Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Using a good domain parking services to monetize expired domain names seems to be a neglected aspect with a number of domain names traders. Domain parking is also an unfamiliar concept to many inexperienced domain name traders. Domain parking is one of the most simple and straightforward monetization techniques in the domain trading industry. With this method, you can have a number of advantages and benefits like:
a) Domain parking offers a stream of ongoing source of income. Though the income earned is very small, you can park a number of domains to earn income from each of them.
b) Domain parking is a simple method that offers you to recover some part of the investment made in purchasing expired domains names.
c) Domain parking offers you a chance to earn income by the way of commission earned by a click through process.
Procedure:
1) Register your expired domain with a good domain parking service provider. Before choosing a particular service, ensure that you are confirming about the terms and conditions, the rate of click through commission and the type of web page they provide.
2) Once you ascertain about the authenticity of the program, you can register for the service by paying a small registration fee.
3) Once you have a confirmed account, the domain parking firm will allot a dedicated web parking page for your expired domain. The page will contain a number of sponsored links, advertising banners and a search box on the top of the page. Premium domain parking services may even insert relevant articles, snippets and content on the page.
4) Once your parked page goes on air, you can expect a small flow of income within a few numbers of days. This income may rise very slowly over a period of several days.
5) You can earn advertising revenue for the traffic generated by your parked page. Some domain parking agencies may share a small potion of income generated, while others allow you to float your Adsense links and keep the entire commission with them.
If you have a series of dead and useless expired-domains in your inventory, domain parking is possibly the best method of extracting money from them. The usual cost of a typical domain parking service may range from $5 to $10. Some of the famous domains parking services are Parked Gold and Godaddy. A good and efficient landing page is a mandatory requirement, if you want to attract more numbers of site visitors. You may wish to park your expired domains with a number of domain parking services. This will allow you to derive maximum possible revenue from your domains. The pay out rate varies among different parking firms. It is possible to mix and match your expired domains with these domain parking firms. In all, domain parking services are an excellent opportunity to create the first viable income source for your expired domains.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
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I will seek to answer those questions here, as well as to provide a Day Planner to enable the new online entrepreneur to navigate the maze of building a successful online business. When I find great advice by other writers, I will include that information as well. --- Clinton Douglas IV, Founder of Vasrue.com |
Friday, February 27, 2009
Teleseminars: Eight Factors That Boost Their Perceived Value
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
On average, teleseminars that charge a registration fee cost from $29.95 to $39.95. Generally, those running a teleseminar series simply multiply the number of sessions by a figure in the average range, then lower the total cost to a psychologically appealing price point. For example, a series of four teleseminars usually costs around $99 because $29.95 times 4 is $119.80.
However, if you're savvy about factors that boost the perceived value of teleseminars, you can charge many times more than the going rate. For instance, in the summer of 2008, I ran an eight-session teleseminar course for which I charged (and got) $997. A few months before that, I ran a four-session teleseminar course for which I charged (and got) $795. Do the math, and you'll see that I received up to five times the going rate.
Here's how you might be able to do the same. Add as many of the following factors as you can to your offering and watch people happily pay high enrollment fees.
Eight Factors That Boost The Perceived Value of Teleseminars
1. An outcome. Participants will pay much more for a teleseminar series that promises to deliver a result or outcome rather than merely offering education, insight or support. Compare "Start and Finish Your Nonfiction Book in 90 Days" or "Become an eBay Power Seller," which clearly aim at a specific result, with "Managing Difficult Employees," which is bound to be helpful but does not target an outcome.
2. Instructor's reputation. If the leader is well-known, impressively credentialed or highly respected by the target audience, the admission fee can go higher than for a no-name unknown.
3. Rarity of the class. For my $997 eight-session class, I told my list it was a one-time group version of my $2995 one-on-one training. Since I'm known to be a straight shooter, people wanted to take advantage of their one and only opportunity to learn the material from me for less than $1,000. If you offer your teleseminar course only once every two years, that's the next best thing to presenting it one time only - and also effective in boosting people's willingness to pay higher than usual fees.
4. Tangible materials. When you offer hard-copy printouts and CDs or DVDs along with your teleseminars rather than just telephone sessions and downloadable extras, the perceived value rises greatly. Most participants appreciate having a physical copy of your material rather than just a memory of the sessions and some files on their computer. The tangible materials also help assuage a participant's worry about not being able to attend all the sessions.
5. Consulting, coaching or mentoring component. Build some sort of one-on-one help or advice into your course, and you can charge lots more for your teleseminar or series. And guess what - surprisingly few participants take advantage of such an opportunity. Since they figure that's their own fault, they're still willing to pay the premium fee for something that makes one-on-one advice or feedback available.
6. Additional services. My four-session $795 teleseminar course included having me distribute a press release for them at no charge - a $149 value. Here I'm not suggesting simply piling on downloadable bonuses, which everyone knows cost next to nothing to deliver, but bundling in an extra service that would normally cost extra, such as free proofreading or free cover design for the participant in "Start and Finish Your Nonfiction Book in 90 Days."
7. Certification. Participants adore it when satisfactory completion of your program enables them to call themselves a certified something or other. Because this beefs up their credentials, they're happy to pay more for a program that includes certification.
8. Continuing education credit. In some industries, professionals have to earn a certain number of educational credits every year to keep their license current. If that applies to your area of expertise, investigate which organizations are in charge of determining which courses can count for such credits, then apply for includion in that program. The very same content is worth more to participants who can satisfy continuing education requirements by signing up with you.
Along with increasing the perceived value of teleseminar programs, the eight factors above strongly reduce refund requests, too. Now go back through the list and think about which elements you can incorporate to boost your teleseminar profits!
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
On average, teleseminars that charge a registration fee cost from $29.95 to $39.95. Generally, those running a teleseminar series simply multiply the number of sessions by a figure in the average range, then lower the total cost to a psychologically appealing price point. For example, a series of four teleseminars usually costs around $99 because $29.95 times 4 is $119.80.
However, if you're savvy about factors that boost the perceived value of teleseminars, you can charge many times more than the going rate. For instance, in the summer of 2008, I ran an eight-session teleseminar course for which I charged (and got) $997. A few months before that, I ran a four-session teleseminar course for which I charged (and got) $795. Do the math, and you'll see that I received up to five times the going rate.
Here's how you might be able to do the same. Add as many of the following factors as you can to your offering and watch people happily pay high enrollment fees.
Eight Factors That Boost The Perceived Value of Teleseminars
1. An outcome. Participants will pay much more for a teleseminar series that promises to deliver a result or outcome rather than merely offering education, insight or support. Compare "Start and Finish Your Nonfiction Book in 90 Days" or "Become an eBay Power Seller," which clearly aim at a specific result, with "Managing Difficult Employees," which is bound to be helpful but does not target an outcome.
2. Instructor's reputation. If the leader is well-known, impressively credentialed or highly respected by the target audience, the admission fee can go higher than for a no-name unknown.
3. Rarity of the class. For my $997 eight-session class, I told my list it was a one-time group version of my $2995 one-on-one training. Since I'm known to be a straight shooter, people wanted to take advantage of their one and only opportunity to learn the material from me for less than $1,000. If you offer your teleseminar course only once every two years, that's the next best thing to presenting it one time only - and also effective in boosting people's willingness to pay higher than usual fees.
4. Tangible materials. When you offer hard-copy printouts and CDs or DVDs along with your teleseminars rather than just telephone sessions and downloadable extras, the perceived value rises greatly. Most participants appreciate having a physical copy of your material rather than just a memory of the sessions and some files on their computer. The tangible materials also help assuage a participant's worry about not being able to attend all the sessions.
5. Consulting, coaching or mentoring component. Build some sort of one-on-one help or advice into your course, and you can charge lots more for your teleseminar or series. And guess what - surprisingly few participants take advantage of such an opportunity. Since they figure that's their own fault, they're still willing to pay the premium fee for something that makes one-on-one advice or feedback available.
6. Additional services. My four-session $795 teleseminar course included having me distribute a press release for them at no charge - a $149 value. Here I'm not suggesting simply piling on downloadable bonuses, which everyone knows cost next to nothing to deliver, but bundling in an extra service that would normally cost extra, such as free proofreading or free cover design for the participant in "Start and Finish Your Nonfiction Book in 90 Days."
7. Certification. Participants adore it when satisfactory completion of your program enables them to call themselves a certified something or other. Because this beefs up their credentials, they're happy to pay more for a program that includes certification.
8. Continuing education credit. In some industries, professionals have to earn a certain number of educational credits every year to keep their license current. If that applies to your area of expertise, investigate which organizations are in charge of determining which courses can count for such credits, then apply for includion in that program. The very same content is worth more to participants who can satisfy continuing education requirements by signing up with you.
Along with increasing the perceived value of teleseminar programs, the eight factors above strongly reduce refund requests, too. Now go back through the list and think about which elements you can incorporate to boost your teleseminar profits!
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Transform Your Teleseminar into a High-Ticket, High-Value Course
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Over the summer, a marketing guru was grilling me about my audio courses when I could hear him suddenly sit up straight and pay attention in a different way.
"What? You had 12 people each paying $997 for your over-the-telephone course? Geez, that's like $12,000 - for how many hours? Eight hours?!"
Yes, that's right. And if you too think of teleseminars mainly in terms of free or low-cost single sessions, you are overlooking a relatively easy opportunity to turn them into serious money.
If you can teach a skill or have content to impart, you can almost always teach it over the telephone and have a great source of income that does not require you to fight traffic, find a parking space, dress up or master advanced technology. Unlike in-person classes, teleseminar courses can be run without much advance notice. Indeed, if you see a cash-flow hole coming up, just set up a course.
You can actually profit from a teleseminar course twice - once with the students who call in every week and interact with you for a learning experience by telephone, and afterwards when you turn the recordings of the live sessions into a home-study course you can continue to sell until the material goes out of date.
Based on my experience teaching five audio courses (so far), here are some tips to help you take advantage of this lucrative income stream.
People will pay much more for a teleseminar series that promises to deliver a result or outcome rather than merely offering education, insight or support. Call it a "course" with a set number of weeks (I recommend three to eight) and a very specific learning goal.
Ease people's fears that they might have to miss one or more class sessions by letting them know you'll be recording class sessions and making them conveniently available as downloadable audio files and/or on a telephone replay line.
Increase the perceived value of the course by providing boxed recordings of all the class sessions afterwards and a bound copy of the teleseminar handouts.
Boost its perceived value even more by bundling one-on-one consulting, coaching or mentoring with the course. Note that some participants will never use the coaching time they're entitled to, but even so, it still figures into a higher perceived value and a higher registration fee you can charge.
Personally, I can't maintain top teaching energy for longer than half an hour, and 80 minutes is as much as can fit on a single CD, so I plan class sessions to each last an hour or an hour and a half. For me, 12 participants is as many as I can handle so that there's a decent opportunity for discussion and answering questions during a call.
If you are going to edit the teleseminar sessions before loading them onto CDs, do that as the course goes along rather than leaving it all to the end of the course. I made that mistake my first time out and just couldn't face the prospect of editing ten and a half hours of material. My sister, who'd wanted to listen to the course anyway, came to my rescue by taking notes as she listened of particular passages I needed to clean up.
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Over the summer, a marketing guru was grilling me about my audio courses when I could hear him suddenly sit up straight and pay attention in a different way.
"What? You had 12 people each paying $997 for your over-the-telephone course? Geez, that's like $12,000 - for how many hours? Eight hours?!"
Yes, that's right. And if you too think of teleseminars mainly in terms of free or low-cost single sessions, you are overlooking a relatively easy opportunity to turn them into serious money.
If you can teach a skill or have content to impart, you can almost always teach it over the telephone and have a great source of income that does not require you to fight traffic, find a parking space, dress up or master advanced technology. Unlike in-person classes, teleseminar courses can be run without much advance notice. Indeed, if you see a cash-flow hole coming up, just set up a course.
You can actually profit from a teleseminar course twice - once with the students who call in every week and interact with you for a learning experience by telephone, and afterwards when you turn the recordings of the live sessions into a home-study course you can continue to sell until the material goes out of date.
Based on my experience teaching five audio courses (so far), here are some tips to help you take advantage of this lucrative income stream.
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Interviewing an Expert For a Teleseminar? Avoid These Six Mistakes
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Recording and interviewing an expert on a topic that has value for a group of listeners is one of the quickest and easiest ways to create a saleable product. This sort of teleseminar can also help drum up interest in an upcoming event as a free preview call.
However, as someone who has been interviewed or interviewed others dozens of times and listened to scores more expert interviews, I've observed several pitfalls that can affect the quality of the product.
To end up with a recording people that people feel good about having paid for, avoid making the following mistakes when you interview experts, either during a live teleseminar with listeners on the line or when just you and the expert are on the line for later distribution of your conversation.
1. Talking too much. As the interviewer, you should be talking no more than 20 percent of the time. It's fine to offer occasional observations that add to and round out what the expert has said. But it's rude to both the expert and the listeners to horn in on his expertise by running off at the mouth. However much you also know about the subject at hand, your role is subsidiary here. Write the following two words in big letters in front of you as a reminder: SHUT UP. If you just can't be quiet, reverse your role and find someone to interview you.
2. Not introducing the expert. Some interviewers either say outright, "So-and-so needs no introduction" or act as if everyone listening knows the stature and credentials of the guest expert. Yet even people who paid to be on a call and presumably read your sales copy might not remember the expert's qualifications or might be new to the circles in which your expert is a living legend. Always provide at least a brief bio of the expert to set the context for your questions.
3. Gushing. It's painful to listen to someone who responds to every other point of the expert by praising him or her to the sky. Instead of flowery or overly emotional flattery, be sparing and specific in your praise. Rather than "Wow, that's another incredibly insightful point," for instance, you can say "That's something most gurus don't tell you," or "I would never have guessed that," or "I see I'm going to have to make some changes after we finish today's call." Let listeners make up their own minds about the value of the expert's savvy for them.
4. Lousy questions. Good questions are open-ended ones that call for an explanation, anecdote or perspective of some sort rather than a simple yes or no. Avoid multi-part questions, because inevitably one of the parts gets lost in the expert's answer, confusing or disappointing listeners.
5. Getting off track. As interviewer, you are responsible to keep the discussion on track. However interesting a side issue might be, you can't let it get in the way of what you advertised would be covered in the call. Good phrases for reining in a digression include "But to get back to our topic for tonight..." or "I'm not sure we have time to get into that. Do you have any more ideas about ___ [the central topic]?"
6. Not providing URLs. Sometimes during a preview call that is promoting an upcoming paid event, the expert mentions valuable information available on the expert's web site, but the interviewer fails to prompt the expert to provide the web address so listeners can access it. This gets listeners feeling like the interviewer cares only about the event selling out and not about helping listeners. Listeners deserve to receive sufficient information to follow up with the expert directly or check out his or her books or web site.
By following these guidelines, you provide a solid educational experience for listeners, treat your expert with respect and are positioned well to receive the payoff that you planned for the teleseminar project.
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Recording and interviewing an expert on a topic that has value for a group of listeners is one of the quickest and easiest ways to create a saleable product. This sort of teleseminar can also help drum up interest in an upcoming event as a free preview call.
However, as someone who has been interviewed or interviewed others dozens of times and listened to scores more expert interviews, I've observed several pitfalls that can affect the quality of the product.
To end up with a recording people that people feel good about having paid for, avoid making the following mistakes when you interview experts, either during a live teleseminar with listeners on the line or when just you and the expert are on the line for later distribution of your conversation.
1. Talking too much. As the interviewer, you should be talking no more than 20 percent of the time. It's fine to offer occasional observations that add to and round out what the expert has said. But it's rude to both the expert and the listeners to horn in on his expertise by running off at the mouth. However much you also know about the subject at hand, your role is subsidiary here. Write the following two words in big letters in front of you as a reminder: SHUT UP. If you just can't be quiet, reverse your role and find someone to interview you.
