One area where a lot of people have problems with running an online business is time management.  Too many of us spend too much time on the things that don’t matter and not enough time on the things that do matter.

Recently I’ve been reading “The Four Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss, and since doing so have really improved the way I use my time.  So in this post I want to share a few ideas that I’ve taken from his book.  I hope they help!

Pareto’s Law

Most of you have probably heard of this by it’s other name, the 80/20 rule.  Sometimes the ratio is different, but the principle is the same: 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

So what does this mean to us as internet marketers?  They way I look at it, it means that you can easily waste a lot of time!  But what if you were able to identify the most important things that you can do to move your business forward every day?

Here’s an activity I want you to do sometime soon:

1. Make a list of the things you do for your business.  This list could include everything from answering emails to processing orders.
2. Next, grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle.  At the top of one column write ‘20%’, and at the top of the other, write ‘80%’.
3. In the 20% column, list the things you can do each day that can actually help to produce income.  In the other column, list the other things that you feel need to be done, but don’t directly relate to producing income.

The purpose of this activity is to help you to identify the things that you should really spend your time on versus the things that are important to do, but don’t lead towards creating an income.

Chances are your 80% list is longer.  This list most likely includes things like answering email, reading other blogs, etc.  These things are good things to do, but are there better things you can be doing with your time?

So what are things that you should focus on?  Things that help to produce results!  This would include anything you do to market your site, or anything really that directly helps you to get people to your site.

Parkinson’s Law

Some of you may have heard of this law, but some of you probably haven’t.  Parkinson’s Law states that a task will swell in perceived importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.  In other words, a task that should only take an hour to accomplish can easily take a week if you give it that much time.

So how do we take advantage of this as internet marketers?  Well, give yourself short deadlines.  If it takes you 3 hours to write an article, you’re taking way too long to do it!  When I’m focused, I can usually get an article done in 15 minutes.  In fact, just today I wrote 3 blog posts in about 20 minutes total.  This is because that’s about all the time I gave myself to do it!

Maybe you’re thinking to yourself that you aren’t good at writing.  Well, part of that if probably because you’re thinking about it too hard!  Honesty, it shouldn’t take you that long.  And you’ll find that you get better at it as you do it more and more.  But you’ll get better faster if you give yourself short deadlines to get things done.

Putting the Two Laws to Good Use

We’ve just learned two ways to make better use of time: first to identify the most important tasks, and secondly to give yourself short deadlines to get things done.  By using these two laws together you can get a lot of things done each day.

Here are a few other tips that you can follow to make the most use of your time:

• Only check your email once or twice a day. Too many of us are addicted to checking our email (I’m guilty of this quite often as well!)
• Limit your information intake.  Find those blogs or information sources that are good and read them as needed, but don’t spend time just browsing for information.
• Spend most of your time taking action, not reading!
• Actually schedule your business into your day.  If you’re just waiting for time to work on it, it won’t ever happen.
• Have daily and weekly tasks, find a way to track these things to keep yourself accountable.

If you have any other tips, feel free to share them below!

I wanted to take a minute today and talk about online marketing strategies in general, and just give a reminder of all the different things that you could be doing to promote your online business.  The fact is that you need to be doing multiple things if you’re really going to see some long term success.  So let’s do a quick review of some of the main strategies.

A Tip About Online Marketing Strategies

Below I’m going to review a bunch of different marketing strategies that you can use.  I don’t want you to get overwhelmed, but you need to look at your own business model and see how you could take advantage of testing these different strategies.  Test, tweak, find what works, and then optimize what works!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is probably the one strategy that everyone is familiar with and want to learn how to do.  And for good reason!  Who could pass up free traffic, and tons of it if you can get ranked for the right keywords?  It’s a great thing!

Some things to be aware of with SEO:

• You have to work on it consistently.  Building a link here and there won’t cut it.
• You need to keep up on the industry.  Algorithm updates, outdated techniques, and other things change in the SEO world all the time.  Keep up on changes.
• Be willing to put in the time to get it done, or hire it out.  This is not a quick process!

SEO is great, but you really need to be aware that it takes time and effort before you’ll see results with it.  But because it can generate so much traffic, it is something you should learn how to do.

Social Media Marketing (SMO or SMM)

Social media optimization and marketing is one of the newer online marketing strategies, but it can be a great way to bring in additional traffic, get exposure, and links.  Use sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, and others to increase your exposure and traffic.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

This is one of the online marketing strategies that I find a lot of people are afraid of.  At least they’re afraid of spending a lot of money without even knowing it.  Well, these days you pretty much have to set up budgets and protections so that you don’t spend more than you’re comfortable with.

But in an overall strategy, this is one you’ll want to learn how to do and at least use from time to time.  This is for a couple of reasons:

• You can get traffic faster with PPC than you can with SEO
• You can do really good testing with PPC
• You can target more phrases with PPC than you can with SEO

So you see, there are some really good reasons to use PPC as one of your main strategies.  Learn the basics of how to do it because with knowledge and then action you can eliminate the fear of doing it!

Shopping Networks

If you’re running a retail business, whether it be with your own warehouse or through dropshipping, this is one you should look into.  Simply put, there are a lot of sites out there that shoppers are already using to find good deals.  These include Amazon.com, Shopzilla.com, Shop.com, Shopping.com, Google Base, and others.  Most of these run of a PPC-like program, but some are even free like Google Base.  Check them out since they can really bring you some targeted customers!

Joint Ventures

This is one online marketing strategy that can really be put to good use early on in your business.  Here’s a basic example of a joint venture: Let’s say you have a site that sells fitness products.  Well, what if you went and found a popular fitness blog and made them an offer where you would give them a promo code that they can give to their readers.  If any of their readers use that code on your site you’ll split the profit with them.

