The truth is, a website on its own is akin to opening a new shop at the bottom of a dark, gated alleyway – with no signage or advertising. Passers-by will do exactly that, pass by, never knowing what wonderful products you are selling. Without the brightly lit signs, local press, opening launches, special offer flyers and other advertising, nobody will ever know your shop is there!

It’s the same with a website, unless people know it’s there, they will never visit it.

So what does it take to get noticed?

Well, for a start, you should register your URL as early as you possibly can. Put up a page stating “website under construction”. Google rates websites, amongst other criteria, for how long they have been up and running. A new website will take many months before Google’s bots will start giving your site any credence.

Next, when you build your site you need to ensure it is built to be optimised for search engine spiders. There is a lot of information out there about how to do this but unless you are a web developer my advice would be to find a reputable company to do it for you. You get what you pay for. In my experience, a cheap website will end up costing you more in the long run. Better to employ a company with a proven track record than to to spend months messing around with a sub-standard site.

Then you will need to be constantly updating your site with fresh content so the spiders know you are a live business and so that your readers or customers have something to keep them coming back .

Establish links to your website from other sites that are high page-ranked. There are a number of ways to do this.

1. You can email the webmaster and offer to provide reciprocal links or manually enter your website details into the many thousands of directories or you can purchase software to part-automate the process. Again, this process takes a lot of time and effort and tests the greatest of patience.

2. Write articles and post them to the big article directories. If readers like your article they can publish them as content on their site, which then provides a link to your site.

3. Participate in forums, using your expertise, use blogs and social networking sites to get your url out there as much as possible.

Okay so all this takes time. What about getting business in the meantime?

Well this is where we come to sponsored links. Sponsored links can give you the immediate exposure that you need. This is where you and your competitors essentially bid to be seen on the right hand side of Google’s Results Page. I read all sorts of articles about the pros and cons of using this facility and I get the feeling that the overall message is a negative one, that somehow paying to be at the top of the listings is cheating. Well I don’t subscribe to this. The organic listings have created a situation that is very similar to the rise of the supermarkets and decline of the greengrocer and butcher and fishmonger. It is hard to compete with their buying power.

This is not so different. To get a good flow of visitors on your site you need to be on the first page of Google for your chosen keywords. To be on the first page is not easy, as I said before it takes a lot of time, effort and money to get there and stay there. Most small businesses, particularly those who are just starting out, don’t have the time, money or know how to do this. But they may well be offering a really good service, product or whatever. It isn’t cheating; it is just a way of getting noticed by your target audience while you gradually develop your SEO skills.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

The Common Misconceptions of Owning a Website and why Sponsored Links are Good

Why should you use article marketing for your MLM business?

Let’s start by covering the basic problems that most MLM distributors have when marketing on the internet. Essentially, there are two problems that most marketers face when trying to market their Network Marketing business on the internet. They are:

1. Most distributors simply have a poor lead capture page that doesn’t convert traffic very well, so most of the effort that they put into their business is wasted. Before you learn article, marketing, you need to have an effective marketing system in place if you don’t have one already. This article is going to assume that you have this set up, and move us to problem two.

2. When you have a killer landing page and a sales funnel that gets sales and signups from the most minute amounts of people possible, it doesn’t do you any good if you only get a couple of visitors to your website each day. The simple truth of the matter is that you need THOUSANDS of visitors to your site each month to generate the kinds of leads you need to be successful – this can be difficult and expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing.

This is where article marketing comes in. Article marketing is a free strategy that brought me 7,000 visitors to my last website within the first 6 ½ weeks of it’s existence. Now those results are much higher than typical, and I have a free video course on my website that I give for subscribing to my newsletter, but I was able to do that because of one thing:

Every day, I write ONE article, no matter what (even if I don’t want to), and I submit it using a planned process to a bunch of sites. That’s it.

Now I haven’t been doing article marketing for very long, yet I’ve already generated more visitors than 99% of everyone who ever markets their business in this way – and it’s because I wrote one article a day for the last five weeks. This is my article for today. Just yesterday, I wrote an article about a pre-launch MLM company. The day before that, I wrote an article about an MLM guru (I already have more than 300 views on that one).

I write ONE article per day.

