Painters were at our house this weekend, doing the trim outside and a few rooms inside. My wife provided most of the direction, but I asked the head guy (and owner of the company) to pay attention to a few details for me.
The whole experience reminded me of how critically important it is to pay attention to customer requests when dealing with eBay sales. On the Web (and with email) it's easy to lose contact with customers and forget to address their concerns.
Make sure you don't fall into this trap. You may not see the results directly, but your customers will become upset and you'll eventually lose business - like my painter has. Not only did he lose business, he lost a valuable referral source.
He started to lose me when he failed to record my suggestions and concerns. I didn't get into interior design much, choosing between mauve and tope, but I did have some input as far as the whole project goes.
I wanted them to make sure they cleaned up the "misses" on the outside, where some black trim paint accidentally hit the white house paint. I needed them to unstick some of the windows and put all the screens back, as well.
When the project started wrapping up, it was obvious that the lead was ignoring some of my requests -- namely the screens and window unsticking. I loved the work, but I wasn't so hot on their finishing skills.
From a customer service perspective, the timing couldn't have been worse. Just when the painters wanted to consider it a job well done, I was having second thoughts about their competence.
That sinking feeling should not have come at the end of the project. The lead should have been going out with a celebration rather than with some gripes. He should have lead me around, showed me how great everything looks, showed me the extra work he'd thrown in, and gone down my list of requests one by one, demonstrating that he met my needs and respects my wishes.
If he performed these "finalizing" customer service/marketing steps, he'd have my 100% recommendation. I'd rave about him to friends, pass out his business cards and even write up a testimonial for him. I'd offer to help him out with his advertising materials, in fact. We'll certainly have more painting jobs in the future, and I'd like to stay on good terms with him.
On eBay, the same steps need to be followed in order to build business and collect loyal customers that rave about you. You need to send customers follow-up emails that confirm what they bought, what kind of deal you're giving them (on shipping, bonuses, etc.), and how you appreciate their business and would welcome any questions they may have. You need to offer them targeted cross-sell and up-sell items as they bid and shop. And, you need to quickly address their concerns as they come up. All this attention and service ensures that your customers refer you to others, leave positive feedback, and return to do more business with you.
Don't be like my painter. Pay attention to detail and your business will grow at a healthy pace.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Google to Compete with PayPal?
PayPal is secure in its domination over the electronic payment industry, at least for now.
Following reports that Google planned to launch a new Internet payment service (nicknamed Google Wallet), Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, denied that Google would be directly competing with PayPal. He did, however, acknowledge that Google has plans for some type of electronic payment service.
Without revealing any details, Schmidt emphasized that the Google payment service will not offer the same sort of “person to person, store-valued payments system” as PayPal provides.
The Internet commerce industry was rampant with rumours of the new Google service following an e-commerce conference hosted by securities firm Piper Jaffray. Speculation that Google Wallet would encroach on PayPal territory was reinforced by the appearance of a June 20th article in the Wall Street Journal which stated that Google was planning an online payment service to compete with PayPal.
PayPal is a unit of eBay and generates almost 25% of total eBay revenue. It is used by consumers for making a wide variety of Internet purchases. It allows purchasers to use their credit cards without divulging their credit card numbers to merchants. PayPal takes a percentage of each transaction and had revenues of $233.1 million in the first quarter of this year.
Most of Google’s revenue comes from online advertising and this expansion into online payments was seen by many in the industry as yet another example of the rivalry between the two companies.
Google is a giant in Internet commerce with revenues of $3.2 billion last year. A payment service that competed directly with PayPal would be a serious blow to both PayPal and eBay.
Google maintained silence about the rumours until Schmidt’s comments last Tuesday. Without elaborating, he stated that Google’s payment service would be an extension of its existing advertising programs.
Following reports that Google planned to launch a new Internet payment service (nicknamed Google Wallet), Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, denied that Google would be directly competing with PayPal. He did, however, acknowledge that Google has plans for some type of electronic payment service.
Without revealing any details, Schmidt emphasized that the Google payment service will not offer the same sort of “person to person, store-valued payments system” as PayPal provides.
The Internet commerce industry was rampant with rumours of the new Google service following an e-commerce conference hosted by securities firm Piper Jaffray. Speculation that Google Wallet would encroach on PayPal territory was reinforced by the appearance of a June 20th article in the Wall Street Journal which stated that Google was planning an online payment service to compete with PayPal.
PayPal is a unit of eBay and generates almost 25% of total eBay revenue. It is used by consumers for making a wide variety of Internet purchases. It allows purchasers to use their credit cards without divulging their credit card numbers to merchants. PayPal takes a percentage of each transaction and had revenues of $233.1 million in the first quarter of this year.
Most of Google’s revenue comes from online advertising and this expansion into online payments was seen by many in the industry as yet another example of the rivalry between the two companies.
Google is a giant in Internet commerce with revenues of $3.2 billion last year. A payment service that competed directly with PayPal would be a serious blow to both PayPal and eBay.
Google maintained silence about the rumours until Schmidt’s comments last Tuesday. Without elaborating, he stated that Google’s payment service would be an extension of its existing advertising programs.
Google's own AdSense Tips
Google is at least as interested as you are in having your ads perform well on your site. And they've gone to some work to provide the information you need to optimize your AdSense.
What's fascinating to me is that apparently not everyone bothers to read their tips. And even some that do, fail to apply it.
That said, you need to be aware that simply using their tips doesn't guarantee successful ads and decent CTR (Click Through Rate). How many times have you heard this? You have to test. You have to try alternatives and see what really works best for you, on your pages, with your content and your visitors. Test, test, test some more. Track your results, analyze them, try variations. Too many of us don't test. We hear the mantra, but we don't do the work.
First, let's see if we can get an idea about location. (The graphic is included in the article on my site or you can take a look at it at the Google link included below) Generally, above the fold, at the top center of your content, below top navigation is the hottest location. Not immediately below which is good but not quite as hot. In a left sidebar, to the immediate left of primary content or below the primary content are also good. Most other locations are generally cooler.
Again, you need to test and you need to consider your users behavior - and their behavior may vary on different pages with different kinds of content. Google suggests that in some cases, such as articles, the best location can be at the end of the article. To quote Google, "It's almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, What can I do next?" Well targeted relevant ads right there can provide the answer.
Don't blindly assume that sticking a nice big rectangle in the center above the fold will do it. It may, but depending on your content, it may annoy or inconvenience your users.
Users tend to focus on content, navigation and to a lesser extent graphics. Positioning your ads near these elements will often work well -- if those ads are targeted to your visitors needs.
The top three performers among the Google ad formats are the 336X280 large rectangle, the 300X250 inline rectangle and the 160X600 wide skyscraper. Google reports that the wider formats tend to do better than the taller ones. One reason may be that these are, perhaps, easier to read since they have fewer line breaks and require less eye movement. But, you need to use formats that fit your pages well. Once again, you need to test, but redoing your pages to suit a particular ad format may not be a reasonable alternative and you may discover that a different format actually gets better results.
Now we come to color. Conventional wisdom says that colors which tend to blend into your content do better. Some go so far as to suggest that colors which make the ads look like part of the content are best. Personally, I think anybody really believes those ads are anything but ads, but who knows. Google suggests that you may find that colors that standout from your content do better - or maybe the opposite. This is absolutely an area where you need to test alternative color schemes. Going with the conventional wisdom usually works fairly well, but without testing you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.
Google allows you to have up to three ad units and one link unit on your pages. If you have long pages with lots of text, can only use small ad units or are in a niche with a large ad inventory, multiple units can pay off. Keep in mind that the way ad serving works is that the higher value ads are delivered to the first ad unit block encountered in your code. Always make sure that this first ad unit is displayed in the best location (yeah - test). You want the higher paying ads to be in the prime hot location on your page. Weaker locations can get the lower priced ads. And if none are available, then nothing will display unless you've included an alternate ad URL in your Google code. To maximize monetization you should be including alternate ad URLs, especially if you are putting multiple units on a page. The use of an alternate ad URL also eliminates the possibility of being served PSAs (Public Service Announcements). It's your real estate, maximize your returns.
Nothing here is secret. Except for using the alternate ad URL, all of this information is available from Google's Optimization Tips page - http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html . You can buy books and courses, visit a dozen forums and, in the end it comes down to what your visitors do on your site. The best you can get is general guidance. This means averaged outcomes over many sites, many types of content. If you are serious about doing whatever you can to really optimize your AdSense returns, there is only one thing to do - test. Whether it's AdSense, opt-ins, copy, headlines - anything with a measurable outcome that you can track - then the way to improve is to test and keep on testing.
What's fascinating to me is that apparently not everyone bothers to read their tips. And even some that do, fail to apply it.
That said, you need to be aware that simply using their tips doesn't guarantee successful ads and decent CTR (Click Through Rate). How many times have you heard this? You have to test. You have to try alternatives and see what really works best for you, on your pages, with your content and your visitors. Test, test, test some more. Track your results, analyze them, try variations. Too many of us don't test. We hear the mantra, but we don't do the work.
First, let's see if we can get an idea about location. (The graphic is included in the article on my site or you can take a look at it at the Google link included below) Generally, above the fold, at the top center of your content, below top navigation is the hottest location. Not immediately below which is good but not quite as hot. In a left sidebar, to the immediate left of primary content or below the primary content are also good. Most other locations are generally cooler.
Again, you need to test and you need to consider your users behavior - and their behavior may vary on different pages with different kinds of content. Google suggests that in some cases, such as articles, the best location can be at the end of the article. To quote Google, "It's almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, What can I do next?" Well targeted relevant ads right there can provide the answer.
Don't blindly assume that sticking a nice big rectangle in the center above the fold will do it. It may, but depending on your content, it may annoy or inconvenience your users.
Users tend to focus on content, navigation and to a lesser extent graphics. Positioning your ads near these elements will often work well -- if those ads are targeted to your visitors needs.
The top three performers among the Google ad formats are the 336X280 large rectangle, the 300X250 inline rectangle and the 160X600 wide skyscraper. Google reports that the wider formats tend to do better than the taller ones. One reason may be that these are, perhaps, easier to read since they have fewer line breaks and require less eye movement. But, you need to use formats that fit your pages well. Once again, you need to test, but redoing your pages to suit a particular ad format may not be a reasonable alternative and you may discover that a different format actually gets better results.
Now we come to color. Conventional wisdom says that colors which tend to blend into your content do better. Some go so far as to suggest that colors which make the ads look like part of the content are best. Personally, I think anybody really believes those ads are anything but ads, but who knows. Google suggests that you may find that colors that standout from your content do better - or maybe the opposite. This is absolutely an area where you need to test alternative color schemes. Going with the conventional wisdom usually works fairly well, but without testing you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.
Google allows you to have up to three ad units and one link unit on your pages. If you have long pages with lots of text, can only use small ad units or are in a niche with a large ad inventory, multiple units can pay off. Keep in mind that the way ad serving works is that the higher value ads are delivered to the first ad unit block encountered in your code. Always make sure that this first ad unit is displayed in the best location (yeah - test). You want the higher paying ads to be in the prime hot location on your page. Weaker locations can get the lower priced ads. And if none are available, then nothing will display unless you've included an alternate ad URL in your Google code. To maximize monetization you should be including alternate ad URLs, especially if you are putting multiple units on a page. The use of an alternate ad URL also eliminates the possibility of being served PSAs (Public Service Announcements). It's your real estate, maximize your returns.
Nothing here is secret. Except for using the alternate ad URL, all of this information is available from Google's Optimization Tips page - http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html . You can buy books and courses, visit a dozen forums and, in the end it comes down to what your visitors do on your site. The best you can get is general guidance. This means averaged outcomes over many sites, many types of content. If you are serious about doing whatever you can to really optimize your AdSense returns, there is only one thing to do - test. Whether it's AdSense, opt-ins, copy, headlines - anything with a measurable outcome that you can track - then the way to improve is to test and keep on testing.
Google AdSense – The text link ad with clout
Webmasters place advertisements on their site to (hopefully!) help their web site visitors find additional information and products that are relevant to their site’s theme and therefore what those visitors came to their website looking for. Of course, it also helps if those advertisements also make money for the webmaster!
Unfortunately, serving advertisements online isn't always easy. Many advertisement companies offering the service of placing ads on our sites have managed to turn the advertisement business into one big mess. Thousands of sites are bogged down with non-relevant pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-ins and banners.
What happens to our sites if these advertisements rarely hit their mark? No matter how many banners and pop-ups we show about herbal remedies to our visitors if we run a website about car parts they will not be interested and they will never click on those ads.
Not only that, but this kind of untargeted advertisement can even have a negative effect on our traffic. Who wants to go to a site that requires us to close pop-ups every minute or for every page we view?
In order to have advertisements that are interesting AND relevant to our visitors there is now a program called ‘Google AdSense'.
Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, text-based, un-obtrusive Google AdWords ads on our website's content pages and earn money.
Since the ads are actually related to what your users are looking for on your site, you'll have a way to both monetize and enhance your web page content. The program is free, and Google pays you for clicks on the AdWords advertisements on your site.
Google offers their AdSense program to just about all website owners. After signing up for the program with Google you receive code to enter on the pages of your site and Google will dynamically generate ads that are relevant to your own web site’s content.
Whenever a visitor clicks on one of the links in the AdSense ad on your site Google credits you with a percentage of money that was paid by the advertiser for that ad.
