Welcome to the MasonWorld Internet Marketing Dictionary Home Page.
One of the more difficult things to get a handle on when you are getting started online is all of the internet marketing terms.
This dictionary is an attempt to bridge that gap. Since this is only a partial list of all internet marketing terms, I have intentionally implemented the dictionary with comments enabled on every page. The intention is to allow readers and users a place to leave comments so that definitions can be added or clarified.
I have also included some more general computing and online terms, where appropriate.
I hope you find this useful.
Regards,
Mark
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Ad Tracking – Using it to Test Your Results
Most advertising services, such as Google AdWords, permit you to track your ads. You can see how many click-throughs you receive; and you can split-test two ads with slightly different wording. Tracking your results will allow you to compare two approaches, so you can determine which works best.
Adding Articles to Directories
One good way to generate traffic for your site is to write articles and then submit them to directories. You can find a list of the top 50 directories according to the amount of traffic they receive at the following URL: http://www.vretoolbar.com/articles/directories.php. This will not only get your site a one-way backlink that will improve your search engine position rankings, but it will also generate some direct, click-through traffic.
Adding Your Blog to RSS Feed Directories
Another good way to generate traffic for your blog is to list your RSS feed in directories. This will have a similar effect as adding your articles to directories. You can find a list of RSS feed directories here: http://www.dotsauce.com/2007/06/06/55-active-rss-directories-to-help-promote-your-feeds/.
Adding Your Site to Link Directories
Another good way to get inbound links pointed at your site is to submit it to directories. You can find a list of directories here:
http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php. When you do this, remember to include a description of your site that links keywords that you are optimizing for. This text will surround your link; and will improve your search engine rankings for these keywords.
Adopt a Strategy
Many Internet marketers go into a new business venture without first spending the time to create a strategy. This is usually a big mistake. Without creating a strategy that specifies what you should do in various situations, you may find yourself lost; and prone to ad hoc and inconsistent decision-making.
AdWords – A Trick That Can Boost Your Click-Through Rate
If you want to improve your AdWords click-through-rate, you should use the base keyword from your keyword list in your headline. When people search for a keyword on your list, it will pull up your ad with the keyword bolded in the headline. This will attract searchers to your ad, increasing the chance that they will click on it.
AdWords – Tracking Your End Results is Crucial
In addition to tracking your ad click-through rates, you will also want to check how your ad results translate into sales. You can do this by sending traffic from different campaigns to different landing pages. This will allow you to do determine whether certain ads are generating higher-quality traffic.
AdWords – Using the Right Headline Could Change Your Campaign
After you begin tracking your results, you will want to start varying your AdWords headlines. You can then test how well each different headline performs; and then select the best for your campaign. Remember to only make small changes at a time.
Affiliates Can Make or Break a Business
One of the best ways to grow your business rapidly is to find affiliates. Affiliates can act as an extension of you by marketing your product in places and in ways that you could not think of yourself.
Affiliate Managers May be Necessary
Once you have grown your affiliate program substantially, it will begin to take up an increasingly larger share of the amount of time you spend on your business. Beyond a certain point, it will be a good idea to consider hiring an affiliate manager to do this work for you. This will free up your time, so that you can spend it doing other, more productive things.
Affiliate Marketing Software – Using it to Save Time
In the past, affiliate marketing was much harder than it is today. Today, you can take advantage of a variety of different software programs to automate tasks for your program. This includes things such as creating ids, tracking sales, and making payments. This can save you a great deal of time and money.
Affiliate Products Can Supplement Your Product Sales
Some of the most successful Internet marketers mix revenue streams. Not only do they sell their own products, but they also sell other business’s products as an affiliate. If you want to maximize your own profits, you should consider selling high-quality products as an affiliate.
Attitude is Important
It may sound like a silly piece of advice, but attitude is truly important when it comes to Internet marketing. As you grow your business, you will find yourself encouraging more and more challenges. If your attitude is good, you’ll stick with your choices and find the courage to get through them; if not, you’ll find yourself quickly folding.
Be an Early-Adopter
When it comes to business, the profits are often greatest in the earliest stage of a new technology or idea. As more people become privy to the idea or technology, competition increases and profits fall. Be an early adopter and make sure you get in with the profits are still large.
Be Flexible
When it comes to any business venture, flexibility is a virtue. Business owners who are too rigid often find themselves in a corner without any options. On the other hand, those who remain flexible ensure that they change with the time and the situation, so that they never end up cornered.
Be Patient
In addition to flexibility, patience is a business virtue. To see that this is true, spend some time on any Internet marketing forum. You’ll find people who have spent years chasing after and abandoning short-term goals with no success. You’ll also find patient business owners who have stuck with the same boring idea—but have used it to earn increasingly greater profits each year.
Bid on Freelance Marketing Assistants
Freelance marketing assistants can take an overburdened, but promising business and transform it into a growing, successful business. If you’re finding yourself too busy to accomplish everything, then you should consider hiring a marketing assistant using http://www.elance.com or http://www.guru.com.
Borrow Ideas from Other Sites
Coming up with marketing strategies is hard. This is precisely why you should focus on borrowing good strategies from other places before you try to come up with your own. You can do this by visiting top sites in your niche; and carefully observing how your competitor operates. In particular, examine the sales process in detail (i.e. how she gets leads, follows up with those leads, pitches to those leads, and closes sales).
Borrow Public Domain Content to Create Products
One of the hardest parts of running a successful business is creating new products. This usually involves careful planning, creative work, and execution. If you would prefer to rely on the effort of others, you can always use public domain content (i.e. content that is freely available for you to resell) as is or in re-bundled form as a product.
Borrow Techniques from Other Marketers
One of the best ways to learn about traffic generation is to observe those who do it successfully. You can do this by performing a search of the following form on Google: “link:
Broker Joint Venture Partnerships
Joint venture partnerships are the lifeblood of many successful businesses. They allow business owners who are skilled in one area to link up with business owners who are skilled in another. If you’re lacking a skill or a resource, such a traffic or marketing ability, then you may want to look for partners for your next launch.
Buy an Autoresponder Subscription
An autoresponder is a critical tool for Internet marketers. It enables them to build, manage, and market to an email list. If you don’t have an autoresponder subscription, you should get one soon. Consider http://www.getresponse.com or http://www.aweber.com.
Buy Banner Ads
Years ago, many Internet marketers concluded that banner ads were dead. But today, they’ve come back. And, for certain types of products, banner ads can be highly effective. Consider running a banner ad campaign. If you don’t already have a high-quality banner, you can get one by hiring someone on http://www.sitepoint.com or on http://www.elance.com.
Buy Ghostwritten Articles
If you want to use articles to promote your site, but don’t feel comfortable writing, you can always purchase them from a ghostwriter. Sites like http://www.elance.com and http://www.guru.com make it easy for you to purchase them from credible sources and for reasonable prices. Just remember to keep your project descriptions clear and detailed.
Buy Ghostwritten Reports
In addition to purchasing ghostwritten articles, you might also consider purchasing reports from ghostwriters. This will make the content-creation portion of your sales process painless.
Buy One-Way Links on High PR Sites
Today, sites like http://www.textlinkbrokers.com abound. These allow you to purchase one-way, inbound links on high-traffic, high-PR sites. These will improve your search engine ranking positions; and also generate some high-quality, direct click-through traffic.
Buy Private Label Content
In addition to ghostwritten content, you may also want to consider purchasing private label content. While this is usually sold to 10 or more people (and thus is not unique), it will also be much cheaper, which will allow you to purchase more of it.
Capture Opportunities When They Present Themselves
Opportunities don’t last forever. Often, then come and go. This is why it is pivotal that you keep an eye open for good opportunities; seize them when they arrive; and work hard to reap the rewards.
