Category: Online Biz Fundamentals

If your blog is not getting the amount of traffic that you desire, you may need to employ a few simple techniques to help increase and retain your audience. In my experience successful blogging comes down to good content, frequency, social participation, effective promotion and retention.

Every blog needs to start with a base of good content. What I have learned is that it’s not just the message you are delivering, it’s how you are delivering it. As a for instance I have all but given up on writing articles for my blog. Instead I have chosen to do all of my posts as video. This has not only increased my traffic, it has improved the participation in the form of comments. Think about the audience you want to attract, how will you educate, entertain and engage them?

The number of times you update your blog will directly impact the size of your audience. If you only update once a month people will get used to that and not necessarily check back very often. If you update every day your audience will grow much faster. Now I understand that in a perfect world we can’t all fill the YouTube video every day and post it to our blogs. But you can set a reasonable goal of at least 1 to 2 times weekly. The frequency of your updates mixed with the quality of your content will directly dictate how quickly your traffic grows and how viral your posts are.

Many bloggers make the mistake of turning off or moderating the comments on their blog. An even bigger mistake is when bloggers delete comments of a negative nature. I have learned to allow anything that is not spam to be posted as a comment on my site. Recently someone even commented on my physical appearance in a negative way and I replied with laughter and acknowledged the flaw. This not only helps to make your blog appear more genuine, it also helps for people to feel some sense of community there.

The easiest way to promote your blog for free is using a few simple tools. The first I will point you to is the SU.PR plug in. This plug-in is brought to you by stumbleupon and allows you to auto post your new blog entries to twitter and Facebook. The second tool I want you to test is the sharethis plug-in. This plug-in allows your users to easily post entries to digg.com and other social networking sites.

One of the best ways to retain users is by using a good RSS feed management system. Google feed burner is the best free service I have found. The great thing about this service as it allows you to put an e-mail subscription box in your sidebar. Every time you update your blog Google will mail a summary and link to the new post. There is no limit on the size of your mailing list and it doesn’t cost you a dime to maintain it.

One of the most important things that any business can have, whether online or not, is legitimacy. If customers think that a particular business knows how to get a job done correctly or sells flawless products, not only will they come back, but they’ll also offer your name to others. And all business owners crave that word of mouth referral like nothing else, as it’s marketing gold.

But how to get that reputation? With online businesses, it can be a little bit more difficult to cultivate word of mouth recommendations simply because your customers might be from all around the globe, and thus are less likely to ask each other for referrals as compared to neighbors in a single community are. Like everything else about online businesses, it’s possible to get that reputation you want going, it just requires a bit of ingenuity and unconventional thought.

One of the best ways to start building your reputation as an online business is to start off with a bang – give away free content. This doesn’t mean that you need to give out free products; though, certainly, if you can afford to do so, freebies are a great way to get a customer’s attention. What you can do, however, is start giving out your advice. If you’re a construction company, set up a “how to fix it” section of your site that anybody can visit. If you’re a shoe repair shop, make some videos about how to do simple things like fix shoelaces and upload them to YouTube. This is a great way to draw in potential customers who may not have originally been looking for your services, but advice – but these surfers can quickly become customers if they believe in the strength of your advice.

Another great way is to get involved with online forums relating to the product or services that you sell. If you’re a car repair shop, consider joining some forums based on car repair and start offering up your free advice on the subject. Most of these forums allow their users to post “signatures,” which are little text/picture snippets that appear at the bottom of every post. If you use this opportunity to advertise your site, you’ll start generating interest when you build your reputation within that particular forum. Just be sure to actually contribute to the conversations in the forum itself, though – most forums have moderators and if your account is deemed to be producing too much spam, you’ll be removed from the community. Not to mention, people who only use forums to place advertisements and not contribute to the topics at hand are looked at with derision. Besides, if the topic of the forum is something that you are interested in – and assuming that you started a business in a particular topic, it hints that you are – you might even end up having fun by participating in forums.

Fun? Online business? Who knew?

