28/12/2006 by management.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a science of sorts that would enable you to ensure a favorably prominent position for your website in search engine results pages (SERPs).  And since 80% of your traffic would come from the search engines, SEO methods take on a critical importance in the success of your online endeavor.

There are two kinds of SEO, on page and off page.  This article will tackle the latter.

Off page SEO is all about the things you could to get a high page rank (PR) for your website after it has already gone live.  These are the things which you actually execute outside the pages of your website, hence the name of this type of SEO.

What are these steps?

Well, all of them are concerned with building your link popularity.  Your link popularity represents the number of back links your website has.  To check you website’s current link popularity, head over to www.linkpopularity.com and use the free tool that can be found there.  The higher your link popularity, the higher your PR will be.

Building your link popularity involves increasing the number of websites that will link to yours.  This is easier said than done.  It’s not a matter of getting reciprocal links like “you link to me and I’ll link to yours.”  Google, in particular, despise reciprocal linking.  You have to get unilateral links to your website.

The best way to do this is by ensuring that you have unique, highly informative content.  Really, this is the number one strategy to invite websites to link to yours.  But your content in the realm of on page SEO, and it is assumed that you have made all efforts to ensure great content.

What are the other ways by which you could build your link popularity?  Try the following techniques:

• Article marketing.  There are thousands of article directories on the Internet.  You could submit articles to these websites.  For every submission, you will be allotted a resource box where you could introduce yourself and share a link to your website.  Now, some of these article directories have high page ranks.  If your articles are accepted, they will be included in their pages.  Having a website with high PR linking to yours would go a long way in increasing your own page rank.  Additionally, if you will submit just one article to a thousand directories, you’d have a thousand pages linking to your website!  Sounds like a daunting task?  There are article directory submission services available.  Seek them out.  For as low as $25, they could submit your articles to as many as 200 directories.

• Forum marketing.  There are online communities dedicated to the subject that your website is serving.  Seek them out, then join them.  You’d be allotted a signature box, which would appear in your every post.  In your signature box, you could leave a link to your website.  Then post as many significant messages as you could.  For every post you will make, you’d have a page linking to your website.

• Advertise at www.craigslist.com .  Now here’s a novel strategy.  The website www.craigslist.com is a well known classifieds website with a PR7 score.  A PR7 score is rarely high!  To have a link in a website like this would give a tremendous boost to your own website.  Simply go to that site and choose the category that your pages belong to, then post your advertisement, with your link of course.  It doesn’t matter that no one would get to read it.  What matters is that the search engine spiders would find your website as they would come from a PR7 site.

• Look for partners who are willing to include your list in their pages.  The easiest way to do this is to use the free tool at www.webconfs.com/backlink-builder.php .

• Try triangular linking.  Google despises reciprocal linking, but triangular linking is one way of going around this limitation.  Look for two or more webmasters who are willing to give it a shot.  Webmaster A could post a link to Webmaster B’s website in his own pages.  Webmaster B can post a link to Webmaster C’s website in his own pages.  And webmaster C can post a link to Webmaster A’s website in his own pages.  It may enforce the same principle as reciprocal linking, but the search engine spiders are not programmed to figure this out… yet.

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28/12/2006 by management.

When it comes to doing business online, you will soon discover that it’s all about the traffic.  Traffic, or the number of internet users you’d be able to generate for your website, is and will always be the lifeblood of any online venture.  After all, what good is a website when there’s no one there to see its pages?  How successful will your digital products be if no one would be able to know about them?  Who will avail of your services when no one will get exposed to their existence?

Contrary to what many people believe, generating traffic for your website does not start once you pages are published and have gone live.  Traffic generation strategies start at the very moment you are conceptualizing an idea for the website itself.

This is what on page search engine optimization (SEO) is all about.  It is concerned with techniques that you could implement on your web pages themselves to ensure a good volume of traffic for your website.  80% of your traffic would come from the many search engines in the World Wide Web.  If each and every web page you have is optimized for these search engines, then your website would be in a good position to have a high rank for the results of every relevant query.

• Keyword selection.  Choosing the right keywords is essential for the success of your website.  Keywords are the popular search terms that people use to gather information from the search engines.  If your web pages are populated by the right density of the correct keywords, then you’ll have better chances of winning the attention of the search engine spiders.  To determine the appropriate keywords for the subject that your website will be servicing, use the free tools that can be found at www.nichebot.com .