Changing Your Routine Can be Helpful
Over time, it’s easy to fall into the trap of carrying out the same routine each day; however, this can be detrimental to your business. Your ideas and approach may become stale and rote; and, eventually, your customers may lose interest. Keep things exciting and consider changing your routine on a regular basis.
Charge Blog Visitors for Premium Content
If you have a successful blog, consider creating a members-only section. In this section, add reports, articles, graphics, and other exclusive items. Charge readers a small fee (perhaps $5/mo.) to access this section. Use the normal blog as a means to advertise this section.
Charge Site Visitors for Membership Content
The same idea I mentioned for blogs also works for normal sites. If you have a site that receives a lot of traffic and has a loyal readership, consider adding a members-only section and charging for access.
Check Your Sales Page Against Modified Versions
Once you’ve completed your sales page, you should check it against modified versions. You can do this by tweaking 1 or 2 elements at a time; and then checking your conversion rate results. Remember to only make small changes; and to track the results over a long period of time.
Coding Isn’t Always Necessary
Many new marketers get into the trap of trying to learn programming languages before they create a site. In truth, this is becoming increasingly less important over time. There are many site editors available (free and paid) that will do this work for you without your ever needing to learn any programming.
Consider Changing Your Business Model
If you’re like most business owners, you follow a set business plan, no matter what business you start. It doesn’t matter whether you’re creating products and selling them on a site; or creating content sites and selling advertisement—your approach and style is the same. If your results are lackluster, consider approaching things in a completely different way next time you create a business. Ignore what your impulses tell you to do; and instead, try something different.
Cooperate with JV Partners
While no one should ever have to be told to cooperate with JV partners, all too frequently people forget to do this. They don’t remember that the partner is bringing something to the table that they couldn’t otherwise; and, instead, take the partner for granted. Don’t be one of the people who does this. Cooperate with your partners; and they will make sure things work out well for you.
Contact People Who Can Help You
Often, solving a problem is much easier than we think it is. The only problem is that we are unwilling to ask someone who can help us. Next time you find yourself stuck, contact someone who can help you, rather than letting the problem fester. It doesn’t matter whether that means emailing a friend or posting on a forum of complete strangers. Do it; get help; and move on.
Context is Important
When it comes to marketing, context is important. Don’t simply take hints and tricks that you hear from gurus and apply them without attention to detail. Instead, consider how they fit into the context of your business; and use them accordingly.
Conquer One Niche at a Time
Instead of trying to tackle many projects at once, limit the scope of your projects to one niche only. Focus all of your time and effort there; and see whether it takes you. If you have success, consider growing until you can’t; and then adding a second niche.
Create Products to Sell on ClickBank
Once you have created a product, you might consider selling it through ClickBank. Initially, it costs $50 to get your product review, but after that, you can easily recruit, work with, and pay affiliates without much additional effort.
Create Promotional Materials for Affiliates
Many Internet marketers make the mistake of thinking about their affiliates as a drain on their resources. In fact, affiliates are an excellent way to extend yourself and your business in ways that would otherwise be impossible. For this reason, it is a good idea to provide your affiliates with marketing materials, such as salesletters, articles, and email marketing materials for free.
Create Promotional Materials for Joint Venture Partnerships
In addition to providing promotional materials for your affiliates, you should also consider doing so for your joint venture partners. This will make it easier for your JV partners to promote you, which is always a good thing.
Create Your Own Products
Creating your own products is a great way to make money. However, there are many places in which process can break down. I personally suggest that you approach this problem by hiring freelancers to deal with all of the parts that are difficult—or for which you do not have expertise.
Decide and Act
Many Internet marketers have a tendency to inflate the importance of certain decisions. Don’t fall into this trap. Instead, get into the habit of making decisions quickly; and then acting.
Detach Yourself Emotionally from Your Plans
As with any business venture, it is important that you detach yourself emotionally from your plans. If you decide to do something and it doesn’t pan out as you had expected, then let go of it and move on. Don’t let your emotional attachment to bad plans ruin your chance at success.
Do What Gurus Do—Not What They Say
Instead of doing what gurus tell you to do, pay attention to what they do. Think about how it is that they’ve captured such a large audience. Also, consider how it is that they’ve become so successful in their niche. And then emulate these features in your own business.
Don’t Be Afraid to Differentiate Your Business
Often, new Internet marketers are afraid to differentiate themselves and their businesses from competitors. As a result, they create a lifeless, boring business that proves to be entirely unmemorable to visitors. Don’t make this mistake. Give your business a personality that attracts people; and allows them to remember you.
Don’t Burn Bridges Unnecessarily
As a general rule of thumb, burning bridges is bad when it comes to business. Unless you have a very good reason for doing so, you should never burn a bridge with a joint venture partner. Instead, try to end the partnership amicably to avoid backlash and negative word-of-mouth feedback.
Don’t Burn Yourself Out
When it comes to running your own business, it is all too easy to put in long hours and burn yourself out. Don’t do this. When your work is done for the night, go to bed, get some sleep, and then come back the following day well-rested.
Don’t Buy Everything
Many new Internet marketers end up going on a buying frenzy at some point. They buy ebooks, software, private label products, membership site subscriptions, and a wide variety of marketing tools. Unfortunately, they also frequently do not use most of what they buy. Don’t go bankrupt for such a foolish reason. Spend wisely; and use what you buy.
Don’t Follow the Crowd
If you read a marketing forum at any point in time, you’ll notice that a large flock of people are repeatedly posting about similar subjects. They’ve latched onto a fad; and they’ve decided that it is the only way to make money. Don’t fall into this trap. These fads often aren’t profitable—and, even if they were, they won’t be when everyone is doing it. So, unless there’s a good reason to do so, don’t follow the crowd.
Don’t Listen to Everyone
In Internet marketing, many offer advice who haven’t experienced success through the plans they suggest. For this reason, be careful who you accept advice from.
Don’t Ruin Your Credibility on Forums
When it comes to using forums to market your products, your credibility is vital. If forum readers perceive you as credible, they’ll follow your links, read your posts carefully, and consider your offers. If you squander credibility my making stupid posts to increase your post count or by spamming the forum, people will quickly lose interest in you and your business.
Don’t Spam Your Email Lists
Internet marketers often mistake the mistake of spamming their email lists. That is—as soon as they acquire an email address, they send it a deluge of emails (both “informative ones” and ones that sell products). The end result is that leads get turned off and unsubscribe or stop paying attention. Make sure you don’t do this to your list.
Don’t Waste Time
If you find yourself spending hours each day surfing the Internet when you’re technically “working on your business,” then it’s time to re-evaluate your priorities. If you truly want to spend that time surfing the net, then continue to do so. But if not, then you may want to keeping work and leisure separate. When you’re at work, do work only. But if you get burnt out, then take a break and do something you enjoy, rather than wasting time doing something you don’t enjoy and counting it as “work.”
Email Lists Can Be Reinvigorated
Email lists can always be reinvigorated. If you’re finding that the responsiveness of your list has dropped off lately, you may want to consider trying tactics to reinvigorate it. For instance, you might start by holding a weekly give-way to readers who enter a raffle to keep people interested.
Email List Building Through AdWords
Another approach to list building involves Google AdWords. First, create a strong squeeze page that is good at converting visitors. Next, use Google AdWords to send a deluge of traffic to your squeeze page.
Email List Building Through Forums
One excellent way in which you can build your list is to post on forums. In your signature, include a link to your squeeze page. Also, infrequently mention your list in forum posts.
Email Lists Make Sales
Any seasoned marketer will tell you that sales happen on the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth contacts—not on the first. This is why it is important to build an email list and market to it, rather than trying to sell directly always.