AdSense also provides us with the option to be selective in which type of ads we want to display on our websites making it possible to send our visitors towards a certain type of products.
To make it possible for everyone to integrate AdSense into their sites the program offers a wide variety of settings that allow us to alter the ads appearance.
The Google AdSense program is incredibly accurate. By stepping beyond the boundaries of simple keyword matching it has become one of the most prominent tools to display accurate advertisements. A list of keywords is still used as the basis of triggering ads, but complex algorithms now ensure that ads that are not related to your site’s theme no longer show up.
An AdSense service can be set up within minutes from the comforts of your chair and by providing your website's visitors with a certain amount of directed ads you can generate for yourself anything from a small to a sizeable income through the use of AdSense.
Unfortunately, serving advertisements online isn't always easy. Many advertisement companies offering the service of placing ads on our sites have managed to turn the advertisement business into one big mess. Thousands of sites are bogged down with non-relevant pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-ins and banners.
What happens to our sites if these advertisements rarely hit their mark? No matter how many banners and pop-ups we show about herbal remedies to our visitors if we run a website about car parts they will not be interested and they will never click on those ads.
Not only that, but this kind of untargeted advertisement can even have a negative effect on our traffic. Who wants to go to a site that requires us to close pop-ups every minute or for every page we view?
In order to have advertisements that are interesting AND relevant to our visitors there is now a program called ‘Google AdSense'.
Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, text-based, un-obtrusive Google AdWords ads on our website's content pages and earn money.
Since the ads are actually related to what your users are looking for on your site, you'll have a way to both monetize and enhance your web page content. The program is free, and Google pays you for clicks on the AdWords advertisements on your site.
Google offers their AdSense program to just about all website owners. After signing up for the program with Google you receive code to enter on the pages of your site and Google will dynamically generate ads that are relevant to your own web site’s content.
Whenever a visitor clicks on one of the links in the AdSense ad on your site Google credits you with a percentage of money that was paid by the advertiser for that ad.
AdSense also provides us with the option to be selective in which type of ads we want to display on our websites making it possible to send our visitors towards a certain type of products.
To make it possible for everyone to integrate AdSense into their sites the program offers a wide variety of settings that allow us to alter the ads appearance.
The Google AdSense program is incredibly accurate. By stepping beyond the boundaries of simple keyword matching it has become one of the most prominent tools to display accurate advertisements. A list of keywords is still used as the basis of triggering ads, but complex algorithms now ensure that ads that are not related to your site’s theme no longer show up.
An AdSense service can be set up within minutes from the comforts of your chair and by providing your website's visitors with a certain amount of directed ads you can generate for yourself anything from a small to a sizeable income through the use of AdSense.
Google Adsense Page Positioning
Correct positioning of your Google adsense ads can make or break your success with the Google adsense program. Why is this true? Some studies suggest that eye positioning on website gravitate to particular sections of web pages. And if you don’t have the necessary ads in these positions you will not get the clicks.
I talked to countless people that have great traffic, some with 300 to 1000 new visitors a day that say that they only make approx. at max $10 to $20 dollars a month on the adsense program. What a shame. But when I look at their websites the ads are either buried in wording that no one usually pays attention to or the ads are located in positions that just don’t call any attention to their presence.
So were the best locations for you Google adsense ads. Well, I have found the number one best place for the ads are near or in proximity to your main menu. Why near your main menu. Because you know that visitors eyes will and always look for the menu structure of your website. So the common places for placement should be to the top right, the very top under your menu, or the top left. These are the most common locations for you main menu.
But what about the color scheme of the Google adsense ads? Yes, color is very important. You have to make the ads looks as seamless as possible. Here is an example on one of my website http://howtoblog.tk . Here I decided to position the ads at the very top right under my main menu. In direct eye contact. Also, remove the borders; just these two changes will increase your adsense proceeds one hundred percent.
By using these tactics I was able to increase my adsense click through rate significantly depending on traffic level and people's interest.
Take my advice and give it try. I believe you will see a change and hopefully make adsense a more pleasurable experience.
I talked to countless people that have great traffic, some with 300 to 1000 new visitors a day that say that they only make approx. at max $10 to $20 dollars a month on the adsense program. What a shame. But when I look at their websites the ads are either buried in wording that no one usually pays attention to or the ads are located in positions that just don’t call any attention to their presence.
So were the best locations for you Google adsense ads. Well, I have found the number one best place for the ads are near or in proximity to your main menu. Why near your main menu. Because you know that visitors eyes will and always look for the menu structure of your website. So the common places for placement should be to the top right, the very top under your menu, or the top left. These are the most common locations for you main menu.
But what about the color scheme of the Google adsense ads? Yes, color is very important. You have to make the ads looks as seamless as possible. Here is an example on one of my website http://howtoblog.tk . Here I decided to position the ads at the very top right under my main menu. In direct eye contact. Also, remove the borders; just these two changes will increase your adsense proceeds one hundred percent.
By using these tactics I was able to increase my adsense click through rate significantly depending on traffic level and people's interest.
Take my advice and give it try. I believe you will see a change and hopefully make adsense a more pleasurable experience.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Google AdSense and Blogs
If you have a blog, or are thinking about starting a blog, then you are definitely going to want to read this article. It’s all about how to line your pockets with money that’s just waiting to be made without working much harder than you already are.
No only are blogs the hottest thing on the ‘net right now, but they are custom-made for Google’s AdSense program. Why? It’s simple. Blogs represent constantly changing and fresh content to Google’s search engine spiders. Feeding fresh content to those little spiders is just like tossing raw meat to a tiger. They just gobble it up. The more pages of your blog that get indexed, the more traffic you get. And the more traffic you get, the more exposure your AdSense ads get. Are you beginning to see where I’m heading here?
It’s not just Google that loves new content, all of the major engines do. In fact, some web-savvy bloggers are testing Google ads on one page and Overture ads on the other. It doesn’t take too long to see which ads are doing the best when you have nearly side-by-side comparison statistics to look at. Just don’t make the mistake of putting Google and Overture ads on the same page together. While they won’t kill each other like a pair of Siamese fighting fish in the same bowel will, you will be violating both sites’ Terms of Service, and it isn’t worth killing the goose (geese) that laid the golden egg.
It’s a snap to set up Google AdSense ads on your blog. Everything you need to know is right inside of the Google control panel. What’s not so easy is figuring out what ads are going to appear on each page. Since Google targets your key words, and your blog articles could possible wander towards any subject, you never know what you’re going to get.
Well, “never” is a strong word because there actually IS a way to pre-test your blog’s ads before you post your newest edition. Here’s what you do:
• Write your blog article like you normally would
• Plug in your AdSense code and then post your newest page to a sub directory that’s not part of your blog.
• Click refresh a few times until Google wakes up and starts sending ads.
• If you don’t like what you see then fine-tune the article until you see the types of ads that you’re looking for.
With some ads paying as much as $5 per click or more, I’d certainly spend an extra 30 minutes or so tweaking my blog. That’s for sure.
If you’re working hard to get your blog in front of visiting eyeballs, then it doesn’t make any sense at NOT to be using Google AdSense to draw every penny out of your site that’s possible. OK, that’s the end of the article. Now get busy tweaking your blog and checking your ads. You’ve got money waiting to be made!
No only are blogs the hottest thing on the ‘net right now, but they are custom-made for Google’s AdSense program. Why? It’s simple. Blogs represent constantly changing and fresh content to Google’s search engine spiders. Feeding fresh content to those little spiders is just like tossing raw meat to a tiger. They just gobble it up. The more pages of your blog that get indexed, the more traffic you get. And the more traffic you get, the more exposure your AdSense ads get. Are you beginning to see where I’m heading here?
It’s not just Google that loves new content, all of the major engines do. In fact, some web-savvy bloggers are testing Google ads on one page and Overture ads on the other. It doesn’t take too long to see which ads are doing the best when you have nearly side-by-side comparison statistics to look at. Just don’t make the mistake of putting Google and Overture ads on the same page together. While they won’t kill each other like a pair of Siamese fighting fish in the same bowel will, you will be violating both sites’ Terms of Service, and it isn’t worth killing the goose (geese) that laid the golden egg.
It’s a snap to set up Google AdSense ads on your blog. Everything you need to know is right inside of the Google control panel. What’s not so easy is figuring out what ads are going to appear on each page. Since Google targets your key words, and your blog articles could possible wander towards any subject, you never know what you’re going to get.
Well, “never” is a strong word because there actually IS a way to pre-test your blog’s ads before you post your newest edition. Here’s what you do:
• Write your blog article like you normally would
• Plug in your AdSense code and then post your newest page to a sub directory that’s not part of your blog.
• Click refresh a few times until Google wakes up and starts sending ads.
• If you don’t like what you see then fine-tune the article until you see the types of ads that you’re looking for.
With some ads paying as much as $5 per click or more, I’d certainly spend an extra 30 minutes or so tweaking my blog. That’s for sure.
If you’re working hard to get your blog in front of visiting eyeballs, then it doesn’t make any sense at NOT to be using Google AdSense to draw every penny out of your site that’s possible. OK, that’s the end of the article. Now get busy tweaking your blog and checking your ads. You’ve got money waiting to be made!
Google Adsense
1. Google Adsense stuff
I've heard that Google have been getting tough on Adsense sites recently, investigating sites displaying Adsense and removing ones which don't meet the criteria.
You see, what's happening is that people are getting approved for one site, then adding the code to other sites they own.
That's fine by Google as long as the new sites have nothing wrong with them/don't break Google's small print.
Well some of that small print is mighty small and two friends have written to me this week to say their sites have been banned in the past 7 days.
Why?
Well both for the same reason. They both put a lot of work into building new content sites and put the Adsense ads up on almost every page.
But it was obvious that the sites had no purpose other than displaying the Adsense code.
They didn't try to get subscribers to their ezines, they didn't promote affiliate programs, etc.
All they did was have good quality targeted content + Adsense.
Now you might think there's nothing wrong with building a site like that, but Google just doesn't like it when it comes to Adsense.
One friend sent me the letter Google sent him. Here's part of what Google had to say:
"Ads may not be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant."
Well what you have to do is give your sites an extra purpose.
Here are a few ways of doing that:
# also display some affiliate links on the pages, and include an affiliate graphic or two.
# perhaps run a news ticker. You can get good ones from a number of sources, but one of the best is http://www.moreover.com which
has newsfeeds covering a huge variety of niches.
# link to authority sites on the subject, even though they're probably not linking back to you.
# start an ezine and have a subscribe box displayed prominently on each page.
# if your site is about online business/marketing give away a free ebook or two. But make sure they're quality one's you can customize with your affiliate links so that you stand a chance
of profiting from them.
# have a poll running on your site. I use a good one from One Minute Poll
If I were you I'd do all of them.
2. Google Adwords Traffic:
One way of GUARANTEEING plenty of visitors from Google is by buying Adwords.
If you do it right you can make a fabulous income. If you do it wrong, you'll be well out of pocket.
3. Google and blogging...
Google is still ranking frequently updated Blogs very high. And having your own blog (and keeping it to the theme of your main site) could be a great way of getting more traffic.
To learn how to do it well I'd like to recommend you read James Maduk's Blogging Secrets which is a really good multimedia ebook. Very tasty.
Like his excellent Google course "How to Get Ranked #1 On Google" it's a combination of Audio / Video / Whiteboard Training and Screen Captures. (plus you get 4 Hours of bonus audio
interviews from his private E-learning sessions.
If you're thinking of blogging for profit you need to read this first.
4. More Google Stuff...
Your commercially oriented sites probably took a rankings kick in the guts in the last Google update.
Don't worry, you're not alone. This site lets you enter the main keywords for your site and see how many other sites with the same keyword phrase have dropped in rankings.
Not really useful, but interesting.
http://www.scroogle.org/
More useful - in fact a MUST READ if you're at all interested in learning more about how and why Google's latest update is affecting your sites - is a detailed online report "A Statistical and Experimental Analysis of Google's Florida Update" written by Leslie Rohde who developed that marvelous ranking software Optilink.
There's no charge to read it, though Leslie could easily have packaged it up into a "special report" and sold it.
When you've done with reading it though, I seriously suggest taking a look at Optilink.
Leslie is one of the most knowledgeable search engine people around, and the Optilink software works a treat.
Looks like an Adsense competitor is on the way early in 2004 http://www.quigo.com/adsonar.htm
Overtures efforts in this field are in beta, with some major sites already running content matched Overture advertising, (and rumors that it's going to be opened up to all of us) and Commission Junction have got a contextual advertising/content matching solution in the works - though unlike Adsense it's very unlikely
to offer pay per click.
You can get more on Overture's Content Match here and while you're there you might want to consider advertising on them. I've had an account there for years now and get tons of traffic to my mini sites. A friend of mine, Paul Manuel, wrote a free report
detailing how he makes a great living from his Overture advertising. you can get it here.
Ok, one last Google thing: Trackmeat.
It's no cost software that saves you logging into Adsense 50 times a day to check how your commissions are doing.
Once you install it and click "Go" it minimizes right away, and your AdSense income will update down in the taskbar and system tray at intervals set by you.
It also works for Commission Junction.
(note: I haven't used this software, so I'm not recommending it, just informing you that it exists)
I've heard that Google have been getting tough on Adsense sites recently, investigating sites displaying Adsense and removing ones which don't meet the criteria.
