WordPress Training Expert

Author: WP Training Expert

  • Internet and Advertising: A Perfect Match

    No matter how big or small your business is, and no matter how old or new, you can only succeed if people know about it. Whether you do this through radio, television, the newspaper, word of mouth, or over the internet; it is absolutely vital to the success of your business. After all, you may have the best product anywhere, but if nobody is aware of it, then it’s the same as not having it at all. Regardless of which methods you are using now, the internet and advertising are ideal for marketing your product or service.

    While not everyone on the planet is on the internet, there is an amazing number of people who have access to it. There has never been anything like it in history. It gives you the potential to have customers all around the world. People go online for all kinds of reasons, and most of those reasons go hand-in-hand with the internet and advertising. For example, people often log on to the web to find solutions to their problems. If you are able to offer a solution they are willing to pay for, then you have just made a sale!

    Another great thing about advertising online is that you can gather tons of useful information about your site’s visitors. Where they are from, what operating system they’re using, they’re web browser, how long they stayed on your site and what links they clicked are just a few of the things you can find out; each of which can help you to market more effectively.

    When it comes to the internet and advertising you have the ability to easily change your marketing message, and it costs virtually nothing to make those changes. But, you don’t have to just guess what changes to make because you can track the results of all of your changes. You do this by using what’s known as ‘split testing’. This is where you make a change or two to something, then compare it to a control. Then you keep whichever performed better, and that becomes the control for your next split test. By repeating these steps you can see major increases in your bottom line.

    The low barrier to entry is another benefit of advertising online. There are many methods you can try for no cost at all. Now, these may take longer than the paid options, but they are an excellent way to get started and see what happens. However, don’t let the low barrier fool you. You still need to take online marketing seriously. Give careful consideration to who your target market is, and the message you are using to reach them. This is just another aspect of running your business, and should be treated as such.

    The internet and advertising are an almost perfect match. In fact, there isn’t any reason for you to not add online advertising to your overall marketing plan. It’s easy, it’s inexpensive, and best of all…it’s effective.

  • Expert Marketers Leave Clues

    I’ve interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs in the past 6 years and all the successful ones share a common belief. It’s the “Can Do” attitude. It doesn’t matter what’s going on around them, who says it can’t be done, who says it can, they put on the blinders and do it. They make it happen.

    Now along the way, we all pick up skills we need to develop to deal with different aspects of our businesses. As you grow and develop and learn more about how to do business and you start experiencing success, you develop your self confidence. You become more comfortable having intelligent conversations with other people in your industry.

    You learn to set goals. And then you learn how to achieve them. Just thinking I’d like to make a million dollars this year isn’t going to do it. You need a plan. You need to plan your work and work your plan. I love expressions ?

    And you have to learn how to guard your time. You have to be ruthless with your time management. I set a schedule for myself so my day is broken up into blocks.

    I answer my email first thing in the morning until 10am. If I’m not done by 10, the rest waits until the next day. I’m in internet marketing not in fire fighting, so there’s no emergency that can’t wait until tomorrow.

    Next I spend 2 hours on my marketing. At 12 I stop for lunch for 30 minutes. I read during my lunch and then I read until 1pm

    From 1pm-4pm I work on projects

    From 8pm – midnight I work more on projects and tie up loose ends

    Time is more valuable than money. It’s the only thing all human beings share. None of us has more or less hours in a day. And you can never get back an hour you waste. My biggest pet peeve is to hear someone say “I’m just killing time.” I have nothing to do so I’m just hanging out killing time. What a waste of a life.

  • Why Sell your Product during Holiday Seasons?

    What is so special about each holiday season? They all increase the selling of products. There are many reasons why you should consider seasonal marketing to promote your products, including the seven which are listed below:

    1. People tend to buy more products during seasonal celebrations than the rest of the year.

    2. People are determined to purchase products, so it is easier to persuade them to purchase a product you offer (assuming of course you are doing it the right way).

