A Good Autoresponder

How many free autoresponders have you tried? Really how many? And how many emails did you get through using them? How do you know? How many people opened your followup message?

My point here is that if you have no clue for the answers above you probably are not operating a followup campaign successfully. These are crucial element that must be explored when you are choosing an autoresponder.

Some good steps to take to ensure you are getting what you need out of a autoresponder include… Compare your autoresponder with those of top marketers, chances are they are using the best in the business. You can’t go wrong with this step!

Other observations you might make are related to spam filters. Have you ever gotten an e-mail and seen something like this…”F`R`E`E” Yes this is a good way to beat the spam filters as they won’t read Free they will read something totally different. However it can be time consuming going through your article and finding which words are “Danger” words. This can go along way in your marketing efforts. So make sure you find an autoresponder that has a spam rating feature… these features will automatically show you where in your article your “Danger” words are.

Another crucial element of e-mail marketing are your statistics. How many e-mails are being opened can tell you if your subject line is any good or if you did a good job branding your name. If you know your e-mail statistics you are one step in the right direction in optimizing your potential sales. Finding an autoresponder that shows in depth analysis with your followups are also key.

What should a followup contain? Good question… My personally experience suggests directing your subscribers to a full article located on the web. There are some good reasons for this. You can create an excitement teaser in the followup e-mail and beg your article to be read on the web. There is also the chance that since you have an article archive on the web many subscribers will often read more than just your original article. Your subscriber might not be interested in one article but they may find what they are looking for browsing through your previous articles.

Broadcasting! So your subscribers are finished receiving their original followup series… now what? Find an auto responder that allows you to broadcast an update or an offer to the entire subscriber list. Don’t let your subscribers go to waste, this feature is a must!

Remember not to bore your hard earned subscribers. Present them with a problem and offer them a solution! Its that easy…

Find my recommended autoresponder on my marketing blog!

Boost Your Business With Free Web Promotion

Whether you are starting a new business or operating on a budget, you cannot go wrong with free web promotion. The truth is that not everyone has an expense account to justify an aggressive advertising campaign. Many businesses, especially web-based, outline marketing as their largest expense. However, free web promotion has changed the way that everyone looks at advertising.

The best way to gain free web promotion is through the use of press releases, which highlight upcoming news, events and headlines regarding your company. In order to write an effective press release, your business must be involved in something noteworthy. Whether it be a contest, a grand opening, a special sale or other event, a press release is the perfect way to advertise your business happenings for free. There are a number of press release submission websites, which allow business owners to submit their news for free. In addition, submitting your press release to newspaper and magazine editors may increase your chances of being published both online and in print. Before sending a press release, which should be no more than one page in length, make sure that your name, mailing address and telephone number is included at the top of the page. Many editors require that contact information be present before they will even consider publishing a press release. The reasoning behind this is to confirm the identity of the person submitting the news.

Web promotion can perhaps best be utilized through successful positioning on internet search engines. By making sure that your website content is rich with information, links and updated information, search engines will be more likely to position your site among the top ranks. In addition, a descriptive website will also find it’s way to the top. For example, if your business deals with collectibles, make sure that your content is rich in keywords dealing with collectibles and the product line that you offer. Avoid stuffing keywords, but make sure that your website clearly indicates it’s subject matter.

One of the best avenues for web promotion is through article marketing. While many website owners are still somewhat unfamiliar with this approach, others are cashing in on a surge of traffic generated from properly marketing their articles. The key to successful web promotion via article marketing is to write an informative article that everyone will want to read. At the bottom of the article, include a brief paragraph featuring your name, the name of your business and a website address. The next step is to submit your article to as many article directories as possible. The more exposure, the better. As other webmasters log on to article directories in search of content for their website, they may select your article to be featured on their site. The more webmasters that feature your work, the more free web promotion your business will receive.

There are a number of ways to acquire paid marketing opportunities and an equal, or greater, number of ways to get free web promotion. If done correctly, web promotion doesn’t have to empty the entire expense account. In some cases, it won’t even cost you a cent.

