Archive for August, 2007

Adding audio to your site will make your site more personable to your visitors. It is an interactive experience that will allow your visitors to see you as a real person. This can build trust; once trust is established your visitors are more likely to become customers.

Subscribing to Audio Acrobat (www.audioacrobat.com) is a very easy way to add audio to your site. For about $20 per month, you can create audios and videos, and allow your visitors to listen to them live over the internet or download them to listen to at their convenience.

Audio Acrobat will provide you with a special number that you can dial with your phone. You can create a recording of just yourself, or you can record a phone call if you are interviewing someone.  Another option is to hook a microphone up to your computer and speak directly into it.

When you are finished with your recording, the service will generate a piece of HTML code that you can publish to your site. This will allow your visitors to listen to the audio or download the Mp3.

When the word “sales” comes into business conversation, many people claim that they do not like it or that they are no good at it. Writing copy that closes the sale can make some people uncomfortable. Unfortunately, if you aren’t selling something, you are out of business. Here are some tips to make your copy saleable.

If people aren’t reading your copy, your copy won’t close any sales for you. Make your copy interesting and attention grabbing. Hook the reader with a catchy headline and keep your reader interested throughout the copy.

When people surf the web for information, they will quickly scan a web page to see if it offers what they are looking for, and if not, they move on to the next website. You only have a few seconds to grab their attention. Keeping your copy clean will also help. Use easy to read fonts, and apply bold formatting to your headlines.

Keep each paragraph limited to a few lines. This will increase the amount of “white space” on your page. If your words are spaced too small and close together, your reader will skip over your page entirely.

You know, “….because we did it, we did it, we did it, Hooray!”

If you’re heard the song from Dora The Explorer, you now may have that song running through your head, for that I am sorry. But if you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that I started my first real brick and mortar business by age 20, and by 22 owned my first retail store.

Well it’s big things like that, you know you don’t know how to do something and you learn it, and you just wanna sing like Dora! (Ok I have a 5 year old girl, what can I say?)

Anyhow…

Today is a relaxing Saturday afternoon, and I gave my virtual assistant Niki Jackson the task of installing a wordpress plugin into my blog over at Scrappers Talk Radio, if you follow me there, you’ll know that I’m completely re-designing that site.

Well, Niki installed the plugin right away and was going to create the color scheme for me and make it look pretty. The plugin displays my audio in a really nice, clean, professional format…  Here’s what it looks like..

Do you know what this orange button means?

I remember when I first heard about blogging, and RSS. I was understanding the blogging aspect, but if you’re anything you’ve been wondering for sometime, “What is RSS? And how do I use it?”

I’ve had more than my share of conversations with my Lynette Chandler about not understanding it and how to understand it and make it work for me.

Really Simple Syndication - RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication.

When you think of the word ‘syndication’ you probably think about a syndicated newspaper column, meaning the column appears in a variety of newspapers around the country or the world.  There’s also syndicated television. A program that goes ‘into syndication’ is picked up by a large number of television stations for rebroadcast.

So how does this syndication apply to you?

You make use of RSS when you make your blog entries available for syndication.  RSS is really what sets a blog apart from a regular old website.

You may know that a blog is really just a simple content management system.  You enter your text and it creates pages for you and sets up navigation to the page.  When you post to a blog, it also adds information about your post to a special RSS file that becomes your ‘feed’.

Goals are very important when it comes to the success or failure of your business. Why are they so important? Goals act as a roadmap for you to follow. They let you know where you are going, and if you are getting there on time. You wouldn’t get in your car and start driving without having a destination planned out, so why would you approach your business that way?

All goals should have a few things in common. A goal should define what you are trying to accomplish and when you want to accomplish it by. Goals should be realistic and there should be a way to measure them. All goals should be written down and available for viewing on a regular basis. Simply writing the goal down will significantly increase you odds of achieving it and having it displayed as a visual reminder will also help motivate you.

Even if you have never taken the time to set goals for your business, you are actually very familiar with the process. At some point in your life, you have more than likely taken out a pen and paper and mapped out a plan for accomplishing some type of task. Writing out goals for your business is no different than writing out your grocery list.

If you’re not sure what affiliate marketing is, my friend Nell Taliercio is teaching some great information on it. I personally know that Nell has been making a full time income online for the past 3 years and is willing to share with you exactly how she did it.

And that’s not all, she’s offering some serious goodies! You’ll find out all the goodies once you’ve signed up and confirmed your registration.  You’ll want to sign up for her Passive Income Answers because you can also be entered in for a free copy of John Reese’s Traffic Secrets. I have a copy of Traffic Secrets here in my office and I can tell you it’s an incredible resource to have.

Click here to go and sign up: Passive Income Answers

Nell’s course will really help you if you want to start creating passive income with my scrapbooking affiliate programs too, you can sign up for my affiliate program here. Let Nell teach you how to maximize your commissions and get your scrapbook website promoting great products (ah-hem, mine. shamless plug )

I’m signed up too because I know Nell has alot to say about it and is very easy to follow.