So you get the benefit of having a popular blogger talk about your site, and also recommend that their readers buy from you.  All you have to do is be willing to share the profit with them!  There are plenty of other ways to use this strategy.  Be creative!

Email Marketing

You’ve all heard by this time I’m sure of the value of building a list.  Have a newsletter that you send out every week or two, but make sure that you’re giving out valuable content and not just advertisements.  This is a great way to keep in touch with current and potential customers.  It gives you the chance to have multiple touches with these people.

Final Thoughts About Different Online Marketing Strategies

So there you have a short list of some of the different things you can do to promote your site out there.  This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list of all the things you can do, but this should get you started.  Think about your site and model, and think about which of these approaches could work for you.  For example, if you have an affiliate site you won’t really be able to use shopping networks the same way a retail site would.

My hope is that after reading this post you understand that there is more to do than just SEO.  Use some of these other online marketing strategies.  As mentioned before do some testing to see what works for you.  Then make the most of it!

Watch this video and then share with me below what you think:

Here’s the quote from Tom Venuto that started it all:

You can either make excuses or get results, but you can’t do both!

Here’s the link to the post on SupplementPricing.com: Stop Making Excuses, Start Getting Results!

So here’s the challenge: stop making excuses for why your business isn’t going as far as you’d like.  Look for the excuses you’re making, and then get over them and start working on results.

Here’s another great quote from Mark Sanborn:

Fear nothing in life but to waste the present moment.

Make every moment count.  If you do something, don’t let it be an excuse later.  Do things consciously, with a choice.  Then you can start working on making the right choices that will move your forward rather than being pushed around by life.

I just learned a really cool PPC (pay per click) tip from a newsletter I got from Perry Marshall that I thought was worth passing on.  Speaking of which, if you haven’t signed up for Perry Marshall’s newsletter you should.  Yes, he’ll pitch product to you from time to time, but he also pumps out a ton of great info.

How to Find the Best PPC Ads to Spy On

As you probably well know, one of the things about search engine marketing in general is that there is a lot of competition for good keyword phrases.  And when it comes to PPC one of the tricks is knowing who to spy on.

So here’s the trick: if you go to Google and search for something you’ll get both types of results.  Well, hit search a few times and you’ll notices that the list of Sponsored Links gets smaller.  Do this a couple of times and you’ll be left with just a handful of ads.

Now why is this important?  Because the ones that are left are the ones that make Google the most money!  And if they make Google good money, it’s because they have a good click thru rate which would indicate they are making good money off of the ads as well.

Here’s a quote from the newsletter:

So if you want to know who the highest quality advertisers are - search a keyword, and then click “search” again and again and again.  After awhile the list of advertisers on the right side will shrink.

After a whole bunch of searches there may only be 3-4 left.

THOSE are the highest quality advertisers. Those are the ones that make Google the most money per 1000 searches, which is the real name of the game.

Mimic the Highest Quality Advertisers

You see, if you’re going to pattern yourself after anybody, you should pattern yourself off the ads that are doing well of course.  By doing this little trick you can eliminate the ads that don’t perform as well.  Here’s another quote from the newsletter that explains why this is:

Let’s say someone’s shopping and researching hard. They search, click on an ad, look at a site, go back, search again, click on another ad, and so on.

The more ads Google shows them, the less money Google makes because the lower quality advertisers aren’t paying Google as much money.

*If Google shows fewer ads, they’ll make more money when people DO click.* So for people who search repeatedly, Google shows fewer ads.

Pretty cool trick huh?  So the next time you plan on spying on some Google ads to get ideas for your next PPC campaign you can use this little trick to make sure you’re looking at the ads that you should actually be looking at, and not the lower converting ones.

A lot of you probably already know about this tip, but I know that there are plenty of you out there that have probably never done this before.  So in this post I’m talking to YOU!

An Easy Way to Save $$$

Ok, here’s the deal.  When you go to buy something online there is a really easy thing that you can do to save some money.  This won’t apply to all sites, but it will apply to most large sites.  What you do is this: search for coupon codes.

Let me give you an example from today.  I had a domain name that I needed to renew.  I was renewing the name through GoDaddy.com and it was going to cost me like $10.88 or so.  Well, there is a point on their shopping cart where they show you a summary of your order and there is a box that says “Enter Promotional Code” or something like that.  This is an obvious indicator that they must have some codes out there!  Now you just have to go and find them .

Search for the Codes

Finding codes is very easy.  I just went to Google and typed in “godaddy promo codes” and got plenty of sites that have lists of promo codes and what they’ll do for you.  On the first site I came do I found one that had a code for getting $3.50 off a domain name renewal.  So I took that code, punched it into GoDaddy’s cart system, and I got $3.50 off my domain name.

Uses for This Tip

There are a lot of places you can use this tip.  As I mentioned before, most of your large sites will have promo codes that they put out from time to time.  Dell, Best Buy, all sorts of places.  You can find them by just searching around, or go to sites like RetailMeNot.com and search what they have to offer.  Even if you only save $3.50 like I did today, it’s still $3.50 that I didn’t have to spend.  I’ll take it!

So there’s your short tip for today.  You probably do some coupon clipping when you go to the grocery store, right?  Well, here’s any easy to do it online!

I’ve run into this problem a couple of times and finally figured out the easy way to fix it.  Someone probably figured this out a long time ago and if I had looked hard enough I probably would have found the answer, but oh well.  At least now I know!

Ok, so here’s an illustration of the problem.  You’ve just started a new blog and even written a few posts.  Then one day you realize that you have ugly URL’s.  For example your URL’s are something like www.blog.com/?p=5.  And the you realize, “OH CRAP!  I forgot to set up pretty permalinks!”

