Why You Need Static Blog Pages
WordPress offers bloggers two choices in publishing their material. They can choose to publish it immediately as a blog post, in which case it will appear as the first post on your homepage with others following suit.
Or, another choice is to publish it as a ’static page’…a page that stands on its own…meaning it is literally a separate page with a separate address from your homepage. Your readers access these pages by clicking on a link that you have provided on your blog.
Most often you will find these navigation links listed in the sidebar, on the top near the header and sometimes even at the bottom of the blog page. (Make sure these pages open in a ‘new window’ so that your customer can easily navigate back to the home page…you don’t want to loose them.)
An example of some ’static’ pages that should or can be included on your blog are:
1) About Page: This is probably the most common page used among bloggers and the first place I head to after I’ve read a post I like on a particular blog. Use your ‘About Me’ page to allow your reader get a more personal view of you. This page gives your new readers a glimpse or snapshot of the person behind the posts. You can and should include a picture of yourself. Additionally, you can explain a bit of why they should subscribe to your blog on this page.
2) Contact Page: Many times your readers will have questions after reading through one of your posts…or maybe something captured their interest and they would like to partner with you on a project. Whatever the reason, you should have a page dedicated to contacting you. Without this page, you will never know how many opportunities you may have missed with your readers and potential partners. Someone may even have been impressed enough to want to advertise with you. Make it easy for them to locate this important page…don’t test their patience by making it difficult to locate…they may walk.
3) Disclaimer Page: With the new FTC rulings about bloggers that came out late 2009, it is imperative that you inform your readers what you ‘get out of your blog.’ If you make money from your blog through affiliate associations or ads, you must inform your readers of this fact or risk big trouble from the FTC. You can balance this revelation by explaining to them some of the costs associated with your blog.
4) Service Related Pages: Any kind of services that you may offer your blog readers such as coaching or consultation services should be given their own page. Your readers will be more likely to buy your services from a dedicated page that you have set up than a flash in the pan mention in one of your posts.
5) Best of Page: Also referred to as a ’sneeze page’…not squeeze page! All your most favorite or most popular blog posts can be included on this page. Use this page to highlight anything about your blog that you want front and center or you know your readers will enjoy because of its previous popularity.
6) 404 Page: Most bloggers are aware of their 404 Error page. This error page is what someone sees when they navigate to a broken or deleted link or a link that is not working for some reason. What most bloggers are not aware of is the fact that they can customize this page to their advantage so that readers are directed to what they are looking for. Additionally, it provides the reader with something else to keep their interest. A blank 404 Page is a wasted opportunity.
7) Unique Projects: Should you participate in any kind of event…charity or otherwise, it is always a good idea to create page dedicated to this particular event. This gives the event much more importance and allows those with interest a place to follow up on any dates or updates that they need be aware of.
Testimonial Page: Selling an item or even selling yourself can be much more impressive if you include testimonials from others that have used the product or service and can provide their details. Once again, there are new strict rules concerning using testimonials so make sure you understand the new FTC rulings before placing any on your blog.
By Kathy Dobson
Email Marketing – Three Keys Before You Hit Send
Unfortunately, the first word that pops to mind when many people mention email marketing is ’spam.’ The junk mail of the modern era, spam is frequently held up as an abominable combination of inconvenience and social evil, with spam blockers and anti-spam petitions filling the news online and offline. Of course, this means legitimate email marketing campaigns can get lost as weary consumers indiscriminately flag all marketing material as spam just to keep their inboxes clutter free.
How then can a company that has a legitimate, creative idea for an email advertisement series avoid getting caught in the spam trap? There are three key steps good copywriters and marketers can take to set themselves apart and boost their message open rates.
A Cautionary Tale
Important campaigns usually succeed or fail well before they’re ever launched – in the planning stages. Consider a recent and already infamous Intel advertisement. The advertisement had athletic sprinters lined up to race, a reasonable attempt to link the company’s processors to speedy performance. It failed because these athletes all were African American gentlemen who appeared to be bowing to a tall, smug looking Caucasian businessman. This was a clear breakdown in the planning process. No one asked the fairly obvious question ‘What could be wrong with this image?’ Intel pulled the advertisement and publicly admitted the mistake, but the image remains as a vivid reminder that cutting corners in the planning phase can bruise your brand.
1. Lay the Groundwork
The lesson here is that simple research, like enlisting a test audience, can mean the difference between hit and miss. The same holds true for email advertising campaigns – research is vital. Just because you can send out 100,000 generic emails within a few minutes of setting up a campaign idea does not in any way mean you should. Strategic planning up front not only can save you time in the long run, it also can secure your results.
