Affordable Online Business Strategies
Archive for April, 2009
Don't Miss Your Discount
Apr 23rd
Have you noticed that a lot of times when you try to leave a web site, a chat box appears with a virtual agent supposedly offering you a special deal?
You are either offered a discount or a bonus or both for ordering right now. Apparently it’s an effective way to generate more sales. And it seems to be on the rise.
We all like getting a discount. But guess what? If you decide to order, you may miss out on the discount.
There’s no way to know if there is a discount available if you don’t try to leave the site. So if you order, you’ll pay full price.
An extreme example of this is a recent product offering that was endorsed by a newsletter publisher I really respect. He said he paid $47 for it, and that it was worth picking up.
I went to the site, read the sales letter, and decided to pass on the offer. I clicked the back button, and a chat box appeared, offering me the product for $17! A $30 discount. I clicked on the link and ordered.
The newsletter publisher who endorsed the product told his subscribers about the discount a couple of days later. He said that while he paid $47, and he thought it was worth it, he wanted to make sure that his readers were aware of the discount. Good for him.
In this time of economic doom and gloom, it’s important to save money everywhere we can .
The next time you come across an offer that you are really interested in ordering, instead of ordering, do this…
Bookmark the site so you can find it again if there is no discount offer. Then hit the back button, or try to go to another site. If there is no chat box with a discount offer, you’ll have the site bookmarked and you can order.
If you get an offer for a discount, you can order and save money. I don’t know about you, but it really annoys me if I find out that I paid more than I had to for a product. Now that you know about this marketing tactic, you won’t miss out on your discount.
Premium keyword research site. Click here for $1 Free Trial…
A Look At Nichebot X And A Special Offer
Apr 18th
Do you know whether you are really picking a winning keyword when you do your keyword research?
The thing is — how can you really know when all you get is one number that represents a count over a specific period of time?
Here’s another question.
Do you find that you use a number of different open browser windows to conduct your keyword research and really would like everything in one complete package?
How do you know whether the demand is old interest or new interest?
The point is — with most sources, you don’t!
If you want to kick up some dust and get some traffic to your site or your offer, you’ve got to fish from more than one sea.
Right now, there is no one is who doing this quite the way NicheBOT does.
They give you access to 4 different databases, such as Google, Yahoo, WordTracker and Keyword Discovery.
Besides that, they have some of the most complex sophisticated one-click features that allow me to manipulate my data like you wouldn’t believe.
I now have ALL of my keyword research available to me online at any time.
I’m sure you know that keywords are what rule the online universe. It’s how people find websites.
As Comscore.com indicated back in 2004 that 83% of all internet purchases began with someone typing a keyword or keyword phrase into the search engines, that can nearly assume that by 2008 — that percentage has now gone up above 90%.
Look, unless you have a huge mailing list or a bunch of joint venture partners in your pocket, the only other place to get traffic is from the search engines.
If you’ve done any sort of keyword research, then I’m sure you are used to seeing a keyword and a count number that represents the search demand.
It’s sort of one-dimensional and doesn’t give you a real feeling about any past trends of the keyword. Like when the seasonal high point is for the demand on a given keyword. Know what I mean?
You probably already know you can look deeper into a keyword — but it takes multiple tools and browser windows to open. Not so with what I’m about to show you.
I would like to show you exactly how you can pick winning keywords every single time — and you can literally do this blindfolded. Well, not really, but close enough.
I’m going to show you how you can get access to all of the details about what you will get when you sign up for Nichebot X. And be sure to watch the video “5 Steps To Niche Domination” on that page.
To make it as risk free as possible, you can try out Nichebot X for 14 days for $1. Sign up and try it for yourself. There are over 50 videos that will show you how to use the tools inside Nichebot. Read the quick start guide and the 10 commandments for keyword research report.
Your subscription is handled through Paypal, so it’s easy to cancel if you find that it isn’t for you. No worries about your credit card getting hit with charges because you can’t contact customer support.
Nichebot X is less expensive than Wordtracker, and you get access to the Wordtracker database through Nichebot. You save money, and get all the keywords you need to dominate your niche. Click here for more…
Customers Only Care About What They Want
Apr 17th
Let’s assume that you’re just getting started with your online business. You decide to sell other people’s products for a commission. You decide to become an Internet marketer. Now you’re ready to make some money…
Here’s a question:
What’s more important – selling the product, or selling yourself?
What brought this to mind was an article I came across today. It advised that the best way to have a successful online business was not to sell the product, but to sell yourself first. Once your visitors get to know you, they will be more likely to buy from you.
In the case of affiliate marketing, I wouldn’t agree, unless you are building a list. Sure, if you’re building a list and sending out offers to your subscribers on a regular basis, you need to keep them interested and willing to click on your links.
If you don’t have a list, why waste the time? The vast majority of all the visitors that come across your offer – your web site, ad, or article – will either click through to the merchant’s site or click to another site. And they will probably never be back.
Why waste your time to be likeable? The fact is that you don’t have the opportunity to get people to know you. They didn’t come to your site to find out about you. They came to find out more info. Your only concern is getting them to click on your link.
The reality is no one cares about you or me. They only care about what they want. And how to get it. Your job is to tell them about what you’re selling, what it will do for them, and how to get it.
The product owner has the task of convincing the visitor that what he is offering and the benefits he/she is offering is what they want.
The Pros And Cons Of Using Video
Apr 16th
<!– @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>
I came across an interesting discussion on the warrior forum today. It had to do with how long squeeze pages should be. There was an interesting difference of opinion, as would be expected. Some people thought that long copy was not working well. That most people were more interested in short copy because they have an increasingly short attention span.
Others were of the opinion that long copy works well for them. A well-known Internet marketer who is very successful, pointed how that his squeeze page was converting at between 45% and 60% with long copy with black text on a white background.