So naturally the next step is you go into your permalinks options and change it to something like /%category%/%postname%/.  Then you breathe a sigh of relief, until you go to your blog and all of your pages cannot be displayed!!!  OH NO!

Ok, so I’m being a little dramatic with this, but it’s happened to me a couple of times and who knows, it may have happened to you as well.  So here’s the quick fix that I used today and it worked:

1. Revert to the default permalink structure.
2. Log into your hosting account.
3. In the root folder of your blog, find the .htaccess file and delete it.
4. Now, set up the permalink structure the way you want it and save it.

That should fix it!  At least it did for a blog I was helping someone with today!  If you have any other tips on this, feel free to share, but hopefully that saves you some headaches.

Seriously, I’m one of those people that when I’m in a situation where they say “Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves” I say something like “Uh, I’m Dan…and I like nachos.”  I figure no matter what I say, they aren’t really going to know me anyway!

So anyway, you’ll find out a little bit more about me on that About page.

If you’re stuggling with an About page for your blog (especially a personal blog), here are some tips from Problogger.net on how to do it: How to Write Your “About Me” Page.

If you’ve never heard of SEOmoz.org, you need to check these guys out.  When it comes to SEO firms, SEOmoz is probably one of the most well-known and recognized for the great information and tools that they put out.  Here’s just a snippet from their site that explains their goal and mission:

SEOmoz serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide by providing education, tools, resources and paid services to help make every SEO the best they can be.

We provide companies around the world with consulting, Internet marketing and search engine optimization services. Our goal is to provide a high level of service and education to businesses and individuals so they can best leverage the unique reach of the Internet to increase visibility and achieve success. Join them by reading our blog or contributing your own content.

Today I just wanted to highlight one section of their site that has a collection of all of their different tools along with tools from other great sites as well.  This page has a very fitting name: The Internet Marketing Handbook.

Not only does this site offer tools that you can use, but they’ve put together a great collection of articles and other resources from some of the following people:

• Darren Rowse, Problogger.net
• Aaron Wall, SEOBook.com
• Jordan Kasteler
• Courtney Tuttle
• and others.

All in all, SEOmoz has put together a great resource with this one.  Check it out and start using it!

Actually, I wrote another post about this topic a long time ago (3 Tips to Optimize Your Time) which was more about not wasting time, but today I want to approach it from a different angle.

Time management really is an important issue.  How many times have you heard someone say (including yourself), “I wish I had more hours in a day!”  I admit, I’m guilty of saying it as well!  Well, we know we can’t get extra hours, so here are some tips on how to make the most out of the hours that you have.

Have a List of Priorities

Each morning I take a few minutes and write out the things that I feel I need to get done that day.  In fact, sometimes I make the list the night before and then revise it that morning.  Either way the idea is to write out the important things you need to get done.

The next step is to prioritize that list.  For the most important items put a ‘1′ next to them.  These are the most important items.  It may just be one thing, or you may have 2-3 first priorities.  Then number the second priorities with a ‘2′, third priorities with a ‘3′, etc.

Be careful not to mark everything as a ‘1′ and ‘2′.  Part of this is being able to tell what really are the most important things.  Then, try to go through that list by order of priority.  This will help you to ge the most important things done first.  If anything really important didn’t get done, assign it to another day in the week.

There are always lots of things calling for our time.  So being able to set priorities can really help you feel like you got more done that day.

Wear Certain ‘Hats’ on Certain Days

In the world of website marketing, there are a lot of different hats that you’ll have to wear.  You will be working on the website, doing marketing, possibly doing the accounting and other stuff as well.

I find that it helps to select which hat or hats you’re going to wear each day.  I’ve also found that personally I do best when i assign the same hats to the same days each week.  Here’s an example (not what I currently do, but just an idea):

• Monday: Blogging and Blog related SEO
• Tuesday: Accounting (input bills and receipts) & site maintenance
• Wednesday: Articles (SEO) and site updates
• etc.

Try something like this.  Only do certain types of tasks on certain days.  If you try to wear every hat every day you’ll find that you’re trying to get too much done in one day.

RELAX!

I find that a lot of us are too hard on ourselves.  It seems like society encourages us to be stressed out workaholics.  And again, I have to admit that I’m somewhat guilty of this, too!  So it’s important to not take everything so seriously that you’re stressed out all of the time.

If something doesn’t get done on a particular day, it’s ok!  Just reassign it to the next day and move on.  Your goal each day is to do the best you can with the time you have.

Life will happen.  You’ll have things come up that demand your time.  This is where your time management is really put to the test.  But if you’re dedicated to what your goals are, you’ll find a way to still make at least something happen.

I hope those tips help.  If you have some that you’d like to share, feel free to leave a comment!  There are a lot of great systems and ideas out there about time management, so I’d love to hear some of your ideas!

I realized that it has been awhile since I’ve updated my Plugins page.  If you haven’t been to this page before, it’s a list of useful WordPress and FireFox plugins that I use and a brief description of what they do.

Plugins/Addons (depending on your preferred terminology) are one of the best things about FireFox and WordPress.  This handy little programs will make your experience with these programs so much better because they allow you to truely customize what you’re doing.

You’ll want to be careful not to use too many FireFox addons though, since if you add too many it can really slow down your browser.  Also, if you use too many JavaScript plugins you can really slow down the load time of your blog as well.

Here are some of the new ones that have been added to the page:

FireFox Plugins

FireGestures
This is another gestures program.  I’m using this on my laptop and Mouse Gestures on a desktop, but as time goes on I think I’m liking FireGestures more than Mouse Gestures.  Same basic idea though.

FireBug
I’ve grown to really love this plugin.  It let’s you hover over a page and see what the different divs are so you can then go into the code and make the changes to the CSS and HTML to make your site look the way you want.  I use this plugin all the time when i’m customizing a site.