• Keyword placement in content.  Content is the king of the internet.  But even royalty needs support.  Populate your content with the proper amount of keywords.  A density level of at least 2% should be sought.  This means that the right keywords should be mentioned at least twice for every 100 words of text.

• META tags.  META tags are HTML codes that do not have a bearing on the physical appearance of your web pages, but they do inform the search engine spiders that such web pages are appropriate for a particular query.  Always include the following META tags on the top portion of your source code.  You could copy-paste them from the list below, but do change the indicated fields.  Also, make sure that you include your keywords as much as you could on your META tags.

• ALT tags.  ALT tags refer to the text that would appear every time the mouse cursor would pass through an image.  Your ALT tags should include your keywords.

• Page titles.  Page titles are the captions that appear at the very top of your web page.  Make sure that each web page in your website would have a different title that will include the appropriate keywords.

• Focus.  Remember, search engines will crawl through your website per page.  Each page is a different project altogether.  Focus is the key.  Ensure that each web page of yours would focus on a particular keyword or key phrase.  If there is an article in that page, make sure that the article will only discuss and include one keyword or key phrase from the list you have made.  Also, it would greatly help if you would name the page file in a manner that would include the keyword or key phrase it is focused on.  For example, www.thisisyourwebsite.com/thisisyourkeyword.html is a good page filename that would help boost your SEO efforts.

Following these guidelines would help you a lot in securing a favorable position in search engine results pages.  This in turn would guarantee for you a sustainable and sufficient volume of traffic that would make your website a genuine success.

Posted in Articles | 1 Comment »

28/12/2006 by management.

So, you’re an online marketer with a great idea that you know will be loved by your target market.  You’re quite certain that it’s going to be a venerable cash cow once it is implemented properly.  The problem is, your resources are quite wanting at the moment.  For starters, you have yet to establish a credible brand that could instantly win consumer confidence.  You will not be able to sell the product that would result from your idea on the strength of your name alone.  Also, your mailing list is composed of ten subscribers, all of whom you have painstakingly sought out throughout two years… or even more.  More importantly, you don’t have the financial capital to fund the production of your idea.

So, what should be done?  Should you give up on your grand idea just like that?

Hold your horses, dear friend.  There is a way that you could avail of to have your idea see the light of day.

It’s called joint venturing, or JV as it has fondly been called in the online marketing scene.  Joint ventures are partnerships between two or more online marketers, all of whom pool together their resources to ensure the success of a particular project.  Once profit is realized, these partners employ a previously established profit-sharing scheme.  Everyone who chipped in would be given his just share.  And everyone would go home happy.

If you don’t have the resources for the idea you have in mind, you could seek out some online businessmen who would be willing to enter a joint venture with you.  Why would they want to partner up with someone like you?  Well, there are many benefits that can be had with joint ventures which they will find pretty hard to resist.

• Since several people will pool together their resources for a joint venture, the risks can be minimized.  Assuming the worst scenario that the project would fail, the losses would be less since it will be borne by several individuals, compared to the losses that can be incurred by a sole endeavor.

• Joint ventures allow online marketers to compensate for missing components in their portfolios.  Don’t have a big mailing list?  Partner up with someone who has tens and thousands of subscribers.  Don’t have the cash to fund production?  Seek out someone who has some extra money to invest.  Don’t have an idea that can be profitably pursued?  Seek out a creative soul beaming with novel concepts that are begging to be exploited.

• Joint ventures help build your brand in the online marketing community.  If you’re an intermediate marketer who manages to enter a joint venture with a renowned guru, you’d be able to enjoy an instant boost to your reputation in the industry.

• Joint ventures foster great relationships between marketers.  The experience of having worked with each other can blossom into friendship and future partnerships.

There is no reason for an online marketer to refuse whatever helpful contribution you could provide for a project.  He may be a well established personality in the industry, and you’re just a cub who’s starting out, but you may possess something that he does not have, and this would make you a valuable part of the team.

The trick, really, is in knowing where to seek out some joint venture partners.  If you have a great idea backed up by an equally amazing business plan, then finding willing partners would be easy, if you’re looking for them in the right places.

Here’s a tip.  Join online business forums and start posting significant messages.  Be a helpful member of the community and build your reputation.  Then publish a thread the calls for joint venture partners.  Explain to your respondents what you have in mind, and chances are, they’ll be more than interested to get started at the soonest possible time.

