Choose the Subject of Your Business Website Carefully
Below you'll find a complete list of business website starter ideas. Choose the one (or two) that best fits your area of interest or expertise. You'll find many of these on the list of 101 personal Website ideas also, as many personal sites turn into business sites.
1. Scenic Photography -- Buying and distributing photographs to calendar companies, postcard companies, magazines, etc...
2. Baby Tips -- Have a resource site for new and/or expectant mothers and sell related products.
3. Wedding Ideas -- Make deals with local catering services, photographers, and bridal shops to receive a commission for sales generated from your Website.
4. Parenting Tips -- Write an informational e-book about parenting.
5. Pet Training -- Pet store online with free tips on training and grooming.
6. Camping -- Camping tips and resources.
7. Fishing
8. Travel (Tell others about the places your family has travelled - provide photos, maps, great eating places, etc. You can distribute a monthly "paid" newsletter about travel.)
9. College Resources (School supplies distributor, online college bookstore, etc.)
10. Crafts
11. Wood Products (Ideas for creative wood furniture along with instructions and material resources.)
12. Sewing (Share your special sewing techniques with others around the world.)
13. Office Organization (You'll find that people who run a busy office are always looking for ways to improve the office atmosphere. You can show how to organize, prepare paperwork, manage and distribute work load, etc.)
14. Music (Music lovers will adore you for building a resource site for music lyrics, musical instruments and where to get them, music reading tips, etc...)
15. Movies
16. Advertising
17. Gardening
18. Sports
19. Computer Training
20. Ceramics
21. Electronics
22. Business Services -- Bookeeping, transcription, accounting, computer programming, etc.
23. Special Interest (Perhaps you're a huge fan of a certain collectible item and would like to become a distributor or reseller.)
24. Horseback Riding Resources and Supplies
25. Bike Riding Resources and Supplies
26. Mountain Climbing Resources and Supplies
27. Racing
28. Fishing
29. Writing -- Provide writing secrets in a paid monthly newsletter.
30. Reading -- Provide services or materials that help children learn to read.
31. Surfing (in the ocean, of course)
32. Singing Lessons
33. Teaching Skill Course
34. Composing Music -- Resources
35. Instrumental (piano, guitar, drums, trumpet, etc...)
36. Cooking Tips -- Offer a cooking tips newsletter.
37. Cooking Recipes (Perhaps you've discovered the secret to cooking brocolli casserole just right, or... know someone who has?)
38. Jokes (Build a site of jokes to keep your visitors laughing and laughing and laughing...ha...ha... Send a joke a day via email for a small fee.)
39. Comedy (Not limited to jokes, but just fun stuff you find on the Web.)
40. Art -- Open an online art gallery.
41. Astronomy
42. Chemistry (Maybe you've found a simple solution to help students improve their understanding of chemistry and could sell a report about it.)
43. Engineering
44. Electronics
45. Vitamins
46. Medicine
47. Herbs
48. Mountains -- Books about, reports, travel guides
49. Oceans
50. Mysterious Discoveries -- Newsletter, books about, reports
51. Animals
52. Cultures -- Newsletter, reports, books
53. Religion
54. Geography -- Maps, guides, pictures, etc.
55. Holidays (Have a Holiday theme for your site - change your site to suit each season.)
56. Languages (Include a listing of each language you can find and provide links to Websites that teach different languages.)
57. Enviroment
58. Boating
59. Government
60. Psychology
61. Games (Provide links to places where people can play free games online -- not necessarily gambling -- but, Monopoly, Scrabble, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy found at Sony.com, etc.....)
62. Interior Decorating
63. Catering
64. Fashion
65. Farming
66. Garage/Yard Sales
67. Weather
68. Women
69. Men
70. Health
71. Excercise
72. Retirement (Information about successful retirement, best retirement locations in the world, money management, etc....)
73. Stock Market/Investing
74. Special Interest Books
75. Vacationing
76. Weight Loss (Tell how you lost weight to help others.)
77. Aging
78. Teenage Years
79. Home Care and Aid (Give tips about how to care for elderly or disabled loved ones, resources for medical assistance, etc...)
80. Grandparenting
81. Handy Work (Maybe you can offer great tips for fixing things around the house.)
82. Tools
83. Flying (airplanes, helicopters, etc....)
84. House Keeping
85. Flowers
86. Pottery
87. Children (Develop a site for children or about children.)
88. Gold/Silver (coin collections, value, going prices)
89. Unique Jewely
90. Cosmetics/Beauty
91. Hunting
92. National Parks
93. Archeology (An up-to-date factual site about ancient artifacts or a study of the history of archeology will be sufficient.)
94. Poetry
95. Shopping (Tell about your shopping experiences with local stores or National chains.)
96. Real Estate (Provide a free real estate site for your area.)
97. Safety (First aid tips and maneuver demonstrations for life-saving.)
98. Science Fiction
99. Marriage Secrets (Website tips for men and women to make their marriage work.)
100. News (Provide daily or weekly updated news for your local region.)
101. Entertainment (Your local area may benefit from an informative entertainment site -- new movie arrivals at the theater, special events in your town or surrounding areas, etc....)
5/15/09
few Search Engine Optimization tips for dummies
Higher Search engine placement: Having a website for your business is a great way to advertise and attract customers. However, simply having an online presence is not enough. A website requires visitors interested in the product or the service that is being provided. Interested visitors lead to better conversions and a more productive online presence with increased online traffic. To sample what the site offers, potential visitors should be able to "find" your site when searching for a similar service or product.
Through a search engine placement service you can ensure that your site is displayed to the right audience in terms of the product or service available on the website. Your website should rank at least within the top 30 search engine matches for a particular search word if you want your site to be found. You can improve search engine placement by optimizing the site for the right set of search terms.
A better search engine rank can be achieved by optimization as it ensures that the site shows up when a user searches for a keyword closely related to what is provided on the website. The site is optimized for a set of keywords that fall within the broad theme of the product and services offered online. The more pertinent the information (available on a webpage) is to the search query the better are the chances of the site ranking for the keyword and for showing up in the Search engine results, when a search for the keyword is made.
There are a number of things that you need to do in order to achieve a better search engine rank. You need to be sure that you optimize each aspect of your web page, and not just the home page. Individual pages can serve as a landing page for a specific service or product. In order to rank a website, Search engines identify various aspects on an existing page. These aspects are referred to as algorithms. Certain aspects may vary but most search engines follow some common guidelines in establishing the relevancy of a webpage to the searched query. Optimization takes care that most of these common guidelines are adhered to.
Search engines take into account the entire text available on the site. Each page is analyzed with regard to the content including all the tags, sub divisions, location of each word etc. In order to improve search engine placement for a specific topic, all of the pages of your website need to be optimized for that topic. Different pages of the website can be optimized for a different set of keywords. It is important that all the keywords optimized on a single page are related to the topic provided on the page.
Ensure that you cover a good range of relevant keywords that users are likely to search for when searching for a product offered on your site. A comprehensive keyword research analysis is critical at this point. A search engine optimization services program should include a detailed list of keywords and key phrases. Using the selected keywords within the pages in a natural manner without distorting the meaning of the content gives the page a chance of a better search engine ranking. In addition other factors like page size, keyword placement, density etc. also contribute in the assessment of a page for displaying in the SERPs.
Additionally internal links within the site pages help as Search engines follow links within a site. External links are extremely important in optimization. A link from a related website to your site is considered a recommendation from the original site. To get the desired ranking a website requires a combination of optimized web page content and quality external one way links.
An initial list should identify as many keywords as possible that are related to your website and target audience. There a number of online Keyword Research tools that can be used to find the number of searches being made on a particular term and also seek other alternate related terms. Each page on your website could be dealing with a different topic (product or service). The keywords for each page should be relevant to the topic discussed on the page.
This should also include analyzing the competition for the search terms listed. This will give an idea of how many pages are competing for the top spot. Your site's Page Rank is also an important parameter in keyword research analysis. If your site has a high Page rank then it has a better chance of ranking for a highly competitive keyword else it is better to focus on more specific keywords. Once the right set of keywords are identified then incorporating these within the content of the website takes you one step closer to better search engine placement. Focusing on the wrong keywords can result in higher investments and lower returns. Hiring an seo services provider can help identify the right revenue generating keywords for improved search engine rankings so that you move one step closer to your business goals.
Through a search engine placement service you can ensure that your site is displayed to the right audience in terms of the product or service available on the website. Your website should rank at least within the top 30 search engine matches for a particular search word if you want your site to be found. You can improve search engine placement by optimizing the site for the right set of search terms.
A better search engine rank can be achieved by optimization as it ensures that the site shows up when a user searches for a keyword closely related to what is provided on the website. The site is optimized for a set of keywords that fall within the broad theme of the product and services offered online. The more pertinent the information (available on a webpage) is to the search query the better are the chances of the site ranking for the keyword and for showing up in the Search engine results, when a search for the keyword is made.
There are a number of things that you need to do in order to achieve a better search engine rank. You need to be sure that you optimize each aspect of your web page, and not just the home page. Individual pages can serve as a landing page for a specific service or product. In order to rank a website, Search engines identify various aspects on an existing page. These aspects are referred to as algorithms. Certain aspects may vary but most search engines follow some common guidelines in establishing the relevancy of a webpage to the searched query. Optimization takes care that most of these common guidelines are adhered to.
Search engines take into account the entire text available on the site. Each page is analyzed with regard to the content including all the tags, sub divisions, location of each word etc. In order to improve search engine placement for a specific topic, all of the pages of your website need to be optimized for that topic. Different pages of the website can be optimized for a different set of keywords. It is important that all the keywords optimized on a single page are related to the topic provided on the page.
Ensure that you cover a good range of relevant keywords that users are likely to search for when searching for a product offered on your site. A comprehensive keyword research analysis is critical at this point. A search engine optimization services program should include a detailed list of keywords and key phrases. Using the selected keywords within the pages in a natural manner without distorting the meaning of the content gives the page a chance of a better search engine ranking. In addition other factors like page size, keyword placement, density etc. also contribute in the assessment of a page for displaying in the SERPs.
Additionally internal links within the site pages help as Search engines follow links within a site. External links are extremely important in optimization. A link from a related website to your site is considered a recommendation from the original site. To get the desired ranking a website requires a combination of optimized web page content and quality external one way links.
An initial list should identify as many keywords as possible that are related to your website and target audience. There a number of online Keyword Research tools that can be used to find the number of searches being made on a particular term and also seek other alternate related terms. Each page on your website could be dealing with a different topic (product or service). The keywords for each page should be relevant to the topic discussed on the page.
This should also include analyzing the competition for the search terms listed. This will give an idea of how many pages are competing for the top spot. Your site's Page Rank is also an important parameter in keyword research analysis. If your site has a high Page rank then it has a better chance of ranking for a highly competitive keyword else it is better to focus on more specific keywords. Once the right set of keywords are identified then incorporating these within the content of the website takes you one step closer to better search engine placement. Focusing on the wrong keywords can result in higher investments and lower returns. Hiring an seo services provider can help identify the right revenue generating keywords for improved search engine rankings so that you move one step closer to your business goals.
5/9/09
Guest Post for Links & Exposure in Search Engine Optimization
In years past general article submissions to sites like EzineArticles was a great strategy, but in early 2008 Google stripped the ability of many of the article banks from being able to pass PageRank, so the upside of writing articles for generic general article banks is fairly limited unless the strategy is used in conjunction with other link building strategies.
More recently some hub based websites (like Squidoo, HubPages, and Work.com) have launched accepting how to guides from topical experts. It is easy to get published on these sites. Some of them use rel=nofollow on outbound links for new publishers, but as you gain experience and trust in their algorithms those limitations typically get lifted.
Some bloggers have thousands of readers, and through buying a lot of ads on blogs you could hope to tap some of that traffic flow. But what if there was a cheaper and more effective way of borrowing their traffic? There is. Guest posts!
The essense of guest posts is you find related popular blogs and follow them for a while. Then after you understand their editorial style and direction, and have participated in the community for a while you can ask if you could write a guest article for their site. The beauty of this strategy is that you not only get a quality low risk link, but you also get to appear in front of hundreds or thousands of subscribers who read that site.
More recently some hub based websites (like Squidoo, HubPages, and Work.com) have launched accepting how to guides from topical experts. It is easy to get published on these sites. Some of them use rel=nofollow on outbound links for new publishers, but as you gain experience and trust in their algorithms those limitations typically get lifted.
Some bloggers have thousands of readers, and through buying a lot of ads on blogs you could hope to tap some of that traffic flow. But what if there was a cheaper and more effective way of borrowing their traffic? There is. Guest posts!
The essense of guest posts is you find related popular blogs and follow them for a while. Then after you understand their editorial style and direction, and have participated in the community for a while you can ask if you could write a guest article for their site. The beauty of this strategy is that you not only get a quality low risk link, but you also get to appear in front of hundreds or thousands of subscribers who read that site.
Linking in Search Engine Optimization
Reciprocal Linking
A lot of people today are still using programs like Zeus to build large quantities of reciprocal links to their website. In most cases these programs really do not help in the process of building a great reciprocal link campaign. The use of these programs usually result in link farming, which refers to a massive reciprocal linking of websites that really do not pertain to any industry and/or related to each other. A good reciprocal link would be described as two sites that are linking to each other which are of related topics. As times change, quality search engines like Google are adding filters to their Algorithms to combat spammers that are clogging search results with irrelevant information and link farms.
Finding good link partners
With billions of websites making up the World Wide Web, your first question is probably going to be "Where do I start?" Good Question. If you already asked yourself this question before you read it, then you most likely already understand the fact that there are sites you should link to and sites you shouldn't. Your search for good link partners should start with educating yourself on the who's who of your industry on the web. Use a few search engines to find websites related to your industry. Run some searches using your researched keywords and click through some of the sites that appear in the results. Next, critique the sites you view. Are they well written? Is there an abundance of good content? Is this a site that you would want to suggest to someone in a conversation? Are they a reputable business? Lastly, scan around their site for a links page. Do they offer reciprocal links? Sometimes you will find forms to fill out to submit your site. These forms get submitted to the webmasters and a review of your site will take place. Upon review, the Webmaster will either accept or decline your link to their page. If there is no form for links, look for an email address to contact the Webmaster directly.
Receiving Reciprocal Links
Now that you know how to find good links, where do you put the reciprocal links on of your site for your link partners? As you would assume, create a links page. This page should consist of the outbound links to your linking partners. You can chose to create a form for other people to offer their site for review as you might of done, or simply add an email address them to contact you. The amount of links that you have on your links page should not be excessive. In fact, in the eyes of search engines, like Google, it is not about how many links you have but how many quality links do you have. Do not bother linking to sites that are not reciprocating back to you on your links page. If you have relevant information that you wish your visitor to view, then add a link to the page of your site that the information pertains to. Your links page should be respected, as you do not want to just link to every website out there nor do you want to be considered a link farm. Remember: 5 good links are better than 15 ones.
A lot of people today are still using programs like Zeus to build large quantities of reciprocal links to their website. In most cases these programs really do not help in the process of building a great reciprocal link campaign. The use of these programs usually result in link farming, which refers to a massive reciprocal linking of websites that really do not pertain to any industry and/or related to each other. A good reciprocal link would be described as two sites that are linking to each other which are of related topics. As times change, quality search engines like Google are adding filters to their Algorithms to combat spammers that are clogging search results with irrelevant information and link farms.
Finding good link partners
With billions of websites making up the World Wide Web, your first question is probably going to be "Where do I start?" Good Question. If you already asked yourself this question before you read it, then you most likely already understand the fact that there are sites you should link to and sites you shouldn't. Your search for good link partners should start with educating yourself on the who's who of your industry on the web. Use a few search engines to find websites related to your industry. Run some searches using your researched keywords and click through some of the sites that appear in the results. Next, critique the sites you view. Are they well written? Is there an abundance of good content? Is this a site that you would want to suggest to someone in a conversation? Are they a reputable business? Lastly, scan around their site for a links page. Do they offer reciprocal links? Sometimes you will find forms to fill out to submit your site. These forms get submitted to the webmasters and a review of your site will take place. Upon review, the Webmaster will either accept or decline your link to their page. If there is no form for links, look for an email address to contact the Webmaster directly.
