We all make mistakes. The key, of course, is catching them early and correcting them before the damage is irreversible.
Retirement planning, with all its moving parts – finances, families, health care and legal issues – presents lots of opportunities to get things wrong.
With that in mind, we asked some pros to talk about the more common mistakes they see these days from clients walking in the door.
1. Misreading Bonds
Lawrence Glazer, at Mayflower Advisors in Boston, meets with retirees who are hesitant to own stocks because they don't want to lose money. But they don't have the same concerns about bonds.
"It's a fallacy to think you can't lose money in bonds," he says.
A bond is basically a loan to an issuer who promises to pay interest on the loan, and ultimately return the principal to investors. One risk is credit risk – that the bond issuer won't make its interest payments, or even be able to return all the borrowed money.
As investors in Lehman Brothers debt found out last year, outside of government–backed debt, defaults can and do happen.
A more common risk is that bond prices fall, most commonly as interest rates rise. The degree to which bond prices rise or fall depends not just on the kind of bond but also on the maturity. Longer–term bonds are generally more prone to price swings than short–term debt.
With interest rates so low these days – a U.S. Treasury two–year note yields just 0.7% – many investors are stretching for higher yields on debt with longer maturities and greater credit risk, such as junk bonds.
In a rising–rate environment, losses on even "safe" debt such as U.S. Treasurys "may come as a shock to investors," says Mr. Glazer.
2. Overspending
"People show up, in their 50s, with no retirement plan and $500,000 saved up and think they are going to retire and spend $5,000 per month," says Ronald Myers, a financial planner in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. But even if they earn 8% a year on their investments, at that rate they would run out of money in 10 years.
Part of the equation is having a realistic spending budget and matching that with a sustainable withdrawal rate. Most financial advisers recommend a 4% annual withdrawal rate.
But Mr. Myers says retirees often don't factor in two other variables. The first is inflation. "At a 4% inflation rate, your expenses are going to be double in 20 years," he notes. Medical costs – a big expense for retirees – are rising much faster than the overall rate of inflation.
Second, retirees often don't allow cushions for unexpected big expenses or hefty investment losses. "You'd better understand what's going to happen if your accounts go down in value," Mr. Myers says, "and whether you're going to be able to adjust on the fly."
3. Forgetting Names
A big concern for many retirees is ensuring that when they die or are incapacitated their property and savings go to the intended recipients and that decisions are in responsible hands. That means keeping a will, health–care proxy and the beneficiaries on retirement accounts and insurance policies up to date.
But many people wrongly assume that a will takes care of all those things, says New York attorney Philip Bouklas. In fact, the laws and regulations are much more complicated. For example, parents will often add one child to their bank or investment accounts for convenience. But irrespective of what it says in a will, when the parent dies the account passes to just the child whose name is on the account.
Another common misstep Mr. Bouklas sees is not naming a beneficiary on a retirement account.
When the account holder dies without a designated beneficiary, the account is distributed to the estate and passed on according to the will. But to do so, the estate has to take the distribution from the account in a lump sum and pay income taxes. That's less beneficial to the heirs. If they were named as beneficiaries, heirs would be able to draw down the account slowly over their lifetime.
4. Failing to Talk
"People don't like to talk about their own mortality and their own infirmities," says Bernard Krooks, a New York attorney who specializes in elder law. "I have a bunch of clients who say they're not going to die," he jokes.
It's not just what will happen in the event of death that families should discuss, but also long–term health–care plans. People often assume that they'll have plenty of time to make arrangements for long–term care or discuss care–giving plans with their children. But a stroke or accident can happen at any time.
These discussions should even include unpleasant conversations, such as a parent explaining to a child why a sibling is getting a bigger share of an inheritance. It may not be an easy conversation, "but it's less likely to result in problems after the fact," says Mr. Krooks.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Income System
Friday, December 11, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
The low down on Affiliate Marketing
Here’s a basic understanding of Affiliate marketing and what you need to know.
Online Affiliate Marketing is a derivative of Internet marketing where the promoter gets paid for every customer or sales provided by him. Affiliate marketing is the preferred marketing avenue for thousands of Internet marketing experts.
In this type of marketing, affiliate management companies, in-house affiliate managers and third party vendors are effectively utilized to use Email Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, RRS Capturing and Display Advertising for the success of the product.
All the web traffic can be tracked with the help of a third party software in most cases. A lot of work is involved in this process. More than most people understand.
At first marketing by this method involved lots of spamming, false advertising, trademark infringement, etc. But, after the invention of complex algorithms and advance security this has been regularized to make it safer for doing business and shopping online.
This even led to the better scrutinizing of the terms and conditions by the merchants. Affiliate marketing became more profiting with the opening of more opportunities but at the same time it also increased the competition in marketing.
Due to this pressure in house affiliate programs for merchants became a thing of the past and were replaced by out-sourced programs.
The companies that offered this service have expert affiliate and network program managers who have various affiliate program management techniques. These affiliate networks have publishers associated with them who help them with the advertising part.
Affiliate marketing was started by cdnow.com who had music oriented websites. They placed list of music albums on their site and they paid others if they put those links in their websites when a visitor bought their album through their site.
The first company to link with cdnow.com was Geffen Records. Two months later, Amazon was offered by a woman that she would sell Amazon’s books on her website and she should be paid a certain percentage in return if she sold Amazon’s books through her site.
They liked the idea and started the Amazon associates program. It was more of a commission program where they received a commission if a visitor clicked their links and banners on other’s site and bought anything through it.
Since its invention, the affiliate network has been adopted by various businesses like travel, education, telecom, mobile, gaming, personal finance, retail, and subscription sites, the most common being adult and gambling sectors. In the US alone, affiliate marketing produced 4.6 Billion.
The compensation methods used are Cost per sale (CPS), Cost per action (CPA), Cost per mile (CPM) and Cost per click (CPC). The first two are the more famous methods today.
This is because in CPM and CPC, the visitor which turns up on a particular website might not be the targeted audience and a click would be enough to generate commission. CPS and CPA have a compulsion that the visitor not only clicks on the link but also buys something or signs up for some service after it which proves that he is among the targeted audience.
Only in the above case the affiliate gets paid. So the affiliate should try to send as much targeted traffic as possible to the advertiser in order to increase his/her returns and for this reason affiliate marketing is also known as performance marketing because it totally depends on the performance of the affiliate.
The affiliate team can be differentiated from a sales team from the nature of their jobs. The job of the affiliate team is to drag targeted traffic to a point and from that point it’s the job of the sales team to influence the visitor to buy the product or the service.
Affiliate marketing can be extremely effective if used correctly.
This is a very effective kind of method because the money is being paid only when results have been achieved. The publisher incurs all the cost except that of initial setup and development of the program, which is incurred by the merchant. Many businesses give credit to this method of marketing for their success.
I hope my article has given all you Internet Marketing beginners a better understanding of how it all works. I wish you incredible success. Feel free to browse my more advanced articles on Affiliate marketing and social media.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
****************************************************************************
http://www.chadtimothy.com/ Chad Timothy is the CEO of the Software Billions Club in Portland, OR. Having started off in Internet Marketing in 1998 Chad Timothy is considered a respected pioneer. He is committed to helping others by writing about what he has learned about strategic Internet Marketing.
In addition to developing scores of websites and online stores and consulting with many companies large and small, he is the author of hundreds of articles and more than a dozen books on Internet marketing and e-commerce.
The Software Billions Club can be found at http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Watch for our new Internet Billions Club membership site to launch soon http://www.internetbillionsclub.com
Online Affiliate Marketing is a derivative of Internet marketing where the promoter gets paid for every customer or sales provided by him. Affiliate marketing is the preferred marketing avenue for thousands of Internet marketing experts.
In this type of marketing, affiliate management companies, in-house affiliate managers and third party vendors are effectively utilized to use Email Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, RRS Capturing and Display Advertising for the success of the product.
All the web traffic can be tracked with the help of a third party software in most cases. A lot of work is involved in this process. More than most people understand.
At first marketing by this method involved lots of spamming, false advertising, trademark infringement, etc. But, after the invention of complex algorithms and advance security this has been regularized to make it safer for doing business and shopping online.
This even led to the better scrutinizing of the terms and conditions by the merchants. Affiliate marketing became more profiting with the opening of more opportunities but at the same time it also increased the competition in marketing.
Due to this pressure in house affiliate programs for merchants became a thing of the past and were replaced by out-sourced programs.
The companies that offered this service have expert affiliate and network program managers who have various affiliate program management techniques. These affiliate networks have publishers associated with them who help them with the advertising part.
Affiliate marketing was started by cdnow.com who had music oriented websites. They placed list of music albums on their site and they paid others if they put those links in their websites when a visitor bought their album through their site.
The first company to link with cdnow.com was Geffen Records. Two months later, Amazon was offered by a woman that she would sell Amazon’s books on her website and she should be paid a certain percentage in return if she sold Amazon’s books through her site.
They liked the idea and started the Amazon associates program. It was more of a commission program where they received a commission if a visitor clicked their links and banners on other’s site and bought anything through it.
Since its invention, the affiliate network has been adopted by various businesses like travel, education, telecom, mobile, gaming, personal finance, retail, and subscription sites, the most common being adult and gambling sectors. In the US alone, affiliate marketing produced 4.6 Billion.
The compensation methods used are Cost per sale (CPS), Cost per action (CPA), Cost per mile (CPM) and Cost per click (CPC). The first two are the more famous methods today.
This is because in CPM and CPC, the visitor which turns up on a particular website might not be the targeted audience and a click would be enough to generate commission. CPS and CPA have a compulsion that the visitor not only clicks on the link but also buys something or signs up for some service after it which proves that he is among the targeted audience.
Only in the above case the affiliate gets paid. So the affiliate should try to send as much targeted traffic as possible to the advertiser in order to increase his/her returns and for this reason affiliate marketing is also known as performance marketing because it totally depends on the performance of the affiliate.
The affiliate team can be differentiated from a sales team from the nature of their jobs. The job of the affiliate team is to drag targeted traffic to a point and from that point it’s the job of the sales team to influence the visitor to buy the product or the service.
Affiliate marketing can be extremely effective if used correctly.
This is a very effective kind of method because the money is being paid only when results have been achieved. The publisher incurs all the cost except that of initial setup and development of the program, which is incurred by the merchant. Many businesses give credit to this method of marketing for their success.
I hope my article has given all you Internet Marketing beginners a better understanding of how it all works. I wish you incredible success. Feel free to browse my more advanced articles on Affiliate marketing and social media.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
****************************************************************************
http://www.chadtimothy.com/ Chad Timothy is the CEO of the Software Billions Club in Portland, OR. Having started off in Internet Marketing in 1998 Chad Timothy is considered a respected pioneer. He is committed to helping others by writing about what he has learned about strategic Internet Marketing.
In addition to developing scores of websites and online stores and consulting with many companies large and small, he is the author of hundreds of articles and more than a dozen books on Internet marketing and e-commerce.
The Software Billions Club can be found at http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Watch for our new Internet Billions Club membership site to launch soon http://www.internetbillionsclub.com
My Top four Techniques for getting the absolute best results from your Google AdSense Ads
These tips can help you boost your AdSense efforts with little additional effort. The money that you make from Google AdSense program is 100% dependent on you and your efforts.
Here are some tips that you can use to get the best results from your Google AdSense Ads:
1. You should be using channels: Channels help you conduct a better analysis of the performance of your Google AdSense Ads and so much more. Channels allow you to monitor what web pages are making more money and which ones are not doing as well. It's true, custom channels can be used for conducting analysis on several aspects all at the same time. You can use this analysis for making amendments to your AdSense Ads or website content in order to get better results.
2. Google Ad customization and positioning: Size, Shape and color are the 3 aspects of your AdSense Ads that you can easily control and customize in a way that the Ads don’t look out of place when served on your website. You can either make your Ads stand-out from the rest of the content on your webpage or you can make them blend with the overall webpage.
Moreover, you can identify the hot spots on your site and position your Google Ads accordingly. Ad customization and Ad positioning are, in fact, the best ways to attract more clicks to your AdSense Ads.
3. Google AdSense Content quality: ‘The best generally overcomes the rest’ – is a very true saying. If you host quality content on your website and provide regular updates to your visitors, you can expect more traffic to your website. This will in turn lead to more ad impressions and possibly more clicks.
4. I recommend Using AdSense Ads on all pages: If you have multiple web pages on your site, you should add AdSense Ads on all of them. Since the visitors can enter your website through a number of different pages, having AdSense Ads on all the pages will surely increase your earnings.
Here's a bonus section I wrote to help you with AdSense feeds. Tips for AdSense for feeds:
Google AdSense for feeds is currently in beta testing phase and the programmers are just waiting for the flood gates to open in order to start making money with the AdSense Ads in their feeds. Here are the top 3 tips that will help you fully capitalize on this revenue earning opportunity:
Google Content quality: You will earn Google AdSense revenue only if people subscribe to your feed. The more subscriptions you attain, the better are your chances of success with AdSense for feeds. Since most people would be looking for quality content, you need to make sure that your feed contains up-to-date quality information that is presented to the users in an easy-to-understand language. Besides that, the feeds should be free from grammatical and spelling mistakes.