Let me share one of my favorite quotes. I don’t know who the original author is, but I heard it a long time ago from a guy named Brad Duncan (who was rich out of his mind). Brad told me “I make the money I do because I do the simple, daily, consistent things that everyone knows that they should do, but nobody does, and I’ve been doing them daily for 20 years.”

It doesn’t take too much time research some quick keywords and write an article – in fact, half the time I don’t even do any research at all, I just do some quick brainstorming and write an article from my imagination. (Like this one – no keyword research was involved.)

The funny thing is, while all my competitors are looking for ‘the perfect keyword’, I’ve gotten more than 2,000 views on my main website in the last 30 days from articles that didn’t contain one smidgeon of research whatsoever to complete. They were concerning subjects I know a great deal about and I didn’t even bother to check if people are searching for them. I just took 20 minutes and wrote them up. I’ve gotten more than 50 leads from those articles alone.

So I have a challenge for you.

I want you to write an article a day for this entire month in your business. I’ll even help you out – you can visit my website and watch a free video training that will explain my personal article marketing strategy in a great deal of detail.

Don’t worry if you suck – you’ll be good at it soon enough. Just do it – I promise you’ll get some results, and with some basic education on the subject your business will by flying in no time!

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

How to Promote Your MLM Business Using Article Marketing

It’s amazing. It’s amazing how many of us are on the social sites but also how many are not!

I think if you’re an entrepreneur, no matter whether you do business locally or globally, you should be doing some amount of social networking as ONE source of lead generation in your business.

Of course there are hundreds of other ways to get leads too and I’m only talking about ONE right now (and it’s not always the most effective depending on how you utilize your time but it’s certainly affordable).

Lead generation is ONE goal to have when you network online but it can also do the following for you:

- solidify long lasting relationships – either personal or professional

- provide an easy way to connect faster with target prospects, referral sources or mentors

- establish yourself as an expert in your field by answering discussion questions, posting tips and articles or even inviting ‘friends’ to live events like teleclasses and webinars

- drive more traffic back to your site for special promotions, downloads or interaction

- provides a central place to share photos, videos and basically get more publicity than you could ever pay (or pray) for

Is it worth it to spend my time on the forums or having profiles on these sites?

I say definitely yes.

- You want to ask and answer questions on forums and blogs

- Post comments, articles, events, information, tips, surveys and polls, anything to get the visitors attention

- Record and post interesting or business related videos (nothing too embarrassing!)

- Send people requests to join your ‘network’, ‘fan page’ or ‘group’

- Pursue those in related groups for interaction, advice, joint ventures, etc.

- Dig deeper into the websites of those you’re really interested in working with or those you want to pay attention to you and relate to them on a deeper level if you can – this is the way to make the most of your time I think.

- And so much more….

Whew! I know this can seem daunting and more sites pop up every day right?

I mean, you can even start YOUR OWN social network these days (not that you want to).

So, what should your ROI (Return on Investment) be you ask?

Well, granted this stuff sucks up a ton of time! So, if you’re delegating some of the initial connecting and basic weekly/daily posts and then you’re only in there mostly to dig deeper, get personal and maximize your time; then you can really build a great following. One that’s loyal and interested in new things you send out. A following that clicks and interacts with your profile, your videos and your website.

This is how then you get them on your list over time, get them to attend teleclasses or join your programs or even refer you!

I can tell you that the hardest part of figuring out whether your time/money invested in social networking is paying off though is that it’s not that easy to track results.

So, if you want to really find out if it’s working for you, you have to set up systems that allow for really detailed tracking – tracking your traffic, conversions, customers and more.

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Social Networking 101 – How to Use It to Increase Your Business!

My answer: WHY are you doing them in the first place? If you can’t answer that, you’re wasting your time and the company’s money.

Sounds simple I know, but I’m stunned at how unclear many marketers are about their intentions/expectations/hypotheses for how social media initiatives might actually help their business. In short, if you can’t describe in two sentences or less (no semi-colons) WHAT you hope to gain through use of social media, then WHY are you doing it? Measurement isn’t the problem. If you don’t know where you’re going, any measurement approach will work.