2. Not introducing the expert. Some interviewers either say outright, "So-and-so needs no introduction" or act as if everyone listening knows the stature and credentials of the guest expert. Yet even people who paid to be on a call and presumably read your sales copy might not remember the expert's qualifications or might be new to the circles in which your expert is a living legend. Always provide at least a brief bio of the expert to set the context for your questions.
3. Gushing. It's painful to listen to someone who responds to every other point of the expert by praising him or her to the sky. Instead of flowery or overly emotional flattery, be sparing and specific in your praise. Rather than "Wow, that's another incredibly insightful point," for instance, you can say "That's something most gurus don't tell you," or "I would never have guessed that," or "I see I'm going to have to make some changes after we finish today's call." Let listeners make up their own minds about the value of the expert's savvy for them.
4. Lousy questions. Good questions are open-ended ones that call for an explanation, anecdote or perspective of some sort rather than a simple yes or no. Avoid multi-part questions, because inevitably one of the parts gets lost in the expert's answer, confusing or disappointing listeners.
5. Getting off track. As interviewer, you are responsible to keep the discussion on track. However interesting a side issue might be, you can't let it get in the way of what you advertised would be covered in the call. Good phrases for reining in a digression include "But to get back to our topic for tonight..." or "I'm not sure we have time to get into that. Do you have any more ideas about ___ [the central topic]?"
6. Not providing URLs. Sometimes during a preview call that is promoting an upcoming paid event, the expert mentions valuable information available on the expert's web site, but the interviewer fails to prompt the expert to provide the web address so listeners can access it. This gets listeners feeling like the interviewer cares only about the event selling out and not about helping listeners. Listeners deserve to receive sufficient information to follow up with the expert directly or check out his or her books or web site.
By following these guidelines, you provide a solid educational experience for listeners, treat your expert with respect and are positioned well to receive the payoff that you planned for the teleseminar project.
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Monday, February 23, 2009
How to Backorder for a Domain Name - Part II
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
As an expired domain trader looking for a good domain name, you may face a number of difficulties and challenges like fierce competition, lightening quick registration by your competitors and exorbitantly higher buying prices. To avoid all these hassles and to buy very good domain names, you can use a number of domain backordering models offered by well known backordering services. Here are some of the famous and recognized domain backordering models made available by backordering firms:
First Model that offers services by individual and separate registrars:
Some well-known registrars offer this model by refusing to delete the expiring domain name especially at stage 2. However, they may assign a particular domain name to an individual, who has paid the required fee to backorder the domain. Examples of registrars are: GoDaddy.com and eNom.com
Second Model that offers services with the help of Coordinated Registrars:
This model offers a single window, application point for backordering a domain by multi-registrars. You may need to submit a request through SnapName.com web portal which eventually works with the registrar of a particular domain just before the final deletion. Examples of registrars are: Network Solutions.
Third Model that offers services with the help of the Registry:
All of us know that VeriSign controls the registry and it has the power to guarantee that any domain names deleted at stage 2 is redistributed to an interested buyer, who has registered to VeriSign's much hyped Waiting List Service or WLS. Any ICAAN registered and approved registrars can offer this service. It offers you two distinctive parameters when compared to a standard registrar type of model.
a) First, registrars offer this to those people, who can opt to offer a particular domain to their customers,
b) Second, only the registry has the complete control over the domain names that reside in the third stage
Tip: If there are no pending backorder requests for any domains forwarded through WLS, the said domain name will advance to the fourth stage after which dedicated software can grab it for immediate purchase.
Fourth Model that offers services by using automated registration software:
You can capture those domains that pass the registry at sixth stage. Using good software, you can send electronic requests for registering a domain with the help of an ICAAN accredited registrar. However, this is perhaps the most famous model that poses you several challenges that concerns how quickly you are grabbing an expired domain name. With good software, you can post simultaneous requests at the same time.
Fifth Model that offers you service by using a Multi-model Strategy:
To enhance your chances of winning a good domain name, you may need to use all the above mentioned strategies and models by subscribing to respective services. However, a number of expired domain name traders are approaching VeriSign to use their WLS service to bypass the registrars, who always delete expiring domain names paid and registered through them, provided there is not backorder requests made against those domains. All these models require considerable amount of skills and dedication from you, before you can grab a good expiring domain name.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
As an expired domain trader looking for a good domain name, you may face a number of difficulties and challenges like fierce competition, lightening quick registration by your competitors and exorbitantly higher buying prices. To avoid all these hassles and to buy very good domain names, you can use a number of domain backordering models offered by well known backordering services. Here are some of the famous and recognized domain backordering models made available by backordering firms:
First Model that offers services by individual and separate registrars:
Some well-known registrars offer this model by refusing to delete the expiring domain name especially at stage 2. However, they may assign a particular domain name to an individual, who has paid the required fee to backorder the domain. Examples of registrars are: GoDaddy.com and eNom.com
Second Model that offers services with the help of Coordinated Registrars:
This model offers a single window, application point for backordering a domain by multi-registrars. You may need to submit a request through SnapName.com web portal which eventually works with the registrar of a particular domain just before the final deletion. Examples of registrars are: Network Solutions.
Third Model that offers services with the help of the Registry:
All of us know that VeriSign controls the registry and it has the power to guarantee that any domain names deleted at stage 2 is redistributed to an interested buyer, who has registered to VeriSign's much hyped Waiting List Service or WLS. Any ICAAN registered and approved registrars can offer this service. It offers you two distinctive parameters when compared to a standard registrar type of model.
a) First, registrars offer this to those people, who can opt to offer a particular domain to their customers,
b) Second, only the registry has the complete control over the domain names that reside in the third stage
Tip: If there are no pending backorder requests for any domains forwarded through WLS, the said domain name will advance to the fourth stage after which dedicated software can grab it for immediate purchase.
Fourth Model that offers services by using automated registration software:
You can capture those domains that pass the registry at sixth stage. Using good software, you can send electronic requests for registering a domain with the help of an ICAAN accredited registrar. However, this is perhaps the most famous model that poses you several challenges that concerns how quickly you are grabbing an expired domain name. With good software, you can post simultaneous requests at the same time.
Fifth Model that offers you service by using a Multi-model Strategy:
To enhance your chances of winning a good domain name, you may need to use all the above mentioned strategies and models by subscribing to respective services. However, a number of expired domain name traders are approaching VeriSign to use their WLS service to bypass the registrars, who always delete expiring domain names paid and registered through them, provided there is not backorder requests made against those domains. All these models require considerable amount of skills and dedication from you, before you can grab a good expiring domain name.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Friday, February 20, 2009
How to Create an Information Product That Shines Above the Rest
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch
A few months ago, I attended a conference that was held at a retreat center in Portland, OR. The center had its own chef and all meals were prepared and served on site.
The food was outstanding; a nice change from the mediocre hotel meals I'm used to. And a few of us got into a conversation around what made our meals so terrific.
Reasons included:
Organic ingredients sourced locally--most of the produce was grown on the center's grounds
Fresh, high quality ingredients - if it wasn't in season we weren't eating it
Made from scratch, often from the chef's original recipes
And something else . . . love.
This became evident when the retreat center's director asked us to make an effort to be on time for meals "because our chef really cares about the food she prepares and wants you to enjoy it fully."
What made our meals so special, in addition to all the other good things mentioned, was that our meals were prepare with love.
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Does Love Belong in a Business?
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First, let's get clear that the kind of love I'm talking about isn't romantic love.
If I had to define the type of love the chef was putting into the meals she prepared I would say it was a mixture of pride, craftsmanship, self-expression, and desire to contribute.
From the few conversations I've had with professional chefs, I know a lot of time and effort goes into preparing and serving dishes so that the flavors and textures work together in wonderful ways.
This what our chef at the retreat was wanting us to experience. And we did.
This type of love is something our culture understands when it comes to work we commonly associate with craftsmanship. That a potter or carpenter feels a sense of pride even love in what they created with their own hands is something most of us "get."
But what about your typical information product? Can your humble "Ten Easy Steps to a Greener Lawn," convey a love of what you do?
Perhaps more importantly, does it even matter?
==================================
Information Products Made with Love
==================================
Can information products convey the love the business owner has for their work? Yes, absolutely!
Over the years, I've purchased quite of few information products: books, ebooks, white papers, audio series, home study courses, all kinds of products. And the ones that are my favorites, the ones that I always refer others to, were clearly on topics dear to the business owner.
One of my favorite examples is "What Color is Your Parachute?" by Richard Bolles.
A lot of other books on job hunting and career development have been published since I bought Parachute in 1983; books that are more concise, better organized, and more business-like. But I continue to recommend Parachute and I continue to refer to it because the love Richard Bolles has for the topic shines through every single page.
And in his brisk, humorous style, Bolle's compassion for his audience: the job seeker and career changer also shines though. The compassion is key because if you have ever had to find a new job, practical advice given with compassion and empathy is like a cold glass of water to a thirsty man in the desert: very much desired, hard to find, and hugely appreciated.
==================================
Why Products Made with Love Matter (to Your Bottom Line)
==================================
This leads to the next question: do products made with love matter? Do they matter in the way in which we ultimately determine whether we have a viable business: our bottom line?
I think products made with love matter a lot and here's why.
There are a LOT of information products out there. So, so many.
If you're the owner of a small business and you're thinking about creating a product - a tips booklet or an ebook or an audio series - it is easy to feel overwhelmed and discouraged. It's easy to wonder "how can I possibly compete?"
And you know what? You can't compete. In fact, I advise you not to even try.
Instead, I suggest you create an information product that is so unique that there simply is no competition. To do this:
1. make sure it provides useful, relevant information that helps your customer solve a problem
2. make sure you genuinely love helping people solve the problem
==================================
An Example: Creating a Product Made with Love
==================================
One of my clients specializes in working with caregivers - persons who take care of someone with a serious illness. She hired me to help her develop an information product that she could sell on her website.
With this particular client, the love part was easy. She has so much natural enthusiasm for her work and it comes across clearly in what she says and writes.
She had more trouble with the "useful, relevant" part.
So we brainstormed some ideas and came up with a step-by-step exercise caregivers could use when they need to be present to the person they're caring for but are feeling stressed and overwhelmed (a common occurrence when you're caring for someone with a serious illness).
What I think is so cool about my client's product is it fills a need for the practical advice badly need by caregivers but offers the advice with a big dose of empathy which is also badly needed.
==================================
Bottom Line
==================================
If you can help customers solve a problem, you have an information product. If you love to help your customers solve that problem and are willing to allow that love to show up, you have an information product that can shine through a sea of competition as the best choice for your customers.
Try it and see.
About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch
A few months ago, I attended a conference that was held at a retreat center in Portland, OR. The center had its own chef and all meals were prepared and served on site.
The food was outstanding; a nice change from the mediocre hotel meals I'm used to. And a few of us got into a conversation around what made our meals so terrific.
Reasons included:
And something else . . . love.
This became evident when the retreat center's director asked us to make an effort to be on time for meals "because our chef really cares about the food she prepares and wants you to enjoy it fully."
What made our meals so special, in addition to all the other good things mentioned, was that our meals were prepare with love.
==================================
Does Love Belong in a Business?
==================================
First, let's get clear that the kind of love I'm talking about isn't romantic love.
If I had to define the type of love the chef was putting into the meals she prepared I would say it was a mixture of pride, craftsmanship, self-expression, and desire to contribute.
From the few conversations I've had with professional chefs, I know a lot of time and effort goes into preparing and serving dishes so that the flavors and textures work together in wonderful ways.
This what our chef at the retreat was wanting us to experience. And we did.
This type of love is something our culture understands when it comes to work we commonly associate with craftsmanship. That a potter or carpenter feels a sense of pride even love in what they created with their own hands is something most of us "get."
But what about your typical information product? Can your humble "Ten Easy Steps to a Greener Lawn," convey a love of what you do?
Perhaps more importantly, does it even matter?
==================================
Information Products Made with Love
==================================
Can information products convey the love the business owner has for their work? Yes, absolutely!
Over the years, I've purchased quite of few information products: books, ebooks, white papers, audio series, home study courses, all kinds of products. And the ones that are my favorites, the ones that I always refer others to, were clearly on topics dear to the business owner.
One of my favorite examples is "What Color is Your Parachute?" by Richard Bolles.
A lot of other books on job hunting and career development have been published since I bought Parachute in 1983; books that are more concise, better organized, and more business-like. But I continue to recommend Parachute and I continue to refer to it because the love Richard Bolles has for the topic shines through every single page.
And in his brisk, humorous style, Bolle's compassion for his audience: the job seeker and career changer also shines though. The compassion is key because if you have ever had to find a new job, practical advice given with compassion and empathy is like a cold glass of water to a thirsty man in the desert: very much desired, hard to find, and hugely appreciated.
==================================
Why Products Made with Love Matter (to Your Bottom Line)
==================================
This leads to the next question: do products made with love matter? Do they matter in the way in which we ultimately determine whether we have a viable business: our bottom line?
I think products made with love matter a lot and here's why.
There are a LOT of information products out there. So, so many.
If you're the owner of a small business and you're thinking about creating a product - a tips booklet or an ebook or an audio series - it is easy to feel overwhelmed and discouraged. It's easy to wonder "how can I possibly compete?"
And you know what? You can't compete. In fact, I advise you not to even try.
Instead, I suggest you create an information product that is so unique that there simply is no competition. To do this:
1. make sure it provides useful, relevant information that helps your customer solve a problem
2. make sure you genuinely love helping people solve the problem
==================================
An Example: Creating a Product Made with Love
==================================
One of my clients specializes in working with caregivers - persons who take care of someone with a serious illness. She hired me to help her develop an information product that she could sell on her website.
With this particular client, the love part was easy. She has so much natural enthusiasm for her work and it comes across clearly in what she says and writes.
She had more trouble with the "useful, relevant" part.
So we brainstormed some ideas and came up with a step-by-step exercise caregivers could use when they need to be present to the person they're caring for but are feeling stressed and overwhelmed (a common occurrence when you're caring for someone with a serious illness).
What I think is so cool about my client's product is it fills a need for the practical advice badly need by caregivers but offers the advice with a big dose of empathy which is also badly needed.
==================================
Bottom Line
==================================
If you can help customers solve a problem, you have an information product. If you love to help your customers solve that problem and are willing to allow that love to show up, you have an information product that can shine through a sea of competition as the best choice for your customers.
Try it and see.
About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Rewriting Articles For Increased Distribution Reach
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2006-2009 Trey Pennewell
Hey! I just figured out how to both promote my website and cut down on my workload. I know what I will do: instead of writing five articles a week to distribute, I will take a single article and change it slightly to produce five different "versions." What a great idea! I will change the title also, so that there are five different titles. Then, I will change the introductory paragraph a bit and alter my word choice a bit. Whew! That is going to be much easier than writing five separate and unique articles each week.
Now, if only it were that simple.
What is wrong with the idea of writing an article and revising it so that you can get five back links instead of one? Isn't this what has made the business of Private Label Reprints (PLRs) so popular? In theory, doing something like this could save a lot of time and generate a great deal of content. Then, you could send various editions of your article to different publishing websites. But...
Many Distributors Will Prevent Duplication
One of the problems with rewriting the same article is that many distributors have mechanisms in place to prevent the publication of both pieces. Article distributors do not do this to harm your business; in fact, these limits are in place to protect your career. If you take the time to write an informative and helpful article to generate traffic back to your site, you probably do not want someone plagiarizing your work. This is why article distribution services work to prevent people, even you, from publishing an article very similar to what you've written.
Instead of being frustrated with the distributors, we should in fact thank them for protecting our work. Some article distributors run a code that will test five strings of data against previously submitted articles; some only use one code to match against, but they all aim to prevent duplication of content.
If you don't use an article distributor-if you submit the piece on your own-then you don't need to worry about duplicate content, right? Wrong. Imagine being a Webmaster who runs a site that accepts article submissions. What are you going to think when you get five articles that are obviously the same, with only simple changes made? Do you think that, as a Webmaster, you would publish these articles or delete the authors from your list for safety purposes?