TwitterFox
TwitterFox let’s you manage your Twitter account from a little pop-up box in your browser.  You can also change back and forth between accounts if you have different ones.  It will keep track of your most recent updates, replies, and direct messages.  Great if you’re a Twitter user!

RankChecker
Another great tool from SEOBook.com.  This one will let you type in a domain and a keyword and tell you where that site ranks for that phrase on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.  You can also save lists of keywords that you check frequently.

SearchStatus
This one will let you see the Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and/or Compete Rank as a small button rather than using the Google Toolbar, Alexa Toolbar, etc.  I just use it for PageRank rather than using the full Google Toolbar.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress Thread Comment
I LOVE this plugin!  I only started using it a few weeks ago, but what it allows you to do is reply to someone else’s comment and the reply stays inside the original comment.  Great for conversations.  It will also email the reply to the person you commented back to if you want it to, thus getting rid of the need for the Comment Email Responder plugin.  It seems though that some themes don’t work well with this one.

TwitterTools
This will make it so that you can show your most recent Twitter updates on your sidebar.  You can also set it up so that when you write a new post it is automatically sent to Twitter.

Apture
I love Apture!  Apture is a plugin that allows you to add extra multimedia to your website from places like Flickr, YouTube, etc. by just highlighting words on the page and inserting the link.  It’s all Javascript, but pretty darn cool.  Check out their site for a demo of how it works.

Ad Rotator
This is a very simple plugin that will let you set up rotating ads where ever you insert it.

Exec-PHP
This is more of an advanced plugin, but can be really useful if you need to do some more advanced things with your blog.  This plugin will make it so that you can actually use PHP code in your posts, which is something that the normal WordPress editors will not let you do.  But use with caution!

Lijit
Lijit is a more advanced search feature for your blog.  It allows people to not only search your blog, but also your social networks and sites you’ve bookmarked on places like delicious and StumbleUpon as well.

Be sure to checkout the Plugins page for other plugins that were added in the past but are still good to use.  Also, let me know if you have any ideas of other great plugins that I should be trying!

There Are No Rules!

Here’s the deal: when it comes to internet marketing, proper ways to set up a page, etc. etc. you won’t be able to find absolute unbreakable rules out there.  That’s because they don’t really exist.  Are there guidelines?  Yes, plenty of them, and a lot of them I would recommend that you follow.  But when it comes to rules, they don’t really exist in the online world.  Things change too quickly.

The “Rules” Change

Let me give you a few examples of ‘Rules’ that have changed online:

For those of you that have been around for a little while, you may have heard of the whole idea behind reciprocal exchanges or link trading. This was a technique that we used to use to build links to your site.  And for a while it was all the rage, it’s what everyone was doing.  But now you don’t hear SEO’s and experts really recommending this as a great way to build links.

Meta keywords used to be really important for search engine rankings.  But now a days if you try to do some of the techniques that used to work for getting a good search engine ranking (i.e. manipulating your meta tags), you won’t see very good results.

There are plenty more that I could list, but hopefully that gives you an idea.  The point here is that you need to stay up to date on what’s happening online so that your strategies don’t become obsolete.  Learn the new guidelines that come out, but don’t treat them as absolute rules.

As a hint to this, you will hear about Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, not Rules.

It’s All in the Testing

A while back I wrote about a post that I based on an email from Perry Marshall, the AdWords expert (You Can’t Learn to Ride a Bicycle at a Seminar).  The point of this post is that if you want to succeed with website marketing or any other type of marketing, you have to do testing.

Try different versions of an ad, see what works best.  Change your home page from time to time.  Stick with what works.

Now of course, as you’re doing this don’t just change random things.  Learn some of the guidelines that you’ll hear out there.  But in the end you have to see what works for you and your website.

I wish that there was some sort of guarantee in business that said, “If you do this, you will never ever ever ever fail!”  Well, I don’t know of anything like that when doing online marketing.  Learn the ropes, try different things, but most importantly TAKE ACTION!  If you’re willing to do that, your chances of success will continue to increase.

Here’s the video by Common Craft that will also explain what it’s all about:

So let’s summarize a little bit after watching that video.

Personal Benefits of RSS

The main benefit of RSS is that it saves you time. If you’re subscribed to a bunch of blogs, whether its by email updates or using an RSS Reader (check out Google Reader at reader.google.com) you can save yourself a lot of time because the new posts are sent directly to you. This is so much better than just going to all the blogs and news sites that you like to read to see if there is anything new.

So that’s the main personal benefit, it saves you a lot of time and helps you to have sort of a personal newspaper.

Business Benefits of RSS

The business benefit of RSS is that it allows your target market and potential customers to subscribe to your blog! Now granted, this doesn’t work for a standard website. It’s really meant for blogs. So consider this as one more reason to consider having a blog for your ecommerce business.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of newsletters before. In fact you’re probably signed up for a couple right now! Well, think of RSS as a really easy way for people to basically sign up for a newsletter. And then the way you connect with and contact those people that are subscribed to you is by simply adding a new post to your blog! You just keep adding content like you should, and those people will be notified of that content.

RSS is a very important aspect of blogs. Another option is to have people subscribe via email, and this can also be handled through companies that manage RSS. I use Feedburner.com for managing my RSS and Email Subscriptions. They will help you to track how many subscribers you have, both through regular RSS and email.

Most blogging software will come with RSS already ready to go. But I’d still recommend that you use something like Feedburner so you know what’s going on.

Anyway, that’s your brief introduction to RSS. Use it and enjoy it!

