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Archive for the ‘Site Promotion’ Category

Automating your online business is one of the most important steps you can take to insure your success on the internet.

If you have been on the internet for any time at all, you know that there are just too many tasks to do each day to be really efficient and productive with them all.

Learning to delegate some of those routine, daily activities is one way to insure your site’s success and to give you much more time in the day for the most important task which is that of promotion and marketing your site.

HERE ARE 5 SIMPLE WAYS TO AUTOMATE TODAY:

1) USE AUTO-RESPONDERS:

Probably one of the best-known and popular ways to handle routine messages to inquirers is the use of auto-responders.

It is simple and easy to set up your messages which usually involve several follow-up messages to remind your visitors what you are offering and how to find your site again.

Here are some free ones:

http://www.freeautobot.com/ (ad free also.)

http://www.getresponse.com/

http://www.sendfree.com/’

http://www.sendthisfree.com/

2) MAILING LIST MANAGEMENT:

If you are trying to run your own newsletter, handling the process by yourself can eat up a lot of valuable time. In the beginning this may be possible, but as your list grows and the tasks involved keep multiplying, your time demands will increase also.

There are lots of ways to manage a mailing list including installing your own scripts and purchasing your own software. Weigh the pros and cons, but be sure and check out the possibility of *farming out* the responsibility to a mailing list service.

Here are some to consider:

http://www.ezinedirector.com/

http://www.mail-list.com/

http://www.zinester.com/ (free and paid versions)

Free ones include:

http://groups.yahoo.com/

http://www.topica.com/

3) USE SOFTWARE:

There are many software options available depending upon your work online. Here are some possible software applications available. Just do a search online.

~Creating links to your site and others.
~HTML editors
~Ad swaps
~Promotion
~Subscription management
~Survey forms

4) PAYMENT SYSTEMS:

Well, this is just a no-brainer. It is just too simple not to do this one.

Having an automated payment system that allows you to accept credit card payments for your products or services and is something that everyone has to have to be successful online.

Here are a couple of third-party ones that I use and recommend:

ClickBank– http://www.ClickBank.com/
PayPal– http://www.PayPal.com/

5) AD TRACKING SYSTEM:

If you are going to advertise your products and/or services online, then it is critical that you track your results.

Knowing how many hits you got to your site is nice, but it won’t take care of your questions like, “Where did my traffic and sales come from?”

Here are some ad tracking systems. (Some offer free versions.)

http://www.BusiToolz.com/

http://www.hypertracker.com/

http://www.adminder.com/

Implementing these five time-saving helpers is a very important benchmark in moving your business into a phase that will free up some time to insure your success online.

Best of luck with your promotional efforts.

Admin

What keeps you up at night?

It’s a good question for you to ask yourself once in a while. For most eCommerce entrepreneurs one of the answers is the thought of revenue lost as potential customers abandon your web site without buying. That’s 97.4% or so of your visitors, according to the accepted industry average conversion rate. Are you confident that your site converts visitors into customers at the best rate possible? If so, you’re probably getting a better night’s sleep than most.

If not, you’re probably tossing and turning, thinking about ways to increase web site sales. You might think you have already tried every little conversion rate optimization tip or trick. Do you have a strong “Call to Action” benefit? Have you ever tested different messaging with tools such as split A/B landing page optimization? The web is always changing. Unless you are sure that there is no room for improvement, its clearly time to consider how you can take your website to the next level to increase online sales with a value added promotional benefit.

1. Bait your prospects with the right cheese.

Online shoppers are more sophisticated today. You should assume that your prospects will evaluate three to four competitors before deciding to purchase. You need to stand out and provide the right bait to get your prospects to stop and buy at your site, rather than move on to a competitor.. In some cases, merchants need to find a special kind of cheese that will get the mouse to click on certain shipping options or up-sells. Getting creative in what bait you use is what will increase conversion rates if you know what type of cheese will make that mouse click.

2. Create a value-added offer.

Sometimes you need to go beyond your product line to find a potential partner that could benefit from a cross promotion. Some gift items can be presented as bonus offerings that would bring a high perceived added value, such as. Phone cards with a volume discount. Such an item could even be co-branded as a special value- added thank you gift.

3. Offer free gifts that create viral marketing buzz

Think of a gift or promotional item that prospects will keep on them at all times such as inside their purse or wallet. Giving this item away is what creates the viral marketing buzz for increased “buzz”, brand awareness, and ultimately more Internet sales. The example of a free co-branded phone card giveaway is a great way to get your customers to carry your brand at all times and increase repeat orders and referrals. Gifts like phone cards are especially effective because they are designed for repeated use. As a result, the customer will be exposed to your brand for the seven plus times experts say are necessary before a prospect is ready to convert to a sale or reorder. It’s also likely to more than carry its weight in referrals.

4. Create a personalized benefit

Always look for ways to personalize your offer. Instead of “we” or” I”. talk to the customer individually as “you”. Make your prospects feel special, elite and make it personal in any way possible when giving away a value added benefit. Personalize your gift when possible and find a partner with whom you could cross promote a co-branded personalized items.

5. Give away a high perceived value item:

Offering something for FREE is always nice. But the word “free” can carry negative connotations. You always want to keep the perceived value of any gift or offer high.

Example:

Get a Free phone card with your order today

Vs.

Receive a complimentary phone card worth more than 1 hour of free calling to the U.S. and many other countries as a personal thank you gift for your order today.