Webmasters and E-Zine publishers are looking for new and unique content that will provide their readers with useful information. When you revise an article and send it to them, you are not giving them the freshness they look for. In fact, you are likely to irritate your editors.
Credibility
Another reason not to submit a revised article is because it takes away from your credibility as a writer or expert. Let's say that a customer comes across one of your articles and loves it. This reader thinks, "Wow, the author knows what he is talking about, I will look for more of his work." The reader searches for you on the Internet and reads a few more of your articles, only to realize that it is the same information, altered only slightly. Do you think this reader will convert to a sale on your website?
More than likely, this reader will become frustrated because he or she was hoping to learn more about you and your services or product. Instead, they will see that your writings do not offer unique information. Imagine buying a book from a respected author. Imagine that, when the author puts out a new book, you buy it, only to realize that they've rehashed the same information for republication. Would you buy a third book from this author? Would the writer seem a credible, knowledgeable or trustworthy authority?
Revising the same article over and over again will likely end up hurting your business. There is nothing more embarrassing for an author than to be ousted (and rightly so) from a forum for plagiarizing, even if you are plagiarizing your own work.
Quality Over Quantity
There are many reasons why it is a bad idea to submit multiple, slightly altered versions of the same article for publication. If you struggle with writing five articles each week, then only commit to writing one or two and composing them to the best of your ability. It is far better to go for quality than quantity in the article reprint business. A customer will appreciate finding a few articles from you that offer new and fresh information rather than finding dozens written by you that effectively state the same thing.
If you want to achieve both quality and quantity, you may consider hiring a ghostwriter. This will keep you from facing the loss of respect and credibility that often results from rewriting a single article.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell is a writer, who writes about online marketing. Learn more about our Pay For Performance SEO services at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html Trey also manages article approvals at the free article directory located at: http://www.techcentralpublishing.com/Category/marketing/83/1
Copyright © 2006-2009 Trey Pennewell
Hey! I just figured out how to both promote my website and cut down on my workload. I know what I will do: instead of writing five articles a week to distribute, I will take a single article and change it slightly to produce five different "versions." What a great idea! I will change the title also, so that there are five different titles. Then, I will change the introductory paragraph a bit and alter my word choice a bit. Whew! That is going to be much easier than writing five separate and unique articles each week.
Now, if only it were that simple.
What is wrong with the idea of writing an article and revising it so that you can get five back links instead of one? Isn't this what has made the business of Private Label Reprints (PLRs) so popular? In theory, doing something like this could save a lot of time and generate a great deal of content. Then, you could send various editions of your article to different publishing websites. But...
Many Distributors Will Prevent Duplication
One of the problems with rewriting the same article is that many distributors have mechanisms in place to prevent the publication of both pieces. Article distributors do not do this to harm your business; in fact, these limits are in place to protect your career. If you take the time to write an informative and helpful article to generate traffic back to your site, you probably do not want someone plagiarizing your work. This is why article distribution services work to prevent people, even you, from publishing an article very similar to what you've written.
Instead of being frustrated with the distributors, we should in fact thank them for protecting our work. Some article distributors run a code that will test five strings of data against previously submitted articles; some only use one code to match against, but they all aim to prevent duplication of content.
If you don't use an article distributor-if you submit the piece on your own-then you don't need to worry about duplicate content, right? Wrong. Imagine being a Webmaster who runs a site that accepts article submissions. What are you going to think when you get five articles that are obviously the same, with only simple changes made? Do you think that, as a Webmaster, you would publish these articles or delete the authors from your list for safety purposes?
Webmasters and E-Zine publishers are looking for new and unique content that will provide their readers with useful information. When you revise an article and send it to them, you are not giving them the freshness they look for. In fact, you are likely to irritate your editors.
Credibility
Another reason not to submit a revised article is because it takes away from your credibility as a writer or expert. Let's say that a customer comes across one of your articles and loves it. This reader thinks, "Wow, the author knows what he is talking about, I will look for more of his work." The reader searches for you on the Internet and reads a few more of your articles, only to realize that it is the same information, altered only slightly. Do you think this reader will convert to a sale on your website?
More than likely, this reader will become frustrated because he or she was hoping to learn more about you and your services or product. Instead, they will see that your writings do not offer unique information. Imagine buying a book from a respected author. Imagine that, when the author puts out a new book, you buy it, only to realize that they've rehashed the same information for republication. Would you buy a third book from this author? Would the writer seem a credible, knowledgeable or trustworthy authority?
Revising the same article over and over again will likely end up hurting your business. There is nothing more embarrassing for an author than to be ousted (and rightly so) from a forum for plagiarizing, even if you are plagiarizing your own work.
Quality Over Quantity
There are many reasons why it is a bad idea to submit multiple, slightly altered versions of the same article for publication. If you struggle with writing five articles each week, then only commit to writing one or two and composing them to the best of your ability. It is far better to go for quality than quantity in the article reprint business. A customer will appreciate finding a few articles from you that offer new and fresh information rather than finding dozens written by you that effectively state the same thing.
If you want to achieve both quality and quantity, you may consider hiring a ghostwriter. This will keep you from facing the loss of respect and credibility that often results from rewriting a single article.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell is a writer, who writes about online marketing. Learn more about our Pay For Performance SEO services at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html Trey also manages article approvals at the free article directory located at: http://www.techcentralpublishing.com/Category/marketing/83/1
Monday, February 16, 2009
The Role of Hunger in Your Business
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Mark Silver
Hunger and fear are good for your business. Not abject hunger and despairing panic, mind you. That's too much. But a little touch of hunger and fear is very useful.
I know there are many people out there who would prefer that not to be the case. And I'm one of them. I wish inspiration and love were big enough motivators for action. But for us humans who aren't yet enlightened, they don't seem to work so well.
The problem is complacency. We most often don't do things until we absolutely have to.
I've watched it happen--a client's savings account dwindles down over time while they are stuck in fear or uncertainty about what to do or how to do it. Perfectionism has it's tight grip on them.
Then the account hits zero, or whatever feels like "zero" to the person in question. And suddenly they leap into action.
Sound familiar? This is the mother of all feast-or-famine cycles. If you stay in that kind of a cycle, then your business can't ever move much higher than the ground floor.
But before we go about seeking a fix, let's take a look at the Sufi teaching that explains why this can be a good thing.
Lashed With Hunger and Thirst
There's a Sufi story that goes like this: Source, aka God, aka The Divine, was talking to the ego, asking it to leave off injuring itself with various addictive behaviors and surrender to Source. "Am I not Your Lord?" The Divine asked in its inimitable Divine fashion.
The ego responded. "I am what I am, and you are what you are," continuing right on with what it was doing. The Divine then plunged the ego into fire in order to purify it--kind of like putting metal into fire to burn away impurities.
The result? Nada. Twelve thousand years of fire and the ego is still clinging to its self-destroying patterns.
The Divine then plunged the ego back into the fire adding just a touch of hunger and thirst. Immediately the ego released its grip and allowed itself to be purified.
Yes, I'm talking about us.
The Difference Between Pain and Survival
What this short Sufi story outlines is the difference between pain and survival. Humans have an almost unfathomable capacity to deal with pain and suffering, but we have very little capacity to risk our own survival.
This is one of the reasons that I think this financial crisis is actually going to be healthy for us in the long run; by threatening our survival, it's making people take actions that could've been done gracefully awhile ago. It's painful, it's scary, and a lot of people will end up being hurt. Yet apparently it's necessary. And some of the actions we're forced to take now may serve us well over the long term.
But that's a far larger topic than I want to delve into, so I'll just say that and move on.
Move on? Now you know complacency is a normal human state of being until hunger and thirst are added. So instead of just living with it, let's move on to how to get your business fanny in gear without your bank account or some other survival button being pushed.
Keys to Hunger-Motivated Business
What else besides (lack of) money threatens your survival?
One of the reasons it works so well to declare goals before witnesses is because your identity as someone with integrity is threatened if you don't follow through, and your ego sees this as akin to survival. It can be a bullying approach, so I recommend some measure of compassion in it, but it can also be very effective.
Take a moment in your heart to identify what qualities are core for you, such as integrity, generosity, or love. Now put them in play, usually with others' help, by setting goals your ego will fight for.
It's a little tricky, but then, so is the ego, and it's okay to push the ego a bit, if the deeper intention is truly from your heart.
Here's an example: In the recent Path to Profitability Retreat, we prided ourselves on holding a spiritual container that allowed participants to go deep into their processes. In order to provide that, we needed to double up on our own spiritual practices. So we did. It just so happens that both Holly and I have had a commitment to deepen our spiritual practices, and this goal helped get us there.
Use actual hunger or thirst to weaken your ego.
One of the key spiritual practices in nearly any tradition is the ascetic practice of fasting--avoiding food or water or both for a set amount of time.
Fasting weakens the ego. Whether it's Ramadan, Yom Kippur, or Lent, devoted followers often report a purity of heart after fasting. The benefit of this purity of heart means that the ego's grip is looser, and the heart's intention and inspiration is more available.
Try taking a single day and, if it's not dangerous for you medically, fast. Don't eat or drink for twelve hours. Keep up your meditation and prayer practices during this time to support the process, and notice how you feel afterwards.
It seems like an impractical business suggestion, but spiritual traditions around the globe have recommended fasting and prayer before big projects or decisions. It creates that sense of purity and resolve that can get you moving forward clearly and in a big way.
Choose the middle path.
While fear of survival can get you moving, too much can paralyze you or make you sick. Don't fast too much. Don't let your bank account go too low. Don't set goals you don't have a chance of reaching.
The ego has all kinds of built-in mechanisms that can support you in your business, and fear of survival is one of them. You don't have to think it's wrong as a motivator, it's actually very holy. But be conscious of how it works, and use survival with love and intention.
The best to you and your business,
Mark Silver
About the Author:
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the globe succeed in business without losing their hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online: http://www.heartofbusiness.com
Copyright © 2009 Mark Silver
Hunger and fear are good for your business. Not abject hunger and despairing panic, mind you. That's too much. But a little touch of hunger and fear is very useful.
I know there are many people out there who would prefer that not to be the case. And I'm one of them. I wish inspiration and love were big enough motivators for action. But for us humans who aren't yet enlightened, they don't seem to work so well.
The problem is complacency. We most often don't do things until we absolutely have to.
I've watched it happen--a client's savings account dwindles down over time while they are stuck in fear or uncertainty about what to do or how to do it. Perfectionism has it's tight grip on them.
Then the account hits zero, or whatever feels like "zero" to the person in question. And suddenly they leap into action.
Sound familiar? This is the mother of all feast-or-famine cycles. If you stay in that kind of a cycle, then your business can't ever move much higher than the ground floor.
But before we go about seeking a fix, let's take a look at the Sufi teaching that explains why this can be a good thing.
Lashed With Hunger and Thirst
There's a Sufi story that goes like this: Source, aka God, aka The Divine, was talking to the ego, asking it to leave off injuring itself with various addictive behaviors and surrender to Source. "Am I not Your Lord?" The Divine asked in its inimitable Divine fashion.
The ego responded. "I am what I am, and you are what you are," continuing right on with what it was doing. The Divine then plunged the ego into fire in order to purify it--kind of like putting metal into fire to burn away impurities.
The result? Nada. Twelve thousand years of fire and the ego is still clinging to its self-destroying patterns.
The Divine then plunged the ego back into the fire adding just a touch of hunger and thirst. Immediately the ego released its grip and allowed itself to be purified.
Yes, I'm talking about us.
The Difference Between Pain and Survival
What this short Sufi story outlines is the difference between pain and survival. Humans have an almost unfathomable capacity to deal with pain and suffering, but we have very little capacity to risk our own survival.
This is one of the reasons that I think this financial crisis is actually going to be healthy for us in the long run; by threatening our survival, it's making people take actions that could've been done gracefully awhile ago. It's painful, it's scary, and a lot of people will end up being hurt. Yet apparently it's necessary. And some of the actions we're forced to take now may serve us well over the long term.
But that's a far larger topic than I want to delve into, so I'll just say that and move on.
Move on? Now you know complacency is a normal human state of being until hunger and thirst are added. So instead of just living with it, let's move on to how to get your business fanny in gear without your bank account or some other survival button being pushed.
Keys to Hunger-Motivated Business
What else besides (lack of) money threatens your survival?
One of the reasons it works so well to declare goals before witnesses is because your identity as someone with integrity is threatened if you don't follow through, and your ego sees this as akin to survival. It can be a bullying approach, so I recommend some measure of compassion in it, but it can also be very effective.
Take a moment in your heart to identify what qualities are core for you, such as integrity, generosity, or love. Now put them in play, usually with others' help, by setting goals your ego will fight for.
It's a little tricky, but then, so is the ego, and it's okay to push the ego a bit, if the deeper intention is truly from your heart.
Here's an example: In the recent Path to Profitability Retreat, we prided ourselves on holding a spiritual container that allowed participants to go deep into their processes. In order to provide that, we needed to double up on our own spiritual practices. So we did. It just so happens that both Holly and I have had a commitment to deepen our spiritual practices, and this goal helped get us there.
Use actual hunger or thirst to weaken your ego.
One of the key spiritual practices in nearly any tradition is the ascetic practice of fasting--avoiding food or water or both for a set amount of time.
Fasting weakens the ego. Whether it's Ramadan, Yom Kippur, or Lent, devoted followers often report a purity of heart after fasting. The benefit of this purity of heart means that the ego's grip is looser, and the heart's intention and inspiration is more available.
Try taking a single day and, if it's not dangerous for you medically, fast. Don't eat or drink for twelve hours. Keep up your meditation and prayer practices during this time to support the process, and notice how you feel afterwards.
It seems like an impractical business suggestion, but spiritual traditions around the globe have recommended fasting and prayer before big projects or decisions. It creates that sense of purity and resolve that can get you moving forward clearly and in a big way.
Choose the middle path.
While fear of survival can get you moving, too much can paralyze you or make you sick. Don't fast too much. Don't let your bank account go too low. Don't set goals you don't have a chance of reaching.
The ego has all kinds of built-in mechanisms that can support you in your business, and fear of survival is one of them. You don't have to think it's wrong as a motivator, it's actually very holy. But be conscious of how it works, and use survival with love and intention.
The best to you and your business,
Mark Silver
About the Author:
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the globe succeed in business without losing their hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online: http://www.heartofbusiness.com
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Which Comes First, Web Hosting or Web Design?
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Kevin Kielty
What is the relationship between web hosting and a website which performs well?
Choosing your web hosting plan can make or break your online business. It requires some level of technical knowledge and for most people, is too important a decision to be made on their own. To be truly successful online, you should begin your search with a web designer and establish a relationship with that person. They will then guide you in finding the best web hosting service to fit your needs.
How well your website performs is strongly dependant upon your web hosting plan. The hosting plan you choose directly effects the experience your prospective customers will have on your site. When shopping for business web hosting, people often make the mistake of looking for the cheapest plan they can find. The problem with this approach is that you are not just paying for hosting, you are paying for bandwidth, which directly effects how fast your web page will load. If your page loads too slowly your prospective customer will never see your site, but bandwidth is not the only factor that effects page load time. Other factors include:
1. The number of people connecting to your site at the same time.
2. The type of content you have on your site (the number of images, flash, video, audio, CMS).
3. How well your website is coded.
4. Back up and restore capabilities
5. Pre-loaded open source software
6. Security features
Of the six factors listed above, #3 is the primary offender for page load delays. Poorly coded websites are most often the result of machine-generated code, from do-it-yourself website builder applications.
Choosing a Web Designer first - Knowledge and Relationship
There are many choices for web hosting companies and many different types of web hosting services. Knowing what web hosting you will need for your website before it even exists is difficult, if not impossible. That is why you will need to begin with an experienced web designer. That person will be able to build a custom website for you and will know what type of hosting will be necessary to accommodate your site. When you hire a web designer, he or she will begin with gathering requirements from you in which you will discuss all the features and content you would like to have on your site. Your designer will then choose a web hosting service that can handle all the requirements of the site that they are going to build for you.
