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Archive for December, 2007

Fulfilling Your Potential – Part 1

December 24th, 2007 | By Simon In Self Development | No Comments »

If you want to make more of your talents and live up to your full potential, and this applies to everything from business to sport to simply living a better life, you have to learn to change your habits.

Assessing the skills you currently have, and looking at the new skills, future objectives or overall goals that you want to achieve is a good starting point in terms of self analysis. You also need to believe that you can improve your performance, your productivity, and the quality of your whole life.

So what are the ingredients for being successful and what makes a high achiever? Is it luck, intelligence, talent, dedication or a combination of all four ? Well, it’s certainly right to point out that not all intelligent, talented and hard working people become successful, or would even consider themselves truely happy.

It is also fair to say that we know (of) people who are not exceptionally bright but seem to be very happy and successful. For example, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Tom Cruise and Sir Richard Branson all have something in common, apart from the fact that they were or are highly successful in their given area of expertise. The answer ….. they ‘ve all suffered with dyslexia.

So there must be something else, some other ’secret’ to success. Well, actually there are several ’secrets’ to fulfilling your potential, and they are largely to do with how you think and how you act and as a result of this, what you do.

Achieving success in business, friendship or love is largely determined by your own self-image, so in essence, what you think about yourself. Your unhappiness is something that you choose, so that would equally apply to your happiness and success too.

 Well, that’s it for Part 1, in Part 2 we’ll go into more detail of exactly how to go about starting your journey into improving yourself and fulfilling your potential.

Generate Instant Traffic – Part 3

December 18th, 2007 | By Simon In Pay Per Click, Traffic Generation | No Comments »

This is Part 3, the final part of our feature on PPC advertising. In this part we’ll summarise the previous 2 parts by pulling everything together.

In simple terms, the following steps are how to put a PPC campaign together:

1) Choose what product(s) or service(s) you are going to promote.

2) Choose (and set up) an account with a PPC search engine.

3) Select your keywords relevant to what you are promoting.

4) Bid on your keywords for your ad placement(s).

5) Write out your advert headline and copy. Perry Marshall recommends that you should always have your keywords in your ad headline and if possible, in your ad copy too and it’s a proven way to drastically increase clicks on your adverts.

6) Set up your ‘landing page(s)’ for your ads. This is your website page where you will aim to capture your prospect’s details with your autoresponder by offering a free bonus of some kind. You will also explain a little bit about what you are promoting, not too much but just enough to wet your prospects appetite!

7) Place your advertisement(s) in the search engine… and wait for prospects to click on your adverts.

I cannot speak highly enough of Perry Marshall as he has helped me with my business. I really do highly recommend reading his free ‘5 Days to Success with Google Adwords’ as it is an excellent way to get to grips with the one way to generate instant, targeted traffic to your site.

Generate Instant Traffic – Part 2

December 17th, 2007 | By Simon In Pay Per Click, Traffic Generation | No Comments »

Here in Part 2, we’re going to look at how to approach your Pay Per Click advertising campaign. I have had some great successes with PPC in the past, but you really have to know exactly how to do it, otherwise you could find yourself losing money…. fast.

When I have created PPC campaigns, I have used both Google and Yahoo’s systems, so I can’t comment on MSN’s because I’ve never used it. Out of the 2 that I have used, I have to say, in my opinion, that Google is far easier and a lot more instantanious than Yahoo.

One of the very first tasks that you need to undertake to get your PPC advertising campaign up and running, is to create your keyword list. Your keyword list is a list of words, phrases and synonyms that are key to your particular business, products or services.

Keyword research is really key (if you pardon the pun) to getting your business noticed online, so it should not be overlooked. Given it’s importance, I’ve found that it’s well worth investing a little money in a quality piece of software. I use keyword elite that allows you to research keywords and phrases that are going to make you ’stand out in the crowd’.

Perry Marshall, from Chicage, Illinois in the US, is widely regarded as The Guru of Google Adwords. I have to agree having read both his ‘Definitive Guide to Adwords’ and the excellent ‘Ultimate Guide to Adwords’.

I highly recommend that you sign up for Perry Marshall’s free ‘5 Days to Success with Google Adwords’ as it will give you a real ‘heads up’ on the mystique of Google Adwords by putting things into crystal clear english, rather than the jargon that you sometimes get from some experts.

Perry has a great, unique style of both presenting and explaining how to be successful at PPC. I found him very easy to follow and very interesting, he’s not someone who rambles on and on, he gets straight to the point, whilst giving you all the information that you need.

In Part 3, we’ll summarise the basics of what you need to do to get your PPC campaign up and running properly.

Generate Instant Traffic – Part 1

December 16th, 2007 | By Simon In Pay Per Click, Traffic Generation | No Comments »

We’ll look at many ways that you can generate traffic to your site within this blog, but the first place we’re going to start is with something called Pay Per Click or PPC for short, as this is the most instant way to get visitors to your website.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising involves you creating relevant text advertisements, the type of adverts that you see down the right hand side of Google. The aim is to get prospective customers to click on your ads so that they can then view your website.