Email Marketing Can Be More Effective Than Direct Marketing
Email marketing allows you to follow up with customers and to pitch to them on a regular basis. For this reason, it can be much more effective than pitching to them only once using a sales page.
Email Marketing Strategies Are Vital
Starting an email marketing campaign without a strategy is a big mistake. Rather than simply sending out an ad, remember to carefully approach the situation with a pre-sales and sales process in mind.
Email Marketing Through Short Copy
Another way to approach email marketing is through short copy. This should consist of 300-500 words carefully-designed to promote a product or subscription. Remember to keep it personal, though, so that it does not seem unusual in an email.
Email Offers Must Be Approached Correctly
It’s easy to bungle email offers. My suggestion is the following: don’t get too salesy in the email. Instead, bait them with the email; and then direct them to some short copy on your site.
Email Proposals to Potential JV Partners
One of the hardest parts of JV partnerships is simply securing the partners. Rather than getting cold feet, find a list of contacts, draft a high-quality proposal, and then fire it off to each of them. Expect a lot of rejections; and be happy if you get a positive response.
Emailing Too Frequently Will Turn Off Customers
Even if you aren’t sending advertisements, emailing your existing customer base too frequently will annoy them. Avoid doing it.
Emailing Too Infrequently Might Make Customers Forget Who You Are
While you shouldn’t email your customers too frequently; you also shouldn’t email them infrequently. Not contacting them for months at a time will make them forget who you are. And when they do hear from you, they may mistake you for a spammer.
Enthusiasm is Important
One of the most important parts of overcoming challenges is maintaining a deep enthusiasm for your business. Always take the time to visualize what you’re doing; and to get excited about it.
Errors Are Part of the Learning Process
When it comes to business and marketing, errors are important. They rule out paths that won’t work for your business. Next time you encounter one, learn from it; and move on.
E-Course Creation
Creating an e-course is a great way to pull in customers and convert them over time. Usually, a course consists of 7-10 lessons on a specific subject; and, at various points in the course, refers the reader to products they can purchase.
E-Course Marketing
In order to market your e-course, you will want to take a several-pronged approach. First, create a squeeze page that allows visitors to add their names and email addresses. Next, drive traffic to the squeeze page using forums, Google AdWords, existing site traffic, banner ads, and any other sources you can find.
E-Course Tricks – Make the Course Free, but Suggest Paid Products
The key to having an effective e-course is interspersing paid products throughout it. That is—make the course free to attract as many people as possible, but then subtly sell them on a variety of different products that you own, as well as affiliate products.
Fall Down—And then Pick Yourself Up
Don’t be afraid to fail. Push hard until you fall down. But once you do, pick yourself up; and get working on the new project.
Fight for Small Gains; Fight Harder for Large Gains
Working hard is important, but only when it means the payoff will be big. Keep that in mind before you slave-away on a project with no clear estimate of how much you will get in return.
Figure Out How to Organize Your Business Better
Many businesses are sub-optimally organized. Parts that need not be automated are automated. And parts that aren’t automated need to be. Figure out how your business can be better organized; and make an attempt to realize that vision.
Figure Out Which Parts of Your Business Are Not Working
As with all businesses ventures, some things go well and others do not. Get rid of the things that aren’t working; and focus on the things that do.
Find New Affiliates
Finding new affiliates is just as vital as finding new joint venture partners. They provide a way for you to expand your business; and do so without needing your direction. Spend time seeking out new affiliates each week.
Find New Joint Venture Partners
Expanding your network is an important part of growing your business. Don’t plateau once you have forged a couple of useful partnerships. Instead, keep working to find new partners; and to work with them to realize projects.
Find New Strategies Each Day
Each day, push yourself to learn something new about Internet marketing. Don’t stagnate at your current level of knowledge; push yourself to learn more, so that you can continuously become a better marketer.
Find Ways to Motivate Your Current Affiliates
In addition to looking for new affiliates, you should try to motivate existing affiliates. Offer special deals (where commissions are temporarily higher), give them promotional materials, and offer to accept emails from them directly.
Find New Ways to Get Visitors to Buy
Always look for new ways to get your visitors to buy. You could create a squeeze page and get them to sign up; or you could give a free product away—and get people to buy it.
Find New Ways to Sell Old Products
If you’re like most Internet marketers, you have a large store of old products. Instead of just sitting on them, figure out how you can re-package them into new products that you can sell or give away.
Find Ways to Innovate
Innovating is hard, but necessary. Each day, try to come up with a new way in which you can do something that none of your competition has thus far.
Fix Problems with Your Current Website
On a regular basis (perhaps once each month), spend time working on your website. Instead of putting up new products and deals (as you normally would), focus on improving existing features, so that they provide higher value to customers.
Friends Can Offer Helpful Suggestions
Whenever you can, ask for the perspective of a friend. Ask how they like the look and feel of your site; ask what they think about your products; and ask if they have any suggestions.
Gaining Experience Without Wasting Time
Experience usually takes time to accumulate if you do it on your own. This is why I suggest that you cut out the wasted time; and learn from the experience of others. Ask friends and colleagues for help; and pay attention to what experts do.
Get a New Perspective Whenever Possible
Before you launch a product, give it away for free in order to get people’s opinions. Before you launch a salesletter, post it on a forum to get reviews. Always try to get a new perspective when you can.
Get As Much as You Can From Each Advertising Dollar
Before you allocate $300 to a Google AdWords campaign, spend some time testing and tweaking your ads. Only after you have found a good technique should you begin spending a lot of money.
Get Expert Opinions Whenever Possible
Experts can provide invaluable information about your ideas and products. Whenever you can consult one, do so, even if it means that you’ll have to contact a stranger and plead for help.
Get In Before It’s Too Late
In addition to knowing when to get out, it’s also important to know when to get in when it comes to Internet marketing. Don’t let the next opportunity pass you by.
Get Out Before It’s Too Late
Often, in Internet marketing, it’s important to get out of a failing business opportunity before it is too late (i.e. before you are broke and burnt out). Pay careful attention to this, so that you don’t miss your opportunity to exit.
Give Yourself Time to Make Big Decisions
Big decisions take time to make. Don’t lock yourself into a bad plan for months because you couldn’t take the time to make the right decision. Instead, think long and carefully about big decisions; and make the right ones.
Getting Something for “Free” May be More Costly Than Purchasing It
Beware of “free” traffic. In many cases, it will cause you to waste a tremendous amount of time and energy for a small return. In the end, you’ll probably be better off paying for it.
Give First; Receive Later
As a general business principle, provide your customers and subscribers with quality content. They well appreciate this; and reciprocate by buying from you down the road.
Give Freely and Frequently to Visitors and Subscribers
In addition to providing customers with high-quality content, you should also consider giving them free products. They will appreciate this, remember you, and buy from you in the future.
Go into Business Ventures with a Plan
Before you launch a new product, come up with a plan. Try to stick through it as the launch progresses. This will prevent you from making a bunch of ad hoc, inconsistent decisions.
Go Out of Your Way to Help Others
Find ways to help other people, including your customers, on a daily basis. This will build goodwill towards you and your business.
Google AdSense – Creating Sites for Ads
One way to make money with AdSense is to create sites from ghostwritten or private label articles; and then to add Google AdSense ads to them.
Google AdSense – Placing Ads on Your Site
When placing AdSense ads on your site, put them above the fold; and in a place that is likely to receive traffic and clicks.
Google AdWords – A Simple Trick
Use delimiters when bidding on keywords. Instead of bidding for the keyword Internet marketing, bid for Internet marketing, “Internet marketing,” and [Internet marketing]. You’ll boost your traffic and pay less per click.