Google Content quantity: Include as much content in your feeds as you possibly can. The more the better. Remember Google loves content. Again, the aim is prove that the feed is useful and comprehensive (so that more users subscribe to it). If you feel that the complete article cannot go into the feed, include a good summary of the article.
Limit the ad units: If the users find that your feeds contain too much Ads, they might not subscribe to your feeds at all (and the whole purpose of feeds would get defeated). In order to ensure that you get good subscription to your feeds, you should limit the ad units to one per feed. Another good way of ensuring that your feeds don’t look like an advertising medium is to place the Ads either at the end of article or after having sufficiently discussed the topic.
So, get ready for enhancing your ‘AdSense for feeds’ revenue with these sure fire tips. I wish you luck. Feel free to check back for further updates from me on Google marketing.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
****************************************************************************
http://www.chadtimothy.com/ Chad Timothy is the CEO of the Software Billions Club in Portland, OR. Having started off in Internet Marketing in 1998 Chad Timothy is considered a respected pioneer. He is committed to helping others by writing about what he has learned about strategic Internet Marketing.
In addition to developing scores of websites and online stores and consulting with many companies large and small, he is the author of hundreds of articles and more than a dozen books on Internet marketing and e-commerce.
The Software Billions Club can be found at http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Watch for our new Internet Billions Club membership site to launch soon http://www.internetbillionsclub.com
Here are some tips that you can use to get the best results from your Google AdSense Ads:
1. You should be using channels: Channels help you conduct a better analysis of the performance of your Google AdSense Ads and so much more. Channels allow you to monitor what web pages are making more money and which ones are not doing as well. It's true, custom channels can be used for conducting analysis on several aspects all at the same time. You can use this analysis for making amendments to your AdSense Ads or website content in order to get better results.
2. Google Ad customization and positioning: Size, Shape and color are the 3 aspects of your AdSense Ads that you can easily control and customize in a way that the Ads don’t look out of place when served on your website. You can either make your Ads stand-out from the rest of the content on your webpage or you can make them blend with the overall webpage.
Moreover, you can identify the hot spots on your site and position your Google Ads accordingly. Ad customization and Ad positioning are, in fact, the best ways to attract more clicks to your AdSense Ads.
3. Google AdSense Content quality: ‘The best generally overcomes the rest’ – is a very true saying. If you host quality content on your website and provide regular updates to your visitors, you can expect more traffic to your website. This will in turn lead to more ad impressions and possibly more clicks.
4. I recommend Using AdSense Ads on all pages: If you have multiple web pages on your site, you should add AdSense Ads on all of them. Since the visitors can enter your website through a number of different pages, having AdSense Ads on all the pages will surely increase your earnings.
Here's a bonus section I wrote to help you with AdSense feeds. Tips for AdSense for feeds:
Google AdSense for feeds is currently in beta testing phase and the programmers are just waiting for the flood gates to open in order to start making money with the AdSense Ads in their feeds. Here are the top 3 tips that will help you fully capitalize on this revenue earning opportunity:
Google Content quality: You will earn Google AdSense revenue only if people subscribe to your feed. The more subscriptions you attain, the better are your chances of success with AdSense for feeds. Since most people would be looking for quality content, you need to make sure that your feed contains up-to-date quality information that is presented to the users in an easy-to-understand language. Besides that, the feeds should be free from grammatical and spelling mistakes.
Google Content quantity: Include as much content in your feeds as you possibly can. The more the better. Remember Google loves content. Again, the aim is prove that the feed is useful and comprehensive (so that more users subscribe to it). If you feel that the complete article cannot go into the feed, include a good summary of the article.
Limit the ad units: If the users find that your feeds contain too much Ads, they might not subscribe to your feeds at all (and the whole purpose of feeds would get defeated). In order to ensure that you get good subscription to your feeds, you should limit the ad units to one per feed. Another good way of ensuring that your feeds don’t look like an advertising medium is to place the Ads either at the end of article or after having sufficiently discussed the topic.
So, get ready for enhancing your ‘AdSense for feeds’ revenue with these sure fire tips. I wish you luck. Feel free to check back for further updates from me on Google marketing.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
****************************************************************************
http://www.chadtimothy.com/ Chad Timothy is the CEO of the Software Billions Club in Portland, OR. Having started off in Internet Marketing in 1998 Chad Timothy is considered a respected pioneer. He is committed to helping others by writing about what he has learned about strategic Internet Marketing.
In addition to developing scores of websites and online stores and consulting with many companies large and small, he is the author of hundreds of articles and more than a dozen books on Internet marketing and e-commerce.
The Software Billions Club can be found at http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Watch for our new Internet Billions Club membership site to launch soon http://www.internetbillionsclub.com
9 AdWord Mistakes & How to Fix Them
Google AdWords is the greatest direct response advertising medium ever created.This fact has been recognized by more than one national business magazine, newspaper, and marketing guru. Some business owners have Google AdWords to thank for their entire existence and growth, while others have replaced their traditional advertising budget at a fraction of the cost to advertise on search engines with better results. Since 2001 these classifieds-style, "Sponsored Links" seen above and alongside organic search listings have created millionaries, they have also lost advertisers millions. With a low barrier-to-entry, many business owners and marketing managers have tried their hand at Google's pay-per-click system. Some have soared, while others have hopelessly wasted big bucks without knowing why. Having looked at dozens of accounts over the years and managed over a million dollars in clicks, I've seen the costly mistakes often made. Below are eight of the most common with solutions.
1. Always Bidding to Be Number One - Ego bidding can cause expensive click wars. Always trying to be #1 over your competitors on one specific keyword just to be #1 wastes time and money unless you know your keywords' true value or cost-per-conversion. For high volume, competitive, high cost clicks, make sure you know your keywords' cost-per-conversion.
Solution: Generally, positions 3 - 10 have higher conversion rates because they receive less impulsive and irrelevant clicks. In recent years relevancy has been playing a larger role (Quality Score), and being #1 is not solely dependent on maximum bid. Calculate how much a customer or lead is worth to you and don't spend more than that per lead (excluding the first month of testing or so). Swallow your pride, mind your ROI, and let your competitors waste their time and money on bidding wars. The one exception being when the keyword is the name of your company.
2. Unrelated Keyword Clumping - Organizing similar phrases and keywords into similar and specific adgroups and campaigns is a huge key to scaling your AdWord's account success. You're not organizing just for the sake of organization; your account should be structured in a way that you are able to give you a quick "bird's eye view" of any one of your particular adgroups or campaigns' relative success.
Solution: Don't put a long list of unrelated terms and phrases in the same adgroup. Organize and stratify your adgroups using what I call the "Two Word Relevancy Litmus Test" where all phrases in one particular adgroup have at least a two word base commonality. This will create adgroup naming conventions which are close to WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) as possible.
3. Neglecting Conversion Tracking Codes - Google AdWords provides up to four codes which should be correlated with an action a user takes on your website: form submission, shopping cart sale, whitepaper download, contact page view, etc. These codes allow you to calculate a much more important number than traffic -- your cost-per-conversion or even cost-per-acquisition.
One click may cost you .25, but it may take 100 clicks before someone fills out a contact form, resulting in a cost-per- conversion of $25. This is a crucial number in which you should base your bid amount. Based on your closing ratio you can then calculate your cost-per-acquisition or advertising cost-per-customer.
Solution: Add the provided conversion tracking codes to your website before you spend a dime on AdWords. Label each action. Put one on the "Thank you" page after a contact form submission. If you have an ecommerce shopping cart, place a code on the receipt page after an online sale is made. You will then know which campaigns, adgroups, keywords, even ads attract the most, and most highly qualified, leads.
4. Using One Catch-All Ad - Non-specific ads which attempt to sell on generalities and features, using superlatives and hyperbole combined with a cliché call to action do not work. These ads under-utilize the direct response nature of the Internet combined with flexibility of matching keyword relevance to ad copy. Search Engine users are typically later in the buying cycle because he/she is looking verses mass marketing which advertises to a much less targeted audience.
Solution: Write tight, keyword relevant ads in small adgroups for every area of your service or product categories. Get the user to take the next step closer, which might not always be a sale. Signing up for newsletter, Ezine, to receive a free whitepaper or ebook, all have huge long term value if a relationship is cultivated.
5. Pointing All Ads to the Homepage - Only linking ads to your homepage is not wise. If a user has to hunt too long for the service or product he/she saw mentioned in your ad's headline, your potential customer is gone and will never return.
Solution: Create specific ads to link to interior landing pages having content that specifically relates to the keyword phrase/ad. Giving the user what he/she was looking for quickly makes it less likely they will leave because you made them think too much. Categorizing your services into separate pages and having a specific ad land exactly on what the user is looking for combined with a convincing argument and a way for him/her to receive more information will dramatically increase your conversion rate. Don't make your prospect hunt, that's what a search engine is for, not your website.
6. Neglecting Negative Keywords - Adding negative keywords to your adgroup or campaign means your ads won't display for search queries containing phase combinations which use irelevant terms. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI.
Solution: Find negative keywords by using common sense, keyword research tools, and the Search Query Performance report over time.
7. Mingling Search & Contextual Campaigns - Did you know more than half of Google ads are not served on Google or any of their Search Partners (ASK, Dogpile, AOL)? They are served on relevant sites surrounding articles, blog posts, news, and other content (aka "Ads by Google"). You have the choice to opt out of this non-search network of sites. Since these two arenas are very different and require different strategies you should address each network one at a time.
Solution: When first starting out with your AdWords uncheck the Content Network by choosing to "Edit Settings" on the campaign level. Once you have achieved an acceptable cost/conversion for the Google + Search Network, then duplicate your campaigns using the AdWords Editor and have "Content Only" campaigns, in which you will most like want to test new ads on as well.
8. Trusting IP Geo-targeting - 20% of the time or more of the time a geo-graphically tagged IP address is either wrong or not set, this can lead to irrelevant or out of area traffic less likely to do business with your local services.
Solution: Create two similar campaigns, one with generic keywords without the city name, the other with generic keywords plus the city name. Target the first campaign using Google AdWords' geo-targeting. Manually target the other to a larger region (state or country), but only buy keywords which have the phrase + the city name. This will cover all your bases and bring you more highly targeted traffic.
9. Accepting the Status Quo - Once a conversion rate has been measured, some site owners do not understand they should keep trying to improve this number by experimenting and testing several variables.
Solution: Always be trying to improve it by A/B split testing ad copy as well as landing page graphics and headlines in order to constantly improve conversion rates.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
1. Always Bidding to Be Number One - Ego bidding can cause expensive click wars. Always trying to be #1 over your competitors on one specific keyword just to be #1 wastes time and money unless you know your keywords' true value or cost-per-conversion. For high volume, competitive, high cost clicks, make sure you know your keywords' cost-per-conversion.
Solution: Generally, positions 3 - 10 have higher conversion rates because they receive less impulsive and irrelevant clicks. In recent years relevancy has been playing a larger role (Quality Score), and being #1 is not solely dependent on maximum bid. Calculate how much a customer or lead is worth to you and don't spend more than that per lead (excluding the first month of testing or so). Swallow your pride, mind your ROI, and let your competitors waste their time and money on bidding wars. The one exception being when the keyword is the name of your company.
2. Unrelated Keyword Clumping - Organizing similar phrases and keywords into similar and specific adgroups and campaigns is a huge key to scaling your AdWord's account success. You're not organizing just for the sake of organization; your account should be structured in a way that you are able to give you a quick "bird's eye view" of any one of your particular adgroups or campaigns' relative success.
Solution: Don't put a long list of unrelated terms and phrases in the same adgroup. Organize and stratify your adgroups using what I call the "Two Word Relevancy Litmus Test" where all phrases in one particular adgroup have at least a two word base commonality. This will create adgroup naming conventions which are close to WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) as possible.
3. Neglecting Conversion Tracking Codes - Google AdWords provides up to four codes which should be correlated with an action a user takes on your website: form submission, shopping cart sale, whitepaper download, contact page view, etc. These codes allow you to calculate a much more important number than traffic -- your cost-per-conversion or even cost-per-acquisition.
One click may cost you .25, but it may take 100 clicks before someone fills out a contact form, resulting in a cost-per- conversion of $25. This is a crucial number in which you should base your bid amount. Based on your closing ratio you can then calculate your cost-per-acquisition or advertising cost-per-customer.
Solution: Add the provided conversion tracking codes to your website before you spend a dime on AdWords. Label each action. Put one on the "Thank you" page after a contact form submission. If you have an ecommerce shopping cart, place a code on the receipt page after an online sale is made. You will then know which campaigns, adgroups, keywords, even ads attract the most, and most highly qualified, leads.