Here’s a framework for thinking about social measurement:

1.       Fill in the blanks: “Adding or swapping-in social media initiatives will impact ____________ by __________
extent over _____________ timeframe. And when that happens, the added value for the business will be $_____________, which will give me an ROI of ______________. ” This forms your hypotheses about what you might achieve, and why the rest of the business should care.

2.       Identify all the assumptions implicit in your hypotheses and “flex” each assumption up/down by 50% to 100% to see under which circumstances your assumptions become unprofitable.

3.       Identify the most sensitive assumption variables — those that tend to dramatically change the hypothesized payback by the greatest degree based on small changes in the assumption. These are your key uncertainties.

4.       Enhance your understanding of the sensitive assumptions through small-scale experiments constructed across broad ranges of the sensitive variables. Plan your experiments in ways you can safely FAIL, but mostly in ways to help you understand clearly what it would take to SUCCEED — even if that turns out to be unprofitable upon further analysis. That way, you will at least know what won’t work, and change your hypotheses in #1 above accordingly.

5.       Repeat steps 1 thru 4 until you have a model that seems to work.

6.       In the process, the drivers of program success will become very obvious. Those become your key metrics to monitor.

In short, measuring the payback on social media requires a sound initial business case that lays out all the assumptions and uncertainties, then methodically iterates through tests to find the model(s) that work best. Plan to fail in small scale, but most important, plan to LEARN quickly.

Measure social media as you should any other marketing investment: How did it perform versus your expectations of how it should have? If those expectations are rooted in principles of profit-generation, your measurement will be relevant and insightful.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Twittering Away Time And Money

If you came here to find a list with an illustrated “it’s as easy as 1-2-3 checklist”, then it is time to adjust your expectations and focus on more tangible guidelines to provide a foundation for producing real SEO results.

Anything worthwhile takes time, energy and effort. To create top ranking results in search engines is no different. There is no need to try and trick search engines, just give them what they want and allow the algorithms to work in your favor.

If your method is ethical, the last thing you need to fear is algorithms. Remember, they work for you if you provide the right signals.

What ARE the proper SEO Signals?

The secret to SEO (if there is such a thing) is based on a trinity of relevance…

1. Build as many relevant keywords to relevant pages as possible.

2. Build scalable site architecture and naming conventions (think Wikipedia).

3. Make sure that humans and search engine spiders know about it.

For example, if you have 1000 pages and each one ranks for 5 keywords, then you have 5000 relevant keywords driving traffic to your website; as a result of that will produce x amount of converting visitors.

Getting from 5000 to 50,000 keywords or respective visitors requires a scalable relevance model. And to create relevance you must identify your market and craft methods to appeal to attain traction tactfully and efficiently.

Growing anything takes time and naturally you must feed a site of that magnitude (to reach 50K visitors or more with something fresh, new and unique or exciting if you ever want to see them again (not just more of the same old new same wrapped in a new dress).

So, instead of thinking of the marketplace from the ground up, you can apply the top down model and emulate formulas for SEO that already exist.

Which type of strategy would you use? More pages to create more traffic (which requires more links and more time) or less pages and a higher concentration of theming you’re content to rank for a specific keyword? It really depends on your competition and ranking objectives.

Not everyone purchases or takes the optimal conversion objective the first time they visit your website. In fact, many will never return, so which do you focus on?; first time visitors, repeat visitors or both.

You have to have the simplicity and the clarity to communicate benefits to first time visitors, yet offer enough substance for those coming back for a second or third time to evaluate your offer. Providing substantial value is one method you can use to evolve the context and engagement levels of virtually any website.

Between forums, social media, search engines, press releases, targeted promotional platforms (like classified), affiliate’s, b2b marketing and websites like craigslist, e-bay, Google product search or other targeted niche sites, you should be able to tailor a specific offer to each type of prospect to create a frenzy and achieve suitable conversion over time.

The reality is, just because you haven’t tapped into it, that traffic exists and there are consumers frequenting competitors sites using the sames keywords you could acquire if you apply SEO. You just have to create something worth entertaining to incentivise visitors and then once they do, give them a reason to come back or pass it on to others.

So instead of thinking about short-cuts, automation or bending the rules. Just consider, there are no real SEO secrets, just temporal algorithms that are bound to change.

