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  • When And How To Start Writing a Blog?

    So, you have been thinking about creating a blog, but aren’t sure where to start. That’s okay, this article will fill you in on what you need to know before you get started. The good news is that blogs are very easy to set up, and you can put up a basic blog in a fairly short amount of time. Here some basic tips to get you on the path to blogging success.

    1. Decide what type of blog you want to have. Will it be a personal blog that is meant to be read by your family and friends? Will it be blog about one of your favorite hobbies? Or will the purpose of it be to make money? Know the kind of blog you’ll have will determine a lot of the other things you need to do.

    2. Pick a topic. Once you know what type of blog you’ll have, you need to narrow it down to a more specific topic. Now, if this is just for family and friends, then it doesn’t matter all that much as you won’t be as concerned with how much traffic you get to your blog. If it’s a blog about a hobby, then you can keep it more general, or you can blog about a specific aspect of the hobby. However, if you will be creating a blog to make money, then you need to be more careful about the topic you choose.

    3. Research. Assuming you are interested in making money with your blog, you need to start with research. First, you need to research who your target audience is; how many people are part of your target audience, what their problems are, what solutions they’re looking for, and how much they are willing to pay to solve their problems. Second, you need to research the best keywords for your blog. There are a few free keyword tools that should give you enough information to get started. However, it may be a good idea to find some paid keyword tools if you want to see even better results.

    4. Keep your visitors in mind. This can be hard to do when you’re the one who’s creating a blog, but you have to do your best. Picture what your visitor sees when they first come to your blog. Are the colors to strong? Too dull? How are the graphics? Is everything laid out in a logical and intuitive manner? Are the posts easy to read? All of these things, and more, will make a big difference to your visitors. Needless to say, if they don’t like what they see, they will go to someone else’s blog. Therefore, it makes more sense to try to look at your blog through the eyes of your visitors.

    5. Be yourself. What really keeps people coming back to a blog? In a word: personality. So, go ahead and let yourself come through in your posts. Some people may not like, but the ones that do could become some of your biggest fans, and will start recommending your blog to other people.

  • Sense Of Urgency So They Buy Now

    One of the goals you have for your sales copy is to compel the reader to make a decision now. All too often, copy builds an excellent case for considering the product, but does not follow through with that little added extra that pushes the prospect off the fence and into making a decision to buy. Here are a three basic ways to make sure your prospect does not get away, and becomes a devoted customer.

    First, don’t assume that your prospect remembers all those great advantages you so painstakingly mentioned earlier in your copy. Instead, do a quick recap. The recap does not have to be an exhaustive replay of all those benefits. In fact, something as simple as a quick bulleted list will often do the trick. This simple device makes it possible for the reader to see the benefits one more time without having to scroll backward to review them.

    Next, don’t forget those ancillary values that your product provides. It can be anything from easily installation and storage to working well in another common but less likely setting. The idea is to convey the fact that the product is versatile and there is a good chance it will take the place of more than one product the prospect is currently using. That usually sets very well with consumers who want to get the most for their money.

    Last, offer something that must be taken advantage of right now, such as a limited time offer of a discount on first purchase, or free support for a month. Everybody likes to get something a little extra when buying a product.

    How many times have you noticed toothpaste manufacturers enticing people to try a new brand with by including a free travel size tube along with the main product? You can do the same thing as part of your copy presentation.

    Getting consumers to buy now rather than later is to your advantage. The sooner someone buys and actually uses the product, the sooner you can look forward to having one more satisfied customer who will provide good word of mouth. Try out these approaches and see how much good they do for you.

  • Ten Uncomplicated Marketing Tips You Can Do At Once!

    1. Listen to (and write down!) the questions your clients ask. They’re clues to the problems you can help them solve. They’re also topics for your next article, talk and e-newsletter. Don’t invent this stuff – just listen!

    2. Plan and write out your next sales conversation. Got a meeting next week with a hot prospect? Write down the words you will use to find out who the decision makers are, what the budget is, the scope of their problem, and how you’ll ask them to take next steps. If you have no idea how to do this, send me an email and I’ll help you think through it.