4. Using One Catch-All Ad - Non-specific ads which attempt to sell on generalities and features, using superlatives and hyperbole combined with a cliché call to action do not work. These ads under-utilize the direct response nature of the Internet combined with flexibility of matching keyword relevance to ad copy. Search Engine users are typically later in the buying cycle because he/she is looking verses mass marketing which advertises to a much less targeted audience.
Solution: Write tight, keyword relevant ads in small adgroups for every area of your service or product categories. Get the user to take the next step closer, which might not always be a sale. Signing up for newsletter, Ezine, to receive a free whitepaper or ebook, all have huge long term value if a relationship is cultivated.
5. Pointing All Ads to the Homepage - Only linking ads to your homepage is not wise. If a user has to hunt too long for the service or product he/she saw mentioned in your ad's headline, your potential customer is gone and will never return.
Solution: Create specific ads to link to interior landing pages having content that specifically relates to the keyword phrase/ad. Giving the user what he/she was looking for quickly makes it less likely they will leave because you made them think too much. Categorizing your services into separate pages and having a specific ad land exactly on what the user is looking for combined with a convincing argument and a way for him/her to receive more information will dramatically increase your conversion rate. Don't make your prospect hunt, that's what a search engine is for, not your website.
6. Neglecting Negative Keywords - Adding negative keywords to your adgroup or campaign means your ads won't display for search queries containing phase combinations which use irelevant terms. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI.
Solution: Find negative keywords by using common sense, keyword research tools, and the Search Query Performance report over time.
7. Mingling Search & Contextual Campaigns - Did you know more than half of Google ads are not served on Google or any of their Search Partners (ASK, Dogpile, AOL)? They are served on relevant sites surrounding articles, blog posts, news, and other content (aka "Ads by Google"). You have the choice to opt out of this non-search network of sites. Since these two arenas are very different and require different strategies you should address each network one at a time.
Solution: When first starting out with your AdWords uncheck the Content Network by choosing to "Edit Settings" on the campaign level. Once you have achieved an acceptable cost/conversion for the Google + Search Network, then duplicate your campaigns using the AdWords Editor and have "Content Only" campaigns, in which you will most like want to test new ads on as well.
8. Trusting IP Geo-targeting - 20% of the time or more of the time a geo-graphically tagged IP address is either wrong or not set, this can lead to irrelevant or out of area traffic less likely to do business with your local services.
Solution: Create two similar campaigns, one with generic keywords without the city name, the other with generic keywords plus the city name. Target the first campaign using Google AdWords' geo-targeting. Manually target the other to a larger region (state or country), but only buy keywords which have the phrase + the city name. This will cover all your bases and bring you more highly targeted traffic.
9. Accepting the Status Quo - Once a conversion rate has been measured, some site owners do not understand they should keep trying to improve this number by experimenting and testing several variables.
Solution: Always be trying to improve it by A/B split testing ad copy as well as landing page graphics and headlines in order to constantly improve conversion rates.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The Seven Principles for Attracting More Clients
Master these Seven Principles and you’ll grow your business
If you are going to attract more clients to your professional service business you must market those services. But you can’t market haphazardly and expect consistent results. You must market according to proven principles. This brief article outlines those principles and gives the owner of a professional service business the keys to growing their business with less struggle and effort.
1. Marketing is a Game
Not many business owners see marketing as a game. They see it as a struggle. But it’s only a struggle because they are unaware of the rules of the game and how to win the game.
Let’s look at a game most people are familiar with – baseball. In baseball there are four main activities – throwing the ball, catching the ball, hitting the ball and running. Pretty simple. If you took a person who was highly proficient at these four activities but didn’t know the rules of baseball and had him join a baseball team, he would struggle for some time. Until he figured out the rules of the game, baseball would be mysterious and perplexing.
It’s much the same with marketing. Most of us know the fundamental activities of marketing – networking, writing, speaking, sending emails, etc, but we rarely see it as a game with very specific rules that lead to attracting clients on a consistent basis.
The marketing activities we engage in seem random and subject more to luck than intention. If we could discover that hidden marketing rulebook that explained how to move a client along the bases with some degree of predictability, marketing would be less of a struggle and much more fun as we began to win the game with some regularity.
Introducing Marketing Ball
Marketing Ball is the name I gave to the process that finally makes some sense out of the game of marketing. Marketing Ball outlines the rules, the skills and the moves required to win the game.
Marketing Ball is built on the simple premise that everyone who is now a client was once a stranger and that the purpose of marketing is to build a relationship with a prospect until they feel comfortable doing business with you.
Those relationships are built one step at a time through a very logical and methodical process. Even if you don’t realize you’re playing Marketing Ball, it’s still happening in the background. But as you master the game you’ll discover that you can convert prospects into clients more quickly and reliably.
Like baseball, in Marketing Ball, you move prospects around the diamond one base at a time. You start at home base armed with your marketing message. When you deliver that message, your aim is to get your prospect onto first base. You’re on first base when you have the attention and interest of a prospect.
Once a prospect is on first, your next marketing activities are designed to get them to second. Second base is when a prospect is ready to explore working with you. Third base is where a prospect is ready to buy from you and home plate is where you’ve consummated the sale and started working with your new client.
Mastering the game of Marketing Ball is a matter of understanding and practicing the “marketing plays” between the bases and gradually moving a prospect from a complete stranger to someone who is a paying client.
Marketing Ball isn’t about getting home runs by delivering a perfect marketing message (there isn’t such a thing), but by moving prospects around the bases as they learn more about how your services work and how they will benefit from working with you.
2. Having the Right Marketing Mindset
If marketing is a struggle for professionals, not only don’t they understand the game of marketing, they have a poor attitude about it. And this attitude, or what I prefer to call Mindset, colors our approach to marketing and tends to result in us avoiding most marketing activities.
A marketing mindset, is how we think about marketing. It’s our attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, expectations, fears, fixed positions, assumptions, and limitations. You could say that our marketing mindset is the “water that we swim in.”
It affects us profoundly, but we don’t see it because it’s so close to us. What we focus on, what we believe, what we think and what we assume, shape our actions. And if these beliefs, thoughts and assumptions are negative, we see marketing as something bad, something to be avoided.
Here are a few of the beliefs, thoughts and assumptions I’ve heard from Independent Professionals over the years. Do any of them sound familiar to you? Do you operate from any of these as if they were the gospel truth?
- Marketing leads to rejection
- If I ask for referrals it will sound like I’m begging
- Marketing doesn’t work for this kind of service
- I don’t have the time to market myself
- Only people with sub-standard services need marketing
- I can’t start until I know exactly what to do
- I’m not qualified (educated, experienced, etc.) enough yet
- Marketing is a bother and an interruption to people
And these are only the tip of the iceberg! In working with clients I’ve discovered that most are attached to literally dozens of thoughts and beliefs that lead to marketing avoidance.
How Marketing Mindsets Work
The response most of us have to negative marketing mindsets is to resist them. For instance, you’ve heard that networking could be useful to your business. But you don’t enjoy it due to your belief that “nobody who attends networking events needs my service.” But you resist that, put on a happy face and try your best, struggling through every event that you attend. Ultimately your experiences verify your beliefs and you give up networking as a waste of time.
When you’re stuck in a negative marketing mindset, everything that happens lines up with that mindset. People want reality to be consistent with their beliefs and this makes it hard to change a mindset.
Sometimes something will happen that challenges your belief and things can change very rapidly. For instance you may go to a networking event and connect with someone who turns into your best client. You then start to question your belief about networking because the new evidence is that it worked for you.
Start Questioning Your Mindsets
What has occurred to very few people, however, is to start questioning your mindset even before you have any observable evidence that it just may not be true. This is a simple but extraordinarily powerful approach, as it undermines your attachment to the beliefs that may be holding you back.
When we don’t question our limiting beliefs, we automatically become subject to them. When we start to sincerely question them, we may discover that what we were so certain was true may be the exact opposite.
Is it really true that all marketing leads to rejection that asking for referrals is begging that you don’t have time to market yourself, that you can’t start until you know exactly what to do? Perhaps not.
Once you start to inquire into your mindset, with the intention of discovering the truth, you may surprise yourself and actually realize that the opposite of these beliefs are just as true or truer. In my personal experience, I’ve discovered that marketing leads to acceptance, that asking for referrals is a contribution, that there is time to do marketing and that you can even start without knowing exactly what to do.
Learning and mastering this process of inquiry regarding various limiting marketing mindsets can transform your outlook about marketing forever. For many people, this has turned their experience of marketing from one of struggle, effort and poor results into an experience of ease, engagement and consistently good results.
3. Understanding the Language of Marketing
Marketing actually has a language. And the purpose of this language is to get attention, generate interest and motivate people to take action to find out more about our services.
If you understand this language and speak it fluently, you’ll be more successful at moving prospects around the bases of Marketing Ball and ultimately turning them into clients.
The language of marketing is based on what I call “Marketing Syntax.” Syntax is the order of things. Syntax creates meaning. For instance, the order of letters in a word give that word meaning and the order of words in a sentence give that sentence meaning.
I also discovered that the order in which you present marketing ideas determines the meaning the listener attaches to your message. In other words, if you deliver your marketing message in a certain order using marketing syntax, you’ll get more attention and interest than if you use a different order.
For instance when people ask us what we do, we often answer them literally, that is, we tell them our label or our process. We say, “I’m an accountant. I prepare taxes for small businesses.” That’s accurate, but it’s not a very attention-getting message. The listener is thinking, “What’s in it for me?”
The first three steps of marketing syntax are as follows:
- Target Market – That is, whom do you work with?
- Problem/Challenge – What issues do your clients have?
- Outcome – What results do your clients get?
This syntax can be used anytime you communicate about your business, verbally or in writing. And when you use it, your attention value will go up dramatically. Let’s look at these steps in a little more depth.
When someone asks what you do, the first words out of your mouth need to be about whom you work with. This creates focus: “I work with multi-national technology firms” or “I work with retailers on the East Coast.” When you identify who your ideal clients are, your listeners can immediately know whether or not you can help them.
Next you tell the problem or challenge you address. “…who are being beaten up by outsourcing” or “…whose profit margins are shrinking.” When you mention a problem, you hit a nerve. Problems are where people live. It’s what they are thinking about. And if you can address their problem, they will realize you know something important about them.
Finally, you communicate the outcome you actually deliver. This is what a client gets if you work with them. “We help our clients maintain their profit margins in an outsourcing economy.”
With this understanding of marketing syntax, you can start to develop your own personalized marketing message.
4. Creating a Powerful Marketing Message
Once you understand the basics of Marketing Syntax, you have the building blocks that enable you to create marketing messages that actually communicate the true value you offer.
The problems most professional service businesses encounter in developing such a message include the following:
- The message isn’t directed to a target market.
- The message fails to hit a nerve.
- The message talks about services, not solutions.
- The message tries to say too much and gets unwieldy.
- The message doesn’t say enough and becomes cryptic.
All of these are relatively easy to solve as these examples show:
Not directed to a target market:
Every marketing message should start with something like: “We work with this kind of client…” or “We help this kind of client… (insert the appropriate demographics or psychographics).”
Fails to hit a nerve
Talk about a problem, challenge, issue, pain, or predicament that is symptomatic and clearly observable. Say: “We work with managers who are struggling to reach their financial targets.” This they can understand, and it hits a nerve. Don’t say, “We work with managers who are marginalizing their optimal financial opportunities.” Huh? Don’t laugh, I’ve heard worse.
Talks about services, not solutions
When you talk about services, I need to translate what it means to me. If you get right into solutions, results and outcomes, I see the immediate benefit. “We offer a retention maximization program,” isn’t as good as, “We have a service that will increase retention of your best employees.” Now that has value.
Says too much
To get someone’s attention, you need to communicate in meaningful sound bites. Run-on sentences or worse, messages with multiple targets, problems, and solutions, will only confuse people: “We work with large and small companies in the broadband and microwave industries who have management, marketing and financial issues and want to dominate markets at the lowest cost while retaining high-performing and self-generating managers/leaders.” Expect confused looks.
Says too little
You might understand the message you’ve come up with, but your audience many need some translation. “What do you do?” “I’m a management consultant.” Wait, what’s wrong with that? Nothing except that it’s meaningless except to other management consultants. There’s no target, problem or solution. And so the twenty questions game begins.
Next, you expand your marketing message into written marketing materials that communicate about your services in more depth.
5. Developing Persuasive Marketing Materials
What’s persuasive? Many think of overly exaggerated hyperbole. But that’s not the case. Good marketing information educates your prospect about how your services will benefit them.
Marketing materials are what come after your main marketing message. Once you have someone’s attention and interest, you need to provide enough information so that they will know if you can help them or not.
Marketing materials, such as a web site, brochure or presentation also employ marketing syntax. They open with a discussion of the target market, continue with an overview of the prospect’s situation and challenges and then discuss desired outcomes and solutions.
Marketing syntax continues with the following elements:
- Stories or case studies of clients you’ve succeeded with.
- Benefits, advantages and features of your services.
- Background on you and your firm for credibility.
- A call to action to let the prospect know what to do next.
