Marketing Without Making Excuses
Affordable Online Business Strategies
How Giving Away A Free Report Can Get You New Subscribers
Jan 23rd
I was going through a course on list building recently, and something got my attention. The teacher of the course said on one of the videos that if you have a list, you should be making $1 per subscriber per month. So if you had 1,000 subscribers, you should be making $1,000 a month from the offers you send out. With that in mind, it’s obvious that having a list is VERY IMPORTANT!
So getting subscribers is the main objective. There are a lot of ways to get subscribers, but I wanted to point out a way that doesn’t get mentioned very often, and it doesn’t have to cost any money.
You’ve probably repeatedly heard that you should create a freebie to get people to sign up for your list. With so many people trying to get subscribers, you really need to offer a freebie. You can include some affiliate links in the report to get some additional revenue, so you can profit at the same time.
Here’s how you can make it even better so you can grow your list without any effort on your part. Oh, and by the way, this is not new, or my idea. It’s just something that I am going to use on a new list I’m starting, and I wanted to share it with you. I’ll also keep you updated on the results I’m getting.
For this project, let’s create an ebook. It doesn’t have to be very long, but it does have to be valuable. It could be a few articles you’ve written or had written for you that you compile into your ebook. It could be a list of resources related to your market – free products, forums, blogs, other email lists.
What you do is to write an offer to subscribe to your list at the front AND back of the ebook. Write a mini sales letter with the benefits of being on your list along with a link to your optin page.
You may be wondering why you would take the time to put in a link to your optin page when the person reading the ebook has already subscribed. The reason is that once someone gets your free ebook, you are going to tell them that they can give it away to their subscribers and web site visitors. Now they have a quality freebie that you have written that they can give away – with a link to YOUR optin page. You get free distribution of your ebook and new subscribers without lifting a finger.
Let’s recap. Create your freebie and make sure to include a link to your optin page. Once someone subscribes and downloads your free report, make sure to email them and encourage them to give this report away to as many people as possible. The only other thing you might want to do is to send them to an optin page that offers a different freebie than the free report they already have! Give it a try and see what happens.
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The 4 Free Software Tools I Rely On
Jan 22nd
When it comes to my online business, there are some software tools that I’ve found to be essential. In this article I am going to show you 4 software tools that I can’t live without and tell you why. I’m also going to show you where you can get these tools. They are all free, but don’t let the cost trick you into thinking that these tools aren’t worthwhile.
1. Xheader.
Header graphics are almost a must-have element on any web page. In the past, you had to know how to do it yourself, pay someone to do it for you, or purchase and learn how to use software so you could make them yourself. Not anymore. With Xheader, you get software that comes with over 500 templates in several categories that you can choose from. Select a template, add text and any graphics you want, add text effects, and you have a professional header. This is not some kind of “Lite” software that has the option to get the “Pro” version. There is only one version, and that’s Xheader. You can learn more by clicking here.
2. Kompozer.
Now that you have a header graphic, it’s time to create the web pages that you’re going to use it on. You can pay a lot of money for some web design software – sometimes several hundreds of dollars. There’s no reason to do that because you can create really nice web site with Kompozer. This is free, open source software that you can use to create web sites quickly. It’s a WYSIWYG web page editor – What You See Is What You Get – so if you can use a word processor, you can easily learn how to use it. There are help files that will answer a lot of questions, and there is a forum that you can access when you go to the Kompozer page. There is no advertising, and never any option to upgrade to a paid version. Free and powerful. Get it here.
3. Open Office.
Creating small reports, articles, and ebooks is a big part of online business. So you need a tool that will make it easier. So you need a tool that will make it easy to write and format your content, including adding graphics, as well as the ability to turn your content into a PDF file. And a tool that would make it easy to create PowerPoint slides would be good as well. If the tool would open Microsoft Office documents as well, it would be great.
The software that does the above and more is called Open Office. It is free software that can take the place of Microsoft Office. It can create PDF files, slide shows, spread sheets, and a lot more. As a marketer, you can create as many PDF files as you need, all with Open Office. It’s a big download, but it’s something that I wouldn’t want to be without. Get Open Office here.
4. FileZilla.
Once you’ve created your header graphics, and have your web pages looking good, it’s time to get them to your hosting account. FTP software makes it easy to upload your files up to the Internet. But which one should you choose? For me, the choice is easy – the free open source software called FileZilla. FileZilla will upload all of your web pages, graphics, PDF files, video files, and anything else you can think of. No ads, no cost, easy to use. It doesn’t get any better than that. Get it here.
