February 3, 2012

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The Golden Rule of Online Marketing: Thou Shalt Not Spam

August 27, 2011 By 4 Comments

don't spam

            A lot of non-marketers think of marketers as nothing but spammers.  It’s easy to understand why. We all get mountains of spam emails o a daily basis – regardless of whether or not we gave out the email address.

 But unless you want to be prosecuted and condemned for sending spam emails out, you’ll want to take precautions to be careful about who you email and why.  Spam is defined as unsolicited email messages that are sent out to the masses.

True Internet marketers don’t mess with spam because it hurts their credibility, risks their accounts, and doesn’t convert as well as targeted, welcomed email does.  You can have your ISP ban you for sending spam, and you can lose your autoresponder account, too.

It’s far better to use an opt-in form where people willingly enter their first name and email address.  In fact, it’s best to utilize the double opt in option most autoresponders provide.

A single opt in is when you just let the person enter their information once.  But what’s to stop one person from going around entering another person’s contact information for unethical reasons?

You want a double opt in to protect yourself.  Here’s how it works:

The user lands on your website and sees an opt in box, asking for their first name and email address.  They enter it (usually in exchange for a free download or the promise of information at a later date).

Then the autoresponder tool automatically sends out a verification email.  The end user gets the email alerting them that they’ve signed up to be on your list, but it asks them to verify their subscription by clicking on a link in the email.

This means if someone goes to your site and signs someone else up, that person will get a notification and have the option to decline if they weren’t the ones who really opted into the list.

Make sure you abide by permission marketing standards.  These people trust you enough to hand over important details, so don’t sell their contact information or abuse it in any way.  If you respect the people on your list, it will grow and you’ll have a readymade list of prospects that can help you earn more money on both a short and long-term timeframe.

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Filed Under: E-Business Tagged With: autoresponder, email, ethical, internet marketers, money, online marketing, opt-in, permission marketing, spam

Is your Blog in Alignment?

April 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

Blog Alignment

One of the very first things I did when I launched this site, even before writing my first post was to set out the goals and successes that I wanted to achieve with my site. Now if I asked you right now what’s the most important goal you’d like to achieve with your site, you’d have some answers ready to go, but the only problem is you can only have one most important goal.

It’s important to list out the goals for your blog starting with the most important and moving down toward the lesser goals. Once you have this list you can then take a look at your blog from an outsider’s perspective and see whether or not your blog is aligned to its full potential with those goals.

Here’s an example for a new blog starting out:

Priorities –

1.       Generate Traffic

2.       Build up opt in subscribers

3.       Gather 2000 fans, followers etc. to social network

4.       Will make enough money to cover the blogs costs

Notice that making money comes last? It’s important to build up a few other aspects of your blog before going after people’s hard earned money. As a blog grows, the goals will change and adapt. You may find that you excel at building up subscribers and are able to move it down the list while still maintaining a favourable growth in that area.

Now since in this case the number one goal is to generate traffic, you are going to want to have your awesome content above the fold on your homepage, and easily accessible to visitors. Perhaps you’ll have a listing of your most popular posts in the side bar. If something is going to drive more traffic, give it space and allow it to do its job.

Since building an opt in list is this particular blog’s goal you’ll want to have an attractive opt in form with some great and amazing giveaway that can only be found on your site. Not only that, but you’ll most likely want that opt in box to be site wide, and also have some additional help in the form of a light box hover (fade in subscriber box), and perhaps a subscription bar at the top like I’ve implemented recently. The more avenues that lead to a person subscribing, obviously the more subscribers you’ll enjoy.

Building your social network does several things for your blog at once. It gives you additional reach and allows you to find visitors that frequent those networking sites on a regular basis. Remember, just as you can email out to your subscriber list, you can also reach out to those people following you on social networks. If you have 5000 fans on your fan page, you can easily send them a special offer to purchase a copy of your new e-book or video course. The more people you are connected to, the larger the audience you can reach out to, and tap into for either traffic to your latest blog post, or your newest information product.

I’m going to assume you’ve chosen goals that are going to bring you closer to the success you seek, but the part that often gets missed is making sure that those goals are reflected in the message you are sending with your blog. If building a community is the number one goal for you at this time, then make sure you’ve invested in the commenting system that reflects that. Perhaps you’d like to integrate a forum where your readers can interact, and communicate directly with yourself, and each other.

Without looking at your current blog setup, write out what’s most important to you right now at this point in your current situation. Then go back and see if those goals are being reflected to the best of your blogs ability. A blog is a constantly evolving system that grows alongside the blogger!

 

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: alignment, blog, blogger, Blogging, build social network, goals, make money, opt-in, success, visitors

Are you subscribed to the Competition?

March 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Spying on the copetition

I’m not sure which business you happen to be in, but I’ll assume it has something to do with internet marketing, affiliate marketing, or perhaps blogging. Either way I’m sure you have some competition and that they happen to be online as well. Are you keeping an eye on them? Are you subscribing to their newsletters and opt in lists? Are you reading their e-books, blog posts, and other online materials?  Well if you aren’t, you should be.