2. Know the Audience
Previous articles have referred to the phenomenon of audience-influenced brands. This is particularly true now that the Web has become so extensively accessible. People’s opinions can catch public attention almost instantly, and word of mouth can spread across the entire world in a heartbeat. Whether or not you want the audience to control your brand is irrelevant; it can and will happen of its own accord, and you should be prepared for it.
Have you taken the time to really get to know your audience? There are thousands of Internet communities dedicated to every conceivable topic, hobby, interest, or fad and your product very likely falls into one of these. Visit these user forums, find out what people are saying, what needs are not being met, and what the general opinion is. Also, don’t just mine for information, but participate in the discussion. Engage and learn how people think and what they want to know about things. This isn’t a chore; this is an opportunity that businesses have rarely had in the past, a goldmine of information for any marketer to tap.
3. Kick up the Content
In many cases, businesses fail to treat email as a legitimate medium, although they’re eager to take advantage of it. Disregarding outright spam, even some well-intentioned ‘campaigns’ amount to little more than a poorly organized message presented in a jumble of mismatched colors rather than a serious attempt at focused communication.
The content of the email has to be strong. The first line has to provide a good hook, the body has to get the core, essential details out quickly and effectively, and the end has to have a call to action (be it a purchase or a website visit). Take the time to craft a message that shows you respect the reader’s intelligence, and put as much thought into the structure of the email as you would any other example of your best writing.
Once these three key elements are in place, consider a test circulation of your campaign before officially kicking it off. There is very little substitute for getting another pair of eyes to look over your hard work. They can spot unfortunate mistakes, call attention to strong points, and help you refine the process before the message is irrevocably out on the Web.
By Enzo F. Cesario
Top 5 Steps to Website Marketing
Why market your site
This is an era of products galore. Each product and producer is trying to outdo the other. Marketing costs are turning out to be more than production costs as marketing has an ability to take products and services to a new high, or bite the dust. Without marketing, a product is as good as non-existing. At the same time, clients and consumers do not have enough time to go around looking for everything that is offered. Clients want it all on their fingertips. Keeping this in mind, internet or online marketing has quickly come to the rescue. It bridges the gap between your service or product and client or consumer.
Having your own website has become an important marketing tool. Almost all products and services have their own presence on the internet in the form of a website. However, there are numerous websites trying to affect the decisions of clients. So, website marketing has become an important and integral part of every business’s marketing strategy. Let’s understand the five most important steps to website marketing.
Understand client requirements
Understanding what your clients are looking for is the key to effective website marketing. Amidst a plethora of websites on the same subject, a client will most likely stick to the sites that are focused on her unique requirements and give her exactly what she’s looking for; e.g. if a client is looking for a website on alternative medicine; the website must focus solely on the various alternative medicines and not generalize on all types.
Get the right design and content
The rightly designed website will catch and hold more eyeballs. Your design should not only have right aesthetic appeal but also facilitate easy navigation. To many flashes, to bright colors running at the same time, plus disturbing pop-ups are sure fire turn offs. Clusters of information placed on the homepage may dumbfound the visitor. At the same time, too little info will dampen her. Your site should strike the right balance of information and placement.
Once you’re done with the designing part of your website, comes another important part, content. Your content should always be current, crisp and clear. It should convey exact information without being verbose. It should be logical, smooth, and flowing. The language should be set keeping the client in mind. The quality of your content should reflect a professional attitude.
Make it user friendly
Once on your website, the client should get important information like variety of products, possibly with their images, price ranges and product availability. Your website should facilitate ordering products online with great ease. It should also give requisite information like contact numbers of the home office or representatives, firm’s location, previous track record and after the sale service.
As customer choices and preferences are always distinct and all of them cannot be addressed on the site; provide for direct contact with your customer service department in order to answer their queries. In case of an email, a prompt reply must be assured.
Blow your trumpet
Once you are done with your website, it is high time to get on the rooftop and tell people that you’ve arrived! What’s the use of a wonderfully designed, beautiful looking site that few know about or catches hardly any eyeballs? Avail other mediums of advertising viz. seminars, articles, television, newspapers,ect… to widen your client base and reach every possible client. Get press releases distributed. A good advertising campaign is essential to attract initial traffic to your site.
Utilize the internet to its fullest. Begin blogging about your site and products/services. Forward links to as many other websites as possible. Get links on social networking websites. In simple terms, talk, talk and talk more about your site.
