My Buy Essay

Archive for September, 2007

Outsourcing is the latest buzz word to hit internet marketing circles, teleseminars, and niche websites. It is certainly not a new concept to outsource work, but like so much else in our lives, the Internet has given rise to a new dimension of this popular technique. Because of this, there are a number of issues to keep in mind when looking at outsourcing as a viable alternative to doing it yourself.

For good reason, outsourcing is a concept that internet marketing professionals and newbies alike should acquaint themselves with. Because a large number of internet marketers are running the show by themselves or with a limited pool of additional assistance, there are just too many tasks to complete alone. In addition to the time factor, it is simply not possible for any one individual to possess all the technical skills necessary to accomplish all aspects running an internet marketing business.

With time and skill level being the two primary factors that lead internet marketers to outsource, it is important to understand which of these two needs you are fulfilling when you proceed to outsource.

When analyzing your outsourcing needs on the basis of time constraints, it is advisable to have a good understanding of what an hour of your time is worth relative to the task at hand.

For example, let’s say it takes you six hours to accomplish a redundant task and it would take about 15 minutes for you to teach someone else to do it for you. Then look at what you may be able to accomplish in that same six hour period. Would you be able to use that time to finish an ebook that could be resold for untold profits, or write thousands of lines of code to package and resell? If so, then any modest fee that is paid to outsource that redundant task could be worth its weight in gold.

Outsourcing on the basis of skill level becomes a little trickier and this is where most internet marketers who are new to outsourcing can get themselves in trouble. It is imperative to keep in mind that even though you may be outsourcing an activity that you are not capable of doing yourself, you still need to be in control.

This is your business and your image and income depends on it. Failure to have a firm grasp on what you are outsourcing will almost always mean that the end result will not live up to your expectations. And this is not productive for you or the individual you have contracted with.

Communication is the key component when outsourcing a task that you are not readily able to do yourself. For example, let’s say you are not the greatest artist in the world and you contract with a designer to develop header and ebook cover graphics for your sales page. Telling the designer nothing more than the title of your ebook and expecting the graphics of your dreams to result is just not going to happen.

The more detailed you can be about your likes, dislikes and expectations, the greater the chance that you will be thrilled with the end result. Remember, just because the designer has skills that you don’t, one of those skills probably isn’t reading minds! If you don’t like the color green, there is no way someone is going to know this unless you tell them.

Another area where internet marketers get into trouble is when the outsourcing project involves technical skills or programming. This can be particularly difficult if both sides are not communicating properly.

A non-programmer often sees a project as being far less complex due to a lack of knowledge about the mechanics involved in the programming process. End users are used to just clicking buttons and having things work; they never have to deal or think about what goes on with the coding behind the scenes.

This can have both an impact on the perceived value of the outsourcing bid as well as the time frame and ultimate functionality of the programming project. Misunderstandings with all of these things can be greatly reduced by taking time to clearly and concisely define the project parameters ahead of time. Again, the importance of communication here cannot be stressed enough.

Finally, it is never a good idea to outsource anything you don’t understand or cannot measure. This isn’t to say that you need to understand the mechanics behind the process, but you definitely need to understand the result.

For example, it is not unusual to see bid requests on popular outsourcing sites requesting 200+ inbound links from PR7 or greater sites to be completed within 24 hours. While this may or may not be an exaggeration, the point is, if you are asking for this and adamant that you want to get your money’s worth, you better be prepared to have a means in place with which to judge someone’s performance in completing this task. Otherwise, it is just a recipe for disaster.

Simply put, if you want something done to your satisfaction, you need to be prepared ahead of time to know when that point is reached.

Remember, outsourcing in many ways is just the virtual version of an employee or subcontractor. If you have ever been an employer who created a job description, along with it you most likely implemented a means of gauging the employee’s performance. And as an employee, you knew exactly what was expected of you and the consequences of failure.

Today’s outsourcing concepts are based upon the same time honored principles used in business throughout the ages and understanding this will greatly increase your odds of success.

When people place orders through your website, it is always a good idea to immediately acknowledge the purchase. One way to do this is with the use of an autoresponder that can be integrated with your shopping cart. In fact, many shopping carts that are available today have their own autoresponders built into the system.

When you set up your autoresponder to send a message to someone that has placed an order, there are several things that should be included in the message. This is an opportunity to ‘speak’ to your customer, and to let them know about other deals that you have or special items that you have available. You should not miss this opportunity.

Do not try to get your ‘thank you’ sales message on the same autoresponder as the customers email receipt. Putting the sales message on an email that is automatically sent to grant the customer access to their purchase is also a bad idea &ndash that would go better with the receipt. Make sure your ‘thank you’ sales message is a message that is sent out all by itself, so your customer can focus solely on that!

