My Buy Essay

Posts Tagged ‘blog’

As an Internet entrepreneur, you’re more than likely aware of the ability of blogs to increase the bottom line of your e-business. Most everyone who sells online, either their product or someone else’s, or runs a blog that they have monetized with ads from Google Adsense or some other source does some kind of blog advertising because it is free and eventually gets indexed by the search engines, especially when using Blogger.com blogs. However, there are a few ways that you can really use blogs to enhance your business online, and these tips can be used whether you are selling products on your own site or simply running your own monetized blog.

The first thing you need to think about when generating new blog entries is “how do people know that I have any/new content available here?” Luckily, most blog servers and software automatically create RSS site feeds (in the form of a file called atom.xml) that can be sent to the many RSS feed servers available online. Think of it is an announcement to the world through Really Simple Syndication that an update has been made to your blog and everyone should come and check it out. These updates are then posted on thousands of other websites and seen by people who are watching the site feeds for up to date news. This benefits you in two ways: First, it gets automatic traffic flowing into your site (you posted your web address in your blog post, didn’t you?), and second many sites will carry your blog post creating one-way links to your web site. And just in case you don’t know, one way links are the most powerful types of links to have.

However, doing so manually can be slow and extremely time consuming. There are many major RSS feeds available online, and posting your blog to each one each time can take forever. Fortunately, there is an easy way to automate it; a little piece of software called RSS Announcer. (.easyrssannouncer.com) To use this software all you do is point it to the URL of your atom.xml file (which is created automatically with virtually all blog software and can be found in your setup), choose which RSS feeds you want to post to, and hit a button. The rest is taken care of for you automatically, and your blog posts are then syndicated across many thousands of web sites. Do you think that might make a difference in the number of visitors to your site?

The next important part of running a blog is always having new and fresh content for visitors to check out. When someone comes to your site or your blog, you want them to keep coming back, and one of the best ways to do that is to constantly update content. The problem is that even the most prolific of writers can’t write more than one or two articles a day, and if you start running several blogs the amount of writing can quickly become overwhelming. I have run as many as 18 blogs at a single time and there’s no way I would ever be able to create enough new content to keep users coming back. This is especially important if your blogs are monetized with Adsense advertising. Let’s say, for instance, that you run a blog about Home Mortgages because it is a subject you know a lot about and are passionate about. In order to produce income you include Adsense on your site, and visitors to your blog read not only your content, but also see ads relating to Mortgages. Some of these visitors are going to click on your ads and generate income for you. In fact, if you’re really good, 20% or more of your visitors will click on an advertisement and put money in your pocket. Soon some money starts coming in and you decide to put up another blog about Refinancing. After a while the blog starts to take off, and more Adsense revenue starts rolling in. At some point, you will find yourself trying to run so many blogs that there is no way you can write enough content for each of them.

Fortunately, there’s an answer for the problem as well. It comes in the form of a piece of software called RSStoBlog. (.dimasenterprises.com/rsstoblog.html) RSStoBlog will automatically, on a schedule that you decide, post relevant content to your blogs either from News sources, RSS Feeds, or search engines. If you’re running a blog about Mortgages, instead of constantly writing new content for your blog, you can automate the posting of Mortgage information to your blog every day, several times a day. How does this benefit you as a blog owner? First, it relieves the burden of having to come up with so much original content by yourself. Second, it will send a “ping” to all the blog directories on every new post alerting them of new content at your blog. Third, if you are running a website relating to your blog, you can post the URL’s of different pages of your website in your blog content, and those pages will quickly be indexed by the various search engines.

Have you seen those advertisements about “get your site indexed in 3 days for only $XX”? That’s how they do it: add your page to a blog and ping the directories. If you’re unfamiliar with this technique it is called Blogging and Pinging, and it is great for getting sites quickly indexed. RSStoBlog lets you do this quickly and easily. For all that it does, RSStoBlog is very under priced. It is definitely worth checking out if you are serious about marketing your websites or monetizing your blogs.

The last problem I’d like to address is that of link building. We all know that one of the keys to a long term search engine optimization strategy is high quality link building. This can include reciprocal links, purchased one-way links with related web sites, or even free links with unrelated websites. Many search engine experts agree that having some links, even if they’re from sites totally unrelated to your own, are better than no links at all. Links to your site are like “votes” that the search engines see as your site containing real content. I assume that the people who run search engines feel that someone who takes time to build links to their site actually wants the site to stick around a while. However, as usual, link building can take a long time if it is not automated in some way.

