better though ;)

The second meta tag we mentioned is a bit less important, but still some search engines use it, so it's worth making it as it will only take you a few minutes. This is the meta keywords tag. Remember to use only a few keywords, each only once, and make sure that those keywords appear in your web site copy. Yu separate the keywords wit a comma.

The syntax is as follows:

[META name="keywords" content="marketing, web site traffic"]

The last meta tag I would like to explain is the meta robots tag. It is used by all the search engines and is only effective if you don't want the web site to be crawled. This could prove useful if you are giving a web site based newsletter and would only like your subscribers to find it (through your e-mail). Sometimes people link to your newsletter which can result in a crawler visiting and indexing the site you don't want indexed. This meta tag will solve the problem:

[META name="robots" content="noindex"]

Make sure you put your meta tags between the HEAD tags of your web site and change [ ] into <>.

• Put your keyword also in the alt parameter of your image tags. Again, don't overdo it and don't use the same keyword in two or more images. It is also a good thing to include another word so that the search engine won't think you're spamming. If your keyword is "make money", put alt="make money header" in the header graphic img tag . For this web site the alt tag might be something like this:

[IMG src="yourimage.gif" alt="marketing secrets logo"]

• Linking strategy inside your web site. For Yahoo! it is more important that the links to a certain site are coming from other sites of the same web page. Simply make many web pages and link to the index page using your preferred keyword in the anchor text. Remember, only one such link per site. They have to be good content pages too. Google on the other hand will not put so much weight on this and will rather see links from entirely different web sites. So you have to have both in order to succeed with the search engines.
• But whatever you do, remember that good content is the most important and the most surefire way to make your web site rank high in the search engine. Make if original, fresh and very informative and your readers will visit often and link to your site thus making it more important to search engines.

Doing the search engines optimization (SEO)

By Blaz Banic

Once your site is created, be sure to verify that you have done the following:

• Keyword research (what keywords could your customers, readers... use to find you? www.goodkeywords.com is a great tool you can use for free. Or the Overture keyword selector tool is good too. See what keywords are searched for the most. TIP: use a general keyword first. You will then get a list of all relevant keywords. Choose one or two that you think will suit your business best).
• On page optimization (your selected keywords in TITLE tags, H1 tags, H2 tags, make them BOLD near the beginning of your text. Also put your keyword as the last word on your site. The keyword density should be about 2%). More on this in later posts.
• Off page optimization (get links back to your website: directories, blogs, forums, mail other relevant and non relevant web sites to include your site. They will most probably link to you if you link to them first! Have a links site ready, write press releases...)
• Continue updating your content (this is very important as the search engines will rank you higher if you have fresh content on your sites)

How to get listed in the search engines in a few days

Well, you might have heard of the blog and ping technique. It is very effective. But here, I'll show you what I also do to get listed very soon.

Go to Google search bar below and write "[keyword] blog" in the search field. [keyword] is your selected keyword. When you get a list, click on the first one and see if you can write a comment. If you can, write a relevant comment for that blog, include your keywords and at the end write something like: "If you want to know more, please visit http://www.yoursite.com".

Also in the name field write your desired keyword in the URL (or Your web site) field write the URL to your site.

Repeat this at least five more times on the next five blogs. It shouldn't take you more than half an hour. Those blogs are spidered very frequently as they have new info coming all the time. So your site will be visited by the spiders too and get indexed.

Getting other sites to link to you

The fastest way is with adding your site to directories. Just type "free directory" in Google search bar above. Add your site to as many as you can. Also have a brief (50 - 200 characters) description ready. Write it in the Notepad software you got with your windows. Also write your correct URL, your links page URL and your e-mail. This will speed up the process as most directories ask you for that information. You can just copy and paste it.

The next step should be this: Go to the Google search fieln in this blog and write your preferred keyword in the search field. Then copy the URL of the first ranking web site and paste it to the search bar. Then add "link:" in front of it (no spaces) and hit search. You will get a list of all the web sites linking to that page. Then go to each of them and find contact e-mails. Write them an e-mail and ask them to link to you. In exchange offer to link back to them. This works and is a great way to get quality back links.

Forums are also a great way to get the word out and to get some back links. Simply write "[keyword]" forum in the search field above and sign up for as many forums as you have time for. Add your URL in the signature and start posting.

That's it for now. I will provide some more information in the next post.

An Internet Marketing Strategy that Works

By: Joy Gendusa

These days an internet marketing strategy plays a vital part of small business marketing strategies (or any size business marketing strategies for that matter). Web site marketing is an important part of just about any business, small or large.

You can't put up a beautiful (or any) web site and hope that people will just arrive. You have to let them know, IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY, that your web site is there. This HAS to be part of any Internet marketing strategy you develop. This is actually a basic marketing principle. Customers are not going to look for you, you have to look for them.