Thank the customer for their recent purchase. Tell them how much their purchase will help them, and then tell them about other available products that work well with the one that they just purchased, or that are similar to the one that they just purchased in some way. For instance hair conditioner works with hair shampoo. Vacuum cleaner bags or carpet powder works well with vacuum cleaners. Just let them know about the various products that you offer that will compliment their purchase in some way.

The important thing is to not let your customer get away without further contact! Think about being in a brick and mortar store. When you go up to the counter to pay, there are many items there for sale. These items are meant to be picked up as last minute purchases, or impulsive purchases. Your ‘thank you’ sales letter serves the same purpose.

Don’t make the mistake of bombarding your customer! You can usually send them periodic information about your specials after they have made a purchase through you, but emailing them on a daily basis with your offers is not good business! Use your autoresponder responsibly! Make sure that your autoresponder is set up to handle automatic remove requests, and make sure that the information that you are sending your customers is of value to them.

What if you could send out all the information that your potential customers have requested without checking your email or answering a phone? While this

may seem impossible, it is becoming more and more popular among the most successful Internet marketing gurus. This is all due to what is called an autoresponder. An autoresponder is an automatic method of responding to emails sent by existing or potential customers and is an must for any Internet

business. Time is money and answering emails personally take a lot of valuable time for both you and the customer. Not only do autorespnders allow you

to spend the time elsewhere in your business, but it gives the customer access to the information almost immediately.

Since there are so many different uses for autoresponders, they can be of value to virtually any type of business. Some choose to use the autoresponders to answer frequently asked questions about a product or service. Others use them to provide information about pricing or product information. Autoresponders are also a nice way to welcome new members to a website or group as well as thank them after a visit.

One might ask what would be the advantage of using autoresponders as opposed to simply listing the information on the site. An important feature of

autoresponders is that they send you an email notification each time a response is sent out. This allows you to track the success of your promotions as well as have the email addresses of potential customers at your fingertips so that you can easily send out updated and new information to them.

It is of the utmost importance to choose an effective autoresponder. An autoresponder should be as personal as possible and send out follow-ups to

potential customers since it has been proven that persistence pays off. It could take up to seven contacts before a final sale is conducted. Generally speaking an advertisement should be short and to the point. However, in this case, the customer has asked to see this specific information and therefore an effective autoresponder should allow you to place as much text on the page as you desire. The autoresponder that you choose should provide automatic updates to customers free of charge.

The autoresponder is one Internet marketing tool that will not cost you an arm and a leg. You can get free autoresponders online from several sources. The

automatic responses will be a welcome addition to your marketing strategy and will help to automatically increase traffic to your site all while you do nothing. Be sure that the one you choose includes all the extras that will send you site to the top and your profits through the roof.

Do you get a lot of emails, important emails? If you do then you probably appreciate how important it is that everyone know that you did in fact receive their message right? If you find it next to impossible to be on top of your email accounts every second of every day, and lets face it: who can actually do that all day, then you will appreciate autoresponder software. Only autoresponder software will help you to let everyone know immediately when you receive his or her messages. They will never have to fret or worry about if you know what you need to know because they will have proof that you did get their emails.

Autoresponder software is not just about making life better for others though. You can have your autoresponder software message say anything that you need it to. If you are out of town it can tell people that, if you are screening your emails then you will be able to do that with ease using autoresponder software.

Autoresponder software will not be able to give different people a different message, it is a one answer kind of deal. You will set your autoresponder software to send a reply message to everyone and this message will always be the same until you change it. Autoresponder software is often used when people sign up to newsletters and blogs and other internet sites. These autoresponder software programs can save everyone a million hours of their precious time which in turn leaves them open to use that time for more profitable ventures.

You will simply tell your autoresponder software to respond a certain way when anyone sends an email to a specific email address. Let me be clear, when anyone, I mean anyone sends any kind of message to this address they will always get the same exact message in reply. If you run a website where people need to subscribe, you will be able to sit back and let the autoresponder software program do all of the hard work for you, it is virtually painless.

Every year autoresponder software programs are getting more and more sophisticated. Now you can use autoresponder software to send out scheduled messages and each of these can differ. What makes these kinds of autoresponder software so powerful is that no one need even send a message to receive the messages you are sending out. Here is an example, lets way that your website is offering free tutorials on speaking French. Okay, now you have offered a free 7 week lesson plan in which the subscribers will receive a brand new lesson each and every week. You can set up your autoresponder software to send these out each week for you. So you will sit down at your computer and put in all of the information at one time and the autoresponder software program will know that they should send this part of it out this week and that the next week and so on and so on. How amazing and simple is that?