Evolution of Posters

At this point you might be wondering why and how is it possible that posters could evolve? How can something so banal be that important so as to even write an evolution story about it? Well, allow me to shed some light and dignity to this often underrated yet often seen piece of art and how it has made its mark in history.

The birth of posters can be traced all the way back to 1798 when the invention of lithography enabled masterpieces to be produced in high volumes to meet the demands of art collectors. As time moved on, the popularity of posters rose to its prime simultaneous to the widespread celebration of stage plays. At that time, posters were widely used to promote plays and other public gatherings or important events. It was very common that avid fans would rip these displays from off the walls for their keepsake and, consequently, from this came the birth of poster collection.

There are a good number of collectors nowadays as they were then who preserve old posters that seem to be nothing but moist and yellow scraps. Scraps which, needless to say, after 20 or 30 years are already considered priceless items that have become holders of documented history. It can now be used to take a glimpse in history’s past trends, cultural growth, political influences, pop culture and the maturity of visual communication methods and styles throughout the years.

The evolving cascade of posters dating back from its birth up to this day manifests an incrementing durability in the paper used and a more vivid ink quality. If we look at the evolution of posters, we might as well be looking at the advancement of printing technology. As printers furthered in their capabilities, better and more durable posters were produced. This growth in printing technology has afforded big advertisements to be displayed in more announced places allowing a dramatic increase in event or brand exposure.

These days, poster printing can now be done on canvas, vinyl, adhesive materials and other types of stock allowing more durability and flexibility on how they can be used. There are also a wider variety of ink types to allow indoor as well as outdoor displays that can stand changing weather conditions thus providing a longer poster life.

Going back to the overall view of the evolution of posters, the perspective that most of us fail to appreciate is how posters captures certain sectors in time. Some perhaps insignificant at that moment, but given 20 years after, is a commonly shared poignant memory. For the Coca Cola company for instance, if they try digging through their archives and recollect all of the Coca-Cola posters, it would be pretty reminiscent of the “good ol’ days”. Posters may be a public item, but after many years and without us knowing, it has turned into something we hold personal and a reminder of a time in our lives.

Do It Big. Get Noticed.

Whatever you do in business, do it big! There’s no other arena in which those words are truer than the internet. It’s a competitive world wide web, and you do have to find your niche. But once you find that niche, do it just a little bit different than everybody else. Do it big. People don’t often think in those terms. So if you are able to put yourself in that mindset, then you’ll be ahead of the pack.

You can struggle all you want trying to get your website to the top of the search engines, but by the time you get there, the rules for getting there will have changed. You can spend countless hours trading links with other websites, but you’ll find that many of those will soon ditch their domain. You may consider any number of online strategies for getting your website noticed, but the bottom line is somebody on the other end always wants to get paid.

This is when the idea of “do it big” comes into play. Let me explain. I recently discovered a website owned by a woman from the UK. Her product was original art. Specifically, cartoon-like pencil sketches. Her intention was to put her work on shirts, stationary, and greeting cards and to sell it through her website. The problem was she couldn’t get her site noticed. She had no visitors.

How many times have you lamented over the lack of visitors to your site? I have, and I do. It doesn’t matter how many visitors a site receives. It never seems to be enough. We are insatiable. But you can struggle with online strategies, or you can do something big offline. Here’s what I suggested to the woman from the UK.

Start a campaign. Call it the “loan a shirt” campaign or something of that nature. The idea would be to take a shirt featuring the artwork, and send it around the world. How? She or somebody else would wear it for a day and then pass it on to another person who would do the same. This would continue for any duration of time. But the goal would be to send the shirt around the world, and each person who wore the shirt for a day could log on to the site if they choose and fill out a quick location form so the shirt may be tracked.