Now, you’re probably scratching your head and wondering “what does that last paragraph have to do with blogs?” Well, once again a piece of software comes to our rescue to automate our link building. It is called Blog Link Generator (.cheapbloglinkgenerator.com), and can be used to quickly create hundreds or thousands of one-way links from blogs relating to your website (or even your own blog). It does this by searching for blogs relating to keywords that you input, and automatically posting to those blogs with a message from you and a link to your website. Let’s say, for example, that you have a website or blog about Car Insurance. You enter the keywords “car insurance” into the software, and it will search through many thousands of blogs relating to car insurance and on each of those blogs post a message from you saying something like “I really enjoy car insurance blog. I have a website relating to car insurance you may find interesting at .whateversite.com. Please come and visit when you have a chance.” This is a piece of software you can use as little or as much as you want. There is no shortage of blogs on just about any topic imaginable, so creating one-way links to your site or blog on nearly any subject becomes extremely easy. Believe me when I say that you will quit before the software does.

So as you can see, there are several ways you can add to the power of blogs to bring more revenue to your e-business. Whether it is getting more people to know about your site or simply automating tasks that would normally consume too much time, software products are available to free up that time so you can get to the business of doing more business.

Suggested Resources:

.cheapbloglinkgenerator.com

.dimasenterprises.com/rsstoblog.html

.easyrssannouncer.com

Yours in Success,

Peter Dimas

When you first get involved with Internet Marketing you’ll discover there are unlimited opportunities for income. For example, there is the GoogleCash opportunity where you simply direct the traffic clicking on your ads to a merchant’s website and collect an affiliate commission. Or, you might choose to build a content-rich theme site over a period of many weeks and use it to earn Adsense income and to earn affiliate income. Or build dozens of “quick and dirty” Adsense sites in hours. Or you can build mini-sites for affiliate marketing. Or you can blog for money. You could profit from ebay in a variety of ways. You could write an information product, or choose to sell physical products. And this is only a partial list! Internet Marketing has something to suit (almost) everyone.

But the reality is that each opportunity probably calls for you to learn more than just one skill, and buy and learn more than just one software tool. For example if you choose to get involved with the Adsense opportunity you can end up using a keyword research tool to identify keywords to focus on, an HTML editing tool to build your site, graphics software to build the graphic header, the blog and ping technique with a junk blog to get indexed in a hurry, RSS to build-up the content on your site, perhaps a separate good quality blog to improve your rankings in the search engines, perhaps another software tool to build a site map, and so on. The different Internet Marketing opportunities have their own Tools of the Trade!

For each of these tools you need to research which one to use; buy it; learn how to use it; then to put into practice. Some individual tools, for example some of the sophisticated software to make automatic post to blocks have quite a steep learning curve, and it can genuinely take many hours simply to become familiar with the software, and many more to understand how to apply it correctly.

But if you’re human, and interested in making money (and why else would you be here?) it is all too easy to be tempted to explore other opportunities while you are still in the middle of making a previous opportunity work. In fact, you probably asked for it! Your research probably put you on the mailing lists of many Internet Marketing experts who send you news of the latest and greatest every day … and these folk are masters at turning-on your greed glands. From personal experience (me, my friends and my family) I suspect the majority of people who decide to dive into Internet Marketing but never succeed in making a serious penny simply get bogged down with partially implemented opportunities.

The solution is simple but unfortunately contrary to human nature (at least for many of us). It requires four steps:

Give yourself the luxury of exploring the opportunities … but with a specific time limit, during which you commit up-front to starting nothing and to buying nothing until that time limit is up. This research is NOT trivial. You are not just looking at the income potential of the different Internet Marketing opportunities … you need to look at the commitments in terms of initial time and ongoing time; whether income is fast or slowly builds up; whether there is out-of-pocket risk or just time-wasted risk; are you prepared to wander to the “dark side” a little (black hat SEO) or is your nature to stick to the straight and narrow; do you want to be dealing with individuals, or just nameless, faceless masses? Do you have a technical nature? Do you have access to someone who does if you need help?

Make the decision. Make it logically …. then test to see how your gut feels about it. When it feels right, commit. I mean, FULLY commit.