For those online business owners getting through the day can be hard. You spend all kinds of time at the computer answering e-mails, fulfilling orders, and updating your customer lists. This is very important and essential for you business but it won’t make it grow. This won’t make more people buy or bring in new traffic. How can you manage to get all the necessary grunt work done and still improve your product or service, increase traffic, or campaign a new idea? You need to be able to market your business to make it work and generate a good profit. Automation is the key to running your business and growing it at the same time. Automating necessary tasks can get these thing accomplished with you having to lift a finger. This gives you more time to focus on growth and increasing traffic and sales. It is the key to success for online business owners.

Automation offers the solution of providing awesome customer service that frees up your time for bigger and better things. An autoresponder is an amazing tool to have that can make those pesky e-mail chores go away. They can help you to:

* Get sales on your products and/or services 24 hours per day 7 days per week that will bring in more profit.

* Have excellent credibility with your customers by having instant responses to his or her inquires for more information.

* Increase sales potential by answering questions quickly.

* Provide instant order confirmation that will keep customers coming back and telling other about you.

* Increase your sales by up-selling backend products automatically.

As you can see the faster you get your business automated the better off you will be. This will let you work on generating more growth and add more content to your site. You will be equipped to handle thousands of customers with out getting bogged down. You will be able to auto respond to confirm orders or shipping. You will also want to use theses to answer the most frequently asked questions and or provide more information about what you are selling. This will allow an instant response to come through to the potential customer so they don’t have to wait. You will need look at what type and how many autoresponders will work for you. There are four main ways to get them. You hosting company may offer a few in their package. This is good if you only need a couple. You can get free ones but they will have third party ads attached to them and are limited in their usage. The paid autoresponders allow you to buy as many as you need and use them as you see fit. They don’t have restriction like the free ones do. They also don’t carry any ads in them. Then there is an e-mail management solution that is geared towards e-mail marketing. You would use that tool to set up your responders.

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Internet marketing is a competitive industry and if you expect to succeed, you will need leads to help establish a customer base. Without new customers, you will not make money and you will not stay in business long. You can get thousands of autoresponder leads that will help you contact interested individuals and increase your customer base dramatically. Attracting visitors to your web site is the best way to make sales and earn a steady profit. It is not enough to get your web site indexed and listed by the major search engines. You must aggressively seek new customers and keep in contact with your established customers.

It is now possible to get literally thousands of fresh leads instantly. You may have mixed feelings about autoresponder leads due to the issues surrounding spam and unsolicited contact. You will be relieved to learn that you can get leads that will put you in touch with only those who have specifically requested information about internet marketing business opportunities. You will be able to see the IP address and the time that the request was made and contact these people immediately. You will increase your web site traffic and a certain percentage of your new contacts will subscribe to your mailing list and/or purchase your products.

You can easily gain access to new leads and add them to your mailing list. You mailing list is one of the most important aspects of your business. Of course you must provide quality products and superior customer service, but you must also keep in touch with your customers and actively seek new customers. Autoresponder leads are a great way to give thousands of prospective customers information about your business.

If you are like most car dealers when prospective buyers visit your current website you only have 2 ways to capture their information.

They must either submit a vehicle inquiry (less than 3% will do) or apply for financing (less than 1% will do), that means 96% of your website visitors are leaving your site without you even knowing who or what they were looking for.

Now some car dealers will have savings certificates and free test drive gifts but that still only captures the “in the market right now crowd.”

Consumers use the internet for information and most of the time they will look and shop a few months before they are actually ready to buy. With your website only offering 2 ways to capture your visitors information and these two methods being designed for ready to buy now consumers it is totally eliminating your chance to follow up with the “not ready to buy at this exact second” crowd which is over 96% of your website visitors.

Studies have also proven that generating automotive leads from your own website offers the best closing ratios however if you do not have effective ways to capture those “ready to buy now” and “just looking” automotive sales leads you will never see the true success of your Internet Sales Department.

You need to look at your current website capture methods and try to incorporate a system that will be able to capture your visitors information no matter where they are at in their own buying cycle.

By focusing your capture efforts and trying to build a large database of email addresses you will have greater success and sell more vehicles online.

If you would like to see what some of the top automotive groups are doing to build their database visit: .HiddenAutoLeads.com

Article marketing is a fairly new, very effective internet marketing tool that allows you to promote yourself, your product, website or service. But, this seemingly simply marketing technique can have explosive results!

As a business owner or marketer, you simply write articles about your product, service or website. In other words, you write about what you know. Once you’ve written your article(s), you start to submit those articles to directories and sites that accept them. From that point, your articles will be spreading across the internet like wildfire…wildfire with your name, site’s name and usually a link to your site included! You see, whenever you submit an article, you include an “author resource box” that includes any information about yourself, your experience, your business and your site’s URL. Anytime that article is published, including on the directory sites, your information must appear along with it!