Search results do not just magically appear on their own, you have to plant the seeds and tend the results to harvest the reward of traffic, conversion and engagement, that is the real secret of SEO.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Are There Any Real SEO Secrets?

Forums have been around in many forms since the dawn of the internet, they provide a means of conversation with like-minded people in a community-driven atmosphere of helping one another with problems. If you don’t know how they work, let me just tell you a bit about them.

First off, you have to find your forum in your niche, the best way to do this is type in subject forums as the keywords (replacing subject with your topic) into a search engine. Once you have found one in the topic you’re interested in, with a nice community going on, registration is the next step.

Registration is pretty simple, its just a case of filling your details in and perhaps entering a captcha (one of those funny sets of digits and numbers that tell the site that you are not an automated spammer!) You may have to click a link in your email to register the fact that you own the email address you registered with.

There usually is many sub-forums, i would reccomend finding one that usually reads something like “introduce yourself” and post a brief overview of what you are about and say hello. I would advise against just registering and posting “buy my product now” or “come to my website” etc. type comments as you’ll end up with a flame war – if you dont know what that is please do a search on it as its not a nice thing to happen to you!

Get involved in the forum, post replies to people’s problems to help with any questions that you can – its a community-type feeling that you will enjoy. Forums which are busy have the advantage of many more people in the nich you are targeting, so you can find out about some really exciting new widget thing in your niche that is very important to you, and also reply and ask more.

Some forums have a specific buy, sell or trade section where you can sell your products, this is the place to be if you want to directly pitch your product. Another way of pitching your product is to enter links to your website in your signature, this is shown directly under each post that you make and is updated automatically – be careful however, some forums dont like this and will ask you to remove them. Some have rules on the size of images or links allowed, please read these before adding it.

Some of the more advanced forums that run vbulletin have private messaging which can be great to directly carry out business to people privately on the forum, i’ve bought many websites and domain names using this – some sites like digital point have itrader which is also a way of showing how trustworthy the user is in terms of buying and selling, similar to the ebay feedback system.

One last thing to remember, forums are a great place to communicate rather than a place to pitch-fest – if you want to advertise on a forum, but you cant find any other method other than the ones i’ve outlined, contact the owners of the site and ask for banner rates, this is a great way of getting in front of these people, then you have the right to freely talk about your product or service which is a huge bonus compared to advertising on a static site!

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

The Forgotten Method of Marketing – Forums

How can you make the best use of Twitter in your business? It all starts with having followers in your target market. No doubt you’ve been inundated with email offers of things like “10,000 Twitter followers in 60 seconds for only $19.95!” Trust me — 1000 followers that are members of your target market are much more useful to the growth of your business via social networking than 10,000 followers that come from anywhere.

How do you find members of your target market on Twitter? Here are my top 7 strategies:

1. Add people you know in your industry. Twitter permits people to use fictitious names or business names as their Twitter identity, rather than their given name. So, it may be difficult at times to find the person you’re seeking, especially if she goes by “ShoeDiva” on Twitter and you know her as Miranda Smith. Try Twitter Search, http://search.twitter.com or Advanced Search, http://search.twitter.com/advanced to help you in your quest.

2. Find others with the same interests or serving the same target market. The online yellow pages of Twitter users, Twellow.com, permits users to list themselves by industry and interests. If your business isn’t currently listed on Twellow, take a few minutes to do that right away.

3. Follow those in the same geographic region. If marketing to your local area is an important part of your business, find local members of your target market by using Twellowhood.com or TwitterLocal.com and find the top movers and shakers in your region, as well as some members of your target market. If you want to meet fellow Tweeps face-to-face, search local Tweetups at TwtVite,com, or create your own gathering.

4. Get relevant recommendations. The free service, MrTweet.com, will provide you with info on recommended people to follow based on your current Twitter profile. You do have to follow MrTweet in order to participate. Once you’re logged in, you can see your recommendations, along with how these recommendations are connected to your list of followers. You can evaluate your recommendations, and MrTweet will make changes in your recommended list accordingly.

5. Follow those who follow you. It’s considered good Twitter etiquette to follow those people who’ve chosen to follow you. And, to prevent being labeled a Twitter snob, ideally you should be following more people than are following you. I have automated my ability to follow my followers by using a free version of TweetLater.com.