1- Other Blogs

Get familiar with some of the best blogs in your industry. Subscribe to them, read them frequently. See what they’re talking about and come up with ideas for your own purposes. While you’re there, leave a comment to get involved. Chris Brogan mentioned on his blog yesterday (25 Ways to Build Your Community) that you should be subscribed to 100 blogs in your industry as a way to build community. It’s a great idea, and if you’re reading that many blogs you should be able to come up with some ideas.

2- EzineArticles.com

When it comes to article directories, EzineArticles.com is one of my favorites.  Just go over there, browse through the topics that they have and find the category that is right for your topic.  Read through some of the articles and get some ideas.

Now granted, some of the articles are written much better than others, but look around for a bit and you’re bound to come up with some ideas.

3- Alltop.com

This is one of Guy Kawasaki’s new projects, and I think it’s a pretty good one.  Here’s a description from the site itself that explains what Alltop.com is all about:

Alltop is an “online magazine rack” of popular topics. Tell us what you’re interested in, and we’ll bring you stories from the best websites and blogs on the topic. All the topics, all the time.

So similar idea to using EzineArticles.com. Just go over there and browse through and find the topic that is right for you. Then read some of the best blogs that are in that industry! This is also a great way to find blogs to get involved with as well.

4- Your Own Blog!

People don’t really think about this one much, but it’s not a bad idea to write about something that you’ve already written about. I read a post today from Copyblogger (9 Little Known Traits of Successful Bloggers) that talked about this. The idea is that your blog is not like a book; people don’t read it from start to finish. So go back and find something you wrote about a long time ago and write about it again!

5- News Sites and Google News Alerts

Sometimes you can get great ideas from the news.  Use Google News or Yahoo News and see if there is anything going on in the news that relates to your topic.

With Google News you can also set up News Alerts.  News Alerts will send you an email any time the keywords you choose are used in an article.  This is a great way to keep yourself up to date on what’s going on in the news in your industry.

So there you have it.  Now you no longer have an excuse for not being able to come up with something to write about!  Use these tools when you hit those moments of writers block.  We all hit them from time to time, but if you’re keeping up on what else is going on in your industry then you don’t have to just rely on the ideas that come off the top of your head.

If you have any other ideas for places to get ideas, please share them below!

I will warn you, he swears quite a bit. I figured I should give you fair warning of that, but listen to what he says and you might just get motivated like I did. I know the recording isn’t great, but this is the best I’ve found of this keynote. Enjoy!

For today’s post I just wanted to ask a bit of a random question: do you work well with music or do you prefer it to be silent?

I know that everyone has a different answer to this, and I’ve found that even for myself it sort of depends on the day. But what do you prefer? Do you need the backgound noise to function, or does it distract you too much?

The Optimal Environment

For me, I prefer to have some music or something playing if I’m doing anything that makes me think. But it has to be music that I’m very very familiar with. I swear I have ADD, because if too many things are going on around me (other conversations, etc.) I have a hard time focusing on what I’m doing. So I’ve found that for me personally I have to crank up the music to drown everything else out.

So what is the optimal environment for you?

Working Effectively

My main point in writing this post is to hopefully get you to think about the way that you work. But I’m also not here to preach to you that working a certain way or with a certain noise level is the best. You have to find what works for you.

I’ve known some people that work very well with the TV on, other people don’t. Some don’t work well with music going, but I find that it’s the way I work best (especially instrumental).

So find your best way to work effectively and efficiently. Experiment. Try different things. If something doesn’t work, then try something else! But do what you can to be the most efficient that you can with your time. You’ll notice that it makes a huge difference.

So I’d really like some comments on this one. If you have any suggestions for people on what they can do to have a great work environment, feel free to share them below. Share your own experiences, too!

Today I want to talk a little bit about credibility, and I’ll be including a lot of the things that I heard and learned down at Blog World a few weeks ago.

First a question: why is credibility important for a website?

That may seem like sort of a ‘duh’ question, but I think that far too many of us don’t think about our own credibility online.

What is Credibility

Sorry to pull out the dictionary on this one, but I think this is a nice and short definition of credibility from Dictionary.com:

capable of being believed; believable: a credible statement.

So what makes a website believable? What helps people to believe you?

Here’s the thing: the internet is full of all sorts of information. And we all know that not all of it is good credible information. One thing that they said at Blog World is that if you’re going to write about something you have to be your own sort of ‘reporter.’ You have to give credit to where you found stuff if you want to be taken seriously!

Going Back to High School

High school English was my least favorite subject. Actually I hated it. Which is kind of funny to think about considering how much I have to write now a days. But they did teach me one very important thing in those classes: cite your sources.

Nobody knows everything. So if you get information from another source, give it credit! Don’t just quote things without backing them up. By doing this you are showing a few things to your audience:

• You know where to get answers to questions
• You give credit where credit is due
• You have some good connections

I’m sure there are other things I could add to that list, but in the end people tend to trust you more if you are looking things up and backing up the things you’re saying!

Other Benefits of Building Credibility

Credibility equals trust. If you can build credibility with your audience (whether you’re a blog, ecommerce store, eBay seller, or whatever) you can gain their trust. This will keep them coming back to your site. Talk about effective website marketing!

As a side note, make sure that when these people do come to your site that you engage them. Don’t just be the ‘high and mighty’ know-it-all that doesn’t have time to talk to audience. You can build even more credibility by answering questions and being engaged with your audience.

Credibility is honestly really lacking online. So take the time to make sure that you are being credible and you’ll see the benefits of it. Research your topics so you know what you’re talking about, then give credit to where you learned what you learned.

And, to give credit where credit is due, I’d like to give credit to @almacy, @dalbee, @shawnomac for putting on a great panel about this topic at Blog World!

So a few days ago I decided that it was time to update the look and feel of eComm Tips. So I went out and found a new design that I liked and then made some tweaks for a day or two.