As a webmaster or publisher, you know that one of the keys to keep your site popular with search engines and to keep your visitors coming back is to have fresh, new, relevant content. Article directories can be the answer to your prayers! You simply search the articles or browse the site and you will find as many articles as you could want to add to your site or publication. All articles submitted to these directories are free to re-print as long as they are reprinted exactly as presented and include the author’s information. There can be site-specific conditions on the reprinting (so be sure to check the terms of each site), but for the most part just stick to the article as presented with all author info included and you’ll be safe!

Some people can get put off by the idea of actually writing something for publication. It can send them back into freshman English class-like anxiety attacks. But, don’t worry most people that use article marketing aren’t Pulitzer Prize worthy writers! In my experience, the best articles and the ones that are picked up and spread the most are the ones that are written in a very reader-friendly manner. Yes, grammar and spelling are important, but what’s most important is that your information is easily accessible and helpful or interesting to potential readers.

If you simply don’t have time or really dislike writing, you can always hire a copywriter or ghost writer to do the work for you. Just make sure that the terms are very clear from the beginning as to whose name will appear on the article, the links to be included, the keywords you’d like the articles to focus on, etc.

If you’re looking for a new marketing strategy, and you don’t have a huge budget…write a few articles! Get your name out there and start getting recognized as the expert that you are. And best of all get mass distribution of the all-mighty links to your website.

The quest for high search engine rankings (and the traffic that comes along with them) has spawned some new search engine optimization techniques of late, two of them being article submission and hosted marketing pages. Although these techniques are similar in appearance, each has advantages and disadvantages. Before we delve into the heart of the issue, a couple of definitions are in order for newcomers to the internet marketing realm.

Submitting articles requires quite a bit of unpleasant work. First you have to be an expert about your chosen subject (or have the ability to fool others into believing you’re an expert). Next you must be able to write about your subject in at least a coherent manner. Then you must find article directories in which to submit your work, giving them and any possible viewers the authority to freely copy and distribute your creation.

A hosted marketing page is a cross between purchasing a one way link from a website and submitting an article to a directory. The website in question allows you to purchase a complete page from their site along with a professionally written article that has multiple one-way links to your site.

The main advantages to both techniques are the SEO-friendly links. Whether you submit your article to a directory or purchase a hosted marketing page, you will get one-way links pointing to your site. Because search engines love one-way links, your website will undoubtedly receive a boost in your search engine ranking. But, the biggest boost will come from links using keywords relevant to your site coming from pages written about a subject relevant to your site.

Here’s something you should remember. In most cases, a hosted marketing page text link from a relevant, high PR website will be much more important to the search engines than a text link from a posted article in a directory. But, if you’re a talented enough author to have your writing approved, it may show up in several directories as well as multiple authority sites. This influx of links could potentially outweigh the few links from a single hosted marketing page.

The disadvantages are pretty obvious. Writing and submitting articles, although free, can consume a considerable amount of time, especially if you are not comfortable writing professionally. On the other hand, purchasing a professionally written hosted marketing page can be very expensive. You should be prepared to shell out anywhere from fifty dollars to several hundred dollars per month, depending on the popularity of the site.

Here’s the bottom line. If you have little time, little writing skill, and a large marketing budget, hosting marketing pages would be most beneficial to you. However, if you have some free time, some copywriting experience, and little to no advertising dollars, writing and submitting articles to article directories would be most beneficial to you.

Webmasters every day are trying to get as much traffic driven to their own websites as possible. Some methods that they are using to attain high levels of traffic include search engine optimized web pages, purchased links, directory submissions, and of course pay per click campaigns, otherwise known as PPC. PPC campaigns take within Overture’s system or Google Adwords.

But what if there was a way to grow organic link backs for a minimal cost to you, the webmaster? Relevant link backs are showing to be the new holy grail in a time where search engines are devaluing purchased links and links of a general nature. But how does one gain these relevant link backs?

Two options: you can either approach websites within your niche and ask for a link to your site to be placed on theirs, or you can have them come to you, without requiring any kind of reciprocal link. One way links are much more powerful than reciprocal links.

Of course you would rather have webmasters come to you. Time is money! To effectuate this, use a good article submission program that allows your article (which contains a bio box with your link back- very important!) to be submitted to general and specific knowledge website article database directories. The reason being is that webmasters who are looking for new content to add to their websites go to these article directories and use new content submitted by people like yourself.

This is why it would benefit you to submit unique articles to article directories to be picked up by webmasters within your niche. When they add your article to their site, with bio box in tact, you gain the benefit of having your website link on their webpage. Thus, the organic link back is born!