Another reason to begin with choosing a website designer or developer first, is that they will design your site based on the idea that they will provide the hosting and that there will be an ongoing relationship. Business web hosting often includes the hosting as well as some type of website support contract so that you will have someone you can go back to on a consistent basis. You will get personal one-on-one attention and ongoing support from someone you have a history with, and who thoroughly knows your website and your business model.
Choosing Web Hosting First - A Space in Need of a Site
If you begin with choosing your hosting plan first, then look for a designer, you set yourself up for several problems. First of all most web designers will not take a job building a website that could potentially be more than the hosting plan can handle. Secondly, many hosting services have different shareware applications that come with the hosting. You could have trouble finding a developer who is familiar with the shareware that comes with your hosting plan.
Another problem with choosing the hosting plan first is that a hosting company is concerned only with selling the hosting and nothing more. If you encounter any problems outside of hosting, the hosting company will not be able to help you. You will be essentially orphaning yourself before the project has even begun. Most web designers and developers offer their clients web hosting as well as maintenance contracts, but if you choose the hosting company first, then the person who builds the site for you does not have an ongoing relationship with you. Since there is no contract tying you to them, they have no vested interest is making your website successful.
Choosing a web hosting service for your website can be a complicated but very important decision. You will have the greatest chance for success with your website, if you begin by choosing a web designer or developer first and then have a hosting and maintenance contract with that person. That will ensure that your hosting plan will be appropriate for your website and that you will always have a website professional available when you need them.
About the Author:
Kevin Kielty writes for Internet Marketing Advantage in Raleigh, NC, providing web hosting and design solutions to small and medium size businesses. Internet Marketing Advantage specializes in bringing together web design, Internet marketing and web hosting solutions for clients in Raleigh, NC and across the country. http://raleighseocompany.net
Copyright © 2009 Kevin Kielty
What is the relationship between web hosting and a website which performs well?
Choosing your web hosting plan can make or break your online business. It requires some level of technical knowledge and for most people, is too important a decision to be made on their own. To be truly successful online, you should begin your search with a web designer and establish a relationship with that person. They will then guide you in finding the best web hosting service to fit your needs.
How well your website performs is strongly dependant upon your web hosting plan. The hosting plan you choose directly effects the experience your prospective customers will have on your site. When shopping for business web hosting, people often make the mistake of looking for the cheapest plan they can find. The problem with this approach is that you are not just paying for hosting, you are paying for bandwidth, which directly effects how fast your web page will load. If your page loads too slowly your prospective customer will never see your site, but bandwidth is not the only factor that effects page load time. Other factors include:
1. The number of people connecting to your site at the same time.
2. The type of content you have on your site (the number of images, flash, video, audio, CMS).
3. How well your website is coded.
4. Back up and restore capabilities
5. Pre-loaded open source software
6. Security features
Of the six factors listed above, #3 is the primary offender for page load delays. Poorly coded websites are most often the result of machine-generated code, from do-it-yourself website builder applications.
Choosing a Web Designer first - Knowledge and Relationship
There are many choices for web hosting companies and many different types of web hosting services. Knowing what web hosting you will need for your website before it even exists is difficult, if not impossible. That is why you will need to begin with an experienced web designer. That person will be able to build a custom website for you and will know what type of hosting will be necessary to accommodate your site. When you hire a web designer, he or she will begin with gathering requirements from you in which you will discuss all the features and content you would like to have on your site. Your designer will then choose a web hosting service that can handle all the requirements of the site that they are going to build for you.
Another reason to begin with choosing a website designer or developer first, is that they will design your site based on the idea that they will provide the hosting and that there will be an ongoing relationship. Business web hosting often includes the hosting as well as some type of website support contract so that you will have someone you can go back to on a consistent basis. You will get personal one-on-one attention and ongoing support from someone you have a history with, and who thoroughly knows your website and your business model.
Choosing Web Hosting First - A Space in Need of a Site
If you begin with choosing your hosting plan first, then look for a designer, you set yourself up for several problems. First of all most web designers will not take a job building a website that could potentially be more than the hosting plan can handle. Secondly, many hosting services have different shareware applications that come with the hosting. You could have trouble finding a developer who is familiar with the shareware that comes with your hosting plan.
Another problem with choosing the hosting plan first is that a hosting company is concerned only with selling the hosting and nothing more. If you encounter any problems outside of hosting, the hosting company will not be able to help you. You will be essentially orphaning yourself before the project has even begun. Most web designers and developers offer their clients web hosting as well as maintenance contracts, but if you choose the hosting company first, then the person who builds the site for you does not have an ongoing relationship with you. Since there is no contract tying you to them, they have no vested interest is making your website successful.
Choosing a web hosting service for your website can be a complicated but very important decision. You will have the greatest chance for success with your website, if you begin by choosing a web designer or developer first and then have a hosting and maintenance contract with that person. That will ensure that your hosting plan will be appropriate for your website and that you will always have a website professional available when you need them.
About the Author:
Kevin Kielty writes for Internet Marketing Advantage in Raleigh, NC, providing web hosting and design solutions to small and medium size businesses. Internet Marketing Advantage specializes in bringing together web design, Internet marketing and web hosting solutions for clients in Raleigh, NC and across the country. http://raleighseocompany.net
Friday, February 13, 2009
Preview Teleseminars: Avoid These Off-Putting Mistakes
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
When you have a new product or an upcoming event, a free preview teleseminar can do a great job of drumming up excitement about it. In one scenario, you announce a teleseminar session about the topic to loyal fans and followers, they sign up for the call to hear your wisdom on the subject, then they buy because they want to learn more. In another scenario, an affiliate hosts a teleseminar interview with you and introduces his or her fans and followers to your ideas, with the same result. Third, you can post the recording of the call on your site or blog and invite anyone visiting to invite their friends to listen to or download the call, so awareness of the product or event spreads as widely as possible.
In all these instances, it's vital to execute this strategy with due consideration for your teleseminar listeners. Be straight, be fair, be professional. These may sound like common sense principles for marketers, yet I've heard them violated in major ways during preview calls. Getting people on the free teleseminar, then making one of the mistakes below diminishes the effectiveness of this potentially powerful method of getting out the word.
1. Not revealing it's a preview call. Recently I downloaded an MP3 file from a coach who announced a free recording on nine strategies to prosper during a recession. The email promo that propelled me to the download link contained not one peep that the call was a preview for a new coaching program. How do you think I felt during the call when I discovered that the nine strategies were not the actual agenda of the call? Knowing that in advance would have given me appropriate expectations, instead of producing disappointment. If participants know ahead of time your call is going to mix content and promotion, they can listen without being distracted by annoyance.
2. Oversized commercials. Compounding the letdown on that call was the skewed proportion of the time devoted to promotion. It felt like 40-50 percent of the talking had to do with the upcoming coaching program, when it should have been no more than 10-20 percent. Providing loads of content makes people hungry for more, whereas doling it out in small chunks makes people wonder whether your event or product will be similarly scant in value. Make sure you pitch whatever you're promoting at the beginning, someplace in the middle and at the end of the call, but be brief. Have confidence that when you set the context appropriately, the thought-provoking or useful ideas in the 80-90 percent of the teleseminar also sell for you, compellingly.
3. Not delivering what you promised. If your writeup for the session featured seven points, you must give listeners seven points, not three or six. During the call, keep one eye on your outline and the other on the clock, so you remain on track to fit in everything you announced would be covered.
4. Failing to identify yourself. Teleseminar recordings often have a second life afterwards for years not only on your own web site but in the audio players of people who may not remember where they got the content from. I've listened to audio recordings where I had no clue who the interviewer or lecturer was, what he did and where to find him on the web. This greatly undermines the call's promotional impact. Always identify yourself by name and URL both at the beginning of the call and just before you sign off.
5. Dominating the guest expert. If your preview call highlights the expertise of someone people avidly want to hear from, don't take over the call. As the interviewer, you should be talking no more than 20 percent of the time. It's fine to add to what the expert says, even disagree on certain points. But it's rude to both the expert and the listeners to allow the expert only occasional nuggets while you talk and talk and talk.
6. Thoughtless editing or no editing. Everyone understands that a live teleseminar call won't go as perfectly as a national radio broadcast. But when you turn the call into a recording, the first thing listeners should hear is your hello, not all the pre-call "Hi, I'm Fluffy from Toledo" and "beep beep beep beep beep" as callers come on the line. Likewise, if mysterious screechy noises interrupted everyone halfway through, edit them out. One information marketer includes a recorded preview teleseminar as a bonus with one of his products that contains hundreds of distracting echoed phrases due to a poor connection on Skype. People judge the quality of the preview as indicating the quality of what it promotes, so be smart.
7. Awkward length. Your bridge line provider may allow you to stretch your preview call to 90 minutes, two hours or however long it takes you to run out of steam. But keep in mind that a CD holds just a bit less than 80 minutes. Someone who downloads an 85-minute call can't burn it onto a CD. You can't burn your own 85-minute call onto a CD, either, without taking the time to chop out a minute here, two minutes there and two minutes someplace else.
By following these guidelines, you show respect for listeners and earn their trust, parleying their participation on the call or their listening to the recording so they become both short-term and long-term customers. After all, isn't that the point of holding the preview teleseminar in the first place?
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
When you have a new product or an upcoming event, a free preview teleseminar can do a great job of drumming up excitement about it. In one scenario, you announce a teleseminar session about the topic to loyal fans and followers, they sign up for the call to hear your wisdom on the subject, then they buy because they want to learn more. In another scenario, an affiliate hosts a teleseminar interview with you and introduces his or her fans and followers to your ideas, with the same result. Third, you can post the recording of the call on your site or blog and invite anyone visiting to invite their friends to listen to or download the call, so awareness of the product or event spreads as widely as possible.
In all these instances, it's vital to execute this strategy with due consideration for your teleseminar listeners. Be straight, be fair, be professional. These may sound like common sense principles for marketers, yet I've heard them violated in major ways during preview calls. Getting people on the free teleseminar, then making one of the mistakes below diminishes the effectiveness of this potentially powerful method of getting out the word.
1. Not revealing it's a preview call. Recently I downloaded an MP3 file from a coach who announced a free recording on nine strategies to prosper during a recession. The email promo that propelled me to the download link contained not one peep that the call was a preview for a new coaching program. How do you think I felt during the call when I discovered that the nine strategies were not the actual agenda of the call? Knowing that in advance would have given me appropriate expectations, instead of producing disappointment. If participants know ahead of time your call is going to mix content and promotion, they can listen without being distracted by annoyance.
2. Oversized commercials. Compounding the letdown on that call was the skewed proportion of the time devoted to promotion. It felt like 40-50 percent of the talking had to do with the upcoming coaching program, when it should have been no more than 10-20 percent. Providing loads of content makes people hungry for more, whereas doling it out in small chunks makes people wonder whether your event or product will be similarly scant in value. Make sure you pitch whatever you're promoting at the beginning, someplace in the middle and at the end of the call, but be brief. Have confidence that when you set the context appropriately, the thought-provoking or useful ideas in the 80-90 percent of the teleseminar also sell for you, compellingly.
3. Not delivering what you promised. If your writeup for the session featured seven points, you must give listeners seven points, not three or six. During the call, keep one eye on your outline and the other on the clock, so you remain on track to fit in everything you announced would be covered.
4. Failing to identify yourself. Teleseminar recordings often have a second life afterwards for years not only on your own web site but in the audio players of people who may not remember where they got the content from. I've listened to audio recordings where I had no clue who the interviewer or lecturer was, what he did and where to find him on the web. This greatly undermines the call's promotional impact. Always identify yourself by name and URL both at the beginning of the call and just before you sign off.
5. Dominating the guest expert. If your preview call highlights the expertise of someone people avidly want to hear from, don't take over the call. As the interviewer, you should be talking no more than 20 percent of the time. It's fine to add to what the expert says, even disagree on certain points. But it's rude to both the expert and the listeners to allow the expert only occasional nuggets while you talk and talk and talk.
6. Thoughtless editing or no editing. Everyone understands that a live teleseminar call won't go as perfectly as a national radio broadcast. But when you turn the call into a recording, the first thing listeners should hear is your hello, not all the pre-call "Hi, I'm Fluffy from Toledo" and "beep beep beep beep beep" as callers come on the line. Likewise, if mysterious screechy noises interrupted everyone halfway through, edit them out. One information marketer includes a recorded preview teleseminar as a bonus with one of his products that contains hundreds of distracting echoed phrases due to a poor connection on Skype. People judge the quality of the preview as indicating the quality of what it promotes, so be smart.
7. Awkward length. Your bridge line provider may allow you to stretch your preview call to 90 minutes, two hours or however long it takes you to run out of steam. But keep in mind that a CD holds just a bit less than 80 minutes. Someone who downloads an 85-minute call can't burn it onto a CD. You can't burn your own 85-minute call onto a CD, either, without taking the time to chop out a minute here, two minutes there and two minutes someplace else.
By following these guidelines, you show respect for listeners and earn their trust, parleying their participation on the call or their listening to the recording so they become both short-term and long-term customers. After all, isn't that the point of holding the preview teleseminar in the first place?
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Why You Should Edit Teleseminar Recordings - and How
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
For years, I led single-session teleseminars and sold them as products without doing any audio editing. The recording service I was using created the recordings for me so they started with my "Hello" and ended after my "Goodbye," and contained everything that happened in between.
When I shifted from offering one-off teleclasses to multi-session classes, however, I raised my standards. After all, people were paying $795 to $997 now and not just $39.95. And once I experienced how easy audio editing can be, I was no longer willing to deliver unedited audios to paying customers. It took me all of 10 minutes to learn the basic moves needed to polish an audio recording - and I am not a "techie"!
What I do now is retain the spontaneity of a teleclass, which resembles either a radio talk show or an informal lecture, depending on whether there's just one speaker or two. But as far as I can with my elementary knowledge of audio editing, I also do the following:
Delete distracting beeps, coughs and static.
Cut at least some of the "ums" or other vocal filler.
Even out volume differences between speakers, making the soft voices louder and the loud ones less jarring.
Eliminate questions and answers that derail the flow of the session, like, "Sorry, I came late, can you repeat such and such?"
Make sure you check and make sure that the audio track plays in both stereo channels. Otherwise someone listening on earphones hears the sound only in one ear. I have returned two audio products for refunds because of this flaw - which is simple to fix during the editing process if you take a few moments to do so.
Just a little more advanced in technique is adding a musical intro and outro. (The latter usually matches the former and goes at the end of the audio file.) To stay on the right side of the law, don't use snippets from commercial CDs for this. Instead, search for "royalty free music" and follow the terms of use imposed by its originator or vendor.
Once you know your way around audio editing, you can also easily combine recordings, substitute parts of recordings or split a long teleseminar session into smaller pieces that you parcel out a day at a time in an autoresponder or on a blog. The possibilities are endless!
Audacity, a widely acclaimed audio editing program, is not only extremely easy to use but also free. Look for it at http://audacity.sourceforge.net. I use Wavepad, another free audio editing program, available at http://nch.com.au/wavepad. If you're familiar with highlighting and moving text around a document by cutting and pasting, you'll catch on very quickly to the fundamentals of audio editing. Save your edited audio files as MP3s and you have a product that's a cut above those who distribute unedited teleseminar recordings.
Customers usually won't demand their money back if you skip editing, but they definitely are more likely to buy again if you put some time and care into preparation of your recording.
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
For years, I led single-session teleseminars and sold them as products without doing any audio editing. The recording service I was using created the recordings for me so they started with my "Hello" and ended after my "Goodbye," and contained everything that happened in between.