You see, what's happening is that people are getting approved for one site, then adding the code to other sites they own.
That's fine by Google as long as the new sites have nothing wrong with them/don't break Google's small print.
Well some of that small print is mighty small and two friends have written to me this week to say their sites have been banned in the past 7 days.
Why?
Well both for the same reason. They both put a lot of work into building new content sites and put the Adsense ads up on almost every page.
But it was obvious that the sites had no purpose other than displaying the Adsense code.
They didn't try to get subscribers to their ezines, they didn't promote affiliate programs, etc.
All they did was have good quality targeted content + Adsense.
Now you might think there's nothing wrong with building a site like that, but Google just doesn't like it when it comes to Adsense.
One friend sent me the letter Google sent him. Here's part of what Google had to say:
"Ads may not be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant."
Well what you have to do is give your sites an extra purpose.
Here are a few ways of doing that:
# also display some affiliate links on the pages, and include an affiliate graphic or two.
# perhaps run a news ticker. You can get good ones from a number of sources, but one of the best is http://www.moreover.com which
has newsfeeds covering a huge variety of niches.
# link to authority sites on the subject, even though they're probably not linking back to you.
# start an ezine and have a subscribe box displayed prominently on each page.
# if your site is about online business/marketing give away a free ebook or two. But make sure they're quality one's you can customize with your affiliate links so that you stand a chance
of profiting from them.
# have a poll running on your site. I use a good one from One Minute Poll
If I were you I'd do all of them.
2. Google Adwords Traffic:
One way of GUARANTEEING plenty of visitors from Google is by buying Adwords.
If you do it right you can make a fabulous income. If you do it wrong, you'll be well out of pocket.
3. Google and blogging...
Google is still ranking frequently updated Blogs very high. And having your own blog (and keeping it to the theme of your main site) could be a great way of getting more traffic.
To learn how to do it well I'd like to recommend you read James Maduk's Blogging Secrets which is a really good multimedia ebook. Very tasty.
Like his excellent Google course "How to Get Ranked #1 On Google" it's a combination of Audio / Video / Whiteboard Training and Screen Captures. (plus you get 4 Hours of bonus audio
interviews from his private E-learning sessions.
If you're thinking of blogging for profit you need to read this first.
4. More Google Stuff...
Your commercially oriented sites probably took a rankings kick in the guts in the last Google update.
Don't worry, you're not alone. This site lets you enter the main keywords for your site and see how many other sites with the same keyword phrase have dropped in rankings.
Not really useful, but interesting.
http://www.scroogle.org/
More useful - in fact a MUST READ if you're at all interested in learning more about how and why Google's latest update is affecting your sites - is a detailed online report "A Statistical and Experimental Analysis of Google's Florida Update" written by Leslie Rohde who developed that marvelous ranking software Optilink.
There's no charge to read it, though Leslie could easily have packaged it up into a "special report" and sold it.
When you've done with reading it though, I seriously suggest taking a look at Optilink.
Leslie is one of the most knowledgeable search engine people around, and the Optilink software works a treat.
Looks like an Adsense competitor is on the way early in 2004 http://www.quigo.com/adsonar.htm
Overtures efforts in this field are in beta, with some major sites already running content matched Overture advertising, (and rumors that it's going to be opened up to all of us) and Commission Junction have got a contextual advertising/content matching solution in the works - though unlike Adsense it's very unlikely
to offer pay per click.
You can get more on Overture's Content Match here and while you're there you might want to consider advertising on them. I've had an account there for years now and get tons of traffic to my mini sites. A friend of mine, Paul Manuel, wrote a free report
detailing how he makes a great living from his Overture advertising. you can get it here.
Ok, one last Google thing: Trackmeat.
It's no cost software that saves you logging into Adsense 50 times a day to check how your commissions are doing.
Once you install it and click "Go" it minimizes right away, and your AdSense income will update down in the taskbar and system tray at intervals set by you.
It also works for Commission Junction.
(note: I haven't used this software, so I'm not recommending it, just informing you that it exists)
Google AdSense: 7 Tips For Creating Sites That Make Money
Having a Google AdSense site is a great way to make money. And to create an AdSense site, all you have to do is have a Google AdSense account (which is free), a website or a blog (which is free), and some articles (which are free if you write them yourself). Once you get your site up and running, the AdSense ads will be targeted to your content.
Therefore, those looking for your content will come by, read your articles, and have a high probability of being interested in the targeted ads. Every time someone clicks an ad, you get paid! That is, as long as you have designed your site to maximize AdSense clickthroughs!
Let's look at seven tips for creating AdSense sites that create money.
#1: Keyword Density
Before you place ads on your site, be sure your keyword density is good. You will want to be sure that the right kinds of ads are placed on your site. A free way to determine what the ads will look like on your site is to go to http://www.resultsgenerator.com/adsense/ and type in your keywords. You will then be able to see exactly what ads would show on your site.
If you don't like what you see, then you know that you need to make changes to your keywords! You can get keyword suggestions from Results Generator from Overture or from the free trial version of Word Tracker.
#2: Focused
Not only will the ads be based on your keywords, but they will also be based on your content. You definitely want your keywords and your content to match as closely as possible.
#3: Write Often
The more information you have the better. Why? Because the more content you have, the more visitors you get. Many people suggest that you write a new article every day since no one wants to come back to your site to find the same old messages!
#4: Choose The Right Format
AdSense allows you to choose many different ad formats. Research has shown that wider ads are more successful. The top three formats are:
" 336x280 large rectangle
" 300x250 medium rectangle
" 160x600 wide skyscraper
Additionally, the 468x15 horizontal ad link under the navigation bar is also a good bet.
#5: Color Counts
You have the option to create a Google AdSense ad in any color of your choice. The best thing to do is to make your ad blend well with your site color scheme. You should make the border color and the background color the same color as your web site. You will want your text color to either be black or the color of your main content.
When creating your Google AdSense ads it is recommended to use the color scheme and style of your website so that the ads blend in well. Ads without background color and borders perfom better than ads within borders with background color.
#6: Position Counts, Too
It is well known that visitors to a website scan the site to determine if it is worth reading. You definitely want them to see and scan your AdSense ads. Therefore, the best place to put them is in the top left part of your page or directly under your headlines.
#7: Increase The Number
AdSense allows you to use up to three AdSense units on a page, two AdSense search boxes, and one unit of ad links. Using all that you can increases the chances of earning money.
Keep these seven tips in mind when creating your AdSense site and you will find that your clickthrough rates increase, thus increasing your money making potential.
Getting Great Deals on EBay
I love getting a deal. I try to smell them out from miles away. I love frequent garage sales, flea markets, closeouts, and more -- but found that I could much better by simply buying through online auctions - if I shop carefully.
Getting a deal out of EBay auctions is an art. Buying from auctions can be a costly proposition or a very economical option depending on your tactics. Buy wisely by learning from my (sometimes costly) experiences.
1. Is the Seller Trustworthy?
Both EBay and Yahoo auctions have seller ratings. Read these and their associated reviews. If the seller has a great rating from buying and a poor one from selling, you probably don't want to buy from them. Look at both praises and complaints as they may or may not apply to what you are bidding on.
2. Read the Description Throughly
It is very easy to read what you want to see in an Ebay auction rather than what is actually written there. Read both what is in the Ebay description and what is NOT in the description. Often your mind will want to fill in details with what is your dream interpretation. You need to re-read the description until you find out whether what you are searching for and what the seller is selling match.
* Used or New?
Is the item you are buying used or new? If it doesn't say new, you are most likely buying something that is used.
* Real or Fake
Is the item you are interested in "real" gold, sterling silver or pearls? For example, a description saying: "gold necklace for sale" does NOT say 14 kt gold or 18kt gold. That most likely means a gold COLORED necklace which may or may not have actual gold metal. This also applies to pearls as many call plastic fake pearls simply "pearls".
If the seller is selling beads, those beads could be plastic, glass, stone, scrap metal, crystal, chips, wood, clay, gemstone or some other material.
* Item Details
Does the EBay description really say how much you are getting, how long the item is, and quality of the item? Selling by the pound can be a great deal - or a horrible deal.
* Beware of Hidden Costs
Look at shipping and handling costs. I've seen many penny auctions that have $13 or more shipping. Some auctions even have handling fees.
* How Fast Will it Ship?
I've been seeing a fair amount of auctions that note that the product will ship in 2 months or that shipping time is 2 months. If you are buying for a particular holiday, be sure that you will get the item in time.
3. Is it a Bargain For You?
Many times an EBay auction will say that the items are "worth $XXX". In many cases, that price is inflated. Often you can find similar items much cheaper tah "$XXX" at normal stores. (However, the auction price may still be cheaper than you can by elsewhere - it really helps to know how much you usually pay for items!) If you are only interested in some of the items in an auction, adjust your bid to reflect how much you are willing to pay for just those items unless you plan to sell the rest as that is how much you would pay for it elsewhere.
4. Auction Fever
Compare prices on the net at the same time to avoid overpaying. Know that usually you can get the item later elsewhere. Wise buyers know to walk away when the price is higher than the item is worth to them.
Getting a deal out of EBay auctions is an art. Buying from auctions can be a costly proposition or a very economical option depending on your tactics. Buy wisely by learning from my (sometimes costly) experiences.
1. Is the Seller Trustworthy?
Both EBay and Yahoo auctions have seller ratings. Read these and their associated reviews. If the seller has a great rating from buying and a poor one from selling, you probably don't want to buy from them. Look at both praises and complaints as they may or may not apply to what you are bidding on.
2. Read the Description Throughly
It is very easy to read what you want to see in an Ebay auction rather than what is actually written there. Read both what is in the Ebay description and what is NOT in the description. Often your mind will want to fill in details with what is your dream interpretation. You need to re-read the description until you find out whether what you are searching for and what the seller is selling match.
* Used or New?
Is the item you are buying used or new? If it doesn't say new, you are most likely buying something that is used.
* Real or Fake
Is the item you are interested in "real" gold, sterling silver or pearls? For example, a description saying: "gold necklace for sale" does NOT say 14 kt gold or 18kt gold. That most likely means a gold COLORED necklace which may or may not have actual gold metal. This also applies to pearls as many call plastic fake pearls simply "pearls".
If the seller is selling beads, those beads could be plastic, glass, stone, scrap metal, crystal, chips, wood, clay, gemstone or some other material.
* Item Details
Does the EBay description really say how much you are getting, how long the item is, and quality of the item? Selling by the pound can be a great deal - or a horrible deal.
* Beware of Hidden Costs
Look at shipping and handling costs. I've seen many penny auctions that have $13 or more shipping. Some auctions even have handling fees.
* How Fast Will it Ship?
I've been seeing a fair amount of auctions that note that the product will ship in 2 months or that shipping time is 2 months. If you are buying for a particular holiday, be sure that you will get the item in time.
3. Is it a Bargain For You?
Many times an EBay auction will say that the items are "worth $XXX". In many cases, that price is inflated. Often you can find similar items much cheaper tah "$XXX" at normal stores. (However, the auction price may still be cheaper than you can by elsewhere - it really helps to know how much you usually pay for items!) If you are only interested in some of the items in an auction, adjust your bid to reflect how much you are willing to pay for just those items unless you plan to sell the rest as that is how much you would pay for it elsewhere.
4. Auction Fever
Compare prices on the net at the same time to avoid overpaying. Know that usually you can get the item later elsewhere. Wise buyers know to walk away when the price is higher than the item is worth to them.
Getting Approved by Adsense in a Jiffy…
I don’t understand why everyone makes Adsense out to sound like some kind of devil. So far, I have a 100% approval rate for my consulting clients. You would think that we spend months developing the site to submit for approval – but to be honest; I spend less than a day (if that!)
What we found is that Google is not nearly as picky as they make themselves sound to be. The trick is to make your site in such a way that you are just providing content; we have found that the less selling you do on your approval site, the better.
Don’t worry, once you’re approved you can use that code wherever you want – so put it on other sites that sell later. But for the purposes of getting approved, try to limit to just content, content and more content!
Now, for the disclaimer before we start talking about how to get your site approved for Google Adsense. I am not a member of Google at all, everything I am about to say is all speculation and experience. I have helped over 50 clients get approved for Google Adsense without having even 1 of them not get approved – we have 100% approval rate on FIRST try.
All I am going to teach you is exactly what I do for them.
There are three main elements that I focus on when getting a client approved:
1. Site look and feel – Not that Google wants a $10,000 professionally designed website, but they also don’t want some piece of junk. Make sure to at LEAST have a presentable website – even if it is just a few tables and a solid background color. Avoid using tacky backgrounds or unprofessional color contrasts.
2. Content – The most important – Google believes in content. If you try to get a website with just a few pages approved, I don’t think you will have any luck. You need to have at least 15-20 pages, preferably, 15-20 pages of articles/resources, a.k.a. content.
3. Traffic – Many “experts” say that Google looks to see what kind of traffic you have and that they do not approve new sites with no traffic. My experience says that these experts are FULL of it. BUT, just to be safe, before you submit your site for approval – try to get your site some traffic.
Here are useful tips you need to make the entire approval process easier and quicker:
>> Get content from article directories like www.goarticles.com – just put those articles in your site, getting 15-20 is easy.
>> Before you submit your site for approval, post at some forums with your website’s link in the signature file – this will help you get some immediate traffic.