Pursue the chosen opportunity to completion, where “completion” means you fail beyond recovery, or you succeed in making a level of income that you considered to be a success for the technique. Learn what you need to; buy what you need to; then DO IT. And be prepared – this often means facing fears; fear of minor failure (starting a technical area where you are a novice), fear of rejection (asking others for links, knowing 90% will tell you “no” in the early days), and the big one … fear of project failure. Your mind can play odd games with you … if you move to another opportunity before you give this one your all, you’ve not really failed, have you? Whereas if you DO give it your all and it doesn’t work out … then you’d have to face your failure.

And while you are pursuing the opportunity discipline yourself not to pursue or even explore different Internet marketing opportunities. Unless you know you have superb discipline this means you do not read e-mail’s, newsletters, or sales pages from gurus promoting products that do not relate directly to your opportunity; and do not even read e-mail’s, newsletters, or sales pages promoting improved versions of products that are supposed to be improvements on those products you are already using in pursuit of your opportunity. Make what you have, work.

Even if, on completing one opportunity, you choose to go onto a second or even a third entirely different one, doing so in this focused manner means you will probably complete three entire opportunities to a satisfying level of success before you would have achieved even one to a partial level of success if you’d been attempting all three simultaneously. I’m serious; multi-tasking often means a factor of three or four times the elapsed duration to completion of any project. Internet Marketing is no exception.

Just as important, you will actually have mastered the individual skills involved in the opportunities you pursued to completion; this contrasts nicely to having only a fingertips grasp of a variety of different tools and techniques, as is the inevitable outcome if you fail to focus.

In Internet Marketing, this mastery has rewards; you can repeat your success more quickly. You can outsource tasks, from a position of complete proficiency (always a good position from which to outsource). And you can usually transfer some or all of the skills to another Internet Marketing opportunity in such a way as to make success in the new arena more certain, and more speedy. Not a bad combination!

If you are a loan officer or mortgage broker looking to keep your name, and your products and services in the face of the public, you may want to consider internet marketing.

You may be thinking to yourself that you are not savvy enough with a computer in order to market via the internet.

Well, these days you don’t have to be, thanks to blogs.

One of the best ways to market yourself and your products is with your own personal blog.

Trust me, it is easier than you think.

Anyone can set up a blog in no more than five minutes and it is absolutely free. It is only a matter of finding a blog provider, which can be done very easily with a google search.

Once you have set up your blog, including domain name and template which the blogger will help you out with, you will be good to go.

On the blog, you can post a biography of yourself, as well as your picture, and the products and services you have to offer.

Now, you can add your blog address to your business card, and tell people in face to face networking to visit your blog.

Blogs are also great for long distance loan customers that you work with. By telling them to visit your blog, they can see your picture and will be able to put a face with your name. This is a great way for them to find a comfort level with you.

By using the internet as a marketing tool, you have added a great weapon to your arsenal of marketing strategies. Best of luck.

One of the fastest ways to generate traffic to your site is with the use of blogs, RSS and article marketing. In addition, Bogs, RSS and article marketing are almost free to low cost, thus assuring you of greater profits.

Blogs are easy to set up quickly and can be on any topic imaginable. It is a good idea to set up a blog to cater to a particular niche market or to have one for your existing site. Combined with the use of RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), your blog’s online content can be turned into a RSS feed and syndicated (distributed) pretty easily. RSS creates a simple headline that if clicked on leads the reader to the full story. All the reader needs to do is to subscribe to your RSS feeds through a little orange button from your site with the aid of a RSS feed reader. Blog posts are usually short and if you post often enough, spiders from the search engines will come crawling more often.

Article marketing is simply writing articles about your niche area and submitting them to online article directories and ezine newsletters for publicity. At the bottom of the article, you are allowed to insert your author’s resource box. This is where you write a few promotional lines about yourself and your site and include your site link.

You can use your blog posts to link to the articles that you have written. A good size article is usually longer at about 300-600 words compared to a blog post. By referencing your articles in your blog, you are giving them more publicity mileage. In fact, I highly recommend the use of article marketing to generate publicity for your site. It is almost free, save for article distribution costs that you may decide to purchase instead of submitting to the sites manually.