Receiving Reciprocal Links
Now that you know how to find good links, where do you put the reciprocal links on of your site for your link partners? As you would assume, create a links page. This page should consist of the outbound links to your linking partners. You can chose to create a form for other people to offer their site for review as you might of done, or simply add an email address them to contact you. The amount of links that you have on your links page should not be excessive. In fact, in the eyes of search engines, like Google, it is not about how many links you have but how many quality links do you have. Do not bother linking to sites that are not reciprocating back to you on your links page. If you have relevant information that you wish your visitor to view, then add a link to the page of your site that the information pertains to. Your links page should be respected, as you do not want to just link to every website out there nor do you want to be considered a link farm. Remember: 5 good links are better than 15 ones.
Submit To Directories and Search Engines
5 Directories Search Engines Love
For websites to rank in the algorithmic search results they typically require inbound links…especially to rank for competitive keywords where lots of competing businesses want to rank. In some cases ranking can take hundreds or thousands of inbound links. No matter how high the odds it is good to start with some foundational link building. Here are 5 general directories search engines love
BOTW.org - general directory offering a yearly $100 recurring option and one time fee listings for $250.
Business.com - Business focused directory that charges $299 per year to list your websites.
DMOZ.org - called the Open Directory Project, this directory is anything but open! Submissions are free, but it can take years to get listed in DMOZ because unpaid volunteers edit the categories and are quite picky with what sites they are willing to list.
LII.org - Librarian’s Internet Index is similar to DMOZ, but more actively maintained. They try to focus on listing leading non-commercial and informational websites.
The Yahoo! Directory - one of the older web directories, started in 1994. The Yahoo! Directory charges an annually recurring $299 fee for listing websites.
Will these directories get you to the top of the search results? Probably not, but every journey must start with a first step!
Search Engine Optimization FAQ for dummies
Q: What is a Search Engine?
A: Search engine is usually a Web site where you can go to search for Web sites that have the information you are looking for.
Search engines have a huge searchable database of WebPages collected by an automated program usually called spider (other names are crawler, robot, SearchEngineBot) that visits each site and collects data form the site.
Q: What are Search Directories?
A: Directories are Web sites that have search databases usually edited manually then assessed by an editor. They accept submissions on a hierarchy of categories. For example: Regional: North America: United States: Maryland: Localities: R: Rockville: Business and Economy: Restaurants and Bars. Search engines use directories to return results. Users can search directories using keywords or phrases or browse the categories or subjects. A good example of a directory is http://dmoz.org/.
Q: What are Organic Search Results?
A: Organic Search results are the results that appear on the search engine results page when you search for a particular word on a search engine.
Search Engine Submission
Q: What is Search Engine Submission?
A: Most visitors go to a search engine to look for information on the internet. In order to be found on search engines you will need to register your Web site with that search engine. The process of registering/adding your Web site to search engines is Search Engine Submission.
Q: What is Manual Submission?
A: Manual Submission is the process of submitting new Web sites to Search Engines and Directories individually using a non-automated process. Some Search Engines and Directories have restrictions on automatic submission.
The latest version of SubmitWizard® includes Manual Submission to important search engines and directories.
Q: What is Local Submission?
A: Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Ask.com and others have special pages where you can search for a local business using bits of information like the name of the city, State, Zip etc. This helps searchers find a business located in the town they are searching for.
Search engines gather business information from numerous Web sites, yellow page directories and other databases to provide results on local businesses. Submitting businesses for listing in the local search is Local Submission.
The latest version of SubmitWizard® includes submission to local search engines and directories.
Search Engine Marketing
Q: What is Search Engine Marketing?
A: Search Engine Marketing is a broad term that encompasses all marketing activities related to the use of search engines which promote traffic to your Web site. It includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Submission (SES), Directory Submission, Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns, Paid Placement, Search Engine Optimization, sponsored listings and many promotional activities (Forums, PR news etc)
Search Engine Optimization
Q: What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
A: Search Engine Optimization is the analysis and modification of a Web site to improve its ranking in Search engines. It may involve changes in content, changes to HTML tags in the code, design and layout changes, new text for META tags, headlines, etc.
Q: Why is Search Engine Optimization Important?
A: It is a well known fact that 85% of all traffic to Web sites comes from search engines. It is important especially for small businesses to create a search engine friendly site without losing focus on their customer and business needs of the Web site. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) provides a balanced approach to improve search engine rankings and content. If done correctly, SEO will help improve qualified leads and increased traffic (visitors) to your Web site.
Q: How is Search Engine Optimization Different from Search Engine Submission?
A: Search Engine Submission (SES) is the act of submitting your Web site/URL to search engines to make them aware of the Web site’s presence. SES is a part of SEO. Some advanced search engines have the capability to find Web sites without submission. However, submitting your site to search engines and directories will help improve your ranking.
Q: What are the Basics of Making my Site Search Engine Friendly?
A: Search engines would like to ensure that the results they present to the searchers are relevant and represent good quality and value. To ensure this, search engines continuously update search results to include only those pages that are well written and relevant to the searches the users are performing.
•Write content that will sell your products to your end user/customer.
•Link all your pages correctly and make sure the links work.
•Make use of keywords that people can use to search for your site, by adding them to image names, page names, etc.
•Check the HTML created for your site to ensure it has the relevant keywords in the title, description and body text.
You can use the SubmitWizard® Search Engine Optimization Tool to check how search engine friendly your site is and for tips on how to make modifications.
Q: What Are Inbound Links?
A: Inbound links are links on other sites that send visitors to your site. Having quality links from highly ranked sites is good for search engine ranking. At the same time search engines frown on link exchanges whose sole purpose is to improve rankings. Inbound links are valued for relevancy of content and purpose.
The SubmitWizard® Link Popularity report gives you a detailed report on your URLs link popularity.
Q: What are Keywords and Why Are They Important?
A: Keywords are search terms or phrases entered into search engines by customers to find your site. A critical part of the search engine optimization for any Web site is determining the appropriate words and phrases to use in your site’s content. With the SubmitWizard® tool you don’t have to spend hours figuring out what keywords to use when promoting your site.
You can also purchase keywords, so that the search engines will display your ad /banner when that specific word is searched. (Example: Pay per Click Advertising)
Q: How Can I Find The Right Keywords To Use On My Site?
A: SubmitWizard® has a keyword tool as part of the package. This tool will allow you to find the most valuable keywords to help your business be found online. You can find the best keywords to use by starting with your customers in mind and what you think they will be searching for to find your business.
Q: What is Link Popularity?
A: The number of quality Web sites that have links to your own site is a factor that could help you get better position in search engines. Link Popularity is an important factor for Search Engines consider to determine page rank.
SubmitWizard® has a Link Popularity Report which allows you to check your position and the trend of your site’s popularity, you may then determine to follow-up with other sites to add your site links.
Q: What are META Tags and Why are they Important?
A: META Tags are pieces of HTML code that are included in the HTML of your page and are "read" by search engines. The tags provide information such as keywords and a description of your page. Search engines use this information to classify your Web pages in their databases, so when a user enters search words matching those in your META tags, your page should be among the results. META tags are invisible to users of your Web page and don't appear when your page is viewed by a Web browser.
Q: How Do I Add META Tags to my Site?
A: Open your webpage using an HTML editor. Most editors have a "Design" view and a "Code" view. The code view gives you a look at the source code of your page. Using the source code, locate the head section of the code.
A: Search engine is usually a Web site where you can go to search for Web sites that have the information you are looking for.
Search engines have a huge searchable database of WebPages collected by an automated program usually called spider (other names are crawler, robot, SearchEngineBot) that visits each site and collects data form the site.
Q: What are Search Directories?
A: Directories are Web sites that have search databases usually edited manually then assessed by an editor. They accept submissions on a hierarchy of categories. For example: Regional: North America: United States: Maryland: Localities: R: Rockville: Business and Economy: Restaurants and Bars. Search engines use directories to return results. Users can search directories using keywords or phrases or browse the categories or subjects. A good example of a directory is http://dmoz.org/.
Q: What are Organic Search Results?
A: Organic Search results are the results that appear on the search engine results page when you search for a particular word on a search engine.
Search Engine Submission
Q: What is Search Engine Submission?
A: Most visitors go to a search engine to look for information on the internet. In order to be found on search engines you will need to register your Web site with that search engine. The process of registering/adding your Web site to search engines is Search Engine Submission.
Q: What is Manual Submission?
A: Manual Submission is the process of submitting new Web sites to Search Engines and Directories individually using a non-automated process. Some Search Engines and Directories have restrictions on automatic submission.
The latest version of SubmitWizard® includes Manual Submission to important search engines and directories.
Q: What is Local Submission?
A: Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Ask.com and others have special pages where you can search for a local business using bits of information like the name of the city, State, Zip etc. This helps searchers find a business located in the town they are searching for.
Search engines gather business information from numerous Web sites, yellow page directories and other databases to provide results on local businesses. Submitting businesses for listing in the local search is Local Submission.
The latest version of SubmitWizard® includes submission to local search engines and directories.
Search Engine Marketing
Q: What is Search Engine Marketing?
A: Search Engine Marketing is a broad term that encompasses all marketing activities related to the use of search engines which promote traffic to your Web site. It includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Submission (SES), Directory Submission, Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns, Paid Placement, Search Engine Optimization, sponsored listings and many promotional activities (Forums, PR news etc)
Search Engine Optimization
Q: What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
A: Search Engine Optimization is the analysis and modification of a Web site to improve its ranking in Search engines. It may involve changes in content, changes to HTML tags in the code, design and layout changes, new text for META tags, headlines, etc.
Q: Why is Search Engine Optimization Important?
A: It is a well known fact that 85% of all traffic to Web sites comes from search engines. It is important especially for small businesses to create a search engine friendly site without losing focus on their customer and business needs of the Web site. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) provides a balanced approach to improve search engine rankings and content. If done correctly, SEO will help improve qualified leads and increased traffic (visitors) to your Web site.
Q: How is Search Engine Optimization Different from Search Engine Submission?
A: Search Engine Submission (SES) is the act of submitting your Web site/URL to search engines to make them aware of the Web site’s presence. SES is a part of SEO. Some advanced search engines have the capability to find Web sites without submission. However, submitting your site to search engines and directories will help improve your ranking.
Q: What are the Basics of Making my Site Search Engine Friendly?
A: Search engines would like to ensure that the results they present to the searchers are relevant and represent good quality and value. To ensure this, search engines continuously update search results to include only those pages that are well written and relevant to the searches the users are performing.
•Write content that will sell your products to your end user/customer.
•Link all your pages correctly and make sure the links work.
•Make use of keywords that people can use to search for your site, by adding them to image names, page names, etc.
•Check the HTML created for your site to ensure it has the relevant keywords in the title, description and body text.
You can use the SubmitWizard® Search Engine Optimization Tool to check how search engine friendly your site is and for tips on how to make modifications.
Q: What Are Inbound Links?
A: Inbound links are links on other sites that send visitors to your site. Having quality links from highly ranked sites is good for search engine ranking. At the same time search engines frown on link exchanges whose sole purpose is to improve rankings. Inbound links are valued for relevancy of content and purpose.
The SubmitWizard® Link Popularity report gives you a detailed report on your URLs link popularity.
Q: What are Keywords and Why Are They Important?
A: Keywords are search terms or phrases entered into search engines by customers to find your site. A critical part of the search engine optimization for any Web site is determining the appropriate words and phrases to use in your site’s content. With the SubmitWizard® tool you don’t have to spend hours figuring out what keywords to use when promoting your site.
You can also purchase keywords, so that the search engines will display your ad /banner when that specific word is searched. (Example: Pay per Click Advertising)
Q: How Can I Find The Right Keywords To Use On My Site?
A: SubmitWizard® has a keyword tool as part of the package. This tool will allow you to find the most valuable keywords to help your business be found online. You can find the best keywords to use by starting with your customers in mind and what you think they will be searching for to find your business.
Q: What is Link Popularity?
A: The number of quality Web sites that have links to your own site is a factor that could help you get better position in search engines. Link Popularity is an important factor for Search Engines consider to determine page rank.
SubmitWizard® has a Link Popularity Report which allows you to check your position and the trend of your site’s popularity, you may then determine to follow-up with other sites to add your site links.
Q: What are META Tags and Why are they Important?
A: META Tags are pieces of HTML code that are included in the HTML of your page and are "read" by search engines. The tags provide information such as keywords and a description of your page. Search engines use this information to classify your Web pages in their databases, so when a user enters search words matching those in your META tags, your page should be among the results. META tags are invisible to users of your Web page and don't appear when your page is viewed by a Web browser.
Q: How Do I Add META Tags to my Site?
A: Open your webpage using an HTML editor. Most editors have a "Design" view and a "Code" view. The code view gives you a look at the source code of your page. Using the source code, locate the head section of the code.
5/4/09
Starting an online business
Outsourcing the design work for the site leaves you with more free time to look at the bigger picture and also gets the work done more professionally. Choose a company that offers affordable website design and creative website design as your site is the front face of your business and the point of contact between the products and the potential customer. Make sure that the website is designed to retain and convert.
Starting an online business can be a really simple uncomplicated process provided that certain thumb rules are kept in mind.
Business Plan
Before actually proceeding with a new website development it is important to lay down a business plan. Identify the market – whether you will be targeting a niche segment or a mass market.
Short listing areas that set you apart from your competitors helps in identifying areas of the site that will be focused upon. This would mean that a short review of competitor websites – their services, products and offerings would be required.
Once the target audience is finalized, it is a good idea to try and get to know a little about more about your potential customers. Use this information to build a site catered to your selected audience.
Knowing what sells online (you can check some competitor websites for this) gives more clarity in the deals and any other add ons that you would offer online.
An online business optimization strategy should also be worked into the overall business plan. This helps streamline the online promotional activities that would be carried out at the time of launching the site.
Domain Name
Hunting for a good domain name can be quite a daunting task as most related names are mostly taken. Keep in mind that a domain name should be short and memorable and easily typed.
Reliable web host
Before selecting a hosting provider some ground work to check - the support, uptime provided, availability of a backup system, provision of other web hosting features such as email features, scripting features etc., needs to be done. Other areas that should be addressed are storage space to store the files that make up your web site, the bandwidth allowed, Compatibility with any server-side software you use.
Website Design
Outsourcing the design work for the site leaves you with more free time to look at the bigger picture and also gets the work done more professionally. Your site is the front face of your business and the point of contact between the products and the potential customer. Make sure that the website is designed to retain and convert.
Ensuring that the site adheres to search engine friendly guidelines brings in the possibility of increased online traffic.
Merchant account
With a multi fold increase in online purchasing signing up for a secure merchant account makes it easier for the user to make a purchase. The aim of the site should be to make it as easy as possible for the potential buyer to make a purchase. Signing up and providing access to an easy payment option adds to the ease of use. Areas where merchant accounts can be compared are the fees associated, discounts, additional costs like transaction fee, monthly statement fees, gateway fees, annual membership fees, cancellation fees etc.
Site Security
When collecting sensitive information form customers, you need to make sure that the transaction is secure. This is achieved with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology. SSL encrypts the connection so that a hacker cannot penetrate and steal the sensitive information. For sites dealing with sensitive data purchase an SSL certificate and make sure that the site is secure.
Manage and track statistics
Monitor real trends in traffic. Web analytics will help you understand user behavior and improve the performance of your site. Identifying pages that perform better helps focus on the necessary in order increase profits. Over a longer run - tracking traffic, results in increasing targeted web site traffic and improved search engine rankings.
Keeping some of these factors in mind helps in developing a well organized, easily navigable site geared for higher profits and better visibility.
Starting an online business can be a really simple uncomplicated process provided that certain thumb rules are kept in mind.
Business Plan
Before actually proceeding with a new website development it is important to lay down a business plan. Identify the market – whether you will be targeting a niche segment or a mass market.
Short listing areas that set you apart from your competitors helps in identifying areas of the site that will be focused upon. This would mean that a short review of competitor websites – their services, products and offerings would be required.
Once the target audience is finalized, it is a good idea to try and get to know a little about more about your potential customers. Use this information to build a site catered to your selected audience.
Knowing what sells online (you can check some competitor websites for this) gives more clarity in the deals and any other add ons that you would offer online.