>> Make a very simple website with 15-20 articles, a contact us page, a privacy policy and the typical disclaimer.
That’s it – you’re ready to get approved for Google Adsense. I know I made it sound too easy, but honestly, we have a track record that proves it. And remember, if you do not get approved, you can always fix things and try again.
So, stop waiting – apply now – Google Adsense is a great source of income.
What we found is that Google is not nearly as picky as they make themselves sound to be. The trick is to make your site in such a way that you are just providing content; we have found that the less selling you do on your approval site, the better.
Don’t worry, once you’re approved you can use that code wherever you want – so put it on other sites that sell later. But for the purposes of getting approved, try to limit to just content, content and more content!
Now, for the disclaimer before we start talking about how to get your site approved for Google Adsense. I am not a member of Google at all, everything I am about to say is all speculation and experience. I have helped over 50 clients get approved for Google Adsense without having even 1 of them not get approved – we have 100% approval rate on FIRST try.
All I am going to teach you is exactly what I do for them.
There are three main elements that I focus on when getting a client approved:
1. Site look and feel – Not that Google wants a $10,000 professionally designed website, but they also don’t want some piece of junk. Make sure to at LEAST have a presentable website – even if it is just a few tables and a solid background color. Avoid using tacky backgrounds or unprofessional color contrasts.
2. Content – The most important – Google believes in content. If you try to get a website with just a few pages approved, I don’t think you will have any luck. You need to have at least 15-20 pages, preferably, 15-20 pages of articles/resources, a.k.a. content.
3. Traffic – Many “experts” say that Google looks to see what kind of traffic you have and that they do not approve new sites with no traffic. My experience says that these experts are FULL of it. BUT, just to be safe, before you submit your site for approval – try to get your site some traffic.
Here are useful tips you need to make the entire approval process easier and quicker:
>> Get content from article directories like www.goarticles.com – just put those articles in your site, getting 15-20 is easy.
>> Before you submit your site for approval, post at some forums with your website’s link in the signature file – this will help you get some immediate traffic.
>> Make a very simple website with 15-20 articles, a contact us page, a privacy policy and the typical disclaimer.
That’s it – you’re ready to get approved for Google Adsense. I know I made it sound too easy, but honestly, we have a track record that proves it. And remember, if you do not get approved, you can always fix things and try again.
So, stop waiting – apply now – Google Adsense is a great source of income.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Gaga over Google Adsense
Google Adsense has taken the world by storm. Now the small guy can get a slice of big profits. But exactly how should one go about generating revenue from it? This article is designed to help you to decide what sort of web-page to make – one that will realize the largest profits.
First you should pick a theme where there is at least some competition. That is to say, if you choose a family history web page, you may only get genealogy ads in your Adsense boxes. These may be very low paying ads and hardly worth your while. Before building a web page you should check and see how much people are paying for a certain type of ad. To that end – PC Bidbrowser will give you an idea how much advertisers are paying at Overture, and you can extrapolate or take an educated guess at Adsense.
But is finding the highest paying keyword the best way to build a page around? Consider the point that there may be so much competition that your web-page may never see the light of day. If no-one ever reads your site, you have no clicks, hence no revenue. No, the money-making truth lies somewhere in the middle. You need a topic that has low enough competition that people will actually find it on search engines, but also high enough competition that you will receive some cash from advertisers.
A neat program called ‘keyword sleuth’ allows you to find alternate keywords that are still highly searched yet low in competition. Other programs do similar functions.
Find 6 or so topics that you find a nice balance between competition and reward. Now how do you build a web-page that will give some new slant on the topic?
Does your web-page really need to be unique? Perhaps you could write an interesting page or two about the subject along with some links. For instance, perhaps you want to write a site on stock market trading. If you’ve ever been in the stock market you could write a real life trading experience. Make it exciting, while keeping it truthful. What led you to invest? What stocks did you trade and why? Did you make money or lose some? Do you have any advice to give to new investors? Could you find a couple of links for free screeners or some other tool that would be useful? Did you employ any special techniques – humorous or not?
You see, it doesn’t have to be about making millions with your trading system, it can be a funny life experience which we all can learn from.
Thanks for reading and I hope you start your profitable business soon.
___________
Google, Google AdSense, money, Google Adsense, revenue, How to, search, advertisers, traffic, business, income, how to, Secrets
First you should pick a theme where there is at least some competition. That is to say, if you choose a family history web page, you may only get genealogy ads in your Adsense boxes. These may be very low paying ads and hardly worth your while. Before building a web page you should check and see how much people are paying for a certain type of ad. To that end – PC Bidbrowser will give you an idea how much advertisers are paying at Overture, and you can extrapolate or take an educated guess at Adsense.
But is finding the highest paying keyword the best way to build a page around? Consider the point that there may be so much competition that your web-page may never see the light of day. If no-one ever reads your site, you have no clicks, hence no revenue. No, the money-making truth lies somewhere in the middle. You need a topic that has low enough competition that people will actually find it on search engines, but also high enough competition that you will receive some cash from advertisers.
A neat program called ‘keyword sleuth’ allows you to find alternate keywords that are still highly searched yet low in competition. Other programs do similar functions.
Find 6 or so topics that you find a nice balance between competition and reward. Now how do you build a web-page that will give some new slant on the topic?
Does your web-page really need to be unique? Perhaps you could write an interesting page or two about the subject along with some links. For instance, perhaps you want to write a site on stock market trading. If you’ve ever been in the stock market you could write a real life trading experience. Make it exciting, while keeping it truthful. What led you to invest? What stocks did you trade and why? Did you make money or lose some? Do you have any advice to give to new investors? Could you find a couple of links for free screeners or some other tool that would be useful? Did you employ any special techniques – humorous or not?
You see, it doesn’t have to be about making millions with your trading system, it can be a funny life experience which we all can learn from.
Thanks for reading and I hope you start your profitable business soon.
___________
Google, Google AdSense, money, Google Adsense, revenue, How to, search, advertisers, traffic, business, income, how to, Secrets
Free instant auction traffic
Here's an easy way to get extra traffic to your eBay auctions...
...and we all know, the more traffic, the more bids and ultimately, the more sales you'll get!
First...answer this question:
"Do you look at other people's feedback ratings?"
You probably answered yes...
So here's my idea -
"Whenever you leave feedback, put your website URL in the feedback Comment"
If you don't have a website, no problem, see below for details.
I have only seen this done once! - me.
It's so easy and EVERYONE looks at feedback ratings before they bid.
So, the idea would be to try and leave feedback for users that get a lot of traffic...
How? - check out ebay pulse and look at some of the highest watched items and try bidding on one of them.
After, you bid and win, leave your feedback with your website URL in your feedback comment.
For example,
**AuctionResourceNetwork.com** - Excellent communication and great eBayer, Highly recommended
You can see how the domain will *jump-out* at the reader.
Also, when you leave feedback for your auction sales, do the same.
Now.., if you don't have a website, here's a quick trick on how to direct that traffic to your about me page.
Simply create a free account at NameCheap.com and purchase a domain name, i.e. www.your-domain.com
NameCheap.com only charges $8.88 per year for your domain name!
...then, in your NameCheap.com account, you can set your new domain to redirect to your eBay about me page...here's how:
Login to your NameCheap.com account
Click the 'view' link beside 'Number of domains in your account'
Click your new domain name
Click URL Forwarding under the Host Management section on the left
Enter your about me page URL in both textboxes and click Save Changes
Viola...you now own a domain that redirects to your about me page!
And make sure you place your new domain name in all your feedback comments.
Ok...now that you know how to get some extra free traffic by using eBay's feedback comments, answer this question:
"Do you want to know how to turn that extra FREE traffic into cash?"
Yes/No? - Well, I'm going to tell you anyways... ;-) There are a few things you can do...here are 2:
Place your auction links on your AboutMe page so that your new visitors can get to your auctions. Place a newsletter signup form in your AboutMe page as well as in your auction pages and collect leads. Then market to those leads over and over again. I think the second idea is the most powerful...although it takes a little work on your part.
The quick`n`dirty way is to use AWeber.com to manage your leads and use their capture web form generator to capture your lead's name and email address.
BUT, there are certain rules you must obey in order to collect client information from your auctions pages as well as you about Me page.
__________
Google, Google AdSense, money, Google Adsense, revenue, How to, search, advertisers, traffic, business, income, how to, Secrets
...and we all know, the more traffic, the more bids and ultimately, the more sales you'll get!
First...answer this question:
"Do you look at other people's feedback ratings?"
You probably answered yes...
So here's my idea -
"Whenever you leave feedback, put your website URL in the feedback Comment"
If you don't have a website, no problem, see below for details.
I have only seen this done once! - me.
It's so easy and EVERYONE looks at feedback ratings before they bid.
So, the idea would be to try and leave feedback for users that get a lot of traffic...
How? - check out ebay pulse and look at some of the highest watched items and try bidding on one of them.
After, you bid and win, leave your feedback with your website URL in your feedback comment.
For example,
**AuctionResourceNetwork.com** - Excellent communication and great eBayer, Highly recommended
You can see how the domain will *jump-out* at the reader.
Also, when you leave feedback for your auction sales, do the same.
Now.., if you don't have a website, here's a quick trick on how to direct that traffic to your about me page.
Simply create a free account at NameCheap.com and purchase a domain name, i.e. www.your-domain.com
NameCheap.com only charges $8.88 per year for your domain name!
...then, in your NameCheap.com account, you can set your new domain to redirect to your eBay about me page...here's how:
Login to your NameCheap.com account
Click the 'view' link beside 'Number of domains in your account'
Click your new domain name
Click URL Forwarding under the Host Management section on the left
Enter your about me page URL in both textboxes and click Save Changes
Viola...you now own a domain that redirects to your about me page!
And make sure you place your new domain name in all your feedback comments.
Ok...now that you know how to get some extra free traffic by using eBay's feedback comments, answer this question:
"Do you want to know how to turn that extra FREE traffic into cash?"
Yes/No? - Well, I'm going to tell you anyways... ;-) There are a few things you can do...here are 2:
Place your auction links on your AboutMe page so that your new visitors can get to your auctions. Place a newsletter signup form in your AboutMe page as well as in your auction pages and collect leads. Then market to those leads over and over again. I think the second idea is the most powerful...although it takes a little work on your part.
The quick`n`dirty way is to use AWeber.com to manage your leads and use their capture web form generator to capture your lead's name and email address.
BUT, there are certain rules you must obey in order to collect client information from your auctions pages as well as you about Me page.
__________
Google, Google AdSense, money, Google Adsense, revenue, How to, search, advertisers, traffic, business, income, how to, Secrets
Four Reasons Why You Should NEVER Use Animations In Your eBay Auctions
Inexperienced auction sellers, or those lacking in confidence, often want to make their auction listings more dramatic and exciting. They dread the possibility that buyers will be bored by their auction and turn away with indifference.
Therefore, they reason, they will spice up their auctions with some "animations" - graphics that blink, change colors, spin, travel around the web page.
Or the seller may be a tech person who loves toys and is proud of his ability to create unusual effects.
Regardless of their reasons, animated elements on an auction page are almost never a good idea for the following four reasons:
1. Rather than attracting attention to the merchandise in your auction, your potential customer may watch a spinning ball or follow Santa and his reindeer through the sky. We want the customer's total attention on that all-important question: "Do I want to buy this widget or not?" Distractions are not good for your wallet.
2. Animations can make the load time of your auction listing much longer. I have been using DSL four years and have forgotten (happily!) how horrible it is to use dialup. However, for many places on this planet, high-speed connections simply are not available. For these folks, loading your page might take forever, and you can be sure they won't wait. Experts tell us that the average user spends only 7 seconds at a webpage before departing for greener pastures. If your sales page is still loading, no sale for you.
3. It takes time for you to figure out how and whether to use animations. This is time that would be better spent on writing more exciting and dynamic copy - copy that will turn a prospective customer into a real buyer. A smart business person will treat time as her most precious commodity and spend it on what is most likely to bring a sale.
4. Many of these animations are just downright annoying. I personally do not enjoy looking at screens that are twirling, whirling and blinking. Two particularly irritating animations are an inescapable message that follows up and down the left side of the page, regardless of where I'm looking, and "trails" that follow my mouse.
A huge majority of people feel the same, apparently. Sellers need to make it as easy as possible for people to buy, rather than throwing obstacles in the way.
Are there any occasions when animated pictures are of any value in an auction listing? Possibly. For example, if you are selling to graphic designers then animated elements might be appropriate. As always, testing, testing, testing is the only way to truly know.
But for the rest of us folks - forget the glitter and focus on your merchandise. That's what makes us buy.
Google, Google AdSense, money, Google Adsense, revenue, How to, search, advertisers, traffic, business, income, how to, Secrets
Therefore, they reason, they will spice up their auctions with some "animations" - graphics that blink, change colors, spin, travel around the web page.
Or the seller may be a tech person who loves toys and is proud of his ability to create unusual effects.
Regardless of their reasons, animated elements on an auction page are almost never a good idea for the following four reasons:
1. Rather than attracting attention to the merchandise in your auction, your potential customer may watch a spinning ball or follow Santa and his reindeer through the sky. We want the customer's total attention on that all-important question: "Do I want to buy this widget or not?" Distractions are not good for your wallet.