It’s such a simple, low-cost idea, but it’s a creative way to expose a website as the address would be listed right there on the shirt. And people who wore the shirt for a day would get to see and sample the product first hand. It could even be an event for charity, and an effective press release would be the only invitation the media would need to get involved.

But what if somebody decided not to pass the shirt on? What if somebody stole it? What if the shirt got lost? What if “this”, and what if “that”?

Hey, what if it worked? What did it cost? Nothing. It only required a little creative thinking. A person could do anything they wanted with the idea in order to eliminate every negative “what if”.

The point I’m trying to make is we don’t often think of doing something big offline to promote ourselves online. And it doesn’t have to be costly. It doesn’t have to even follow what we believe to be the traditional rules of advertising. Just think big, do it big, and get noticed. After all, isn’t that the goal? Or is the goal just to advertise?

Yahoo! Directory Listings Service Provide by Top10optimizer

Welcome to the Yahoo! Directory
Listings

Affiliate program!

Our
Affiliate Program Pays

$10.00 on Level 1
of Every Sale!

Here’s how to get started!

It’s very simple to earn commissions by promoting our site.

Yahoo! Directory Listings sells
for $166.00 . For every sale you refer to
us, we will pay you $10.00 on Level 1 (less
processing fees.)* Our customers can pay us
through the following merchant account(s): PAYPAL .

(Please
note, it does not matter how our customers pay us for you to get paid. You do
not have to have an account with the merchants listed above ( PAYPAL ) to
participate. All you do is promote our service with your custom affiliate link
and we will pay you all your commissions via: PAYPAL .

Yahoo! Directory Listings uses
PayDotCom.com to manage our affiliate program. We will provide you with
great tools to sell our product easily. We also provide you ways to track your
hits, sales, campaigns, and commissions. All you need is a free PayDotCom.com
affiliate account ID. PayDotCom.com will even
credit you for sales even if your buyer does not buy on the first day. So even
if they come back years later, you still get paid. We always pay the last
affiliate who referred the customer to us.

Why such a high commission rate?

We pay

$10.00 on Level 1
because we want to have as many people as we can promote our product. That way
the word can get out to the most amount of people.

Who pays me?

We will pay
you all your commissions via: PAYPAL .

When do I get paid?

Once a month ends it is closed. We will pay you all your commissions due between
the 15th – 30th of the following month. We may pay sooner, but you can expect
your commissions to come every 30 days.

How do I promote?

Once you become an affiliate you get your own “Affiliate Website” to promote.
All you do is promote the unique URL that we give you. Then you can advertise it
using your website, banners, your own opt-in list, etc… When people come here
you get paid a whopping
$10.00 on Level 1
commission on the sale of every

Yahoo! Directory Listings!

Access our Affiliate Members Area Now!

• 
  Don’t have a PayDotCom.com account?

If you do not have
an account with

PayDotCom.com then

Join Now now and

create an account right now for free.

Then just go to the
next step below to access our affiliate members area to start earning income
now.

• 
  Already have a PayDotCom.com account?

After you have a
PayDotCom account, just Login to our affiliate members area right now.

*
Processing fee –
PayDotCom.com will
charge you a small fee for each sale. This fee will automatically be deducted
from your commission and will be paid to PayDotCom.com by us on your behalf.
This is all automated and done for you. The small processing fee is based on the
price of each sale as follows. $0.50 (sales under $10), $1.00 (sales from $10.01
to $20.00), $1.50 (sales from $20.01 or more).

35% Revenue Increase… from Your Website!

35% of visitors fail to achieve their goal when they visit company websites! By following 2 simple rules, you can increase your web-derived revenue by 1/3 or more!

Renowned website usability researcher, Jakob Nielsen, today (Nov 24) published results of his latest study. His test subjects used 139 websites. On average, they failed to find what they were looking for 35% of the time. Shockingly, 37% of users couldn’t even find company location details!

What was surprising was that users didn’t give up. They generally found the information they were after – but they found it at a competitor’s site!