An online business optimization strategy should also be worked into the overall business plan. This helps streamline the online promotional activities that would be carried out at the time of launching the site.
Domain Name
Hunting for a good domain name can be quite a daunting task as most related names are mostly taken. Keep in mind that a domain name should be short and memorable and easily typed.
Reliable web host
Before selecting a hosting provider some ground work to check - the support, uptime provided, availability of a backup system, provision of other web hosting features such as email features, scripting features etc., needs to be done. Other areas that should be addressed are storage space to store the files that make up your web site, the bandwidth allowed, Compatibility with any server-side software you use.
Website Design
Outsourcing the design work for the site leaves you with more free time to look at the bigger picture and also gets the work done more professionally. Your site is the front face of your business and the point of contact between the products and the potential customer. Make sure that the website is designed to retain and convert.
Ensuring that the site adheres to search engine friendly guidelines brings in the possibility of increased online traffic.
Merchant account
With a multi fold increase in online purchasing signing up for a secure merchant account makes it easier for the user to make a purchase. The aim of the site should be to make it as easy as possible for the potential buyer to make a purchase. Signing up and providing access to an easy payment option adds to the ease of use. Areas where merchant accounts can be compared are the fees associated, discounts, additional costs like transaction fee, monthly statement fees, gateway fees, annual membership fees, cancellation fees etc.
Site Security
When collecting sensitive information form customers, you need to make sure that the transaction is secure. This is achieved with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology. SSL encrypts the connection so that a hacker cannot penetrate and steal the sensitive information. For sites dealing with sensitive data purchase an SSL certificate and make sure that the site is secure.
Manage and track statistics
Monitor real trends in traffic. Web analytics will help you understand user behavior and improve the performance of your site. Identifying pages that perform better helps focus on the necessary in order increase profits. Over a longer run - tracking traffic, results in increasing targeted web site traffic and improved search engine rankings.
Keeping some of these factors in mind helps in developing a well organized, easily navigable site geared for higher profits and better visibility.
Importance of Choosing the right Keyword
Getting the right traffic depends a lot on the keywords that a site ranks for. The most searched keywords need not necessarily be the right keywords for your site. Traffic related to the website service is extremely important as wrong traffic may result in lesser conversions on the site. It is better to get fewer visitors that actually want to buy what you are providing rather that a large number of visitors who leave as soon as they reach the main page because the search term that brought them to your site did not exactly match with the information available online.
A good keyword research should be a part of the professional seo service being availed. There should be a good percentage of high paying keywords as well as the least competitive keywords - provided these are related to the product offered.
If your site is only selling “Baby food” then getting traffic from related researched keywords like “healthy baby food”, “baby food online” etc. will get more focused traffic to the site than getting traffic from a more generic keyword like “babies”.
A visitor landing on a page that is very relevant to the queried search term will show a better possibility of conversion as compared to a visitor reaching from a broad search term. Since the visitor is already searching for the product or service provided on your website the chances of the visitor to stay on long enough to make a buying decision also increases.
However, getting traffic from one specific keyword is not enough. By adding variations to the root keyword (provided the variations remain a part of the main service or product) you can target a wider range of keywords. Targeting high paying keywords gets the site to rank for a number of focused keywords as the competition for these researched keywords becomes lesser and results are seen faster. Covering a wider range of keywords will get a good target audience than just ranking on one competitive keyword. Make sure that the search engine optimization services provider has enough variations for the root keyword being targeted.
A keyword research that takes into account different keyword combinations and variations covers a wider range of possible entry points to the landing page. A good keyword analysis can also contain keywords that are location specific, region specific or country specific. For instance, a lawyer practicing in a particular town would most likely target people living in the same region instead of targeting the entire country. Hence, targeted keywords can be more region specific like “attorney Florida” etc. A focus on region would help get targeted visitors, not just diluted traffic.
For any given topic there are a number of ways that searchers can select a keyword. Keeping this in mind there are a number of variations of key phrases that a webpage can be optimized for. The detailed Keyword research report should take into account a number of factors such as relevancy, misspelling, singular and plurals, using qualifiers to make the keyword more focused etc.
An initial list should identify as many keywords as possible that are related to your website and target audience. There a number of online Keyword Research tools that can be used to find the number of searches being made on a particular term and also seek other alternate related terms.
Each page on your website could be dealing with a different topic (product or service). The keywords for each page should be relevant to the topic discussed on the page.
This should also include analyzing the competition for the search terms listed. This will give an idea of how many pages are competing for the top spot. Your site's Page Rank is also an important parameter in keyword research analysis. If your site has a high Page rank then it has a better chance of ranking for a highly competitive keyword else it is better to focus on more specific keywords.
Once the right set of keywords are identified then incorporating these within the content of the website takes you one step closer to better search engine placement.
Focusing on the wrong keywords can result in higher investments and lower returns.
Hiring an seo services provider can help identify the right revenue generating keywords for improved search engine rankings so that you move one step closer to your business goals.
A good keyword research should be a part of the professional seo service being availed. There should be a good percentage of high paying keywords as well as the least competitive keywords - provided these are related to the product offered.
If your site is only selling “Baby food” then getting traffic from related researched keywords like “healthy baby food”, “baby food online” etc. will get more focused traffic to the site than getting traffic from a more generic keyword like “babies”.
A visitor landing on a page that is very relevant to the queried search term will show a better possibility of conversion as compared to a visitor reaching from a broad search term. Since the visitor is already searching for the product or service provided on your website the chances of the visitor to stay on long enough to make a buying decision also increases.
However, getting traffic from one specific keyword is not enough. By adding variations to the root keyword (provided the variations remain a part of the main service or product) you can target a wider range of keywords. Targeting high paying keywords gets the site to rank for a number of focused keywords as the competition for these researched keywords becomes lesser and results are seen faster. Covering a wider range of keywords will get a good target audience than just ranking on one competitive keyword. Make sure that the search engine optimization services provider has enough variations for the root keyword being targeted.
A keyword research that takes into account different keyword combinations and variations covers a wider range of possible entry points to the landing page. A good keyword analysis can also contain keywords that are location specific, region specific or country specific. For instance, a lawyer practicing in a particular town would most likely target people living in the same region instead of targeting the entire country. Hence, targeted keywords can be more region specific like “attorney Florida” etc. A focus on region would help get targeted visitors, not just diluted traffic.
For any given topic there are a number of ways that searchers can select a keyword. Keeping this in mind there are a number of variations of key phrases that a webpage can be optimized for. The detailed Keyword research report should take into account a number of factors such as relevancy, misspelling, singular and plurals, using qualifiers to make the keyword more focused etc.
An initial list should identify as many keywords as possible that are related to your website and target audience. There a number of online Keyword Research tools that can be used to find the number of searches being made on a particular term and also seek other alternate related terms.
Each page on your website could be dealing with a different topic (product or service). The keywords for each page should be relevant to the topic discussed on the page.
This should also include analyzing the competition for the search terms listed. This will give an idea of how many pages are competing for the top spot. Your site's Page Rank is also an important parameter in keyword research analysis. If your site has a high Page rank then it has a better chance of ranking for a highly competitive keyword else it is better to focus on more specific keywords.
Once the right set of keywords are identified then incorporating these within the content of the website takes you one step closer to better search engine placement.
Focusing on the wrong keywords can result in higher investments and lower returns.
Hiring an seo services provider can help identify the right revenue generating keywords for improved search engine rankings so that you move one step closer to your business goals.
5/2/09
How To Find Ideas For Things To Sell Online
Stuck for ideas? I thought it would be cool to do a little experiment. I grabbed todays paper and went through it with my 'marketing mind'. Watch over my shoulder as I show you how to find the ideas you could later test with research to develop products or promote affiliate opportunities.
For more inspiration check through this popular list if goals people make for themselves:
lose weight
stop procrastinating
fall in love
write a book
be happy
get a tattoo
drink more water
go on a road trip
get married
travel the world
take more pictures
learn Spanish
save money
learn to play the guitar
make new friends
buy a house
read more books
exercise regularly
get out of debt
learn Japanese
be more confident
get a job
eat healthier
start a business
quit smoking
learn to cook
learn sign language
stop biting my nails
learn to play the piano
learn to surf
learn to dance
graduate from college
get organized
practice yoga
worry less
get wealthy
create a web site
meditate daily
write a song
get a dog
And if you are still stuck try looking at thes popular categories:
Aging
Beauty
Arts Crafts
Auto
Internet Marketing
Business
Career
Coaching
Consulting
Computers
Cooking
Dating
Finance
Fitness
Gardening
Health
Hobbies
Investing
Motivation
Parenting
Pets
Speaking
Property
Relationships
Religion
Retirement
Sales
Self Improvement
Shopping
Sport
Stock Trading
Time Management
Weddings
Weight
Wellness
Work at home
Writing
You can also look at these resources to get ideas:
Magazines.com
Google Book Search
Dummies.com
ebay pulse
http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm
And try this lateral search tool:
Search Lateral Markets
The next step is to run all those opportunities through a detailed filter of questions and do keyword and volume research online to see what is there and how big the opportunity is.
For more inspiration check through this popular list if goals people make for themselves:
lose weight
stop procrastinating
fall in love
write a book
be happy
get a tattoo
drink more water
go on a road trip
get married
travel the world
take more pictures
learn Spanish
save money
learn to play the guitar
make new friends
buy a house
read more books
exercise regularly
get out of debt
learn Japanese
be more confident
get a job
eat healthier
start a business
quit smoking
learn to cook
learn sign language
stop biting my nails
learn to play the piano
learn to surf
learn to dance
graduate from college
get organized
practice yoga
worry less
get wealthy
create a web site
meditate daily
write a song
get a dog
And if you are still stuck try looking at thes popular categories:
Aging
Beauty
Arts Crafts
Auto
Internet Marketing
Business
Career
Coaching
Consulting
Computers
Cooking
Dating
Finance
Fitness
Gardening
Health
Hobbies
Investing
Motivation
Parenting
Pets
Speaking
Property
Relationships
Religion
Retirement
Sales
Self Improvement
Shopping
Sport
Stock Trading
Time Management
Weddings
Weight
Wellness
Work at home
Writing
You can also look at these resources to get ideas:
Magazines.com
Google Book Search
Dummies.com
ebay pulse
http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm
And try this lateral search tool:
Search Lateral Markets
The next step is to run all those opportunities through a detailed filter of questions and do keyword and volume research online to see what is there and how big the opportunity is.
How To Make Money by Selling Information
There are things to consider when selling information. There are many people already selling information out there and the competition is fierce... unless you are already known as a pro in that field. You are really going to have to work on creating the best information piece you can develop and promote yourself as more qualified than anyone else in that field to give you the edge in selling your information.
How will you know if you have a winning report? Take an example from a well known losing category. Recipes rarely sell via mail order. If you look in the tabloid magazines and see people selling recipes, you will notice they have purchased multiple insertions for a few weeks then drop away. They often spend more money on the ads than they ever get back selling a recipe. Why? Because everyone likes to think they know a thing or two about cooking. These ads never point out to why they are the best in their field or what really makes them unique. Often what happens to those who sell these reports is they end up on mailing lists of others who will try to sell them get rich quick schemes.
Does your report say something new, unique and helpful to the consumer? Is it well written? Is it easy to follow and understand? Do you have testimonial that can back up any claims you make about your report?
Now is the time to get into the specifics of selling information.
Finding Your Format
Will you sell reports for mail order or for downloading online or both?
If you are selling for mail order, you need to know what size book or booklet the finished product will be. If it is under 50 pages [front and back], you can get away with a booklet format. Anything more than that you may need to create a book.
If it is a small booklet, you can run copies from your computer or go to a local print shop and have them do it for you. Invest in a long arm stapler if you plan to do it yourself so you can hook the pages together in the middle.
To create a book does not have to be such a great expense anymore. With Print On Demand technology, you can have a publisher keep a copy of your book in a digital file in order to retrieve it when there is an order.
Lulu Press is a great place to consider. The basic service is absolutely free. Just create your book and they charge a nominal fee for each book you order to be run off their press. They even have a store where they can sell your book for you for a percent of the profit. For the deluxe service, you can get an ISBN number which will get your book listed with the big online book retail services which will give you more exposure.
Lulu also has e-book formats which will create your book in a pdf document which can easily and instantly be downloaded to any computer.
With Lulu, you can set your price for the book and determine, in the end, how much money you will get for each book that is sold. I highly recommend this option for those who want to sell information whether by mail or online.
Writing Your Report
The two step formula boils down to "what do you know" and "what sells".
What do people want? This is the question you must answer to find out what will sell. Sure, there are all kinds of niche markets out there for special experts, but I will address that later. This is for general audiences which have the higher impact for sales.
People want anything that will make them rich, feel safe, feel sexy and/or loved, have an advantage over others, or to know information that is secret.
[According to traditional marketing strategies, people do like to have their appetites teased, but in the case of selling reports a recipe book rarely sells unless you are a proven pro in that field and this goes under specialty reports. This only works if selling food directly to people.]
What do you know that others do not know? Do you know ways that will make people rich? Or safe? Or sexy? Or loved? Do you have any secret insider information that could give anyone an advantage in the fields of money, safety or love? These are the information reports that sell. If you do not know enough about these topics, research it until you can become an expert in the field. Once you have collected all your notes to create your book, you can start writing it.
Niche books are a little bit harder to sell to a general audience. These are the ones that are very specific and very topical. For instance, a book or report on all the characters of Star Trek is likely to only appeal to those who are Star Trek fans. In order to be taken seriously as an expert to write a report for Star Trek fans, you must generally be known in these circles to have a lot of expertise knowledge that people will be willing to pay for your edge. You might have a web site dedicated to Star Trek with a lot of credible information that will give you an edge in selling anything related to the topic. You might be a regular at the conventions and have a booth where you display products and dispense information which will give your credibility boost.
Recipes are hard to sell and would require a niche market where you can promote yourself as an expert in this field. Top name celebrity chefs and well known restaurants will always pull the lion's share of profits from selling recipes. As an average person, you hold little power in comparison to the top dogs. Why do you think you are more qualified than anyone else to do recipes? Everyone thinks they are a good cook to some degree. You need to define why in order to convey this to your audience.
Perhaps you have grown up in Louisiana all your life as a daughter of a cook in a fancy Cajun restaurant and you have witnessed many famous people who always come back for more. Maybe you know a few recipes used there and have tried them yourself. This would give you an edge over someone selling a Cajun recipe they found and tried. Perhaps your grandmother sold cookies during the Great Depression and you have an incredible story to sell with the recipe [everyone has a grandmother's recipe, why is your's unique?] Maybe you know a way to make things on your grocer's shelf, but cheaper such as Taco Bell's seasoning mix or Open Pit Barbeque Sauce. Maybe you have a new technique of cooking something using equipment you invented. If you are doing something this common, you need a hook to make it uniquely yours.
Start with an outline. Your book or report needs a beginning, middle and an end. Your beginning should outline the purpose of your book. Your middle should go into full detail about your purpose. Your end should sum it up.
Here is an first outline example:
Book Title - How To Attract The Opposite Sex
I. Beginning - This book will show the reader how to attract the opposite sex by using eye appeal, flirtation, conversation, and a proper dating etiquette.
II. The Middle
A. Why Does It Work - As long as the human race has been around, these techniques go to the heart of your targeted goal to secure the attention of a potential mate. These specific techniques have been proven to work in conjunction with each other to guarantee success. Anyone who applies these techniques will see it works for them as well as any Casanova.
B. Eye Appeal - The first and most important step is being noticed. Cite examples of people who do this. List ways the reader can do this.
C. Flirtation - Once you get the person to see you, make sure they know you are interested in them. Cite examples of people who do this. List ways the reader can do this.
D. Conversation - This is where you determine what type of relationship this will be. If it is a one night stand, the conversation may be short and to the point. If this is to be a long term relationship, your conversational skills must be in direct appeal to the opposite sex on the lines of topics and intellect. By determining if they like a true equal or someone smarter or not as smart before engaging in too much talk can help steer you in the right direction. Cite examples of people who do this. List ways the reader can do this.
E. Dating - Going too fast or too slow can have its advantages and disadvantages. Which track do you want to take? What rules should you follow when dating? Cite examples of people who do this. List ways the reader can do this.
III. In Conclusion - As you can see through the previous examples and step by step methods for you to accomplish each goal, anyone can attract the opposite sex.