Let’s look at all of these in a little more detail. The purpose for this information is to answer the unasked questions lurking in the back of your prospects’ minds.
Stories or Case Studies
These answer the question, “Have you worked with clients like me and have you been successful?” This is a very valid question. And you don’t answer such a question conceptually, you simply outline a number of case studies that explain what you did for your clients and what results you produced. This is very persuasive and gets the prospect thinking how they could get similar results.
Benefits, Advantages, Features of Service
This answers the question, “How exactly do your services work?” Prospects want a snapshot of what it will be like when they are clients. What will happen, how long will it take, how will they be involved and exactly what process or methods will be employed?
Background on You and Firm
This answers the question “Who are you and are you credible.” Interestingly enough, this is not the biggest question most prospects have. So it doesn’t need to be the first page of your website. But many are interested in your background, experience, education and even some personal information so they can get a sense of what it would be like working with you.
Call to Action
This answers the question, “What do I do next to find out more?” People are hesitant to pick up the phone or even send an email until they know more about how you start working with clients. Tell them what will transpire once they contact you. Show that you are accessible and easy to work with. And give them a reason to contact you now (not someday).
The great thing is that all of this information can be communicated efficiently and effectively on a website. It’s a powerful marketing vehicle that is often under-utilized by professional service businesses.
Now you are ready to take your marketing message and materials and get them in front of prospects through a variety of marketing strategies.
6. Determining Marketing Strategies
Once you are armed with the previously mention marketing principles you are ready to choose marketing strategies or activities that get your message out into the world and in front of prospective clients.
Let’s revisit Marketing Ball. The marketing strategies you employ depend on where your prospects are located on the Marketing Ball model. Remember that the purpose is to move them around the bases. First are marketing activities to get prospects onto first base.
From Stranger to Affiliation to Attention
Your first step in moving from home base to first is developing affiliations with those who could be possible clients. An affiliation is a connection between people. If you belong to an association or organization, you have an affiliation. If you went to the same college, you have an affiliation. If you belong to a church, you have an affiliation with all the other members.
Your first marketing task is to form affiliations with groups and organizations who are made up of prospects or those who can lead to prospects. These are the people who will be most receptive to your marketing messages. Whether you network, make calls or send mailings, if you have created an affiliation first, your message will be more readily accepted and you’ll get the attention you need to get onto first base.
From Attention to Familiarity
Going from first base to second base is a longer process where you get to know your prospect and they get to know you. People like to do business with those they know, like and trust, so your next task is to stay visible and become familiar to those you are affiliated with. Doing such things as networking actively, adding members to your ezine list, and meeting with others over coffee or lunch builds your “familiarity factor.” Then once you are more familiar, prospects want more information.
From Familiarity to Information
Even when people know you by name, they don’t necessarily understand what you really do for your clients. Your next job is to provide the information that lets them know who you work with, what challenges you address and what outcomes you produce. Important information tools are web sites and articles such as the one you’re reading now.
From Information to Experience
The final stage before getting to second base is providing more of an experience to your prospects. Going beyond information, where you tell people what you do, is to actually demonstrate the value of your work. This can be accomplished through case studies, presentations and, in some cases, offering a sample of your work through presentations, executive briefings or teleclasses.
From Experience to the Selling Process
With a sufficient amount of affiliation, attention, familiarity, information and experience, prospects are much more likely to want to explore working with you. You might say this is where marketing ends and selling begins. When you get to second base you are engaging in the selling process and learning how you can help this prospect specifically. Selling is much easier if you have played the marketing game well up to this point.
Because this article is more focused on the marketing process, I won’t go into the details of the selling process here. But now you know the most important strategies of the marketing game and how to play to win.
7. Creating Marketing Action Plans
Even after you’ve developed the foundation of your marketing, which includes understanding the game, maintaining the ideal marketing mindset, creating a powerful marketing message, materials, and strategies, you have one more important step towards marketing success.
And this step is creating a marketing action plan. You might think of this as a marketing blueprint, much like an architectural blueprint. This action plan is your step-by-step guide in implementing your marketing strategies.
An ideal marketing action plan includes the following elements:
Your Target Market
Who exactly will you approach? Who are your potential clients and where can they be reached?
Price
What will you charge for the service you are offering?
Strategy
How will you get the word out? What is the specific strategy you’ll use to market your service? For instance, this might be networking, speaking, publishing, or mailings.
Purpose
This is the ultimate result you hope to achieve by implementing your plan. For instance, the purpose of a speaking plan may be to “Get 10 new clients valued at $5,000 each.”
Intended Results
This is everything else you intend to accomplish through this marketing strategy. So in addition to attracting more clients, you may want to a) get more exposure to you target market, b) increase your credibility, c) add names to your email list, d) sell products at the presentation, e) improve your speaking ability.
Strategy Game Plan
This is your actual approach to implementing your strategy. If you’ve chosen a speaking plan you need to determine where you will speak, how you will get engagements, what topic to speak on, what handouts and materials are required, and what offer to make after the talk. This will often take some research and assistance to avoid major mistakes in your implementation.
Marketing Materials and Resources
What written or other marketing materials will be needed? And what other resources will be required for success? This may include money, information and assistance.
Offers and Call to Action
For many steps of the plan you may need to ask someone to take action. You will need to approach organizations and ask them to book you. At the presentation you will be selling your ideas and ask them to buy your concepts. At the end you will deliver a close that asks your participants to request a follow-up.
Follow-Up
Once you have implemented your activity, you need to follow up in some way, shape or form. You can’t just cross your fingers and hope the phone starts ringing.
Action Steps and Timeline
The final step in your marketing action plan is to outline all the steps you will take in chronological order.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
How to Maximize Your Opt-In List: A Quick Guide
Make everything user friendly
Your website is the front-end of your operations, the shining gemstone of all your marketing efforts. This is why you should make everything as painless as possible when people are trying to sign up for something.
Streamline it
The most important component of your offer should be clearly visible. Use simple, bright colors and clean text links. If you want your visitors to view two or three more pages, make sure that they can navigate the deeper pages with little effort. If they don’t want to navigate other pages anymore, the registration form should easily be seen on the landing page they are on.
There is not fixed formula for the placement of your main call to action. It all depends on your website’s over-all design, the length of your copy, the number of illustrations and graphics, etc. You don’t have to guess. What you can do is create different versions of your landing pages with the call to action box in different places. Ask people to take a look, and see which placements convert well. Testing is key.
Additionally, you can also experiment with your font styles and font sizes.
Straightforward registration forms
What do you need their home addresses and phone numbers for? People are no longer comfortable with sharing this information with total strangers, much less to someone who is amassing hundreds or thousands of people’s names and email addresses. If you do not have a direct use for such information, then don’t ask the information from people trying to opt-in. If you need a person’s physical address, you can ask them confidentially in specialized (customized emails) and you have to reassure them that all the data would be held in strict confidence. Ask for a name and their email address- that’s all you need for an opt-in. You can get to the nitty-gritty of their private lives after you get their email (and trust).
What’s in it for them?
Really, with the amount of junk on the Internet today you have to be really convincing with your offer. And you have to be reassuring as well. You can go the extra mile for more opt-ins by providing sample screen shots of what they will be receiving in the mail. Live samples such as online PDF copies of a few newsletters can also be helpful (make sure that your ‘snippets’ are good quality).
1. More options means more opt-ins
Letting people ‘shop’ for the stuff that they would receive in their personal mail boxes is one of the most efficient ways of multiplying the number of your opt-ins. For example, you can offer them a newsletter, but directly beneath the check box for the newsletter is another check box for a good primer or a cool free eBook. You see the difference already? They’re not stuck with something that looks machine-wrought. They see a list of free goodies that they would get immediately by just giving away their email address. Additionally, you can also offer your new opt-ins technical options. For example, they can choose between plain text emails and vanilla-flavored HTML emails. They can also opt for monthly newsletters, daily alerts, bi-daily alerts, weekly primers, and more. Expanding to the social networks such as Facebook can also help increase the exposure of your current deals. It’s fast, and it works.
2. More value for their opting-in
There’s a difference between adding one-time bonuses for opt-ins and genuine quality content delivered over time. In the age of Web 2.0, the agile email marketer gets the most number of conversions. Don’t rely on ‘carrots’ too much because they won’t get people talking about your website much. ‘Carrots’, as we’ve mentioned earlier, are one-time bonus you offer people to just sign up (but it is by no means an effective method of convincing people to buy anything from you). If you can produce engaging case studies with real statistics and usable data for your mailing lists, then you have something.
3. Invite people to opt-in whenever you are communicating directly
Your website can be considered direct communication; the same applies to Twitter and Facebook. So what’s stopping you from offering your email course or newsletter when you’re actively communicating with your clients?
Here are just a few of the places where you can include an efficient “call to action”.
Your website
Of course. It should be at the center of all your activities.
Social networking
I will say this again and again: use social networking to your advantage.
Call centers rock!
Inbound call center communications are actually a vibrant source of conversions, if you know how to format the script right. With B2C communications, it’s always wise to include an invitation to sign up or opt-in for something when the customer is about to close the chat window. If your customer service representative provided good service, then there’s no reason why a cheerful and polite request to sign up would be denied. Think about it; what do you have to lose if you ask your agents to include an extra link at the end of each B2C conversation?
Conferences and other engagements
Nothing like good old offline marketing to get your website started. While you will get only a fraction of the total number of people attending a trade show or conference, you’re still getting more people to sign up. Remember, business cards are not a sign of agreeing to anything. Ask for permission first and tell your potential consumers what you have to offer when they agree to register.
Make your content shareable
Social networking works best if people can share what they saw on your email or website to other people. Actually, this is already the beginning stage of viral marketing. By encouraging involvement, you’re making people feel that they are part of something dynamic. However, don’t expect thousands of new subscriptions with mere Tweets and Diggs. The main impetus for creating content that is shareable is exposure. More exposure means better business, remember that.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
Your website is the front-end of your operations, the shining gemstone of all your marketing efforts. This is why you should make everything as painless as possible when people are trying to sign up for something.
Streamline it
The most important component of your offer should be clearly visible. Use simple, bright colors and clean text links. If you want your visitors to view two or three more pages, make sure that they can navigate the deeper pages with little effort. If they don’t want to navigate other pages anymore, the registration form should easily be seen on the landing page they are on.
There is not fixed formula for the placement of your main call to action. It all depends on your website’s over-all design, the length of your copy, the number of illustrations and graphics, etc. You don’t have to guess. What you can do is create different versions of your landing pages with the call to action box in different places. Ask people to take a look, and see which placements convert well. Testing is key.
Additionally, you can also experiment with your font styles and font sizes.
Straightforward registration forms
What do you need their home addresses and phone numbers for? People are no longer comfortable with sharing this information with total strangers, much less to someone who is amassing hundreds or thousands of people’s names and email addresses. If you do not have a direct use for such information, then don’t ask the information from people trying to opt-in. If you need a person’s physical address, you can ask them confidentially in specialized (customized emails) and you have to reassure them that all the data would be held in strict confidence. Ask for a name and their email address- that’s all you need for an opt-in. You can get to the nitty-gritty of their private lives after you get their email (and trust).
What’s in it for them?
Really, with the amount of junk on the Internet today you have to be really convincing with your offer. And you have to be reassuring as well. You can go the extra mile for more opt-ins by providing sample screen shots of what they will be receiving in the mail. Live samples such as online PDF copies of a few newsletters can also be helpful (make sure that your ‘snippets’ are good quality).
1. More options means more opt-ins
Letting people ‘shop’ for the stuff that they would receive in their personal mail boxes is one of the most efficient ways of multiplying the number of your opt-ins. For example, you can offer them a newsletter, but directly beneath the check box for the newsletter is another check box for a good primer or a cool free eBook. You see the difference already? They’re not stuck with something that looks machine-wrought. They see a list of free goodies that they would get immediately by just giving away their email address. Additionally, you can also offer your new opt-ins technical options. For example, they can choose between plain text emails and vanilla-flavored HTML emails. They can also opt for monthly newsletters, daily alerts, bi-daily alerts, weekly primers, and more. Expanding to the social networks such as Facebook can also help increase the exposure of your current deals. It’s fast, and it works.
2. More value for their opting-in
There’s a difference between adding one-time bonuses for opt-ins and genuine quality content delivered over time. In the age of Web 2.0, the agile email marketer gets the most number of conversions. Don’t rely on ‘carrots’ too much because they won’t get people talking about your website much. ‘Carrots’, as we’ve mentioned earlier, are one-time bonus you offer people to just sign up (but it is by no means an effective method of convincing people to buy anything from you). If you can produce engaging case studies with real statistics and usable data for your mailing lists, then you have something.
3. Invite people to opt-in whenever you are communicating directly
Your website can be considered direct communication; the same applies to Twitter and Facebook. So what’s stopping you from offering your email course or newsletter when you’re actively communicating with your clients?
Here are just a few of the places where you can include an efficient “call to action”.
Your website
Of course. It should be at the center of all your activities.
Social networking
I will say this again and again: use social networking to your advantage.