This was all part of a sort of ‘re-launch’ for this site. I’ve had it up for awhile but let it stall for a few months because I was working on other projects. So hopefully you like the new look!

So today i was looking at my stats and it was showing that I had no traffic for the last couple of days. I thought that was rather odd, because I know that I’ve had traffic because I’ve had people leaving comments.

A few thoughts raced through my mind: “Did my tracking company have a problem?”, “Am I really getting no traffic for some reason?”, “Have I been banned from search?” Then it came to me…I forgot to bring the tracking code over from my previous template!

So that’s the lesson for today. If you make changes to a site like a redesign or something like that, always make sure to bring over the essential things like tracking codes, etc. It will save you a headache :-).

So for the last week or two I’ve had some conversations with my friend Stace Barrus of SpyderCandy.com about duplicate content and what to worry about and what not to worry about.

You see, a lot of times we worry about having too much duplicate content out there on the web, that it will hurt our ranking in the search engines.  Well, after having some of these discussions I think there is a better way to look at it.

What is Duplicate Content

Here is a quick definition of duplicate content from the Google Webmaster Guidelines:

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.  Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.

So if you have an article that you write and have it submitted to a bunch of different places, that is technically duplicate content on all of those other sites.  But is that necessarily a bad thing?  Wouldn’t it be good to have your article syndicated on multiple sites?

Or what if you take articles from other sites and publish them on your site?   That’s duplicate content too, right?  Well, yes it is.  So which do we really need to worry about the most?  Which one is the evil ‘duplicate content’ that everyone seems to refer to?

What Search Engines Want

Ok, let’s take a look at this from a search engine’s point of view.  What is a search engine trying to do?   Honestly, all they want to do is to give their users a good experience!  They want it to be so that when you go and do a search you get good results, and not the same thing over and over from multiple sites.   That’s the problem with duplicate content.

So what does a search engine do when they come across duplicate content that could show up in the search results?  They show what they think is the original or best result!

So with that in mind, let’s say that your article gets syndicated to a bunch of other sites.  What the search engines will try to do is show what they think is the original or best version of that article and not all the other versions.  That way, they give their users a good experience.

Articles and Syndication

So does syndication hurt you?  Well, again, think of it from a search engine point of view.  If you write good content and it gets syndicated, why should that hurt you?

Stace told me about a conversation he had with Stephen Spencer (founder and CEO of Netconcepts) at Blog World Expo.  He asked him this same question about articles and here is what Stephen Spencer told him (paraphrased of course):

All that happens is that the duplicate articles will be removed from the search results.  But, they still give you link benefit; they still pass ‘link-juice.’  They just don’t show up in the search results, only the original does.

In other words, get your articles syndicated, but don’t expect all of the duplicates out there to show up in the search results.

Article Spam

Now, that doesn’t mean you should go out there and spam your article across a million sites.  You see, there is a point where this type of syndication really can hurt you.  Google and other search engines do watch for malicious activities that are meant to deceive the search engines.  So don’t go crazy with your syndication.

Here’s what I’d recommend you do as a few practical steps when it comes to article submissions:

1. Publish the article on your site first.
2. Wait a few days before syndicating to let it get indexed first
3. Submit the article to a handful of good article directories or other syndication outlets, but be reasonable.

By submitting the article to your site first you can help it be noticed as the original.  Also, it is a good idea to link back to the original when you syndicate, giving the search engines more reason to believe that it is the original.  For more info on that, read the first question and answer from this interview that Stephen Spencer had with Matt Cutts: Natural Search Tactics for Retailers.

Republishing Articles on Your Site

So what about taking articles from other places and putting them on your site?  Well, if you read what I’ve said above you’ll see that it probably isn’t the best idea because you are not the original content.  So don’t expect the articles you take from other sites to show up well in the search results.  I admit that in some cases I have had this type of article show up, but not very often.  You’ll do a lot better by creating your own content!

I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this! Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

A lot of people have this concern that if they monetize their website, whether it be a blog, regular site or whatever, that they have sold out. Have you sold out? How does that phrase make you feel? It has kind of a negative feeling to it, but it really shouldn’t.

While I was at BlogWorldExpo last weekend one of the speakers made a very good point. I’ll have to paraphrase a little bit here, but basically what he said was that if you want to make any money online, you have to sell out. And, you need to be comfortable with that. Honestly, anything you do to make money could be considered selling out.

What Is Being a Sell Out?

Is there something wrong with making money? I get the feeling all the time that to some people it must be a crime to make money. I always wonder where they got that idea from. Personally, I have no problem making money as long as I’m doing it honestly and ethically!

So if you have a blog and you do paid posts, you’ve sold out! If you show affiliate advertisements you have sold out! If you have an ecommerce business that sells products you have sold out!

Now here’s the one that a lot of people really don’t think about: if you have a job you have sold out! You’re selling your time for whatever your boss is willing to pay you, whether it is an hourly rate or a salary. Either way you’ve sold out. So why is it a bad thing?

Be Open About Selling Out

Now that we’ve established the fact that it’s ok to sell out, let’s talk about being smart about it. You see, if you have an ecommerce store for example, you should be proud of that fact. When people come to your site it should be very obvious to them that you have something to sell. Those are the people we want to have come to our site anyway!

That’s why your home page for an ecommerce store needs to look like a store! Why hide the fact that you have something to sell? One thing that’s for sure is that if you do hide that fact, you won’t make any money. And isn’t that why you started your ecommerce business in the first place?

If you run a blog, it’s ok to have affiliate links, AdSense, and other types of marketing on your site! That’s how you make money! Now, I won’t go into how to use these tools effectively in this post, but you need to be ok with doing these things. Test them, see what works, and then use them the best you can. You don’t have to hide it.