The discussion moved from that topic to the topic of replacing text on web pages with video. It was correctly pointed out that not everyone has high-speed Internet. A lot of people are stuck with dial up Internet. They aren’t interested in waiting for a video to load. Especially when there seems to be an awful lot of bad videos online.
Some say the video is the new way to market. That video is replacing text as a method of marketing in the 21st century. It’s true that video is here to stay, but I’m not sure that it is going to completely replace text on a web page. Just because video is popular and here to stay doesn’t mean that it is the best way to market. After viewing countless “must see” videos, I have found that a lot of them are a complete waste of time.
This may seem mean spirited, but I am only stating my experiences. I’m getting tired of sitting through 20 to 30 minute videos, only to realize that it is just a sales message without any useful content. I’m not against people selling to me. I am against people making me sit through 30 minutes of slides and audio that masquerade as of video, without telling me what is in it for me.
Until recently, I did not have high speed Internet. I used to sit for several minutes to over an hour waiting for a video to load, expecting great information, only to be disappointed. This happened so many times, that I stopped even trying to watch online video.
Now that I have high speed Internet, I can easily watch any video I want, and I have watched a lot more than I used to. But guess what? In too many cases it’s still a waste of my time. Creating online video is getting easier and cheaper, which is good news for everyone. But the bad news is, that a lot of people who don’t know what they are doing, are slapping up video after video without realizing that their customer is spending valuable time to watch the video.
There’s no denying that video can be very good for a business. So why even bring this up?
Because this means there is a great opportunity for you. If you had the same experience as I have, and have sat through countless boring videos, you know how bad some of them are. And I’m sure that you could do a much better job of creating a video of your own. With so much garbage out there, it’s not going to be too difficult for you to create top notch videos of your own.
It seems that most people don’t take the time to create quality videos. All you have to do to be unique and successful as a marketer, is to create videos that offer useful information with related offers. Remember that not everyone has high speed Internet, and try to keep your videos short and informative. Or you could offer a longer video for those with high-speed Internet, with the option to view a shorter video for those with dial-up.
Always respect your customer. They don’t have to buy from you, but if you provide value, don’t waste their time, and produce content that they looked forward to getting, you’re on your way to Internet marketing success.
Get all the keywords you need to dominate your niche. Click here for more.
Weeding Out The Non-Buying Keywords
Apr 11th
We all know that keyword research is important. Once you have your keyword list, you can do a lot of things with the list. One thing that I want to talk about is to filter out the useless keywords.
You can do this yourself manually, or you can use software. What do I mean by useless keywords?
Useless keywords are the ones that are used by non-buyers, people that have no intention of buying anything, people who want everything for free. Nothing wrong with that, if they can find it. But it won’t work for you if you’re in business to make money.
The red flag word that should get your attention are words such as:
- Free
- Cheap
- Discount
People who are using these words in their search phrases aren’t buyers. Targeting any keywords with these words in them is not a good idea. You may get clicks, but you aren’t going to get buyers.
Any key phrase with these words should be deleted. Free software, free html tutorial, free ppc videos, cheap mp3 players, discount software. These are not phrases that that indicate buyers.
This is especially true if you are doing pay per click advertising. If you compile a huge list of keywords and just dump them into your account, you could be spending a lot of money for no reason. If your keyword list has any of the words listed above, and your ad comes up, you may get a lot of clicks, but all that’s going to do is run up your advertising bill.
Time is valuable to all of us, and we don’t want to waste it. This is especially true if your online business is done after you work your full time job. It’s important to concentrate your time on activities that will make you money. And it’s important that you don’t lose money in your PPC ads by including non-buying keywords in your keyword list.
Discover The 5 Steps To Niche Domination. Click Here For More…
Market Research Comes Before Keyword Research
Apr 5th
We all know that keyword research is vital to a marketing campaign. One thing I have learned is that the first step is not to go compile a list of as many keywords as possible, target the ones with the highest search volume, and create articles, ads and content based on the results.
Yes, it’s important to do those things.
Here’s where you could run into problems. If you’re looking at markets you can enter, the usual way to do it is to go to a keyword research tool and start typing in words and phrases that you “think” are being used to search in your market.
It doesn’t really matter what you or I think that the market is searching for. What matters is what keywords searchers are actually using. And this is where I was missing the point.
The first step before doing keyword research is doing market research. In other words, finding out where your potential customers are hanging out. Finding out what forums they visit, the blogs they comment on, the products they are already buying.
Paying attention to what your market is buying, what questions they are asking, and what solutions they are after is key. From this information, you will have a list of seed keywords that you can plug into a search engine. Look at several of the web sites listed, and see what they’re selling, and subscribe to their newsletters.
I’ll use an example. Let’s say I want to target the bee keeper market. So I think for a few minutes and come up with a few keywords. The problem is that I don’t know anything about bee keeping, so I don’t have any real idea of what search terms my market is using.
If all I do is rely on my limited knowledge of the market and my guess about which keywords to target, I could be missing out on a lot of potential. If I do market research instead, I’ll find out what products are out there, and I’ll get an idea of what the market is looking for by going to a few forums.
Keyword research is important, but it’s frustrating when you sit at your computer and can’t come up with a list of keywords, when you don’t have many ideas of what terms to use to get started. That’s why a little quick exercise in market research can be a real asset. And market research doesn’t have to be boring, long, or tedious.
Go to Amazon.com and take a look at the best selling books and most popular magazines in your market. Do a search for forums by using your keyword followed by forum – bee keeper forum – for example. Pick a few keywords, plug them into a search engine, look at a few of the top sites.
Then you’ll have a list of keywords that your market is using. You’ll be doing keyword research on words and phrases that the market uses, and your results will be more targeted.