Call centers rock!
Inbound call center communications are actually a vibrant source of conversions, if you know how to format the script right. With B2C communications, it’s always wise to include an invitation to sign up or opt-in for something when the customer is about to close the chat window. If your customer service representative provided good service, then there’s no reason why a cheerful and polite request to sign up would be denied. Think about it; what do you have to lose if you ask your agents to include an extra link at the end of each B2C conversation?
Conferences and other engagements
Nothing like good old offline marketing to get your website started. While you will get only a fraction of the total number of people attending a trade show or conference, you’re still getting more people to sign up. Remember, business cards are not a sign of agreeing to anything. Ask for permission first and tell your potential consumers what you have to offer when they agree to register.
Make your content shareable
Social networking works best if people can share what they saw on your email or website to other people. Actually, this is already the beginning stage of viral marketing. By encouraging involvement, you’re making people feel that they are part of something dynamic. However, don’t expect thousands of new subscriptions with mere Tweets and Diggs. The main impetus for creating content that is shareable is exposure. More exposure means better business, remember that.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Everyone’s talking about using social media networking to increase their profits. Traditional strategies like email marketing are being slammed for ‘hipper’ strategies like using Twitter and Facebook. However, lots of companies still use email marketing no matter how cumbersome or ‘un-hip’ it may seem. From getting people to buy eBooks to getting people to sign up for auto-shipping programs for slimming pills, the humble email is still the number 1 choice of those who are just entering the wild world of niche marketing, etc. and for those who have been in this business for a long time.
Spam laws matter
There are two sets of international laws on spam emails. One is for the United States and the other is for Europe. In the United States, there is the federal legislation for spam and there are also state regulations for spam. It would be best if you can take into consideration these existing laws just to be safe. You can’t be too careful, because CAN-SPAM laws are in force and are funded.
What makes an offer, an email course or a ‘hard-sell’ email spam? First, if the sender of these materials does not provide a basic ‘unsubscribe’ or ‘opt-out’ option in the email, which can immediately qualify the email as spam. Why would you send someone unsolicited mail if they can’t unsubscribe? That’s already forcing someone something they won’t even read. The content of newsletters also matter. If a newsletter looks like it’s been written by a troubled fifth grader, then would people want to read it? No, people would rather have something else on their personal mailboxes, like emails from friends and their bosses. Certainly not a newsletter with grammatical errors and senseless content.
It’s quite easy to follow the basic rules of CAN-SPAM. First, identify yourself adequately in the Sender box. Next, include the physical address of your company or organization. Third, make sure people can stop your emails from coming. Write the unsubscribing information on the bottom of the email, but make sure you include it. If you don’t, you might be fined $11,000. And that’s for every time you commit such a mistake!
Opting-in matters, too (a lot)
Well you know, you can just send your emails to tens of thousands of people right? Some companies are still doing this up to now. Well you can do that too, if you want to fill up the Spam folders of Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Fact is, these three are wising up with better spam filtering. Now, what would make your email, well, recipient friendly? The answer is “opt-ins”. We know you probably are laughing right now, because opt-ins is part of the ABCs of email marketing. But hey, we give everyone the benefit of the doubt. If you want to annoy people, send unsolicited email. If you want to make fat profits from selling something online, then make them opt-in for something.
Offering something to potential clients must be done with all honesty. If you want to offer infrequent sales letters so they get discounts galore on some months, then just tell them. It would be better if they choose this option for themselves. Instead of being annoyed, people would feel empowered, because hey, you gave them the choice to receive something of value when they subscribed to your mailing list.
Is there a way to make your offer even more powerful? YES.
Double opt-ins can make two things possible: first, reduce the chances of your mails being automatically junked by Spam filters and second, a double opt-in can filter out not-so-serious takers from the serious takers. By asking them to confirm their subscription, you can also take the opportunity to pitch another product or upgrade. Make your mails creative! Creativity rules in the realm of email marketing.
Why are you sending them to your homepage?
We know your homepage is one of the well-designed parts of your website, but does it really drive home your message? Does your homepage really contain the information that would get you a sale, based on the unique content of your email? Remember the basic rule of sending out emails over a period of time? Each email has to be unique but should employ different strategies in selling whatever it is you need to sell. It might be useful if you had unique landing pages based on what your emails are promising to your recipients. For example, if you offered them a money-back guarantee, the link on your email should lead to a landing page that talks about the money-back guarantee more. It’s all about efficient dissemination of information, right?
Quality is also an issue here. We know that it can be tiresome to write new information for your mailing lists. It’s not unusual for webmasters to have people rewrite things that have been sitting on their website for years already. Hey, people notice these things. If every email is mirror of the last one, what’s the point of reading these mails anyway?
Re-thinking graphic-laden emails
Most email services these days offer recipients the ability to download or ignore images – many choose to ignore them. Should you quit using graphics altogether? Not really. Visuals work very well, but you have to balance it out. 75 kilobytes is the ideal size of HTML emails with graphics.
Back to the basics of copywriting
Should copies for your emails be shorter or longer? Some people say that shorter copy works better in conveying what needs to be said. For example, “Know How To Take Care of Baby Tigers Without Being Eaten!” is definitely an eye-catching headline (and it’s only 11 words long!). How long should the email copy be? It all depends on what you are trying to sell. Some products require short copy; some need longer copy in order to sell well.
Subject lines are for nerds? Not anymore!
Every part of the email matters, not just the body of the email. If you have an insufficient sender’s address you get fined. If your subject line is lousy, you’re missing out on getting fast clicks and genuine interest in what you have to say! Now, how can you make those profit-laden subject lines? It’s easy! What’s the gist of your email offer? Are you offering discounts or bonuses? Write those down! Try to create a subject line that’s 6-8 words long. If you need to be wordier, just make sure that people can read your subject line in one breath, okay?
Learn how to link your emails with Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Online marketing is all about creating synergy. Isolating one part of your advertising campaign from the larger body can be detrimental to your efforts in building a name for yourself or your company. Twitter and other social media networking services can be avenues of fast information relays. But you have to make sure that what you’re saying on your emails are also connected with what you are saying on Twitter. For example, an ideal link to your Twitter page would be “Liked the 10% discount here? Get more discounts and freebies. Follow us on Twitter at (insert your Twitter link here)” It’s easy, it doesn’t take up much of your time and your clients would think that they’ve hit a gold mine with a single email that you sent. Email marketers need to provide a lot of useful content to people in order to gain their trust.
Now, don’t forget mobile phones. Mobile marketing is very promising if you do it right. Immediacy can also make a world of difference. For example, if you own an online bookshop, you can send a message to your mailing list that would get a fast response: “New York Time Bestsellers at 50% off, only 2 days to go!” Because of the time constraint, people who are already thinking of buying a book would probably check out your website since you are offering a big discount on selected books.
Are you bored with testing?
Testing emails? People might scoff at the idea at first, especially if they’ve read too many books and they feel generally lazy. But it works, that’s the point. Get a small segment from your current mailing lists and send them different emails. Measure the response rate. Its easy mathematics: the email that gets the most number of good responses is the mail that is most effective in laying down the cards!
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
Spam laws matter
There are two sets of international laws on spam emails. One is for the United States and the other is for Europe. In the United States, there is the federal legislation for spam and there are also state regulations for spam. It would be best if you can take into consideration these existing laws just to be safe. You can’t be too careful, because CAN-SPAM laws are in force and are funded.
What makes an offer, an email course or a ‘hard-sell’ email spam? First, if the sender of these materials does not provide a basic ‘unsubscribe’ or ‘opt-out’ option in the email, which can immediately qualify the email as spam. Why would you send someone unsolicited mail if they can’t unsubscribe? That’s already forcing someone something they won’t even read. The content of newsletters also matter. If a newsletter looks like it’s been written by a troubled fifth grader, then would people want to read it? No, people would rather have something else on their personal mailboxes, like emails from friends and their bosses. Certainly not a newsletter with grammatical errors and senseless content.
It’s quite easy to follow the basic rules of CAN-SPAM. First, identify yourself adequately in the Sender box. Next, include the physical address of your company or organization. Third, make sure people can stop your emails from coming. Write the unsubscribing information on the bottom of the email, but make sure you include it. If you don’t, you might be fined $11,000. And that’s for every time you commit such a mistake!
Opting-in matters, too (a lot)
Well you know, you can just send your emails to tens of thousands of people right? Some companies are still doing this up to now. Well you can do that too, if you want to fill up the Spam folders of Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Fact is, these three are wising up with better spam filtering. Now, what would make your email, well, recipient friendly? The answer is “opt-ins”. We know you probably are laughing right now, because opt-ins is part of the ABCs of email marketing. But hey, we give everyone the benefit of the doubt. If you want to annoy people, send unsolicited email. If you want to make fat profits from selling something online, then make them opt-in for something.
Offering something to potential clients must be done with all honesty. If you want to offer infrequent sales letters so they get discounts galore on some months, then just tell them. It would be better if they choose this option for themselves. Instead of being annoyed, people would feel empowered, because hey, you gave them the choice to receive something of value when they subscribed to your mailing list.
Is there a way to make your offer even more powerful? YES.
Double opt-ins can make two things possible: first, reduce the chances of your mails being automatically junked by Spam filters and second, a double opt-in can filter out not-so-serious takers from the serious takers. By asking them to confirm their subscription, you can also take the opportunity to pitch another product or upgrade. Make your mails creative! Creativity rules in the realm of email marketing.
Why are you sending them to your homepage?
We know your homepage is one of the well-designed parts of your website, but does it really drive home your message? Does your homepage really contain the information that would get you a sale, based on the unique content of your email? Remember the basic rule of sending out emails over a period of time? Each email has to be unique but should employ different strategies in selling whatever it is you need to sell. It might be useful if you had unique landing pages based on what your emails are promising to your recipients. For example, if you offered them a money-back guarantee, the link on your email should lead to a landing page that talks about the money-back guarantee more. It’s all about efficient dissemination of information, right?
Quality is also an issue here. We know that it can be tiresome to write new information for your mailing lists. It’s not unusual for webmasters to have people rewrite things that have been sitting on their website for years already. Hey, people notice these things. If every email is mirror of the last one, what’s the point of reading these mails anyway?
Re-thinking graphic-laden emails
Most email services these days offer recipients the ability to download or ignore images – many choose to ignore them. Should you quit using graphics altogether? Not really. Visuals work very well, but you have to balance it out. 75 kilobytes is the ideal size of HTML emails with graphics.
Back to the basics of copywriting
Should copies for your emails be shorter or longer? Some people say that shorter copy works better in conveying what needs to be said. For example, “Know How To Take Care of Baby Tigers Without Being Eaten!” is definitely an eye-catching headline (and it’s only 11 words long!). How long should the email copy be? It all depends on what you are trying to sell. Some products require short copy; some need longer copy in order to sell well.
Subject lines are for nerds? Not anymore!
Every part of the email matters, not just the body of the email. If you have an insufficient sender’s address you get fined. If your subject line is lousy, you’re missing out on getting fast clicks and genuine interest in what you have to say! Now, how can you make those profit-laden subject lines? It’s easy! What’s the gist of your email offer? Are you offering discounts or bonuses? Write those down! Try to create a subject line that’s 6-8 words long. If you need to be wordier, just make sure that people can read your subject line in one breath, okay?
Learn how to link your emails with Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Online marketing is all about creating synergy. Isolating one part of your advertising campaign from the larger body can be detrimental to your efforts in building a name for yourself or your company. Twitter and other social media networking services can be avenues of fast information relays. But you have to make sure that what you’re saying on your emails are also connected with what you are saying on Twitter. For example, an ideal link to your Twitter page would be “Liked the 10% discount here? Get more discounts and freebies. Follow us on Twitter at (insert your Twitter link here)” It’s easy, it doesn’t take up much of your time and your clients would think that they’ve hit a gold mine with a single email that you sent. Email marketers need to provide a lot of useful content to people in order to gain their trust.
Now, don’t forget mobile phones. Mobile marketing is very promising if you do it right. Immediacy can also make a world of difference. For example, if you own an online bookshop, you can send a message to your mailing list that would get a fast response: “New York Time Bestsellers at 50% off, only 2 days to go!” Because of the time constraint, people who are already thinking of buying a book would probably check out your website since you are offering a big discount on selected books.
Are you bored with testing?
Testing emails? People might scoff at the idea at first, especially if they’ve read too many books and they feel generally lazy. But it works, that’s the point. Get a small segment from your current mailing lists and send them different emails. Measure the response rate. Its easy mathematics: the email that gets the most number of good responses is the mail that is most effective in laying down the cards!
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
Effective Tips for Postcard Marketing
Alright my friends. As some of you know I'm a fan of postcard marketing. Let me explain some helpful tips...
Postcard printing may not be the most popular marketing strategy in this day and age of high technology but...
Nevertheless, the power of postcards cannot be overrated, even if it is just cheap.
Postcard marketing can be the most cost-effective alternative to generating traffic and movement in any sales leads. It does help a lot in generating traffic to your website.So how do you create these small yet powerful marketing tools to help you boost your sales?