6. Look for keywords. Another way to find relevant followers is to keep track of people mentioning certain keywords in their Tweets. I do that through the free version of TweetLater.com. I use this same service to keep track of any mentions of me or my company on Twitter in the very same way I use Google Alerts.

7. Find groups. Twibes.com permits you to find groups by industry and interest and join them and/or see the members of each group. And, if you so inclined, you can create your own Twitter group, as well.

Remember, finding your target market is just the beginning. Once you’ve found them, you need to begin to build relationships with them. This means paying attention to what they say so that you can respond when appropriate either with a direct message (DM) or an @ reply that is public or retweeting (RT) their message to your followers when you feel someone has great info that would be useful to those who follow you. Take 10-15 minutes per day to keep yourself informed about what’s happening with your Tweeps and watch your business grow!

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

7 Strategies to Finding Your Target Market on Twitter

I have been a blogger, learning about blogging and of course learning WordPress for several years. I am in front of a computer so much that I have been known to take my shirt off for an hour or two so that I can take advantage of my monitors radiation to work on my tan.

Yes, I’ll admit it, I am a computer & internet junkie. I love to make money on the internet. I am so happy to be able to work from home, working my own hours, doing what I want to do whenever I want to do it. I don’t even miss that morning commute any more. It was really weird, when I first started to work from home I actually found myself checking to be sure I had everything before I made my new commute exactly 21 steps to my new office in a spare bedroom in my house, is that sick or what!

I even remember that I used to justify my commute by saying to myself (because I was the only one listening) that my morning trek was my quiet time. Yeah right, who was I kidding. If surrounding yourself with 20,000 pissed off caffeine junkies who are all late for work is your idea of quiet time; maybe you should plan your next family vacation to Iraq.

Let’s face it we all want freedom but we all know that freedom takes money. The more money you have the more freedom you have, period. To illustrate this point here is a saying from my dear old Dad. “Son, life is like a poop sandwich (not his exact words), the more bread you’ve got the less poop you’ve got to eat”. Wise words Dad, thanks.

Well, we also all know there’s a ton of money to be made on the internet, but the 64 thousand dollar question that eludes most people is, HOW? How in the world do you go out and get your piece of that mega Billion dollar pie?

The answer is WordPress! Why you may ask? Well, the answer to THAT question is; it can do everything!

If you want to build conduit sites, adsense sites, affiliate sites, of course blogs, sales pages, review sites, landing pages, redirect sites, full blown company sites and so much more I could write a book on it, then WordPress is your goose that laid your very own Golden Egg!

Do you know what the real definition of insanity is? It’s doing the same thing the same way over and over again every single day and somehow magically expecting the results to change. If it happens call me, I’ll be impressed and I’ll call the Guinness book of world records, because trust me they’ll want to know.

My point is; if you’re really interested in making money online then it would be absolute insanity if you didn’t want to master the one and only tool out there that can literally do it all for you. That would be like saying you’re a professional carpenter but you don’t want to find out how to use a hammer. Ridiculous I know, but it does illustrate the point.

So, what is the really cool tip and trick that you can put into action right now and start earning money within the next 1 hour? Yes, I just said that this one tip can have you putting money in your bank account within just one hour.

Well, first let me ask you just one little thing. And don’t worry this won’t drag on very long at all. I don’t need you to start wondering if Starbucks delivers just so you can finally finish this article.

My question is; do you think online video games is a big industry? I know what you’re thinking; What? does it take this idiot an hour and a half to watch the TV show 60 minutes? No, it doesn’t last time I checked I got it down to only 63 minutes.

Well, what if you could finally have the power to turn a WordPress blog into your very own personal online video arcade? Sounds too good to be true right!

Well it’s not too good to be true, WordPress just launched the plug in and I’m going to show you how easy it is to use right now.

To launch your video arcade simply choose a cool looking WordPress theme from 1000’s of free themes online. Next just install the WordPress arcade game plug in and go sign up with Mochiads the people who will supply you with constant game feeds. When you’re taken to your welcome page just scroll down and get your games publisher ID. You then just type the ID into your WordPress dashboard so you can configure the plug in (You only click one button by the way, that’s how easy it is). If you have all your files uploaded and named properly then that’s it!! That’s all there is too it!