Joint ventures prove that in internet marketing, there is no such thing as lack of resources.  What can lead to failure in this field is lack of imagination.

Posted in Articles | 1 Comment »

28/12/2006 by management.

Almost every online business follows a basic model.  This is a tried and tested system that would allow you to effectively sell your products in the World Wide Web.  It is an automated system that could act as your sales agent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even when you’re offline.  Have you followed this basic model so far?

Let’s have a checklist:

• Have you pinpointed your target market?
• Have you come up with a product to sell?
• Have you created a search engine-optimized website?
• Have you promoted your website well, through article marketing, forum marketing, blogs, and outside links?
• Have you come up with a sales page for your product?
• Are you garnering enough traffic for your sales page?
• Have you integrated a follow-up system in your website?
• Have you determined a price for your product?

If you have done all these things, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t rake in some substantial earnings.

The only concern left that we have to tackle is how to sustain your profit.  Surely, if you’d gather a stable stream of visitors for your web page, you’d be able to generate some sales.  But you should always aim for more.

And this can be done through cross-selling and back selling.

Cross-selling involves the sale of products related to the main products you are selling.  For example, you are selling an eBook on dog grooming.  You could offer supportive products like dog grooming kits, dog instructional videos, and the likes.  You don’t have to come up with these products yourself.  You could simply look for other online businesses offering these items, and you could sign up as their affiliate.  As an affiliate, you just have to refer people to the other business’ sales page, and when the visitors you have referred would decide to make some purchases, you’ll get a commission for every sale!

Back selling is slightly more complicated.  It involves offering your other products at the exact points of sale.  Points of sale are those moments during the instruction when your customers are most willing to purchase something.  By offering them other products during these times, there is a higher likelihood that they’d buy from you!  These points of sale can be broken down into:

• That moment when your customer clicks on the order button.  He will be diverted to a new page for his payment details.  You could include a pop-up for this page advertising your other products.  Better yet, the pop-ups could even employ urgency marketing to better your chances of bagging more sales.

• That moment when your customer has just purchased a product from you.  Normally, he’ll be redirected to a Thank You page.  In the Thank You page, you could advertise other offers as well.

When automating your online business, do keep these in mind.  If you manage to integrate cross-selling and back selling tactics in specific points of your website, you’d be able to rake in more profit!  It’s as simple as that!

Do you need some products to cross promote of to offer at the backend of every deal?  You could check out the many affiliate programs online.  For sure, there is one which is relevant to the subject your business is servicing.  Simply choose the products that complement what you’re offering, or at the very least, target the same audience your own products are aiming for.  This would provide for you the greatest chance of success when it comes to the aforementioned supplements for your online sales.

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28/12/2006 by management.

Freelancing refers to the process of offering your services for someone else on a per project basis.  The best way to explain this is through an example.

Supposing you possess excellent writing skills.  There are millions (and I’m not exaggerating) of webmasters and internet marketers out there who are in need of fresh content and new products on a daily basis.  Their demand for digitally written works is so great that even if they are blessed with just as much writing prowess, they won’t have the time to come up with everything that they need.  Hence, they resort to outsourcing.

And this is where you enter the picture.

As a freelancer offering your writing services for a fee, you could take in some projects they will give you.  You will be paid per delivery, and once that’s done, you could take in more clients for consistent earnings.

But freelancing is not only limited to writing, or ghostwriting as it is technically known.  There are other services that you could offer, depending on the area of proficiency you possess.  Here are more examples:

• graphic creation and design
• web creation and design
• software development
• data encoding
• translation to specific languages
• marketing consultancy
• strategic placement consultancy

There are more, of course, ranging from something as complex as creating advanced scripts to something as seemingly trivial but as surprisingly effective as forum posting (yes, I kid you not!  You’ll get paid per post you make!).  The bottom line is, if you have some services to offer that can be delivered digitally, freelancing is always available for you.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this earning opportunity.  Let’s take a look at the distinct benefits you can reap from this option.

• You can work anytime you want, from the comforts of your own home.  Your only concern is to deliver high quality products on or before the deadline your client has set.

• Freelancing requires minimal investment, or none at all.  Promoting your services can be done without spending a single cent.  But as with everything else, the best advertising vehicles are often those which you have to pay for.  Be that as it may, you won’t be promoting heavily, and any financial investment you will be forced to make will not cost you a fortune.