Google AdWords – Boosting Your Traffic
Run rotating AdWords campaigns with minor tweaks. Find out which one is performing the best; and then allocate your entire budget to it. Over time, you will get more clicks.
Gurus Don’t Always Know What’s Best for Your Business
Gurus may have a lot of marketing wisdom, but that doesn’t mean that their general advice is the best advice for your business. Listen to them, but remember that you ultimately understand your business best.
Half of the Challenge is Following Through
Coming up with an idea and a plan isn’t enough. Following through is just as difficult and important. This is why it is important to practice being consistent; and to practice forcing yourself to move forward, even when you don’t feel comfortable doing so.
Half of Your Traffic Will Come from 10% of Your Work
Much of your traffic will come from 1-2 marketing campaigns that work very well. This is why it is important to test and track your marketing campaigns—so you can keep the ones that work and drop the ones that don’t.
Half-Finished Projects Don’t Bring in Half as Much Revenue
Half-finished projects don’t sell. So, instead of creating 3 different half-finished projects, complete and market 1 product.
Haste Doesn’t Always Translate into Waste
Haste doesn’t always translate into waste. In particular, when it comes to creating products, it is better to do it fast, get it wrong, and make corrections than it is to spend weeks trying to create the “perfect” product.
Have A Back-Up Plan Ready
Back-up plans are crucial. They give you something to do as soon as the original plan doesn’t pan out. Keep 1 or 2 plans on the back burner, so that you can refer to them if things don’t go well.
How to Advertise without Going Broke
While it may not seem intuitive, advertising with Google AdWords and other cost-per-click advertising services is the best way to control your costs. You very clearly pay according to quality; and you have direct control over the entire process, including the budget.
How to Avoid Getting Burnt Out
Burn out is very common among Internet marketers. After the honeymoon phase of owning your own business, the long hours and the irregular pay may get overwhelming. If this is the case for you, then you need to get in the habit of taking breaks, going on vacation, and doing whatever you can to avoid getting burnt out.
How to Avoid Going Broke while You Build Your Business
When building your Internet-based business, it is important that you do not overspend. Otherwise, you could end up broke before you make any headway towards a successful business. For this reason, it is a good idea to cut out extraneous spending on ebooks and software—and instead seek free and open source alternatives.
How to Boost Your Blog Traffic in One Week
Begin tagging all of your blog entries and pinging them to www.pingoat.com. This will automatically add your entries to social bookmarking sites and blog directories. For a moment, your entry will be at the top of the results, which will probably generate at least a few visits.
How to Buy Competing Sites
If you’re struggling to expand your current business, consider buying a closely related business using the marketplace at http://www.sitepoint.com. You will not only gain the customer base, business template, and credibility of the existing business, but you will also learn how it operates, so you can import that knowledge into your current model.
How to Choose the Terms for Re-Sale Rights Licenses
If you’re planning to sell your own re-sale rights products, you will need to come up with a terms-of-use agreement. This will specify which uses are and are not legal. For instance, you might make it legal for people to resell the articles, but not to resell them to other resellers.
How to Create a Viral Report
Take one of the best marketing strategies you know. Write it up in a 5-10 page report. In that report, link to your site in multiple places, but not to other sites. Give the report away for free and encourage others to do so.
How to Create a Viral Video
Similar to a viral report or ebook, a viral video must start with a good idea. From there, use CamStudio or Camtasia to create a video and then post it on YouTube. Finally, promote it from your site and hope that it catches on.
How to Find a Good Website Template
Today, the Internet abounds with many high-quality, free website templates. One site that offers such templates is http://www.oswd.org.
How to Find Good ClickBank Products
In addition to selling your own products, you should consider selling affiliate products. One good place to find them is on ClickBank. In particular, look for products that have high commissions and high gravity scores.
How to Find New Markets for Your Product
Once you have created a viable product, the only task that remains is marketing it correctly. This not only means creating a good salespage, but also finding many new markets in which to sell it.
How to Flip Sites
One way to make money as an Internet marketer is to flip sites. You can buy them originally at http://www.sitepoint.com, monetize them better, track the earnings, and then resell them again.
How to Get Good Copywriting Tips
The best way to get tips about your salesletter is to post it on a copywriting forum, such as WarriorForum.com/Copywriting-Forum/. Let other copywriters rip it apart, make suggestions, and guide you in the right direction.
How to Hook High-Quality JV Partners
Finding high-quality JV partners is an important part of expanding your business. This is why it is critical that you be especially careful when soliciting potential JV partners. Make sure that you send a clear, well-thought-out proposal.
How to Generate Traffic through Word-of-Mouth Strategies
Many Internet marketers do not realize this, but word-of-mouth strategies are often the most effective. This is why it is important to ensure that your customers are satisfied and spread the word.
How to Generate Traffic with PLR Articles
If you have private label content articles, you can always re-write them slightly (perhaps to 50% uniqueness). You can check the uniqueness on http://www.dupecop.com. Once you have completed this process, you can add them to your website.
How to Improve Your Business Continuously Over Time
Many Internet marketers make large, discrete changes to their businesses at given points in time. However, some of the more successful marketers operate on Toyota’s continuous improvement model. Each day, they look for tiny, new things that they can do to improve their business’s outcomes.
How to Improve Your Salesletter Headlines
One good way to improve your salesletter headlines is to incorporate psychological triggers. This includes words like free, proven, tested, shocking, and mysterious, which elicit strong responses from readers.
How to Improve Your Salesletter’s Call to Action
Keep your call to action short and to the point. Quickly reiterate a reason why it is vital that the customer purchase now; and then direct them to do so.
How to Improve Your Salesletter’s Conversion Rate
Before you send traffic to your salesletter, it is vital that you optimize its conversion rate. You can do this by sending small amounts of traffic to the salesletter; and then tweaking individual elements to see what works best.
How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Positions – Tip 1
One easy way to improve your search engine ranking positions is to purchase ghostwritten articles that are optimized for particular keywords. You can then upload these articles to your site. Once Google and other search engines spider your site, those pages will appear more favorably in the rankings.
How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Positions – Tip 2
Another way to improve your search engine ranking positions is to create a blog as an extension of your site. You can then ping the blog, which will generate one-way, inbound links to your site on blog directories.
How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Positions – Tip 3
One way to improve your SERPs is to write articles and add them to article directories. This will generate one-way, inbound links to your site from high-PR sites.
How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Positions – Tip 4
You can improve your SERPs by re-optimizing existing pages on your site. Find keywords that receive a lot of searches, but for which there are few existing pages. Then intersperse these keywords through existing content.
How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Positions – Tip 5
If your current content is very keyword dense, consider removing some uses of the keyword. Google many penalize you if it looks like your content is keyword-stuffed.
How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Positions – Tip 6
Comment on blogs and include a link to your site in your signature. This can help to improve your search engine ranking positions.
How to Increase the Response Rate of Emails
One way to increase the response rate of your emails is to use psychological triggers in the subject line. Words such as free, shocking, proven, and explosive will draw attention and prompt curiosity.
How to Launch a Product – Tip 1
An important part of any launch is getting other marketers involved. Spend the time to find potential business partners; and to encourage them to get involved by offering monetary incentives, such as larger commissions for launch-event sales.
How to Launch a Product – Tip 2
Sometimes, getting high-profile people involved with your launch is more important than earning commissions from them. Consider emailing a few high-profile individuals in your niche and offering to let them have 100% commissions on the launch date.
How to Launch a Product – Tip 3
Instead of putting the product up for sale and starting the marketing campaign at the same time, start the marketing campaign first. Create a salesletter and put a countdown timer on it. Talk about it in forums and on your blog.