Have you ever thought of placing a classified ad online to get some online ad traffic? There are so many free ad sites out there you should never have to pay a dime to put ads online. There are people who will tell you that those free sites are so congested that your ads may not ever be seen but if you choose to not place that ad then that will surely be the case, won’t it? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Place the ad on the free sites. You never know, the one person who really needs what you are selling may just be looking there right now. Why anyone would ignore such a good resource is beyond me but even I know someone who has listened to the naysayers and she has not been very successful in her internet business endeavors because she has no online ad traffic. Just think of the millions of people she could have reached if she had just placed that ad on the free sites.

Learning how to write a n effective ad will put you one above the rest. If you can’t write or are intimidated by the process then hire someone to write it for you. You will need to make sure you have the budget for this.

The cheapest way is to learn to write for yourself. My advice to you is to take a look at what is out there for writing samples on the internet. If you can speak English and can hold a pen in your hand you are qualified to write your own ads. Some of the stuff you find out there is so bad it will leave you shaking your head in wonder as to how they ever got published in the first place. Some of it doesn’t even make sense!

Anyway, you can do this, I have faith in you. First, make a list of, say, ten free classified ad sites you think you can trust. Then, research them to be sure you can trust them. Make sure they are on the up and up with no funny stuff going on. When you get ready to submit your ad, be sure to follow their rules for submitting ads closely. Remember you are trying to get more traffic to you website not the other way around.

Read all of the directions before you do anything. Find out if you can upload a picture of what you are selling. This will help increase sales. The free sites may not allow pictures but check it out and if they do then put one up. It can’t hurt.

These free sites may not have categories of ads listed so your ad may get lost in the jumble but like I said if it is not out there then it surely will not be seen. Use every advantage you can find when it comes to trying to drive online ad traffic to your site. Use the free sites to start and then graduate to paid sites when the money starts rolling in.

Most people understand that their primary role as an online entrepreneur is to drive as much quality traffic to their website as they can get. There are many ways to do that and most people will use several methods to get the best result. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of those methods. Before you dive in and hire a company to do your SEO for you, you will want to check out seo pricing.

There are companies online that specialize in doing all the seo your website needs. The prices for such services will vary depending on several variables. For one thing, the number of keywords you will be targeting in your seo campaign. The more keywords you want to target, the higher the cost will be.

The more competitive the keywords you use, the higher the cost will be too. SEO isn’t a “set it and forget it” method. It will take ongoing attention. That’s why the more competitive keywords will cost more, they will take more time and attention.

Most SEO companies will sell their services in packages. Usually they will be divided up something like: 1 – 10 keywords, or 11 – 50 keywords,etc. The package you will choose will be based mostly on your budget.

Another important element to website SEO is back links. Many times companies will set their pricing structure on the number of back links they are creating.

Back links will gain more importance, and cost more, if the link comes from a highly ranked site. A back link from a website that has a PR4 rank will be priced differently than a PR8 website.

The truth is for most new, and smaller internet marketers, seo campaigns are out of bounds from a financial point of view. But that doesn’t have to mean that you can’t still benefit from seo optimization.

There are many places online where you can learn to do simple seo techniques that will allow you to benefit from optimization techniques. You can use these methods for your website, your blog posts and your articles.

If you do decide that you have enough of a budget to hire a company to do SEO for you than you need to carefully check them out. Find out what they will offer, how much it will cost and how much time and attention you can expect to get from them.

It’s also a good idea to find out what other people have to say about the company and their services. This can be a fairly big investment and you want to make sure that you hire a company that knows what they are doing, and can really help you get the results you want.

You also want to make sure that there are no surprises, that you know exactly what you will get and how much it will cost. Having a written contract in place is very important too. That way there can be no misunderstanding; both parties know what is expected of each other and how much it will cost.

When it comes to seo pricing remember that cost is only half the issue. You want to make sure that you get the service and results that you are really looking for.

If you want the benefit of search engine optimization (SEO) but just don’t have the time, or inclination, to learn how to do it or to spend the time doing it yourself, you don’t have to miss out. You can hire search engine optimization experts to do it all for you.