When I shifted from offering one-off teleclasses to multi-session classes, however, I raised my standards. After all, people were paying $795 to $997 now and not just $39.95. And once I experienced how easy audio editing can be, I was no longer willing to deliver unedited audios to paying customers. It took me all of 10 minutes to learn the basic moves needed to polish an audio recording - and I am not a "techie"!
What I do now is retain the spontaneity of a teleclass, which resembles either a radio talk show or an informal lecture, depending on whether there's just one speaker or two. But as far as I can with my elementary knowledge of audio editing, I also do the following:
Make sure you check and make sure that the audio track plays in both stereo channels. Otherwise someone listening on earphones hears the sound only in one ear. I have returned two audio products for refunds because of this flaw - which is simple to fix during the editing process if you take a few moments to do so.
Just a little more advanced in technique is adding a musical intro and outro. (The latter usually matches the former and goes at the end of the audio file.) To stay on the right side of the law, don't use snippets from commercial CDs for this. Instead, search for "royalty free music" and follow the terms of use imposed by its originator or vendor.
Once you know your way around audio editing, you can also easily combine recordings, substitute parts of recordings or split a long teleseminar session into smaller pieces that you parcel out a day at a time in an autoresponder or on a blog. The possibilities are endless!
Audacity, a widely acclaimed audio editing program, is not only extremely easy to use but also free. Look for it at http://audacity.sourceforge.net. I use Wavepad, another free audio editing program, available at http://nch.com.au/wavepad. If you're familiar with highlighting and moving text around a document by cutting and pasting, you'll catch on very quickly to the fundamentals of audio editing. Save your edited audio files as MP3s and you have a product that's a cut above those who distribute unedited teleseminar recordings.
Customers usually won't demand their money back if you skip editing, but they definitely are more likely to buy again if you put some time and care into preparation of your recording.
About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Why You Should Archive Your Ezines and Newsletters Online
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2005-2009 Trey Pennewell
As a publisher of ezines and newsletters, you know that customers always want more from your services. One way to provide customers a good service while increasing your search engine rankings is to place your ezine archives online. By placing these online, you are giving your readers a value-added service that will set you apart from other ezines and newsletters. Not only will this provide value to your customers, but also by placing your archives online, the search engine spiders are able to "see" your unique combination of content. Ultimately, having your ezine archives online will give you higher search rankings and additional keyword phrase variations that everyone so desperately wants.
There are some things to consider when making the decision to put your newsletter archives online.
The first consideration is whether or not your ezine model is a paid subscription or a free subscription. If your ezine is a pay subscription, you probably do not want to place all of your archives online where someone can access them for free. If you were to do this there would be no need for readers to actually pay for a subscription. However, you may want to consider placing a couple of archived issues on a website, so that potential customers and advertisers can see what it is your publication has to offer them. Then, you can keep your remaining archives in a member's only website that is only accessible to your paying subscribers.
If you offer a free ezine or newsletter, there is little reason not to offer all of your archives for free online. The reason that people will want to go ahead and subscribe to your ezine or newsletter is that they can get the issue as soon as it comes out. You may want to consider only offering archives online that are at least a few months old. In other words, do not offer this month's issue in the archive for a few more months, so that people will still want to subscribe to your publication to see it when it is first made available.
Search engine spiders love content on websites. Not only do spiders like the generic content, but they really like valuable content such as articles. Quality content is one of the primary things that search engines look for when providing rankings and the level of importance of a website. The articles that are included in your archive will boost your search engine ranking. Having a higher search engine ranking means that potential subscribers are able to find you much easier. Being easy to find and offering a service such as free ezine with archives gives potential subscribers many reasons to choose your ezine or newsletter to land in their email box over your competitors.
Having your publications placed in an online archive will automatically provide you with a good amount of keyword optimization. For example, if you are publishing an ezine that mainly talks about home improvement, there is a high likelihood that many of the articles in your publication will contain the words "home improvement". Now when a potential subscriber searches on the Internet for "home improvement," they are much more likely to be directed to your website and learn that you provide a valuable subscription on this very topic. If you do not have your archives online, chances of picking up these new visitors and subscribers are greatly diminished.
Simply put, having your newsletter archives online is probably the easiest way to increase your exposure in the search engines and the easiest way to increase your ezine's subscriber base for free. It is very inexpensive to provide your archives online, and it can improve your subscriber's experience, letting him or her feel good about the service that you are providing to them.
People may have a desire to read your publication, but your ezine can easily get overlooked due to the excessive number of publications currently arriving in the subscriber's email box. A day will come when an individual feels overwhelmed by the number of publications arriving in their mailbox each day or week. When this starts to happen, they start canceling subscriptions because it is simply too much hassle to go through and delete these newsletters and ezines every week or every month. I have found myself in that position, so I eliminated the ones that bored me and only kept one or two subscriptions that really seemed to offer me the quality content that I wanted in an easy-to-read format. It was getting to be annoying to go through my email on a regular basis to filter out the excess ezines and newsletters that I did not read anyway.
So if you want to set yourself apart from your competitors and offer this value-added service to your customers, you seriously need to consider placing your archives online. It is likely that you will be surprised at the change in your search engine rankings as well. Again, if you provide a pay subscription do consider offering a few issues in a free archive, so that you can at least show potential subscribers and advertisers the quality of the product you provide.
Follow my advice, and down the road, you will be able to generate more income from your newsletter, because you will have a much larger list of subscribers to count as your own.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell is a writer, who writes about online marketing. Learn more about our Pay For Results SEO services at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html Trey also manages article approvals at the free article directory located at: http://www.techcentralpublishing.com
Copyright © 2005-2009 Trey Pennewell
As a publisher of ezines and newsletters, you know that customers always want more from your services. One way to provide customers a good service while increasing your search engine rankings is to place your ezine archives online. By placing these online, you are giving your readers a value-added service that will set you apart from other ezines and newsletters. Not only will this provide value to your customers, but also by placing your archives online, the search engine spiders are able to "see" your unique combination of content. Ultimately, having your ezine archives online will give you higher search rankings and additional keyword phrase variations that everyone so desperately wants.
There are some things to consider when making the decision to put your newsletter archives online.
The first consideration is whether or not your ezine model is a paid subscription or a free subscription. If your ezine is a pay subscription, you probably do not want to place all of your archives online where someone can access them for free. If you were to do this there would be no need for readers to actually pay for a subscription. However, you may want to consider placing a couple of archived issues on a website, so that potential customers and advertisers can see what it is your publication has to offer them. Then, you can keep your remaining archives in a member's only website that is only accessible to your paying subscribers.
If you offer a free ezine or newsletter, there is little reason not to offer all of your archives for free online. The reason that people will want to go ahead and subscribe to your ezine or newsletter is that they can get the issue as soon as it comes out. You may want to consider only offering archives online that are at least a few months old. In other words, do not offer this month's issue in the archive for a few more months, so that people will still want to subscribe to your publication to see it when it is first made available.
Search engine spiders love content on websites. Not only do spiders like the generic content, but they really like valuable content such as articles. Quality content is one of the primary things that search engines look for when providing rankings and the level of importance of a website. The articles that are included in your archive will boost your search engine ranking. Having a higher search engine ranking means that potential subscribers are able to find you much easier. Being easy to find and offering a service such as free ezine with archives gives potential subscribers many reasons to choose your ezine or newsletter to land in their email box over your competitors.
Having your publications placed in an online archive will automatically provide you with a good amount of keyword optimization. For example, if you are publishing an ezine that mainly talks about home improvement, there is a high likelihood that many of the articles in your publication will contain the words "home improvement". Now when a potential subscriber searches on the Internet for "home improvement," they are much more likely to be directed to your website and learn that you provide a valuable subscription on this very topic. If you do not have your archives online, chances of picking up these new visitors and subscribers are greatly diminished.
Simply put, having your newsletter archives online is probably the easiest way to increase your exposure in the search engines and the easiest way to increase your ezine's subscriber base for free. It is very inexpensive to provide your archives online, and it can improve your subscriber's experience, letting him or her feel good about the service that you are providing to them.
People may have a desire to read your publication, but your ezine can easily get overlooked due to the excessive number of publications currently arriving in the subscriber's email box. A day will come when an individual feels overwhelmed by the number of publications arriving in their mailbox each day or week. When this starts to happen, they start canceling subscriptions because it is simply too much hassle to go through and delete these newsletters and ezines every week or every month. I have found myself in that position, so I eliminated the ones that bored me and only kept one or two subscriptions that really seemed to offer me the quality content that I wanted in an easy-to-read format. It was getting to be annoying to go through my email on a regular basis to filter out the excess ezines and newsletters that I did not read anyway.
So if you want to set yourself apart from your competitors and offer this value-added service to your customers, you seriously need to consider placing your archives online. It is likely that you will be surprised at the change in your search engine rankings as well. Again, if you provide a pay subscription do consider offering a few issues in a free archive, so that you can at least show potential subscribers and advertisers the quality of the product you provide.
Follow my advice, and down the road, you will be able to generate more income from your newsletter, because you will have a much larger list of subscribers to count as your own.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell is a writer, who writes about online marketing. Learn more about our Pay For Results SEO services at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html Trey also manages article approvals at the free article directory located at: http://www.techcentralpublishing.com
Gordon Ramsey's Success Secret: Put Yourself In The Mind Of Your Customers
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Trey Pennewell
During the course of my work, I get to literally read or scan articles written by hundreds of authors every week - thousands every year. I have seen the best and the worst of what people have written to promote their businesses online.
Experience has taught me who will be successful with article marketing and who will fail with article marketing. I have also learned that anyone can be taught the secret to successful article marketing, but not everyone wants to accept what is being taught.
Business Lessons From Chef Gordon Ramsey
The other day, I was watching Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America. If you have never seen the show, Gordon Ramsey is a popular and successful chef, whose name and reputation is known around the world.
Restaurant owners - many of whom are chefs - contact Ramsey and ask him to visit their restaurant, in essence to help them to save their restaurant from economic failure. The most amazing thing about the process is that many of the chefs have personally asked Ramsey to come, yet when he arrives, they fight with Ramsey every step of the way - determined that Ramsey will not force them to change their ways.
On day one of his visit, Ramsey tries the food as a customer and talks to the owners of the restaurant. On day two, Ramsey observes the operation of the restaurant. On day three, he has designers come in and remake the dining room and he trains the staff to understand the changes that will take place. On day four, Ramsey uses his skill to swamp the restaurant. On night four, most restaurants will have a line out the door.
It is a process that will save most restaurants, from failure.
Whether an employee or the boss, the chef always seems to believe that he or she is smarter than Ramsey, and they tend to reject the problems that Ramsey identifies and the solutions he provides.
How Gordon Ramsey's Advice Can Help The Online Marketer
In one episode, Gordon Ramsey said that the difference between a successful restaurant and one that fails can be summed up in one thought, "A successful restaurant is one that puts the desires of its customers, above the desires of its owner."
In the restaurants that Ramsey visits, customers simply desire good food at a fair price. But when a restaurant is suffering from slow sales, the first corner that owners usually cut is in eliminating "fresh food" in the kitchen. By eliminating fresh food and replacing it with canned or frozen, restaurant owners find that they can save an awful lot of money, but that step often drives away even more customers from the "fine dining" experience.
The online marketer is much in the same boat as the restaurant operator.
The online marketer needs to give online consumers a good product at a fair price, but the seller must resist the temptation to cut costs in ways that will hurt the business.
How This Applies To Article Marketing
Article marketing was developed in recognition of the fact that people go online to learn. Online marketers realized that if they were willing to teach, they could use the content they created to "attract" customers to their products and services.
Somewhere over the years, the purpose of article marketing was redefined and perverted by someone with something to sell. A lot of online marketers accepted the new definition that said that the only purpose for article marketing was to build inbound links to one's website. They said you only needed to put together enough words - 300 to 500 words - so publishers could accept your "links".
"Attraction marketing" was set aside as the "old way of doing things", and replaced with "link building" as the "new and improved" way of marketing a website.
I count myself lucky that I learned "article marketing", when it was still understood as "attraction marketing". I count myself lucky, because I remain able to "attract" hordes of traffic and considerable sales for my websites, by using article marketing the way it was originally intended.
Interestingly, the people who adopted article marketing under the "new and improved" model soon began to realize that the new kind of article marketing was not bringing the kinds of results that people were promised. So the "new and improved" model was recently "improved" again. Now the common knowledge of the "new and improved" model say that the search engines reject "duplicate" copies of articles on the Internet. To combat this, marketers are using software to rewrite an article dozens of times, so that they can put "unique computer-generated content" on each website.
I predict that the "new, new and improved" will be as unsuccessful as the "old, new and improved" model was. It is not that the search engines changed to reject "duplicate copies" of articles. Instead, the search engines started to reject articles that proved to offer no real value to readers.
Of course, this statement may generate a very important question in your mind. How does the search engines' algorithms know which articles provide value to their readers and which ones do not?
In response, let me ask you this: How many people link to your articles on those third-party websites? See, there really is a simple method that the search engines can use to determine if a particular article has any value to its audience. The search engines can count the number of links pointing to an individual article on a third-party website, to determine if people find that article useful to the needs of the consumer.
So you have got to ask yourself, will the "new, new and improved" model of "unique computer-generated content" provide enough value to readers to attract links from third-party websites? If you answer this question honestly with a "no", then you will have also predicted the failure of the "new, new and improved" model of article marketing, as I have.
Remember Gordon Ramsey's Advice
"A successful restaurant is one that puts the desires of its customers, above the desires of its owner."
It is true that article marketing done as I do it (attraction marketing) is more expensive than the "new, new and improved" model of article marketing, but it also produces better results. Just as "fresh food" will attract more diners to a restaurant, the more expensive "hand-crafted" and "polished" articles will attract more links to the article and more visitors to the author's website.
First off, article marketing - as it was done in the early days of the Internet - will accomplish more than one goal. When done well, the article will find an audience in newsletters, which can introduce your marketing message to thousands or hundreds of thousands of prospects in a single day.
Like you, we also have goals of building links for our websites and achieving a higher search engine placement for our websites, but we consider search engine placement to be secondary to the main goal of attracting customers to our websites' products and services.
So in order to achieve our first goal of reaching large audiences for our articles, we have to "attract" readers to our articles, by teaching our prospects something of value to them. When our article delivers value to our readers, then the article's resource box will generally deliver prospects to our website, where the real selling takes place.
In our world, our article on a third-party website will attract links from other websites, because we put the needs and desires of our customers / readers ahead of our own needs. And after our article has been delivered to tens or hundreds of thousands of readers in various newsletters, we will also achieve our search engine goals, because most newsletter publishers will publish a copy of the article in their online archives and people will link to it.
If It Is Not Broke, Don't Fix It
Yes we consider the search engine goals to be important to our long-range plans, but we find that we don't have to put a "unique article" on every website to get great search placement. Because we have never embraced the "new and improved" model of article marketing, we know that the "old-fashioned way" of doing things works just fine - even today.
Consider this:
Foxnews.com has a PageRank of 6;
Cnn.com has a PageRank of 7;
Msnbc.msn.com has a PageRank of 10;
Nytimes.com has a PageRank of 8;
Online.wsj.com (Wall Street Journal) has a PageRank of 7;
Latimes.com has a PageRank of 8.
Besides being news websites, do you know what else these websites have in common?
They all buy some "news content" from the Associated Press (www.ap.org) and United Press International (www.upi.com). What that means is that all of the news outlets buy and publish the same articles from the same sources, and yet, we don't see the search engines penalizing the news sites, do we?
If the search engines are not penalizing the corporate news websites for printing the same non-unique articles, then why should we believe that the search engines are penalizing non-unique content on your website and in your article marketing endeavors?
In Conclusion
Article marketing works well when people link to your articles - on one third-party website or a dozen third-party websites. But in order for people to want to link to your articles, the content must be top-notch. People aren't going to link to crap articles; so computer-generated content should be avoided in the same way that fine dining restaurants should avoid buying canned foods.