There you have my 4 must have software tools. They are all I need to create professional web pages and sites, header graphics, PDF ebooks and reports, and upload them to my hosting account. These tools are powerful and free, so go check them out and see for yourself.
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Here's How You Can Get Professional Header Graphics For Free
Jan 21st
A really big problem for lot of people when they get around to creating a web site is getting graphics. If you could have only one graphic on your web pages, it would be the header graphic.
The problem is that you have to know how to do it, pay someone to do it for you, or buy software that you can learn to use to do it. If you know how to do it, you’re all set. If not, you have to spend some money to hire someone, or pay for and learn how to use the software so you can do it yourself. And no matter how you do it, remember that a badly designed header can do more to harm your business than help it.
Here’s some good news – now you can get your hands on free software that includes over 500 graphic headers in several categories. These headers don’t have any text on them. That’s where the software comes in.
It’s called Xheader. Now you can create incredible header graphics with this software that look like they were professionally designed.
It all starts with the over 500 header graphics that you can choose from. Select one in the software, and then you’re ready to customize it for your site. With Xheader, you can put any text on the header that you like. You can choose the size, font, color, and multiple effects of the text.
You can also add any graphics you want to the header. Add your picture, a picture of your product, or any buttons that you want. You can make the header any size you want, and save it in a web friendly format. There are no limits to this software. Create as many headers as you want.
I’ve been using this software since it first came out, and it’s amazing what you can do with it. And yes, it is absolutely free. You get the software and the header graphic templates for free. There is no option to buy the full version, because you are getting the full version. No One-Time-Offers, no popup ads, no hassle.
Besides being free, it’s easy to use. There are a couple of videos that you get access to so you can learn how easy it is to use this software. Click here to read more about Xheader and get your FREE copy.
Quick Cash From New Subscribers
Jan 20th
If you’re building a list, you need to generate traffic to your optin page. Some of you may decide to spend some money on advertising to get subscribers. While it’s true that building your list is a good investment, it would be a lot better if you could make some money up front so your advertising costs are covered. A way to make money before you warm up your list and start sending out offers.
There are two opportunities that you are presented with every time someone enters their name and email address and subscribe to your list. The first opportunity is on the page your new subscribers are sent to immediately after they subscribe. Here’s the first opportunity that you can use to make money right away.
When you set up your autoresponder and get the code you need so visitors can enter their name and email address, there is a page that they will be sent to after they hit the submit button. The service you use will usually have a default page that they are sent to that tells them that they have successfully subscribed. These default pages are very basic but useful.
There is an option to direct a new subscriber to a page of your choice after subscribing. Here’s where you can make money right away. Create a page that informs them that they have successfully subscribed, and then offer them the opportunity to take a look at some of your products. These can be affiliate offers, or they can be offers for a product of your own.
To make this work, the offer has to be really enticing. You could offer a substantial discount if they buy right now. Or you could offer a bonus that is not available to people who buy from the sales page.
Here’s your second opportunity to make some quick cash. After someone subscribes, they will get an email with a link that they need to click on to confirm that they want to subscribe to your list. Again, most autoresponder services have a default page that is very basic and informs them that they have successfully confirmed their subscription.
On this page, you would probably want to make a different offer. You could offer a substantial discount on a product. You could make this a one time offer. If they don’t buy from the page they’re on, they will miss out on the discount, and will have to pay the regular price if they wait to make a purchase.
It’s a good idea to make your offer one that is relatively inexpensive. They don’t know you yet, and they may be reluctant to spend a large sum of money up front. So concentrate on lower cost offers.
This is a way to make some cash while you’re building your list. It’s easy to do, and you can be sure that everyone who subscribes will see the pages that you create and will see your offers. Not everyone will be interested, but there’s a good chance that you can generate enough cash to pay for any advertising costs. And if they become a customer and are happy with what they’ve purchased, they’re more likely to buy from you again. Try it out and see what happens.
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Do You Know Your Perfect Customer?
Jan 19th
Targeted traffic is the best traffic. We all know that. But it can be a challenge finding our target market, and sometimes we get it wrong. That’s why market research is so important. The whole idea of market research is to first find out if there is a demand for your product, and find out where your market can be reached.
A mistake that can waste a lot of time is to fall in love with a product, and promote it with the idea that if you like it, everyone will want to buy it.
A close relative of mine made this mistake. They decided to get involved with a company that sold nutritional products. They looked through the brochures and went to a couple of representative’s meetings, and was really interested. The products claimed to fix just about any health related problem anybody had. One of their premiere products was a weight loss package that promised effortless weight loss.