In the above example [feel free to use it if you want, but please give credit where it is due] you see a definite direction of the report. This skeleton is the structure that keeps you on topic and prevents you from rambling on endlessly. It will help you focus on making a book that will keep the reader wanting to read more.
With a structure in place, you can write your report directly from it. At first by expanding the outline into more sub-categories and even in sub-categories of your sub-categories. Then expand on each point you want to make by creating short and easy to understand sentences. Keep up with creating sentences off of your outline until you have a book in place where you can remove the outline tags. Then go over it several times to make sure it feels like a good and comfortable read with much information.
Use a spell and grammar check. Lotus Pro or Word and most word processing software will include both spell and grammar checks. Do not let the software make all the corrections automatically. Be sure you have it point out each error to be sure it is truly is an error.
The basic rule for writing to a general audience is it must be at a third to fourth grade reading level which is the comfort level of most adults. I really hate to tell you, but from a marketing point of view this is true. It's not so much that people are stupid, but when people want to kick back and read they do not really like that much of a challenge. [I learned this lesson the hard way by creating a book that tested out at a near 9th grade level which went over most people's head.] There are many forms of software out there that can help you determine if your work is at the appropriate reading grade level called the "Flesch-Kincaid Index." If you have Lotus Pro or Word, you may already have that tool attached to your program and can have it check your document. Many word processing software has it included, but if not, you may want to go to the web to find it.
If the grammar and spelling are correct. If your book tests out at a 3rd-4th grade reading level. If your book is fun to read and full of information. You are ready for the next step.
If going to Lulu, follow the step by step process to submit your work online. If you have your own Adobe software to create a pdf document or if you are going to use a printer service, make sure your document is "print-ready" where it will look exactly like you intend the finished product to look. If using some forms of e-book creating software, you will often have to convert it to an html format for the software to produce the book.
When you have a finished product - a book, booklet, or an e-book - then you are ready to promote it.
Promoting Your Book
Tabloids are one way to promote your material. Place a short, but powerful ad in the classified ads of papers such as Weekly World News, The Star, Thrifty Nickel, and other similar papers. Use hot, powerful words and direct them to a web site and/or phone number [with a voice mail recording] which will do all of your selling for you.
Create a phone script for a voice mail sales campaign designed to further explain your product and detail instructions on how to purchase your information. You may even want them to go to your web site for further information.
On your web site, create a sales pitch to help your potential customer focus on what's in it for them. Appeal to their senses on why they will benefit from your information. Explain why they cannot do without it and how bad it would be if they passed up this limited opportunity. Carefully spell out what you want them to do so they do not miss this report - "Buy Now before midnight to get the best price on this report! It will change your life forever!" Have several links for them to click to purchase so they do not miss an opportunity to buy it. Explain in the link you want them to click it to buy it. Tell them the methods you accept for payment and how the product will be delivered. Most importantly, tell them, upfront, the price...people do get angry when the price is hidden near the end of the transaction and will often not buy because they feel it is deceit on your end.
With a web site and a phone selling your plan, all you need to do is to assure people will see both the web site or listen to the message. Use the search engines to your full advantage. Join an affiliate program and have people sell for you. Give buyers an incentive to sell on your behalf. Place a recommend a friend link on your site and a bookmark this page link so those who have not bought can come back later. Place ads in online classified ad sites and in ezines related to your topic.
By doing all these things, you will get the exposure you need. You may have to tweak your ad from time to time, but if you are getting the traffic your direction, you will eventually get the sales.
How will you know if you have a winning report? Take an example from a well known losing category. Recipes rarely sell via mail order. If you look in the tabloid magazines and see people selling recipes, you will notice they have purchased multiple insertions for a few weeks then drop away. They often spend more money on the ads than they ever get back selling a recipe. Why? Because everyone likes to think they know a thing or two about cooking. These ads never point out to why they are the best in their field or what really makes them unique. Often what happens to those who sell these reports is they end up on mailing lists of others who will try to sell them get rich quick schemes.
Does your report say something new, unique and helpful to the consumer? Is it well written? Is it easy to follow and understand? Do you have testimonial that can back up any claims you make about your report?
Now is the time to get into the specifics of selling information.
Finding Your Format
Will you sell reports for mail order or for downloading online or both?
If you are selling for mail order, you need to know what size book or booklet the finished product will be. If it is under 50 pages [front and back], you can get away with a booklet format. Anything more than that you may need to create a book.
If it is a small booklet, you can run copies from your computer or go to a local print shop and have them do it for you. Invest in a long arm stapler if you plan to do it yourself so you can hook the pages together in the middle.
To create a book does not have to be such a great expense anymore. With Print On Demand technology, you can have a publisher keep a copy of your book in a digital file in order to retrieve it when there is an order.
Lulu Press is a great place to consider. The basic service is absolutely free. Just create your book and they charge a nominal fee for each book you order to be run off their press. They even have a store where they can sell your book for you for a percent of the profit. For the deluxe service, you can get an ISBN number which will get your book listed with the big online book retail services which will give you more exposure.
Lulu also has e-book formats which will create your book in a pdf document which can easily and instantly be downloaded to any computer.
With Lulu, you can set your price for the book and determine, in the end, how much money you will get for each book that is sold. I highly recommend this option for those who want to sell information whether by mail or online.
Writing Your Report
The two step formula boils down to "what do you know" and "what sells".
What do people want? This is the question you must answer to find out what will sell. Sure, there are all kinds of niche markets out there for special experts, but I will address that later. This is for general audiences which have the higher impact for sales.
People want anything that will make them rich, feel safe, feel sexy and/or loved, have an advantage over others, or to know information that is secret.
[According to traditional marketing strategies, people do like to have their appetites teased, but in the case of selling reports a recipe book rarely sells unless you are a proven pro in that field and this goes under specialty reports. This only works if selling food directly to people.]
What do you know that others do not know? Do you know ways that will make people rich? Or safe? Or sexy? Or loved? Do you have any secret insider information that could give anyone an advantage in the fields of money, safety or love? These are the information reports that sell. If you do not know enough about these topics, research it until you can become an expert in the field. Once you have collected all your notes to create your book, you can start writing it.
Niche books are a little bit harder to sell to a general audience. These are the ones that are very specific and very topical. For instance, a book or report on all the characters of Star Trek is likely to only appeal to those who are Star Trek fans. In order to be taken seriously as an expert to write a report for Star Trek fans, you must generally be known in these circles to have a lot of expertise knowledge that people will be willing to pay for your edge. You might have a web site dedicated to Star Trek with a lot of credible information that will give you an edge in selling anything related to the topic. You might be a regular at the conventions and have a booth where you display products and dispense information which will give your credibility boost.
Recipes are hard to sell and would require a niche market where you can promote yourself as an expert in this field. Top name celebrity chefs and well known restaurants will always pull the lion's share of profits from selling recipes. As an average person, you hold little power in comparison to the top dogs. Why do you think you are more qualified than anyone else to do recipes? Everyone thinks they are a good cook to some degree. You need to define why in order to convey this to your audience.
Perhaps you have grown up in Louisiana all your life as a daughter of a cook in a fancy Cajun restaurant and you have witnessed many famous people who always come back for more. Maybe you know a few recipes used there and have tried them yourself. This would give you an edge over someone selling a Cajun recipe they found and tried. Perhaps your grandmother sold cookies during the Great Depression and you have an incredible story to sell with the recipe [everyone has a grandmother's recipe, why is your's unique?] Maybe you know a way to make things on your grocer's shelf, but cheaper such as Taco Bell's seasoning mix or Open Pit Barbeque Sauce. Maybe you have a new technique of cooking something using equipment you invented. If you are doing something this common, you need a hook to make it uniquely yours.
Start with an outline. Your book or report needs a beginning, middle and an end. Your beginning should outline the purpose of your book. Your middle should go into full detail about your purpose. Your end should sum it up.
Here is an first outline example:
Book Title - How To Attract The Opposite Sex
I. Beginning - This book will show the reader how to attract the opposite sex by using eye appeal, flirtation, conversation, and a proper dating etiquette.
II. The Middle
A. Why Does It Work - As long as the human race has been around, these techniques go to the heart of your targeted goal to secure the attention of a potential mate. These specific techniques have been proven to work in conjunction with each other to guarantee success. Anyone who applies these techniques will see it works for them as well as any Casanova.
B. Eye Appeal - The first and most important step is being noticed. Cite examples of people who do this. List ways the reader can do this.
C. Flirtation - Once you get the person to see you, make sure they know you are interested in them. Cite examples of people who do this. List ways the reader can do this.
D. Conversation - This is where you determine what type of relationship this will be. If it is a one night stand, the conversation may be short and to the point. If this is to be a long term relationship, your conversational skills must be in direct appeal to the opposite sex on the lines of topics and intellect. By determining if they like a true equal or someone smarter or not as smart before engaging in too much talk can help steer you in the right direction. Cite examples of people who do this. List ways the reader can do this.
E. Dating - Going too fast or too slow can have its advantages and disadvantages. Which track do you want to take? What rules should you follow when dating? Cite examples of people who do this. List ways the reader can do this.
III. In Conclusion - As you can see through the previous examples and step by step methods for you to accomplish each goal, anyone can attract the opposite sex.
In the above example [feel free to use it if you want, but please give credit where it is due] you see a definite direction of the report. This skeleton is the structure that keeps you on topic and prevents you from rambling on endlessly. It will help you focus on making a book that will keep the reader wanting to read more.
With a structure in place, you can write your report directly from it. At first by expanding the outline into more sub-categories and even in sub-categories of your sub-categories. Then expand on each point you want to make by creating short and easy to understand sentences. Keep up with creating sentences off of your outline until you have a book in place where you can remove the outline tags. Then go over it several times to make sure it feels like a good and comfortable read with much information.
Use a spell and grammar check. Lotus Pro or Word and most word processing software will include both spell and grammar checks. Do not let the software make all the corrections automatically. Be sure you have it point out each error to be sure it is truly is an error.
The basic rule for writing to a general audience is it must be at a third to fourth grade reading level which is the comfort level of most adults. I really hate to tell you, but from a marketing point of view this is true. It's not so much that people are stupid, but when people want to kick back and read they do not really like that much of a challenge. [I learned this lesson the hard way by creating a book that tested out at a near 9th grade level which went over most people's head.] There are many forms of software out there that can help you determine if your work is at the appropriate reading grade level called the "Flesch-Kincaid Index." If you have Lotus Pro or Word, you may already have that tool attached to your program and can have it check your document. Many word processing software has it included, but if not, you may want to go to the web to find it.
If the grammar and spelling are correct. If your book tests out at a 3rd-4th grade reading level. If your book is fun to read and full of information. You are ready for the next step.
If going to Lulu, follow the step by step process to submit your work online. If you have your own Adobe software to create a pdf document or if you are going to use a printer service, make sure your document is "print-ready" where it will look exactly like you intend the finished product to look. If using some forms of e-book creating software, you will often have to convert it to an html format for the software to produce the book.
When you have a finished product - a book, booklet, or an e-book - then you are ready to promote it.
Promoting Your Book
Tabloids are one way to promote your material. Place a short, but powerful ad in the classified ads of papers such as Weekly World News, The Star, Thrifty Nickel, and other similar papers. Use hot, powerful words and direct them to a web site and/or phone number [with a voice mail recording] which will do all of your selling for you.
Create a phone script for a voice mail sales campaign designed to further explain your product and detail instructions on how to purchase your information. You may even want them to go to your web site for further information.
On your web site, create a sales pitch to help your potential customer focus on what's in it for them. Appeal to their senses on why they will benefit from your information. Explain why they cannot do without it and how bad it would be if they passed up this limited opportunity. Carefully spell out what you want them to do so they do not miss this report - "Buy Now before midnight to get the best price on this report! It will change your life forever!" Have several links for them to click to purchase so they do not miss an opportunity to buy it. Explain in the link you want them to click it to buy it. Tell them the methods you accept for payment and how the product will be delivered. Most importantly, tell them, upfront, the price...people do get angry when the price is hidden near the end of the transaction and will often not buy because they feel it is deceit on your end.
With a web site and a phone selling your plan, all you need to do is to assure people will see both the web site or listen to the message. Use the search engines to your full advantage. Join an affiliate program and have people sell for you. Give buyers an incentive to sell on your behalf. Place a recommend a friend link on your site and a bookmark this page link so those who have not bought can come back later. Place ads in online classified ad sites and in ezines related to your topic.
By doing all these things, you will get the exposure you need. You may have to tweak your ad from time to time, but if you are getting the traffic your direction, you will eventually get the sales.
Getting Stuff To Sell Online
Billions of dollars worth of products are sold on eBay and other online merchants every year.Where are people getting all these items to sell? Surely, they’ve emptied their closets and garages by now.Even if they have, finding stuff to sell online is still relatively easy. Several sources are available for those who want to make a little or a lot of cash selling online.
Home Stuff:
Not all garages have been cleared of junk.Weekend garage sales are still popular places to find items to sell. Sales in higher income areas tend to net more quality items like designer clothes, high end furniture, and antiques.However, don’t neglect an average Joe garage sale; one never knows what unique items will be unearthed regardless of the neighborhood.Go to these sales toward the end of the day.Homeowners will be more inclined to sell you merchandise at rock bottom prices rather than having to pack up unsold items.
Look through your own garage and closets to find items to sell online.You may be harboring old clothes, books, Cds, and toys that will bring in a few bucks online. Offer to rid your friends and family of their unwanted junk by selling on consignment.You sell their stuff and keep %25 of the profits.Local retailers may also agree to let you sell their overstocks and returned merchandise on consignment as well.
Buy Online, Sell Online:
Finding stuff to sell online is as easy as buying it from the same online source. eBay is an excellent place to find everything from antiques to huge lots of merchandise that you can buy and resell at a profit.
Locate other online sources by using search terms such as wholesale liquidators, closeout dealers, and drop-ship services.These same sources can also be found in print media including the Yellow Pages and classified ads in newspapers, trade magazines, and free weeklies.
Auction Action:
Unclaimed, slightly damaged, and repossessed merchandise can be purchased at freight claims and government auctions.Check the Yellow Pages for contact information and newspaper classified section for upcoming sales.
There’s a storage unit operation on every corner these days.The storage company auctions off the contents of unpaid rental units.Although the contents are sold sight unseen, there’s probably enough sale worthy items inside to let you break even.
Estate auctions are another great source for finding stuff to sell online.Like garage sales, high income estates yield the greatest finds, but gems can be found regardless of the estate’s net worth.These sales are advertised in the newspaper.
Drop Shipping:
Drop shipping is an easy, hands off way to sell online.You send the order to the manufacturer or distributor and they ship the product to the customer.No inventory or shipping hassles to worry about.
Local Events:
Bazaars, flea markets, and festivals are good sources for everything from unique handmade crafts to valuable collectibles.Like garage sales, stop by near closing time for deep discounted deals.
Check with the local convention and visitors’ bureau to find out about upcoming trade shows that are open to the public.You’ll be able to buy from manufacturers and sale reps selling the latest products on the market.
Offshore Action:
Asia is a good source for finding stuff to sell online. However, the red tape and cost of contacting sources there can be a hassle.Your best bet is to hook up with a manufacturer’s rep who has overseas connections. There’s enough available home grown sources for locating products to sell to make this option unnecessary.
Home Stuff:
Not all garages have been cleared of junk.Weekend garage sales are still popular places to find items to sell. Sales in higher income areas tend to net more quality items like designer clothes, high end furniture, and antiques.However, don’t neglect an average Joe garage sale; one never knows what unique items will be unearthed regardless of the neighborhood.Go to these sales toward the end of the day.Homeowners will be more inclined to sell you merchandise at rock bottom prices rather than having to pack up unsold items.
Look through your own garage and closets to find items to sell online.You may be harboring old clothes, books, Cds, and toys that will bring in a few bucks online. Offer to rid your friends and family of their unwanted junk by selling on consignment.You sell their stuff and keep %25 of the profits.Local retailers may also agree to let you sell their overstocks and returned merchandise on consignment as well.
Buy Online, Sell Online:
Finding stuff to sell online is as easy as buying it from the same online source. eBay is an excellent place to find everything from antiques to huge lots of merchandise that you can buy and resell at a profit.