Action backup
The types of services and products that you offer on your website must be put into action by an efficient team. Your client must feel she is getting a good value for her money, and also her time spent. This will assist to establish a reputation for your business and create your brand image. Website marketing will only be effective if and when your promises are fulfilled in reality.
And yes! Do not rest on your laurels. Continue updating your website with any new developments and also, continue to support it with on going action.
By James Trent
Who’s Linking to Your Web Site – and What Does That Say About You to Google?
Linking is the mechanism that connects all the pages on the Internet. You’ve got links throughout your web site to let people navigate their way around. You may have links going out to other web sites that you think will be useful for your visitors. And hopefully you have links coming into your web site from independent sources.
All types of links can impact your search engine optimization results, helping determine where your web site shows up online. Though the hardest to control, inbound links pointing to your site can make the biggest impact.
At its most basic, the concept is that if several high-quality sites are linking to your web site, then Google and other search engines figure your site must be a popular, valuable resource – and they will be more likely to show it higher in their search results. In effect, your site receives “link juice” from other web pages that link to it.
However, it’s not enough to secure a couple links and then sit still. The Google PageRank algorithm looks at the pattern of links to your site as they build over time.
Building the right kind of links can bring a major payoff, while a wrong turn could get you penalized – and the Google Sandbox is not easy to dig out of.
Armed with a bit of knowledge and some creativity, you can build up valuable incoming links naturally and powerfully, avoiding the traps that plague amateurs.
Spice Up Your Links With Some Variety
There are all kinds of link farming schemes to grow links, and you need to run the other way from these. This is also called reciprocal linking, where you exchange links with other web sites that will then link to you on a mass scale. Warning: Google is onto this.
While it’s perfectly advantageous to link to high-quality sites that also link to you, the key here is to cultivate a natural mix of links over time.
Is it natural to suddenly have 100 links pointing to your site, all with the same text? Of course not. When people link to you naturally, they might use your business name (SEO Advantage) or some variation on a descriptive phrase (search optimization company). If too many similar links exist, it can signal that those links were generated artificially and potentially result in penalties.
Also consider which pages on your site inbound links point to. Your home page is probably going to get the most, but it’s natural to have links pointing to specific pages inside your web site, too. Cultivate links to your services, your blog, your news pages, your articles, etc., to help those pages get indexed and build their own PageRank. Called deep links, these can help bolster your site’s overall performance.
Some links also carry a title tag, which is indicated in the source code. This is a little too technical to go into detail here, but if you can influence this you’ll want both the link text and title to vary a bit among the links pointing to your site. Once again, the key is to grow your links in a natural pattern.
Not Every Link Carries The Same Value
Links from popular, established web sites usually carry the greatest value. That’s because they have high PageRank from plenty of other people already linking to them. A link from CNN.com, for example, will carry much more weight than a link from a free press release distribution site that few people know of. Likewise, a link from www.sbdpro.com will offer greater impact than a link from a directory that uses no-follow tags.
No-follow tags are the bane of naive link builders. It’s tempting to think you can just link to pages on your site from your Twitter tweets, Facebook and other social media applications. However, many of these sites as well as online ads and also some directories employ “no follow” tags that prevent the search engines from following a link to your site. In this case, it’s as if the link doesn’t exist in the eyes of the search engines. (That doesn’t mean the links aren’t valuable to people who find you and follow the link, it’s just not helping your web site show up in Google.)
So, How Can A Business Build Incoming Links Naturally?
The mix of links created out on the web pointing back at your web site should avoid skewing toward any particular type. A good mix that you can influence may include:
A sample schedule could mean every month you list your site in two good directories, link to interior site pages from a couple relevant posts in your own blog, distribute one press release to news sites, and write one great article that other people may want to link to and then let them know about it.
A word about selecting outlets is in order, too. You’ll need to carefully assess each place you target in order to determine the link value they can pass onto you. For example, different press release submission sites and directories can offer you a wide variety in link value. This can be time-consuming to determine but worth it when your site’s PageRank starts to climb. (Find some information on how to evaluate outlets in this article on press release optimization.
See Who’s Linking To Your Web Site
You can see all the links pointing to your site via a couple handy tools online. Go to Google.com to see who Google is crediting with a link to you. Enter in the search box [link:www.yourwebaddress.com] without the brackets.
Not all your links are going to show here, though, but you can use Google’s free webmaster tools for more in-depth research if you’re inclined. You can also use the free Yahoo! Site Explorer to see what links Yahoo! shows pointing at your site.
Every month, make it a part of your link-building strategy to check for any new links and build relationships with more web properties. After all, a link is a compliment and a great way to network in addition to an important way to build value for your web site.