My relative was hooked. They decided that the products they were selling were so awesome that everyone needed them. In fact, they went so far as to say that no one could afford NOT to buy and use these products. She was sold.
As time went on, she got a few people interested, but it wasn’t as easy as she had hoped. She was sold on the products, but she wrongly felt that everyone else would too once they found out about these products. She had invested a lot of time and money in this business, only to end up with bottles of supplements and a big credit card balance.
What does this have to do with market research? Easy. Instead of trying to sell to everyone and convince them to buy your product, it’s a lot easier to find the people that are already looking for what you’re selling.
A key to doing this is to come up with a profile of your perfect customer. What are the characteristics of the people who would be interested in your product. What other interests do they have. What problems are they trying to solve or what do they want to learn more about? Where do they go online? What newsletters and blogs do they read? What web sites do they visit? Are they willing to spend money online?
When someone comes to your site, or comes across one of your offers, it should seem like you are speaking directly to them. One on one. If you have a profile of your perfect customer, it’s easier to relate to them. You’ll be able to write your marketing content just like you were talking to them across the table over a cup of coffee. And since you know what they want, you don’t have to sell them, you just have to show them what you have to offer, and let them take the next step.
You’re not going to get very far in business if you don’t sell products. But if you try to convince people to buy your products, you’re going to have a harder time of it than if you know who you’re talking to.
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Keeping Up With Keyword Trends
Jan 16th
So you did your keyword research and got a nice, big list of keywords and keyword phrases. You selected keywords that had a good volume of monthly searches. The competition looks easy to beat, and you get to work creating your site. The thing is, you’re not done – not by a long shot.
First of all, markets change all of the time. What’s hot today may not be hot tomorrow. New competitors are going to try and do to you what you did to your competitors. You have to make sure that you don’t make a big marketing mistake. And that mistake is to do your keyword research once and never look back.
There’s no way to be sure that the search volume you saw when you did your research a few weeks or months ago are the same now.
A timely example is right in front of us – Valentine’s Day.
Try getting a lot of traffic for anything related to Valentine’s Day in November and December and chances are that you wouldn’t see a lot of searches or traffic. Now that we’re less than a month away from the big day, the search volume is getting really hot.
Would it be a good idea to target this market? Of course it would.
Should you go all out and put all of your efforts into a site centered around Valentine’s Day? For the short term, maybe. To make a lot of money all year long? No.
That may be an extreme example, but it points out that markets change all of the time.
What that means is that keyword research is never done. You do initial keyword research to find profitable markets. You keep doing keyword research to keep up on markets that are heating up. And you keep doing it so you make sure that you are targeting the profitable keywords.
A free tool that you can use to get an idea of what a market has done in the last few months or years is Google Trends. It won’t give you exact search volumes, but it can give you an idea of whether a market goes in cycles depending on the time of year, and if it has been gaining in search volume or if the volume has been going down over time. There is also Google Insights For Search that will give you similar data.
If you have a list of keywords that you created a few weeks ago and haven’t gotten around to creating content, take a little time and update the results. If you’ve got a site that you’re driving traffic to, go back and revisit some of your main key phrases to make sure that they’re the best ones to target. You’re also likely to find a few new keywords that you missed the first time around.
Article pages, squeeze pages, sales pages, optin pages, review pages, and graphics don’t have to be difficult or expensive to create. Discover the only point and click method that will show you how to create as many professional web pages as you’ll ever need. More here…
Tips On Using PLR Products For Maximum Profits
Jan 16th
When most of us get started with this “Internet Marketing” thing, we have a lot to learn. One of the first things that we learn is that it’s not enough to have a web site. You have to have something to sell if you want to make money. Affiliate products are good, and your own products are better. When you have your own product, you get to keep all of the money.
Not all of us know how to create a product, want to create a product, and/or we don’t want to wait around to get a product created before we start making any profits. One solution is Private Label Rights products. There are a lot of sites where you can buy these products for next to nothing. So you can buy these products, sell them and keep all of the profits.
If only it were that easy…
I have collected a lot of PLR products, and while the idea is good, often the products are not good. So the first step before you decide to sell anything is to actually read or use the product yourself. Some of these products are hard to read and have little real value. Some of these products have outdated information. A good example of this are ebooks that guide you through keyword research. I have private label rights ebooks that I purchased in the last couple of months that recommended using the overture keyword tool.
No one is recommending the Overture keyword tool anymore. I don’t even know if it is available anymore. So it wouldn’t make sense to sell the ebook the way it is and expect my customers to be happy. So what can you do?