Imagine having a team of professionals working for you day and night doing market research, tweaking sales copy, email copy, and then publishing the findings for you to review at your leisure and then integrate the ones that strike a chord with you. You aren’t the only one working hard to build your business, and if you aren’t taking advantage of the findings your competitors are digging up, then you are missing out in a big way.

Because we are all unique individuals with different make ups, different strengths, and core values, we each head into different areas to further our businesses. The introverted businessman might go further utilizing the software method, and because he is so much more comfortable than you being by himself, he has mastered which tools will further his business utilizing the different software tools that are available to us.

The social butterfly who needs to be surrounded by other people will likely be the first to discover the best social networking tools to use for his or her business; they’ve also discovered how to maximize their Twitter accounts, and Fan pages to help drive traffic and sales to the highest level possible. You should be keeping a close eye on these people as they can help you to take your own business to levels you couldn’t achieve on your own, or at least quite so quickly.

I have a list of about 30 internet marketers, and bloggers who I keep a close eye on, I know which ones are falling behind in certain areas, and others who are excelling beyond belief at others. Obviously I listen closely to the topics they cover that show where there success in those areas are coming from. This helps point out flaws in my own business model that I can then quickly change or restructure in order to not get left behind with my own marketing efforts.

I have no doubt that you can make your business into a successful enterprise, but wouldn’t it be great if you could turn your weaknesses into strengths simply by paying attention to those other marketers who are experts in those fields you either struggle with, or simply have little interest in learning?

So here is what I’d recommend:

1.       Spend a day scouring the net for individuals who are doing what you are doing and then read a couple of posts, bookmark the site so you can keep abreast of what their writing, perhaps subscribe to their RSS feed.

2.       Subscribe or opt in so you can see how often they mail out, and what they mail out, this will serve two purposes, you can see what content offends you (so you can avoid sending out similar type content) and items you find valuable.

3.       If they offer products that you offer or are at some point going to offer, you might want to consider purchasing them to see how they put them together, you can then evaluate a finished product and incorporate the winning aspects, and avoid the negatives when you create your own.

I want you to consider for a moment how hard you are working your own business, and then think about others who are spending just as much time developing their own similar businesses out there. By collaborating online either passively (just keeping an eye on them), or actively (joining a Forum or community where you can brainstorm together and share which ideas are working, and which aren’t) you’ll be able to experience a higher level of growth for your business.

The resources available to you today are greater than at any other time in history, it is up to you to avail yourself to them, and make use of them.

If you are interested in collaborating with other bloggers, and marketers online, I’ve created an online forum where you can register for free and join in the discussion, ask question, find joint venture partners, etc. If you have questions, you can ask them and someone knowledgeable in that field will answer, or if you have answers for someone else, please feel free to contribute.

There are two areas to the forum, a free section as well as an “Elite” section that we’ve made super affordable at $6.00 a month, or $49.00 for the year. If you are investing in your business education this would be $6.00 well spent.

*Note: There is a credit system going live that will allow you to earn credits for posting content, you can then in turn use those credits to purchase a membership so you can save yourself some money.

To register for free click here!

Filed Under: Work from home Tagged With: bloggers, blogs, Business, community, competition, email lists, internet marketing, internet marketing forum, opt-in, subscriber

Building Your Opt-In List – Three Steps to Start Building

September 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Opt-In List Building

Building your opt-in list is a very important step in internet marketing. This can be done easily if you set your emails up for success. This will allow you to grow your lists quickly. You may have heard many success stories about people who have started opt-in lists and made good money with them. Perhaps this is the reason you decided to start an opt-in list. However, you may still not be making a profit. You may actually be losing money, and you may have a large list. Perhaps not many people are buying from you.

The most common mistake people make while building their opt-in list is coming into the market without learning what they need to know about it. If you have already started your opt-in list but it is not doing well, you can make it better. Perhaps in the past you’ve chosen a topic that you viewed as popular, but no one is buying from you. Sending an email to people does not ensure that they will buy from you right away. However, there are a few tips that will help you to make your opt-in list successful.

The first tip that will help you to build your opt-in list is making sure that your customers trust you. This should be your first priority. They should trust not only you, but also the product that you sell. You should gain their trust before you even try selling anything to them. You cannot become an expert overnight simply because you have launched a campaign. This also does not make you a trusted resource. Before starting your opt-in list, go to an article directory and submit articles about topics that are related to your business online, or other topics you have knowledge about.

The next step in building your opt-in list is to find a service or product to provide that people will actually need. It may not be your area of expertise, but whatever you choose to provide should be something that you have learned much about through extensive research. Knowing your product well is part of being professional. You may choose a product that you are interested in, but this should only be done if the product attracts a larger audience. You can also give those subscribed to your email promotional materials that they can give to others or use for themselves.

The final step in building your opt-in list is making friends. You should befriend other opt-in list users. This will benefit you if the person is successful, because you can learn much from their experience in building opt-in lists. They will provide firsthand experience of what not to do, as well as what you should do. As your list grows, you will be able to provide your customers with a higher quality of content. Remember to stay manageable and organized. If you need help, then seek it out or hire someone to help you. Always ensure that your customers are satisfied and happy.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: building your opt in list, email list, internet marketing, list, list building, money, opt-in, profit