So how do you stop potential customers falling into the hands of your competitors? Nielsen is right when he suggests user research. Yes, it’s imperative that know what your users need at your site. But what he doesn’t say is how to structure your website so it meets users’ needs.

There are two golden rules:
1) Write first, build later
2) Write to your customer

Write first, build later
The real message on most websites is in the writing. It makes sense, then, that the writing should determine the structure.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for most businesses. For them, the writing is an afterthought. They structure and design their website first, then try to fit the writing to the structure. This flies in the face of common sense. When you speak to someone, you structure your speech around your message. You don’t decide on a structure, then change the message to suit!

For a truly usable website, you need to plan what you want to say before you create the site – perhaps even write the whole thing. The message – the writing – should determine the structure.

Write to your customer
So how do you decide what to write?

Firstly, don’t think, “What do I want to say?”. When you’re writing a website, you have to think, “What does my customer want to know?”. It’s a very subtle difference, but it’s the key to engaging writing. And that’s what you want to do… engage the customer.

Most customers will want to know the basics:

– What do you do?
– What benefit do you offer them?
– Why should they choose your service or product?
– Why should they choose your service or product and not your competitors’?
– What does it cost?
– How can they contact you?
– Where are you located?

Your website has to communicate a lot of information. And to make matters worse, you’re going to have limited screen real-estate. Ideally, your customer won’t have to scroll – especially on your homepage (all your information will fit within a single window). And you can’t fill the whole screen with writing, either. The design and navigation elements take up about a third of the window, and you should leave a bit for white space (you don’t want to overwhelm your customer). As a rule of thumb, you should expect to have about 1/3 – ½ of the window at your disposal for the writing.

Chances are, right now you’re thinking, “How am I going to fit it all in?”. Well, that’s where your writing skills come in. Choose your words very carefully…

Websites can be an extremely powerful piece of marketing collateral. You can reach millions for just a few hundred dollars. Unfortunately, your competitors can do the same thing. It’s a level playing field, but there are a lot of players. It’s important that your thoughts are structured, otherwise your site will be a mess. If your message is clear, your site will be simple and easy to use. It’s all in the words…

8 More Reasons to Write for Your Audience…

1) There are approximately 550 billion documents on the web

2) Every day another 7 million are added

3) Workers take so long trying to find information that it costs organisations $750 billion annually! (A.T. Kearney, Network Publishing study, April 2001)

4) Reading from a monitor is 25% slower than reading from paper. (Sun Microsystems, 1998)

5) Helpful content develops site loyalty. The average person visits no more than 19 websites in the entire month in order to avoid information overload. (Nielsen NetRatings in Jan 2001)

6) 79% of users scan read when online (Sun Microsystems, 1998)

7) Information gathering is the most common use of the Internet – 73% (American Express survey, 2000)

48% of people use the Internet to find work-related information as opposed to 7% who use magazines. (Lyra Research, 2001)

Breaking Down And Analyzing Your Design

What a graphic designer usually does is to mix all the basic ingredients to reflect a particular mood or style in any color printing ad they create. The fonts, the graphic images, the design as well as the color – all of these elements are combined to come up with an ad that would definitely get your target readers’ attention.

And it all boils down to what your readers feel and say about your ad. It’s all about their reaction and impression on the style you chose for your ad, as well as the way you conveyed your message to them.

That’s your design palette – where you mix altogether your elements to draw your readers into your ad. It may be the subtle type where your readers are drawn to your design with no effort at all. The design is so simple and subtle that your readers won’t even realize that they’re into your ad already. The other one, the more aggressive type, is more obvious, as the design usually directs your attention to the key message. There’s nothing to distract or confuse your readers from what is really important, which is your message.

If you choose to apply the more aggressive style in your design, first of all, you need to provide a typeface that is ‘clean, readable, and with quiet strength’ as another designer would suggest. This means that your choice of font does its job efficiently, and yet it doesn’t overshadow all the other elements in your ad. And remember that when you want to put a lot of information in your color printing campaign, be sure to include a distinctive typeface that is neutral as it easily packs your details in a small space without making it look busy and disorderly.