• You have the liberty to accept the projects that you want, and turn down the projects you’re not happy about.  Orders will come from your clients, but you remain your own boss.

It’s not entirely a bed of roses for freelancing.  Let’s take a look at the disadvantages of this trade.

• You will earn an amount equivalent to the work you have done.  If you could only do so much in one day, you could only earn just as much.  Surpassing that threshold is quite improbable.

• You will have to work, many hours on occasions.  Freelancing may afford you certain liberties, but the same principle applies: no work, no pay.

• Expansion is also quite improbable.  You’re only a single person.  There is only so much you could do.

• Your orders would be dependent on how efficiently you market your services.  There are other earning opportunities that promise more rewards for less work using the same marketing vehicles you will be forced to take.

If you want to dabble in freelancing, here are some splendid places where you could advertise your services and solicit some clients:

www.elance.com

www.rentacoder.com

www.scriptlance.com

www.guru.com

The choice is yours, dear friend.  If you’re looking for sure profit fast, then freelancing is a great option indeed.  But if you want to plan long-term, I suggest that you explore other earning opportunities as well.

Posted in Articles | 1 Comment »

28/12/2006 by management.

There are 22 million owners of portable mp3 players in 2005.  29% of them have tried downloading and listening to podcasts at one point in time.  We’re talking about 6,380,000 people who have been exposed to podcasts during a period when podcasting was just in its infancy.

These statistics alone will show you the vast potentials that can be found with the podcasting medium.  As an online marketer, you’ll be able to reach a lot of people with downloadable podcasts.  Not only this, but podcasting offers a slew of benefits that can only gain momentum in the coming months:

• People respond more to what they could hear rather than what they simply read.
• Podcasts offer a more exciting experience compared to conventional written works.
• Podcasts will attract prospects that you will normally fail to tap.
• Podcasts offer you more leeway in delivering your business message.
• Podcasts would give your business an instant boost in credibility, as people will get to listen to a real voice instead of having to read mere words.

The problem that many Internet marketers face when it comes to the prospect of creating podcasts is the seeming difficulty associated with their preparation.  This is borne from simple unfamiliarity, however.  The fact is, anyone – yes, ANYONE – can create their own podcasts without having to avail of special software programs for the same.  Just follow the steps below:

1. Choose a subject.
2. Choose an engaging aspect of that subject, one which your target market would be interested to know about.
3. Prepare an outline detailing the important points you wish to discuss about the said subject.
4. Do some research, if necessary.
5. Prepare index cards which should contain some summaries of your points.  You will refer to these to ensure uninterrupted recording that would streamline the process.
6. Attach a microphone to your computer.  This is the only hardware you will need, aside from the PC terminal itself, of course.
7. Set up the Sound Recorder program that is bundled with your Windows operating system.
8. Begin recording.
9. Once you have finished your podcast, review the same using the Media Player which should also be bundled with your Windows operating system.
10. Enhance your podcast with the free tools that can be found at www.odeo.com/inbox .
11. If you wish to earn from your podcast itself, enroll it with www.fruitcast.com .  They will include advertisements within your podcast, but you’ll get to earn a certain amount every time it is downloaded.
12. If everything sounds well, convert your file into .mp3 format.
13. Use Microsoft Front Page to upload the file to your web server.
14. Include your podcast link in website repositories like www.ipodder.com and www.podcastalley.com .

Just like that, you could have your own podcast ready to be downloaded.  You would want to limit the length of your podcasts to 10 minutes per episode, however, so that the file size can be kept at a minimum.  Additionally, you would want to serialize your podcasts into installments to capture the continuous interests of your listeners.  They will then become your leads for some marketing purposes.

You could create podcasts for any topic you want.  There is no limit, and each subject should command a healthy audience if the podcast is marketed correctly.  Submitting the same to the websites we have mentioned above would be a start, but try to look for more avenues where you could promote your podcasts and you’re bound to reach more people in the process.

Afterwards, you could sit back, relax, enjoy all the benefits that podcasting can offer, and realize that yes, indeed, podcasting is as easy as 1-2-3.

Posted in Articles | 1 Comment »

28/12/2006 by management.