How to Launch a Product – Tip 4
Provide joint venture partners, affiliates, and others involved in your launch event with promotional materials. The better prepared they are, the more sales you can expect.
How to Make a Squeeze Page – Tip 1
For starters, write 1 paragraph of persuasive text and then combine it with a form generated by your autoresponder.
How to Make a Squeeze Page – Tip 2
Always keep the opt-in form above the fold. This has been shown to significantly increase conversion rates.
How to Make a Squeeze Page – Tip 3
Always include a line of text that explains that you hate spam and will not sell the information of people who opt-in under any circumstances.
How to Make a Squeeze Page – Tip 4
Split test your original salesletter against one that uses a custom opt-in form with arrows pointing at the blank fields. If this approach works better, adopt it over your original form.
How to Make Money from Re-Sale Rights
If you don’t want to lose that 25-50% of the product price from selling as an affiliate, you may want to consider purchasing re-sale rights to a product. This will allow you to sell it for the full purchase price.
How to Make Money with Free Reports – Tip 1
The first step to making money with free reports is to get one. Start by coming up with a topic; and then hire a good ghostwriter to complete the job for you.
How to Make Money with Free Reports – Tip 2
Once you have a free report to work with, use it as bait in all of your forum signatures. Allow people to download the report for free when they visit your site and subscribe to your newsletter.
How to Make Money with Free Reports – Tip 3
Include multiple affiliate links in your free report; and then give your report away for free to as many people ask you can. If they read it and follow the affiliate links, you’ll end up with residual income for a long time into the future.
How to Make Money with Free Reports – Tip 4
Give your report away for free. And encourage others to do so. The further they spread it, the more your name will be recognized.
How to Make Money with Reports
Allow others to sell your report, but charge them a small fee for the resale rights.
How to Make Money by Re-bundling Products
Re-bundling is an easy way to make money from old products. All you have to do is take some ghostwritten articles and transform them into a report; or take a report and transform it into articles. You can then sell the resulting products.
How to Make Your Site Sales-Friendly
When it comes to sales, many sites are their own biggest enemy. For instance, they might not allow a buyer to buy until the very end of a salesletter, rather than at multiple points in the letter. These types of small mistakes can make the difference between a high-converting site and a low-converting site.
How to Maintain Sales Momentum After the Product Launch
One trick to keep the momentum rolling after the launch event is over is to save some ammunition. That is, keep a few special bonuses, discounts, and sales for 1-2 months after the launch event is over to inspire some interest.
How to Market Your Business with Facebook – Tip 1
Before you can do anything else to market your business with Facebook, you must create an account; and then spend the time to familiarize yourself with its features. This will pay off down the road.
How to Market Your Business with Facebook – Tip 2
Once you have familiarized yourself with Facebook, begin adding friends, family members, and business associates. This is all an important step in building a legitimate profile an immersing yourself in social networking.
How to Market Your Business with Facebook – Tip 3
Use status updates to alert business associates and members of your network to the projects you are working on. For instance, you might mention that your team just finished creating the software for a particular project. This may solicit interest from potential business associates; and could spur a joint venture with very a little effort.
How to Market Your Business with Facebook – Tip 4
Add gurus and well-known individuals in your niche as friends. They will see your status updates and potentially read your profile (which should contain a link to your site). Again, this can be a great way to generate joint venture partnerships.
How to Market Your Site for Free
You can market your site for “free” through the following methods: 1) article marketing, 2) link exchanges, 3) banner exchanges, 4) list swaps, and 5) forum posting.
How to Market Your Site Using Forums
Forum posting is one of the more effective marketing strategies. The key is to initially find forums related to your niche at a site like http://www.big-boards.com. Once you do this, join the forum, post regularly, and create a signature that includes a link to your site.
How to Monetize Your Site with AdSense
If you have an existing site that receives traffic, but is not monetized, consider adding AdSense ads. This is an easy and cheap way to generate revenue.
How to Pick Colors for Your Website
The background color you pick for your website or salesletter is important. It will influence the mood of your visitors in ways you might not understand. In particular, if you want your customers to relax and read casually, you should pick a light blue. If you want them to feel pressure and take action, you should pick a red background.
How to Pick the Right Niche
When you look for a new niche to sell in, you should do three things: 1) perform a thorough keyword analysis to determine whether or not it is a profitable niche; 2) try to discern how crowded the niche is; and 3) determine how hard it will be to enter that niche.
How to Use Traffic Exchanges
Traffic exchanges, such as http://www.trafficswarm.com allow you to post an advertisement for your site. In exchange for “views” on an autosurf rotation, you must view other websites. These are generally free to use, but may consume a lot of your time.
How to Use Twitter with Your Business– Tip 1
Before you do anything else with Twitter, you should create an account and familiarize yourself with how it works, so that you avoid looking amateurish when you launch your marketing campaign.
How to Use Twitter with Your Business – Tip 2
Search trending topics for items related to your niche. Follow the tweets to people who might be interested in your products; and then follow them. If you do this enough, this will generate a large list of potential customers.
How to Use Twitter with Your Business – Tip 3
Once you have a lot of followers on Twitter, it is time to reap a return. You can do this by tweeting about a product, a sale, or something related to your business. Just remember to keep your commercial tweets sandwiched between many, many non-commercial tweets that are useful and informative.
Internet Businesses and How to Manage Them
Many Internet marketers go into business without the realization that they will have to manage a business. Instead, they focus only on the creation part and ignore the management-end. I personally suggest that you focus on the opposite.
Internet Business Strategy
Many marketers neglect this aspect of the business, but Internet business strategy is important. It separates those who plan and create contingencies from those who do not.
Internet Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
If you’re on a shoestring budget, Internet marketing is still possible. Just focus on forum posting and blogging, rather than paid methods.
Internet Marketing – How to Do It Without Pushing Away Existing Customers
When working on a new marketing campaign, it is always important that you avoid pushing away old customers. Keep this in mind before you send out a mass email to everyone on your list—including both new and old members.
Internet Marketing – Know Your Audience
In marketing, nothing is more important than knowing who your audience is. This is why it is important to periodically take surveys of your customers, to research your market, and to visualize the end-buyer.
Internet Marketing – The Directness Way
In marketing, directness goes a long way. Keep this in mind when drafting your next sales pitch. Instead of dancing around the details, be clear, direct, and open with your customers.
Internet Salescopy – How It’s Different
As with all Internet writing, Internet-based salescopy should be clearer, more direct, and should use short sentences.
Internet Writing the Right Way
Whenever you’re writing articles or reports for Internet readers, it’s important to understand that you should keep the sentences short and clear. Otherwise, writers will lose interest and move on.
Join a Mastermind Group
Forums like http://www.warriorforum.com occasionally have mastermind groups, where individuals meet to discuss ideas and projects. Join the next available mastermind group; and learn what others who are successful in your niche are doing.
Join Social Networking Sites
Sites like Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter hold a lot of promise for marketers. Not only will they allow you to find other like-minded individuals, but they also allow you to market to them. For this reason, you should consider creating accounts for social networking sites.
JV Partnerships Beget JV Partnerships
If you’re a useful JV partner, the people you work with will tell others. And this will lead to future JV partnerships.
Joint Ventures Can Be Profitable
It’s impossible to over-emphasize the importance of JV partnerships. If you haven’t done one, you should. And if you have done, you should do more.
Joint Ventures Can Drain Your Resources if Done Wrong
While JV partnerships are generally profitable, it’s possible for them to be a drain on your resources if they are planned or executed properly. To prevent this from happening, live by the following two rules: first, only look for JV partners who can bring something to the table that you cannot; and second, communicate clearly and often with your partner throughout the duration of the project.