Grab your prospects today, and give them an incentive to buy on your site. Now its time for you to find your special “cheese” that will get your prospect’s mouse to click on your personalized high perceived-value benefit.

3 Way Links

There has been a lot of talk over the past few months, even more so with the latest Google update, about the value of linking. What types of links are better, which types are still seen as value added to a website. Well if the truth be told, the only people who can tell us are not saying anything. I am speaking of the engineers at Google and the other search engines, the very people who are the one who determine the value of all linking.

According to some people at the various search engine optimization companies, reciprocal links are no longer being considered when determining link popularity for a website. Just like so many of the other theories search engine optimization, outside of the engineering labs, no one really knows for certain. I have read some of the reports that have been issued on this topic and these reports are far from conclusive, offering little more than contradictory examples taken over several days of testing.

So aside from a wait and see what happens next stance what can we do? Rather than adopt a reactive position to this uncertainty I feel that it would be far better to move forward and be proactive by changing my linking strategies. As long as there is any kind of controversy regarding reciprocating links, there really isn’t much point in relying on them to help build link popularity.

Personally, I still place a value in reciprocating links as a valid means of trading traffic and will continue to utilize them however, as more and more misinformation gets spread over the Internet it will become increasingly more difficult to exchange links with quality sites. So what is a webmaster to do now that this style of linking seems to be on its way out? Simple – adapt or disappear off the search engine radar. Well Google’s radar anyway.

For my consultation clients I am going to suggest that they be extremely selective on who they link with now. Spend more time evaluating the potential linking partners. If the site measure up to their standards of web development and the theme of the linking site matches their site in some manner then, go ahead and trade links.

Before they trade links with any site they should make sure that the partner site is placing their link on a page that has some “on topic” content rather than a page that contains just random links. If possible only trade links with sites that employ some form of directory system so that all of the links contained on any given page share a similar theme. I will also be suggesting that they set up their own directory style system broken into categories and every page in each category should contain a topical block of text that ties all potential links together. Setting up their own system like this will make linking with their site more desirable.

Another strategy I will be advising my clients on is the use of 3 way links. For those of you who do not know what three way links are here is a brief, simplistic description: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site A. Pretty straight forward eh? The process is pretty straight forward but the application often is not. The only way three way links work is when all the parties involved are honest and are willing to maintain those links.

Recently I tested one of my sites and discovered that approximately 80% of the sites I traded links with were not honoring our agreement. Now I fully expected that there would be some shiftless webmasters out there who would be less than trustworthy but, I never expected the number to be so high.

Although reciprocating linking isn’t too difficult of a task it does require a certain amount of time and effort. To have some unscrupulous webmaster cheat you out of your back link in your reciprocated deal is bad enough but to have one do that to your site in a 3 way link deal is even worse.

You see a 3 way linking deal requires slightly more effort due to the necessity of documenting all of the information regarding this agreement. If you are going to go through all of that effort to set up a three way linking agreement you certainly do not want one of the partners to sour the deal by dropping one of the links without notifying any of the other partners.

The extra work required to establish a successful 3 way linking agreement isn’t too difficult, it is all about record keeping. After you have researched the two sites that you think would make good candidates for your three way link swap, you are going to need to contact them and invite them into the exchange. More than likely you are going to have to lay out the plan and explain to them why a 3 way link deal is good and make sure that they understand that the only way it works is if everybody involved is open, honest and up front about everything.

As part of the research for the 3 way trade you are going to want to make sure that all three sites are in some way related. Not necessarily in direct competition with each other but connected in some way; much like the way a restaurant site would be similar to a hotel site and the hotel site might be similar to a pub site. Pretty simple really as a hotel can contain both a pub or a restaurant, it isn’t too much of a stretch to think that these 3 service based businesses could be related somehow.

Once you have the three sites picked that you would like to trade links with make sure you research them thoroughly. The things you want to be checking for are;

Page Rank
IP
Quality
Age of the sites
Current link popularity

Page Rank
When checking Page Rank you are looking to make sure that everybody is of a similar PR. Don’t get greedy and automatically suggest that your site should be linked from the site with the highest PR. In fact it might be a good idea to suggest that the higher PR site should link to the lowest PR site. Doing this may make the deal seem a little sweeter.

IP
It would be best if all 3 sites were on different IP addresses. Sites that are all residing on the same IP may be misconstrued as being part of a link farm strategy. Why take the chance?

Quality
This one should be a no brainer. If the site isn’t of a quality that you would recommend to your friends or family to visit why would you want to risk the credibility of your site by suggesting that other people go to it? Rule of thumb here on quality is this; if you wouldn’t bookmark the site for yourself, don’t link to it.

Age of the Sites
The age of the site is important because of the alleged age delay sandbox effect in Google’s algorithms. If the site is too new then you may have to wait for the site to mature before any weight is given to the out going links from that site. You should try to make sure that the sites you include in your 3 way linking are at least 1 year old or more. No guarantees that sites over a year are going to be mature enough but at least the odds are better.

Current Link Popularity
The reason you will want to check out the current link popularity is more about the investigation into their linking history. Do they currently trade links with sites that may be considered as being from a bad neighborhood. Do they link to gambling, porn or FFA sites? If they do and they are not part of the gambling or porn world and your site isn’t either then DO NOT link to them.

Three ways linking in this manner revisits the days when linking was more natural. This type of linking will demonstrate to the search engines that you value your linking recommendations and therefore the search engines should value them as well. If the search engines trust your site to make these recommendations then there is no way that the applied due diligence will get you in trouble with the search engines.