2. Animations can make the load time of your auction listing much longer. I have been using DSL four years and have forgotten (happily!) how horrible it is to use dialup. However, for many places on this planet, high-speed connections simply are not available. For these folks, loading your page might take forever, and you can be sure they won't wait. Experts tell us that the average user spends only 7 seconds at a webpage before departing for greener pastures. If your sales page is still loading, no sale for you.
3. It takes time for you to figure out how and whether to use animations. This is time that would be better spent on writing more exciting and dynamic copy - copy that will turn a prospective customer into a real buyer. A smart business person will treat time as her most precious commodity and spend it on what is most likely to bring a sale.
4. Many of these animations are just downright annoying. I personally do not enjoy looking at screens that are twirling, whirling and blinking. Two particularly irritating animations are an inescapable message that follows up and down the left side of the page, regardless of where I'm looking, and "trails" that follow my mouse.
A huge majority of people feel the same, apparently. Sellers need to make it as easy as possible for people to buy, rather than throwing obstacles in the way.
Are there any occasions when animated pictures are of any value in an auction listing? Possibly. For example, if you are selling to graphic designers then animated elements might be appropriate. As always, testing, testing, testing is the only way to truly know.
But for the rest of us folks - forget the glitter and focus on your merchandise. That's what makes us buy.
Google, Google AdSense, money, Google Adsense, revenue, How to, search, advertisers, traffic, business, income, how to, Secrets
Five ways to quadruple a websites revenue.
Many website owners all too often give up on their website, even before their site has had time to shine. It can take months, or even years to reach the optimum for a business so why not expect the same out of a website? It is hard to find a business that finds the desired revenue within the first year. So why should a website be as popular as it should be within the first few months or years?
First of all just like any successful business you must believe that you'll
succeed and never give-up. To be successful with a website you must have the same mentality, never give up and always put time and effort in. Giving up is the single major problem, if you give up on your website too early it will fail.
I have built many website over the years and found that what I have set out for you in this article will work, and keep on working.
Secondly, you need to increase your traffic, or hits to the website. I advise you to read my previous article “Six Techniques To Triple Your Website Hits.” This article illustrates six functional ways you can increase the traffic to your website.
Thirdly on the list, make sure you have branded your site well. People want to remember you and believe your site is quality. So build a clean and functional website that is appealing to your potential customers. The more professional your site is, the more you will impress the visitors.
Fourthly, one of the most important parts to a website: Quality content. You must have quality content. Always make sure you are original and unique. By having quality and informative information on my websites has benefited me to no extent. I found one of my website advertised on eBay. Not only was my site featured in an auction, but they were referring to my website and the products I sold. This alone gave my website over 40-50 extra hits from the eBay website alone, per day.
Not only did I find my website in eBay, but I found it in many other websites. I took a look at my link popularity and found my link popularity had risen from 60 to 300 within six months. These links were from quality websites and all were talking about my website as an example. No wonder my websites visitor count was dramatically increasing!
Fifth. Now that you have a quality and possibly a very well established website, you need to advertise. Advertising can be very expensive, and often not rewarding. So why not allow people to make money reselling your product or service?
I have found that every successful website I have setup, has an affiliate programme. Not only does an affiliate programme allow you to receive more new customers but it also increases your link popularity. As you all know, increasing your link popularity is something we are all trying to do.
I have found that affiliate programmes are the most important part to any website that sells a product or service. There is no other way to beat the free link popularity and the added bonus of extra sales you would not have had earlier. I cannot guarantee that you will quadruple your revenue, but the above information given will ensure that your website has a positive future and will prosper into a successful website. I have used every single example in the implementation of my current websites, and has worked for me. There is no time limit to how long it will take, although I have found a six month old website can quadruple its revenue within six months!
First of all just like any successful business you must believe that you'll
succeed and never give-up. To be successful with a website you must have the same mentality, never give up and always put time and effort in. Giving up is the single major problem, if you give up on your website too early it will fail.
I have built many website over the years and found that what I have set out for you in this article will work, and keep on working.
Secondly, you need to increase your traffic, or hits to the website. I advise you to read my previous article “Six Techniques To Triple Your Website Hits.” This article illustrates six functional ways you can increase the traffic to your website.
Thirdly on the list, make sure you have branded your site well. People want to remember you and believe your site is quality. So build a clean and functional website that is appealing to your potential customers. The more professional your site is, the more you will impress the visitors.
Fourthly, one of the most important parts to a website: Quality content. You must have quality content. Always make sure you are original and unique. By having quality and informative information on my websites has benefited me to no extent. I found one of my website advertised on eBay. Not only was my site featured in an auction, but they were referring to my website and the products I sold. This alone gave my website over 40-50 extra hits from the eBay website alone, per day.
Not only did I find my website in eBay, but I found it in many other websites. I took a look at my link popularity and found my link popularity had risen from 60 to 300 within six months. These links were from quality websites and all were talking about my website as an example. No wonder my websites visitor count was dramatically increasing!
Fifth. Now that you have a quality and possibly a very well established website, you need to advertise. Advertising can be very expensive, and often not rewarding. So why not allow people to make money reselling your product or service?
I have found that every successful website I have setup, has an affiliate programme. Not only does an affiliate programme allow you to receive more new customers but it also increases your link popularity. As you all know, increasing your link popularity is something we are all trying to do.
I have found that affiliate programmes are the most important part to any website that sells a product or service. There is no other way to beat the free link popularity and the added bonus of extra sales you would not have had earlier. I cannot guarantee that you will quadruple your revenue, but the above information given will ensure that your website has a positive future and will prosper into a successful website. I have used every single example in the implementation of my current websites, and has worked for me. There is no time limit to how long it will take, although I have found a six month old website can quadruple its revenue within six months!
Five Ways To Detect Shill Bidders On eBay So That You Don't Pay Absurd Prices
There is as a lot of buzz about shill bidders on the eBay forums. But in actuality, shrill bidding isn't that common and is rather easily detected.
A buyer will sometimes attempt to use shill building to raise the price of merchandise he is selling. The idea is that the shiller will bid increasingly high prices, in the hope that legitimate buyers like you will top the artificially high prices in an effort to win the goodies for sale.
Here are five ways you can recognize a shill bidder:
1. Few shill bidders will have any feedback. This is because they never follow through with transactions and therefore don't have anyone to leave feedback. If the shiller does have legitimate transactions on ebay, he is usually smart enough to use a separate ID, because he does not want to get caught shilling and lose all buying and selling privileges.
{It is important to note, however, that just because a bidder has no feedback that does not mean that he is necessarily a shrill bidder. This may simply be a new account that has not had time to build a feedback reputation.}
2. Generally, a shiller only bids on the auctions of a particular seller. When in doubt, you can check the current and completed options of a seller and see if this shiller has bid on other auctions by the same seller.
3. Shill bidders are most often newbies. You can check the feedback, and the date that the eBay account was created, for any ebay member. If the bidder's account was created two days ago and he is bidding on several auctions of the same seller, you can be pretty certain about what is going on.
4. eBay has ways of the tracking shillers. Of course we don't know everything they do (and if I did know I wouldn't tell!) but some clues all are dead giveaways. For example, if the seller and the bidder have the same IP address, eBay knows to take a closer look.
5. Shill bidders retract many more bids than normal buyers. eBay does allow any buyer to retract a bid, although this is only supposed to occur for specific reasons. But in actuality, a retraction is rarely challenged and ultimately what can eBay do? It cannot force a person to pay for a particular item.
It is wise not to use this option on a frequent basis. Remember that your eBay behavior deal is constantly tracked. A retraction is considered to be a "black mark" on your reputation so don't do it very often. Shillers, on the other hand, don't care because they're unconcerned about their reputation. If caught, they simply open a new account.
Sometimes a shiller is the high bidder at the end of an auction. In that that case, the seller and buyer can agree to cancel the bid, rather than retract it. However, all this takes a lot of work, planning and effort. In the end, shill bidding is rarely worth the trouble and time. Instead, smart sellers spend their time finding products and writing listings - the two basic moneymaking activities of an ebay business - instead of plotting how to raise profits on individual listings. Success in business is about efficiency.
A buyer will sometimes attempt to use shill building to raise the price of merchandise he is selling. The idea is that the shiller will bid increasingly high prices, in the hope that legitimate buyers like you will top the artificially high prices in an effort to win the goodies for sale.
Here are five ways you can recognize a shill bidder:
1. Few shill bidders will have any feedback. This is because they never follow through with transactions and therefore don't have anyone to leave feedback. If the shiller does have legitimate transactions on ebay, he is usually smart enough to use a separate ID, because he does not want to get caught shilling and lose all buying and selling privileges.
{It is important to note, however, that just because a bidder has no feedback that does not mean that he is necessarily a shrill bidder. This may simply be a new account that has not had time to build a feedback reputation.}
2. Generally, a shiller only bids on the auctions of a particular seller. When in doubt, you can check the current and completed options of a seller and see if this shiller has bid on other auctions by the same seller.
3. Shill bidders are most often newbies. You can check the feedback, and the date that the eBay account was created, for any ebay member. If the bidder's account was created two days ago and he is bidding on several auctions of the same seller, you can be pretty certain about what is going on.
4. eBay has ways of the tracking shillers. Of course we don't know everything they do (and if I did know I wouldn't tell!) but some clues all are dead giveaways. For example, if the seller and the bidder have the same IP address, eBay knows to take a closer look.
5. Shill bidders retract many more bids than normal buyers. eBay does allow any buyer to retract a bid, although this is only supposed to occur for specific reasons. But in actuality, a retraction is rarely challenged and ultimately what can eBay do? It cannot force a person to pay for a particular item.
It is wise not to use this option on a frequent basis. Remember that your eBay behavior deal is constantly tracked. A retraction is considered to be a "black mark" on your reputation so don't do it very often. Shillers, on the other hand, don't care because they're unconcerned about their reputation. If caught, they simply open a new account.
Sometimes a shiller is the high bidder at the end of an auction. In that that case, the seller and buyer can agree to cancel the bid, rather than retract it. However, all this takes a lot of work, planning and effort. In the end, shill bidding is rarely worth the trouble and time. Instead, smart sellers spend their time finding products and writing listings - the two basic moneymaking activities of an ebay business - instead of plotting how to raise profits on individual listings. Success in business is about efficiency.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Five Knockout Affiliate Tips
Here are five “hook em in the jaw” affiliate tips that really
work. Implement them and see how well they work for you.
(1) Develop a positive and realistic mindset. Do you believe that
you can get rich quick or that your business will take time to
grow? Those who believe in the online hype are the ones who
normally lose. Think positive and know in your heart you can earn
an income from your efforts.
(2) Too much information or the lack of it can be dangerous. Not
using the knowledge that you have gain can stop your business
from getting off the ground and not having the right information
can have the same effect.
(3) Market your programs with Google Adwords. This is a powerful
strategy you can use and as long as you earn more in commissions
than your PPC costs, then you are getting something for nothing.
(4) Write your own ads, articles and reviews instead of the
pre-formatted ones offered by affiliate programs. This will set
you apart from all the other affiliates in the same program.
(5) Make sure your affiliate program matches the content of your
website or newsletter. If you have marketing content then you
should promote marketing products on that page. Think of it like
matching ads to the page content like the way Adsense does. There
may a few exceptions to the rule though, even Adsense does it
some time.
There you go. A few tips to help you with your affiliate programs
whether you are looking for your first check or to boost your
current earnings. Try them all or even a couple and test and
track your results. I am sure Lennox Lewis would be proud of your
hooks and jabs
work. Implement them and see how well they work for you.
(1) Develop a positive and realistic mindset. Do you believe that
you can get rich quick or that your business will take time to
grow? Those who believe in the online hype are the ones who
normally lose. Think positive and know in your heart you can earn
an income from your efforts.
(2) Too much information or the lack of it can be dangerous. Not
using the knowledge that you have gain can stop your business
from getting off the ground and not having the right information
can have the same effect.
(3) Market your programs with Google Adwords. This is a powerful
strategy you can use and as long as you earn more in commissions
than your PPC costs, then you are getting something for nothing.
(4) Write your own ads, articles and reviews instead of the
pre-formatted ones offered by affiliate programs. This will set
you apart from all the other affiliates in the same program.
(5) Make sure your affiliate program matches the content of your
website or newsletter. If you have marketing content then you
should promote marketing products on that page. Think of it like
matching ads to the page content like the way Adsense does. There
may a few exceptions to the rule though, even Adsense does it
some time.
There you go. A few tips to help you with your affiliate programs
whether you are looking for your first check or to boost your
current earnings. Try them all or even a couple and test and
track your results. I am sure Lennox Lewis would be proud of your
hooks and jabs
Fed up with eBay?
For many people, their first experience of working online involves selling products on eBay. This was how I got started back in 1998 and I know countless other people that have done the same.
However, it is important to remember that eBay is not the 'be all and end all' - there is a much bigger online world out there. My reason for mentioning this is that I have spoken to three people this week who each make a decent full or part-time income on eBay but who are fed up with it and looking to move in other directions.
Having sold on eBay myself, I can understand why sellers do get tired/bored/frustrated with the auction site - it is highly competitive and it takes an incredible amount of hard work to succeed. In addition, it is normally the case that the more successful you become, the harder you have to work. Listing auctions, handling customer enquiries, packing, shipping, sourcing/buying stock, keeping up with feedback, monitoring the competition - selling on eBay is a tough job and it is no wonder that after working in this way for a few years, many people wish they were back in the land of the employed!!