By Stone Reuning in Featured
5 Things Bloggers Shouldn’t Do
There are a lot of articles and blog posts on the web that will present a list of things you should do in order to run a successful blog, this is not one of those articles. I want to discuss some of the things you shouldn’t do, opinions may differ but most of these you will likely agree with.
1. Don’t call yourself, “An Authority” or, “Expert” on your blog’s subject.
If you run a great blog and seem to have a great answer for everything, then yes, you are likely an expert or authority; but the minute that you announce to your readers that you are, you become a jerk instead. Think about it, the people who we admire the most are those that are modest and in denial about their own talents, whether they fake the denial or not, it is the cool thing to do. Same thing goes for heroes right? When was the last time some guy pulled a kid from a burning building, and when the reporter calls him a hero he says, “Yup, absolutely, I am incredible, aren’t I?” Never, that’s when. Anyone in that position knows that they have to say, “Hero? Nah, I was just doing what anyone else would do, I ain’t no hero.” Otherwise, he would be a jerk.
2. Don’t argue with your readers.
It doesn’t matter if he is the biggest idiot in the world, and you are right as rain; you are the only one with something to lose: your readers. If you think that your content is so good that you can say whatever you want to whoever you want, then people will go out of their way to ignore your blog and tell all of their friends to do so also. Treat everyone with the same respect that you would want, even if they are wrong, it will make you look like the better of the two.
3. Don’t fail to remember your theme.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but there are so many blogs that ramble on and never recover. Please do not get the wrong idea here. If you write a blog about playing baseball, then each and every one of your posts do not have to be about baseball, but if the last twelve posts are about your mother-in-law’s divorce struggle, then you seem to have lost direction. Yes, people want to understand that you are a real person, with real problems, but unless your blog is specifically about those problems, then stick to the subject.
4. Don’t alienate the “majority.”
Now this is a big one I see continually. Please don’t think that just because two or four people want your blog to go a particular route, that ALL of your readers want it to go that way. Keep in mind, a successful blog is about pleasing the majority of your readers. Just because you have a few people who LOVE a particular type of content, it doesn’t mean that all of them do. Remember, you likely have many readers whom you will never hear from on your comments, but are extremely in to your blog. So how are you supposed to know which direction they want you to follow? Well, try using the poll feature in Blogger or Wordpress, and ask your readership what they like best; you may be surprised. Also, keep a mailing list that is up to date, and ask your members for their view; most people jump at the chance to offer their voice in a matter that concerns them. Plus, it will make you look great that you are asking for their input.
5. Please do not be a rolling billboard.
Look, everybody understands that advertising is what pays the bills for a full-time blogger, but when you jam ad copy down their throat at every single turn, it gets annoying. Take care of the most vital thing, the content, and the rest will take care of itself. Yes, ads are significant, and you should optimize your ads and put a ton of work into it; just don’t be overbearing with them. They are there, people see them, and if they are interested, they will click.
By James Junior
Free Traffic for Your Website or Blog
The homework is done, your blog or website is live. You’ve chosen a hot niche/topic, ordered an awesome banner/header and chosen a theme if required…you’ve worked hard.
You add valuable content, affiliate links to high converting products, your own product links…but there is a problem. You have no traffic. Without traffic, there is no one to appreciate your hard work and awesome content.
Without traffic, you are a nobody in the cyber world. Traffic is what gets the search engine Gods to notice you. There is no one to click your affiliate links without traffic.
But, it can get expensive driving traffic to your site if you use some of the paid methods such as PPC.
There are however some very valid traffic producing methods that you can employ for free.
Let’s examine a few:
1) Forum Marketing: The worst think you can do is show up on forums and start dropping one liners with your “signature” and a link back to you blog. This is considered spam and the only thing it will do for you is to get you banned. But, forums are an excellent place to get noticed with when you add great valuable content.
Obviously you want to choose forums that focus on your particular topic or niche. Forums are a condensed concentration of the people that are interested in your niche…all located in one spot. Make sure with each post, you leave your signature with a link to your product, website and or blog.
If you establish yourself as a valued contributor then you will eventually be perceived as an expert and people will navigate to your blog or website to find out more.
2) Article marketing: There is a hungry audience waiting for excellent articles to use on their own websites or blog and article directories is where they go looking. With articles, you don’t want to fill the article with your links but use the author resource/bio box provided to leave your signature and links.
You can employ the use of article directories to get your article listed in hundreds of article directories. Additionally, many directories also submit to newsletter publishers.