You may have a new website you want to get indexed with the various search engines at the soonest possible time.  Or you may have an existing website which you want to position well in the search engine results.  Or you may have a good performing website which you want to remain competitive.  Whatever your reason may be, you’re sure to benefit from the blog and ping combo.

Now, you may have heard or read about this before, but your never realized how it works.  Or this may be the first time you have been acquainted with this surefire technique.  Regardless, much can be learned from this article as we discuss the basics and the mechanics of the blog and ping strategy.

It All Starts With A Blog

Web logs, or blogs as people have fondly referred to them in recent years, were originally designed for social purposes.  People used it as online diaries where they could post their thoughts, the events of their days, their secret desires and the likes.  But blogs possessed some very special qualities that internet marketers found hard to dismiss.

• Blogs figure prominently in search engine results.  The first few pages of some queries would yield many blogs occupying premium spots.
• Blogs are basically free web publishing tools.  A little tweaking and it could become a website of its own.
• Blogs are easy to update.  Just press EDIT or PUBLISH and you’d have new content in a flash.  No need to change the source code.  The system will easily take care of that.
• Blogs have their own communities.  Bloggers often link with one another.  This is a level of connectivity that is pretty hard to come by in other mediums.

Hence, online businessmen started using blogs for marketing purposes.

The strategy goes like this:

1. Create a blog dedicated to the subject your main website is catering to.  Preferably, you should create an account with www.blogger.com , because this service is owned by Google, the most widely used search engine in the World Wide Web.
2. Post regularly, and include a link to your website in majority of your messages.  Also include your links with popular keywords as anchor texts.
3. Include a link to your own website on the navigation bar.
4. Just to emphasize – you have to post REGULARLY.  This means at least every other day.  No sweat, though.  Short posts of 200 words in length would be enough.

It’s About RSS As Well

Blogs produce RSS feeds.  RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, a technology that would allow you to broadcast any changes on your blog to subscribed systems.  This is actually the heart of the blog-ping combo.  You have to learn how to syndicate your RSS feeds.

If you’re using blogger, it’s easy.  Take your blog’s URL.  For example, it is:

www.thisisyourblog.blogspot.com

Now, all you have to do is to add the extension atom.xml.  So, it should appear like this:

www.thisisyourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml

This is the URL of your RSS feeds.

Now you need an RSS aggregator somewhere which could pick up your RSS feeds.  Preferably, it is a website that can be easily crawled by search engine spiders.  The perfect spot for this is www.my.yahoo.com .  Simply create a Yahoo account, then go to the said page.  Find the ADD RSS button, then press on the same.  Then paste the URL of your RSS feeds.

Every time you’d update your blog, RSS feeds would be generated and displayed in www.my.yahoo.com .

Now It’s Time To The Ping

Once your www.my.yahoo.com is set up, every time you’d post a new entry on your blog, you’ll have to go to www.pingomatic.com .  Fill up the appropriate fields, then submit.  This will inform a lot of blog directories that your blog has new entries.  And this would drive the search engine spiders on a feeding frenzy.  It’ll be a reminder for them to check out your blog come the next relevant query.

Again, you have to do this every time you will post a new entry.  No exceptions!

How powerful is the blog-ping combo?

Your new website will get indexed in Yahoo within 5 days.  This is guaranteed!  And with Yahoo picking up your website, and with www.blogger.com being owned by Google, it wouldn’t be long until the world’s most widely used search engine would index your new website as well.

And if the blog-ping combo could do this for new websites, just think of the possibilities it could provide for older ones.  Fantastic, isn’t it?

Posted in Articles | 1 Comment »

28/12/2006 by management.

Are you an eBay seller?  If you have been conducting your business in this widely popular online auction site, then chances are, you would’ve experienced some fraudulent activities perpetrated against your enterprise.  Scam artists are everywhere, it seems, and the sheer anonymity provided by the World Wide Web makes the virtual world a paradise for all sorts of unscrupulous folks.

Condemning them is one thing.  But you do need to positively act on the real perils of getting scammed.  You have take some precautionary steps and adjust the way you operate your online business to minimize, if not completely eliminate, the risks that these scam artists present.

Let’s enumerate the more famous, or should we say infamous, of these eBay scams and discuss some ways by which you could avoid them.