Here are proven tips that guarantee you a huge impact albeit it is just cheap or affordable.
1- Create first impressions that last. Create postcards that look like your target audience gets them from a friend.
You will not only be kept and remembered but your target audience would certainly appreciate a marketing tool that is exactly what they do not expect - advertising collateral.
2- Don't beat around the bush.
Get right to the point and deliver a format that is easy to comprehend by your recipients. By making the biggest benefit they would get as the very first thing your target audience sees in your advertising material, the rest would be a breeze.
3- Be clear and direct.
Again, the bottom line is to get your target readers to know your offer right away. So make your message brief and direct-to-the point. You only have a few seconds before your target readers get distracted with other stuff.
So make your few seconds count.
4- Sell the right offer.
Postcards are too small for you to be able to convince your target readers to take you up on your offer. Indeed, your postcard printing would be less effective if you want to close a sale.
Instead, have your print postcards sell the idea of getting your reader to seek for more information. Rather than try to make a sale every time, be sure to encourage your target readers and ask for more details of your product or service.
5- Encourage action right away.
Have them respond NOW. If you need for them to get more information, then be sure to give them a reason to do so the moment they read your message. Do not let them put your postcards down without getting any action from them.
They will be distracted with other things and your offer will surely be forgotten when they become very busy later on.
Postcards may not be new and high-tech for many, but it does not mean they do not get the job done. They can help any business, small or otherwise, to generate leads, which can turn into actual sales to increase your profits.
Postcard printing may not be the most popular marketing strategy in this day and age of high technology but...
Nevertheless, the power of postcards cannot be overrated, even if it is just cheap.
Postcard marketing can be the most cost-effective alternative to generating traffic and movement in any sales leads. It does help a lot in generating traffic to your website.So how do you create these small yet powerful marketing tools to help you boost your sales?
Here are proven tips that guarantee you a huge impact albeit it is just cheap or affordable.
1- Create first impressions that last. Create postcards that look like your target audience gets them from a friend.
You will not only be kept and remembered but your target audience would certainly appreciate a marketing tool that is exactly what they do not expect - advertising collateral.
2- Don't beat around the bush.
Get right to the point and deliver a format that is easy to comprehend by your recipients. By making the biggest benefit they would get as the very first thing your target audience sees in your advertising material, the rest would be a breeze.
3- Be clear and direct.
Again, the bottom line is to get your target readers to know your offer right away. So make your message brief and direct-to-the point. You only have a few seconds before your target readers get distracted with other stuff.
So make your few seconds count.
4- Sell the right offer.
Postcards are too small for you to be able to convince your target readers to take you up on your offer. Indeed, your postcard printing would be less effective if you want to close a sale.
Instead, have your print postcards sell the idea of getting your reader to seek for more information. Rather than try to make a sale every time, be sure to encourage your target readers and ask for more details of your product or service.
5- Encourage action right away.
Have them respond NOW. If you need for them to get more information, then be sure to give them a reason to do so the moment they read your message. Do not let them put your postcards down without getting any action from them.
They will be distracted with other things and your offer will surely be forgotten when they become very busy later on.
Postcards may not be new and high-tech for many, but it does not mean they do not get the job done. They can help any business, small or otherwise, to generate leads, which can turn into actual sales to increase your profits.
Top 4 Tips for getting the best results from your AdSense Ads
Top 4 Tips for getting the best results from your AdSense Ads
The revenue that you earn from Google AdSense program is totally dependent on you and your abilities.
Here are some tips that you can use to get the best results from your AdSense Ads:
1. Use channels: Channels help you in conducting a better analysis of the performance of your AdSense Ads. You can use custom channels to check what web pages are making more revenue and which ones are not doing so well.
In fact, custom channels can be used for conducting analysis on multiple aspects at the same time. You can use this analysis for making amendments to your AdSense Ads or website content in order to get better results.
2. Ad customization and positioning: Shape, Size and color are the three properties of your AdSense Ads that you can easily control and customize in a way that the Ads don’t look out of place when served on your website.
You can either make your Ads stand-out from the rest of the content on your webpage or you can make them blend with the overall webpage.
Moreover, you can identify the hot spots on your website and position your Ads accordingly. Ad customization and Ad positioning are, in fact, the best ways to attract more clicks to your AdSense Ads.
3. Content quality: ‘The best generally overcomes the rest’ – is a very true saying. If you host quality content on your website and provide regular updates to your visitors, you can expect more traffic to your website. This will in turn lead to more ad impressions and possibly more clicks.
4. Use AdSense Ads on all pages: If you have multiple web pages on your website, you should include AdSense Ads on all of them. Since the visitors can enter your website through a number of different pages, having AdSense Ads on all the pages will surely increase your earnings.
The revenue that you earn from Google AdSense program is totally dependent on you and your abilities.
Here are some tips that you can use to get the best results from your AdSense Ads:
1. Use channels: Channels help you in conducting a better analysis of the performance of your AdSense Ads. You can use custom channels to check what web pages are making more revenue and which ones are not doing so well.
In fact, custom channels can be used for conducting analysis on multiple aspects at the same time. You can use this analysis for making amendments to your AdSense Ads or website content in order to get better results.
2. Ad customization and positioning: Shape, Size and color are the three properties of your AdSense Ads that you can easily control and customize in a way that the Ads don’t look out of place when served on your website.
You can either make your Ads stand-out from the rest of the content on your webpage or you can make them blend with the overall webpage.
Moreover, you can identify the hot spots on your website and position your Ads accordingly. Ad customization and Ad positioning are, in fact, the best ways to attract more clicks to your AdSense Ads.
3. Content quality: ‘The best generally overcomes the rest’ – is a very true saying. If you host quality content on your website and provide regular updates to your visitors, you can expect more traffic to your website. This will in turn lead to more ad impressions and possibly more clicks.
4. Use AdSense Ads on all pages: If you have multiple web pages on your website, you should include AdSense Ads on all of them. Since the visitors can enter your website through a number of different pages, having AdSense Ads on all the pages will surely increase your earnings.
Setting up your Google AdSense account – Parts 1-4
Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 1 (Enrollment form)
For those of you new to the Adsense scene I wrote this quick start report to help get you off and running with Google Adsense.
So, you have decided to go ahead and use Google AdSense for generating revenue from your website. Google AdSense doesn’t need you to sell any products or services.
With Google AdSense, you are just selling advertising space on your website. And the best part is that Google doesn’t discriminate between websites; so, any website owner can enroll with Google AdSense program (as long as it adheres to the Google AdSense program policies).
Moreover, setting up a Google AdSense account is so easy that you can literally start generating revenue within 15 minutes.
For enrolling to the Google AdSense program, go to https://www.google.com/AdSense and click on the ‘Click here to Apply’ button. You will be presented with an enrolment form where you need to fill-in some details like your website information (URL and website language), the Google AdSense products that you wish to use (i.e. AdSense for Content or AdSense for Search), your contact information, your email address and your preferences.
You will also need to select an account type (business/individual) for your AdSense Account and agree to the various policies, terms and conditions of Google AdSense program.
The account type will not affect your revenues in any way; it is there just to determine if the payment is to be made in the name of a company or an individual. The email address and the password that you provide during the enrolment process will be required by you for logging into your account later on. Note that you will be referred to as publisher by the Google AdSense program; so when you return back to the Google AdSense website, you will be asked to enter your login details as an ‘Existing Publisher’.
That’s it. You can now submit your application form for Google to evaluate and get back to you.
Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 2 (Essential customizations)
Once you are done with setting up your Google AdSense account and once Google has approved your application, you are ready to use Google AdSense for earning revenue from your website.
Just login into your account using your email address and password, click ‘AdSense Setup’ in the top menu and select the product type (i.e. ‘AdSense for Content’ or ‘AdSense for Search’). You will be presented with various options for customization of your AdSense Ads.
Here we will take a look at setting up ‘AdSense for Content’ only (however, the setup for ‘AdSense for Search’ is quite similar and equally easy).
The first thing that you need to choose is the Ad type (Ad unit or link unit). Based on the Ad type you choose, you will need to specify the type of ad (text, image, etc for Ad unit) or number of links per link unit too.
Google AdSense program allows you to use a maximum of three ad units and 1 link unit per web page (and you must use both, in order to maximize your AdSense revenue).
The next thing is to choose the Ad layout. There are various layouts available but large rectangle (336x280) and wide skyscraper (160x600) are preferred over others (since they help get more impressions for you and hence help you make more money).
Customizing the colors of various parts of your AdSense ad is the next thing you need to do. Even though customizing colors is optional (as far as the Google AdSense program is concerned), it’s strongly recommended for making your Ads attractive and more effective.
Your choice of colors must be governed by the look and feel of your website so that the Ad doesn’t look out of place.
These are the essential customizations that you surely need to do before you can start using Google AdSense Ads on your website.
Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 3 (Additional customizations)
Besides the essential customizations like selecting the Ad type, Ad layout and colors, there are some other customizations that you can apply to your AdSense account.
In fact, some of these can quite easily be treated as essential customizations (based on the context of your website) e.g. ‘filters’ is one such customization that is quite important. Let’s take a look at what these additional customizations are:
Filters: Google allows you to set-up custom ad filters for your website (note that this is in addition to the screening of ad content that Google does by default).
By setting up filters you can block competitive Ads and other Ads that you don’t want to display on your website. In fact, filters are a must if your website sells a product or a service (unless you want to promote your competitors through your website).
Alternate Ads: This is something that can help you in preventing underutilization of the ad space on your website. Alternate Ads are the Ads that you would want to show up on your website in case sufficient content-relevant Ads are not available.
If you don’t specify alternate Ads and if there are insufficient content-related Ads available, Google AdSense program will serve charitable Ads to your website (Ads which don’t earn revenue for you).
Reporting and performance tracking: You can even customize the reporting and performance tracking options for your AdSense account.
One important tool in this regard is the use of channels to study the performance of AdSense Ads from various perspectives.
However, you might decide to take this up later down the line (maybe 1 month after setting up your AdSense account.
Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 4 (AdSense code)
Once you are done with all the customizations, your AdSense code is generated in the AdSense Code box. You just need to copy this code (which is in the form of a programming script) from the AdSense Code box and paste it in your website as per the guidelines from Google.
Since Google allows only three ad units per page, you can add the code at more than one place in your html code.
The next step is to save your web page to the designated web server (as per the instructions from your web hosting service provider). Please note that Google AdSense program does not require you to send over your website’s html code to them; neither does it ask to load it onto their servers or do anything else with it.
The addition of AdSense code to your website’s code is the only thing that you need to do. Separate procedures are available with Google for people who want to use AdSense Ads with their blogs (you can check these on Google’s website for AdSense program).
Now that everything is done and dusted, you need to wait for a few hours (might be lesser than that) before Google’s web crawlers find your web page or blog that has AdSense code on it and you start seeing AdSense Ads on your web page or blog.
You might see some PSA (charitable Ads) initially (almost immediately) but these will soon get replaced with the AdSense Ads that will earn revenue for you.
If the content on your website violates the AdSense program’s policies, you might keep seeing PSAs even after few hours.
In all such cases (or if you find objectionable Ads that don’t go even after you have applied appropriate filters), you will need to contact Google who will sort out the problems for you.
For those of you new to the Adsense scene I wrote this quick start report to help get you off and running with Google Adsense.
So, you have decided to go ahead and use Google AdSense for generating revenue from your website. Google AdSense doesn’t need you to sell any products or services.
With Google AdSense, you are just selling advertising space on your website. And the best part is that Google doesn’t discriminate between websites; so, any website owner can enroll with Google AdSense program (as long as it adheres to the Google AdSense program policies).
Moreover, setting up a Google AdSense account is so easy that you can literally start generating revenue within 15 minutes.
For enrolling to the Google AdSense program, go to https://www.google.com/AdSense and click on the ‘Click here to Apply’ button. You will be presented with an enrolment form where you need to fill-in some details like your website information (URL and website language), the Google AdSense products that you wish to use (i.e. AdSense for Content or AdSense for Search), your contact information, your email address and your preferences.
You will also need to select an account type (business/individual) for your AdSense Account and agree to the various policies, terms and conditions of Google AdSense program.
The account type will not affect your revenues in any way; it is there just to determine if the payment is to be made in the name of a company or an individual. The email address and the password that you provide during the enrolment process will be required by you for logging into your account later on. Note that you will be referred to as publisher by the Google AdSense program; so when you return back to the Google AdSense website, you will be asked to enter your login details as an ‘Existing Publisher’.
That’s it. You can now submit your application form for Google to evaluate and get back to you.
Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 2 (Essential customizations)
Once you are done with setting up your Google AdSense account and once Google has approved your application, you are ready to use Google AdSense for earning revenue from your website.
Just login into your account using your email address and password, click ‘AdSense Setup’ in the top menu and select the product type (i.e. ‘AdSense for Content’ or ‘AdSense for Search’). You will be presented with various options for customization of your AdSense Ads.