    3. Read a marketing article. Most non-marketers don’t go out of their way to read about marketing. A painless way to stay motivated, though, is to read one new article every week. Start here: YOUR BLOG HERE 🙂

    4. Pay attention to the marketing messages all around you. See if you can pick out the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) and call-to-action (what they want you to do). Practice thinking like a marketer.

    5. If you manage others who perform your client work, visit a client with your employee to show interest. This keeps you fresh and demonstrates your commitment to the client. It also shows the client that there’s more to your organization than their sole point of contact.

    6. Give a copy of this article to your staff and ask them to come to the next staff meeting prepared to talk about the ideas that this generates. Ask people to commit to one new task. Have them give a progress report at the next meeting. Rinse, repeat.

    7. Draft a 3 or 4-question survey to do short, conversational telephone interviews with your target audience to find out what they struggle with…what’s on their wish list…what they want from you.

    Do NOT ask them if they want to buy anything from you. This is a relationship-building task, NOT a sales call. That comes much later. Ask others you work with to pick two clients or prospects and call them. Compare notes and discuss your findings.

    8. Think of small solutions that you can offer to important problems. Or small solutions to little problems. The key is to think small. It’s less intimidating for your customer to “sample” you and makes it easy for them to take a first step.

    9. Practice saying your Positioning Statement out loud. To the mirror. In the car. In the elevator. If you don’t know what your Positioning Statement is, that’s a problem. Email me and I’ll give you a hand.

    10. Visualize doing any one of these things successfully. Really – it’s what professional athletes, speakers, performers, and successful people do all the time. Visualize it, and it will be so.

    The next time a scientist tells me they can’t market, I’ll know better. These ideas clearly prove that theory wrong!

  • The Benefits of Search Engine Placement Marketing

    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.

  • Essentials of protecting your blog from comment spam in WordPress

    Video: How to protect your blog from comment spam in WordPress

  • How To Make a Good Offer On Forums

    In an Internet Marketing Forum, all people want to display their superior copywriting skills while composing a special offer. I have listed some tips for you to follow while posting your ad in a forum based market place.

    Do not try to overdo the title – if your offer cannot be understood, there are high chances of you losing out. They should be directed to your sales page and the offer copy should be short and pin pointed.

    Apart from the headline, actual copy and payment method, you need to ensure the inclusion of the following:

    ? Rights – What are the rights to be included (use these in the zip file too!)?

    ? Guarantee – Will you guarantee refund? You better, especially if you are new.

    ? Delivery Terms – Enlist the timeframes and if they are manual or automatic.

    ? Support – Does your offer allot any support, installation or other such help?

    ? Upgrades – To be included or served as extra?

    ? Reviews – Did you get 5 to 10 members to review your offer before? 

    Some forums allow the members to post their ads related to their product / service for free. But there are many forums such as warrior forum that asks for a small fee of $20 to post the ad.

    Also, price your products or services properly. It is better if you charge a special price at the forums which will definitely attract more customers towards your products or services.

    As a matter of fact, in some forums , it is mandatory to charge a discount price compared to what is being charged to the general public. This is because more people to go to buy in some particular forum based marketplaces since they know that they are going to find quality products a low price in those market places.

    By asking for a lower price, you will definitely have higher chances of making sales.

    Remember, I talked of over delivery earlier. A good way to over deliver is you can charge for one product and give 2 quality products to the buyers. Or you can add 5 valuable E-books that will be of great use to your customers or you can also, use the technique , buy 1 and get 1 free technique to attract more customers.

    Many experienced marketers create an urgency in their products or services by restricting their number clients or by restricting the period of the offer. So, if you have a product or service, that you are confident of , you too can create exigency by placing certain limitations.

     

    Spend some time in posting your ad and trust me, it’s worth every penny or second that you invest. Owing to the large number of traffic flow to the popular Internet Marketing forums, not only your products or services but also you are going to get some good exposure. That is why I repeatedly kept focusing on the importance of a QUALITY product and the value of a well crafted offer.