By focusing on the desires of our future customers (solutions for their problems), we are able to use article marketing successfully to promote any website we want to promote. We think about what is important to our customers, and then we answer our customers' questions. By putting ourselves into the mind of our prospects, we are able to give them the exact kind of content they want to read.
In doing so, we successfully drive traffic to our websites, AND we create excellent search engine placement for our websites. And when we say websites, we do mean more than one website. We successfully utilize article marketing for dozens of websites, so we know that what we teach can be duplicated by the masses, if only the masses are willing to accept what we teach.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell works for http://www.thePhantomWriters.com/ article distribution service and provides process support for the http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com/ Pay-For-Ranking SEO service. Just recently, The Phantom Writers introduced professional Video Articles production, to help its customers take advantage of the new frontier in Video Marketing, using great video content and video sharing sites such as YouTube and others.
Copyright © 2009 Trey Pennewell
During the course of my work, I get to literally read or scan articles written by hundreds of authors every week - thousands every year. I have seen the best and the worst of what people have written to promote their businesses online.
Experience has taught me who will be successful with article marketing and who will fail with article marketing. I have also learned that anyone can be taught the secret to successful article marketing, but not everyone wants to accept what is being taught.
Business Lessons From Chef Gordon Ramsey
The other day, I was watching Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America. If you have never seen the show, Gordon Ramsey is a popular and successful chef, whose name and reputation is known around the world.
Restaurant owners - many of whom are chefs - contact Ramsey and ask him to visit their restaurant, in essence to help them to save their restaurant from economic failure. The most amazing thing about the process is that many of the chefs have personally asked Ramsey to come, yet when he arrives, they fight with Ramsey every step of the way - determined that Ramsey will not force them to change their ways.
On day one of his visit, Ramsey tries the food as a customer and talks to the owners of the restaurant. On day two, Ramsey observes the operation of the restaurant. On day three, he has designers come in and remake the dining room and he trains the staff to understand the changes that will take place. On day four, Ramsey uses his skill to swamp the restaurant. On night four, most restaurants will have a line out the door.
It is a process that will save most restaurants, from failure.
Whether an employee or the boss, the chef always seems to believe that he or she is smarter than Ramsey, and they tend to reject the problems that Ramsey identifies and the solutions he provides.
How Gordon Ramsey's Advice Can Help The Online Marketer
In one episode, Gordon Ramsey said that the difference between a successful restaurant and one that fails can be summed up in one thought, "A successful restaurant is one that puts the desires of its customers, above the desires of its owner."
In the restaurants that Ramsey visits, customers simply desire good food at a fair price. But when a restaurant is suffering from slow sales, the first corner that owners usually cut is in eliminating "fresh food" in the kitchen. By eliminating fresh food and replacing it with canned or frozen, restaurant owners find that they can save an awful lot of money, but that step often drives away even more customers from the "fine dining" experience.
The online marketer is much in the same boat as the restaurant operator.
The online marketer needs to give online consumers a good product at a fair price, but the seller must resist the temptation to cut costs in ways that will hurt the business.
How This Applies To Article Marketing
Article marketing was developed in recognition of the fact that people go online to learn. Online marketers realized that if they were willing to teach, they could use the content they created to "attract" customers to their products and services.
Somewhere over the years, the purpose of article marketing was redefined and perverted by someone with something to sell. A lot of online marketers accepted the new definition that said that the only purpose for article marketing was to build inbound links to one's website. They said you only needed to put together enough words - 300 to 500 words - so publishers could accept your "links".
"Attraction marketing" was set aside as the "old way of doing things", and replaced with "link building" as the "new and improved" way of marketing a website.
I count myself lucky that I learned "article marketing", when it was still understood as "attraction marketing". I count myself lucky, because I remain able to "attract" hordes of traffic and considerable sales for my websites, by using article marketing the way it was originally intended.
Interestingly, the people who adopted article marketing under the "new and improved" model soon began to realize that the new kind of article marketing was not bringing the kinds of results that people were promised. So the "new and improved" model was recently "improved" again. Now the common knowledge of the "new and improved" model say that the search engines reject "duplicate" copies of articles on the Internet. To combat this, marketers are using software to rewrite an article dozens of times, so that they can put "unique computer-generated content" on each website.
I predict that the "new, new and improved" will be as unsuccessful as the "old, new and improved" model was. It is not that the search engines changed to reject "duplicate copies" of articles. Instead, the search engines started to reject articles that proved to offer no real value to readers.
Of course, this statement may generate a very important question in your mind. How does the search engines' algorithms know which articles provide value to their readers and which ones do not?
In response, let me ask you this: How many people link to your articles on those third-party websites? See, there really is a simple method that the search engines can use to determine if a particular article has any value to its audience. The search engines can count the number of links pointing to an individual article on a third-party website, to determine if people find that article useful to the needs of the consumer.
So you have got to ask yourself, will the "new, new and improved" model of "unique computer-generated content" provide enough value to readers to attract links from third-party websites? If you answer this question honestly with a "no", then you will have also predicted the failure of the "new, new and improved" model of article marketing, as I have.
Remember Gordon Ramsey's Advice
"A successful restaurant is one that puts the desires of its customers, above the desires of its owner."
It is true that article marketing done as I do it (attraction marketing) is more expensive than the "new, new and improved" model of article marketing, but it also produces better results. Just as "fresh food" will attract more diners to a restaurant, the more expensive "hand-crafted" and "polished" articles will attract more links to the article and more visitors to the author's website.
First off, article marketing - as it was done in the early days of the Internet - will accomplish more than one goal. When done well, the article will find an audience in newsletters, which can introduce your marketing message to thousands or hundreds of thousands of prospects in a single day.
Like you, we also have goals of building links for our websites and achieving a higher search engine placement for our websites, but we consider search engine placement to be secondary to the main goal of attracting customers to our websites' products and services.
So in order to achieve our first goal of reaching large audiences for our articles, we have to "attract" readers to our articles, by teaching our prospects something of value to them. When our article delivers value to our readers, then the article's resource box will generally deliver prospects to our website, where the real selling takes place.
In our world, our article on a third-party website will attract links from other websites, because we put the needs and desires of our customers / readers ahead of our own needs. And after our article has been delivered to tens or hundreds of thousands of readers in various newsletters, we will also achieve our search engine goals, because most newsletter publishers will publish a copy of the article in their online archives and people will link to it.
If It Is Not Broke, Don't Fix It
Yes we consider the search engine goals to be important to our long-range plans, but we find that we don't have to put a "unique article" on every website to get great search placement. Because we have never embraced the "new and improved" model of article marketing, we know that the "old-fashioned way" of doing things works just fine - even today.
Consider this:
Besides being news websites, do you know what else these websites have in common?
They all buy some "news content" from the Associated Press (www.ap.org) and United Press International (www.upi.com). What that means is that all of the news outlets buy and publish the same articles from the same sources, and yet, we don't see the search engines penalizing the news sites, do we?
If the search engines are not penalizing the corporate news websites for printing the same non-unique articles, then why should we believe that the search engines are penalizing non-unique content on your website and in your article marketing endeavors?
In Conclusion
Article marketing works well when people link to your articles - on one third-party website or a dozen third-party websites. But in order for people to want to link to your articles, the content must be top-notch. People aren't going to link to crap articles; so computer-generated content should be avoided in the same way that fine dining restaurants should avoid buying canned foods.
By focusing on the desires of our future customers (solutions for their problems), we are able to use article marketing successfully to promote any website we want to promote. We think about what is important to our customers, and then we answer our customers' questions. By putting ourselves into the mind of our prospects, we are able to give them the exact kind of content they want to read.
In doing so, we successfully drive traffic to our websites, AND we create excellent search engine placement for our websites. And when we say websites, we do mean more than one website. We successfully utilize article marketing for dozens of websites, so we know that what we teach can be duplicated by the masses, if only the masses are willing to accept what we teach.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell works for http://www.thePhantomWriters.com/ article distribution service and provides process support for the http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com/ Pay-For-Ranking SEO service. Just recently, The Phantom Writers introduced professional Video Articles production, to help its customers take advantage of the new frontier in Video Marketing, using great video content and video sharing sites such as YouTube and others.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Escape the Web Wasteland
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Ty Shewmake
Ask a few friends with websites if they're site help them sell, and the answer is usually something along the lines of "some". Asked why their site fails to make a real difference in their business most have no idea why.
Digging deeper, most businesspeople fume at the mention of their Google and Yahoo rankings. They paid big bucks to get their website "just so", spent weeks of effort, then tossed it out into the wild and expected it to rank high in Google. A week or so later, they type in their business name, and voila, they have a #1 Google ranking! Success!
Well, not really... Truth is, soon they discover their shiny new site isn't bringing in any new business. What they don't know is their site's living in The Web Wasteland Land - a place where old and new websites go to die.
"All politics is local" - when Tip O'Neil said that he was describing Web search, too. What's this mean? It means that (almost) all web searches are geographical.
Let's take Sue, a Miami resident who wants to buy a new scooter. Invariably, Sue goes to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or her favorite niche search engine and types in the search term (you guessed it) "scooter".
After a few milliseconds the search engine presents Sue a page of listings for scooter companies - in Guatemala, Anchorage, and Dubuque. She also gets results listing .pdf files about scooter batteries, scooter videos - but nothing relevant to buying a scooter near her.
However, Sue searches again. This time she uses the phrase "scooter Miami". Voila! Now Sue gets more relevant scooter listings in Miami. Still, for some reason she doesn't see the scooter shop (Bill's Scooter Emporium) her uncle recommended, and unfortunately she can't remember their name.
That's because "Bill's Scooter Emporium" and many other Miami scooter retailers still won't show up - because they think they're scooter stores, while in fact they're really Miami scooter stores.
Simply put, the text on their website pages isn't saying scooter + Miami to the search engines.
The truth is, unless you're a national retailer or service provider, you probably serve people who seek your particular product or service within their local geographic area. Few people who need their car windows tinted are going to drive 300 miles to get it done. Whether you consider your business to be geographically focused or not doesn't matter, people who seek your product or service will want to buy it within a particular geography (Miami scooters) - and that's how they'll always search for it. They ARE geographically-focused, so you MUST be.
That's why your website must talk to the search engines in terms they understand. If your pages don't talk product + geography, your site's likely going to end up in The Web Wasteland Land - or at best, on the outskirts.
Going back to the Miami scooter example, Sue used "scooter + Miami" as her search term. Grossly oversimplified, search engines process her search looking for web pages with the strongest appearances of these two search words (how often they appear on a page and how close together they are), and serve them up to Sue ranked 1 to x zillion (high to low) based on that strength (and some other lesser factors).
So, if you're a scooter store in Miami and want to show up at #1 when Sue searches for you, the pages on your website need to contain some phrases like these:
You just can't find a better scooter in Miami...
Scooters for Miami...
The best scooters in Miami...
When you need a new scooter in Miami, call us...
Scooters for Miami, Dade County, and South Florida...
And so on...
The closer "scooter" is to "Miami", the better. The key is to demonstrate to Google and Yahoo a tight geographic and product (geo-product) linkage. You connect the product (scooters) with geography (Miami) to create a geo-product linkage the search engines then use to your advantage.
How do you know when your site is in The Web Wasteland land? Test it! The very best way to test you website visibility is to use a tool specifically-designed for the task. WebPosition, WebCEO, and others are available as are vendors who are more than willing to run the test for a fee. Short of that, write down some logical search phrases (geography + product) and search for yourself in Google, Yahoo, and your other favorite search engines.
Some example search phrases Bill's Scooter Emporium would use to test include:
Scooter Miami
Miami scooter
Scooter shop Miami
Miami scooter shop
Miami scooter dealer
Escaping The Web Wasteland. If your business shows on page 2, you've got work to do. If it shows up on page 3 (or is a no-show) - you're in The Web Wasteland. The key to breaking out of The Web Wasteland is to understand that there are three basic areas you need to address; your page text, META page descriptions, and META keywords.
1. Page text can be easily modified to achieve a geo-product focus by whoever maintains your website. And, if your business serves multiple geographies, you can include multiple phrases, or select pages to have a separate geo-focus (a Miami page, a Punta Gorda page, etc.).
2. META Descriptions are short paragraphs within the HTML code which describe the content of that particular web page. Though you never see that HTML on a page, if you right-click on the background of a web page and select "View Source", notepad will pop up with the underlying HTML code from the page. Using our scooter example you should expect to see something like this:
3. META keywords are words and phrases located within the HTML code at the top of most web pages that talk to search engines. Near the top you should see something like this (again, using our scooter example)
While there are dozens of additional tweaks and nuances which can help or hurt your search engine placement, these three areas can make a huge difference in how well you web pages and website shows up in a search engine. An experienced search engine optimization (SEO) company can get these right quickly, handle the endless additional nuances, and keep an eye on things on an ongoing basis.
However, whether you fix your site yourself or hire it done, you should constantly check (monthly at least) the placement of your site to make sure it stays out of The Web Wasteland Land.
Regardless of your product or service, it's clear that if you achieve a better tight geo-product linkage, over time Google, Yahoo and the other search engines will reward your work with increasingly better placement and more customers.
Leave your competitors in The Web Wasteland, and sell more today!
About the Author:
Learn more about how the Web can help you sell more. Visit Ty Shewmake at http://www.www.RetailSalesSystems.com Retail Sales Systems helps small and medium B2B and B2C businesses create the perfect storm of e-sales success using the web, SEO, drip and nurture, and more. We specialize in implementing world-class ACT and http://www.SalesForce.com drip marketing systems.
Copyright © 2009 Ty Shewmake
Ask a few friends with websites if they're site help them sell, and the answer is usually something along the lines of "some". Asked why their site fails to make a real difference in their business most have no idea why.
Digging deeper, most businesspeople fume at the mention of their Google and Yahoo rankings. They paid big bucks to get their website "just so", spent weeks of effort, then tossed it out into the wild and expected it to rank high in Google. A week or so later, they type in their business name, and voila, they have a #1 Google ranking! Success!
Well, not really... Truth is, soon they discover their shiny new site isn't bringing in any new business. What they don't know is their site's living in The Web Wasteland Land - a place where old and new websites go to die.
"All politics is local" - when Tip O'Neil said that he was describing Web search, too. What's this mean? It means that (almost) all web searches are geographical.
Let's take Sue, a Miami resident who wants to buy a new scooter. Invariably, Sue goes to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or her favorite niche search engine and types in the search term (you guessed it) "scooter".
After a few milliseconds the search engine presents Sue a page of listings for scooter companies - in Guatemala, Anchorage, and Dubuque. She also gets results listing .pdf files about scooter batteries, scooter videos - but nothing relevant to buying a scooter near her.
However, Sue searches again. This time she uses the phrase "scooter Miami". Voila! Now Sue gets more relevant scooter listings in Miami. Still, for some reason she doesn't see the scooter shop (Bill's Scooter Emporium) her uncle recommended, and unfortunately she can't remember their name.
That's because "Bill's Scooter Emporium" and many other Miami scooter retailers still won't show up - because they think they're scooter stores, while in fact they're really Miami scooter stores.
Simply put, the text on their website pages isn't saying scooter + Miami to the search engines.
The truth is, unless you're a national retailer or service provider, you probably serve people who seek your particular product or service within their local geographic area. Few people who need their car windows tinted are going to drive 300 miles to get it done. Whether you consider your business to be geographically focused or not doesn't matter, people who seek your product or service will want to buy it within a particular geography (Miami scooters) - and that's how they'll always search for it. They ARE geographically-focused, so you MUST be.
That's why your website must talk to the search engines in terms they understand. If your pages don't talk product + geography, your site's likely going to end up in The Web Wasteland Land - or at best, on the outskirts.
Going back to the Miami scooter example, Sue used "scooter + Miami" as her search term. Grossly oversimplified, search engines process her search looking for web pages with the strongest appearances of these two search words (how often they appear on a page and how close together they are), and serve them up to Sue ranked 1 to x zillion (high to low) based on that strength (and some other lesser factors).