Don't get me wrong, there is good money to be made on eBay for anyone willing to put the effort in and many people enjoy trading on this huge auction site. But it isn't for everyone.
Having spoken to numerous eBay sellers in the past, it seems to me that of the ones that don't enjoy working on eBay, the particular task that they enjoy the least is the packing and shipping of products. Funnily enough, this is exactly the bit of trading that I grew to dislike too.
I (and the sellers I have spoken to) didn't have a problem with creating sales descriptions, dealing with emails, collecting payment (naturally!) and the other administrative tasks involved in running an online business. But wrapping things up and taking them to the post office is something completely different and for me and many others that's where it all started to fall apart :-)
As I said at the beginning of this article, if you are getting fed up of doing the eBay 'thing' or if you just don't fancy the idea to start with, there is a wealth of alternative opportunities available online. My own solution was to get rid of the one aspect of eBay trading that I didn't enjoy - the packing and shipping - and start to produce and sell digital products which could be delivered to the customer automatically. I still have to write sales pages and build websites, I still have to deal with emails etc but I don't have to handle any physical products (neither do I have to deal with payment collection because that too can be handled automatically by software).
Of course my products are very relevant to eBay sellers and indeed, there are numerous individuals and companies out there that have made a fortune off the back of eBay without ever having sold a single product on the auction site. I am sure that there are numerous other problems that eBay users have that could be solved with a new piece of software or a particular service and if the idea takes off, there are 135 million registered users on eBay to market to!
eBay provides a wonderful opportunity for hundreds of thousands of people but it isn't for everyone and if you find yourself frustrated/bored with the same old routine everyday, start to look for something outside of the eBay world.
However, it is important to remember that eBay is not the 'be all and end all' - there is a much bigger online world out there. My reason for mentioning this is that I have spoken to three people this week who each make a decent full or part-time income on eBay but who are fed up with it and looking to move in other directions.
Having sold on eBay myself, I can understand why sellers do get tired/bored/frustrated with the auction site - it is highly competitive and it takes an incredible amount of hard work to succeed. In addition, it is normally the case that the more successful you become, the harder you have to work. Listing auctions, handling customer enquiries, packing, shipping, sourcing/buying stock, keeping up with feedback, monitoring the competition - selling on eBay is a tough job and it is no wonder that after working in this way for a few years, many people wish they were back in the land of the employed!!
Don't get me wrong, there is good money to be made on eBay for anyone willing to put the effort in and many people enjoy trading on this huge auction site. But it isn't for everyone.
Having spoken to numerous eBay sellers in the past, it seems to me that of the ones that don't enjoy working on eBay, the particular task that they enjoy the least is the packing and shipping of products. Funnily enough, this is exactly the bit of trading that I grew to dislike too.
I (and the sellers I have spoken to) didn't have a problem with creating sales descriptions, dealing with emails, collecting payment (naturally!) and the other administrative tasks involved in running an online business. But wrapping things up and taking them to the post office is something completely different and for me and many others that's where it all started to fall apart :-)
As I said at the beginning of this article, if you are getting fed up of doing the eBay 'thing' or if you just don't fancy the idea to start with, there is a wealth of alternative opportunities available online. My own solution was to get rid of the one aspect of eBay trading that I didn't enjoy - the packing and shipping - and start to produce and sell digital products which could be delivered to the customer automatically. I still have to write sales pages and build websites, I still have to deal with emails etc but I don't have to handle any physical products (neither do I have to deal with payment collection because that too can be handled automatically by software).
Of course my products are very relevant to eBay sellers and indeed, there are numerous individuals and companies out there that have made a fortune off the back of eBay without ever having sold a single product on the auction site. I am sure that there are numerous other problems that eBay users have that could be solved with a new piece of software or a particular service and if the idea takes off, there are 135 million registered users on eBay to market to!
eBay provides a wonderful opportunity for hundreds of thousands of people but it isn't for everyone and if you find yourself frustrated/bored with the same old routine everyday, start to look for something outside of the eBay world.
Easy Steps To Hands Off Passive Income
So you want to increase your Adsense income? Log into your Adsense account, and look at your last month's stats. There are three key areas that contribute to your earnings: Impressions, Clickthroughs and Effective CPM. Improving your stats in any, or preferably, all of these three key areas will increase your Adsense earnings.
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your webpages with Adsense ads have been viewed. You can increase Impressions by increasing traffic (preferably targeted traffic) to your webpages. Some of the best ways to increase targeted traffic to your webpages include:
-create more webpages, with relevant, focused content
-create more links to your webpages
-list your website/s under relevant categories in more directories
-set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant
reciprocal links
-write relevant articles, with your site information in the 'resource box' at the end of each article, and submit them to article directories
-advertise with pay per click search engines like Google's Adwords. www.Miva.com (formerly www.FindWhat.com, www.YahooMarketing.com (formerly Overture) and 100's of others. When of the best places for pay per click info is www.payperclicksearchengines.com with a descriptive list of 659 search engines.
Clickthroughs
Clickthroughs are the percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase Clickthroughs by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placing of your ads.
Although you can't dictate which Adsense ads show on your site, you can
influence the relevance of the ads by maintaining a tightly focused website. If every page on your site focuses tightly on the site topic, its more likely that the Adsense ads will too. For example, if every page of your site is about fishing, and the word 'fishing' appears several times on every page, its likely that your Adsense ads will relate to fishing.
The best way to tweak your ad format and placement is to invest in an Adsense Tracker, and test, test, test! People who have done this tend to suggest that the best format is the large rectangle, with background and border the same color as the page behind it, so that the ad blends into the page. The best placement is towards the center or top left of the first screen of the page. Try these suggestions first, and then track and test, to be sure of what works best for your pages.
Effective CPM
Effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings, per thousand clicks. You can increase your Effective CPM by selecting topics that attract high bids from Adsense advertisers, and building pages and whole websites on higher paying topics.
Although Google doesn't release information on Adsense bids, you can get a good idea of the top paying topics by looking at information on Adwords bids, or, for that matter, bids on pay-per-click search engines like Overture. There are a number of keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that can help you find high paying topics.
The Formula
So now you have the basics of increasing your Adsense income. Its a deceptively simple formula:
-Build pages and websites on high paying topics for the best Effective CPM.
-Format and place your Adsense ads for maximum Clickthroughs.
-Promote your sites to drive targeted traffic to your Adsense webpages for maximum impressions.
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your webpages with Adsense ads have been viewed. You can increase Impressions by increasing traffic (preferably targeted traffic) to your webpages. Some of the best ways to increase targeted traffic to your webpages include:
-create more webpages, with relevant, focused content
-create more links to your webpages
-list your website/s under relevant categories in more directories
-set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant
reciprocal links
-write relevant articles, with your site information in the 'resource box' at the end of each article, and submit them to article directories
-advertise with pay per click search engines like Google's Adwords. www.Miva.com (formerly www.FindWhat.com, www.YahooMarketing.com (formerly Overture) and 100's of others. When of the best places for pay per click info is www.payperclicksearchengines.com with a descriptive list of 659 search engines.
Clickthroughs
Clickthroughs are the percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase Clickthroughs by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placing of your ads.
Although you can't dictate which Adsense ads show on your site, you can
influence the relevance of the ads by maintaining a tightly focused website. If every page on your site focuses tightly on the site topic, its more likely that the Adsense ads will too. For example, if every page of your site is about fishing, and the word 'fishing' appears several times on every page, its likely that your Adsense ads will relate to fishing.
The best way to tweak your ad format and placement is to invest in an Adsense Tracker, and test, test, test! People who have done this tend to suggest that the best format is the large rectangle, with background and border the same color as the page behind it, so that the ad blends into the page. The best placement is towards the center or top left of the first screen of the page. Try these suggestions first, and then track and test, to be sure of what works best for your pages.
Effective CPM
Effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings, per thousand clicks. You can increase your Effective CPM by selecting topics that attract high bids from Adsense advertisers, and building pages and whole websites on higher paying topics.
Although Google doesn't release information on Adsense bids, you can get a good idea of the top paying topics by looking at information on Adwords bids, or, for that matter, bids on pay-per-click search engines like Overture. There are a number of keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that can help you find high paying topics.
The Formula
So now you have the basics of increasing your Adsense income. Its a deceptively simple formula:
-Build pages and websites on high paying topics for the best Effective CPM.
-Format and place your Adsense ads for maximum Clickthroughs.
-Promote your sites to drive targeted traffic to your Adsense webpages for maximum impressions.
Drive Yourself to More eBay Auction Money
Big ticket items are increasingly popular on eBay.
Cars are probably one of the best examples of this.
In fact, eBay is the largest dealer of used cars in the USA. And eBay's car sales in the UK is also growing significantly. Every 16 seconds, a car is sold on eBay!
If you're an eBay seller, here's an idea you might like to consider to make extra cash.
The vast majority of car dealers don't use eBay. They advertise in the press, usually locally, and their customers likewise usually live within reach of the car dealer.
What eBay Motors has successfully proved is that people will bid on cars from owners hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
Why not take your eBay selling expertise, and offer your services to car dealers in your area?
You know how to create auctions, take and upload photos, and manage auctions. The dealers have vehicles which are getting a tiny fraction of the exposure which eBay could offer.
You might decide to offer this to dealers on a no-cost basis. In other words, you bear the cost of eBay's listing and selling fees. The benefit here is that there is no reason why the dealer shouldn't give you the go-ahead. They could get a sale without cost to them and no extra effort on their behalf. That's what I call a no-brainer!
Alternatively, you could pass on the fees to the dealer on the basis that they would be spending money anyway on press advertising.
The other commercial arrangements are simple. You could work on a commission, where you get a percentage of the sale price. Or you could agree a price which the dealer will accept for the sale of the car, and anything you can get above that price is your profit. This would work particularly well if the dealer has had a vehicle for some time, and has no interest in it.
The best types of cars to sell on eBay are those that are unusual for one reason or another. It might be vintage or classic vehicles, sports cars or high value models. You're best to avoid what might be termed "normal" cars. It also depends on the kind of dealers you have in your area.
One of the major potential problems is easily handled. You can't expect the dealer to cease trying to sell a vehicle which you have on eBay auction. In every auction you run for a car, you state that the vehicle is also on sale in other ways, and that you reserve the right to withdraw it before the end of the auction period. You will see such statements on many eBay car auctions.
This idea doesn't have to be limited to cars. There are big ticket item opportunities in several categories. You're looking for retail outlets which tend to concentrate on local advertising and local trade. Examples of this would be jewelers, antique traders and real estate operations.
With big ticket items, just one or two sales per week could make a significant difference to you.
Worth thinking about!
Cars are probably one of the best examples of this.
In fact, eBay is the largest dealer of used cars in the USA. And eBay's car sales in the UK is also growing significantly. Every 16 seconds, a car is sold on eBay!
If you're an eBay seller, here's an idea you might like to consider to make extra cash.
The vast majority of car dealers don't use eBay. They advertise in the press, usually locally, and their customers likewise usually live within reach of the car dealer.
What eBay Motors has successfully proved is that people will bid on cars from owners hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
Why not take your eBay selling expertise, and offer your services to car dealers in your area?
You know how to create auctions, take and upload photos, and manage auctions. The dealers have vehicles which are getting a tiny fraction of the exposure which eBay could offer.
You might decide to offer this to dealers on a no-cost basis. In other words, you bear the cost of eBay's listing and selling fees. The benefit here is that there is no reason why the dealer shouldn't give you the go-ahead. They could get a sale without cost to them and no extra effort on their behalf. That's what I call a no-brainer!
Alternatively, you could pass on the fees to the dealer on the basis that they would be spending money anyway on press advertising.
The other commercial arrangements are simple. You could work on a commission, where you get a percentage of the sale price. Or you could agree a price which the dealer will accept for the sale of the car, and anything you can get above that price is your profit. This would work particularly well if the dealer has had a vehicle for some time, and has no interest in it.
The best types of cars to sell on eBay are those that are unusual for one reason or another. It might be vintage or classic vehicles, sports cars or high value models. You're best to avoid what might be termed "normal" cars. It also depends on the kind of dealers you have in your area.
One of the major potential problems is easily handled. You can't expect the dealer to cease trying to sell a vehicle which you have on eBay auction. In every auction you run for a car, you state that the vehicle is also on sale in other ways, and that you reserve the right to withdraw it before the end of the auction period. You will see such statements on many eBay car auctions.
This idea doesn't have to be limited to cars. There are big ticket item opportunities in several categories. You're looking for retail outlets which tend to concentrate on local advertising and local trade. Examples of this would be jewelers, antique traders and real estate operations.
With big ticket items, just one or two sales per week could make a significant difference to you.
Worth thinking about!
Friday, October 1, 2010
Do Marketers Really Need RSS?
The recent Forrester Research study, which claims that only 2% of online households in North America use RSS, took the internet marketing world by storm. Does this data really mean that marketers can still afford to ignore this channel?
Soon after the Forrrester study became public, I received a press enquiery asking whether marketers should be interested in RSS now that so few online adults use it.
Is this the correct question to ask? Let’s take a look at the bigger picture …
1. THE FORRESTER STUDY VALIDITY
The Forrester study is just one of those available and cannot be considered as the only relevant study, although it was conducted on a sample of 68,000 households.