If you’re a small business just starting out you may think that you won’t be able to afford to hire anyone, and you may be right. I don’t know your budget, but I do know that there are many companies online who specialize in this type of work and work with small and mid sized companies. You may just be able to afford it after all.

The truth is that to have a vibrant and effective seo campaign will take a lot of time and effort. You see, the search engines are always “improving” their algorithms and they don’t like to share. They don’t tell anyone just exactly how they figure out which sites will be ranked the highest.

For this reason a lot of seo is intelligent guessing. It is pretty much a full time job to stay abreast of all the changes being made in regards to seo. That’s why you want to hire someone if at all possible.

And don’t think that just because your niece Sally is online all the time and can put up a blog or send out a tweet that she is competent to do it for you, most of the time that won’t be the case.

There are many elements that go into a successful seo strategy and a company will have their own way of doing things, but there are some things that you will want to look for.

For one thing, any company you are looking at should provide you with an initial assessment of your website. They should be able to give you an idea based on where you are already, how much the whole thing will cost.

After that, they should come up with an extensive keyword list that is loaded with highly targeted and highly relevant keywords. If chosen properly, this list can be like money in the bank for you and your online business.

Once the keyword list is in place, the next step is to “clean up” your website. Make sure everything is set up in the optimum way to grab the search engines attention. This includes adding meta tags and header tags for instance.

And the next step would be to manually submit your search engine optimized site to search engines. After that, it will be important to track your results so you can see how effective the changes you’ve made are.

This final step is very important, and often overlooked. If you can’t track your results how will you know whether or not the money you’ve invested in your seo company is money well spent or just a waste?

Hiring your own search engine optimization experts to oversee all your seo needs is a great idea for any online business. You can get the maximum benefit with a minimum of effort from you.

What’s just as important as the quality of your product and the organization of the site it’s located on? The copy that sells it, of course!

Consider your copy the same way you’d consider yourself before going on an interview for a job. You’d be clean, you’d look professional, and you might even rehearse a little bit about what you were going to say. Your copy should present itself like it’s going in for an interview as well – this is your business speaking for itself, after all!

What are the cornerstones of good copy? Well, let’s start off with the obvious – good copy is first and foremost well organized and free of grammatical errors. If your copy is hard to read and misspelled, it looks unprofessional which sets off red flags in the mind of your customers. Don’t let the incorrect usage of semicolons drive away potential revenue. Also, if nothing else, be sure to run everything through spellchecker before putting it up.

But if you want your copy to truly pop, you’ll need to do more than make sure that you cross your Ts and dot your Is. Good copy can accurately describe the product or services that you sell, as well as inform the customer why your product and services are better than what’s offered by the competition. It paints you, the seller, as credible and honest, and it adds a touch of urgency to the transaction, convincing the customer that it’s in his/her best interest to make a purchase as soon as possible. Good copy is convincing, but not overbearing.

There are two obvious ways to go about getting good copy for your online business. The first is writing it yourself. The second is outsourcing. The first is definitely the cheaper way to go, and even if you are utterly incapable of designing a website, it’s likely that you know how to work a word processor and use spellchecker. You could write your own copy very persuasively and well.

But this is another area in which potential online business owners should not scrimp. Be honest with yourself. Will you be able to represent your services and products to the extent they deserve – and need to be represented in order to be profitable – with your writing abilities?

Many people opt to outsource their copy just as they outsource their web design. Just as there are people who have dedicated themselves to the art of making web pages, there are those who make a living out of writing the copy that fills these pages. Many of these places are also versed in writing copy that will make your website appear higher in search engine rankings, which is a worthy consideration as well.

Either way, be sure not to forget about spellchecker.

One of the most valuable assets an online business can have is an opt-in list. What’s this and how does it work? We’re here to help!

An opt-in marketing list is where a customer (or potential customer, but it’s most often somebody who has purchased something from your site) gets an option to include themselves in on an email list that your company sends out.

This is very different from spam, which is where unscrupulous business owners go “phishing” for random email addresses that they find on the Internet and relentlessly pelt these poor souls with emails. Spam does nobody any good and basically ends up costing a business a lot of money only to irritate people.