Here we will take a look at setting up ‘AdSense for Content’ only (however, the setup for ‘AdSense for Search’ is quite similar and equally easy).
The first thing that you need to choose is the Ad type (Ad unit or link unit). Based on the Ad type you choose, you will need to specify the type of ad (text, image, etc for Ad unit) or number of links per link unit too.
Google AdSense program allows you to use a maximum of three ad units and 1 link unit per web page (and you must use both, in order to maximize your AdSense revenue).
The next thing is to choose the Ad layout. There are various layouts available but large rectangle (336x280) and wide skyscraper (160x600) are preferred over others (since they help get more impressions for you and hence help you make more money).
Customizing the colors of various parts of your AdSense ad is the next thing you need to do. Even though customizing colors is optional (as far as the Google AdSense program is concerned), it’s strongly recommended for making your Ads attractive and more effective.
Your choice of colors must be governed by the look and feel of your website so that the Ad doesn’t look out of place.
These are the essential customizations that you surely need to do before you can start using Google AdSense Ads on your website.
Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 3 (Additional customizations)
Besides the essential customizations like selecting the Ad type, Ad layout and colors, there are some other customizations that you can apply to your AdSense account.
In fact, some of these can quite easily be treated as essential customizations (based on the context of your website) e.g. ‘filters’ is one such customization that is quite important. Let’s take a look at what these additional customizations are:
Filters: Google allows you to set-up custom ad filters for your website (note that this is in addition to the screening of ad content that Google does by default).
By setting up filters you can block competitive Ads and other Ads that you don’t want to display on your website. In fact, filters are a must if your website sells a product or a service (unless you want to promote your competitors through your website).
Alternate Ads: This is something that can help you in preventing underutilization of the ad space on your website. Alternate Ads are the Ads that you would want to show up on your website in case sufficient content-relevant Ads are not available.
If you don’t specify alternate Ads and if there are insufficient content-related Ads available, Google AdSense program will serve charitable Ads to your website (Ads which don’t earn revenue for you).
Reporting and performance tracking: You can even customize the reporting and performance tracking options for your AdSense account.
One important tool in this regard is the use of channels to study the performance of AdSense Ads from various perspectives.
However, you might decide to take this up later down the line (maybe 1 month after setting up your AdSense account.
Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 4 (AdSense code)
Once you are done with all the customizations, your AdSense code is generated in the AdSense Code box. You just need to copy this code (which is in the form of a programming script) from the AdSense Code box and paste it in your website as per the guidelines from Google.
Since Google allows only three ad units per page, you can add the code at more than one place in your html code.
The next step is to save your web page to the designated web server (as per the instructions from your web hosting service provider). Please note that Google AdSense program does not require you to send over your website’s html code to them; neither does it ask to load it onto their servers or do anything else with it.
The addition of AdSense code to your website’s code is the only thing that you need to do. Separate procedures are available with Google for people who want to use AdSense Ads with their blogs (you can check these on Google’s website for AdSense program).
Now that everything is done and dusted, you need to wait for a few hours (might be lesser than that) before Google’s web crawlers find your web page or blog that has AdSense code on it and you start seeing AdSense Ads on your web page or blog.
You might see some PSA (charitable Ads) initially (almost immediately) but these will soon get replaced with the AdSense Ads that will earn revenue for you.
If the content on your website violates the AdSense program’s policies, you might keep seeing PSAs even after few hours.
In all such cases (or if you find objectionable Ads that don’t go even after you have applied appropriate filters), you will need to contact Google who will sort out the problems for you.
Friday, October 30, 2009
How to Build Trust in Social Media Marketing
How much is trust worth? How much is word-of-mouth worth? We know that people don't trust TV ads like they used to. And, journalism gets murkier by the minute. So, how can you still reach people and build trust?
Nielsen surveyed over 250,000 internet consumers from 50 countries and found:
What can you do starting this week to cultivate trust online?
Nielsen surveyed over 250,000 internet consumers from 50 countries and found:
- Recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising.
- 90% or consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know.
- 70% trusted consumer opinions posted online.
What can you do starting this week to cultivate trust online?
- Showcase your latest case study on Facebook. Tell a story!
- Ask your Client/Customer base to Tell a Friend about your Website. Give them a pair of movie tickets as a way of saying thanks.
- Put a rating system in place for your products. Let the fans attract the business.
- Invite key bloggers in your industry to experience your product/service.
Keep an ongoing list of ways you can build trust online, and leverage your current network whenever possible. Just be sure to give back. It always comes full circle.
Hope you have found this article helpful. Please feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
20 SURE- FIRE Tips For Optimizing Time Spent on Social Media Sites by Chad Timothy
In respect to your time reading this, I’m going to keep the tips brief and to the point.
1. Become a search ninja. Search really matters to be ultra-successful in social, and knowing all the specific Google operators can help you get to what you need for your marketing efforts fast (such as content creation that requires research).
2. Unfollow those who don’t add value or aren’t important to your network. This tip isn’t for a brand or company seeking to make themselves accessible to the world at large, but for you as a marketer personally. How many times have you logged into Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed – even just after a few hours of being away – and felt totally lost in the conversation. Unless you’re going to devote your life to watching the stream, make sure that who you’re following is actually worth your time.
3. Unsubscribe to all RSS feeds that aren’t unmissable. RSS is the perfect, simple way to keep track of relevant feeds, but over time your reader can become bloated. We’ve all logged into reader and seen Google display the euphemistic “1,000+ unread items” before. This isn’t very fun – so be sure to keep your subscription signal-to-noise ratio positive.
4. Learn to skim. As marketers, there just isn’t time to read everything fully. Learn to skim past the noise and recognize when there are conversations and content worth your time to read carefully. On the flip side, make your own content scanable to entice readers to skim. Done properly, this should increase engagement and draw people in deeper.
5. Establish a set of trusted sites to read frequently. No matter what niche you’re interested in, you absolutely must identify the trusted, valuable sites in that area. Read their content carefully, as in many cases, those at the top are the conversation starters for those in the tail. In other words: Following the leaders can keep you at the forefront of the greater conversation.
6. Audit your time. Calculate how much time you spend daily in different areas of the social web. It adds up, and no one is immune to losing time. Carefully audit just where your time is going and realign efforts to the areas that make a different in achieving objectives.
7. Automate where it makes sense, but do so carefully. Setting up feeds to auto-tweet when you add new content to your blog or share something in Google Reader may make sense. But careful not to automate things like direct messages, something that may irk those on the receiving end.
8. Analyze how people react to the content you create or share. Look at what content archetypes your community reacts to, learn from them, adjust and sharpen as you go forward.
9. Realize there is no information overload. Learn to navigate the unstoppable river of real-time information.
10. Aggregate social content about your company, brand or even yourself into a real-time feed using one of the many tools available to do this. Bring the relevant mentions to you instead of always searching for them.
11. Consolidate your network presence keep your posts short and to the point.
12. Learn the ebbs and flows of content in a niche and what networks, sites and users matter. Get an understanding of how your corner of the web works, and in time you’ll develop an understanding for how it functions at the macro level.
13. Develop an efficient routine for your time spent in the social web. This will allow you to know how much time each set of tasks and updates take and allow you to become more efficient each day. With that said, as marketers it is also important to understand that we all use the web differently. So if you’re going to do this for efficiency’s sake, continue to explore other tools, trends and options. You can be efficient with your core functions but still experiment.
14. Make your processes simple. No one is going to argue against copying and pasting being the best social media tool. There’s a reason for that: It’s dead simple. Make your time spent on social media as a participant and contributor as simple as the idea of copy-pasting content.
15. Use only the essential tools. With a constant slew of new apps being developed, it’s easy for marketers to get shiny new object syndrome. And while you should be trying new things out, you should get to the point you’re only using the tools daily that are essential to your core purposes in the social web.
16. Don’t multitask. If you want to do things like develop killer blog content, you have to turn off Twitter, walk away from email and focus. Social media makes it all too easy to multitask, but the results of your efforts will be sub-par compared to those who focus.
17. Cross-pollinate content sharing. Do things like sharing StumbleUpon or Digg links in Twitter – encourage users from one network to share content in another. Get creative with how you do this and make it subtle or even invisible.
18. Embrace imperfection. Part of social media means, well, being social. And our social interactions are by their very nature imperfect. Some of the best blogs on the planet are hardly perfect, but that’s not what makes them compelling.
19. Eliminate busy work. Identify where the valuable, creative opportunities are that resonate with your key audiences. Now focus there – the rest may be busy work that can be trimmed.
20. Quality over quantity – more participation does not trump higher-quality participation. As the social web continues to grow, this will only become more important.
This is certainly a shortlist, so I’ll turn it over to the readers: What’s your best tip for optimizing time spent in social media?
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
1. Become a search ninja. Search really matters to be ultra-successful in social, and knowing all the specific Google operators can help you get to what you need for your marketing efforts fast (such as content creation that requires research).
2. Unfollow those who don’t add value or aren’t important to your network. This tip isn’t for a brand or company seeking to make themselves accessible to the world at large, but for you as a marketer personally. How many times have you logged into Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed – even just after a few hours of being away – and felt totally lost in the conversation. Unless you’re going to devote your life to watching the stream, make sure that who you’re following is actually worth your time.
3. Unsubscribe to all RSS feeds that aren’t unmissable. RSS is the perfect, simple way to keep track of relevant feeds, but over time your reader can become bloated. We’ve all logged into reader and seen Google display the euphemistic “1,000+ unread items” before. This isn’t very fun – so be sure to keep your subscription signal-to-noise ratio positive.
4. Learn to skim. As marketers, there just isn’t time to read everything fully. Learn to skim past the noise and recognize when there are conversations and content worth your time to read carefully. On the flip side, make your own content scanable to entice readers to skim. Done properly, this should increase engagement and draw people in deeper.
5. Establish a set of trusted sites to read frequently. No matter what niche you’re interested in, you absolutely must identify the trusted, valuable sites in that area. Read their content carefully, as in many cases, those at the top are the conversation starters for those in the tail. In other words: Following the leaders can keep you at the forefront of the greater conversation.
6. Audit your time. Calculate how much time you spend daily in different areas of the social web. It adds up, and no one is immune to losing time. Carefully audit just where your time is going and realign efforts to the areas that make a different in achieving objectives.
7. Automate where it makes sense, but do so carefully. Setting up feeds to auto-tweet when you add new content to your blog or share something in Google Reader may make sense. But careful not to automate things like direct messages, something that may irk those on the receiving end.
8. Analyze how people react to the content you create or share. Look at what content archetypes your community reacts to, learn from them, adjust and sharpen as you go forward.
9. Realize there is no information overload. Learn to navigate the unstoppable river of real-time information.
10. Aggregate social content about your company, brand or even yourself into a real-time feed using one of the many tools available to do this. Bring the relevant mentions to you instead of always searching for them.
11. Consolidate your network presence keep your posts short and to the point.
12. Learn the ebbs and flows of content in a niche and what networks, sites and users matter. Get an understanding of how your corner of the web works, and in time you’ll develop an understanding for how it functions at the macro level.
13. Develop an efficient routine for your time spent in the social web. This will allow you to know how much time each set of tasks and updates take and allow you to become more efficient each day. With that said, as marketers it is also important to understand that we all use the web differently. So if you’re going to do this for efficiency’s sake, continue to explore other tools, trends and options. You can be efficient with your core functions but still experiment.
14. Make your processes simple. No one is going to argue against copying and pasting being the best social media tool. There’s a reason for that: It’s dead simple. Make your time spent on social media as a participant and contributor as simple as the idea of copy-pasting content.
15. Use only the essential tools. With a constant slew of new apps being developed, it’s easy for marketers to get shiny new object syndrome. And while you should be trying new things out, you should get to the point you’re only using the tools daily that are essential to your core purposes in the social web.
16. Don’t multitask. If you want to do things like develop killer blog content, you have to turn off Twitter, walk away from email and focus. Social media makes it all too easy to multitask, but the results of your efforts will be sub-par compared to those who focus.
17. Cross-pollinate content sharing. Do things like sharing StumbleUpon or Digg links in Twitter – encourage users from one network to share content in another. Get creative with how you do this and make it subtle or even invisible.
18. Embrace imperfection. Part of social media means, well, being social. And our social interactions are by their very nature imperfect. Some of the best blogs on the planet are hardly perfect, but that’s not what makes them compelling.
19. Eliminate busy work. Identify where the valuable, creative opportunities are that resonate with your key audiences. Now focus there – the rest may be busy work that can be trimmed.
20. Quality over quantity – more participation does not trump higher-quality participation. As the social web continues to grow, this will only become more important.
This is certainly a shortlist, so I’ll turn it over to the readers: What’s your best tip for optimizing time spent in social media?