It’s always a good idea to track your articles by using Google Alerts. If someone is routinely publishing your material, you may want to contact them and offer to submit your articles directly to them whenever you write a new one.
3) Sign up on sites like MyBlogLog and use their widget on your site. You can befriend other bloggers and build your own community of followers with MyBlogLog…a social community that you can tap into and get a consistent flow of traffic.
4) If you have an opt in form on your site, make sure to send an email out every time you create a new post. These people have already shown an interest by signing up to your blog…keep them informed and coming back.
5) Let’s not forget the basics…blog posting. You need to stay on top of your website or blog and keep it fresh with new content including using your keywords for SEO purposes. Ideally, your keywords should be in the title, the first paragraph and the last paragraph. But, only if it makes sense to do so.
6) Yahoo answers is an excellent way to get traffic and show off your expert knowledge. Look for questions in your area of expertise and provide valuable answers. It’s important that you add your link for reference.
7) Getting free traffic can be as easy as guest blogging on some high-ranking blogs but only if you can write intelligent, interesting, value filled posts that will benefit them. Your link will then be added to your post and can bring lots of free traffic your way.
Twitter: Let’s not forget Twitter. Twitter is here to stay and has become an invaluable source of free traffic, so if you haven’t already, it’s time you took a hard look at it. In fact, every time you submit an article to Ezine the reader can tweet the title and link to it.
Once again, don’t go on Twitter and start spamming with links, links, links. That is what you will become known for. Instead, build up a stream of targeted followers by providing interesting tweets.
9) Build a Squidoo Lense: Squidoo pages are the perfect avenue to get 1-way links to your blog. You can get direct traffic to your Squidoo lense if you use your long-tail keywords. Google loves Squidoo pages and using this method will often get you ranked in the top ten.
10) Video: Create and distribute a video that includes a link back to your blog or website. Videos have taken over the Internet as most people would rather watch a video than read a screen. People love them.
This by no means a comprehensive list as there are many more ways to drive free traffic. But, these are some of the most important ones and will get you started.
Don’t be discouraged easily. It takes time for people to discover your new blog or website. You must be patient and consistently work towards your goal and if you do, I promise that you will reap the benefits.
Combine persistent and consistent action with patience and before you know it you will have your own thriving list of subscribers hungry to learn from you.
By Kathy Dobson
How to use the Google Trends Website
The Google Trends Website was made public in 1996 but many marketers on the Internet don’t know about it. Some know but don’t understand it and so don’t get the benefits out of it that are possible.
The Google Trends website is a service offered by Google to users that want to get some fantastic data about keyword searches in the Google search engine. For example if you wanted to know how popular Levi jeans were over the past 6 years you could type in “Levi Jeans” and get data that would show you the search trend for Levi Jeans. It will not only give you the search trend but you can begin to focus the searches on country, city or even by language.
For anyone looking for a Niche to market and make money Google Trends is something they should not do without.
How to use the Google Trends website Practically?
PPC Marketing – If you are primarily a PPC marketer Google Trends is going to help you in your geo-targeting. I was involved in a niche that was hot in the United States but it gradually tapered off in the USA but got real hot in the Japanese market and so you set up your Adwords campaigns to target Japan. Thank you Google for saving me money on advertising and making me money by knowing where the buyers were.
Spying on Competition – To the right of the trends graph there are a list of links that show you articles that are ranked high for the keyword that you chose. Look over those articles, get some ideas, spin it and submit it. Have you seen our page about Online Article Marketing?
Hot Trends for Bloggers – Google Hot Trends is a separate service and URL. When you are blogging you are in need of content and if you want to have something relevant to your crowd that is timely with world events or something else you can use Google Hot Trends to see what is real relevant. Not long ago Tiger Woods went through his hardship with his family and the reporters. If you type Tiger Woods into the Google Trends website you will see the spike that was created over the bad press. I would not use Hot Trends to determine a niche because it is only reporting the hot things that are very current and as we know, news is changing all the time.
Keyword Analysis – The Google Trends website should be a part of your keyword research in conjunction with a program like Traffic Travis (download Traffic Travis for FREE) and the Google external keyword tool. Google trends will save you money from choosing keywords or a niche that is no longer active in a particular country that you may be targeting.
Another cool part of the keyword analysis that I should mention is something I saw in a webinar. The Google Trends website was used to compare “table tennis” and “ping pong”. Which do you think is more popular? Which country would you think either is more popular? Curious? Well I am not going to tell you. Go to the Google Trends website and check it out for yourself. While you are there play with it and see if you should alter some of the marketing that you are doing.