Ok, so you might be thinking, that’s great now I have a free game site, but how do I make money?

Well, if you have hundreds or thousands of people coming to your site every day to play free games you can load your pages with Google adsense, sell advertizing blocks on your site, put up your own ads for your own products (if you don’t have your own you should develop some, the profits can be huge) or put ads for products you affiliate. Literally, your choices are endless.

This system is so easy, you can follow all the directions I gave you and have it up and running in under 10 minutes.

Trust me, If I can do it, you can do it. You really can make a fantastic living online and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Of course people will tell you you’re crazy, but will it be the 1st time anyone’s ever said that to you? Remember; Today’s Mighty Oak is just yesterdays Nut who held his ground.

Visit my free games site here.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

How You Can Write Your Own Paycheck the moment You learn the Hidden Insider Secrets of Wordpress!

A word about spam.

Unsolicited email or “Junk email” also called “Spam” is living proof that email is a powerful way to reach an online audience.

Spammers know that for all the emails trashed in every bulk mail out, they will still get a few unsuspecting readers who will click on their links and make a purchase. While their shotgun approach is annoying to the majority of us they still persist because of that reason.

On the other hand, email marketing should not involve spamming a harvested collection of email addresses, but rather contacting a list of individuals who have actually said yes to receiving your material.

How to get people to subscribe to your mailing list.

There are some of the ways to get people on your mailing list.

The first and most obvious option is that they fill out a form on your website specifically designed for the job.
You can add a special offer such as a free report, a tutorial, discounts or even a prize draw in exchange for their contact.

The second way (if you are a local business) is to have some printed material such as a flyer with a special offer, competition or similar that people can fill out and return to you.

Hint: In all these cases, it is worth adding a note to your forms telling people that you will not share their email with other companies and that you will not swamp them with emails either.

The third way to get more subscribers is to actually purchase a list of verified email addresses from a reputable provider. They must be interested in your subject material and have opted in to receiving emails from you.
There are a number of companies that specialize in providing leads, but it is worth doing some homework to find out what value this method will give to you.

What makes a marketing email work.

These items are very effective in encouraging readers to continue to look at the emails they receive from businesses.

How to’s and tutorials.

People love do-it-yourself articles that show them how to solve a problem. The added advantage of posting material like this is that you are not only helping existing customers and encouraging loyalty (and repeat sales) but you can use opportunities such as this to address potential issues before they happen and so reduce calls for customer support.

Video and Audio content.

This is the best format for the above, as well as tours, testimonials…the list goes on. Video gets noticed and is highly memorable in comparison to text.
Audio sessions are great for podcasts too which means your listener can take your article with them.

A pleasant layout with some color.

This will help make your email stand out from your competitors and add to the reader’s enjoyment. You can incorporate a template and produce something really effective.

Nice pictures that are both relevant and of good quality.

A picture paints a thousand words – so make sure you include at least one to illustrate your point.
Include photos (they need not be professional) but in focus and a reasonable size. Hint: not too large though so they do not take several minutes to download.

Humor (in good taste).

A laughing reader is likely to be a repeat one.

You might want to enlist the help of a cartoonist to create something original. Add a funny video, quote or even a brief story.

Relevant news.

keep your readers informed on new products and developments and how improvements to your offerings will help them.

Competitions (with a nice prize).

You can gain a lot of interest from readers simply by creating a competition.

An opportunity to share an opinion.

People will often happily share their thoughts if you ask them to because it gives a sense of belonging and community. It is also a very cost effective way of finding out what your customers want. Make it fairly short and offer a prize draw or other incentive as a token of appreciation.

What makes a marketing email suck.

Hard sell.

“Buy now!!!” will soon become “Bye now.” from your readers.

An email every day.

This is the death knell for emails via annoyance and plain overkill – try and control your enthusiasm to market by limiting your email frequency. This will give you time to produce quality content too.
Quality beats quantity.

Bad layout (such as none).

Lots and lots and lots of text with poor spacing all crammed up with no places for the eyes to rest. (and besides who has time to read a newsletter that is 149 pages long during their morning break)?