Jupiter Research estimates RSS penetration at 12% of the American online population, while the latest report from PEW shows that 9% of the American online population has a good idea of what RSS is. An October 2004 PEW study actually estimated RSS penetration at 5%.
It is also important to understand that Forrester data does not include those that might not even be aware they are using RSS, especially through services such as My.Yahoo, which is actually the most popular RSS reader.
Also, at the same time, Forrester Vice President Henry Harteveldt says that »RSS is critical for any organization that wants to reach out to people under the age of 30«.
2. THE FUTURE GROWTH OF RSS
Regardless of the numbers we put our faith in, the future growth of RSS is without question. Microsoft just recently announced full RSS support in the next edition of their Internet Explorer browser and full RSS integration in the next edition of their operating system, the Windows Vista.
Once RSS becomes easily available to most internet users out-of-the-box and becomes as widely spread as bookmarks, its adoption will grow at an incredible rate. Microsoft has now made sure this in fact will happen.
Consequently, the time for marketers to not only become interested in RSS but also master it is now. Those that test and discover the best possible ways of using RSS for marketing will be ahead of their competition once everyone starts using RSS.
Furthermore, since RSS implementation can actually be free of any charge, there’s no reason not to start providing your content in RSS feeds now.
3. GOOGLE SHOWS THE WAY
Microsoft and Yahoo! aren’t the only big players to show support for RSS. Google recently launched RSS advertising as part of their Google AdSense program, giving publishers reason to start their own RSS feeds to generate direct revenues.
Those that depend on Google AdSense for part or all of their online revenues actually need to provide RSS feeds, or stand to lose some of those revenues due to their visitors switching to sites and feeds from their competitors.
Face it, today many users are already starting to request publishers provide them with RSS to subscribe to their content. This trend will only continue, with many users selecting RSS as their primary channel of receiving and reading online content.
4. THE QUESTIONABLE RELIABILITY OF E-MAIL
All marketers today are experiencing e-mail delivery problems, constantly wondering whether their messages are getting through or not. Simply put, e-mail can no longer be relied on.
For one, offering your content via RSS as a supplement to e-mail will help you make certain that at least a portion of your visitors, those that decide for the RSS option, will be receiving all of your content without any doubt.
Lockergnome.com decided to start pushing RSS instead of e-mail some time ago, and as a result saw that their RSS feeds are outperforming e-mail when it comes to clickthrough rates for about 500%. Also an interesting fact, they today have 5 times more RSS subscribers than e-mail subscribers.
And two, for your most important content updates, RSS really is becoming a must, especially if you need to be in contact with your existing customers, partners and other key audiences. If you want to be 100% certain that your messages reach your audience, RSS is the way to go.
5. OTHER BENEFITS OF RSS
But all of the above don’t even touch all the reasons why marketers should start using RSS today …
a) RSS will help you generate additional traffic and reach new audiences. Considering the low cost of RSS implementation, this is reason enough to get started with RSS today.
b) RSS helps you to easily get your content published on other sites, thus generating you more credibility and visitors.
c) As a publisher you can use RSS to display content from other sources, thus making your site more relevant and interesting to your existing visitors.
And the list goes on and on.
RSS may not be mainstream yet, but it provides enough advantages even today to make it a must-choice for marketers.
Soon after the Forrrester study became public, I received a press enquiery asking whether marketers should be interested in RSS now that so few online adults use it.
Is this the correct question to ask? Let’s take a look at the bigger picture …
1. THE FORRESTER STUDY VALIDITY
The Forrester study is just one of those available and cannot be considered as the only relevant study, although it was conducted on a sample of 68,000 households.
Jupiter Research estimates RSS penetration at 12% of the American online population, while the latest report from PEW shows that 9% of the American online population has a good idea of what RSS is. An October 2004 PEW study actually estimated RSS penetration at 5%.
It is also important to understand that Forrester data does not include those that might not even be aware they are using RSS, especially through services such as My.Yahoo, which is actually the most popular RSS reader.
Also, at the same time, Forrester Vice President Henry Harteveldt says that »RSS is critical for any organization that wants to reach out to people under the age of 30«.
2. THE FUTURE GROWTH OF RSS
Regardless of the numbers we put our faith in, the future growth of RSS is without question. Microsoft just recently announced full RSS support in the next edition of their Internet Explorer browser and full RSS integration in the next edition of their operating system, the Windows Vista.
Once RSS becomes easily available to most internet users out-of-the-box and becomes as widely spread as bookmarks, its adoption will grow at an incredible rate. Microsoft has now made sure this in fact will happen.
Consequently, the time for marketers to not only become interested in RSS but also master it is now. Those that test and discover the best possible ways of using RSS for marketing will be ahead of their competition once everyone starts using RSS.
Furthermore, since RSS implementation can actually be free of any charge, there’s no reason not to start providing your content in RSS feeds now.
3. GOOGLE SHOWS THE WAY
Microsoft and Yahoo! aren’t the only big players to show support for RSS. Google recently launched RSS advertising as part of their Google AdSense program, giving publishers reason to start their own RSS feeds to generate direct revenues.
Those that depend on Google AdSense for part or all of their online revenues actually need to provide RSS feeds, or stand to lose some of those revenues due to their visitors switching to sites and feeds from their competitors.
Face it, today many users are already starting to request publishers provide them with RSS to subscribe to their content. This trend will only continue, with many users selecting RSS as their primary channel of receiving and reading online content.
4. THE QUESTIONABLE RELIABILITY OF E-MAIL
All marketers today are experiencing e-mail delivery problems, constantly wondering whether their messages are getting through or not. Simply put, e-mail can no longer be relied on.
For one, offering your content via RSS as a supplement to e-mail will help you make certain that at least a portion of your visitors, those that decide for the RSS option, will be receiving all of your content without any doubt.
Lockergnome.com decided to start pushing RSS instead of e-mail some time ago, and as a result saw that their RSS feeds are outperforming e-mail when it comes to clickthrough rates for about 500%. Also an interesting fact, they today have 5 times more RSS subscribers than e-mail subscribers.
And two, for your most important content updates, RSS really is becoming a must, especially if you need to be in contact with your existing customers, partners and other key audiences. If you want to be 100% certain that your messages reach your audience, RSS is the way to go.
5. OTHER BENEFITS OF RSS
But all of the above don’t even touch all the reasons why marketers should start using RSS today …
a) RSS will help you generate additional traffic and reach new audiences. Considering the low cost of RSS implementation, this is reason enough to get started with RSS today.
b) RSS helps you to easily get your content published on other sites, thus generating you more credibility and visitors.
c) As a publisher you can use RSS to display content from other sources, thus making your site more relevant and interesting to your existing visitors.
And the list goes on and on.
RSS may not be mainstream yet, but it provides enough advantages even today to make it a must-choice for marketers.
Creating A Blog To Promote An Existing Business
If you belong to any of the following groups, then this article is for you.
* You already have a business and a website that serves as the official hub for your online sales. The website may be serving as an online store for your enterprise.
* You need a venue wherein you can promote your affiliate links.
* Your already have a website, which may not necessarily be a commercial one, and it is enrolled with a Pay Per Click (PPC) program, like Google AdSense.
Success in these fields depends on one essential principle which you might have already realized: traffic is the key to your online business thriving.
You may have in your digital inventory the best products in the world, but they won’t mean squat if no one would get to see them. This is why each and every online businessman will fight tooth and nail just to have a piece of the Internet traffic. After all, the more visitors who get to visit your site, the more potential clients you have.
And blogs can most definitely help you drive visitors to your pages. Here is how you could use them to achieve such a purpose:
1. Download the Wordpress blogging software, which is available for free at www.wordpress.com . An alternative is to go with blogger.com.
2. Remember that good content is always at the heart of a progressive online traffic stream. People are always looking for information, and if you will give them that, they would read what you have to offer. Dedicate your blog to the subject of your main website. Publish informative entries that would hook your readers and make them come back for updates. In between purely educational entries, strategically include a link to your site by suggesting their importance to your readers.
3. Using the above mentioned strategy, you could also include your affiliate links to pre-sell your affiliate products. The more traffic you drive to your affiliate merchant’s site or sales page, the more chances you will have of effectuating a successful sale and bigger commissions.
4. Links from blogs are unilateral, meaning, they are one way links to your websites. The more traffic a unilateral link generates, the more it becomes prominent in online searches. Avoid reciprocal links at all costs! Do not include a link to your blog from your website. Search engines abhor reciprocal linking.
5. 80% of your traffic will come from the search engines. You have to tweak your blog to attract the attention of the search engine spiders. Now, blogs are already search engine friendly. However, there is a very big possibility that you would be competing with other blogs on the same subject. You have to make sure that once you upload your blog, it is able to outperform its competitors in the search engine rankings.
One way you can do this is by using the title of your post to match the keyword phrases you are targeting, plus put a sprinkling of your keyword phrase in the post itself. I am doing this with great results.
6. Check your blog offline. It should be as readable and as navigable as possible for your prospective readers. Make appropriate adjustments if necessary.
7. Upload your blog to a reliable server that has enough bandwidth to accommodate many viewers.
8. Constantly update your blog. Search engines love regularly updated content, so publishing new entries will greatly increase your blog’s page rank, and consequently, your main website’s traffic.
9. Accepting links from other related blogs will also bring to your site some traffic from sources other then search engines. The way that a blog is designed fosters the building of a community of blog sites, and this will provide for an added stream of visitors for you.
10. You could also decide to enroll your blog site in the Google AdSense advertising program. This will give you an additional income stream. We will discuss this in future articles.
Blogs are excellent promotional tools for your existing business. Use them well and you will harvest the rewards in a matter of weeks.
* You already have a business and a website that serves as the official hub for your online sales. The website may be serving as an online store for your enterprise.
* You need a venue wherein you can promote your affiliate links.
* Your already have a website, which may not necessarily be a commercial one, and it is enrolled with a Pay Per Click (PPC) program, like Google AdSense.
Success in these fields depends on one essential principle which you might have already realized: traffic is the key to your online business thriving.
You may have in your digital inventory the best products in the world, but they won’t mean squat if no one would get to see them. This is why each and every online businessman will fight tooth and nail just to have a piece of the Internet traffic. After all, the more visitors who get to visit your site, the more potential clients you have.
And blogs can most definitely help you drive visitors to your pages. Here is how you could use them to achieve such a purpose:
1. Download the Wordpress blogging software, which is available for free at www.wordpress.com . An alternative is to go with blogger.com.
2. Remember that good content is always at the heart of a progressive online traffic stream. People are always looking for information, and if you will give them that, they would read what you have to offer. Dedicate your blog to the subject of your main website. Publish informative entries that would hook your readers and make them come back for updates. In between purely educational entries, strategically include a link to your site by suggesting their importance to your readers.
3. Using the above mentioned strategy, you could also include your affiliate links to pre-sell your affiliate products. The more traffic you drive to your affiliate merchant’s site or sales page, the more chances you will have of effectuating a successful sale and bigger commissions.
4. Links from blogs are unilateral, meaning, they are one way links to your websites. The more traffic a unilateral link generates, the more it becomes prominent in online searches. Avoid reciprocal links at all costs! Do not include a link to your blog from your website. Search engines abhor reciprocal linking.
5. 80% of your traffic will come from the search engines. You have to tweak your blog to attract the attention of the search engine spiders. Now, blogs are already search engine friendly. However, there is a very big possibility that you would be competing with other blogs on the same subject. You have to make sure that once you upload your blog, it is able to outperform its competitors in the search engine rankings.
One way you can do this is by using the title of your post to match the keyword phrases you are targeting, plus put a sprinkling of your keyword phrase in the post itself. I am doing this with great results.
6. Check your blog offline. It should be as readable and as navigable as possible for your prospective readers. Make appropriate adjustments if necessary.
7. Upload your blog to a reliable server that has enough bandwidth to accommodate many viewers.
8. Constantly update your blog. Search engines love regularly updated content, so publishing new entries will greatly increase your blog’s page rank, and consequently, your main website’s traffic.
9. Accepting links from other related blogs will also bring to your site some traffic from sources other then search engines. The way that a blog is designed fosters the building of a community of blog sites, and this will provide for an added stream of visitors for you.
10. You could also decide to enroll your blog site in the Google AdSense advertising program. This will give you an additional income stream. We will discuss this in future articles.
Blogs are excellent promotional tools for your existing business. Use them well and you will harvest the rewards in a matter of weeks.
Contextual Ad Networks...The Baby Boom Is Upon Us
No, this baby boom will certainly not swamp the Social Security
system (sort of a bad joke for those that live in the United
States, but many other countries...most notably Japan...have an
even more acute problem), but this baby boom is revolutionizing
the way that pay per click advertising is being spread across the
Internet.
One of the early participants in this pay per click baby boom was
Google, with its AdSense program. With this program, Google
shares pay per click revenue with a huge number of individual
partner websites that carry a few pay per click ads that are
distributed by Google. In essence, this creates a whole bunch of
little pay per click locations (websites) throughout the Internet
and hence the term "pay per click baby boom".
Conceptually, programs like AdSense are similar to what the
computer hardware folks refer to a distributed processing.
Instead of trying to draw everyone to a large pay per click
search engine site, little groups of pay per click ads are spread
widely across thousands of locations (websites) all over the
Internet.