Note – Remember that this is only Google traffic and does not account for the traffic on other search engines like Ask, Yahoo and Bing. Clearly Google dominates as a search engine and gives a good picture of what is most likely taking place in the other search engines.
12 Ways to Make Sure Your Internet Marketing Really Works
Everyone loves the Internet, but not everyone is ready to buy. There can be a level of scepticism you may have to overcome and one way to do that is let them see your face. Use online video and you have an advantage over your competitors when dealing with customers.
Successful marketing is all about establishing a relationship; and that is so much easier when they can see and hear you. You may be very comfortable online, but some people are still sceptical about doing business with you over the Internet and you need to persuade them to trust you before they will buy from you.
These are my top 12 direct marketing principles you can use to make sure your Internet marketing really works for you:
1. History.
People want to know you are not going to disappear overnight so if you’ve been in business for any length of time then this will add credibility to you and your offers.
2. Statistics.
Use genuine statistics to give you more credibility by listing number of customers served, money saved, profits made, and so on.
3. Testimonials
I can’t overestimate the importance of these so get them from your Customers and Clients saying how you and/or your products have helped them. Get experts in your market to validate and endorse your products and services and if appropriate get celebrities who you either ‘rent’ for your marketing, feature at your events or use by association.
4. Demonstrations.
With the use of online video and ‘how To’ DVDs it is very ease to show a demonstration of your product both on and offline. You can even demo an ebook by printing it out and talking through what it contains live on screen. Camtasia is free software that lets you make a screen capture video where you can demonstrate your website talking though the sales letter or giving a demo of how easy it is to download your ebook. If you are in a market that isn’t really familiar with online buying this works really well.
What better proof that your product or service works than by showing an example of before and after. Many markets and products lend themselves to this treatment and it is very effective.
In our own business we use video to show how to confirm emails when signing up to our email lists, when demonstrating how to use our Membership site and examples of results in a number of our ebook markets.
5. Credentials.
What credentials do you have in your market? They don’t have to be academic, but can awards, accomplishments, membership to organisations that are relevant to your market. Both I and Neil Travers my business partner are CIPD qualified which is a training qualification we attained while working at the Bank.
This is ‘proof’ of our ability to run workshops that are designed to aid the learning and intake and retaining of information by attendees and gives us increased credibility in their eyes.
6. Publicity.
Reprints of articles about you in the press, or your articles being published in the media that lend weight to your credibility as the expert or authority in your market are highly valuable to you. Show your market that you are in demand, and have status as an expert.
7. Celebrity Spokesperson.
To be used with caution. It can be effective but can also backfire when the market remembers the celebrity and the advert, but not what it was advertising.
8. Guarantee.
If you can’t guarantee the product you’re selling then find something else to sell that you can guarantee. To really make your potential customers feel safe to buy from you you need to offer an ironclad guarantee.
9. Accessibility.
On your website have your full contact detail if possible as this will give a big boost to your potential customer confidence in you and your company. Using just an email contact is the worst and an email, phone and address the best.
Never give a PO Box as your address as it immediately makes people suspicious.
10. The Personal Touch.
Being visible in the business to your customers is a confidence booster for them. Make it personal so you are a real individual, anecdotes about you and your business, pictures and videos all make your customer more comfortable as if they have already met you.
11. Make A Damaging Admission.
No matter how good your product is it will have a disadvantage somewhere. Admit it up front and honestly comment on this fact.
Answer Questions and objections up front and when a customer asks them via email or the phone. People can call our office throughout the week and email at any time with questions and that makes them feel safe to buy from us.
12. Excess.
Use a combination of as many of the examples above in your marketing! What may seem like overkill to you may not be enough to overcome some people’s scepticism!
By Neil Stafford in SE Tactics
Ten Ways to Use PHP on your Website
PHP is a programming language that allows your website to go beyond a basic HTML document, and create an interactive experience. Open source means that the source code is available to someone with proper access to the site, so that they can easily make changes. When the Internet was first getting started, most of the pages on websites were basic HTML documents. Meaning that when you visited a page (about.html, for example), you downloaded all of the content of the page into your browser.
How Do I Know if I have a PHP Site?
If you are visiting a site, and you see that the page name ends with .html, this means that the page is most likely a plain old HTML page. If the page name ends in .php, then you the site is a php based site. Other dynamic programming languages include .jsp (Java Server Pages) or .asp (.NET or Active Server Pages). Occasionally you’ll see sites that end in .html that have dynamic code embedded in them, but this requires some tricks to accomplish on the server.