• Bid shielding.  Bid shielding greatly compromises the profit you could derive from your auctions.  Bid shielding occurs when a bidder uses two eBay accounts.  One account would bid a low price for your auction.  The other account would bid a very high price for the same, thus dissuading other people from competing for the same item.  When the bidding period nears its end, the second account would withdraw his bid, leaving the first account to win the item at a very low price.  Bid shielding gravely jeopardizes the integrity of eBay itself.  This is why the site promptly acts on any reports about possible occurrences of this scam.  Pinpointing possible bid shielding is quite easy.  If the current bid is grossly higher than the most recent bid, then bid shielding is probably in operation.  Report it immediately to eBay, so that they could conduct an investigation while the auction is ongoing.  Additionally, add a disclaimer on your auction, allowing you to cancel any winning bid whenever bid shielding is apparent.

• Bad checks.  If you will take checks as payment for your auction, then you will have to live with the danger of encountering checks that would eventually bounce because of lack of funds.  The solution to this scam is simpler than the rest.  Do not ship your items until the checks you received have cleared.  It’s the most prudent course to take.  Add a notice in your auction that payments made through checks would have to clear before the items can be delivered.  This would serve as due earning for your bidders that they would have to wait longer for the auctions they have won.

• Stolen payment information.  Credit card fraud is rampant these days, what with new hacking technology and the abundance of spyware all over the internet.  A winning bidder may pay you trough a credit card which is not his.  He’ll ask you to ship the item to a P.O. box.  Once the item is delivered, he’ll then close the P.O. box address to cover his tracks.  And you’re left with no means to retrieve what you have lost.  The best way to protect yourself against credit card fraud is to require payment from confirmed addresses only.  Since PayPal accepts credit card payments, you could easily inquire from the service if a payee has entered a verifiable address.  You have the option to cancel the bid of someone who’s not paying with a confirmed address.

• Drop shipping scams.  There is no denying the popularity of drop shippers in the eBay business.  Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, wants to contact a drop shipper to increase his eBay offerings and profit.  Some “enterprising” individuals have started to offer a list of drop shippers in eBay itself, as one of the many auctions in its pages.  But eBay warned against these lists.  99% of them, according to eBay, would be filled with junk details like broken links, outdated information, and even fabricated entities.  The solution?  Do not purchase these lists.  Look for your own drop shipper.  You’d realize that finding one would only entail a little research of your own.

For many of us, eBay offers great income streams that serve us well.  We must strive to protect the opportunity we have been given by being vigilant against scams and combating them through the implementation of precautionary measures for our every auction.

Posted in Articles | 2 Comments »

28/12/2006 by management.

“Gold is in your mailing list.”

You’ve heard many veteran internet marketers and established gurus preach these very words time and time again, and for good reasons at that.  It has been established as a fact that most of your sales would come after the 4^th to the 8^th contact.  But before you could ensure that you’ll be able to keep in touch with your prospects for such number of times, you’d have to capture their contact details first.

This is accomplished through an opt-in list.  An opt-in list, basically, is a system that would allow you to capture the contact details of your visitors.  The way it works is that your visitors would be presented the choice to leave their contact details (usually their email addresses) so that you could follow up on them later on.  This is the reason why an opt-in list is also called as a follow-up system.

An opt-in list is essential for your online business.

For starters, as we have discussed in the statistics above, most of your sales won’t come after the first contact.  Your prospects should be given time to warm up to your offer.  You’d have to contact them again, and again, and again, to assure them of your credibility and to make them believe that your offer would be truly beneficial for their needs.

Also, they may not be interested with your current offer, but this shouldn’t be taken to mean that they won’t be interested with what you could come up with in the future.  An opt-in list would allow you to contact them for the future deals you will bring to the table.

There is no doubt that a follow-up system, or a mailing list, or an opt-in list, whatever you want to call it, would be very important for your success in the online field.

But the question is: how do you build the same?

I will not sugarcoat any answers.  A lot of internet marketers are struggling to acquire subscribers for their mailing lists.  They may have been in the business for a couple of years already, yet their mailing lists are composed of only a dozen or so subscribers.

If we are to peg an average, the conversion rate of your mailing list would hover around the range of 1% to 3.5%.  Hence, the success of your mailing list would greatly depend on the number of users who would decide to subscribe to the same.  If you only have 10, 15 or 20 subscribers, you won’t be able to make the most out of this system.

So again, how do you build your mailing list?  How will you be able to acquire thousands upon thousands of subscribers at the soonest possible time?