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
6 KILLER INTERNET MARKETING WEAPONS YOU CAN USE ON A SHOESTRING BUDGET - BY CHAD TIMOTHY
I have some useful tips for you. When many people consider of Internet marketing, they consider customarily of websites. Are they right or wrong? Well both. While websites have been the pass member of Internet offered as well as in many cases have been the customarily Internet offered apparatus businesses use, they have been not the “be all, finish all”. They have been not compulsory for Internet marketing. However, we do rarely suggest them as they have been many appropriate matched to lay during the core of your Internet offered plan, the heart so to speak, though that’s the subject for an additional conversation.
So here have been 7 torpedo Internet offered collection which we can exercise upon the shoestring bill but carrying to have the website of your own:
1. Email Marketing – When scrupulously implemented, there substantially isn’t the quicker, better, as well as reduction costly proceed to stay in front of your prospects as well as clients than to precedence the energy of email. You can literally reason a total volume of prospects as well as clients with the singular click – how’s which for power?!
2. Blogs – Blogging is the good apparatus when we would similar to step it up the nick as well as stay in consistent hit with your prospects as well as clients. Some ideas upon how to have use of it competence be to post what’s brand new with we or your business, post ominous calm as the value-add to your clients, or reason as well as interactive forum with your clients geared towards bargain how to improved offer them.
There have been the handful of giveaway or low price blog hosts out there which unequivocally have this routine elementary (e.g. Blogger as well as TypePad).
3. Article Marketing – This is the unusual proceed to bringing notoriety, seductiveness as well as in conclusion leads for many sorts of businesses. It can be used as the vital differentiator or value-add upon because someone should buy from we instead of your competitors. Whether your clients have been local, regional, inhabitant or tellurian — articles have been unstable as well as serviceable in all situations — that’s partial of their charm.
4. eZines – Much similar to blogs as well as essay marketing, eZines have been good proceed to stay in reason with your prospects upon the some-more scheduled basis. Additionally, they have been substantially the foregoer in assisting we rise the list of prospects to marketplace as well as sell your wares.
5. Affiliate Programs — Get others compelling as well as offered for you. This apparatus can turn the homogeneous of carrying both the full blown offered as well as sales staff which gets paid upon performance. They don’t foster as well as without delay lead to the sale for you, they don’t get paid. For the do-it-yourselfers, there have been copiousness of collection out there to assistance we set up this sort of program. For everybody else, there have been glorious use providers out there who can coordinate as well as conduct this routine for you (e.g. Clickbank as well as Commission Junction).
6. Viral Marketing – Again, the good proceed for removing others to foster as well as assistance emanate the hum about you, your business, your products and/or your services. The best, many genuine proceed to get this proposed is by formulating vehemence fans out of your existent clients as well as afterwards assisting them assistance we widespread the word.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
Internet Marketing Made Easy for the Newbies
There are so many internet marketing possibilities for promoting an online business, or even a traditional business. The ability to engage in internet marketing has truly opened the door for women in business and has made working from home a lot easier than it used to be.
Internet marketing can be much less expensive than traditional marketing and it can reach a huge, precisely targeted audience. Because there are no geographic barriers in internet marketing, it is truly possible to do business worldwide and to sell anything from anywhere, even from the comfort of your own home. Following is a simple explanation of some of the most common internet marketing options that you can use to promote your business.
Article Distribution
Distributing professional articles with a resource box that directs readers to your website is a very valuable and effective method of internet marketing. The articles can be given away with permission to reprint at-will under the terms that the article content and resource box cannot be changed. Many website operators will post these articles on their websites which will direct visitors to your website as well as enhancing your internet marketing link campaigns.
Directory Listings
Directory listings are a form of internet marketing that can be very useful. Directories are a lot like search engines, only listings in the directories are managed and ranked by people rather than by automated, electronic means. Many directories accept directory listings free of charge, so they can be an inexpensive and effective form of internet marketing.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a viable internet marketing technique that is very similar to direct mail. Generally, it is best for internet marketing messages sent via email to be sent to opt-in or subscriber lists. However, third party lists can be purchased for the purpose of email marketing.
If using third-party lists, check into how the email addresses were collected and make sure that they are truly targeted lists with content gathered from individual who opted to receive information relevant to what you are sending.
Ezine Advertising
Ezine advertising, as an internet marketing option, is a lot like advertising in a magazine; only the “magazine” is delivered to subscribers electronically rather than through the mail. Companies that distribute online newsletters often sale advertising in their newsletters as well, and some may even trade out for an advertisement in your newsletter.
Link Campaigns
Building links to your website from other websites that have information relevant to your target market should be a part of your internet marketing plan. Link popularity, the number of links coming in to your website, and link relevancy, the relevance of the website that is linking to you, can improve your website ranking in the search engines as well as directing targeted traffic to your site.
Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing
Pay-per-click search engine marketing is one of the most successful forms of internet marketing. Basically, pay-per-click search engine advertising is a process whereby you bid on specific keywords that will direct targeted traffic to your website. You are listed in the search engines based upon the amount you bid for the keyword. You are charged the bid price each time a visitor clicks on the search engine listing, through to your website. This is a good internet marketing option because you only pay for successful click-through’s which result in traffic to your website.
Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing is a much preferred internet marketing option because the majority of visitors to just about any website come via the use of a search engine. Search engines use what is called spiders or crawlers which are really just software programs that index websites and determine their relevance, based on the search engine’s rules, to the information a person using an internet browser is looking for.
There are also meta search engines that draw from the results of other search engines, and specialty search engines that are geared to a particular topic or industry. To get listed in search engines, a website needs to be optimized and submitted to the search engines. Major search engines include Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Alta Vista and others.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
Internet marketing can be much less expensive than traditional marketing and it can reach a huge, precisely targeted audience. Because there are no geographic barriers in internet marketing, it is truly possible to do business worldwide and to sell anything from anywhere, even from the comfort of your own home. Following is a simple explanation of some of the most common internet marketing options that you can use to promote your business.
Article Distribution
Distributing professional articles with a resource box that directs readers to your website is a very valuable and effective method of internet marketing. The articles can be given away with permission to reprint at-will under the terms that the article content and resource box cannot be changed. Many website operators will post these articles on their websites which will direct visitors to your website as well as enhancing your internet marketing link campaigns.
Directory Listings
Directory listings are a form of internet marketing that can be very useful. Directories are a lot like search engines, only listings in the directories are managed and ranked by people rather than by automated, electronic means. Many directories accept directory listings free of charge, so they can be an inexpensive and effective form of internet marketing.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a viable internet marketing technique that is very similar to direct mail. Generally, it is best for internet marketing messages sent via email to be sent to opt-in or subscriber lists. However, third party lists can be purchased for the purpose of email marketing.
If using third-party lists, check into how the email addresses were collected and make sure that they are truly targeted lists with content gathered from individual who opted to receive information relevant to what you are sending.
Ezine Advertising
Ezine advertising, as an internet marketing option, is a lot like advertising in a magazine; only the “magazine” is delivered to subscribers electronically rather than through the mail. Companies that distribute online newsletters often sale advertising in their newsletters as well, and some may even trade out for an advertisement in your newsletter.
Link Campaigns
Building links to your website from other websites that have information relevant to your target market should be a part of your internet marketing plan. Link popularity, the number of links coming in to your website, and link relevancy, the relevance of the website that is linking to you, can improve your website ranking in the search engines as well as directing targeted traffic to your site.
Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing
Pay-per-click search engine marketing is one of the most successful forms of internet marketing. Basically, pay-per-click search engine advertising is a process whereby you bid on specific keywords that will direct targeted traffic to your website. You are listed in the search engines based upon the amount you bid for the keyword. You are charged the bid price each time a visitor clicks on the search engine listing, through to your website. This is a good internet marketing option because you only pay for successful click-through’s which result in traffic to your website.
Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing is a much preferred internet marketing option because the majority of visitors to just about any website come via the use of a search engine. Search engines use what is called spiders or crawlers which are really just software programs that index websites and determine their relevance, based on the search engine’s rules, to the information a person using an internet browser is looking for.
There are also meta search engines that draw from the results of other search engines, and specialty search engines that are geared to a particular topic or industry. To get listed in search engines, a website needs to be optimized and submitted to the search engines. Major search engines include Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Alta Vista and others.
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
TWITTER ADVERTISING MADE EASY
Here's what's available if you're interested in Twitter advertising?
1) RevTwt
This service offers a variety of advertising options. Publishers can select from CPC (cost per click) ads, CPT (cost per thousand), which you must have a specific number of followers for, or CPA (viewers must perform a specific action). RevTwt supplies the links and you paste them into your Twitter timeline.
2) Adf.ly
A link shortening service with a twist. Shorten the URL, then post it to Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks, and you'll earn money with every click. The current payout for those in the U.S. is about $1.00 per thousand visitors.
3) Adjix
Another link shortening service with an advertising twist built in. Twitter users can choose to embed ads inside their tweets. Advertisers set the rate they are willing to pay for someone to tweet their ad. Ad selection varies from a random ad to allowing you to target a specific subject area, for example health. An informative video is available at http://adjix.com/ddew
4) Be-A-Magpie
A variety of compensation modes to pick from, including pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, pay-per-click, or pay-per-view. Enter your Twitter user name to see how much you can earn. You'll be paid to allow "Magpie" to post tweets to your account. Tweets sent will be matched to the topic of your usual Tweets, so you won't need to worry about off-topic messages. It's up to you how many ads get posted. It can be set at the default, which is one Magpie tweet for every 10 of yours, or changed. You will need a PayPal account in order to get paid.
5) PayMeTweets
To use this "micro-promotional" tool you'll first need to follow "@PayMeTweets.com". Watch for tweets you like, then "retweet" (RT) them. You'll be paid a set amount for each one. Payment varies depending on your "influence". Credits you earn can also be used to advertise your own products/services. Payout per tweet ranges from a few pennies up to $20.00 for those Twitter users with heavy influence.
6) SponsoredTweets
Connecting advertisers with Twitter users to sponsor "conversations". All paid Twitter ads contain a disclosure to such in order to comply with the FTC. To set up an account you'll need to set your price, and then add a category and keywords. Advertisers come to you, and you'll make the decision to reject or accept them. You'll be paid within 24 hours of posting Tweets, and you must earn $50.00 before cashing out. Ads are not posted to your Twitter timeline, you must manually post them.
As Twitter continues to evolve and grow, the number of advertising supported services will too. Like it or not, Twitter is a powerful communication tool that allows people to connect with each other all over the world, and marketing to that audience is a natural by-product of that.
No matter whether you like the idea or not, advertising to Twitter users is here to stay. I'm not taking one side over the other, just reporting some of the options. As my Mama used to say "Don't shoot the messenger!
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
1) RevTwt
This service offers a variety of advertising options. Publishers can select from CPC (cost per click) ads, CPT (cost per thousand), which you must have a specific number of followers for, or CPA (viewers must perform a specific action). RevTwt supplies the links and you paste them into your Twitter timeline.
2) Adf.ly
A link shortening service with a twist. Shorten the URL, then post it to Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks, and you'll earn money with every click. The current payout for those in the U.S. is about $1.00 per thousand visitors.
3) Adjix
Another link shortening service with an advertising twist built in. Twitter users can choose to embed ads inside their tweets. Advertisers set the rate they are willing to pay for someone to tweet their ad. Ad selection varies from a random ad to allowing you to target a specific subject area, for example health. An informative video is available at http://adjix.com/ddew
4) Be-A-Magpie
A variety of compensation modes to pick from, including pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, pay-per-click, or pay-per-view. Enter your Twitter user name to see how much you can earn. You'll be paid to allow "Magpie" to post tweets to your account. Tweets sent will be matched to the topic of your usual Tweets, so you won't need to worry about off-topic messages. It's up to you how many ads get posted. It can be set at the default, which is one Magpie tweet for every 10 of yours, or changed. You will need a PayPal account in order to get paid.
5) PayMeTweets
To use this "micro-promotional" tool you'll first need to follow "@PayMeTweets.com". Watch for tweets you like, then "retweet" (RT) them. You'll be paid a set amount for each one. Payment varies depending on your "influence". Credits you earn can also be used to advertise your own products/services. Payout per tweet ranges from a few pennies up to $20.00 for those Twitter users with heavy influence.
6) SponsoredTweets
Connecting advertisers with Twitter users to sponsor "conversations". All paid Twitter ads contain a disclosure to such in order to comply with the FTC. To set up an account you'll need to set your price, and then add a category and keywords. Advertisers come to you, and you'll make the decision to reject or accept them. You'll be paid within 24 hours of posting Tweets, and you must earn $50.00 before cashing out. Ads are not posted to your Twitter timeline, you must manually post them.
As Twitter continues to evolve and grow, the number of advertising supported services will too. Like it or not, Twitter is a powerful communication tool that allows people to connect with each other all over the world, and marketing to that audience is a natural by-product of that.
No matter whether you like the idea or not, advertising to Twitter users is here to stay. I'm not taking one side over the other, just reporting some of the options. As my Mama used to say "Don't shoot the messenger!
I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to leave me a comment.
To Your Success,
Chad Timothy
http://www.chadtimothy.com/
http://www.softwarebillionsclub.com/
Chad Timothy's 500K Instant Cash Flow System
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