So, if you're a scooter store in Miami and want to show up at #1 when Sue searches for you, the pages on your website need to contain some phrases like these:
The closer "scooter" is to "Miami", the better. The key is to demonstrate to Google and Yahoo a tight geographic and product (geo-product) linkage. You connect the product (scooters) with geography (Miami) to create a geo-product linkage the search engines then use to your advantage.
How do you know when your site is in The Web Wasteland land? Test it! The very best way to test you website visibility is to use a tool specifically-designed for the task. WebPosition, WebCEO, and others are available as are vendors who are more than willing to run the test for a fee. Short of that, write down some logical search phrases (geography + product) and search for yourself in Google, Yahoo, and your other favorite search engines.
Some example search phrases Bill's Scooter Emporium would use to test include:
Escaping The Web Wasteland. If your business shows on page 2, you've got work to do. If it shows up on page 3 (or is a no-show) - you're in The Web Wasteland. The key to breaking out of The Web Wasteland is to understand that there are three basic areas you need to address; your page text, META page descriptions, and META keywords.
1. Page text can be easily modified to achieve a geo-product focus by whoever maintains your website. And, if your business serves multiple geographies, you can include multiple phrases, or select pages to have a separate geo-focus (a Miami page, a Punta Gorda page, etc.).
2. META Descriptions are short paragraphs within the HTML code which describe the content of that particular web page. Though you never see that HTML on a page, if you right-click on the background of a web page and select "View Source", notepad will pop up with the underlying HTML code from the page. Using our scooter example you should expect to see something like this:
3. META keywords are words and phrases located within the HTML code at the top of most web pages that talk to search engines. Near the top you should see something like this (again, using our scooter example)
While there are dozens of additional tweaks and nuances which can help or hurt your search engine placement, these three areas can make a huge difference in how well you web pages and website shows up in a search engine. An experienced search engine optimization (SEO) company can get these right quickly, handle the endless additional nuances, and keep an eye on things on an ongoing basis.
However, whether you fix your site yourself or hire it done, you should constantly check (monthly at least) the placement of your site to make sure it stays out of The Web Wasteland Land.
Regardless of your product or service, it's clear that if you achieve a better tight geo-product linkage, over time Google, Yahoo and the other search engines will reward your work with increasingly better placement and more customers.
Leave your competitors in The Web Wasteland, and sell more today!
About the Author:
Learn more about how the Web can help you sell more. Visit Ty Shewmake at http://www.www.RetailSalesSystems.com Retail Sales Systems helps small and medium B2B and B2C businesses create the perfect storm of e-sales success using the web, SEO, drip and nurture, and more. We specialize in implementing world-class ACT and http://www.SalesForce.com drip marketing systems.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
4 Reasons Why Most Internet Marketers Fail Miserably
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Willie Crawford
An often-quoted statistic is that that 95% of all Internet businesses fail. The reality is that the vast majority of businesses in the offline world fail too, so the picture is not bleaker online. In-fact, it's better online since most aspiring Internet marketers could never even find sufficient capital to start a business in the offline world.
The sad part is that many of these failing online businesses fail for readily identifiable reasons. Often the business owners are even aware of the reasons but do nothing about them.
Let's look very briefly at four of these reasons:
1) Selling The Wrong Products
Once you have identified a profitable niche, one in which customers happily spend money to solve their problems, then the next step is to identify what is it that they really, really want.
If you offer your customers what they tell you that they want, and what they are already buying, then they will buy it from you.
If you try to convince your customers that they want something that they've already told you that they DON'T want, then you'll soon be out of business.
Many failing marketers simply need to drop "a loser," and start marketing something that is WANTED!
2) Trying To Do Everything Yourself
In "Think And Grow Rich," Napoleon Hill taught nearly a century ago that "specialized knowledge" is a success essential. You need to find one or two things that you do really well, and that people are willing to pay for, and then you need to do only those things.
Everything else involved in operating your business should be done by someone better at doing those tasks.
The disconnect we run into there is that, as a business owner, your job is to grow and manage the business. So what if that's not what you're good at? Then you may need to find a way to market whatever it is that you ARE good at. You may also need to hire a business or operations manager!
In a recent mastermind call with Rich Schefren, where he interviewed a dozen top Internet marketers, most earning over $1 million a year online, we all shared that our greatest business growth started when we stopped trying to do everything ourselves.
If you're still trying to do all of your own programming, copywriting, graphics, customer service, database management, script installations, article writing, video creation, traffic generation, product creation, audio/video editing, pay-per-click management, etc., then you are so bogged down in the minutiae of "working in your business" that it's impossible for you to even identify which things are essential for "working on your business."
This is a tough decision for many of us, but you absolutely have to identify the things that you MUST do, and then you need to outsource most of the rest. As an example, my talent seems to be copywriting, so copywriting is really the only thing that I focus on aside from planning and managing business growth.
I do plan product launches for client, but that still falls under planning and managing business growth.
3) Very Poor Time Management
Dan Kennedy once observed "You will never finish all of the things on your to do list." That tells me that I shouldn't try to, but should instead frequently ask which things I personally need to do, which things I need to get others to do, and which things don't really need doing at all.
For the online marketer, good time management is really just establishing some new habits, and breaking some old bad ones. Common habits that need changing include:
-- Don't let email dominate your time. Many online marketers spend many hours each day just digging out from under the deluge of email. For help in that area, I highly recommend that you checkout http://TamingTheEmailMonster.com
I spend about 30 minutes per day on email. The course at the url above is what allowed me to take back control of my life.
-- Turn off the television during work hours. If you were working for someone else, say in an office, I'm sure that you wouldn't expect to be allowed to sit in front of the television all day with your laptop perched on your lap.
Unless you are VERY different from me, you cannot focus on your work while watching television. Not only that, but watching a lot of negative programs (news included) will completely zap your energy and shift you out of a productive mindset.
-- Establish work hours. Tell your family and friends when you'll be working, and let them know that when you're really focused on work, you shouldn't be disturbed any more than you'd expect to be disturbed if you worked at a regular job.
Explain to them that you can get more done in one hour if you really concentrate that you can in five hours with frequent interruptions. Explain that letting you really focus at designated times gives you MORE free time to spend with them... and you'll have more money to spend on them too.
4) Too Many Projects That Are Never Completed.
My friend Mike Filsaime likes to point out during seminar presentations that if you have a dozen projects started but not completed, you'll make less money that having just ONE project completed and on the market.
CHOOSE one project that you want to get completed and on the market. Focus exclusively on that one until it is finished before doing anything else.
Since you are an entrepreneur, and probably come up with a new idea "once every five minutes," keep a note pad handy to jot down new ideas. When you get a new idea, jot it down on the note pad, and then knowing that it won't be lost, go back to what you were working on previously.
Another option if you're an idea person, or great at starting projects, is to partner with "finishers." Instead of letting projects bog down, and never reach the market, partner with someone who will push it through to completion, splitting the profits with them.
If you don't like that idea, consider how much those unfinished projects are making you. Would you prefer 50% of whatever that finished project makes, or 100% of nothing (which is exactly what most of your unfinished projects earn).
We've just looked very briefly at four reasons why most Internet marketers fail miserably. Now that you have acknowledged that these ARE problem areas for you, the question becomes what are you going to do about them.
Sadly, many people will read this article and then choose to do absolutely nothing about these problems. Nothing will change! However, you're different, and therefore destined for online success.
About the Author:
Willie Crawford is founder of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle a membership site where he frequently brainstorms solutions to problems such as those discussed in this article on the discussion forum. Join that discussion now http://TIMIC.ORG
Copyright © 2009 Willie Crawford
An often-quoted statistic is that that 95% of all Internet businesses fail. The reality is that the vast majority of businesses in the offline world fail too, so the picture is not bleaker online. In-fact, it's better online since most aspiring Internet marketers could never even find sufficient capital to start a business in the offline world.
The sad part is that many of these failing online businesses fail for readily identifiable reasons. Often the business owners are even aware of the reasons but do nothing about them.
Let's look very briefly at four of these reasons:
1) Selling The Wrong Products
Once you have identified a profitable niche, one in which customers happily spend money to solve their problems, then the next step is to identify what is it that they really, really want.
If you offer your customers what they tell you that they want, and what they are already buying, then they will buy it from you.
If you try to convince your customers that they want something that they've already told you that they DON'T want, then you'll soon be out of business.
Many failing marketers simply need to drop "a loser," and start marketing something that is WANTED!
2) Trying To Do Everything Yourself
In "Think And Grow Rich," Napoleon Hill taught nearly a century ago that "specialized knowledge" is a success essential. You need to find one or two things that you do really well, and that people are willing to pay for, and then you need to do only those things.
Everything else involved in operating your business should be done by someone better at doing those tasks.
The disconnect we run into there is that, as a business owner, your job is to grow and manage the business. So what if that's not what you're good at? Then you may need to find a way to market whatever it is that you ARE good at. You may also need to hire a business or operations manager!
In a recent mastermind call with Rich Schefren, where he interviewed a dozen top Internet marketers, most earning over $1 million a year online, we all shared that our greatest business growth started when we stopped trying to do everything ourselves.
If you're still trying to do all of your own programming, copywriting, graphics, customer service, database management, script installations, article writing, video creation, traffic generation, product creation, audio/video editing, pay-per-click management, etc., then you are so bogged down in the minutiae of "working in your business" that it's impossible for you to even identify which things are essential for "working on your business."
This is a tough decision for many of us, but you absolutely have to identify the things that you MUST do, and then you need to outsource most of the rest. As an example, my talent seems to be copywriting, so copywriting is really the only thing that I focus on aside from planning and managing business growth.
I do plan product launches for client, but that still falls under planning and managing business growth.
3) Very Poor Time Management
Dan Kennedy once observed "You will never finish all of the things on your to do list." That tells me that I shouldn't try to, but should instead frequently ask which things I personally need to do, which things I need to get others to do, and which things don't really need doing at all.
For the online marketer, good time management is really just establishing some new habits, and breaking some old bad ones. Common habits that need changing include:
-- Don't let email dominate your time. Many online marketers spend many hours each day just digging out from under the deluge of email. For help in that area, I highly recommend that you checkout http://TamingTheEmailMonster.com
I spend about 30 minutes per day on email. The course at the url above is what allowed me to take back control of my life.
-- Turn off the television during work hours. If you were working for someone else, say in an office, I'm sure that you wouldn't expect to be allowed to sit in front of the television all day with your laptop perched on your lap.
Unless you are VERY different from me, you cannot focus on your work while watching television. Not only that, but watching a lot of negative programs (news included) will completely zap your energy and shift you out of a productive mindset.
-- Establish work hours. Tell your family and friends when you'll be working, and let them know that when you're really focused on work, you shouldn't be disturbed any more than you'd expect to be disturbed if you worked at a regular job.
Explain to them that you can get more done in one hour if you really concentrate that you can in five hours with frequent interruptions. Explain that letting you really focus at designated times gives you MORE free time to spend with them... and you'll have more money to spend on them too.
4) Too Many Projects That Are Never Completed.
My friend Mike Filsaime likes to point out during seminar presentations that if you have a dozen projects started but not completed, you'll make less money that having just ONE project completed and on the market.
CHOOSE one project that you want to get completed and on the market. Focus exclusively on that one until it is finished before doing anything else.
Since you are an entrepreneur, and probably come up with a new idea "once every five minutes," keep a note pad handy to jot down new ideas. When you get a new idea, jot it down on the note pad, and then knowing that it won't be lost, go back to what you were working on previously.
Another option if you're an idea person, or great at starting projects, is to partner with "finishers." Instead of letting projects bog down, and never reach the market, partner with someone who will push it through to completion, splitting the profits with them.
If you don't like that idea, consider how much those unfinished projects are making you. Would you prefer 50% of whatever that finished project makes, or 100% of nothing (which is exactly what most of your unfinished projects earn).
We've just looked very briefly at four reasons why most Internet marketers fail miserably. Now that you have acknowledged that these ARE problem areas for you, the question becomes what are you going to do about them.
Sadly, many people will read this article and then choose to do absolutely nothing about these problems. Nothing will change! However, you're different, and therefore destined for online success.
About the Author:
Willie Crawford is founder of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle a membership site where he frequently brainstorms solutions to problems such as those discussed in this article on the discussion forum. Join that discussion now http://TIMIC.ORG
Buying Expired Domain Names- Golden Tips and Suggestions
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Buying expired domains could be a tricky affair and a strenuous task given stiff competition involved in the process. Here are some golden tips and suggestions to buy an expired domain.
Tip#1: Evaluate and assess the possibility of gaining backlinks: Checking to see whether the set of expired domains that you are looking to buy, has any backlinks associated with them. In fact, you may wish to check out the domain, if it has any backlinks by visiting the Google search engine. Most of the search engines do not update their engines on a daily basis. If the domain name is not in the backlink web portal, most probably the web portal link will loose its power in the next link updating.
Tip#2: Checking out to see if the expired domain has a link in either Yahoo or DMOZ: Yahoo charges a hefty registration fee of $299 to list a domain. Registering a web portal on DMOZ is quite difficult as well! If the domain expired domain you are looking has a listing in these web portals, you can definitely go ahead and buy expired domains in question. A listing in DMOZ directory is actually a big privilege and an honor.
Tip#3: Using other internet tools: To check previous avatar of web portals, their content and design, backlinks, traffic and other useful features, you may wish to conduct an exhaustive research on internet portals like http://www.archive.org. This is an extremely useful web portal that can provide you number of hints whether to buy an expired domain or not.
Tip#4: Backlinks Vs PR: Before buying expired domains from a registrar, you may wish to compare and evaluate both backlinks and PR. Backlinks provide a clue about the number of links associated with the domain expired. On the other hand, the PR is indication of the popularity of the web portal in terms of incoming traffic. You may need to maintain a very fine balance between these two issues, while buying an expired domain.
Tip#5: Patience will reap you dividends: Buying domains expired is a time consuming process and a lengthy affair. You will need to be extremely patient enough to lay your hands on your preferred expired domain.
Tip#6: Of late, expired domain traders are looking for expired domains that have extensions like .gov and .edu. However, you will need to face the prospects of handing such domains back to the owner, as these expired domains may carry trademark and proprietary symbols.
Tip#7: Using powerful software or a script: Very successful expired domain traders always use powerful software and scripts to buy a lucrative expired domain name. These helpful tools and utilities will assist you locating a good domain expired very quickly and later buy the domain through an auction process. Just ensure that you are buying the best possible set of tools, as there are hundreds of them available over internet portals.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Buying expired domains could be a tricky affair and a strenuous task given stiff competition involved in the process. Here are some golden tips and suggestions to buy an expired domain.
Tip#1: Evaluate and assess the possibility of gaining backlinks: Checking to see whether the set of expired domains that you are looking to buy, has any backlinks associated with them. In fact, you may wish to check out the domain, if it has any backlinks by visiting the Google search engine. Most of the search engines do not update their engines on a daily basis. If the domain name is not in the backlink web portal, most probably the web portal link will loose its power in the next link updating.
Tip#2: Checking out to see if the expired domain has a link in either Yahoo or DMOZ: Yahoo charges a hefty registration fee of $299 to list a domain. Registering a web portal on DMOZ is quite difficult as well! If the domain expired domain you are looking has a listing in these web portals, you can definitely go ahead and buy expired domains in question. A listing in DMOZ directory is actually a big privilege and an honor.
Tip#3: Using other internet tools: To check previous avatar of web portals, their content and design, backlinks, traffic and other useful features, you may wish to conduct an exhaustive research on internet portals like http://www.archive.org. This is an extremely useful web portal that can provide you number of hints whether to buy an expired domain or not.
Tip#4: Backlinks Vs PR: Before buying expired domains from a registrar, you may wish to compare and evaluate both backlinks and PR. Backlinks provide a clue about the number of links associated with the domain expired. On the other hand, the PR is indication of the popularity of the web portal in terms of incoming traffic. You may need to maintain a very fine balance between these two issues, while buying an expired domain.