Here’s a great example of not being shy about trying to make money from your site. This is just one line from the disclaimer from ShoeMoney.com:

You should assume I have motivation for linking to everything on this page and will benefit from it somehow.

Well, this post may seem like a little bit of a rant, but I assure you it’s not meant to be. I hope that you can understand that it’s ok to make money online. Keep working at it - don’t be shy - be smart.

This last weekend while I was at BlogWorldExpo, and one of the main themes that kept coming out of it was interacting with your audience.

Now if you’re a blog, that seems obvious.  But what should you do if you’re a regular ecommerce site?  Here are a few ideas

Start a Personal Blog

One of the problems with a lot of online companies is that they are afraid to show a personal side to their company.  And yet it seems that the companies that are taking the time to do this are getting more interaction and better PR with their customers!

I actually had a chance to talk to Jeremy Schoemaker of www.ShoeMoney.com and I specifically asked him this question (well, this might be a little paraphrased, but you get the idea), “If you have an ecommerce site, one where you’re selling products like a store, would it be best to do your blog as a ‘company blog’ or still take a personal approach to it?”

His response: GO PERSONAL!

Here’s why: any company can have a blog where they post things like press releases, company updates, facts, figures, etc.  But who wants to read that junk?  With a blog you have a chance to have a personal face to your company - someone that people can relate to.  This is very powerful because that person or face is the one that will be interacting with your customers and potential customers.  People tend to do business with people they know, so having a ‘face’ to your business helps customers and potential customers to better know you.  It’s one of the best ways to do interactive website marketing.

Interact with Bloggers

Having your own blog is only one step.  Next you need to go out there and interact with other bloggers that blog about the topics in your industry.

Here’s the key to this one: these bloggers already have an ‘in’ with your audience.  So you need to go and interact with that same audience.  Don’t just go there to push your products.  Go there to be part of the community, and over time become an important part of that community.  Once again, people tend to do business with people they know!

So find out where your audience hangs out.  What blogs are popular in your space?  Go find out and interact with them!

Be Involved in Forums

Not everyone is into the whole ‘blog thing.’  Way before blogs came out there were things called forums.  Well, they still exist and a lot of them are still very very active.  This is another way for you to go out there and find out where your audience is and start to interact with them.

Similar rules apply here as when you interact with blogs.  Don’t market to them.  In fact, that’s the easiest way to get yourself banner from a forum!

Twitter

I talked about Twitter a few days ago, you can read the post here: You Need to Start Using Twitter!.

Twitter is still a growing resource, and your particular industry may not be using it much. But I would still recommend getting involved in it. I’ve listened to several podcasts the last few days with big internet marketers and professionals, and they all agree that the social marketing space is the next big thing - and they’re all using Twitter.

For starters, you can follow me if you want.  My username on Twitter is dan_patterson.

So there’s a few tips for you about interacting with your audience online.  These types of interactions are not just for bloggers, they’re for everyone that is trying to create an online presence!  Start with one technique, then branch out and become more and more involved with your audience.   The internet is getting more and more interactive, and this is crucial for your ecommerce website marketing.

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It’s always so tempting to get wrapped up in the advanced tactics and techniques of online marketing. There’s the potential to plan and strategise without actually doing something that will make a real difference to your results. Today however, I want to go back to basics and encourage you to revisit one of the most crucial and overlooked elements of converting customers online: the Landing Page.

Consider what happens when a user clicks on an Google AdWords link and ends up on your site. The first page that they see when they click that link is your landing page. A landing page is a lot like a first impression - and we all know how important a first impression can be, especially for online businesses.

A successful landing page seeks to do one of two things: to inform the visitor, or to persuade the visitor to complete some manner of transaction. The former type, known as a reference landing page, displays text, images, links and other informational elements. For the most part, reference landing pages may just be a way for the hosting site to generate advertising revenue. If you’re a business owner looking to generate revenue through your own products or services, then the second type of landing page is more suited to your needs. Known as a transactional landing page, its purpose is to get website visitors to buy a product or at least complete some sort of form. The goal of the page might just be a simple as keeping the user there long enough to click through some ads or other site content.

Getting the user to give his or her email address, or even name and telephone number, or to straight up buy a product is known as a conversion (I told you we were going back to basics today). The goal of any landing page is, of course, to have as high of a conversion rate as possible, so it’s imperative for anyone that wants to take advantage of Google AdWords or other pay per click advertising to learn how to properly optimise their landing page. Here are a few simple tips to do just that.

1. Half now, half later
One simple way to push for a basic conversion, such as getting an email address, is to withhold some amount of information from the user until he or she submits some information to you. If your customer is interested in what you have to offer, they may be willing to submit their email address or other information to find out more about your products or services. However, it’s important to reassure users that you won’t use their information maliciously - remind them that you will not use their email to spam them, or submit their address to people who will.

2. One page for one job
Avoid using your homepage as a landing page. Your home page should be the hub of your website, with links to various different sections and information about your business. This can be overwhelming to users, who may just leave the site before they really see what you have to offer. Your landing page should be concise and targeted to maximize conversion potential.

3. Sell without overwhelming
Use copy that is short and potent, without being over the top. Giant walls of text can be very intimidating to users, and that’s something you want to avoid. Use small blocks of text and bulleted lists to quickly get your point across to visitors of your landing page. It can also be a good idea to design your landing page in such a way that it doesn’t require scrolling.

4. Don’t waste your visitors’ time
No one has that time to waste, and if you are not going to follow through on what you’ve promised, you’re not going to get any conversions. Make sure that when a visitor reaches your landing page, they know that you mean business and are going to do everything you can to keep them satisfied and interested.