We have several sites that use static HTML pages and have great results. There are some pages that have dynamic content, but most of the pages are built in straight HTML. It’s great for search engine optimization, as some of those pages have been active for years. However, as the number of pages grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to update menu or navigation items, because it means you have to open each page, one at a time, and modify the contents.
Advantages of using PHP
PHP works a little differently. Instead of downloading the entire page (with the navigation, content and everything in one file), php allows you to embed programming code that isn’t displayed to the end user. This programming code allows you to tell the page, “Insert the top navigation here.” Or, “put the content for the page over there.”
PHP allows you to personalize a page, for example, or automatically detect that a user is coming into the site from a mobile device and display a different version of the site that is optimized for their Blackberry or iPhone. PHP keeps most of the code for the site “behind the scenes” so that the page that is displayed to the end user loads quickly and doesn’t require the browser to do processing work — the work is handled instead by the server.
PHP Is Ideal For Working With Databases
One of the biggest advantages of a programming language like PHP is that it allows you to easily interact with a database. If you’re unfamiliar with databases, think of a database as a souped-up form of an Excel spreadsheet. You have columns (i.e. page name, content, title) and rows. Rows typically would hold information that is organized by column headings.
PHP makes it easy to read information from a database, and then display information onto a web page. So, if you’ve ever used a site where you type in your zip code to find a store location near you, the system likely is taking your zip code, performing a database query (i.e. find all stores within 10 miles of the 80303 zip code) and display the results so that you can find your way. In order to do this, we have a geolocation database that allows us to tell the approximate distance between two zip codes.
You could do the same thing by building out a series of web pages that has each location. And while this is fine for three or four locations, as the number of locations increases, PHP allows you to automate the process.
Keep Content Organized
One of the ways we’ve been able to streamline the process of building websites is that we’ve standardized our process using our PageDirector content management system. There are many, many ways to build websites. Each designer seems to have a slightly different way of putting a site together. We are frequently asked to work on sites that other people have created, and in order to make simple changes to the content or navigation, we often have to dig around in the code to find where things are located. This takes time and isn’t very efficient. The PageDirector system, however, keeps all of the content for the site neatly organized in a database table. So that anyone can easily find the content and make changes quickly and easily. One of our clients said to me in an email to me yesterday, “It’s really efficient and a simple tool to use PageDirector. It makes my life easier being able to update the website fast.”
How Does It Work?
When someone clicks on a link to go to a page, the system pulls the right content from the database, grabs the menu items from another location, and on-the-fly creates the page for a person.
Summary
PHP is a server-based programming language that allows you to create an interactive experience for your site visitors, and keep content and other information organized within a database.
By Chuck Matthews in Webmasters
Internet Marketing – Do You Know What You’re Promoting?
We have all had something to say at one time or another about online scams; people who make money by selling things to others which they don’t need, which don’t do what they are said to do, and which can even waste people’s time or distract them from what they should be focused on - besides being a waste of money in the long run. And the fact is, that is far from the worst of it.
Do you want to earn money by promoting unethical products? Probably not. But are you always fully aware of what you are promoting?
There are a few categories of products which you should probably be aware of when you are deciding what to promote. You might want to think twice before you throw together a website to promote these types of products, or put one of their ads on an existing site.
After all, it’s not all about money. We are also human beings.
There are three types of products which I would never want to promote:
1. Products which are unnecessary, wasting people’s time and/or money
The “Make Money Online” niche is home to some of the worst culprits – including individuals, sales pages, emails, and advertisements which promise you unlimited riches as long as you invest ($47/$97/$5,000 etc.) in whatever it is they are trying to sell.
Whether it is a coaching program on how to earn money online, an amazing new software program which allows you to rake in thousands of dollars with a few minutes of work, a monthly membership, or perhaps just access to an enormous quantity of downloadable information which you don’t need right this second.
Some of these types of products have real value, and only require a reasonable investment. When they are useful, they do pay off in the long run. There are certainly legitimate products and services which help people save money, earn more money, or learn how to do so. I have invested in quite a few myself, and have been happy with a majority of the items I have purchased.
Some products have little-to-no real use or value for the consumer, but use a convincing sales pitch, and cost too much.
In between the two extremes there are various shades of gray.
But this is not what inspired me to write this post. There are other products one can promote, outside of the “Make Money Online” niche, which are just as bad, and even worse.
2. Products which are used to steal money
There are bogus “free trial” offers which latch onto a customers credit card, steal unauthorized recurring payments, and never let go, no matter how hard the customer tries to cancel.