Many online article directories also offer RSS syndication from their sites. This provides an avenue for online visitors to subscribe to the RSS feed for a particular category that you have submitted your article to. Chances are some of them may also be looking for RSS feeds to be incorporated into their sites for their own website visitors. Others may simply be very interested in this category for their own personal consumption. A good example is if your article is on constipation and you submit your article under the category of “health”. A webmaster may be on the lookout for RSS feeds for his health site. Or someone who is highly constipated may be particularly interested in what you post in your blog. Through the author’s resource box in your article, they can find your site and the RSS subscription button to your blog posts and articles pretty easily.

Thus, RSS has the potential to give your blog great exposure to a wide audience of subscribers building a bigger readership in less time. If you also optimize your blog content and the articles that you write for your site at the same time with a good keyword strategy, then you will be assured of free search engine traffic. Lots of traffic plus huge readership can only mean greater profits!

You have seen them all over the internet — blinking, flashing, animated and garish. You vow that you will not contribute to this internet graffiti. You feel smug with your decision because after all banner advertising is dead.

Wrong. Banner advertising is not dead — and in fact it is still an effective internet marketing tool. However banner advertising has evolved — or rather I should say successful banner advertising has evolved. Some of the horrible eye-damaging banner ads still exist but successful, knowledgable internet entrepreneurs have long abandoned those marketing efforts and instead concentrated on targeted, tasteful, and trim banner ads.

Banner ads have a bad reputation in part because of the proliferation of banner farms that killed all the banner swap programs (or at least made them completely ineffectual). Also we all have memories of those hideous banners flashing across the top of so many web sites.

Banners have come along way since then and a cleverly designed banner can be a real asset to any advertising campaign. Also don’t forget that you don’t have to use one of those big giant banners that span the width of the screen. You can use smaller simple ads that can fit easily into the sidebar or special box on a web site so they can suit the design and work more effectively.

It is also important that you pay close attention to what sites you will choose for displaying your banner. IE. A site about web development for your web hosting service ad or a site about parenting for your ad promoting your potty training book.

Many text link and pay per click advertising vendors also offer the option of banner ads. Similarly many ezine and newsletter publishers sell space on their sites.

And savvy internet marketers are taking them up on these advertising opportunities.

WHY USE BANNER ADVERTISING?

Consumer research historically shows that most people see an ad several times before they take action. Banners allow you to display your ad over a period of time, increasing the chances that a prospect will see your ad and remember it.

Your banner ad can be targeted to specific audiences and displayed on internet pages and sites matched to that specific audience.

People seeing your advertisement can instantly click through to your web site store to to learn more or to make a purchase on the spot.

You can track your results and make adjustments to your campaigns based on response. Analyzing your results can help you finetune your banner, landing page, or target audience to improve your response and sales.

Banner advertising is really a buyers market, as there is always more banner spaces available than advertisers need or want, which means you can find many bargains available.

IMPORTANT POINTS TO CONSIDER WHEN PLANNING YOUR BANNER AD CAMPAIGN

There are several aspects to consider when planning out your banner advertising campaign.

The first consideration should be your ad graphic itself. These are usually animated GIF images but remember you want to attract customers — not simply attention — and remember the overall tone of your ad campaign when designing your graphic. Also keep in mind that many sites limit the file size of the graphic to somewhere between 12 and 16 KB.

Your banner can come in variety of sizes. The full banner size is 468 x 60 pixels. Some other standard banner sizes include:

Size(pixels).Type

468 x 60…..Full banner

234 x 60…..Half banner

392 x 72…..Full banner with vertical navigation bar

120 x 240….Vertical banner

125 x 125….Square button

120 x 90…..Button #1

120 x 60…..Button #2

88 x 31……Micro button

Your graphic will be hyperlinked to a target url of your choice so you may want to spend some time planning how you will track traffic and clicks. Some programs provide a tracking and statistics service for you but most individual sites can’t offer that information.

When selecting where to display your banner ad the first consideration should really be choosing a site offering information that appeals to your target audience. A high-traffic dating site isn’t going to be much good for advertising your maternity clothing line, for example.

Then you should look at traffic. When looking at site stats you want to make sure you focus on page views or page impressions rather than hits (which may count individually each graphic viewed). Depending on your banner and market you may be primarily concerned with unique page impressions.

Banner advertising is often sold by CPM (Cost Per Thousand displays, the Roman numeral “M” stands for one thousand). Many sites also offer a fixed rate price for a set period of time.