5. Include a call to action
Don’t leave people wondering what to do next; it’s essential to include a call to action that is easy for the visitor to fulfil. No one wants to send a stamped, addressed envelope, or fill out a huge online form. Better alternatives are free-phone numbers, short (around 4 fields max) forms with the promise of being contacted back, and even PDF downloads with more information and plenty of branding.

6. Reiterate the benefits you offer
Reassure your visitors by reiterating what you promised them in your Adwords advert e.g. “Cheapest solid oak kitchens - guaranteed!” or “Get a free, no obligation quote today!”. The worst thing you can do is give the impression you have promised something that isn’t a reality. Click-thru traffic have little patience with this kind of thing.

7. Test, Revise, Repeat
Imagine being able to change your shop layout and fittings every week, keeping the best bits and discarding the under-performing elements. Well that’s exactly what you can do with landing pages. Use your favourite web analytics to identify the bits of the page that are not being used, and change them for something else such as customer testimonies or accreditation logos to increase the trust and authority of your brand. Don’t be afraid to move elements around your page, and change the wording, with the goal of inching up your overall page conversion rate.

Actually that last tip is probably the mothership of landing page tips - if you’ve never tested and revised your landing pages, then you’re potentially missing out on a couple of percentage points of conversion, maybe more. So take a look at your Adwords landing pages today and get more bang for your buck!

—
David Lindop is a Search Specialist at Setfire Media, a leading digital marketing company who specialise in Adwords management, SEO, linkbait & social media marketing
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I’m sure that a lot of you are not familiar with this tool and what it can do for you.  So let me explain really quickly what it’s all about.

You might call Twitter ‘micro-blogging.’  The idea is that you give little updates (140 characters or less) about what’s going on, things you’re doing or whatever.  Now, I’m sure that some of you are thinking, “why would someone care that I brushed my teeth this morning?”  Well, they wouldn’t.  That’s not what you use Twitter for.

More than anything else, you can use Twitter as a chance to network with people that you couldn’t network with otherwise.  Think about it, there are people all over the country (or world) that you’ve read their blogs or followed them in some other way.  Well, you now have one other way to connect with them.

One of the big topics at BlogWorld was finding your audience and connecting with it.  That’s another use for Twitter.  As you gain more followers you can send out polls and get responses about different questions that you have.  You can get feedback from your followers about certain topics, etc.

You see, the internet is all about connecting with people, and Twitter is one resource that can help you do it.  Twitter was HUGE at BlogWorld, and I’ve seriously underestimated it in the past.

Be sure you don’t waste your time posting silly stuff.  Use it as a tool.

Here are a few articles you can read about how to use Twitter better.  And by the way, you can follow me: www.twitter.com/dan_patterson.  Tweet tweet!

Twitter: Use it Productively from Lifeack
How to Use Twitter - Tips for Bloggers from Problogger

Now honestly, for an online business you will probably focus a lot of your time doing your online marketing.  But have you noticed that a lot of online businesses do a ton of offline advertising as well?  Look at sites like LegalZoom and others that always have radio and TV ads going.

One simple way that you can advertise your business offline is through brochures.  Granted, this depends on your type of business, but you can create some brochures and have them displayed around town and possibly drum up some business that way.

The other good thing about doing brochures and some of the other printed means of advertising is that you can do brochure printing for pretty cheap these days.  There are plenty of companies such as PsPrint.com that can help you with all of your online printing needs.  These guys are one of the leaders in online brochure and business card printing, so if you’re looking for a quality company to help you get started in this arena they are one to look into.

Here’s the thing: you need to have some money to advertise your business appropriately.  Whether you’re doing SEO, PPC, or any other type of marketing, you need to have a budget for it.

One thing I’ve found is that a lot of people that are just getting started online don’t have much of a budget to use towards advertising.  Well, you can just focus on SEO and take time to get to the top, but things would go so much faster if you had an advertising budget!

So, if you’re on a limited budget, is there anything you can do to help build up some capital that you can turn into marketing money?  Definitely!  Here are a few ideas:

eBay

Simply put, eBay can be one of the fastest ways to make some money online.  Some people love it for the long term, but if you’re not one of those people you can at least use it to sell stuff for the short term and then funnel that money back into your advertising budget.

Why do I say that eBay is one of the quicker ways to make money?  Because the system is already set up for you!  There are already millions of people going to eBay every day!  You just need to find products you can sell and get them sold!  Use tools like www.TeraPeak.com to research your items first.

CraigsList

This is another site that gets a ton of traffic.  There are people that sell a lot of stuff on CraigsList.org.  One of the interesting things about CraigsList is that some areas use it a lot, while other areas seem to be dead.  So see what your area is like, but chances are you can sell some stuff this way, too.  Here’s a great post from Mat Siltala about how to use CraigsList effectively: How I Got 30 Phone Calls And Sold My Car In One Hour On Craigslist.

Other Auction/Classified Sites

eBay and CraigsList are the two big ones in the auction and classified site arena, but there are other sites to check out as well and see if they work for you.  Here’s a short list of some to consider:

• Kijiji.com
• iOffer.com
• Local Classifieds (find the websites for local news stations, they usually have a classified section)

See what works for you, but these sites give you more market places to get involved in.

Paid Blogging

The idea here would be to set up a blog (on Blogger.com if you want to keep it free), write about either random topics or specific topics, and then do paid blogging through sites like PayPerPost.com, SponsoredReviews.com, ReviewMe, SocialSpark, and others.   Not a huge money-maker necessarily, but you can definitely add to your advertising budget this way.  You usually have to have a blog that is at least 30-90 days old before you can qualify though.  For an example of a site that does this, check out SimpleRandomness.com.

So there you have a few ideas of ways that you can add to your advertising budget to market your regular website.  Feel free to share any other ideas you have or ideas that have worked for you down below in the comments section.