Apr
26
Website’s success is the key.
12:43 pm
The popular search engine Google indexes over 8 billion websites. Is one of them yours, or is your website just floating around in cyberspace and you’re hoping your customers will just find you? Is your website a benefit to your organization or company? Is it just an expensive showpiece or is it of true value?
These are some of the many questions that can be asked when launching a new website. With so many different websites being published (some amazing, awful and otherwise), it would be safe to assume that most current business plans underway include the utilization of a website, and that most active companies are utilizing the Internet to some degree. If you are interested in publishing a website, or already have, here are some key elements that may help towards its success:
1. Domain Registration: Be sure to register your domain name (www.yourdomain.com) yourself or have it done within your organization, as opposed to letting a third party register your name. Without control of your domain name registration, you can expect to run into some unnecessary delays if the third party becomes unavailable, which is surprisingly common. You also run the risk of having the registration setup incorrectly or even losing the domain. Purchasing a domain is very easy and available at less than $10 a year, so it is a very inexpensive yet potentially valuable asset.
2. Hosting: After domain registration is complete, you will be in control of where to host your website. Your website will be hosted on an Internet server, a computer that will house your website files and process any functionality such as shopping carts, email, databases, etc. Shop around for hosting options, they vary from inexpensive do-it-yourself options, to managed hosting plans, to exorbitantly expensive plans that are unnecessary. What you need to accomplish with your website will determine what your hosting needs are. I have seen small, compact sites be very effective, so beware of purchasing 500MB of hosting when you may only need 10MB.
3. Design and Development: When it comes to website design, less can often be more. Your website should load quickly and yet be visually stimulating. Try to maintain a consistency of look with any pre-existing marketing material you have in place. Avoid bombarding your visitors with tons of miscellaneous information and links, keep your content precise and to the point, and be sure all of your links work properly and that information is presented in an organized manner. Further development can allow you to take online orders, process payments, store customer info in a database, etc. The type of development you need will depend on what your company wants to accomplish with the website. The bottom line is that even a simple website should be beneficial to your organization when well designed.
4. Caution: Keep in mind that anyone, anywhere in the world, can access your website, so take caution with what you make public. The Internet offers wonders of information exchange, but sadly that can sometimes work against us, depending on who accesses the information and for what reasons. One very bizarre and extremely sad case was the young pregnant mother that was murdered and her baby stolen, after her killer saw a picture of the pregnant woman on the Internet (selling dogs) and then setup a meeting pretending to have an interest in a dog. Focus on publishing informative content related to your products and services only, and keep personal or sensitive information private as much as possible.
5. Marketing: Once your website is designed and hosted you will be ready for visitors, but how are you going to get them to visit your site? Make sure a major search engine indexes your website. If the website is coded correctly, this will be automatic but may take a few weeks. Be sure your website address appears on all of your marketing material, and direct customers to your website for specific reasons, ie. coupons, specials, additional info, etc. Also, explore the many online marketing opportunities as well as traditional print ads.
6. Maintenance: Be sure to pay all domain registration and hosting fees on time. If you would like to be able to update and edit your website yourself, some professional website designers may offer this service. You may be surprised how easily it can be done and being able to do self-maintenance allows you to get the most out of your website.
Good luck and have fun publishing!
Filed Under SEO Tips and Tricks, Tutorials and Website promotion | 2 comments
Apr
23
Adsense Vocabulary
08:23 am
So, you are considering taking the step of adding Adsense to your blog in order to make some extra money. It can be a wise decision. By using your blog to display contextual advertising, you have created a great opportunity, not only for the blog in question but for future pursuits, as well. Many bloggers enter Adsense without a great deal of experience in online advertising and its terminology. However, in order to better understand exactly what will be happening, it is important to get a firm grasp on some of the unique terminology used when discussing Adsense and blogs. Here are some important terms, their common abbreviations, and meanings:
Terms of Service (TOS). All participants in the Adsense program are required to abide by Google’s Terms of Service. This is basically the “rule book” for Adsense. Those who fail to conduct themselves according to TOS may be banned from participation and/or have their account suspended. Every participant should carefully read the TOS.
Publisher. That’s you. Anyone operating a site displaying Adsense ads is considered a publisher.
Pay per click (PPC). Google Adsense operates predominantly on a pay per click basis. That means the advertiser pays for each time someone clicks upon their ad. It also means that you will get paid for every click.
Click through rate (CTR). This represents the percentage of page impressions that result in a click on an ad at your site. For instance, if your blog gets 100 impressions and 17 of them result in a click, the CTR for your site will be 17%.
Ad unit. An ad unit is a displayed block of Google Adsense ads. There are a variety of ad units from which to choose. They are usually expressed in terms of their size in pixels. For instance, a 120 x 600 tower ad unit will be 120 units wide and 600 units long–tall and skinny.