I have seen affiliate programs for such products. In some cases, these offers would have been relevant to one of my websites. Did I choose to promote them? No!
Examples of products which are likely to be promoted in this manner include Acai berry, colon cleanse, teeth-whitening, and stop-smoking products, which often offer a “free trial” requiring a credit card number “for shipping,” and give you “automatic renewals if you don’t cancel.” A bit of research and Googling will often reveal whether there are scams or dishonest tactics involved.
Not every free trial with paid shipping is a scam, but I am definitely careful before signing up for them when I do.
3. Products which harm people
Then there are is another type of products you can promote. You would only promote these products if a) you don’t really know what you are promoting or b) you don’t care about people and money is your only motivation.
These are products which don’t simply waste people’s time and money, but actually harm people.
It takes a bit of confront to look beyond the surface appearance of modern day life and realize that not everything is what it appears to be on the surface.
The sad fact is, that just because an item has been endorsed by an official agency, an “expert,” or a learned authority, (government or otherwise) does not necessarily make that product useful or even safe.
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the worst in this respect. That does not mean that every pharmaceutical medicine is harmful.
But if you were to do some real, unbiased research in the field, you would be amazed at how many well-known and widely used pharmaceutical drugs:
- Have never undergone actual scientific testing as to their results
- Were approved for use by the same groups, individuals, and networks, who are profiting by their sales. (Yes, approval agencies do have ties to the pharmaceutical companies, and yes, the people who approve these drugs and medications for use do make money by approving them.)
- Have known side-effects (known even by the producers and salesmen of the drugs, but not promoted by them) which range from health problems, to death, to suicide, to murder.
- As an added benefit there are ties to the media, which is sometimes (but not always) used to attack any group which begins to expose what is occurring. Which leads people to disbelieve organizations that do so.
If you look into it, you will find that almost every school shooter, loving-family-member-turned family-murderer, or sudden unexplained suicide, involved someone who was taking one of these drugs. Common examples are Zoloft, Paxil (Seroxat), and Prozac, to name a few.
Furthermore the same doctors who were involved in the creation of these drugs can be found openly admitting that the diseases and disorders which the drugs were designed to cure do not exist. These diseases were not found by blood tests or any other form of testing. They are invented by “majority vote”.
But they make a lot of money. Billions per year. So hey, why kill a booming business?
In a previous profession I had first-hand experience with individuals who were the victims of these drugs, sometimes as young as the age of three, and had the heart-wrenching experience of seeing the damage that was done. In some cases I was able to help undo the damage, by getting these individuals onto detoxification programs or other remedies. But, sadly, the effects of legal, approved, and even common-place pharmaceutical drugs were often more harmful, and harder to correct, than the effects of any street drug. I still remember the three year-old-girl who had been put on a drug by a doctor. With a bit of research we found out that the drug was actually Speed. We were actually relived that it was Speed instead of something worse, (and yes I helped the little girl).
Sound difficult to believe? It is. So is war, needless killing of civilians, Chinese killer-cat food, genocide, kid-napping, human-trafficking, and a host of other insanities which occur on a daily basis, inside and outside of the US.
The fact is that it is a crazy world.
In American middle-class society it is very easy to forget that there is something beyond the glossed-over existence we see in front of us, where all appears so happy and regulated.
The purpose of this article is not to depress you about the state of the Earth. The purpose of this article is to communicate to affiliate marketers and online entrepreneurs about what they can do to stem the tides of damage. Or, at least what they can not do.
Because, sadly, I often see affiliate marketers blithely promoting the same products and drugs, which harm people, children, and lives on a regular basis!
When something is too incredible to be believed, we have a tendency to disbelieve it. When we don’t believe it, we don’t do much about it. History is full of incidents which we would never have believed could have happened, but happened.
Okay. My point – just because you do some keyword research and find a niche does not mean its all hunky-dory to promote that item. I have spoken of bogus Make-Money-Online products, free trials, and pharmaceutical drugs. But that’s definitely not the only thing.
Craigslist has been prosecuted for promoting prostitution and contributing to devastating effects on women and children.
A few days ago I saw a banner ad on an Internet Marketing side. It said “Pimping has never been this easy.” I hoped it was a joke and was curious, so I clicked on it. It then went on to say how you could earn $500 per day just placing these ads … in the sidebar I saw a string of prostitution ads. They weren’t joking at all.
The upshot – think before you promote. Most people care about others and want to help people. Only a few are truly money-motivated, and even those are basically good – way, down deep.
There is nothing wrong with making money online as long as you always remember to put ethics, honesty, honor, and integrity first.
By Anna Williams
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