Locate other online sources by using search terms such as wholesale liquidators, closeout dealers, and drop-ship services.These same sources can also be found in print media including the Yellow Pages and classified ads in newspapers, trade magazines, and free weeklies.
Auction Action:
Unclaimed, slightly damaged, and repossessed merchandise can be purchased at freight claims and government auctions.Check the Yellow Pages for contact information and newspaper classified section for upcoming sales.
There’s a storage unit operation on every corner these days.The storage company auctions off the contents of unpaid rental units.Although the contents are sold sight unseen, there’s probably enough sale worthy items inside to let you break even.
Estate auctions are another great source for finding stuff to sell online.Like garage sales, high income estates yield the greatest finds, but gems can be found regardless of the estate’s net worth.These sales are advertised in the newspaper.
Drop Shipping:
Drop shipping is an easy, hands off way to sell online.You send the order to the manufacturer or distributor and they ship the product to the customer.No inventory or shipping hassles to worry about.
Local Events:
Bazaars, flea markets, and festivals are good sources for everything from unique handmade crafts to valuable collectibles.Like garage sales, stop by near closing time for deep discounted deals.
Check with the local convention and visitors’ bureau to find out about upcoming trade shows that are open to the public.You’ll be able to buy from manufacturers and sale reps selling the latest products on the market.
Offshore Action:
Asia is a good source for finding stuff to sell online. However, the red tape and cost of contacting sources there can be a hassle.Your best bet is to hook up with a manufacturer’s rep who has overseas connections. There’s enough available home grown sources for locating products to sell to make this option unnecessary.
What Should I Sell Online?
Everyone who starts an ebiz faces the question: What do I sell? And most everyone seems to make two classic mistakes in the beginning:
They try to sell what everyone else is selling: DVDs, electronics and designer clothing. The problem they encounter is that the market is already saturated with these products and the suppliers typically do not work in small quantity. To make any profit at all, they'd have to buy huge quantities.
They try to sell what they know and love. Unfortunately, unless there is a significant demand for what they know and love, they are going to be stuck with a lot of product they can appreciate but can't move.
What's an IDEA HOTSPOT?
Lisa Suttora of Whatdoisell.com coined the term "idea hotspot" to refer to anything, any place or person that "provide[s] you with an unending source of new product ideas, of market trends, of developing niches and product line education?It is a fertile ground for product ideas." These hotspots keep you in touch with what people are buying, what things are up-and-coming, and what things are on their way out. If your ideas all come from one or two places, you are limiting yourself. Expand your thinking? You might consider looking at one of these "hotspots" for inspiration:
Newspapers. You can get an idea of what is on the minds of consumers by simply reading the lifestyle section, the business section, or looking at the advertisements the big stores are putting out.
Consumer Publications. There are hundreds of magazines designed around niche products, niche hobbies and niche markets. They are a terrific resource for building niche product lines.
Malls/brick-and-mortar stores. Talk to the salespeople, find out what is selling. You can even source your suppliers off the boxes. Get the manufacturer's name, call them up, and ask who their local distributor is in your area.
Trend-spotting websites, such as Trendwatching.com, Influxinsights.com and Trendhunter.com.
The entertainment industry, movies and TV drive product trends. If you know what is coming out in the movie industry, you can start sourcing related products before the trend begins. Imdb.com maintains a list of movies that are going to be released in the coming year. So if you know now that a particular movie is going to be coming out, you can start stocking up on relevant products before they become pricey, such as Batman, Superman, Curious George and Star Wars.
Write It Down
Suttora strongly suggests carrying a product sourcing notebook, be it a PDA or hand-held notebook, to keep track of your ideas as they come. She warns, "Ninety percent of ideas that you don't write down will get lost. When you're at these idea hotspots, if you see a hundred ideas for products to sell, you won't be able to remember those. You've got to write them down in your product sourcing notebook and then go back and start researching them."
They try to sell what everyone else is selling: DVDs, electronics and designer clothing. The problem they encounter is that the market is already saturated with these products and the suppliers typically do not work in small quantity. To make any profit at all, they'd have to buy huge quantities.
They try to sell what they know and love. Unfortunately, unless there is a significant demand for what they know and love, they are going to be stuck with a lot of product they can appreciate but can't move.
What's an IDEA HOTSPOT?
Lisa Suttora of Whatdoisell.com coined the term "idea hotspot" to refer to anything, any place or person that "provide[s] you with an unending source of new product ideas, of market trends, of developing niches and product line education?It is a fertile ground for product ideas." These hotspots keep you in touch with what people are buying, what things are up-and-coming, and what things are on their way out. If your ideas all come from one or two places, you are limiting yourself. Expand your thinking? You might consider looking at one of these "hotspots" for inspiration:
Newspapers. You can get an idea of what is on the minds of consumers by simply reading the lifestyle section, the business section, or looking at the advertisements the big stores are putting out.
Consumer Publications. There are hundreds of magazines designed around niche products, niche hobbies and niche markets. They are a terrific resource for building niche product lines.
Malls/brick-and-mortar stores. Talk to the salespeople, find out what is selling. You can even source your suppliers off the boxes. Get the manufacturer's name, call them up, and ask who their local distributor is in your area.
Trend-spotting websites, such as Trendwatching.com, Influxinsights.com and Trendhunter.com.
The entertainment industry, movies and TV drive product trends. If you know what is coming out in the movie industry, you can start sourcing related products before the trend begins. Imdb.com maintains a list of movies that are going to be released in the coming year. So if you know now that a particular movie is going to be coming out, you can start stocking up on relevant products before they become pricey, such as Batman, Superman, Curious George and Star Wars.
Write It Down
Suttora strongly suggests carrying a product sourcing notebook, be it a PDA or hand-held notebook, to keep track of your ideas as they come. She warns, "Ninety percent of ideas that you don't write down will get lost. When you're at these idea hotspots, if you see a hundred ideas for products to sell, you won't be able to remember those. You've got to write them down in your product sourcing notebook and then go back and start researching them."
How To Sell Things Online And Make Money
With your idea in mind, you decided to make money online. You have your domain name and a web hosting company to host your site. You have mapped out on paper what your site will look like. Now you want an angle to make money.
Some people jump into doing business on the web with a business they run offline hoping an international connection will make things better. These people can do quite well if they were already successful in the real world.
Others figure they would just wing their way into the Internet gold mine. Again, without a business plan you probably won't get too far.
If you don't have something to sell, you can't make money on the web. By simply being on the web does not guarantee the money will fall in your lap. You need a product and to give the buyers a reason to get it from you.
One easy way to come up with a product is to create your own. Information is the most inexpensive form of a product you can sell. In print form, you can sell a booklet, but have to figure in the cost of printing and mailing. In electronic form, it costs you nothing! However, some people would rather have something in writing to justify the fact that they spent something.
If you are not creative enough to come up with an informational book, you could make other products, but you will have to confirm what your local, state and federal laws would be concerning the product you have in mind.
If you want an easier route, consider a dropship dealer. In many cases they can print up catalogs in your name for you to distribute. You collect the orders, take out your share of the money and direct the rest of the money with the order to the dropship company. They process the orders you send them and ship to the customer. It is easy enough, but you also want to be sure about any policy they have about returned merchandise. You may have to hold on to the money you made until a clearing period passes.
Look through this list of companies and take your pick of what you wish to sell. Write these companies and ask them about their dropshipping program. It helps speed things up if you send a large SASE when you write them. Some of these businesses may no longer be around, so pick a few just in case. Dropship Companies.
After you figure out what you want to sell, you need to find a way to take payment. What are your options?
Of course the best option is to accept any and all forms of payments, but that is not practical in every situation, is the traditional merchant account. If you have only one item that is less than $10 and sell a few a month, it would be VERY risky to get a merchant account to accept credit cards.
Merchant accounts will let you take major credit cards and checks. Depending on what type of account you deal with, some will only allow Visa and Master Card, some just checks only, and others will take everything. They charge you according to your credit worthiness to make sure you will not rip off the customer or the company to pay your debts or that someone will put a lien on your assests. Unless you have perfect credit, expect to pay more. You can get these accounts starting at $50 a month and up to over $250 per month. Then there is the transaction charge ranging from 10¢ - 75¢. And they also take a percentage of your sale ranging from 1-10%.
So as you can see, they do take a fair amount out of what you would have considered your profit just for a transaction. If you make no sales, you still have to pay the monthly fee. So unless you can prove you will have a steady flow of ready buyers, having a merchant account is not always the best thing.
Don't be fooled by the ads that claim your business will increase by having the ability to accept cards with a merchant account. Unless you have a good sales pitch and a product people want and people coming to see your offer, a merchant account won't do you a bit of good. They are also not the only way to take card payments, but they do charge less for the service.
A merchant account will only suit you if you can supply the buying traffic. Before you shell out the big bucks for a traditional merchant's account, check to see if you have the buying traffic to support it.
Get a good statistics counter to see how many people are actually viewing your ad, where they came from, and how long they stayed. Most good web hosting companies will have an excellent traffic statistic counter to tell you the details of where your traffic originated and even search terms used to get to your site. If your web hosting company does not have a good statistic program, try Web Stat which is one of the best traffic counters around and only $9 a month, but you can try it free for 30 days to check your traffic levels.
If you offer payment by check, cash, or money order and you have at least 1% of your traffic buying what you sell, then it might work out when you accept credit cards. If people want something, they will stick money in the mail. Granted there are many impulsive people, there are also many who would rather mail a check or money order than to give credit card informtion online.
Of course, if you do not qualify for the traditional accounts, you have other options. Sign up for the PayPal merchant account program, ClickBank, or eBay. They allow you to sell whatever it is you are selling without having to go through the same hoops as a traditional merchant account.
Once you have a product and a means to collect payment, create a sales page. Use the basic rules of advertising. Keep your copy simple to read and easy to understand. Keep it short and to the point. Use words that are powerful. Create "white space" (don't crowd the screen with words or bog it down with pictures and keep a good margin space.) Use headlines, subheadlines, and bullet points to highlight the great points of your offer for those who are just skimming readers. Be sure to ask for the order. Be specific on how they are to get your product. Create a sense of urgency to buy your product now. Give them what they wanted and pile on goodies to make it impossible to refuse. Make sure your page will load fast. Unless you are selling music, DO NOT PUT MUSIC ON!
Try to advertise your site as much as possible through forums, newsgroups, and other places where you find people in the form of a signature tag which is a 1-2 line signature that can link to a site you own and is used at the end of your comments. Another way to advertise online is through classified ads such as Adland Classified Ads. Also consider offline forms of advertising such as newspapers, flyers, business cards and word of mouth.
When you create and launch your site, just be prepared to fill orders and handle your business. It is not easy, but it is not difficult either. You will not get rich overnight and this will take a lot of time to set up. Don't let the Don Lapre's of the world fool you. If you haven't noticed, this site has a lot more information on making money on the web than buying one of the infomercial products. And this advice is FREE.
Some people jump into doing business on the web with a business they run offline hoping an international connection will make things better. These people can do quite well if they were already successful in the real world.
Others figure they would just wing their way into the Internet gold mine. Again, without a business plan you probably won't get too far.
If you don't have something to sell, you can't make money on the web. By simply being on the web does not guarantee the money will fall in your lap. You need a product and to give the buyers a reason to get it from you.
One easy way to come up with a product is to create your own. Information is the most inexpensive form of a product you can sell. In print form, you can sell a booklet, but have to figure in the cost of printing and mailing. In electronic form, it costs you nothing! However, some people would rather have something in writing to justify the fact that they spent something.
If you are not creative enough to come up with an informational book, you could make other products, but you will have to confirm what your local, state and federal laws would be concerning the product you have in mind.
If you want an easier route, consider a dropship dealer. In many cases they can print up catalogs in your name for you to distribute. You collect the orders, take out your share of the money and direct the rest of the money with the order to the dropship company. They process the orders you send them and ship to the customer. It is easy enough, but you also want to be sure about any policy they have about returned merchandise. You may have to hold on to the money you made until a clearing period passes.
Look through this list of companies and take your pick of what you wish to sell. Write these companies and ask them about their dropshipping program. It helps speed things up if you send a large SASE when you write them. Some of these businesses may no longer be around, so pick a few just in case. Dropship Companies.
After you figure out what you want to sell, you need to find a way to take payment. What are your options?
Of course the best option is to accept any and all forms of payments, but that is not practical in every situation, is the traditional merchant account. If you have only one item that is less than $10 and sell a few a month, it would be VERY risky to get a merchant account to accept credit cards.
Merchant accounts will let you take major credit cards and checks. Depending on what type of account you deal with, some will only allow Visa and Master Card, some just checks only, and others will take everything. They charge you according to your credit worthiness to make sure you will not rip off the customer or the company to pay your debts or that someone will put a lien on your assests. Unless you have perfect credit, expect to pay more. You can get these accounts starting at $50 a month and up to over $250 per month. Then there is the transaction charge ranging from 10¢ - 75¢. And they also take a percentage of your sale ranging from 1-10%.
So as you can see, they do take a fair amount out of what you would have considered your profit just for a transaction. If you make no sales, you still have to pay the monthly fee. So unless you can prove you will have a steady flow of ready buyers, having a merchant account is not always the best thing.
Don't be fooled by the ads that claim your business will increase by having the ability to accept cards with a merchant account. Unless you have a good sales pitch and a product people want and people coming to see your offer, a merchant account won't do you a bit of good. They are also not the only way to take card payments, but they do charge less for the service.
A merchant account will only suit you if you can supply the buying traffic. Before you shell out the big bucks for a traditional merchant's account, check to see if you have the buying traffic to support it.
Get a good statistics counter to see how many people are actually viewing your ad, where they came from, and how long they stayed. Most good web hosting companies will have an excellent traffic statistic counter to tell you the details of where your traffic originated and even search terms used to get to your site. If your web hosting company does not have a good statistic program, try Web Stat which is one of the best traffic counters around and only $9 a month, but you can try it free for 30 days to check your traffic levels.
If you offer payment by check, cash, or money order and you have at least 1% of your traffic buying what you sell, then it might work out when you accept credit cards. If people want something, they will stick money in the mail. Granted there are many impulsive people, there are also many who would rather mail a check or money order than to give credit card informtion online.
Of course, if you do not qualify for the traditional accounts, you have other options. Sign up for the PayPal merchant account program, ClickBank, or eBay. They allow you to sell whatever it is you are selling without having to go through the same hoops as a traditional merchant account.
Once you have a product and a means to collect payment, create a sales page. Use the basic rules of advertising. Keep your copy simple to read and easy to understand. Keep it short and to the point. Use words that are powerful. Create "white space" (don't crowd the screen with words or bog it down with pictures and keep a good margin space.) Use headlines, subheadlines, and bullet points to highlight the great points of your offer for those who are just skimming readers. Be sure to ask for the order. Be specific on how they are to get your product. Create a sense of urgency to buy your product now. Give them what they wanted and pile on goodies to make it impossible to refuse. Make sure your page will load fast. Unless you are selling music, DO NOT PUT MUSIC ON!
Try to advertise your site as much as possible through forums, newsgroups, and other places where you find people in the form of a signature tag which is a 1-2 line signature that can link to a site you own and is used at the end of your comments. Another way to advertise online is through classified ads such as Adland Classified Ads. Also consider offline forms of advertising such as newspapers, flyers, business cards and word of mouth.
When you create and launch your site, just be prepared to fill orders and handle your business. It is not easy, but it is not difficult either. You will not get rich overnight and this will take a lot of time to set up. Don't let the Don Lapre's of the world fool you. If you haven't noticed, this site has a lot more information on making money on the web than buying one of the infomercial products. And this advice is FREE.
4/30/09
Some Ugly Aspects of SEO
Some Ugly Aspects of SEO
1Dependent on search engines
It is true that in any career there are many things that are outside of your control but for SEO this is a rule number one. Search engines frequently change their algorithms and what is worse – these changes are not made public, so even the greatest SEO gurus admit that they make a lot of educated guesses about how things work. It is very discouraging to make everything perfect and then to learn that due to a change in the algorithm, your sites dropped 100 positions down. But the worst part is that you need to communicate this to clients, who are not satisfied with their sinking ratings.