Promoting your web site on-line and building traffic is the subject of thousands of web sites, e-zines, books, courses and seminars. Using the web to promote your site, however, assumes that your customers are surfers. But there is a large percentage of our population that is not as savvy with the internet as we would like them to be.

So, what about the large percentages of the population who are not? They will only find out about you through traditional marketing and public relations media. This is particularly true if you serve a fairly local market. Fortunately these are the easiest and cheapest prospects for you to reach off-line.

Key Off-Line Internet Marketing Strategies Here are some of the ways to make your web site known (this list was taken directly from the Traffic Building Volume of Ken Evoy's brilliant book, Make Your Site Sell! 2002:

• TV, print and other advertising
• Stationary and business cards
• Catalogs, fliers, billboards, blimps, etc.
• Direct mail (prominently on every document)
• Telemarketing (make it part of the script)
• News releases to targeted media.

The main principle, to which you can add all your imagination, is INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGY INCLUDES ANY AND ALL MEANS OF GETTING YOUR WEB SITE KNOWN AND VISITED BY TARGETED PROSPECTS.

Unless you have a high budget, the TV, radio, classified ad route is not recommended but if you do run ads, be sure to mention your web site everywhere. Make it part of your Internet Marketing Strategy.

Another guiding principle is that your off-line internet marketing activities should make it easy for your prospect to go straight to your web site. One of the best ways to market your website off-line is direct mail postcards.

If your prospect sees your website on a billboard as she's driving home, she probably won't look you up when she gets to the office the next day.

This is not the only medium that has problems like this. Newspapers are bulky, radio has to spell it out and like before most people are driving at the time. On the other hand, if your prospect is sitting at her computer and a post card comes in the mail announcing your web site, she can just turn around and type in your URL and she's at your web site.

Now if someone is in the office reading a trade journal and comes across an article about you in the magazine, it's not difficult for him to copy your URL into his browser and pay your site a visit. I don’t mean to say that those other avenues won’t drive traffic to your site, but it will take numerous impressions and repetition to get them to remember your address.

On the other hand, direct mail postcards are generally received at the home or office where a computer is present, and if received somewhere else they are small enough to keep with you until you can get to a computer. This way, your prospective customer will be able to take the take right over to their desk top computer, type in your address and go right to your site. Brilliant!

I have seen the greatest success in off-line web site promotion with direct mail, and specifically direct mail postcards.


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About the author:Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998, her only assets a computer and a phone. By 2004 the company did close to $9 million in sales and employed over 60 people. She attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy. Now she’s sharing her marketing secrets with others. For more free marketing advice, visit her website at www.postcardmania.com

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Direct Mail Marketing Done Correctly, Cannot Fail

By: Joy Gendusa

So how do you do it? Direct mail marketing. When it comes to marketing your product or services there are two basic challenges:

1. How do you obtain new customers or clients?
2. How do you get your existing customers to come back for more?

Direct mail/direct response marketing answers both these challenges admirably (it’s not the only way to do it but it is a proven method that always works). You can ALWAYS rely on DIRECT MAIL MARKETING. The postcard—direct marketing’s secret weapon… One of the simplest and most cost-effective forms of direct mail marketing is the POSTCARD.

Because postcards work so well they can be considered one of the key small business marketing strategies. "I switched from sending out a monthly newsletter to my mailing list, to sending out full color post cards. Not only did it save me money on the cost of printing, but it saved me the hassle of having to prepare the mailings. Feedback has been very positive from our clients and the leads have been pouring in. Plus my website hits have increased due to promotion or it on our post cards!" Kerry Fuller, Realty Executives Direct mail marketing strategies…

To get new customers all you need to do is:

1. Get their identities (mailing lists do this).
2. Reach them (direct mail does this).
3. Attract their attention and get your message across (post cards do this perfectly—you don’t have to open them!).
4. Get them to contact you. (Your mailing piece, letter or, preferably, post card, will do that if it’s well designed and written.)
5. The rest is up to your ability to sell.

To get your existing customers to come back for more all you need to do is:

1. Keep accurate records of your customers (anyone who has ever bought anything from you) in a database and keep it current.
2. Send them frequent mailings. Postcards are excellent. You can send out a newsletter. You can send out personalized letters. But keep contacting them. Tell them about new products or services. Get them to respond.
3. Obviously you have to deliver excellent service or a great product. You will get results with these marketing techniques even if you don’t deliver good service or a great product, but it won’t last long and you won’t be able to maintain it.
4. Remember, the size of your customer base and the number of mailings to it determines how much income you make. Fact. So, do it correctly and you cannot fail.

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About the author:Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998; her only assets a computer and a phone. By 2004 the company did $9 million in sales and employed over 60 persons. She attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy. Now she’s sharing her marketing secrets with others. For more free marketing advice, visit her website at www.postcardmania.com

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Here are two of my pictures ;)