The unique thing about PPC advertising is that you only pay when someone clicks on your advert, so its not like placing an advert in a local newspaper or in a magazine where you pay a fee upfront regardless of whether one person or 100,000 people read your ad!

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for a leading position on search engine results and listings. The 3 main search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN all operate a PPC advertising scheme, so its worth having a look to familiarise yourself with these adverts to see what they look like.

On Google they appear under the heading “sponsored links” , in Yahoo it’s “sponsored results” and with MSN it’s “ sponsored sites”, so they’re pretty easy to spot for the trained eye!

Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment, and in part 2 we’ll look in more detail at how you should approach it.

Affiliate Marketing, Part 2

December 15th, 2007 | By Simon In Affiliate Marketing, Useful Software or Tools | No Comments »

In Part 1, we discussed the topic of affiliate marketing and how it is a good way to start in Internet Marketing, no matter what market(s) you’re interested in. In Part 2 we will talk about how to get into affiliate marketing and what to look for.

So, what does it take for you to become a successful affiliate marketer? What are the ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut to affiliate marketing glory? All these questions play around in the minds of affiliate marketers who want to make it big in this business.

Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it still requires that you put in some research, creativity and work.  Below are what I believe to be the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1: You must have your own website

The most important tool to achieve success in affiliate marketing is to have your own website. By building a good, credible and professional looking website, with an autoresponder such as aweber to collect prospect’s names, you will have the foundation for creating an online business.

Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase.

One of the best places to look for products to promote is Clickbank, an excellent site where you can get commissions as high as 75% for selling ebooks on all manner of subjects. There are others too, such as Commission Junction and Affiliates4U so there is plenty of choice. They are typically free to sign up too.

Something crucial that you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, on the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.

Important Tool #2: Incentives

Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects and this can be done by offering them a free newsletter or an e-zine. as a thank you for subscribing to your list. You can also present free softwares, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be help to build your list of prospects.

Important Tool #3: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important entities in the internet world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign.

One of the best ways to do this – at no cost at all – is by submitting articles, with your website’s link at the resource box, to e-zines and free article sites. We will cover the art of  article writing in another thread, but its a very useful way to get links back to your site. You will not only gain exposure, but you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, by simply including a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.

These are but three of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a high rolling affiliate marketer.

Affiliate Marketing, Part 1

December 14th, 2007 | By Simon In Affiliate Marketing | No Comments »

One of the questions that I see asked more often than any other is “how do I start making money on the internet ?”.  The easiest place to start, and where many successful internet entrepreneurs started, is with something called affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing has many advantages and is one of the best ways for you to start generating money on the internet in the shortest period of time. In getting you started in the world of internet marketing, it’s one of the best home based business ideas I can think of.

Even for newbies, internet affiliate marketing is relatively easy to get into. It requires a very modest business investment on your part, it also means that you do not have to stock or create any products of your own. You will also not have any support issues, delivery problems to deal with, all you have to do is promote someone else’s products and simply collect your commission checks each month !

You’d be amazed by how many website there are out there that are making serious money as affiliates to other companies, the likes of Amazon, Walmart and even William Hill all have affiliate programmes. Once you’ve referred a customer to their site and they buy, you get a percentage commission with no hassle.

We’ll go into more detail on how to get into affiliate marketing in Part 2.

Hosting – It’s A Minefield

December 14th, 2007 | By Simon In Getting Started, Useful Software or Tools | No Comments »

In my opinion, probably one of the most important factors to consider with your internet company is choosing a very good web host. So, why is this important? Well, if your web site goes down at any point, you are effectively completely out of business, as no one will be able to see your site on the net.

What you need to look for when searching for a web hosting company, is that they have secure server capabilities, fast servers with a high “up time” (as near to 100% as you can get), lots of space, unrestricted FTP access, daily server backups and no minimum contracts. You may want to test their technical support and see if they offer services, scripts, and software and also enquire about their downtime and how long they have been in business. Make sure you are not being charged for the extra services.

When a customer visits your website whether it’s their first visit or not, you want them to see professionalism, knowledge and fast connections. If your visitors notice advertisements from your free or low cost web host server, they will rightly perceive your website to be unprofessional. Slow connection speeds will definitely lose you customers and cost you alot of money.

The problem is there are thousands of hosting companies available online, so where do you start? Well, you could just put “website host” or “web hosting service” into a search engine and see what the results are. How I decided upon my web host, was to speak to other online business owners to find out who they used, and why….

The overwhelming winner in these results was a company called Hostgator. Hostgator boasts arguably one of the best “up time” stats in the industry, with a staggering 99.9% which is guaranteed. They also offer 24/7 online support and a 45 day money back guarantee. They are also extremely well priced, starting at just $4.95 per month, although $7.95 a month will enable you host unlimited websites, yes unlimited!

With today’s changing trends in web hosting services, it is important to get as much server space and bandwidth as you can. Hostgator offer ample server space and bandwith, so this allows for necessary updates and increased traffic to your site as it becomes more popular. And when your business grows, you have the option to have a dedicated server just for your business, so they really can cater for any business both large and small.