That’s where the power of PLR products comes in. With most PLR products, you can change the product in any way you want. You can change the graphics, add content, change content, and put your name on it. You should edit any PLR product you get. The reason for that is if several people are trying to sell the same product without any changes, they are going to have a lot of competition.
If you create new graphics for the product, add to and/or rewrite the content, rename the product, add unique bonuses, and edit the sales page, you will be the only one selling that exact same product. As a bonus, you’ll get better at copywriting and editing.
PLR products are useful because you can get them at a low cost, you don’t have to spend a lot of time researching and compiling the information, and you can learn how to market products without a lot of up front costs. With Private Label Rights products, you can start selling your own products in no time. I don’t have a favorite source that I can recommend. The easiest way to find what you want is to go to Google and type in your market and PLR. For example “internet marketing private label rights”. Good luck and have fun.
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Targeted Keywords And Free Traffic
Jan 15th
Getting good rankings in the search engines is something that all of us want. Where a lot of people fail is that they either don’t take the time to create a list of keywords that they want to target, or they try to rank for seveal keywords on their index page.
So the starting point is to select the keywords you want to rank for. Your first task is to create a list of keywords that you want to target. Along with that, you want to collect a list of secondary keywords and key phrases that you can use along with the primary keywords. This list will also help you to write keyword rich content for your site.
Once you have a list of keywords, it’s time to take a look at the competition. If there is little or no competition, that keyword may not be one that will make you any money.If there is a lot of competition, you are less likely to get a good ranking, or at the very least it will take a long time to get there.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you decide that video game consoles are selling well, and the search volume is very high. So you go to Amazon.com, sign up for an affiliate account, and decide to sell Xbox 360 games and consoles. If you type your keywords into Google, you’ll see that your competition are the big companies like Walmart, BestBuy, Target, etc.
Since you are very unlikely to ever outrank these sites, it probably isn’t a good idea to spend the time to target this market, at least not if you want free search engine traffic. If you’re not on the first or second page of search results, you’re not going to get much free traffic. So a top 100 listing won’t do you much good.
That’s not to say that you can’t enter a competitive market. It’s just that there’s no reason to spend time on a keyword or key phrase that is too hard to rank for.
Here’s the good news. Since you have a large list of keywords that you’re targeting, you can cross off the ones that are too competitive and move on to the ones that are easier to rank for. Often you’ll find that keyword phrases that contain 2, 3, or more words will be easier to rank for.
The bottom line is this:
To give your web pages the best chance of getting free traffic, do your keyword research before you create your content. Once you have your keywords selected, create pages targeting those keywords. Try to target one main keyword to a page along with 3-5 related keywords. Doing the keyword research first is going to go a long way toward getting you good ranking web pages and free traffic.
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Getting Free Headers For Your Web Sites
Jan 12th
What web page would be complete without graphics? Most web sites have graphics somewhere on the page, and one of the most noticeable type of graphic is the header graphic. It’s at the top of the page and can really make a site stand out.
The only problem is that if you don’t have the software and skills to create your own header graphics, you either have to do without them or pay someone to create them for you. You can also buy packages of header graphics that you can customize for your own needs if you have the software and skill to make them work for your site.
The good news is that there is a way to get stunning header graphics that you can customize with the text and additional graphics of your choice. It from the same company that brought you Xsite Pro 2 (you do use this, don’t you?), and it’s called Xheader – the free header/banner design software. Did I mention that it is FREE?
There is no Pro version, just one version, the free version. No ads, no upsells, just tons of banners you can customize, all for free.
Here’s what happens once you download and install Xheader:
You open the software to scroll through the hundreds of banners you can choose from. They are sorted into categories so it makes it easier to find something that you like.
Click on the banner to open it in the software. Here you’ll be able to add text to the banner graphic. You can select from several fonts, sizes, colors, and effects. There are a lot of options, so experiment a little to get a feel for what you can do. You can move the text anywhere you want on the banner.
You can also import a graphic or picture that you have on your hard drive. For example, you could insert a picture of yourself right into the banner.
Once you’re done with the header, you can resize the banner to fit your web page, and you can select the quality of graphic you want to save. The higher the quality the bigger the file, but it’s up to you. Then you can export it as a jpg file and use on your web site.
One quick tip is to save it as the default file type first, and then save it as a jpg. This is because Xheader won’t open jpg files, and if you want to change the header without having to start from scratch, you can open the XHF header, make the changes, and use it on your site.
There are a couple of video tutorials that you can watch that will show you how to use the software. You have nothing to lose by trying out Xheader. It’s free and easy to use. You can have professional header graphics without having to pay anyone to do it for you or having to learn how to use some expensive software. Click here to download Xheader…