    3. Most purchases concern gifts to others, therefore quality is what matters while price is less significant.

    4. The time of celebration is limited and specific. Therefore people cannot leave for tomorrow what they need to buy for the celebration. They must act in a timely manner. This urgency is a huge advantage to marketers trying to sell products.

    One other motivating factor for buyers is that seasonal products are limited and something they have in-mind may not be available in the stores at a different time.

    5. People connect seasonal celebrations with their childhood. That makes them more emotional and as you might already know emotion is the key factor that makes people buy a product.

    6. It is not always necessary to offer a celebration related product to increase your sales. Even a valued Internet product like software or e-books can be a valued gift.

    7. Marketers do not have to invent new or never before used methods to create interest in seasonal products.

    The old traditional marketing techniques are effective and can still be applied. People want to buy because of the “celebration”. In fact, many people may not see their purchase as buying at all, but as an act of making someone (including themselves) more happy.

    Naturally, seasonal marketing may use different strategies to promote products. Instead of offering a product discount try the following:

    – Offer a portion of the price of your product to charities and make people feel they contribute to this charity themselves.

    – Try a special offer like “purchase one product and get the other at half price” or “purchase one product and get another free to offer as a gift”.

    These types of special offers can very easily increase your sales volume.

    So, do not hesitate. Start promoting your products (or affiliate products) now. And don’t forget, once a celebration ends, there are many others right around the corner. People are always looking for reasons to purchase gifts for others or for themselves.

  • How to Build a Business Using Real Paper Greeting Cards

    Most businesses spend a huge amount of time and money looking for NEW customers. We advertise, make phone calls, even travel cross country for meetings, all in the pursuit of the ever elusive stream of new customers.

    What we’re probably forgetting is that up to 80 percent of our sales growth can and should come from PAST customers. People who have bought from you before are pre-sold on you, your products, and services. It often just takes a simple reminder to get them

    to buy again and again.

    A while back I was talking to a group of realtors. When I asked how many followed up with old customers, only a couple of hands went up. Even though most customers will sell their home and buy another within just a few years, hardly any of the realtors

    were considering how MUCH that repeat business could increase their sales.

    I don’t mean to single out realtors. Just about ALL of us could increase our business simply by getting in touch with our past customers.

    I’ve found the most effective way to say, “I’m here and can help you,” is to send a genuine paper greeting card by regular mail. It’s FAR more effective than sending an email, mailing a sales letter, or even placing a phone call.

    Paper greeting cards say “I appreciate you.” Everyone loves them! Send cards to past customers to let them know you miss them, send them to employees for a job well done, send cards to prospects on birthdays. These are just a few tried and true ideas, and I’m sure you can think of many more.

    Now I’ll admit choosing, buying, and mailing a greeting card can take a lot of time and a fair amount of expense (figure $3 for the card, $4 for the gas to get to and from the store, and even more for postage).

    The time and trouble involved is one reason why greeting cards are so effective. First of all, the recipient doesn’t receive many cards, and secondly, they intuitively know just how much trouble you went to.

    But let me share a little secret with you. There are new systems now that let you log onto a web site, choose your card, affix your digitized signature, then the service regular mails your card for you. The cost for the entire package can be as little as $1 per card, and it only takes a few seconds to do.

    Can’t remember important dates? These same services will let you enter all your dates for months, then send your cards out automatically.

    If you’ve got lots of relatives to keep up with, your customers would appreciate this special gesture, or you know your employees would be motivated by a nice pat on the back — then sending paper greeting cards is a communication tool you shouldn’t be without.

  • Links To Your Site Aren’t As Important Anymore

    If you are a search engine optimizer you know how important link building is to your rankings. The problem is that these days most people are aware that link building works and have found ways to exploit and dominate the process.