 So go on over to their site and have a look at what they can do for your online business.

Website Building

December 13th, 2007 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Getting Started, Useful Software or Tools | No Comments »

Your website is where your business resides, it’s like the head office of an offline company. It is therefore important to practise good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible. 

When building your own website there are a few things to consider. First of all, are you able to design and build it yourself? For the majority of people the answer to this is “no”. So If you know nothing about web design, you will need to pay someone to design it exactly the way you want. Make sure you use a reputable source so you are not wasting your money.

There are many, many website design companies out there, all of them ranging in quality and price. I have a company that I use for website building (as well as other related projects) and they are called Scriptlance. Scriptlance operate by allowing programmers, website designers, article writers (to name but a few) to bid for your project. This means that you can very often get a job done for a very competitive price, as you could have a dozen website designers all bidding for your project.

You also need to be very careful about choosing your domain name. Make sure it is short, memorable and relevant to your business. One popular site you can visit to check what domains are available is namecheap.

It is also recommended that you keep the number of images on your website to a minimum. They might make your website look pretty, but they also make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure it is optimized so that it has a minimum file size, something your website designer will easily be able to do.

Autoresponders – Getting Started

December 13th, 2007 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Getting Started, List Building, Useful Software or Tools | No Comments »

Whether you’re thinking about making money online,  just started your online business or have decided to get into affiliate marketing, I’m sure the one objective you have is that you’ll be looking to make money.  Making money on the internet is not as easy as some would have you believe, but can be made easier if you have an autoresponder.  An autoresponder is the ideal way to carry out your day to day business and capture your customer’s (and potential customer’s) details. This will save you quite a bit of time and a lot of money.

For those of you who have heard the stories of creating an online income with zero outlay or investment, think again. It doesn’t cost anywhere near as much as starting a traditional bricks and mortar business, but it does require a little investment.

The reason I mention this is because there are places on the internet where you can get an autoresponder for free, however I do not recommend this at all.  Keep in mind that if you don’t purchase your autoresponder, the free ones normally come with serious downsides.  The most common of these downsides is that you will have to put up with having other companies ads on your emails. This does not look at all professional and will more than likely put your customers off buying from you.

There are several very good quality autoresponders available. The one that I use and highly recommend is aweber, because it is so easy to use and implement and their deliverability of emails is first class. Their support is also excellent, so the all round package from aweber is in my opinion the best out there.

When you eventually get your autoresponder, the first thing I suggest you do is set it up with messages or articles that relate to your business. This way, when you send out emails or messages, you’ll be sending out material that relates to your business’ products or services. 

When you load up your autoresponder, you should try to load it with at the very least 7 messages.  This is because it is widely believed that it takes a potential customer at least 7 contacts before they feel comfortable buying from you. 

Once you have your autoresponder preloaded with messages or articles, you’ll need to set up your signature.  Your signature will be displayed at the bottom of every message your autoresponder sends, and should be your name and link to your business.  Your name and link to your business will go a long way, letting your customers know that you are professional.

Once you have everything set up, potential customers that visit your site and give you their name and email address will trigger your autoresponder emails, so this will be done automatically.  You can also send out emails called “broadcasts” on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis. This is particularly useful to promote offers, new products or just to keep the relationship going. 

Almost all autoresponders are flexible, easy to use, and will send out your messages when you decide.  Once your subscriber list starts to build up, and you get more email addresses to your autoresponder, you’ll quickly see that it’s very beneficial. After you have used your autoresponder for a few months, you won’t be able to imagine your business without it.

Autoresponders And Why You Need One

December 12th, 2007 | By Simon In Building Your Business, Getting Started, List Building, Useful Software or Tools | No Comments »

There are several ‘key tools’ that you will need for your internet business to succeed. Possibly the most important is what’s called an “autoresponder”.

An autoresponder makes for an excellent promotional tool and is a great way to save time, as it responds to any message with an automatic response. It can help your business by automatically emailing your prospects and customers with a preset message that will help to increase your sales. It also acts as a database to store your prospect and customer details, allowing you to communicate with them whenever you like “en masse”. This is an excellent benefit as it will allow you to type one email or message, and send it to all of your prospects or customers.

There are many autoresponders on the market, and they all work the in essentially the same way, as they will automatically send a message out when they are activated.  I have tried a couple of different companies and have to say that I highly recommend using aweber.  Aweber is very easy to use and reasonably priced, but perhaps most importantly their support is second to none. There is an online chat facility that allows you to discuss a query with an advisor in “real time”, so this is extremely useful. Go over to aweber and have a look around their site.

The principal use for your autoresponder would be to encourage your prospects to sign up for free information (perhaps a newsletter), or a free gift. In return for this free information/gift, the prospect is expected to leave their name and a valid email address, and once they’ve done that you’ve got their details with their consent.

Autoresponders are great to use for your daily tasks, as they will basically do all of the work for you.  They allow you to automate that aspect of your business, so instead of having to answer individual emails and input contact details manually, your autoresponder does it for you.