JV Partnerships Can Lead to Greater Things
Even seemingly insignificant JV partnerships can lead to greater things. So, before you take off in the middle of a seemingly unproductive partnership, consider whether this partnership could lead to a more profitable one in the future.
Joint Venture Partnerships and Snail Mail
High-quality JV partners are often bombarded with JV offer emails. One way you can separate yourself from the crowd is to send your joint venture proposal to prospective partners through snail mail.
Just Take Action
It cannot be stressed enough: action–not thoughts–brings results. Don’t sit around and day dream; take action.
JV Offers – The Right Way
There’s a right way and a wrong way to submit JV partnerships. The wrong way consists of bombarding every person on planet earth with an offer that is vague and borderline rude. The right way is to select partners carefully, reference them and their work in your proposal, and submit proposals cautiously and with attention to detail.
JV Partnerships – Drafting a Contract
When creating a JV partnership, it’s never a bad idea to create an informal contract. This will specify what you will do; and what your JV partner will do. It will help you to work together and to guide your progress.
JV Partnerships – Learning by Doing
Marketers who are new to JV partnerships often don’t get the most of them. If you find yourself in this position, don’t give up. Over time, you will learn how to do them better, but in order to get there, you must start by doing them—even if you’re not doing them correctly.
JV Partnerships – Your Goal
Before you begin any JV partnership, it is important for you to state your goal as a partner; and communicate it clearly to the person you are working with. It is important to also understand what your partner wants from the partnership.
Keep an Eye on Your Competition
Visit http://www.goingup.com/analyzer/. Enter the URL of your site and note the results. Do the same for all of your major competitors. See whether they have advantages and disadvantages.
Keep Leisure Time and Work Time Separate
Many self-employed individuals have a hard time separating work and leisure time. As a result, they end up sitting at a computer all day, thinking they are working, but in fact, they are actually accomplishing little. Don’t fall prey to this mistake.
Keep a Plan, but Deviate from it if Necessary
In Internet marketing, plans are necessary. But if you plan doesn’t pan out as you had expected, don’t panic if you have to change it. This is a normal and important part of running a business.
Keeping Up Is As Important As Getting Ahead
Often, marketers convince themselves that they need to be at the forefront of every new marketing approach—and, they sometimes do this by neglecting their current business plan. I personally suggest that you focus on keeping your business stable and growing; and introduce new ideas and technologies only when timing works.
Killing Time May Also Kill Profits
Don’t fall into the trap of procrastinating when your work on your business. Even if you can’t get fired, you can lose a great deal of profits by tricking yourself into thinking you are working when you are not.
Leave Bad Plans Behind
There’s one major difference between good and bad businesses: bad businesses cling on to terrible plans, no matter how bad the results. And good business know to shed these plans and move to the next. Be a good business and get rid of your bad business plans.
Leave Costly Marketing Strategies in the Past; Keep Good Ones
Line your marketing strategies up in order of profitably. Get rid of the ones that are unprofitable; and focus more on the ones that have proven successful.
Leave the Office and Take a Break
Periodically, take a break from your work and leave the office. This will leave you feeling refreshed; and give you the energy to be more productive when you return.
Less is Not More When it Comes to Salesletters
Many copywriting gurus suggest that less is not more when it comes to salesletters. That is, when you write copy, you should make it long, but include many opportunities for the buyer to opt out of the copy and buy immediately.
Less Projects Can Translate into More Money
If you’re like most marketers, you take on too many projects at the same time. Dump some of them; and focus carefully on the ones that show the most promise.
Lose the Battle if You Can Win the War
Sometimes, when it comes to Internet marketing, you need to lose a battle in exchange for winning the war. That is, you have to give up a cherished idea in exchange for profit or more traffic.
Make a Good Impression on JV Partners
Building a strong network of affiliates and JV partners is essential for any Internet-based business. This is why it is vital that you always make a good impression on the JV partners you work with, so they will refer you to friends and colleagues.
Market with the Customer in Mind
Before you begin a marketing campaign, spend time visualizing your customers. Think about what they look like, what they do for a job, and what their needs and desires are. Then write copy for them.
Marketing like Gurus
Some of the most important lessons you can learn from gurus will come from watching them, rather than listening to them. From now on, pay attention to what they do.
Marketing Locally
Consider posting fliers and doing bulk mailings. Just because your business is Internet-based doesn’t mean that your customers must all be generated from online sources of advertising.
Marketing Plans Can Always be Revised
Plan to revise your ideas when they go wrong. In most situations they will; and, in most situations, you will be better off if you remain flexible and willing to adapt.
Marketing Products Through Services
Today, it has become common to sell products through services. You can do this, for instance, by offering to install software that you sell for your clients remotely. Depending on the products and services offered, this can be a highly effective way to boost sales.
Marketing Seminars are a Good Way to Network
Keep an eye out for marketing seminars in your area. They’re a great way to meet new marketers, exchange ideas, and find JV partners.
Marketing Services – Seeking Out Professionals
Instead of doing all of your marketing in-house, consider hiring professionals through http://www.elance.com or http://www.guru.com to manage your upcoming marketing campaign.
Marketing Services – Working with Professionals
Once you have hired professionals to work on your business, it’s important to conduct yourself professionally, too. Communicate your expectations to them; help them when needed; and be responsive when they ask questions. All of these things will help you in the end.
Marketing Strategies Should Match the Niches
If your “niche” is Internet marketing, then buyers might not mind being marketed to. In other niches, buyers will be resistant to typical marketing techniques. In these situations, it is important to identify the context and to proceed accordingly.
Marketing through Affiliates – Tip 1
Offer to hold a meeting with any of your affiliates over Skype, Google Chat, or MSN if they make over a certain amount of sales. This will encourage them to work harder; and it may also help you to learn more about the people who are helping your business.
Marketing through Affiliates – Tip 2
Remember that affiliates are an extension of your business. Make sure that you treat them that way.
Marketing through Brand-Creation
Brand-creation is an important part of marketing. Once you establish your name or your business’s name as being credible, people will begin to talk about you and your business; and this will generate some traffic.
Marketing through eBay Sales
Sell cheap ebooks on eBay. In those ebooks, include links to affiliate products and your own products, so that buyers will purchase them.
Marketing through E-Courses – Tip 1
If you don’t currently offer an e-course, you should. They’re simple to create an e-course can have a powerful impact on your business. Start by purchasing your content from a ghostwriter; and then add it to your Aweber account. The final step is filling the e-course roster with interested individuals.
Marketing through E-Courses – Tip 2
At the end of each day’s course, include a link to your own product or to an affiliate product that readers can buy and that is related to the course content.
Marketing through E-Courses – Tip 3
In addition to including product links at the end of each email, you should also have a one-time offer at the end of your entire course. The offer could be something like a large discount on a comprehensive ebook that is related to the course material.
Marketing through E-Courses – Tip 4
Even if you don’t sell people products successfully during the e-course, getting them to sign up will still be worth it. Once you have their email addresses, you can always pitch to them later.
Marketing through Ezine Ads
Another great way to turn a profit is to market your products through ezine ads. Consider the options available at the following site: http://www.ezinead.net/.
Marketing through Free Stuff
One good way to attract attention to your site is by holding a give-away each week or month. This will encourage visitors to return to your site and also to tell others about it.
Marketing through Pay-Per-Click Services
One of the most cost-effective ways to market your site is through pay-per-click services, such as Google AdWords. These ensure that you don’t waste money on “views” that don’t translate into visitors.
Marketing through Search Engine Optimization – Tip 1
Content is king. You’ve heard it a hundred times, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Find ways to stuff your site with high-quality content and the search engines will reciprocate by improving your rankings.