Tip#5: Patience will reap you dividends: Buying domains expired is a time consuming process and a lengthy affair. You will need to be extremely patient enough to lay your hands on your preferred expired domain.
Tip#6: Of late, expired domain traders are looking for expired domains that have extensions like .gov and .edu. However, you will need to face the prospects of handing such domains back to the owner, as these expired domains may carry trademark and proprietary symbols.
Tip#7: Using powerful software or a script: Very successful expired domain traders always use powerful software and scripts to buy a lucrative expired domain name. These helpful tools and utilities will assist you locating a good domain expired very quickly and later buy the domain through an auction process. Just ensure that you are buying the best possible set of tools, as there are hundreds of them available over internet portals.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Laid Off ?? NOW is the Time to Start a Home Biz!
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Sandy Brewer
Every day newspapers and TV tell us that companies are laying off folks or simply closing their door. Frightening. Stable companies that have to cut back or simply cannot afford to stay open for business.
And, much to everyone's dismay, the number seems to be climbing higher for unemployment. Of course, no one knows when this will improve. And the down side is it may not show any improvement for at least a year or more.
I, unfortunately are one of those people. After working for a nation wide company for 7 years I was told doors were closing mid October due to business and economic reasons. And there are many more out there like myself.
Due to this distressing situation, it makes perfect sense to start a home based business. Home Businesses are a 427 Billion Dollar a year industry. When I read that I could not believe it. This large number is mostly due to the internet.
Online businesses are open 24/7. Once setup, they keep running even when you are no at home. Take a vacation, go shopping, watch a movie, whatever and your business keeps running.
The benefits for working from home are endless. You take yourself out of the rat race scenario. Save your car from every day wear and tear. You choose your own hours There is no schedule when you have your own home business.
Your new home business can be run part-time. Keep your current job and work on it when you can fit it in.
Some home businesses require very little capital to get started. Again, that depends on what your new home business is. If it is an internet business, you already have your PC and internet connection, why not put them to work??
If you have been laid off, like me, you now finally have time to devote to really research and see what you want to do. There are so many opportunities for someone to consider. I have seen websites showing you how to do digital photography as a home business, setup a day care center, make gift baskets, and countless others. The sky's the limit for finding something you are passionate about and turning that passion into something profitable.
Your new home business does not have to be anything huge. Maybe you will become an affiliate for a vendor. Simply speaking, an affiliate sells someone else's products. There are many vendors you can become an affiliate for. Probably the largest is Clickbank.
E-Commerce is a really popular field. When you do a search just for the words "E-Commerce" you can see for yourself the unlimited opportunities that are available. When I did a search for "E-Commerce" I found a site where someone can sell their own items, like homemade clothing and build an online store. Again, the possibilities are endless.
Downloadable E-Books are very popular right now. These electronic books offer information in many categories. You can setup an online store where you sell Ebooks in many areas. How to remove adware, spyware from your computer. How to setup a website. How to earn multiple streams of income. How to earn money taking pictures with your digital camera. How to start an import-export business. Just to name a few of many possibilities.
One of the reasons E-Books are so popular is the buyer has access to the product immediately.
No one knows the future of the economy. When you have your own home business, you cannot get laid off!
You can turn your unexpected and unwanted layoff into something positive. You are free to explore and have fun finding a profitable way to make money. And NOT dependent on an employer.
About the Author:
Sandy Brewer is an a cat lover and an avid gardener. She lives in New Mexico, and is currently unemployed. This has allowed her the time to research the idea of working for her self. Her website provides lots of programs and information to get started being your own boss. http://www.homebizunlimited.com/
Copyright © 2009 Sandy Brewer
Every day newspapers and TV tell us that companies are laying off folks or simply closing their door. Frightening. Stable companies that have to cut back or simply cannot afford to stay open for business.
And, much to everyone's dismay, the number seems to be climbing higher for unemployment. Of course, no one knows when this will improve. And the down side is it may not show any improvement for at least a year or more.
I, unfortunately are one of those people. After working for a nation wide company for 7 years I was told doors were closing mid October due to business and economic reasons. And there are many more out there like myself.
Due to this distressing situation, it makes perfect sense to start a home based business. Home Businesses are a 427 Billion Dollar a year industry. When I read that I could not believe it. This large number is mostly due to the internet.
Online businesses are open 24/7. Once setup, they keep running even when you are no at home. Take a vacation, go shopping, watch a movie, whatever and your business keeps running.
The benefits for working from home are endless. You take yourself out of the rat race scenario. Save your car from every day wear and tear. You choose your own hours There is no schedule when you have your own home business.
Your new home business can be run part-time. Keep your current job and work on it when you can fit it in.
Some home businesses require very little capital to get started. Again, that depends on what your new home business is. If it is an internet business, you already have your PC and internet connection, why not put them to work??
If you have been laid off, like me, you now finally have time to devote to really research and see what you want to do. There are so many opportunities for someone to consider. I have seen websites showing you how to do digital photography as a home business, setup a day care center, make gift baskets, and countless others. The sky's the limit for finding something you are passionate about and turning that passion into something profitable.
Your new home business does not have to be anything huge. Maybe you will become an affiliate for a vendor. Simply speaking, an affiliate sells someone else's products. There are many vendors you can become an affiliate for. Probably the largest is Clickbank.
E-Commerce is a really popular field. When you do a search just for the words "E-Commerce" you can see for yourself the unlimited opportunities that are available. When I did a search for "E-Commerce" I found a site where someone can sell their own items, like homemade clothing and build an online store. Again, the possibilities are endless.
Downloadable E-Books are very popular right now. These electronic books offer information in many categories. You can setup an online store where you sell Ebooks in many areas. How to remove adware, spyware from your computer. How to setup a website. How to earn multiple streams of income. How to earn money taking pictures with your digital camera. How to start an import-export business. Just to name a few of many possibilities.
One of the reasons E-Books are so popular is the buyer has access to the product immediately.
No one knows the future of the economy. When you have your own home business, you cannot get laid off!
You can turn your unexpected and unwanted layoff into something positive. You are free to explore and have fun finding a profitable way to make money. And NOT dependent on an employer.
About the Author:
Sandy Brewer is an a cat lover and an avid gardener. She lives in New Mexico, and is currently unemployed. This has allowed her the time to research the idea of working for her self. Her website provides lots of programs and information to get started being your own boss. http://www.homebizunlimited.com/
Friday, February 6, 2009
The Importance Of Deep Linking In Your Search Engine Marketing
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2006-2009 Trey Pennewell
If you are an experienced webmaster then you probably know that creating back links to your website is one of the best things that you can do to improve your Search Engine Ranking Placement (SERP). Google openly discusses the importance that their algorithms place on back links and even recommend that webmasters who want to increase their traffic use back links. Both Yahoo! and MSN are starting to talk openly about the importance of back links in their search algorithms as well.
There are a number of strategies that you can use to create back links to your website. Some of these strategies include emailing webmasters and asking them to place a link to your website, submitting your site to directories, distributing free reprint articles, and paying for links. All of these have their pros and cons, and some have a better success ratio than others.
How Many Back Links Does Your Website Have?
Take a look at your website and see just how many back links you actually do have. Do not do this for only one search engine, but for all search engines where you are trying to get good SERP results. To check your backlinks, simply type into the particular search engine's box link:http://www.yourdomainurl.com/ . Of course you will replace the yourdomainurl with the name of your own domain.
The more back links that you have to your website, the better off you are. Not only do back links help your SERP, but also the visitors of pages where your back link is listed may just choose to visit your site.
A common mistake that new webmasters make is that they create back links, but they have all of these links pointing to their home page. It is great that you have 50 back links pointing to your home page, but take a look at other pages on your site. How many links are pointing to these pages? The answer is probably zero unless you have utilized deep linking in your link building campaigns.
What Are Deep Links?
Deep links are links that go to specific pages within your website. For example, let's say that you have a home improvement website that has a large number of pages and articles on it telling people how to do projects. If all of your back links are pointing only to your home page and you have none pointing to specific article pages, then you are not getting the full benefit of your linking activities.
Think about it this way, if I go to your website and find a piece of information that I find particularly helpful or interesting and I want to tell other people about it, how will I do it? When I tell all my friends on my blog about this great page of yours, am I going to link to your home page? No, I am going to copy and paste the actual webpage address out of my browser, into my blog. That is deep linking and what is considered to be natural linking by the search engines.
What Are Natural Links?
Natural links are those links that are created by people other than the website's marketing team. Suppose I posted a link in my own blog that said that the "most easily understood tutorial, I have read, for creating a php-xml parser" was: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-xml-parsing-rss-1-0 , and I put my quoted text into the link. That is a natural link, because I created the link with no prompting from the management at SitePoint.com.
Difficulties In Creating Deep Links
There are a few problems that you will run into when trying to create deep links to your site. One problem is that if you ask a Webmaster of another site to link to you, they will most likely just link to your home page. When you submit to directories, the vast majority of them will only allow you a link to your home page, not a deep link. Even if they do allow you to submit a deep link, they will not allow you to submit 10 deep links.
Success Tips For Creating Deep Links
Deep linking is quite a bit easier when utilizing free reprint articles as a part of your link building campaign. This is because you can put whatever link you want to put in the "About The Author" box. The About The Author box is required to stay intact in all websites that are using your article. If you intend on writing a large number of articles to promote your domain, then you will want to optimize your results by putting a different deep link into the About The Author box for each of the articles that you write.
Another method of doing this is free and easy, but requires a bit of time. Take keywords in each page of the text on your website and make a hyperlink on that word or phrase to another page on your site. This is very easily done if you know how to do basic HTML. The ultimate goal here is to have every page of your website linked to, at least once, by another page on your site. You will want to spread these out among your domain's webpages, instead of having just a couple of pages linking to the other 50 pages.
Another reason to spread your links across all of the pages of your domain, is that users are likely to be turned off by a page that is almost all hyperlinks; those pages often appear spammy or cluttered. A good idea for any Webmaster is to create these internal deep links when you create a new page. It is much easier to spend a couple of minutes from the beginning, rather than trying to go back and do all of them at a later date.
Incorporate Deep Linking Into Your Linking Strategies
Deep linking is as important a consideration as back linking! It does not matter which page visitors use to enter our websites. If they like what they read on our internal pages, they are more likely to view other pages on our websites. If they view other pages on our website, they are likely to find our homepage, and we will get a chance to tell them why they should buy our products or services.
Deep links to our website help to ensure that the search engines will have good cause to show our internal webpages as well as our homepage. For every page in our website that gets great SERP, our chances of getting a sale are increased significantly.
We have 15 pages on our website, eight of which provide real content to our prospective clients. All eight of these pages have a significant number of back links pointing to them. 48% of our visitors land on our home page. 37% of our visitors land on our internal pages. As a result, 85% of our traffic lands on our website as a result of our back links, either directly or through our natural search placement in the search engines. The remaining 15% arrive on our website through bookmarks, personal referrals, and paid listings.
Deep linking works. Give it a shot.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell is a writer, who writes about online marketing. Learn more about our SEO Pay For Ranking services at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html Trey also manages article approvals at the free article directory located at: http://www.techcentralpublishing.com/Category/business/50/1
Copyright © 2006-2009 Trey Pennewell
If you are an experienced webmaster then you probably know that creating back links to your website is one of the best things that you can do to improve your Search Engine Ranking Placement (SERP). Google openly discusses the importance that their algorithms place on back links and even recommend that webmasters who want to increase their traffic use back links. Both Yahoo! and MSN are starting to talk openly about the importance of back links in their search algorithms as well.
There are a number of strategies that you can use to create back links to your website. Some of these strategies include emailing webmasters and asking them to place a link to your website, submitting your site to directories, distributing free reprint articles, and paying for links. All of these have their pros and cons, and some have a better success ratio than others.
How Many Back Links Does Your Website Have?
Take a look at your website and see just how many back links you actually do have. Do not do this for only one search engine, but for all search engines where you are trying to get good SERP results. To check your backlinks, simply type into the particular search engine's box link:http://www.yourdomainurl.com/ . Of course you will replace the yourdomainurl with the name of your own domain.
The more back links that you have to your website, the better off you are. Not only do back links help your SERP, but also the visitors of pages where your back link is listed may just choose to visit your site.
A common mistake that new webmasters make is that they create back links, but they have all of these links pointing to their home page. It is great that you have 50 back links pointing to your home page, but take a look at other pages on your site. How many links are pointing to these pages? The answer is probably zero unless you have utilized deep linking in your link building campaigns.
What Are Deep Links?
Deep links are links that go to specific pages within your website. For example, let's say that you have a home improvement website that has a large number of pages and articles on it telling people how to do projects. If all of your back links are pointing only to your home page and you have none pointing to specific article pages, then you are not getting the full benefit of your linking activities.
Think about it this way, if I go to your website and find a piece of information that I find particularly helpful or interesting and I want to tell other people about it, how will I do it? When I tell all my friends on my blog about this great page of yours, am I going to link to your home page? No, I am going to copy and paste the actual webpage address out of my browser, into my blog. That is deep linking and what is considered to be natural linking by the search engines.
What Are Natural Links?
Natural links are those links that are created by people other than the website's marketing team. Suppose I posted a link in my own blog that said that the "most easily understood tutorial, I have read, for creating a php-xml parser" was: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-xml-parsing-rss-1-0 , and I put my quoted text into the link. That is a natural link, because I created the link with no prompting from the management at SitePoint.com.
Difficulties In Creating Deep Links
There are a few problems that you will run into when trying to create deep links to your site. One problem is that if you ask a Webmaster of another site to link to you, they will most likely just link to your home page. When you submit to directories, the vast majority of them will only allow you a link to your home page, not a deep link. Even if they do allow you to submit a deep link, they will not allow you to submit 10 deep links.
Success Tips For Creating Deep Links
Deep linking is quite a bit easier when utilizing free reprint articles as a part of your link building campaign. This is because you can put whatever link you want to put in the "About The Author" box. The About The Author box is required to stay intact in all websites that are using your article. If you intend on writing a large number of articles to promote your domain, then you will want to optimize your results by putting a different deep link into the About The Author box for each of the articles that you write.
Another method of doing this is free and easy, but requires a bit of time. Take keywords in each page of the text on your website and make a hyperlink on that word or phrase to another page on your site. This is very easily done if you know how to do basic HTML. The ultimate goal here is to have every page of your website linked to, at least once, by another page on your site. You will want to spread these out among your domain's webpages, instead of having just a couple of pages linking to the other 50 pages.
Another reason to spread your links across all of the pages of your domain, is that users are likely to be turned off by a page that is almost all hyperlinks; those pages often appear spammy or cluttered. A good idea for any Webmaster is to create these internal deep links when you create a new page. It is much easier to spend a couple of minutes from the beginning, rather than trying to go back and do all of them at a later date.
Incorporate Deep Linking Into Your Linking Strategies
Deep linking is as important a consideration as back linking! It does not matter which page visitors use to enter our websites. If they like what they read on our internal pages, they are more likely to view other pages on our websites. If they view other pages on our website, they are likely to find our homepage, and we will get a chance to tell them why they should buy our products or services.
Deep links to our website help to ensure that the search engines will have good cause to show our internal webpages as well as our homepage. For every page in our website that gets great SERP, our chances of getting a sale are increased significantly.
We have 15 pages on our website, eight of which provide real content to our prospective clients. All eight of these pages have a significant number of back links pointing to them. 48% of our visitors land on our home page. 37% of our visitors land on our internal pages. As a result, 85% of our traffic lands on our website as a result of our back links, either directly or through our natural search placement in the search engines. The remaining 15% arrive on our website through bookmarks, personal referrals, and paid listings.
Deep linking works. Give it a shot.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell is a writer, who writes about online marketing. Learn more about our SEO Pay For Ranking services at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html Trey also manages article approvals at the free article directory located at: http://www.techcentralpublishing.com/Category/business/50/1
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