Lots and lots and lots of banners.

“Ohhhh my eyes my eyes!”
Save the flashing logos and bright colors for Las Vegas.

Poor writing skills and grammar.

Forgetting to check for spelling mistakes is more than just another annoyance (believe it or not, but people are influenced by this).
Poor spelling and grammar presents an unprofessional / lazy picture for your readers.

What to look for when choosing an email marketing service.

A good email marketing service should have a number of features that will allow you to tweak things so you can get the most bang for your marketing buck. Here are a few features to look for…

Firstly there needs to be flexibility and creativity to get your message across.

This includes the ability to combine text with pictures and video as well as some html so you can make your message stand out.
A good email is more than just a page of text – it needs to be memorable and the way to do that is by being visually creative.

Secondly there should be a way to find out if your email marketing is being received and read.

This feature is called tracking and basically means you should have a display somewhere that will show you exactly where your emails are going, what addresses are incorrect (your emails are undeliverable and bounce back) and what emails are actually being delivered, clicked on and read.

Thirdly you must be able to automate and adjust everything so once you create an email you can set it to deliver to your recipients at a set time.

This can also include auto responders (An email that goes to a visitor as soon as they fill out a contact form or make a purchase from your website) which help you communicate with your potential customer when you are not online. You should be able to do split testing too (in other words create two different emails and send them to selected groups so you can find out which one works best).

Fourthly you should be able to see how your email list is growing over time.

Data like this is not just for statisticians and geeks who like to crunch numbers – it will help give you an insight into what is working overall so you can refine your marketing.

Marketing is an art, but with the right tools and know-how it can work for you.
Here’s to your success.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Help! My email marketing sucks. (And how to fix it)

Instead, I realized today that rain is the best friend of the internet marketer for several reasons. Many of these reasons relate to my six year old son but let me explain…

As an internet marketer myself I walk around with a little blue pad with a list of daily, weekly and monthly tasks written down in order for me to be sure to complete certain tasks on time. Now I know I should be using some kind of PDA instead, but the blue pad is just annoying enough, sticking out in my pocket, to make sure that I don’t forget it’s there. PDAs etc are just too easy to ignore.

So, what are the reasons rain is the best friend of an internet marketer?

Reason #1: The Sun Isn’t Shining – Usually, I would be at my computer trying to finish all of the items on my little blue pad trying to ignore my six year old son’s pleas to play in the yard. Kicking a soccer ball or taking a swim in the pool on a hot, steamy day is difficult to deny. Rain sort of puts a stop to all of this frivolity.

Reason #2: Watching The Media – Rainy days are days for the movies…or so I was told when I was a kid. Now that I’m all grown up, rather than heading to a movie theater, I relaxed with a mug of coffee and reviewed a video directly on my computer screen. OK, it’s not as much fun, but sometimes watching great videos can be a great way to spend time on a really rainy and story day.

Reason #3 - No Distractions – As most of you, there are always distractions when you work out of your home. Postman, FedEx, gardeners, pool guy etc. all have a real need, for some reason, to ring my doorbell to tell me something I really have no reason to hear. On rainy day, no such thing. They all stay home!

Reason #4 - Creativity – Somehow, when all of these distractions; six year old son, no postman, no gardener, no delivery guy etc to bother me just when I need to really dig down deep and be creative.

Now, I fully realize that there may be many other businesses that may also do better in the rain while others may not do as well. However, anyone that works at home and needs to be fully focused can easily relate to this rainy day phenomenon.

On my little blue pad are numerous tasks that seem to just get done a bit better when the sun is hiding behind those dark black clouds.

A perfect case in point occurred today (which may vary depending upon when you reading this article) when I was finished with my blue list tasks (a topic for another article) and I still had some time to spend since in no way was I going out to play in the rain. So….I decided to develop a quick web page, create a free ebook for my loyal subscribers, add a post to my autoresponder and send out an email offering this free ebook to my entire list of subscribers.

Conclusion – This may not sound like much but if the sun was shining no such free gift would have been created and my loyal subscribers would have lost the positive information contained within that report. Plus, rainy days are just perfect for reading free reports…..

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Why Internet Marketers Love The Rain