In terms of your colors, by putting a limit to your use would ensure that you provide subtleness to your design and draw your readers’ attention to the ideas and concepts that you would want to be emphasized. This is particularly true with your photographs. If you want to show a certain concept on that, you’re better off limiting your color use.

Your photos and images also provide your readers with the idea you would want to convey. Depending on different design factors such as layering, opacity, and transparency, you can make your images look more dramatic and striking.

The bottom line is that you include that extra attention to the details of your design. It doesn’t matter whether you want it subtle or straight-forward. What would make your ad effective are the features and factors you add in your size, color, in your choice of image and photos, and so forth.

Are Using Free or Fee Paid Link Exchanges Useful?

There a few ways of building reciprocal links to your website, the method im going to discuss is the online link exchanges.

What are link exchanges?

Link exchanges serve has a centre point for reciprocal link exchanges between one webmaster and another and are a gateway to communication between the two interested parties, the service they provide can be free with minor account limitations such as only being able to make five link requests a day or fee paid giving access to the full facilities such as checking whether the website you swapped with still has your link on their site or help with building link pages for your site etc.

One fine example is Linkmarket.net. Webmasters simply sign up and enter their website details and then are added to the link exchanges directory under relevant web content categories along with search engine ranking powered by Google or Alexa. From here webmasters can browse through and find websites which have relevant web content to their site and add them to their link basket.

Once they have finished choosing which links they are interested in, they can checkout and the chosen website webmasters are then informed automatically via email that they are interested in exchanging links with their site and then have a specified time limit in which to decide whether to exchange links or not.

This method works both ways and webmasters will be informed frequently via email when someone is interested and requesting to exchange links.

Conclusion

Link exchanges can be a good way of padding out your deserted links pages on your website, the more reputable link exchanges have huge directories from which to choose adequate links with relevant content to your site and gaining full access to all features are only usually a small subscription charge. One downside could be that websites you wish to exchange with wont because you haven’t got an adequate Google Rank, this can be a bit frustrating to the newly made websites, but this problem is very rare.

Are directory Links still effective?

A Lot of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing Professionals are voicing their opinions and saying than directories are dead. But remember, these are the people that also say that Page Rank is dead, SEO is dead, and the latest this is dead theory.  So is directory link building no longer worthy? well only the Search Engines can tell you for sure.

I believe the real issue with directory links is that only some of them are good and worthy, while some others are junk, being able to tell this difference is the key between loosing your time and having a fruitful link building campaign.  How you can tell if a directory is good enough or that you should pass it.  Here are the 3 main criteria of identifying a good directory from a bad one.

1. The director is listed in the Search Engines and most pages are being crawled.

You can find the directory in the most popular search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. Also the category pages of the directory are cached on the search engines, if the directory offers detail pages, these should be indeed too.

2. The links are plain text, no redirects or javascript.

Check the source code of the pages of the directory. Look to see if the links are plain a href’s, without the rel=”nofollow” attribute, and no sneaky redirects are present. By validating all these you guarantee that these links are seeing and counted by Search Engines.

3. Doesn’t link to bad neighborhoods.

The directory doesn’t link to questionable websites, specially topics like gambling, casino adult, and illegal content websites. Be very wary about directory that offers sitewide likes to these type of sites.

Hopefully these guidelines will help you do more quality link building campaigns getting links from quality web directories.

5 Ways Increase Web Site Conversion Rate That Will Increase Internet Sales Using Free Giveaway Promotional Product Sample.

What keeps you up at night?

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

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

1.    Bait your prospects with the right cheese.

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

2.    Create a value-added offer.

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

3.    Offer free gifts that create viral marketing buzz

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

4.    Create a personalized benefit

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

5.    Give away a high perceived value item:

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

Example:

Get a Free phone card with your order today

Vs.

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

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

Next Page »