    Remember, a forum based marketplace has every power to make or break your online business.

  • Painless Way To Add Awesome Videos To Your WordPress Site

    Adding video to your WordPress blog post or page is a pretty simple affair. All you have to do is copy the embed code of the video and drop it into WordPress’s HTML editor. Pretty simple.

    What if you want to add it to your sidebar though? You could probably use the text widget but then you would have to change the code yourself to change it’s size. This is fairly straight forward, but it might be something that people are not interested in doing. This is especially true if they have no coding knowledge.

    Like usual though, WordPress has a plugin to help you out. Doesn’t it always? There are a couple plugins that can address this issue, but my favourite is simply called the Video Widget. All you have to do is download this plugin and activate it. Once that is done you will be able to add videos to your sidebar.

    When the plugin is activated, you will notice you have a new Video Widget in the widget section of your WordPress back office. A little reminder; the widget menu can be found under the appearance heading. You simply grab the widget and drag it where you want it to appear in your sidebar.

    This video widget will give you a few options. It will allow you to title the Widget so you can call it something like “Check This Out” or “latest video”.

    It will also allow you to specify the width and height of the videos. This is extremely important because the average video won’t naturally fit in the sidebar.

    Another cool feature is right underneath the width and height values. There is a box that will let you put in multiple video IDs. You don’t need the embed code for this plugin, just the video ID. The plugin works with 25 of the most popular video sharing sites so no matter where your video is you should be able to use this plugin. If you have multiple videos, your videos will be chosen randomly for your web visitor.

    Underneath that you will see an area to use if you just want a single video. You will also be able to add some text either before the video or after it.

    This plugin is no longer updated, but it still works as of WordPress 3.0. If you want to put a video in your sidebar the Video Widget is one of the easiest and most flexible choices you can make.

  • An Enticing Social Networking Script

    Earn Money With A Social Networking Script

    Social networking sites are big business so imagine the money you could earn if you had your own social network site. To create your own site you could use a script designed for social networking sites like Phpfox. Let’s take a closer look at how you can benefit from Phpfox.

    Phpfox is an amazing social network script that will allow any website owner to create their own social networking website in any niche they choose. There are new social networking sites coming up all over the internet thanks to the amazing popularity of sites like Facebook and Twitter. The income potential to having your own social network site is extremely high so now many webmasters are creating their own sites.

    Look at the benefits that come with having your own social networking website:

    * You don’t have to constantly add new content to your site because it is continually being added by your members,

    * As your members invite friends and colleagues to join they are promoting your site for you,

    * When new members fill in their profiles they are supplying you will all your marketing research and demographic information.

    With the Phpfox script you can create your social networking site with all the necessary functions and so much more. Of course when researching the different scripts available you should read reviews from other webmasters, programmers and developers so you can learn from others whether the script gives you everything you are looking for.

    The Phpfox also offers a forum of members who are also using the scripts so you can get a lot of help and advice if needed. With scripts and setting up websites like social networking websites, a member’s forum can be extremely helpful. With forums like this you often find information you just don’t get anywhere else and even any modifications or tips that can help you to use the script better and get the most out of it.

    Many social network scripts can be difficult to install and implement the many options but the phpfox script is one of the simplest scripts available. The installation process is done in three basic steps that are quite easy.

    1. Create a database,

    2. Upload the script files and then chmod them according to the directories,

    3. Go to the installation page and enter your information. The information required is the database name, your username and your password. That is it, you then just run it and the installation file does the rest.

    If you are not comfortable installing the script yourself you can have the Phpfox Company install it for you for a small fee. When the script is installed you can then log yourself into the admin area and choose the template you want for your social networking website. There are a number of templates to choose from with the phpfox script.

    If you are considering creating your own social networking website then Phpfox is certainly one of the best scripts to do it with. Of course you should explore all your options and decide which is best for you.

  • Most Popular Social Networking Sites and Their Benefits

    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.

  • Essentials of editing WordPress themes using CSS

    Video: How to edit WordPress themes using CSS