An opt-in list, though, is a brilliant for business because the people who receive your emails are actually interested in receiving them. You can send this list of people who are interested in keeping constant correspondence with your business occasional emails – no more than twice a month, usually, and only when you have something of worth to say or offer – which can detail everything from the current goings-on of your business to deals and offers and promotions. Many companies offer special promotions to those who join their opt-in list as an incentive to, well, opt in.

Opt-in lists give customers who are interested in you your attention. Even better, the effect of an opt-in list is entirely traceable, as if you start offering promotions through your list you’ll be able to tell how many of them get redeemed. Opt-in lists are also another great way to get out more of that free expert content you offer, specially designed for those who wish to follow you. Many smaller businesses offer Q and A sessions through their opt-in list, where followers can ask specific questions that can be answered through the general forum of your email.

These lists are also the digital equivalent to having “regulars” at a store and engaging them in casual chat. Through an email list you can develop more intimate relationships with customers as compared to the normal “anonymous buyer” that hops into your site to pick up a few items, and then hops out without you knowing anything more about them other than what they bought. Close relationships with customers generate brand loyalty, which is a hot commodity.

Want another bonus? Email marketing can also be entirely free if you manage it yourself. Even if you choose to outsource your email marketing or leave it to an employee to handle, it is much cheaper than print advertising because of how targeted it is. Individual customers make specific requests, and you fill them by sending out the information direct to those who asked for it. It’s a very simple, yet incredibly effective method of advertising that is guaranteed to optimize conversions and get people talking about you, particularly if you make your opt-in list a plum deal to join.

I was talking with one of my coaching clients yesterday, who was complaining to me about time management problems. It seems that she can’t find enough hours in the day to make videos, write articles and participate in the global conversation online.

Normally when I hear this problem I know that most people who complain about time management are actually time wasters. Case in point: my client was spending an hour each day making cold calls which she felt was a good utilization of her time. Entrepreneurs love to make justifications for the things they do and cold callers are no exception, in many cases we can always look to the one or two really good customers who we have found through a cold call to make it all worthwhile.

What my client didn’t understand was that if she spent that hour each day publishing content to the Internet she would be much more effective over the long term. Filming a five-minute video and putting it up on YouTube is very easy. It’s also very easy to get 1000 people to view that video. YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world next to Google. If 1000 people watch your video, it’s the equivalent of making 1000 five-minute phone calls.

Start thinking about the messages you want to get across to your audience and start thinking about the mediums you want to use to deliver those messages. I prefer to use articles and video to deliver my messages. Increasingly my audience has been growing exponentially because I spend more time putting content out and less time talking to people one-on-one.

I am not saying that you should completely replace face-to-face or telephone communication, I am suggesting however that you find ways to maximize that communication and leverage it to a larger audience. As a for instance yesterday I spent 30 minutes on the phone with one of my trainers. We did a question-and-answer session that was intended for a larger audience. This call was recorded and will be heard by thousands of people.

Lately when people have been asking me for mentoring or business coaching and they don’t have any money to pay for my time, I have been asking them to do recorded calls with me that I can later release on my blog. These calls will be a valuable tool for me to recruit new clients, so even when I give up some of my free time, I am able to monetize it down the road.

With billions of websites on the internet, and that number being added to daily, anyone who uses their website to make money recognizes the importance of getting their website to stand out and get visitors. That is where search engine placement marketing comes into play.

If your website is only a way to show vacation pictures to friends and family than getting a lot of traffic won’t be a concern of yours, but for everyone else this is a crucial issue. It can be the difference between success and failure.

This type of marketing revolves around the concept of doing anything possible so that the website ranks high in all the search engines: Bing, Yahoo and Google. When someone does a search using a certain word or phrase the search engine will bring up a list of returns. These returns are referred to as Search Engine Results Page, or SERPS, for short.

The higher on the list your site is ranked, the more free traffic you will get. People will usually click on the first 5 or so listings on the first page of results. When they do they will be taken to that website. If that is your website you have a lot of traffic coming to your site for free.