    I have heard stories ranging from Chinese sweatshop link builders to automated software solutions that essentially pollute the Internet with garbage (fake profiles, bogus blog comments, etc.). Anyone who attempts to game the system is usually doing everyone a disservice. There will be a short-term gain from getting ranked well for your keyword but eventually you will be removed altogether.

    I am sure that the engineers at Google are already working on several plans to make link popularity less relevant in the future. I have made a short list of things I think would be useful tools to judge the popularity of a website, brand, person, product.

    Mentions Within The Social Media Space.

    Increasingly, social media sites like twitter offer new metrics into the world of popularity. Not only is the data up-to-date and current, it’s much more difficult for anyone to mimic a piece of content going viral and social media. Companies like Google could easily make deals with Facebook and twitter to access their data feeds and use them as a gauge for popularity.

    Additionally, Google could search for mentions of the name of a company, twitter account for that company, or any subsequent products as a measure of likability.

    Mentions Within E-Mail Communications.

    Google is now one of the largest free e-mail providers in the world. It would be very simple for them (if they aren’t already) to monitor the number of times a link is sent through Gmail’s mail servers. This would also be difficult to game because your accounts would quickly get flagged for spam. Additionally Google can monitor the Gmail accounts to see which ones appear to be trying to increase their footprint.

    Although I believe that your link popularity score will always play a role in your final ranking. I think it’s time for that metric to stop beating the primary source of data for Google. Once this happens, companies will increasingly be working towards social media strategies to help their bottom line.

    If you participate in any kind of link building consider this. Quality will trump quantity in the future. One really good Flickr profile will be better than 100 crappy blog comments. Try to engage the communities within each one of your social profiles online.

  • Easily Create Facebook Applications

    Video: Creating Facebook Applications

  • Cash In On Domain Names

    If you are aware of the best practices, reselling domain names can earn you a considerable amount of money. There are some factors that you need to consider for this. First of all, you must be able to speculate what names would sell the most and generate most demand. Let us look at all the points one should consider when looking to sell domain names to make some good money out of this business.

    How To Choose The Best Selling Names

    A small domain name is much more desirable than a large and complicated domain name. It is easier to type and remember for the surfer. Because of this, small domain names are very effective for advertising through word of mouth.

    Once you have a domain name, try to get it a good ranking with search engine optimization. This greatly increases the value of the domain name. It can be achieved by good advertising and following the other methods of search engine optimization. Any business that purchases it will have a good ranking and hence get more visitors to their website with the domain name.

    Selling Domain Names

    Now that you have a good domain name that will get you a good price, how do you go for selling it? It is very simple. Try to go for the various forums, blogs and auctioneering websites and post the domain name and the price you are looking to sell it for. This generally gets a lot of people and businesses getting back to you provided your domain name is good enough.

    The best thing to do is to wait for some time before actually selling off the domain name. In the mean time you can check the price of similar domain names and how they are selling. When you feel that the prices being offered are good enough, advertise about the domain name and sell it off at the best price obtained.In this way you can make very good money by selling domain names. Even when you have the domain name parked and are waiting for the best price, you can use it in various ways to generate money. Affiliate marketing, pay-per-click programs, etc are some of the ways for you to go for it.

    Domain name reselling business is a great money maker requiring very little effort from you. If you are a bit careful and go for this business intelligently, you can make a lot of money with the minimum effort applied.

  • Simple Steps for Using Google Analytic Statistics

    Video: Brad talks about what he thinks are the most important things to look at when you’re going over your Google analytics stats.

  • Benefits of Wholesale Online Business

    Now you have made the decision that you want to get into the wholesale marketing business, it is now time to start making some money, this is great as it is one of the fastest growing industries on the net, actually it is one of the fastest growing industries period.

    So, what have you decided to sell? Have you figured this part out yet?, or are you still up in the air with this one? There are some very important things to consider when going into wholesale Internet marketing, capital is a huge issue, but the biggest issue seems to be the storage and product capacity problems.

    Do your research first and gather all the information you can, try to find out what seems to be working for other people who are working in the same kind of business.