Marketing through Search Engine Optimization – Tip 2
Don’t obsess about improving your PageRank. At the end of the day, you want your individual pages to perform well for their selected set of keywords—and this does not always depend on the PR of the individual pages.
Marketing through Search Engine Optimization – Tip 3
Add new stuff to your site regularly. This may mean purchasing and altering PLR content or buying new ghostwritten articles. The fresh content will improve you rankings with the search engines my making your site appear to be dynamic and changing.
Marketing through Search Engine Optimization – Tip 4
Find high-quality, related (but not competing) sites to exchange links with. This will improve your search engine ranking positions.
Marketing through Your Blog
Using your blog is another great way to market your business. Keep the bulk of your content informative and non-commercial, but occasionally, review an affiliate product or post news about one of your upcoming product launches.
Marketing through Your Products
Another way to market your business is through your own products. If, for instance, you are selling reports, you could use those reports to link to your other products.
Marketing Tools Cost Money, But Save Time
Marketing tools like competition analyzers and keyword tools can be expensive. Some cost as much as $400. But in the end, they will save you a great deal of time and money by ensuring that you don’t set out on the wrong path.
Marketing to Other Businesses
Right now, you may be marketing primarily to individuals. However, there’s a good chance that your products can be sold en masse or through a bulk license to businesses. Try this option; and see what it yields.
Marketing with Forums
Forum-posting is one of the cheapest ways to market. Simply create a handle, create a profile, create a signature file that links to your site, and then begin posting.
Marketing with Systems
If you want your business to be scalable, you will need to base it on systems, not ad hoc decisions. This means that you will need to automate and organized everything related to your business.
Marketing-Focused Web Design
Next time you design a website for your business, keep marketing in the back of your mind. Think about how different design elements will influence how visitors decide to act and make purchasing decisions.
Never Annoy Your Email List
Be careful not to annoy your email list with persistent pitches. If you do this too frequently, list members will stop paying attention to your emails; and will buy less from you in the long run.
Never Blatantly Promote Products in Forums
Promoting products in forums rarely results in sales. Rather, it usually results in warnings, bans, and general annoyance on the part of members. Avoid doing it.
Never Blow Money Recklessly on Advertising
Avoid spending money on advertising just because you can. Instead, be careful to use all money allocated to your advertising budget for its highest purpose.
Never Buy Email Lists
Regardless of the supposed quality, do not buy email lists. Not only will doing this make it highly likely that your emails will get flagged as spam, but it may also be illegal in certain countries.
Never Buy Traffic from Disreputable Sources
With advertising services like Google AdWords, there is no good reason to ever buy traffic from sketchy, disreputable sources. Keep your money for true opportunities; and spend it where you know you will have control over the process.
Never Follow the Plans of Others Blindly
As an Internet marketer, you have problem seen hundreds of blueprints for businesses. You know that there are many approaches you can take if you want to be successful. However, it is important to realize that many of them will not work unmodified for your business. Instead, you will need to change them to fit your specific plans.
Never Expect Sales on the First Contact
Many new Internet marketers do not realize this, but making a sale on the first contact is very rare. Don’t expect it. Instead, plan to follow up multiple times until the sale occurs.
Never Give Up
In Internet marketing, it’s all too easy to give up. The marketing campaign didn’t go the way you planned, so you give up. The product launch didn’t quite bring in as many sales, so you give up. Get out of the habit of doing this; and instead, focus on why you don’t need to give up—and how you can turn a bad situation into a good one.
Never Make Promises You Can’t Keep
Whether you’re making promises to customers, clients, or JV partners—don’t make ones you can’t keep. Instead, underpromise and then overdeliver. This will always leave your customers happy.
Never Participate in Automated Link Exchanges
In the past, automated link exchanges were popular. Today, many Internet marketers recognize that these will do little to help your site. Avoid them unless you have a good reason to believe one can help your site.
Never Take Your Customers for Granted
Customers will only stay with you for as long as you provide them with something beneficial at a reasonable price. So don’t take them for granted. Instead, find ways to constantly improve their experience.
Never Underestimate the Difficulty of Tasks
When it comes to running an Internet-based business, you will encounter many tasks that no one has completed before. For this reason, you will not be able to find a step-by-step guide on how to do them. Don’t be intimidated, but also do not underestimated the difficulty. Instead, commit yourself to working through any problems you encounter.
Offer to Match or Beat Your Competition
If you can, offer to match the price or quality of your competition. This will increase the amount of people who purchase your product without shopping around, since they know that they can always ask for a partial refund if they find a lower-priced product.
Own Up to Your Mistakes
If you make a mistake and it affects your customers, clients, or business partners, own up to it and deal with it. Hiding from it will not help you in the long run. Instead, it will just reflect poorly on you in the eyes of your customers and partners.
Predict How Your Customers Will Respond
Customers respond to offers in many different ways. For this reason, it is important to anticipate these different responses; and to react accordingly through a carefully-designed email marketing campaign or follow-up approach.
Picture Yourself Accomplishing Your Goals
Positive visualization is a great way to prime yourself for achieving goals. Imagine how a sales campaign will progress; or how an interaction with a potential JV partner will go. This will help to prepare you for the actual scenario.
Price is Important
Price will determine the amount of sales you make. Often, it is best to keep the initial price low for entry-level products. From there, you will be able to contact the buyer again and attempt to upsell him or her on higher-priced products.
Privacy is Important – Don’t Give Away Your Customer’s Information
Your customers probably take their privacy very seriously. For this reason, whenever you ask for their information (be it names, email addresses, etc.), you should always explicitly state that you will not give it away or sell it under any circumstances.
Project Your Success, But Be Realistic
Thinking about the future is important. It will help you fix yourself on certain goals; and imagine how they might be accomplished. Just remember to keep things within the realm of reality, so you don’t get too disappointed when you’re not a millionaire tomorrow.
Purpose is Important
Having a sense of purpose is important. For this reason, it is not only important to think about how your business can generate profits, but also what it can do for others. In the long run, if you truly believe your business has a role beyond swindling people into handing over cash, it will be easier to stick with it.
Quirks Make Your Business Unique
Tiny quirks make your business different and interesting. Don’t always try to get rid of them in favor of a lifeless, dull business model that lacks personality.
Reciprocity is a Large Part of Success
If your customers do something nice for you (perhaps by buying your products), then do something nice for them. Don’t only give them a high-quality product that they were promised, but also give them a bonus they didn’t expect. This will generate good will towards you.
Rehire Good Freelancers, But Keep an Eye Out for New Ones
Once you have found good freelancers, you should rehire them, as this will reduce the transaction cost of constantly drafting new contracts; however, don’t be afraid to look for new ones, too.
Repeat Things that Work; Discard Things That Don’t
Marketing is a trial and error process. Find things that work; and stick with them. Identify strategies that have failed; and do not repeat them. Over time, you will work towards a set of strategies that is proven.
Report-Writing is an Inexpensive Alternative to Paid Traffic
As I’ve mentioned before, report-writing is an excellent way to generate traffic. You can give reports away for free, sell them for a small amount, or allow JV partners and affiliates to give them away. Whatever you do, writing and using reports can be an excellent alternative to purchasing traffic through AdWords or other paid choices.
Reports – Giving them Away for Free through File-Sharing Sites
One little-used strategy for disseminating free reports is to upload them to file-sharing sites. People searching for related materials will find your report; and may download and re-share it.
Reports – Selling them for Small Amounts
An alternative to giving your reports away for free is to sell them for a small amount (perhaps $3-7). This will generate a lot of sales, but will be cheap enough to cast a wide net and also generate affiliate and back-end sales.
Resale Rights – Tip 1
Always be sure to find out what “resale” rights actually means before you buy a resale rights product. For instance, can you resell the product to other resellers? Or does it mean only you can resell it? This is important to know.