2No fixed rules
Probably this will change over time but for now the rule is that there are no rules – or at least not written ones. You can work very hard, follow everything that looks like a rule and still success is not coming. Currently you can't even rely on bringing a search engine to court because of the damages they have done to your business because search engines are not obliged to rank high sites that have made efforts to get optimized.
3Rapid changes in rankings
But even if you somehow manage to get to the top for a particular keyword, keeping the position requires constant efforts. Well, many other businesses are like that, so this is hardly a reason to complain – except when an angry customer starts shouting at you that this week their ratings are sinking and of course this is all your fault.
4SEO requires Patience
The SEO professional and customers both need to understand that SEO takes constant effort and time. It could take months to move ahead in the ratings, or to build tens of links. Additionally, if you stop optimizing for some time, most likely you will experience a considerable drop in ratings. You need lots of motivation and patience not to give up when things are not going your way.
5Black hat SEO
Black hat SEO is probably one of the biggest concerns for the would-be SEO practitioner. Fraud and unfair competition are present in any industry and those who are good and ethical suffer from this but black hat SEO is still pretty widespread. It is true that search engines penalize black hat practices but still black hat SEO is a major concern for the industry.
So, let's hope that by telling you about the pros and cons of choosing SEO as your career we have helped you make an informed decision about your future.
1Dependent on search engines
It is true that in any career there are many things that are outside of your control but for SEO this is a rule number one. Search engines frequently change their algorithms and what is worse – these changes are not made public, so even the greatest SEO gurus admit that they make a lot of educated guesses about how things work. It is very discouraging to make everything perfect and then to learn that due to a change in the algorithm, your sites dropped 100 positions down. But the worst part is that you need to communicate this to clients, who are not satisfied with their sinking ratings.
2No fixed rules
Probably this will change over time but for now the rule is that there are no rules – or at least not written ones. You can work very hard, follow everything that looks like a rule and still success is not coming. Currently you can't even rely on bringing a search engine to court because of the damages they have done to your business because search engines are not obliged to rank high sites that have made efforts to get optimized.
3Rapid changes in rankings
But even if you somehow manage to get to the top for a particular keyword, keeping the position requires constant efforts. Well, many other businesses are like that, so this is hardly a reason to complain – except when an angry customer starts shouting at you that this week their ratings are sinking and of course this is all your fault.
4SEO requires Patience
The SEO professional and customers both need to understand that SEO takes constant effort and time. It could take months to move ahead in the ratings, or to build tens of links. Additionally, if you stop optimizing for some time, most likely you will experience a considerable drop in ratings. You need lots of motivation and patience not to give up when things are not going your way.
5Black hat SEO
Black hat SEO is probably one of the biggest concerns for the would-be SEO practitioner. Fraud and unfair competition are present in any industry and those who are good and ethical suffer from this but black hat SEO is still pretty widespread. It is true that search engines penalize black hat practices but still black hat SEO is a major concern for the industry.
So, let's hope that by telling you about the pros and cons of choosing SEO as your career we have helped you make an informed decision about your future.
Some Good Reasons to Choose SEO as Your Career
1High demand for SEO services
Once SEO was not a separate profession - Web masters performed some basic SEO for the sites they managed and that was all. But as sites began to grow and make money, it became more reasonable to hire a dedicated SEO specialist than to have the Web master do it. The demand for good SEO experts is high and is constantly on the rise.
2A LOT of people have made a successful SEO career
There are many living proofs that SEO is a viable business. The list is too long to be quoted here but some of the names include Rob from Blackwood Productions, Jill Wahlen from High Rankings, Rand Fishkin from SEO Moz and many others.
3Search Engine Optimizers make Good Money !
SEO is a profession that can be practiced while working for a company or as a solo practitioner. There are many jobboards like Dice and Craigslist that publish SEO job advertisements. It is worth noting that the compensation for SEO employees is equal to or even higher than that of developers, designers and marketers. Salaries over $80K per annum are not an exception for SEO jobs.
As a solo SEO practitioner you can make even more money. Almost all freelance sites have sections for SEO services and offers for $50 an hour or more are quite common. If you are still not confident that you can work on your own, you can start a SEO job, learn a bit and then start your own company.
If you already feel confident that you know a lot about SEO, you can take this quiz and see how you score. Well, don't get depressed if you didn't pass - here is a great checklist that will teach you a lot, even if you are already familiar with SEO.
4Only Web-Designing MAY NOT be enough
Many companies offer turn-key solutions that include Web design, Web development AND SEO optimization. In fact, many clients expect that when they hire somebody to make their site, the site will be SEO friendly, so if you are good both as a designer and a SEO expert, you will be a truely valuable professional.
On the other hand, many other companies are dealing with SEO only because they feel that this way they can concentrate their efforts on their major strength – SEO, so you can consider this possibility as well.
5Logical step ahead if you come from marketing or advertising
The Web has changed the way companies do business, so to some extent today's marketers and advertisers need to have at least some SEO knowledge if they want to be successful. SEO is also a great career for linguists.
6Lots of Learning
For somebody who comes from design, development or web administration, SEO might look not technical enough and you might feel that you will downgrade if you move to SEO. Don't worry so much - you can learn a LOT from SEO, so if you are a talented techie, you are not downgrading but you are actually upgrading your skills packages.
7SEO is already recognized as a career
Finally, if you need some more proof that SEO is a great career, have a look at the available courses and exams for SEO practitioners. Well, they might not be a CISCO certification but still they help to institutionalize the SEO profession.
Once SEO was not a separate profession - Web masters performed some basic SEO for the sites they managed and that was all. But as sites began to grow and make money, it became more reasonable to hire a dedicated SEO specialist than to have the Web master do it. The demand for good SEO experts is high and is constantly on the rise.
2A LOT of people have made a successful SEO career
There are many living proofs that SEO is a viable business. The list is too long to be quoted here but some of the names include Rob from Blackwood Productions, Jill Wahlen from High Rankings, Rand Fishkin from SEO Moz and many others.
3Search Engine Optimizers make Good Money !
SEO is a profession that can be practiced while working for a company or as a solo practitioner. There are many jobboards like Dice and Craigslist that publish SEO job advertisements. It is worth noting that the compensation for SEO employees is equal to or even higher than that of developers, designers and marketers. Salaries over $80K per annum are not an exception for SEO jobs.
As a solo SEO practitioner you can make even more money. Almost all freelance sites have sections for SEO services and offers for $50 an hour or more are quite common. If you are still not confident that you can work on your own, you can start a SEO job, learn a bit and then start your own company.
If you already feel confident that you know a lot about SEO, you can take this quiz and see how you score. Well, don't get depressed if you didn't pass - here is a great checklist that will teach you a lot, even if you are already familiar with SEO.
4Only Web-Designing MAY NOT be enough
Many companies offer turn-key solutions that include Web design, Web development AND SEO optimization. In fact, many clients expect that when they hire somebody to make their site, the site will be SEO friendly, so if you are good both as a designer and a SEO expert, you will be a truely valuable professional.
On the other hand, many other companies are dealing with SEO only because they feel that this way they can concentrate their efforts on their major strength – SEO, so you can consider this possibility as well.
5Logical step ahead if you come from marketing or advertising
The Web has changed the way companies do business, so to some extent today's marketers and advertisers need to have at least some SEO knowledge if they want to be successful. SEO is also a great career for linguists.
6Lots of Learning
For somebody who comes from design, development or web administration, SEO might look not technical enough and you might feel that you will downgrade if you move to SEO. Don't worry so much - you can learn a LOT from SEO, so if you are a talented techie, you are not downgrading but you are actually upgrading your skills packages.
7SEO is already recognized as a career
Finally, if you need some more proof that SEO is a great career, have a look at the available courses and exams for SEO practitioners. Well, they might not be a CISCO certification but still they help to institutionalize the SEO profession.
How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites
stumbleupon.com or digg.com etc can bring you a LOT of traffic. How about getting 20,000 and more visitors a day when your listing hits the front page?
Getting to the front page of these sites is not as difficult as it seems. I have been successful with digg and del.icio.us (and not so much with Reddit though the same steps should apply to it as well) multiple times and have thus compiled a list of steps that have helped me succeed:
Pay attention to your Headlines
Many great articles go unnoticed on social bookmarking sites because their headline is not catchy enough. Your headline is the first (and very often the only) thing users will see from your article, so if you don't make the effort to provide a catchy headline, your chances of getting to the front page are small.
Here are some examples to start with :-
Original headline : The Two Types of Cognition
Modified Headline : Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence
Original headline: Neat way to organize and find anything in your purse instantly!
Modified Headline : How to Instantly Find Anything in Your Purse
Here is a good blog post that should help you with your headlines.
2Write a meaningful & short description
The headline is very important to draw attention but if you want to keep that attention, a meaningful description is vital. The description must be slightly provocative because this draws more attention but still, never use lies and false facts to provoke interest. For instance, if your write “This article will reveal to you the 10 sure ways to deal with stress once and forever and live like a king from now on.” visitors will hardly think that your story is true and facts-based.
You also might be tempted to use a long tell-it-all paragraph to describe your great masterpiece but have in mind that many users will not bother to read anything over 100-150 characters. Additionally, some of the social bookmarking sites limit descriptions, so you'd better think in advance how to describe your article as briefly as possible.
3Have a great first paragraph
This is a rule that is always true but for successful social bookmarking it is even more important. If you have successfully passed Level 1 (headlines) and Level 2 (description) in the Catch the User's Attraction game, don't let a bad first paragraph make them leave your site.
4Content is king
However, the first paragraph is not everything. Going further along the chain of drawing (and retaining) users' attention, we reach the Content is King Level. If your articles are just trash, bookmarking them is useless. You might cheat users once but don't count on repetitive visits. What is more, you can get your site banned from social bookmarking sites, when you persistently post junk.
5Make it easy for others to vote / bookmark your site
It is best when other people, not you, bookmark your site. Therefore, you must make your best to make it easier for them to do it. You can put a bookmarking button at the end of the article, so if users like your content, they can easily post it. If you are using a CMS, check if there is an extension that allows to add Digg, Del.icio.us, and other buttons but if you are using static HTML, you can always go to the social bookmarking site and copy the code that will add their button to your pages.
Here is a link that should help you add Links for Del.icio.us, Digg, and More to your pages.
6Know when to submit
The time when you submit can be crucial for your attempts to get to the front page. On most social bookmarking sites you have only 24 hours to get to the front page and stay there. So, if you post when most users (and especially your supporters) are still sleeping, you are wasting valuable time. By the time they get up, you might have gone to the tenth page. You'd better try it for yourself and see if it works for you but generally posting earlier than 10 a.m. US Central Time is not good. Many people say that they get more traffic around 3 p.m. US Central Time. Also, workdays are generally better in terms of traffic but the downside is that you have more competitors for the front page than on weekends.
7Submit to the right category
Sometimes a site might not work for you because there is no right category for you. Or because you don't submit to the right category – technology, health, whatever – but to categories like General, Miscellaneous, etc. where all unclassified stuff goes. And since these categories fill very fast, your chance to get noticed decreases.
8Build a top-profile
Not all users are equal on social bookmarking sites. If you are an old and respected user who has posted tons of interesting stuff, this increases the probability that what you submit will get noticed. Posting links to interesting articles on other sites is vital for building a top-profile. Additionally, it is suspicious, when your profile has links to only one site. Many social bookmarking sites frown when users submit their own content because this feels like self-promotion.
9Cooperate with other social bookmarkers
The Lonely Wolf is a suicidal strategy on sites like StubleUpon, Digg, Netscape. Many stories make it to the front page not only because they are great but because they are backed up by your network of friends. If in the first hours after your submittal you get at least 15 votes from your friends and supporters, it is more likely that other users will vote for you. 50 votes can get you to the top page of Digg.
10Submit in English
Linguistic diversity is great but the majority of users are from English-speaking countries and they don't understand exotic languages. So, for most of the social bookmarking sites submitting anything in a language different from English is not recommendable. The languages that are at an especial disadvantage are Chinese, Arabic, Slavic languages and all the other that use non-latin alphabet. German, Spanish, French are more understandable but still they are not English. If you really must submit your story (i.e. because you need the backlink), include an English translation at least of the title. But the best way to proceed with non-English stories is to post them on where they belong. Check this link for a list of non-English sites.
11Never submit old news
Submitting old news will not help you in becoming a respected user. Yesterday's news is history. But if you still need to submit old stuff, consider feature articles, howtos and similar pieces that are up-to-date for a long time.
12Check your facts
You must be flattered that users read your postings but you will hardly be flattered when users prove that you haven't got the facts right. In addition to sarcastic comments, you might also receive negative votes for your story, so if you want to avoid this, check you facts - or your readers will do it.
13Check you spelling
Some sites do not allow to edit your posts later, so if you misspell the title, the URL, or a keyword, it will stay this way forever.
14Not all topics do well
But sometimes even great content and submitting to the right category do not push you to the top. One possible reason could be that your stories are about unpopular topics. Many sites have topics that their users love and topics that don't sell that well. For instance, Apple sells well on Digg and The War in Iraq on Netscape. Negative stories - about George Bush, Microsoft, evil multinational companies, corruption and crime also have a chance to make it to the front page. You can't know these things in advance but some research on how many stories tagged with keywords like yours have made the front page in the last year or so can give you a clue.
15Have Related Articles / Popular Articles
Traffic gurus joke that traffic from social bookmarking sites is like an invasion – the crowds pour in and in a day or two they are gone. Unfortunately this is true – after your listing rolls from the front page (provided that you reached the front page), the drop in traffic is considerable. Besides, many users come just following the link to your article, have a look at it and then they are gone. One of the ways to keep them longer on your site is to have links to Related Articles / Popular Articles or something similar that can draw their attention to other stuff on the site and make them read more than one article.
16RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, affiliate marketing
RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, affiliate marketing are all areas in which the traffic from social bookmarking sites can help you a lot. Many people who come to your site and like it, will subscribe to RSS feeds and/or your newsletter. So, you need to put these in visible places and then you will be astonished at the number of new subscriptions you got on the day when you were on the front page of a major social bookmarking site.
17Do not use automated submitters
After some time of active social bookmarking, you will discover that you are spending hours on end posting links. Yes, this is a lot of time and using automated submitters might look like the solution but it isn't. Automated submitters often have malware in them or are used for stealing passwords, so unless you don't care about the fate of your profile and don't mind being banned, automated submitters are not the way to go.
18Respond to comments on your stories
Social bookmarking sites are not a newsgroup but interesting articles can trigger a pretty heated discussion with hundreds of comments. If your article gets comments, you must be proud. Always respond to commends on your stories and even better – post comments on other stories you find interesting. This is a way to make friends and to create a top-profile.
19Prepare your server for the expected traffic
This is hardly a point of minor importance but we take for granted that you are hosting your site on a reliable server that does not crash twice a day. But have in mind that your presence on the front page of a major social bookmarking site can drive you a lot traffic, which can cause your server to crash – literally!
I remember one of the times I was on the front page on Digg, I kept restarting Apache on my dedicated server because it was unable to cope with the massive traffic. I have many tools on my site and when the visitors tried them, this loaded the server additionally.
Well, for an articles site getting so much traffic is not so devastating but if you are hosting on a so-so server, you'd better migrate your site to a machine that can handle a lot of simultaneous hits. Also, check if your monthly traffic allowance is enough to handle 200-500,000 or even more visitors. It is very amateurish to attract a lot of visitors and not be able to serve them because your server crashed or you have exceeded your bandwidth!
20The snowball effect
But despite the differences in the likes of the different social bookmarking communities, there are striking similarities. You will soon discover that if a post is popular on one of the major sites, this usually drives it up on the other big and smaller sites. Usually it is Digg posts that become popular on StumbleUpon and Reddit but there are many other examples. To use this fact to your best advantage, you may want to concentrate your efforts on getting to the front page of the major players only and bet on the snowball effect to drive you to the top on other sites.
An additional benefit of the snowball effect is that if your posting is interesting and people start blogging about it, you can get tons of backlinks from their blogs. This happened to me and the result was that my PR jumped to 6 on the next update.