Actually, this distributed processing or propagation technique is
not limited to pay per click advertising. For example, Amazon
uses a similar arrangement (called Amazon Associates) to sell the
products it carries on amazon.com and ClickBank has a sales
program called CBAdwords which operates in a similar fashion.
According my trusty Ouija board, it seems likely that most
commercial hubs on the Internet will be shifting to this
propagation concept as time progresses...all of those individual
partner websites that carry the message/proposition will
constitute the vast army of worker ants that keep the queen ant
alive and healthy.
From a pay per click marketing perspective, these programs make
brilliant use of leverage while providing highly targeted
prospects for the paying advertiser.
There are, of course, some interesting things that occur as a
result of all of this stuff. For example, consider what I call
the "cross fertilization effect": Suppose a person goes to
yahoo.com and performs a search that leads them to one of my
websites that happens carry Google AdSense ads and that visitor
then clicks on one of those ads...the net result is that Yahoo
natural search provided Google pay per click with some revenue!
Aren't these fun times that we're living in?
As these programs continue to proliferate, the individual
webmaster needs to exercise a little restraint and avoid the
temptation to go overboard by plastering these ads all over your
website and thereby diluting your own primary message/proposition
and confusing your hard earned visitor. When properly used,
these ads are just ancillary or complementary content that you
are providing to enhance the information and opportunities that
you are providing to your visitor...if something happens to
strike a responsive chord with your visitor, you might make a
little pay per click money.
If properly used, these propagation programs can result in the
classical "win-win" situation. However, if you over do it, this
can quickly turn into a loss for you (the individual webmaster)
and a win for your pay per click partners that are distributing
the ads. As in many things, moderation is important.
The dynamic search engine marketing industry continues to evolve
as users began to take advantage of the steady stream of new
features, tools and innovations provided by the ever increasing
number of search engines offering quality search results (it's
not all about Google anymore). The evolutionary time line for
Internet marketing continues to run at warp speed.
An example of previous evolutionary periods (which by now may
almost seem prehistoric) would be the emergence of pay-per-click
advertising and the cooresponding rise of search-marketing firms
specializing in AdWords and Overture. As long as there are methods
for finding and retrieving information in digital databases by
using keywords or similar attributes, there will be a
search-marketing industry. How that industry operates in the
future depends on how the search engines operate and how consumer
tendencies evolve.
It's a constant sea of change, but the good things just keep on
getting better! Stay alert, and light on your feet, and the
opportunities will just keep on coming your way.
The above are just some observations from "the peanut gallery",
but I don't think I'm far off the mark about where things are
heading. With that, I'm off the soapbox and wishing you
success in whatever you do online!
system (sort of a bad joke for those that live in the United
States, but many other countries...most notably Japan...have an
even more acute problem), but this baby boom is revolutionizing
the way that pay per click advertising is being spread across the
Internet.
One of the early participants in this pay per click baby boom was
Google, with its AdSense program. With this program, Google
shares pay per click revenue with a huge number of individual
partner websites that carry a few pay per click ads that are
distributed by Google. In essence, this creates a whole bunch of
little pay per click locations (websites) throughout the Internet
and hence the term "pay per click baby boom".
Conceptually, programs like AdSense are similar to what the
computer hardware folks refer to a distributed processing.
Instead of trying to draw everyone to a large pay per click
search engine site, little groups of pay per click ads are spread
widely across thousands of locations (websites) all over the
Internet.
Actually, this distributed processing or propagation technique is
not limited to pay per click advertising. For example, Amazon
uses a similar arrangement (called Amazon Associates) to sell the
products it carries on amazon.com and ClickBank has a sales
program called CBAdwords which operates in a similar fashion.
According my trusty Ouija board, it seems likely that most
commercial hubs on the Internet will be shifting to this
propagation concept as time progresses...all of those individual
partner websites that carry the message/proposition will
constitute the vast army of worker ants that keep the queen ant
alive and healthy.
From a pay per click marketing perspective, these programs make
brilliant use of leverage while providing highly targeted
prospects for the paying advertiser.
There are, of course, some interesting things that occur as a
result of all of this stuff. For example, consider what I call
the "cross fertilization effect": Suppose a person goes to
yahoo.com and performs a search that leads them to one of my
websites that happens carry Google AdSense ads and that visitor
then clicks on one of those ads...the net result is that Yahoo
natural search provided Google pay per click with some revenue!
Aren't these fun times that we're living in?
As these programs continue to proliferate, the individual
webmaster needs to exercise a little restraint and avoid the
temptation to go overboard by plastering these ads all over your
website and thereby diluting your own primary message/proposition
and confusing your hard earned visitor. When properly used,
these ads are just ancillary or complementary content that you
are providing to enhance the information and opportunities that
you are providing to your visitor...if something happens to
strike a responsive chord with your visitor, you might make a
little pay per click money.
If properly used, these propagation programs can result in the
classical "win-win" situation. However, if you over do it, this
can quickly turn into a loss for you (the individual webmaster)
and a win for your pay per click partners that are distributing
the ads. As in many things, moderation is important.
The dynamic search engine marketing industry continues to evolve
as users began to take advantage of the steady stream of new
features, tools and innovations provided by the ever increasing
number of search engines offering quality search results (it's
not all about Google anymore). The evolutionary time line for
Internet marketing continues to run at warp speed.
An example of previous evolutionary periods (which by now may
almost seem prehistoric) would be the emergence of pay-per-click
advertising and the cooresponding rise of search-marketing firms
specializing in AdWords and Overture. As long as there are methods
for finding and retrieving information in digital databases by
using keywords or similar attributes, there will be a
search-marketing industry. How that industry operates in the
future depends on how the search engines operate and how consumer
tendencies evolve.
It's a constant sea of change, but the good things just keep on
getting better! Stay alert, and light on your feet, and the
opportunities will just keep on coming your way.
The above are just some observations from "the peanut gallery",
but I don't think I'm far off the mark about where things are
heading. With that, I'm off the soapbox and wishing you
success in whatever you do online!
Concentrate on what's important...
1. Concentrate on what's important...
First of all, it looks like I'm missed seeing a lot of new products since I've been offline.
When I visited my forum I saw a number of programs/software being talked about that I'd never even heard of.
And, do you know what? I didn't really care that I'd missed the products being announced.
There's probably nothing wrong with them. They're most likely useful. They're probably worth investigating.
But... remember this.
It's IMPORTANT to not get distracted with new things all the time. You could spend all your limited web time learning how to use
new tools, when really you should be focusing on improving your sites and your skills and your own business.
I remember David Garfinkel and Mark Joyner saying to me in Vegas that I should focus on what I'm good at (in my case writing).
And that's what you should be doing too.
Play to your strengths.
Work out what you're good at/what your main interests are and give them most of your attention and time.
Don't get sidetracked by everything new that comes along.
Write down your "online business" plan, even if it's only on one piece of paper. And work out the steps you need to take to achieve success with it. Doing this will help you focus on what matters, and it will clear your head so that you know where you should be spending your time.
Once you've mapped out your action steps you need to follow them. Don't make a plan and then not stick to it. Don't let anyone or
anything put you off. Go for it.
Don't sign up for every crappy new scheme that comes along. Don't buy every new piece of software or every ebook.
Do what works for YOU and use the tools that works for YOU.
And just go for it.
2. One of the smartest brains around...
I'm not sure if you've heard of him, but James Maduk is one of the smartest business brains around. He's been working online since 1995, writes monthly articles for Entrepreneur Magazine, and he's an expert at online selling.
Plus he's got more products on the market than anyone I know, even beating the prolific Marlon Sanders.
So why he's not amazingly well known in this field I'll never know.
I'm a big fan, especially of his member only site
If you'd like an introduction to his style and knowledge have a look at one of his free weekly webcasts, where he uses "internet whiteboard" technology to get his messages across.
And when you've finished watching and listening you might fancy signing up for his affiliate program which is looks like turning into one of the best around.
3. Free Amazon Tools...
If you're promoting Amazon's affiliate program here are a couple of useful sites which help you automate the process.
4. Beginners Bit...
I get heaps of letters about how difficult it is to build a good looking website. But I get even more letters about the complexities of getting a webhost and uploading pages to it.
One simple way around this is to use Site Build It! (SBI) because it offers an all-in-one solution.
The mastermind behind SBI, Ken Evoy, has been really busy with SBI over the past few months, constantly adding new features and making it easier to use. I've owned SBI for a few years now and it's now a far, far better site building tool than when I started using it. And it was good then.
One thing SBI is ideal for is displaying Google Adsense ads.
To really make big profits from Adsense you need a lot of content pages. Using SBI for these sites makes sense because once you've got over the learning curve it leaves you totally free to
concentrate on providing that content. So you can quickly put out a lot more pages.
Plus the in-built tools help you keep that content on topic, which means that Adsense can read that your pages correctly and display relevant ads.
In fact Ken has put together a very good info site about using SBI with Adsense. You should spend a bit of time reading through it.
5. Stuck for ideas what to build a site about?
Try reading Michael Holland's Strike it Niche.
It's a great place to begin.
Michael's done a great research job, giving you ideas for 70 different sites, and explaining just what you need to do to profit from each
of them. Reading this ebook should leave you dancing with enthusiasm.
6. As a follow on to the stuff higher up...
Do you ever feel like you're drowning in a sea of data?
Well you're not the only one.
I just checked out the online edition of The Guardian, one of the best UK daily papers, and found this report:
"There's a lot of data on our hard disks, and there's more accumulating by the day. The University of Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems has just updated its "How Much Information?" study. In 2002 we created over five exabytes of data, in the form of video, print, magnetic and optical media — an increase of over 30% a year since 1999. That's equivalent to half a million new collections the size of the US Library of Congress — 92% of which was on magnetic media, and most of that was on hard disk."
First of all, it looks like I'm missed seeing a lot of new products since I've been offline.
When I visited my forum I saw a number of programs/software being talked about that I'd never even heard of.
And, do you know what? I didn't really care that I'd missed the products being announced.
There's probably nothing wrong with them. They're most likely useful. They're probably worth investigating.
But... remember this.
It's IMPORTANT to not get distracted with new things all the time. You could spend all your limited web time learning how to use
new tools, when really you should be focusing on improving your sites and your skills and your own business.
I remember David Garfinkel and Mark Joyner saying to me in Vegas that I should focus on what I'm good at (in my case writing).
And that's what you should be doing too.
Play to your strengths.
Work out what you're good at/what your main interests are and give them most of your attention and time.
Don't get sidetracked by everything new that comes along.
Write down your "online business" plan, even if it's only on one piece of paper. And work out the steps you need to take to achieve success with it. Doing this will help you focus on what matters, and it will clear your head so that you know where you should be spending your time.
Once you've mapped out your action steps you need to follow them. Don't make a plan and then not stick to it. Don't let anyone or
anything put you off. Go for it.
Don't sign up for every crappy new scheme that comes along. Don't buy every new piece of software or every ebook.
Do what works for YOU and use the tools that works for YOU.
And just go for it.
2. One of the smartest brains around...
I'm not sure if you've heard of him, but James Maduk is one of the smartest business brains around. He's been working online since 1995, writes monthly articles for Entrepreneur Magazine, and he's an expert at online selling.
Plus he's got more products on the market than anyone I know, even beating the prolific Marlon Sanders.
So why he's not amazingly well known in this field I'll never know.
I'm a big fan, especially of his member only site
If you'd like an introduction to his style and knowledge have a look at one of his free weekly webcasts, where he uses "internet whiteboard" technology to get his messages across.
And when you've finished watching and listening you might fancy signing up for his affiliate program which is looks like turning into one of the best around.
3. Free Amazon Tools...
If you're promoting Amazon's affiliate program here are a couple of useful sites which help you automate the process.
4. Beginners Bit...
I get heaps of letters about how difficult it is to build a good looking website. But I get even more letters about the complexities of getting a webhost and uploading pages to it.
One simple way around this is to use Site Build It! (SBI) because it offers an all-in-one solution.
The mastermind behind SBI, Ken Evoy, has been really busy with SBI over the past few months, constantly adding new features and making it easier to use. I've owned SBI for a few years now and it's now a far, far better site building tool than when I started using it. And it was good then.
One thing SBI is ideal for is displaying Google Adsense ads.
To really make big profits from Adsense you need a lot of content pages. Using SBI for these sites makes sense because once you've got over the learning curve it leaves you totally free to
concentrate on providing that content. So you can quickly put out a lot more pages.
Plus the in-built tools help you keep that content on topic, which means that Adsense can read that your pages correctly and display relevant ads.
In fact Ken has put together a very good info site about using SBI with Adsense. You should spend a bit of time reading through it.
5. Stuck for ideas what to build a site about?
Try reading Michael Holland's Strike it Niche.
It's a great place to begin.
Michael's done a great research job, giving you ideas for 70 different sites, and explaining just what you need to do to profit from each
of them. Reading this ebook should leave you dancing with enthusiasm.
6. As a follow on to the stuff higher up...
Do you ever feel like you're drowning in a sea of data?
Well you're not the only one.
I just checked out the online edition of The Guardian, one of the best UK daily papers, and found this report:
"There's a lot of data on our hard disks, and there's more accumulating by the day. The University of Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems has just updated its "How Much Information?" study. In 2002 we created over five exabytes of data, in the form of video, print, magnetic and optical media — an increase of over 30% a year since 1999. That's equivalent to half a million new collections the size of the US Library of Congress — 92% of which was on magnetic media, and most of that was on hard disk."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)