Many marketers do not concern themselves as much with click-through rates and instead see banner ads as “branding” tools. They create brand awareness and a brand image in the viewer’s mind. The hope is that when the viewer gets ready to make a purchase then your “brand” pops into their mind. Branding can also generate sales over the long-term. Branding is difficult to measure, but can be very powerful.

If you have a big advertising budget then you might want to consider an ad agency or media buyer. They can offer a lot of value for the dollar because they have the experience, knowledge, and contacts to make the most of your budget.

It is quite possible to be your own media buyer, if you are willing and able to handle the increased workload. The biggest difficulty is finding the right sites on which to advertise your product or service. Then after you find a site that might be a good match you need to negotiate the best possible deal. It is important you be as knowledgeable as possible as it is a buyer’s market and you don’t want to pay too much. Of course you also don’t want to alienate a web master whose site is a perfect match for you.

You also have the option to buy banner space on many search engines and directories. Often this option allows you to display your ad only to a targeted audience which can obviously increase your chances for a successful campaign but it can be a pricey option.

Banner ad networks are another targeted option that might be more affordable. Individual web site owners contract with a single company to serve their banner ads and handle ad sales for them. In turn, these networks divide their sites into categories and subcategories to allow advertisers to advertise on particular sites within the network that are the most highly targeted. They also offer very sophisticated tracking tools that give you lots of valuable information about who is visiting your site, and what actions they are taking.

Some networks offer pay-per-click advertising which only charges you when someone clicks on your banner and comes to your site. However, this approach is subject to fraud by unscrupulous site owners.

A pay-per-sale network, otherwise known as an affiliate program, only charges the advertiser when a purchase is actually made. The advertiser pays both the affiliate and the network but only when there is a sale. Of course the competition to attract quality affiliates is high so while this can be effective it shouldn’t be the only method of banner advertising you use.

And some final banner advertising tips:

* Keep your message brief, direct and simple.

* Attract more attention using words such as “free” and “now”.

* Put “click here” somewhere on the banner.

* Create different versions of the banner.

* Animate your banner but only if it improves it.

* Keep the file size as small as possible.

Most business owners fully understand that not advertising is the surest way to kill your business.

However they are also bombarded by so much information and so many choices they quickly lose track of what options are available to them.

There are a number of cheap and easy online advertising options available to you.

1. Ezine Advertising

Ezine advertising is one of the best ways to reach your future customers because it is often inexpensive and flexible as well as offering you the option to match the ezine audience with your product and ad. It also often offers a double benefit–your initial ad plus longevity in the ezine archives.

2. Text Links

This simple tool is often overlooked by many. It is simply one of the least expensive and yet most powerful advertising option available. You can often buy text links for under $10 and the link will not only promote the specific site or page you choose but also connect it with the specific key words that will benefit you the most.

Text links also provide a double bonus. You can attract immediate traffic from the host site as well as achieve better search engine ranking which will further increase traffic.

3. Pay per click advertising

Just like it sounds pay per click advertising is simply paying for specifically targeted traffic. You can monitor and control these advertising programs very closely and tweak your ad copy and the key words that you are sponsoring. This can be a very expensive option but doesn’t have to be if you plan carefully and watch closely.

4. Email marketing

Despite ever-increasing vigilant attempts to stop spam, we all know that email marketing is still alive and well. While it is foolish in the extreme to risk your business, web host, or internet connection, by sending out spam you can still use email marketing as a way to reach out and touch your customers and your future customers.

You just need to make sure that no one receives mail except the people who ask for it. People are still willing to sign up for mailing lists–especially if you have something to offer them in return for sharing their email address. Sponsor a contest; give away an article, ebook, or tutorial; or offer a discount and you will have people sign up willingly.

Then if you don’t abuse the mailing list you will have the opportunity to reach them again and again!

5. Banner Ads

Banner ads have a bad reputation. In part because of the proliferation of banner farms that killed all the banner swap programs (or at least made them completely ineffectual). Also we all have memories of those hideous banners flashing across the top of so many web sites.

Banners have come along way since then and a cleverly designed banner can be a real asset to any advertising campaign. Also don’t forget that you don’t have to use one of those big giant banners that span the width of the screen. You can use smaller simple ads that can fit easily into the sidebar or special box on a web site so they can suit the design and work more effectively.