Another benefit is that you know that the visitors to your website are very targeted, they are interested in your product or service or they wouldn’t have done a search using that term.

To decide which of the billions of websites for a certain search term rate the highest, the search engines utilize a sophisticated algorithm to help it determine which sites are the most relevant to the search term. So if your site is about golf balls, the sites that are the most relevant to that term will be rated the highest and receive that coveted first page listing.

There are various tactics that a webmaster can use to ensure that the search engines recognize their website as being very relevant to certain search terms. So, to use the above example, if you are selling golf balls you would optimize your site for the term golf balls (along with other terms related to golf balls).

This may all sound complicated, and it can be, but some simple tweaks to your webpage might be all it takes. To a large degree how much time and effort you will have to put in will be in relation to how competitive your niche is.

No one really knows what the algorithms look for, it is a closely guarded secret, and they are changed and perfected all the time. For this reason, you should either incorporate some simple techniques or enlist the aid of a professional to follow all the changes and optimize your site as soon as possible after the criteria has been changed.

Search engine placement marketing is one of the best ways to ensure that your site gets a steady stream of highly qualified visitors.

If you hear the term social networking you might immediately think of sites like Facebook and Twitter. These are some of the biggest social networking sites but there are actually hundreds of social networking, social media and social bookmarking sites on the internet. These big social sites dominate the industry and would have more members than all the other smaller social sites together. Let’s take a quick look at some of the bigger players in the social networking game and how they can benefit you.

1. Facebook – Facebook is huge and is probably the biggest social networking website with millions of members worldwide. Facebook offers many different applications and games and many of the games themselves have become incredibly popular. Games like Farmville, Mafia Wars and Social City have people playing on Facebook for hours at a time.

Business people are now also using Facebook to network with potential customers and build a strong customer base. Facebook allows you to connect with customers on a personal level and build a strong and trusting relationship with them. You can also create fan pages and groups on Facebook that can be very useful for any business person marketing a website or business online.

2. Twitter – Twitter is also extremely popular and brings about a whole unique for of networking. With Twitter you micro-blog which is when you post short updates to your Twitter page. If you are using Twitter to promote your business you will want to seek out other Twitter members that are interested in your niche. When you find members that could be potential customers you then ‘follow’ them. When you begin to follow people many of them will follow you. Whenever you post an update to your Twitter page, your followers will see it.

The more members you have following you the more people you have to market to and you will find more and more people will begin to follow you. Keep on building up the number of people that you follow and your followers will also increase. When you have updated your own website or blog then you can put an update on Twitter with a link to your website or blog. Your followers can then see your website link and visit your website. You can even update your Twitter status via your mobile phone.

Twitter is an amazing tool for promoting an online business and there are thousands of Internet Marketers profiting from Twitter every day.

3. MySpace – Although MySpace isn’t as popular as it once was, it is still quite popular and has thousands of members. MySpace has a number of niches within the community where you can meet people that share your interests or people you can market to if your business is in that niche. MySpace is one of the original social networking websites and connects users who share interests in books, TV shows, videos, music and much more. You can make new friends and you can share images and music with those friends.

4. LiveJournal – Livejournal is a social network blogging site where you can create your own blog within their community and other community members can read your blog posts. This is a great way to blog about your business and you will have a large community of members that you can market to. Every user at Livejournal has a blog account and you can leave comments on other member’s blogs. The more active you are in the community the more users will comment on your blog and follow your blog posts.

5. Flickr – Flickr is a little different than most social networking in that it is based around photo sharing. With Flickr you can create an account and upload your favorite photos. Photos can be tagged, shared, edited and commented on and you can connect with other members through your interest in photography.

6. Digg – Digg is another great social networking site that is based around sharing news and media with other members of the community. When a member shares a news story, other members can leave comments or rate the media by ‘digging’ it. The media with the highest number of diggs is the most popular and will have good exposure. This is a great way to promote your business if you can get a high number of diggs and get a lot of exposure to your article.

These are just some of the top social networking websites and there are many others. If you are looking for a method to market your business then why not try some social networking websites.