There is only one answer to give.  It’s not even a secret, as it is quite simple.

Incentive.

Your visitors should be given a reason to sign up with your mailing list.  You cannot just expect them to leave their email addresses without receiving anything in return, right?  If you were in their shoes, would you even bother to give out your contact details without deriving something from it?

The mistake that most internet marketers make is that they expect people to sign up by simply promising future updates.  This isn’t enough incentive.  People need something more than that, something valuable, something that is very much worth their time.  If you will be able to give them such in exchange for their subscription, you’d be able to boost your number of subscribers really fast.

Here are some incentives that are guaranteed to work:

• Ezines or newsletters.  Information is always a valuable commodity in the World Wide Web.  If you could commit to create and deliver a regular eZine or newsletter for them, you’d be able to win their subscription and eventually their trust.  Just make sure that your eZine or newsletter would be of premium quality.

• Freebies.  Who would say no to something that is offered for free, right?  It may be an eBook, a special report, a PLR product, a software program or another kind of digital item which your prospects could download in exchange for their subscription.

• Contests.  You could offer a valuable digital product as a prize for a random drawing, with your prospects’ subscriptions serving as their raffle entries.

Any of the suggestions above are sure to make your prospects take notice.  And as such, you’d have greater chances of bagging their subscription and building your mailing list to enormously profitable levels.

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28/12/2006 by management.

What good are your products if you don’t have a place where you could sell them, right?  Think of the internet as one big marketplace.  Naturally, to be able to sell your wares in a venue like this, you will need a store… a digital store.  This digital store takes the form of your website.

A website that sells information products does not have to be complicated.  In fact, the simpler it is, the better it would be.  Designing your website would depend on what products you’re selling, and how many products you’re actually offering.

If you’re just offering one product for sale, you could simply host one page for the same.  This page is called a sales page, or a sales copy.  A sales page is where you could try to persuade your visitors to purchase your products.  This can be done in a variety of ways.  Usually, internet marketers hire a copywriter to prepare a sales page for their goods.  However, copywriters don’t come cheap.  Some of them charge thousands of dollars per sales page.  Some even charge a percentage of the sales you’ll be able to generate, as their fee.  If the copywriter is good, trust that whatever he will come up with would most certainly result in quite a number of sales, and eventual profit, for your online business.

The question that needs to be asked, really, is if you have the resources to procure the services of one?

Even if you don’t have such allotted resources for such, you could still prepare your own sales copy.  Simply keep in mind the following guidelines:

• Your sales page should start with an attention grabbing headline.  If you’re selling an eBook about dog grooming for example, you could emphasize on the best benefit that your readers would be able to derive from the same.  Here is an illustrative headline: “Finally, An Ebook That Reveals Easy And Comprehensive Steps In Keeping Your Canine Companion Squeaky Clean!”  Remember, a headline should be able to grab your visitors’ attention to compel them to read the rest of what you have to say.  Always be guided by this rule.

• After your salutations (“Dear Sir/Ma’am;” “Dear Internet Friend;” Dear Valued Customer;” etc.), you should first introduce who you are and what your business is about.  This would make your readers know that they are dealing with a credible expert in the field.  Also, this would diminish the anonymity that sometimes makes them hesitant to trust you with their hard-earned money.

     Establish the necessity for the product you’re about to offer.  Discuss the market and why there is a need for your goods.  This can be done by enumerating some problems with the way things are.  With our running example of dog grooming, you could create a semblance of necessity for your eBook if you would discuss the rather unpleasant smell that unclean pups would leave in the house, or the fur that comes off their bodies because of their lack of grooming, etc.

• Introduce your product.  Include the specifications for the same.

• Enumerate ALL the benefits that could be derived from the use of your product.

• Lastly, create a sense of urgency.  Many internet marketers label this as a “call to action.”  This is where you would be able to get them off their seats, in a manner of speaking, and punch their credit card details to order your product.  This is the most important component of your sales page.

A sales page can easily become the entirety of your website by itself.  Simply add a payment button that would lead your would-be customers to the payment processing page.  This is dependent on the merchant account you will procure.  PayPal, 2checkout, and ClickBank are the most popular payment processors for online businesses.

If you’re offering multiple products for sale, you would need a sales page for each of them.  Your landing page (the page that would load up when the visitor would type in your URL) should contain links to each of your product’s sales page.

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