It is also important that you pay close attention to what sites you will choose for displaying your banner. IE. A site about web development for your web hosting service ad or a site about parenting for your ad promoting your potty training book.

Many text link and pay per click advertising vendors also offer the option of banner ads. Similarly many ezine and newsletter publishers sell space on their sites.

~~ Sell Your Knowledge ~~

These next five advertising methods are all free or relatively inexpensive because you are trading something of value — your knowledge and expertise — in return for advertising.

6. Publish a Newsletter

Creating your own regular newsletter or ezine offers you all the advantages of ezine advertising and email marketing offered above.

7. Publish a Blog and RSS Feed

While publishing a newsletter or ezine isn’t that difficult it is much easier to create a blog and make its content available via RSS feed. This can offer you the benefits of regularly updated material for your web site which will be attractive to visitors and search engines alike. It will also help establish you as an expert in your field.

I personally like using WordPress on your own site but many web hosts now offer blogging services and there are many free blogging sites around where you can create a blog on their site.

8. Write Articles

Take some of the material you have generated for your newsletter and/or blog and share it with others. Make it available in one of the many free content directories available on the web. This not only helps to establish your credibility but the contact info you provide in your resource box (which will run every time someone else publishes your material) will bring in both direct traffic as well as search engine attention.

9. Create an Ebook

Once you have enough material generated from your newsletter and blog then you can package it into a convenient Ebook and give it away. Make sure to collect names and email addresses and offer a coupon or discount to bring people back to your site!

10. Post in Forums

If you have the time you should start your own forum but even if you only have a few minutes a week to spare for this effort then it can be well worth the effort. Don’t offer blatant spam posts but find a forum where you have something to offer. Make sure that you include an appropriate url and description for your forum signature and you will attract the double benefit of traffic and search engine attention!

No successful advertising campaign embraces one single method of advertising and no single method of advertising works for everyone. Advertising cannot be treated as a one-size-fits all proposition. However you know what your business needs and can offer–mix and match methods and make sure to track your results–to optimize your choices.

I don’t know everything and if I have learned one thing about doing business on the Internet it is that the more you learn the more you don’t know. However, I have been doing business on the Internet since 1999 and I’ve managed to carve out a successful enterprise for myself with several profit streams. The largest percentage of my marketing and promotional efforts has been conducted through one simple method-Ezine Advertising.

These are the 8 important lessons I’ve learned regarding Ezine Advertising and Marketing Success:

A common mistake many advertisers make is to attempt to do too much, or rather sell too much, in one ad. Sure you have lots of great products but you can’t sell them all in a few lines-at least not individually. Instead focus on the benefit your customer can achieve from all your products and promote that! People are much more likely to click on a link that BENEFITS them than a link that promises to sell them something.

For example, “Help your child reach their maximum potential” instead of “Try our many reading, writing, math, shapes and colors programs”

More importantly, tell the customer “what your product or service is going to do for him.”

It is important that you identify your Unique Selling Proposition before you begin your advertising program. This will determine which Ezines (or markets) you target as well as what you should include in your ad copy. Who will be interested in your product and why? What benefits does your product offer them?

Don’t go for the sale in your ad! You are at a disadvantage because you can’t list all your products’ wonderful benefits in the space allowed. Also, there is only a small percentage of any Ezine audience that is ready to buy your product at the exact moment they view your ad. Yes, maybe they should be, but most people today live in the moment and if this isn’t the time they want to buy then they aren’t going to buy, end of story.

But it doesn’t have to be the end of the story. If you go for the soft sell approach your target consumer is much more likely to click on your link and then you’ve got the chance to go for the hard sell-again and again!

Here’s an example. I’m selling a product called the Preschool Prep Power Pack. It’s an educational CD for preschoolers. Now I could go for the hard sell in my promotion and I would make some sales but a lot of people who really might be interested won’t even look at my site and product. However, I’ve chose to go the soft sell approach. Instead of selling my product in my ads, my ads offer two FREE items. I offer a free newsletter (Preschoolers Learn More) offering tips about preparing preschoolers for kindergarten. This is my target market for my product. The folks who subscribe also receive a free ABC-123 coloring book. Why wouldn’t the parent of a preschooler subscribe, right?

But what’s in it for me as a business person? A lot! Think about it. I now have the freely offered contact information for my target market. Now I can regularly email them information about my product. I’m confident they will buy eventually because my product provides a solution to something that concerns them-or they wouldn’t have subscribed in the first place!