If you like this articles give me a back link...http://smallonlinebusinessmoney.blogspot.com
Getting to the front page of these sites is not as difficult as it seems. I have been successful with digg and del.icio.us (and not so much with Reddit though the same steps should apply to it as well) multiple times and have thus compiled a list of steps that have helped me succeed:
Pay attention to your Headlines
Many great articles go unnoticed on social bookmarking sites because their headline is not catchy enough. Your headline is the first (and very often the only) thing users will see from your article, so if you don't make the effort to provide a catchy headline, your chances of getting to the front page are small.
Here are some examples to start with :-
Original headline : The Two Types of Cognition
Modified Headline : Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence
Original headline: Neat way to organize and find anything in your purse instantly!
Modified Headline : How to Instantly Find Anything in Your Purse
Here is a good blog post that should help you with your headlines.
2Write a meaningful & short description
The headline is very important to draw attention but if you want to keep that attention, a meaningful description is vital. The description must be slightly provocative because this draws more attention but still, never use lies and false facts to provoke interest. For instance, if your write “This article will reveal to you the 10 sure ways to deal with stress once and forever and live like a king from now on.” visitors will hardly think that your story is true and facts-based.
You also might be tempted to use a long tell-it-all paragraph to describe your great masterpiece but have in mind that many users will not bother to read anything over 100-150 characters. Additionally, some of the social bookmarking sites limit descriptions, so you'd better think in advance how to describe your article as briefly as possible.
3Have a great first paragraph
This is a rule that is always true but for successful social bookmarking it is even more important. If you have successfully passed Level 1 (headlines) and Level 2 (description) in the Catch the User's Attraction game, don't let a bad first paragraph make them leave your site.
4Content is king
However, the first paragraph is not everything. Going further along the chain of drawing (and retaining) users' attention, we reach the Content is King Level. If your articles are just trash, bookmarking them is useless. You might cheat users once but don't count on repetitive visits. What is more, you can get your site banned from social bookmarking sites, when you persistently post junk.
5Make it easy for others to vote / bookmark your site
It is best when other people, not you, bookmark your site. Therefore, you must make your best to make it easier for them to do it. You can put a bookmarking button at the end of the article, so if users like your content, they can easily post it. If you are using a CMS, check if there is an extension that allows to add Digg, Del.icio.us, and other buttons but if you are using static HTML, you can always go to the social bookmarking site and copy the code that will add their button to your pages.
Here is a link that should help you add Links for Del.icio.us, Digg, and More to your pages.
6Know when to submit
The time when you submit can be crucial for your attempts to get to the front page. On most social bookmarking sites you have only 24 hours to get to the front page and stay there. So, if you post when most users (and especially your supporters) are still sleeping, you are wasting valuable time. By the time they get up, you might have gone to the tenth page. You'd better try it for yourself and see if it works for you but generally posting earlier than 10 a.m. US Central Time is not good. Many people say that they get more traffic around 3 p.m. US Central Time. Also, workdays are generally better in terms of traffic but the downside is that you have more competitors for the front page than on weekends.
7Submit to the right category
Sometimes a site might not work for you because there is no right category for you. Or because you don't submit to the right category – technology, health, whatever – but to categories like General, Miscellaneous, etc. where all unclassified stuff goes. And since these categories fill very fast, your chance to get noticed decreases.
8Build a top-profile
Not all users are equal on social bookmarking sites. If you are an old and respected user who has posted tons of interesting stuff, this increases the probability that what you submit will get noticed. Posting links to interesting articles on other sites is vital for building a top-profile. Additionally, it is suspicious, when your profile has links to only one site. Many social bookmarking sites frown when users submit their own content because this feels like self-promotion.
9Cooperate with other social bookmarkers
The Lonely Wolf is a suicidal strategy on sites like StubleUpon, Digg, Netscape. Many stories make it to the front page not only because they are great but because they are backed up by your network of friends. If in the first hours after your submittal you get at least 15 votes from your friends and supporters, it is more likely that other users will vote for you. 50 votes can get you to the top page of Digg.
10Submit in English
Linguistic diversity is great but the majority of users are from English-speaking countries and they don't understand exotic languages. So, for most of the social bookmarking sites submitting anything in a language different from English is not recommendable. The languages that are at an especial disadvantage are Chinese, Arabic, Slavic languages and all the other that use non-latin alphabet. German, Spanish, French are more understandable but still they are not English. If you really must submit your story (i.e. because you need the backlink), include an English translation at least of the title. But the best way to proceed with non-English stories is to post them on where they belong. Check this link for a list of non-English sites.
11Never submit old news
Submitting old news will not help you in becoming a respected user. Yesterday's news is history. But if you still need to submit old stuff, consider feature articles, howtos and similar pieces that are up-to-date for a long time.
12Check your facts
You must be flattered that users read your postings but you will hardly be flattered when users prove that you haven't got the facts right. In addition to sarcastic comments, you might also receive negative votes for your story, so if you want to avoid this, check you facts - or your readers will do it.
13Check you spelling
Some sites do not allow to edit your posts later, so if you misspell the title, the URL, or a keyword, it will stay this way forever.
14Not all topics do well
But sometimes even great content and submitting to the right category do not push you to the top. One possible reason could be that your stories are about unpopular topics. Many sites have topics that their users love and topics that don't sell that well. For instance, Apple sells well on Digg and The War in Iraq on Netscape. Negative stories - about George Bush, Microsoft, evil multinational companies, corruption and crime also have a chance to make it to the front page. You can't know these things in advance but some research on how many stories tagged with keywords like yours have made the front page in the last year or so can give you a clue.
15Have Related Articles / Popular Articles
Traffic gurus joke that traffic from social bookmarking sites is like an invasion – the crowds pour in and in a day or two they are gone. Unfortunately this is true – after your listing rolls from the front page (provided that you reached the front page), the drop in traffic is considerable. Besides, many users come just following the link to your article, have a look at it and then they are gone. One of the ways to keep them longer on your site is to have links to Related Articles / Popular Articles or something similar that can draw their attention to other stuff on the site and make them read more than one article.
16RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, affiliate marketing
RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, affiliate marketing are all areas in which the traffic from social bookmarking sites can help you a lot. Many people who come to your site and like it, will subscribe to RSS feeds and/or your newsletter. So, you need to put these in visible places and then you will be astonished at the number of new subscriptions you got on the day when you were on the front page of a major social bookmarking site.
17Do not use automated submitters
After some time of active social bookmarking, you will discover that you are spending hours on end posting links. Yes, this is a lot of time and using automated submitters might look like the solution but it isn't. Automated submitters often have malware in them or are used for stealing passwords, so unless you don't care about the fate of your profile and don't mind being banned, automated submitters are not the way to go.
18Respond to comments on your stories
Social bookmarking sites are not a newsgroup but interesting articles can trigger a pretty heated discussion with hundreds of comments. If your article gets comments, you must be proud. Always respond to commends on your stories and even better – post comments on other stories you find interesting. This is a way to make friends and to create a top-profile.
19Prepare your server for the expected traffic
This is hardly a point of minor importance but we take for granted that you are hosting your site on a reliable server that does not crash twice a day. But have in mind that your presence on the front page of a major social bookmarking site can drive you a lot traffic, which can cause your server to crash – literally!
I remember one of the times I was on the front page on Digg, I kept restarting Apache on my dedicated server because it was unable to cope with the massive traffic. I have many tools on my site and when the visitors tried them, this loaded the server additionally.
Well, for an articles site getting so much traffic is not so devastating but if you are hosting on a so-so server, you'd better migrate your site to a machine that can handle a lot of simultaneous hits. Also, check if your monthly traffic allowance is enough to handle 200-500,000 or even more visitors. It is very amateurish to attract a lot of visitors and not be able to serve them because your server crashed or you have exceeded your bandwidth!
20The snowball effect
But despite the differences in the likes of the different social bookmarking communities, there are striking similarities. You will soon discover that if a post is popular on one of the major sites, this usually drives it up on the other big and smaller sites. Usually it is Digg posts that become popular on StumbleUpon and Reddit but there are many other examples. To use this fact to your best advantage, you may want to concentrate your efforts on getting to the front page of the major players only and bet on the snowball effect to drive you to the top on other sites.
An additional benefit of the snowball effect is that if your posting is interesting and people start blogging about it, you can get tons of backlinks from their blogs. This happened to me and the result was that my PR jumped to 6 on the next update.
If you like this articles give me a back link...http://smallonlinebusinessmoney.blogspot.com
4/29/09
Adsense Do's and Dont's for Dummies
So you’re new to the whole Adsense Experience, that’s okay, everyone was a newbie once. You’ve got to start somewhere. I was, and I still consider myself a newbie with almost 2 years experience with Adsense. I’m always open to suggestions, and I’m like a sponge with a thirst for knowledge. Here are a few tips and suggestions for people who are either about to embark on their Adsense adventure or who have just set sail.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don’t’s…
Don’t make a site about Adsense. You know very little. And in the process of trying to learn you are of course going to websites trying to find out more. In the search for your adsense knowledge how would you feel if you stumbled on a site like the one that YOU have made? By a rank amateur. Who is just regurgitating what everyone else has said. In the process of reguritating it it is also being watered down. Also the Adsense Newbie who makes a site about Adsense is probably gathering information from other sites made by Adsense Newbies. They have haven’t digested it properly and you are unable to discern what is worth reading and what is not.
Don’t strive to be an Adsense Expert for the sake of being an Adsense Expert. When you’re making enough money to live on comfortably to give you the lifestyle you believe you deserve, then you can be an expert who writes e-books, talks at seminaros or publishes their methods. Until then we’re all learning. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from each other.
Some people don’t see how funny it is that people ask “how do I get the code to work? How do I get the ads I want? How do I get traffic?” and their site is about… MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET!
Best case scenario it’s pure comedy. Worst case scenario it’s hypocrisy.
Don’t think that you can make a site, upload it, and then the traffic will magically arrive.
It’s not a case of “Build it and they will come”, it’s more like the old saying “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Realise this: you haven’t even yet lead the horse to water. You know what? You don’t even know where that horse is!
You want to make Adsense work for you? Then you’re going to do some more homework… SEO (Search Engine Optimization), learn some design skills (expose yourself to good examples of design, both online and offline, ie: magazine layouts, even the ads), get out of your comfort zone and learn HTML (you can still use a HTML editor (my preference is Dreamweaver), but look at what you’ve done and then look at the code, slowly but surely you will learn without really trying). Read books on marketing. Look at the way businesses (not just online ones) promote themselves.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don’t spam. Never ever. Whether it be email spam to a list of addresses of people you don’t know or a “drive by spamming” at a forum you’ve just signed up at.
Don’t cheat. Don’t try and cheat Google, they’ll catch you. If you think you can, then go ahead. The result will be one less Adsense Publisher for me to compete with to get hold of advertisers dollars.
Cheating is not a means towards passive income. It has no residual effect. Cheating only makes money (which you can end up losing) when you are actively cheating. Instead of wasting your time doing that use your creative if somewhat devious brain to come up with legitimate plans of increasing your revenue. As previously mentioned, educate yourself: SEO, marketing, promotion, etc, etc. Instead of using the local town library computer to fraudulently click on a couple of ads use that trip to pin a flyer for one of your websites on the community noticeboard.
Don’t make a site about a topic simply because it is a high paying keyword. Again, you will just be vomiting up someone elses words. I had a discussion ten years ago with a friend who had concerns with the state of the quality of the information that people were exposing themselves to. It’s even more apt in todays society which sees more of the worlds population multiplied by a thousandfold get online since then. He saw information as peanuts. We process this information, and pass it on in text books and it’s crunchy peanut butter. Then people use this information to write articles (he was thinking magazines) and it’s now smooth peanut butter, and where was it going from there? What was it being used for? And what was it ending up as?
Peanut JUICE!
Watered down and with very little of the crunchy goodness it originally had.
I’m still unaware if peanut juice is on the market, but the thought of it doesn’t make me want to go drink a glass of it. And that’s what people are doing nowadays, dispensing peanut juice from their made for adsense websites.
Unique content isn’t rearranging words in a paragraph. Unique is original. If you’re going to fill your site up with articles from an article site, then so be it. But write a half a dozen articles to do with the topic that you yourself have researched. It might feel like you’re going back to school to do an assignment. And it is. But you know now more than you knew then so it should be easier for you now than it ever was. If you’re not sure how to go about it there are books at the library on writing and researching. Your librarian will know exactly where they are! Despite the rumours circulating the internet, the library is not dead. Use it. If a publisher took a gamble on an author to write a book then it’s bound to contain better information than what you’re getting through a search from a quick lookup online.
Don’t tell your family about your Adsense websites. They may feel compelled to click on the ads to help you out. Which may lead to your account shutdown by Google because one of your family members were a little too generous with the clicks.
Don’t tell your friends about your Adsense websites. They may do what a family member does, or if you have a habit of having friends who for whatever reason would hate to see one of their friends get ahead in life they may try and cripple your residual earnings by clicking too much.
Don’t register your name as a dot com and fill it with Adsense ads. Avoid doing this unless you’re an artist, photographer, musician, author or have some other reason why your name would evoke some kind of recognition and response from an internet audience. By all means do register it, but for purposes other than making money from Adsense.
Don’t label your Ads with anything other than “sponsored links” or “advertisements”.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do’s…
Do make a website on a subject that you LOVE and enjoy. Because depending on your experience, net savvy and other determining factors it may take a while before 1) you get traffic, 2) people actually click on your links, 3) you’re making enough money to get a monthly check.
Adsense is a long term proposition. If you are new you will not making it big overnight.
Do look around and find a forum where they discuss Adsense. There’s a lot around, but be mindful that the information that the members are sharing islegit and not likely to get you banned. It’s good to have more than one opinion. I recommend AdsenseChat which was started by Adsense Expert and published author Joel Comm.
Do ask questions, even stupid ones. At the forum I frequent the only time I will mock someone is AFTER someone has been rude to me because I have pointed out that either 1) they’re a cheater or 2) the world doesn’t need a site about adsense and/or making money on the internet from someone who has little or no experience with both.
Do speculate. Wonder out loud (in forums) about why you think you’ve had a drop or a rise in your adsense earnings. Or even about your site traffic. Feel free to imagine how Google does things. Of course highlight the fact that it is mere speculation. Avoid it coming across as fact or gospel. Also be aware that sometimes things happen and you’ll never find out the reason for them. As frustrating as that is it does happen.
Do ask others to critique your site. And while someone may not directly respond about the ad block layout that you specifically asked for and they talk about some other feature or facet of your website then just go with the flow.
Do keep your site/s confidential if you so wish.
Do buy Joel’s book The Adsense Code. It’s only fifteen bucks! It’s an excellent start point and will bring you up to speed quickly.
Do read Google’s Programme Policies and their Terms and Conditions, aka ToS (Terms of Service). As a matter of fact bookmark them and read them every so often.
Do be patient. If you are a Complete Adsense Newb, and by that I mean you have absolutely no idea how to crop an image, upload a page, copy and paste html, etc, etc, then don’t jump in feet first to the first sales pitch for hosted sites or templates that comes your way. You will need to educate yourself first. Otherwise you will be approaching these offers from a position of ignorance.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don’t’s…
Don’t make a site about Adsense. You know very little. And in the process of trying to learn you are of course going to websites trying to find out more. In the search for your adsense knowledge how would you feel if you stumbled on a site like the one that YOU have made? By a rank amateur. Who is just regurgitating what everyone else has said. In the process of reguritating it it is also being watered down. Also the Adsense Newbie who makes a site about Adsense is probably gathering information from other sites made by Adsense Newbies. They have haven’t digested it properly and you are unable to discern what is worth reading and what is not.
Don’t strive to be an Adsense Expert for the sake of being an Adsense Expert. When you’re making enough money to live on comfortably to give you the lifestyle you believe you deserve, then you can be an expert who writes e-books, talks at seminaros or publishes their methods. Until then we’re all learning. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from each other.
Some people don’t see how funny it is that people ask “how do I get the code to work? How do I get the ads I want? How do I get traffic?” and their site is about… MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET!
Best case scenario it’s pure comedy. Worst case scenario it’s hypocrisy.
Don’t think that you can make a site, upload it, and then the traffic will magically arrive.
It’s not a case of “Build it and they will come”, it’s more like the old saying “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Realise this: you haven’t even yet lead the horse to water. You know what? You don’t even know where that horse is!