Ad placement. This refers to where your ads are placed. Publishers may place their Adsense units anywhere on a page consistent with the TOS. There are a variety of online guides, charts and recommendations demonstrating the various location options and how successful they tend to be in producing a high CTR.
Channel. You can set up channels to track the performance of individual Adsense ad units or to track earnings on particular sites. Channels are established in the Set Up area of your Adsense account.
Competitive Ad Filter. Google gives you the option not to display certain advertisements via the competitive ad filter. This allows you to avoid inadvertently advertising someone with whom you are in competition, for instance.
The world of Adsense brings with it a new vocabulary that must be mastered in order to achieve maximum success. Terms like those above become second nature in a short period of time for most Adsense units. By knowing and understanding these terms, you will be better able to understand your performance charts and will be better able to learn more about succeeding with Adsense.
Filed Under Tutorials and Website promotion | 1 comment
Apr
11
Outsourcing means more parallel work
08:44 pm
As an online business owner, do you find yourself facing some major challenges with getting more work done, in less time, and as a result your business suffers?
If you’re one of the thousands of people that suffer from running a one man operation and are desperately seeking serious help with the necessary key areas of your online successfully, now you will have the answers, but first…
Which of these every day Business tasks take up most of your time?
Answering Email
Web Design
Script Installations
Recruiting Affiliates
Recruiting Link Partners
Search Engine Optimization
Article Submissions
Testing Marketing Campaigns
Keyword Research
Content Research
Developing AdSense Websites
Sound familiar?
How’s that 1 man operation working for ya?
Are you your own webmaster, business manager, vp of operations, programming team, customer support rep, secretary, etc. ?
If so, now is the perfect time for you to take charge of your life, and take control of your online business activities before they take control of YOU once and for all.
Many online business owner’s suffer with these ongoing headaches, believing there’s no other alternative. It’s happened to the best of us, and it can happen to you too, if it hasn’t happened already…
Before you decide to hire outside help, be sure that you have a clear vision of the task at hand that you want the company, or freelancer to perform for you.
Freelancers vs. Outsourcing Firms
A Freelancer is often the first choice, but after dealing with my fair share of Freelancers, some are very difficult to deal with, worse yet, they often have more then 1 project on the go, and can take weeks or months before your project is completed. ( Some charge a lot higher then the original bid, when it’s all said and done. )
A Freelancer is limited to their individual resources, meaning there’s only so much 1 person can do, plus they often excel at just 1 skill. If you have multiple projects, and multiple tasks
at hand, a Freelancer will not be able to keep up with your ever growing business demands.
When to use Freelancers?
If you have a single project, which doesn’t take a lot of time, and can quickly be accomplished by a person with specialized skills, such as a programmer or graphics designer, or if you need a script installed on your server, and they can do it quickly for you.
Where to find Freelancers?
Check out scriptlance.com, eLance.com, and other freelance related sites, when you’re tired of searching for the right individual, then you may be ready for an Outsourcing Firm.
When to use an Outsourcing Firm?
When an Outsourcing Firm is well established and setup, it will often be able to keep up with your ongoing demands, such as:
Handling your customer service, designing your graphics, and websites, recruiting affiliates along with link partners, Installing scripts for you, they’ll also be able to implement
traffic strategies, and complete any tasks that are demanded to run your business effectively. ( If of course they’re properly set up )
Rather then having 1 freelancer do several jobs for you, an Outsourcing Firm will often have teams in place, specifically trained to handle multiple tasks.
How do you benefit?
You can now have multiple projects, and tasks completed at the SAME time, rather than waiting for each job to be completed before moving on to the next.
Before choosing either a Freelancer or an Outsourcing Firm, be sure to evaluate your company’s goals, and determine which option would be best suited for your tasks at hand.
Be sure to check out their portfolios, ask to see client testimonials, and determine their reputation, and their ability to deliver results in a timely manner. Remember, Time is Money, and you can’t afford to lose either one!
As a business owner, you want to work with people that will maximize your results, require minimum supervision, and give you the peace of mind of knowing that your projects will be completed on time, every time.
When you Outsource successfully, you will have more time to focus on growing your business, rather then working in it.
Outsourcing Dot Com is a firm focused on helping online business owners eliminate the painstaking tasks that are taking up their precious time. It was built for online business
owners, by a successful online business owner.
You can get a sneak peak at what current Outsourcing Dot Com clients are saying about their projects, and how they’re now enjoying more FREE time to spend with their family and friends…
Some are now focused on the key areas that will maximize their profits this year. Read their stories below, and find out how you too can get more work done, in LESS time, because you too deserve to have more time to enjoy with family and friends.
http://www.OutsourcingDotCom.com/Outsourcing/
Filed Under SEO Tips and Tricks, Tutorials and Website promotion | Add comment
Apr
02
Powerful Tips for Super Fast Mini Site Profits!