Another common mistake is not giving your ad campaign enough time to work.

Studies show it takes prospects an average of seven exposures to your promotion before they take the bait. Even after they have clicked through to your site visitors may need to visit your site as many as three times before they buy from you. So make sure you keep that offer in front of them. That means it may well pay to take the long-term package versus a one-shot ad.

People run through their emails rapidly and delete things they wish they hadn’t. Make their wish come true! Give them a second, third, fourth chance. The formula is–when you’re sick and tired of it, the public is just beginning to hear it.

Just because you’ve bought ad space doesn’t mean you have to utilize every pixel or character-space. Short, punchy lines that do not use up every available space are more effective. Think about the reader scanning down the page or screen. What will catch their eye and make them stop scanning and actually read? White space is your friend so don’t squander it. Use it to set off your important message.

Make sure you apply the same principal to your urls and e-mail addresses as well. Nothing can make an ad look more cluttered than giant web addresses with a complicated string of numbers and letters. If you have to use an address like that (perhaps for your affiliate code, for example) then it might be wise to use a redirect. There are numerous free services out there (snipurl.com for exmple) although perhaps it might be a good idea to use a page from your own web site with a redirect programmed in

USE YOUR HEAD

Your headline is the most important part of your ad. This is usually the line that determines whether the skimming reader will stop or skip ahead.

Some of the proven headline formulas include:

1. Ask the reader a question: “Are you worried about filing your

tax return this year?”

2. Tell the reader how to do something: “How to buy a

car without getting a lemon.”

3. Provide a testimonial: “Big Al saved me $200 last month. Thanks, Cindy Lou from Paducah, Kentucky.”

4. Make a command. Turn your most important benefit into a commanding

headline. “Stop rushing through life.” “Make more money this month.” “Feel better about yourself.”

5. Important news makes a good headline. “Max Electronics just went international!”

6. Start the clock: “Buyers who act before midnight Tuesday will save an extra $50!”

7. Give the reader something free: “Free whatsit for the first 100 visitors!”

DON’T FORGET TO TELL THEM WHAT TO DO!

It sounds almost ridiculous, but simply giving clear, specific directions about what you want the reader to do can increase the response to your ads.

Click here to find out more: whatsit.com

Subscribe by emailing subscribewhatsit.com

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SET YOUR BUDGET

One of the most difficult things to decide for any business person is how much money to spend on promotion. There really is one simple way to determine the answer. How much is a customer worth to you? That tells you a great deal about how much you can afford to spend on advertising.

The simple formula to calculate the net worth of a visitor is: Net Profit divided by Conversion Rate.

First, what is your net profit on an average sale? Let’s say $10 to make it easy. (Hey, I’m an English professor, I need to keep it simple!)

Then consider what your conversion rate is for visitors to become customers. Let’s say one visitor out of 50 becomes a customer. (This makes your conversion rate 50 as you need 50 customers to make a sale)

With this example, a visitor is worth $0.50 to you. ($10 divided by 50)

So if you spend $100 on an advertising campaign that draws in 1000 visitors then you made $400 on that campaign.

SET REALISTIC GOALS

This issue is really about control. Yes, if you could control things that you would have a high sell through but that isn’t always going to happen. In fact, for most advertisers that isn’t going to happen. However, if your goal is to capture customers then you are much more likely to match your goal or even exceed it. And in the end a customer is worth a lot more to you than a sale because a customer can represent many sales over years to come-sales that were fairly easy to achieve.

As frustrating as it may be, advertising is usually about long-term versus short-term benefits. Your ad simply serves as a lure to draw people into your site or long-term promotion. Once you’ve pulled them in then you need to sell them. So it is not really fair to judge an ad campaign on simple sales.

The success of an ad campaign should be measured by one or two elements only-first, how many people followed up on your offer (click-through rate) and second, how many of those visitors were you able to convert into customers (conversion rate).

Over time you will be able to judge where the weak link in your chain of customer creation exists and work to fix it.

Low click-through rate? Then it is probably your offer. You are not giving readers enough incentive to follow through. What is in it for them to click on your offer? Remember you are selling benefits!

Low conversion rate? Then perhaps you are not attracting the right sort of visitor. Target your incentive (the free offer, for example) to match your target audience. See my example in SOFT SELL.