Resale Rights – Tip 2
Once you have secured resale rights, you may want to consider altering the product before you resell it (if the license permits). The rationale behind this is that you can create a unique product, rather than selling one that is available elsewhere.
Resale Rights – Tip 3
Whenever purchasing resale rights products, find out how many other people the rights will be sold to. If it is more than 20 people, you may not want to purchase it, as there will be many competing sellers.
Resale Rights – Tip 4
Consider purchasing a number of resell rights items that are complementary. Package them together; and resell the entire bundle.
Re-Bundling Strategies – Tip 1
One of the simplest re-bundling strategies involves combining a set of 10-12 articles into a short report; and then selling the report.
Re-Bundling Strategies – Tip 2
If you’re thinking about creating an ebook or report, consider doing it using PLR content articles. While many other people will be able to sell these articles, few of them will use your exact bundle to create an ebook.
Re-Bundling Strategies – Tip 3
Another simple re-bundling strategy involves taking a private label content ebook; and then breaking it up into articles. Since search engines will recognize these articles as unique content, this could go a long way to boost your search engine ranking positions.
Sales Strategies – Always Follow Up
Sales usually occur on the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth contact. This is why it is vital to keep contacting your clients. Let them know what you are around; and reiterate the benefits of your product to them.
Salesletter-Writing – Tip 1
Experiment with color schemes. Mix and match font colors and background colors. See which works best.
Salesletter-Writing – Tip 2
Experiment with different fonts; and see which elicits the best response from visitors.
Salesletter-Writing – Tip 3
Always test your changes. Find out how each small tweak to your salesletter affects the amount of orders you receive.
Salesletter-Writing – Tip 4
Use subheadings throughout your salesletter, so that readers can scan for the parts they need to know.
Save Information to Sell as Premium Content
Whenever you give away free content, don’t tell all of your secrets. Save some of the most important ones; and then tease them at the end of the piece of content. Link to a place where they can purchase a report or ebook that details these secrets.
Selling Content
One excellent way to make money as an Internet-based business is to sell content. You can hire ghostwriters, editors, and graphic designers. You can then produce private label products and resell them to people via a membership site model.
Selling Parts of Your Business
If parts of your business become unprofitable, sell them off to other marketers and move on. It doesn’t matter whether this unprofitable part consists of sites or products. Dump them and move on.
Selling Products through Word-of-Mouth – Tip 1
Always keep your customers happy. This will ensure that they spread the word about your business; and keep the flow of new customers coming.
Selling Products through Word-of-Mouth – Tip 2
Give customers an incentive to promote your business. Offer them a discount on your products for each referral they make.
Selling Products through Word-of-Mouth – Tip 3
Create an affiliate program; and allow customers to resell your products as affiliates.
Selling Products through Word-of-Mouth – Tip 4
Post on forums; and ask questions about your upcoming product launch (i.e. about how best to approach it). This will introduce people to you and your product; and may generate some buzz about it.
Selling Services – Tip 1
Use freelancers to create a website script. Offer to install it for an extra $10. If you need to, you can also hire someone to do this.
Selling Services – Tip 2
Launch an ebook. One month after the launch event, offer to hold a session with readers for free to go over any questions.
Selling Services – Tip 3
Offer report or ebook buyers a private coaching session at a discount.
Selling through Persuasion
In addition to presenting the features of your product, you also have to persuade visitors to buy. In order to do this, you must communicate clear benefits to them by telling them how the product will make their lives better in tangible ways.
Short Copy – How to Use it Effectively – Tip 1
Use short copy on squeeze pages. Keep it to one paragraph at most; and make every effort to direct the reader to the form.
Short Copy – How to Use it Effectively – Tip 2
Use a powerful, bold, red, gripping headline. Test it against other headlines until you find the one that works best.
Short Copy – How to Use it Effectively – Tip 3
Keep sentences short and use simple words. Put pressure on the reader, make them an offer, and compel them to take action. Don’t give them time to get lost in the copy.
Short Copy – How to Use it Effectively – Tip 4
Use multiple calls to action. Allow the reader to stop and buy in multiple places.
Test the Effectiveness of Changes to Your Blog
As with your main site and your copy, it is important to test the effectiveness of changes to your blog.
Test Your Copy
Testing your copy is important. The difference between a 1% and 2% conversion rate means serious differences in terms of profits.
Test Your Headlines
Always test headlines. After you create one, modify it 3, 4, or 5 times. And then test each modification one after another. See which one works best; and adopt it permanently.
Track and Test Changes to Your Site
Make changes to your site and see how visitors respond. This should give you insights into how you can improve the sales process.
Track Your Website Visitors
Use your traffic statistics package to follow the paths of some of your visitors. Find out what they look at; how they react to things; and what triggers them to buy.
Try New Things
As with many things in life, it is easy to fall into a rut and keep doing the same things again and again. Don’t do this with your business. Constantly try new things, innovate, and expand.
Under-Cut the Competition
Find out what your competition is offering; and offer the same at a lower price. Make it clear to customers that this is what you are doing.
Understand What Drives Your Customers to Buy
One of the most important things you can do as a business owner is to find out what drivers your customers. Make an attempt to research your market; and learn what drives them.
Understand What Features Your Customers Want
You might think that your customers want one thing, but in fact, they may want something completely different. This is why it is important to solicit their opinions through polls and emails periodically.
Vary Your Style and Approach; and Test the Results
When it comes to business, it is important to periodically change your approach, see how the market responds; and then decide whether or not to keep the new approach.
Why Giving Things Away for “Free” Isn’t Always Best
In many situations, giving something away for free many elicit a weaker response than if you sell it. This is because visitors may thing that “free” is synonymous with “low quality.” By attaching a small price to the product, you may actually be able to increase sales.
Why It’s Sometimes Best to Give Up
Persistence is important. It can get you through tough times. Yet, at some point, you must know when to give up and move on.
Why You Should Always Ask for a Second Opinion
No matter who tells you something is true, you should always ask for a second opinion. Even if the first person is an expert and the second is not, getting that second perspective could help you to broaden your perspective.
Why You Should Always Be Upfront with Customers
Being dishonest with your customers may yield profits in the short run, but as people catch on to you, it will only hurt your business. Be upfront with them from the beginning; and your relationship will only improve over time.
Why You Should Practice Positive Visualization
Positive visualization helps you to see where you and your business will be in one month, one year, or five years from now. It will help to guide your path and keep you on track.
Why You Should Test and Track Everything
Testing and tracking allows you to discern between things that work and things that do not. This is why it is so vital to your business. Next time you start a marketing campaign, remember to design it so that you can track everything.
XML Sitemaps Can Improve Your SERPs
Create an XML sitemap. It will allow you to control what a search engine’s spider does when it lands on your site.
Your Approach Will Determine the Productivity of Your Entire Business
It doesn’t matter whether or not you have employees. As the business owner, every tiny decision you make will affect the productivity of the entire organization by determining how it is run. Keep this in mind when you make major organizational changes.
You’re Responsible for Your Own Success or Failure
As a business owner, your success or failure is up to you—and no one else. Take the reins of your business tightly; blame only yourself; and push forward.
You’re Your Own Boss
Having a boss can be useful. A boss can push you to work harder and threaten to fire you. It’s nice not to have a boss, but remember the important roles that a boss can place; and be sure to impose them on yourself.
Zen and the Art of Internet Marketing
Internet marketing is hard, but it can be even harder if you are running a business that produces nothing worthwhile; and that focuses purely on monetization and not on quality content. Change your business to make sure that you are at peace with what you do. This will make it much easier to get through the hard times.