If you are new to building websites, you may think that the actual construction is the hard part.  After a while, you will start to realize how hard it is to keep your site updated and full of fresh content. That is where the real work lies.

Constantly adding new articles is the best way to keep your content fresh. If possible, try to add a new article every day. This will also help your search engine optimization. Search engines love content and the more content you have, the more traffic they’ll send to you.

If you do not like to write, you have options when it comes to keeping your content fresh. You can find free articles that you can publish through reprint directory sites. You will have to include the author’s bio box at the end of the article, though.

If you would rather not promote someone else on your website, you can buy private label rights articles. Also known as PLR, these are pre-written articles, often sold in packs. These are inexpensive; however, they are sold to more than one person. If you are looking for fresh, original content, you may want to hire a ghostwriter. Ask other internet marketers for referrals. Many people use ghostwriters; it is not uncommon at all.

We will be using the website name Beckys Blankets, for our example.

Login to your account.  Choose the Followup Tab => Add List

Enter the following:

List Name: (the name you’d like your list to be known by) Becky’s Blankets
From Name:  (your name, business name, etc.)  Becky Brown
From Email: news@beckysblankets.com
If you would like to receive an email every time someone signs up for your list then choose yes on the next question, otherwise choose No.

Next you will be asked if you’d like to add your first message.  This is the message your list will receive as soon as they sign up.

Choose whether you would like your message to be delivered in plain text or HTML.  By default Wahmcart does plain text.

Next enter the delay of the message.  This is in days and is the number of days after your subscriber signs up for your list.  To send immediately after signing up leave this set to 0.

The set of buttons “First Name” and “Last Name” that appear under the Delay section are for your subject line only.  If you wish to enter either of these in your subject line, click them…otherwise simply type (or copy and paste) your email subject into the next section.

I am a HUGE fan of reality shows, any type too! I especially love The Amazing Race, Age of Love, Survivor (I don’t watch Survivor anymore though), and any dating type reality show.

As you can tell from my blog I’m passionate about bringing internet marketing techniques to the scrapbook business owner. And I’ve been living, breathing, working, and even sleeping internet marketing since January 2004.  When I first started I already knew quite a bit about the internet and was frustrated when I was learning that I should promote affiliate products and make money but there was barely any programs lead in the scrapbooking industry.

Now there is some, but no one where near what I think there should be & that’s what I’m doing here on this site, teaching others to turn their passion into an internet business.

So here’s the “I’m in BIG trouble part…”

Joel Comm a prominent internet marketing millionaire has launched a new internet reality show that is called, “The Next Internet Millionaire.”

When I first heard about this, I kinda sluffed it off. Really, how good could it be? It’s not on tv right? Wrong! Dead wrong!

If you are looking for a way to drive traffic to your site, consider writing a viral report. A viral report is a small, focused special report that you allow other people to brand with their affiliate links and pass onto their mailing lists.

This is a win-win situation. The people who are passing your report on will have free, ready-made content to use, and you will have an army of people passing out your report, which is going to drive traffic to your site.

You do not have to worry about someone stealing your work. You can include a message in the report that specifies your name and website must be kept on the cover page. If you want, you can purchase software that will specify which links in a pdf document that can’t be changed

Writing a whole report may seem like a daunting task, but you can break it up into smaller, easier to tackle pieces. Take the subject matter that you want to include and break it up into sections. If you write one section each day, which will be the equivalent of one or two articles, you can create a special report in seven to ten days.

As you may know, adding content to your website increases your site’s search engine optimization, also known as SEO. Search engines will scan your web pages and index the information that they find. When someone performs a search, using the terms on your webpage, your page will come up in the search results. This will keep traffic coming into your site.

1. Create A Keyword List: One of the most important steps in increasing your SEO is creating a list of keywords. You can use a service such as wordtracker to identify what words and phrases people are using when they search online. For instance, if you are creating a website containing information about pet care, you can enter the term “pet care” into wordtracker. It will let you know how many times people are searching for those words, as well as the related words and phrases people are using.

2. Create Keyword Density: Once you develop your list of keywords, plan to use two to three of your chosen key words and phrases at least three times each within the body text. You can use other variations of those keyword throughout the page. Keyword density measures the amount of keywords used in content. Keep your content full of keywords yet natural looking to maximize your SEO.

When you think of publicity, you may think of paid ads, press releases, and the like. When you think of email, you probably think of it as a communication tool; They may seem very different, but you can blend the two and use email as a publicity tool.

Most email programs have a signature line option. You can create a unique signature that includes your name, phone number, slogan, website address – or anything else that comes to mind. When you choose to have the signature line option on, your email program will automatically include your signature line into outgoing messages.

If your message is going to someone who doesn’t know about your business, your signature line will give them a brief overview. And if anyone forwards your emails to other people, your signature line will be included as well.

Creating a mailing list and using an autoresponder to stay in touch with them is a great way to use email as a publicity tool. An example of this would be to create an e-course on a subject that goes along with something you are promoting. For instance, if your target market is new mothers that are interested in health topics, you can create an e-course on the health benefits of making your own organic baby food.