    Have you ever considered selling a product that people collect?

    What about sports cards? This is a very big market, and you could easily find some storage space in even a modest sized home for the product to be shipped in mass quantity. This is a market that is really taking off; there are people in every walk of life that collects these sports cards. From football cards to baseball cards the product is still the same, small and easy to store until it is sold and shipped. You see the problem with choosing a large-scale item such as clothing, or stereo equipment, means that you will need adequate space to store it until you ship it.

    If you are just starting out, renting a storage space for the product makes for a certain drop in your profits. Not to mention the insurance you will want to take out to keep you and your wholesalers business safe, in the event of fire or theft.

    This is why smaller items that are still popular may be the best bet for positive results and a chance to keep all of your profits. The option is there for the wholesaler to keep the product at their storage facility until the sale is final, and it is even possible for them to ship the item to the customer saving you the trouble.

    The major problem with this is, everything that the wholesaler has to do such as storing and shipping the items eats away at your profits. If they store it, they will charge you for the use of space. and if they ship it for you, they will ship it the way they want to regardless if that ends up costing you more, either way it matters not to them.

    This is because it will come out of your share in the end. This then takes you from a legitimate business partner to a simple run of the mill salesperson without most of the perks. When starting your wholesale marketing business maybe it really is better to think small.

  • Choose Your Words Carefully When Marketing Your Business

    There are a lot of people making money online. There are also a lot of people who want to teach other people how to make money. That means a lot of money making products and lessons. These can definitely be valuable, but as someone who has been bombarded by offers I have come to hate a couple widely used terms.

    These terms must work because the big names use them. Money is being made by people who use these terms so who am I to hate them? Well, I think there is room for more transparent and honest online marketing. The first step for me is to not use the following terms:

    1. Guru – There is already a growing resentment to this word in the online marketing community. I think it comes down to over saturation. Everyone is now a “guru”. Oh they may not have results, and they might be new to the field but hey, they are a Guru so they must be good!

    I was contacted by a man who was new to online marketing. he wanted a WordPress website built. One of his specific requests was to have Guru in his header. I did it no problem, but I have to admit that I found it rather hilarious. This guy was new to online marketing, was into like seven MLMs and was making no money. What exactly is he going to teach anyone? Wait a second, who am I to question a Guru! It is in his header after all – must be true.

    If someone is claiming to be a Guru do your research – and if you are going to buy something off a “Guru” ask them about their results. There are some truly knowledgeable “Gurus” out there – but be aware that anyone can call themselves a Guru and at the end of the day it means nothing.

    2. No Brainer – I hate when someone tells me their service or product is a no brainer. Unless I am handing you $1000 and you instantly hand me back $1500 then I can’t envision any deal being a “no brainer”. It is almost offensive in a way too. Do I look like some rube who is buying snake oil off the back of a van? Do you really expect me to not think about my forthcoming purchase? Oh it is a no brainer? Give me seven!

    I am not the type of person who tosses my money at a product without doing research. I would suggest anyone looking at online marketing programs do the same. I have seen a lot of product launches come and go over the years and I can say without a doubt there has never been a “no brainer” product.

    3. Newbie – This word is a bit different than the others on the list. It is different because I know it works and is effective. New people love to see this word and it makes them feel like “Hey I’m new I can do this!”. The reason it bothers me is purely saturation. Everyone has their newbie product. Overkill.

    I will take it easy on this word because I understand it’s power. But in general – UGH. To me it is a warning sign that someone might be trying to take advantage of people new to the industry.

    These words are never going to disappear from internet marketing. They worked at one time and probably still do. Even if they aren’t nearly as effective as they once were, people will still use them because people like to follow. That may seem harsh but anytime something has worked online it is almost always ran into the ground. If you are like me and can’t stand these words you better learn to live with them.

    If you are using these words and not making money then maybe you should change it up. Try transparent and honest..I heard that sometimes works.