You want to make Adsense work for you? Then you’re going to do some more homework… SEO (Search Engine Optimization), learn some design skills (expose yourself to good examples of design, both online and offline, ie: magazine layouts, even the ads), get out of your comfort zone and learn HTML (you can still use a HTML editor (my preference is Dreamweaver), but look at what you’ve done and then look at the code, slowly but surely you will learn without really trying). Read books on marketing. Look at the way businesses (not just online ones) promote themselves.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don’t spam. Never ever. Whether it be email spam to a list of addresses of people you don’t know or a “drive by spamming” at a forum you’ve just signed up at.
Don’t cheat. Don’t try and cheat Google, they’ll catch you. If you think you can, then go ahead. The result will be one less Adsense Publisher for me to compete with to get hold of advertisers dollars.
Cheating is not a means towards passive income. It has no residual effect. Cheating only makes money (which you can end up losing) when you are actively cheating. Instead of wasting your time doing that use your creative if somewhat devious brain to come up with legitimate plans of increasing your revenue. As previously mentioned, educate yourself: SEO, marketing, promotion, etc, etc. Instead of using the local town library computer to fraudulently click on a couple of ads use that trip to pin a flyer for one of your websites on the community noticeboard.
Don’t make a site about a topic simply because it is a high paying keyword. Again, you will just be vomiting up someone elses words. I had a discussion ten years ago with a friend who had concerns with the state of the quality of the information that people were exposing themselves to. It’s even more apt in todays society which sees more of the worlds population multiplied by a thousandfold get online since then. He saw information as peanuts. We process this information, and pass it on in text books and it’s crunchy peanut butter. Then people use this information to write articles (he was thinking magazines) and it’s now smooth peanut butter, and where was it going from there? What was it being used for? And what was it ending up as?
Peanut JUICE!
Watered down and with very little of the crunchy goodness it originally had.
I’m still unaware if peanut juice is on the market, but the thought of it doesn’t make me want to go drink a glass of it. And that’s what people are doing nowadays, dispensing peanut juice from their made for adsense websites.
Unique content isn’t rearranging words in a paragraph. Unique is original. If you’re going to fill your site up with articles from an article site, then so be it. But write a half a dozen articles to do with the topic that you yourself have researched. It might feel like you’re going back to school to do an assignment. And it is. But you know now more than you knew then so it should be easier for you now than it ever was. If you’re not sure how to go about it there are books at the library on writing and researching. Your librarian will know exactly where they are! Despite the rumours circulating the internet, the library is not dead. Use it. If a publisher took a gamble on an author to write a book then it’s bound to contain better information than what you’re getting through a search from a quick lookup online.
Don’t tell your family about your Adsense websites. They may feel compelled to click on the ads to help you out. Which may lead to your account shutdown by Google because one of your family members were a little too generous with the clicks.
Don’t tell your friends about your Adsense websites. They may do what a family member does, or if you have a habit of having friends who for whatever reason would hate to see one of their friends get ahead in life they may try and cripple your residual earnings by clicking too much.
Don’t register your name as a dot com and fill it with Adsense ads. Avoid doing this unless you’re an artist, photographer, musician, author or have some other reason why your name would evoke some kind of recognition and response from an internet audience. By all means do register it, but for purposes other than making money from Adsense.
Don’t label your Ads with anything other than “sponsored links” or “advertisements”.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do’s…
Do make a website on a subject that you LOVE and enjoy. Because depending on your experience, net savvy and other determining factors it may take a while before 1) you get traffic, 2) people actually click on your links, 3) you’re making enough money to get a monthly check.
Adsense is a long term proposition. If you are new you will not making it big overnight.
Do look around and find a forum where they discuss Adsense. There’s a lot around, but be mindful that the information that the members are sharing islegit and not likely to get you banned. It’s good to have more than one opinion. I recommend AdsenseChat which was started by Adsense Expert and published author Joel Comm.
Do ask questions, even stupid ones. At the forum I frequent the only time I will mock someone is AFTER someone has been rude to me because I have pointed out that either 1) they’re a cheater or 2) the world doesn’t need a site about adsense and/or making money on the internet from someone who has little or no experience with both.
Do speculate. Wonder out loud (in forums) about why you think you’ve had a drop or a rise in your adsense earnings. Or even about your site traffic. Feel free to imagine how Google does things. Of course highlight the fact that it is mere speculation. Avoid it coming across as fact or gospel. Also be aware that sometimes things happen and you’ll never find out the reason for them. As frustrating as that is it does happen.
Do ask others to critique your site. And while someone may not directly respond about the ad block layout that you specifically asked for and they talk about some other feature or facet of your website then just go with the flow.
Do keep your site/s confidential if you so wish.
Do buy Joel’s book The Adsense Code. It’s only fifteen bucks! It’s an excellent start point and will bring you up to speed quickly.
Do read Google’s Programme Policies and their Terms and Conditions, aka ToS (Terms of Service). As a matter of fact bookmark them and read them every so often.
Do be patient. If you are a Complete Adsense Newb, and by that I mean you have absolutely no idea how to crop an image, upload a page, copy and paste html, etc, etc, then don’t jump in feet first to the first sales pitch for hosted sites or templates that comes your way. You will need to educate yourself first. Otherwise you will be approaching these offers from a position of ignorance.
Start your Online Business from Scratch Make money from Zero
One advantage of doing business online is that you can start from scratch without investing much money. Here is the Action Plan to help you get started...
Please bookmark this blog and check other related posts for better understanding.
1. List 5 hobbies, interests or areas of expertise. If you want to start a new business, you'd better choose a subject that you like and a subject where you can show expertise. You will have more fun and you will be more competitive.
2. Brainstorm a list of keywords and phrases related to those hobbies and interests. For example, if you are going to sell small airplane collectibles, some possible keywords could be: airplanes, aeronautics, war airplanes, etc.
3. Research those keywords in Wordtracker.com to locate problem statements that have high search results and low competition. Wordtracker.com is a web page that helps you find out how many times your keywords are searched online, how popular your keywords on search engines are. Those keywords may represent problem statements. Wordtracker shows you how many people are buying traffic on those keywords and how much are they paying. You need to find popular statements with low competition.
4. Research those problem statements further to determine if you can develop a product to solve the problem stated. You may use search engines to see how many people are offering products that can help to solve those problems. If you find a popular problem and there are not many people offering solutions online, you've got it!
5. Find or create a product based on previous research for you to sell. Once you found a hungry market, you just need to find the food that your customers want and they will eat from your hands. You may find companies online that can manufacture the products for you or you may find a different way to create the product yourself. If the product is an e-book, you may write it yourself or you may hire someone else to do it.
6. Write a long copy sales letter for that product. The experience of the most important internet marketing gurus reveals that long copies sell much more than short copies. It is also recommendable that you try to sell only one product on your web site. Focus on one product unless the solution you are providing is the offer of a wide catalogue.
7. Register a domain and set up a hosting account. There are many places online where you can register a domain and set up a hosting account in minutes.
8. Register for a merchant account (to set up quickly use PayPal.com). If you don't want to register a merchant account that will allow you to take credit card payments online, go to PayPal.com and sign in. It can be a little bit more expensive, but it is a simple way to take credit card payments online very quickly.
9. Set up a simple web site using an automatic site builder or pay to have someone set it up for you. Do not try to design your own web site unless you are educated on html. Do not waste your time. Hire someone else to do it or buy automatic web site builder software. There are many of these you can buy online.
10. Set up an opt-in form on your web site to collect e-mail addresses. You need to start collecting e-mail addresses for your newsletter. The major part of your business will come from the emails that you will send to your customer list.
11. Build an extensive keyword list based on the initial list of keywords you developed. Use Overture.com. For each keyword on the initial list, Overture can help you find different combinations with other words that you may find interesting. Check the popularity of each term and write down on a spread sheet your final keyword list.
12. Submit those keywords to Overture.com to start driving traffic right away. You need to start driving some traffic immediately in order to test your web site. The best way to do that is to buy this traffic at overture.com
13. Optimize and submit your web site to organic search engines (Google, Altavista, etc...). Once you have proved that your web site works and sells, you will be ready to make the business bigger. It is then time to start working on building free traffic to your site.
14. Continue to test and tweak your web site until target conversion rate is met. Your conversion ratio should be that 1-2% of your visitors should buy from your web site, and 11% should subscribe to your newsletter. Continue testing until you get those stats.
15. Set up an affiliate program on your web site. Affiliate programs can double your business with no additional effort. Others will make the job for you. But you cannot set up an affiliate program before you are sure that your web site can produce results. If your site does not work, you will loose your affiliates and they will never come back to you again.
16. Approach complimentary web sites to sign up as affiliates to promote your product. Get in contact with people that can promote your product and ask them to be your affiliates. Just try to find your first 100 affiliates, and your affiliate list will boom alone.
17. Start publishing a monthly newsletter. You have started collecting e-mail addresses much earlier, but it is not the time to start working the newsletter until you can prove that everything else works.
18. Submit articles to related newsletters and e-zines on a regular basis. In the articles you should always have a link to your site, so that you can get more traffic and you can get more people joining to your newsletter.
19. Continue the development of a content rich web site to further increase search engine rankings. Search engines love content. You must have many web sites which are rich on your keywords and which have links to your main page. A good way to do this is to add as many articles as you can related to your business and link them to your home page.
20. Once keywords have been tested in Overture, roll out in Google Adwords. It works similar to Overture, you bid for traffic. But do not go to Google Adwords first. You must first prove your success with Overture and then go to Google Adwords.
21. Roll out tested keyword list in other major PPCs. When you are sure about your stats, and you know how much money you collect per visitor, you must buy as much traffic as you can get as far as your income per visitor is higher than your bids.
22. Create a viral e-book to generate more leads. Create a free e-book that you can promote and which sells your product or service. Give it for free, and this will bring more traffic to your web site.
23. Have an expert review and critique your web site. Even if your site works, you can always improve. Listen to others and learn from their experiences.
24. Survey your existing customers to find out what other products or services they are looking for. Once you have a big list of customers, use it to find out what other problems do they have. Try to find or create a solution for them and you will boost your sales instantaneously.
25. Create and find back-end products and market them through your e-mail list. Continue finding more products that meet your customer demands and promote them via e-mail.
26. Continue to test and tweak your web site and offers. Nothing is perfect the first time and can always be improved. It is very important that you take action, even if you make mistakes. Learn from your errors and improve your skills.
27. Repeat process to create "Multiple Streams of Income". Once your business is working on automation, then you can start the process again with a new business. Build as many businesses as you can, and reduce your risks. If one business fails, but you have another 5 working businesses, who cares about it?
If you have read up to this point, you are probably asking yourself how much it will cost to get started? The answer is very simple; it depends on how much time and money you have available to invest! If you have a lot of time, you can do everything yourself. On the other hand, if you don't have time, you will have to pay other people for building your website and/or for optimizing your site on search engines.
If you can do nothing else...just launch a web site and start promoting online...
1. List 5 hobbies, interests or areas of expertise. If you want to start a new business, you'd better choose a subject that you like and a subject where you can show expertise. You will have more fun and you will be more competitive.
2. Brainstorm a list of keywords and phrases related to those hobbies and interests. For example, if you are going to sell small airplane collectibles, some possible keywords could be: airplanes, aeronautics, war airplanes, etc.
3. Research those keywords in Wordtracker.com to locate problem statements that have high search results and low competition. Wordtracker.com is a web page that helps you find out how many times your keywords are searched online, how popular your keywords on search engines are. Those keywords may represent problem statements. Wordtracker shows you how many people are buying traffic on those keywords and how much are they paying. You need to find popular statements with low competition.
4. Research those problem statements further to determine if you can develop a product to solve the problem stated. You may use search engines to see how many people are offering products that can help to solve those problems. If you find a popular problem and there are not many people offering solutions online, you've got it!
5. Find or create a product based on previous research for you to sell. Once you found a hungry market, you just need to find the food that your customers want and they will eat from your hands. You may find companies online that can manufacture the products for you or you may find a different way to create the product yourself. If the product is an e-book, you may write it yourself or you may hire someone else to do it.
6. Write a long copy sales letter for that product. The experience of the most important internet marketing gurus reveals that long copies sell much more than short copies. It is also recommendable that you try to sell only one product on your web site. Focus on one product unless the solution you are providing is the offer of a wide catalogue.
7. Register a domain and set up a hosting account. There are many places online where you can register a domain and set up a hosting account in minutes.
8. Register for a merchant account (to set up quickly use PayPal.com). If you don't want to register a merchant account that will allow you to take credit card payments online, go to PayPal.com and sign in. It can be a little bit more expensive, but it is a simple way to take credit card payments online very quickly.
9. Set up a simple web site using an automatic site builder or pay to have someone set it up for you. Do not try to design your own web site unless you are educated on html. Do not waste your time. Hire someone else to do it or buy automatic web site builder software. There are many of these you can buy online.
10. Set up an opt-in form on your web site to collect e-mail addresses. You need to start collecting e-mail addresses for your newsletter. The major part of your business will come from the emails that you will send to your customer list.
11. Build an extensive keyword list based on the initial list of keywords you developed. Use Overture.com. For each keyword on the initial list, Overture can help you find different combinations with other words that you may find interesting. Check the popularity of each term and write down on a spread sheet your final keyword list.
12. Submit those keywords to Overture.com to start driving traffic right away. You need to start driving some traffic immediately in order to test your web site. The best way to do that is to buy this traffic at overture.com
13. Optimize and submit your web site to organic search engines (Google, Altavista, etc...). Once you have proved that your web site works and sells, you will be ready to make the business bigger. It is then time to start working on building free traffic to your site.
14. Continue to test and tweak your web site until target conversion rate is met. Your conversion ratio should be that 1-2% of your visitors should buy from your web site, and 11% should subscribe to your newsletter. Continue testing until you get those stats.
15. Set up an affiliate program on your web site. Affiliate programs can double your business with no additional effort. Others will make the job for you. But you cannot set up an affiliate program before you are sure that your web site can produce results. If your site does not work, you will loose your affiliates and they will never come back to you again.
16. Approach complimentary web sites to sign up as affiliates to promote your product. Get in contact with people that can promote your product and ask them to be your affiliates. Just try to find your first 100 affiliates, and your affiliate list will boom alone.
17. Start publishing a monthly newsletter. You have started collecting e-mail addresses much earlier, but it is not the time to start working the newsletter until you can prove that everything else works.
18. Submit articles to related newsletters and e-zines on a regular basis. In the articles you should always have a link to your site, so that you can get more traffic and you can get more people joining to your newsletter.
19. Continue the development of a content rich web site to further increase search engine rankings. Search engines love content. You must have many web sites which are rich on your keywords and which have links to your main page. A good way to do this is to add as many articles as you can related to your business and link them to your home page.
20. Once keywords have been tested in Overture, roll out in Google Adwords. It works similar to Overture, you bid for traffic. But do not go to Google Adwords first. You must first prove your success with Overture and then go to Google Adwords.
21. Roll out tested keyword list in other major PPCs. When you are sure about your stats, and you know how much money you collect per visitor, you must buy as much traffic as you can get as far as your income per visitor is higher than your bids.
22. Create a viral e-book to generate more leads. Create a free e-book that you can promote and which sells your product or service. Give it for free, and this will bring more traffic to your web site.
23. Have an expert review and critique your web site. Even if your site works, you can always improve. Listen to others and learn from their experiences.
24. Survey your existing customers to find out what other products or services they are looking for. Once you have a big list of customers, use it to find out what other problems do they have. Try to find or create a solution for them and you will boost your sales instantaneously.
25. Create and find back-end products and market them through your e-mail list. Continue finding more products that meet your customer demands and promote them via e-mail.
26. Continue to test and tweak your web site and offers. Nothing is perfect the first time and can always be improved. It is very important that you take action, even if you make mistakes. Learn from your errors and improve your skills.
27. Repeat process to create "Multiple Streams of Income". Once your business is working on automation, then you can start the process again with a new business. Build as many businesses as you can, and reduce your risks. If one business fails, but you have another 5 working businesses, who cares about it?
If you have read up to this point, you are probably asking yourself how much it will cost to get started? The answer is very simple; it depends on how much time and money you have available to invest! If you have a lot of time, you can do everything yourself. On the other hand, if you don't have time, you will have to pay other people for building your website and/or for optimizing your site on search engines.
If you can do nothing else...just launch a web site and start promoting online...
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