07:51 pm
There are many ways to make money from “mini sites”. Mini Site for a general definition usually means a very small site with only a few pages (3 to 10).However today I am solely concentrating on selling a “single product”. This can be an ebook, piece of software, a service or even simply “list building”.
**The Most Important Factor!
The main thrust of any highly profitable mini site is in the planning.
Once this has been achieved “you must see through to the end your action and marketing plan/system.”
I have seen too many times people build sites and products only to quit without going the whole course.
I have a current client with an excellent ebook of which the topic has huge demand and his book is only one of two on the market.
Like he stated; “I have put six months, time, effort and money into this book, I am not going to quit now”.
With a little testing, editing and site marketing, we will have his book selling 500 to 1000% more copies within a month or so.
So don’t get to the 80% point of you work and then quit.
Do a bit more testing, build a better linking campaign, write that pop-up course, launch that press release, do more research, get your sales copy professionally written, have your ebook edited by an expert, get help if you need to.
Plan to Succeed and Succeed by Finishing!
**Your Product – Is There Demand?
Simple & quick ways to ascertain if demand for your product or service is present before taking steps to create it.
1. Use Nichebot (http://www.nichebot.com/) & Word Tracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) to research your keywords and get an idea of competition.
2. After choosing your keyword/s, do a search on Google and see how many “adwords” (right hand side of the screen) advertisements appear.
Click on these ads to see “exactly what” they are selling. Are they selling a product the same or similar to yours and at what price? Set up an excel file and check the same keywords over a two week period, who’s advert stays and who’s drops off?
It is best to change your Google ‘preferences’ to show 100 search findings to examine the ads more easily.
3. Set up your own free Adwords account (https://adwords.google.com/select/) and see what amounts are being bid for your given keyword.
The next few tasks also help with the above however it will help you deicide whether there is an exact need for your own product.
1. Do a search for your keywords on Overture (http://www.content.overture.com/d/). Under the top search result click on “sponsored linking” and then click the “view bids tool”.
This will give you the prices of all bids. In general a higher price means that there is much competition and demand for that keyword and product.
Click on a few these links to see exactly what is being sold.
2. Start asking questions on forums associated with your business and product. Does anyone own similar products, what was good about the product or bad, improvements that could be made and so on?
3. Get a survey done.
4. Write a short email course, set-up a website and get traffic to the site using Adwords. At the end of the course get subscribers to fill out a survey stating whether they would find your new product useful and if they would purchase it.
**Product – Service Production
This is part is straight forward really. Being that it’s your own product, you should already know how to produce it or least some idea.
I will say that if you are writing an ebook, by far the easiest method is to produce it in Microsoft “word” or similar and then convert it into “Pdf” using Adobe Acrobat 7.
**Setting Up
Again, setting up your website, domain name, etc can be done quite easily and inexpensively.
**Testing
You must split test! This simply means to test different parts of your sales copy, headings, pictures, price that is on your sales page to achieve the highest sales percentages (website hits to sales).
At this stage though you have a choice!
You can split test your product by driving clients to your site using “paid methods” such as Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/).
Or
You can start building traffic to your site and then test with free traffic.
Or
The best option, do both at the same time!
Let me make this very clear. Testing can and does make & break many businesses!
Fail to test and your business can under or you could be loosing $10,000’s lost revenue every year. Do not fail to test.
**Marketing Your Mini Site
On of the best ways to market your own product is with an affiliate program. You can have hundreds if not thousands of people advertising your product or service all over the net for free.
Here are several top affiliate services currently on the market:
http://www.clickbank.com
http://www.cj.com (Commission Junction)
http://paydotcom.com
At this stage we get into the nuts and bolts of web traffic and marketing however as much of this is similar for some sites I will cover web traffic methods in detail in the following section.
**Planning & Your Budget
After completing your research you should plan you whole business campaign and prepare and research a budget.
What will you do yourself and what will you outsource? Items to think about are:
Web Design
Sales Copy
Affiliate Setup
Accepting Payments
Download Area (If an online product)
Delivery
Marketing & Web Traffic
If you are a small business much of this can be handled by a staff member to set up or organize. If a solopreneur the same can be done.
**Sales copy – a word of warning!
If you have no sales copy experience, you will improve with time spent online.
Even so, although I have many years of experience I still outsource my major copy writing needs. Copy writing is a highly acquired skill and while good copy will make you a lot of money, bad copy will…….
So bottom line. If you have no skill in copy writing, outsource it.
**That’s it! Start you marketing campaign and watch the profits flood in!
Filed Under SEO Tips and Tricks, Tutorials and Website promotion | Add comment