Monday, January 30, 2006

Tool Talk: All about internet marketing tools

Who doesn't want inexpensive internet marketing tools? In this day and age when advertising your business online is the way to go, it's a must that you avail of internet marketing tools at the lowest cost possible. How can you avail of them? How can you make the most out of these low cost internet marketing tools?

These low cost internet marketing tools aim to better your website and promote them thoroughly. Read on to know more about them:

1. Software
There is software specializing in internet marketing. These programs are affordable internet marketing tools. They attract traffic, communicate your site to anyone online, harness and trim down your keywords, track your site visitors and create links to other sites. Of course, the phrase "low cost" emphasizes that you must not spend exorbitantly. Watch out for internet marketing tools that do nothing but suck your budget.

2. Website packages
Take note of low cost internet marketing tools that do the following: hosting and designing your site, getting your domain, offering technical help, configure and upload your files, campaigning for your traffic. These are available in website packages that you can avail of anytime. Choose a package caters to your site's needs.

3. Mailing lists
Notice that when you visit the Bulk Mail folder of your email, you read nothing but website promotions. That's email marketing? It boosts your business like no other. Don't worry about spamming. There's such a thing as "safe lists" that make your mails spam-free. This is so easy to obtain. Look for mailing lists for sale and let the fun of emailing begin.

4. Data Submitters
This is a money-saving internet marketing tool that works like magic. Have a data submitter of your own and amass tremendously huge hits!

5. E-books
Integrate an e-book in your site for people to download. At such a cheap price, you keep people clamoring for more and visiting your site in the process. That's one affordable internet marketing tool for you.

6. SEO tools
Internet marketing is not complete without the standard SEO tools. Search engines remain as the major powerhouse in marketing so never leave this part out. Generate traffic through this effective low cost internet marketing tool!

Here's a reminder: when you see the low cost internet marketing tool banners online, never get persuaded easily. Study the package deals; analyze the contents and benefits before deciding if you want one.

Additional Resources: Web Tools

Friday, January 27, 2006

How To Write A Killer Sales Letter

Try to win the love of a girl with flowers alone, and you're in for a major heartbreak.

In the same light, try to win a customer with a description of the product by itself, and you're in for a period of bleak earnings.

The painful fact is this: products don't sell themselves. They need that human touch to convince the prospective buyer that he needs to purchase the said products, least he misses out on an advantageous opportunity. Sadly, persuading the potential buyer is made more difficult if the business is being carried out online. It seems that the anonymity involved in online transactions make people more hesitant about parting with their hard earned money.

How does an Internet marketer go about in selling his products then?

It's no secret that sales copies have become a must in this day and age. They have even become the landing page of many websites. The power of a good sales copy should not be underappreciated. Sales copies can convert an undecided visitor into a successful sale. After all, a sales copy is what the visitor would read to get more information about the product.

The nature of sales copies is quite sensitive. One word can win or lose a client. This is why many Internet marketers pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for a killer sales letter. Most of the time, they hire a ghostwriter to the job for them. The problem here is that the ghostwriter can only know so much about the product, hence, he could only write just as less.

But guess what?

YOU can write your own sales copy! Yes! You could!

Below is a step-by-step procedure, a formula if you will, on how to churn out those superbly effective sale copies that would increase your conversion rate.

STEP 1: Write an attention grabbing HEADLINE. Please bear in mind that a headline is composed of three parts:

A. A line that would set up the main headline.
B. Your main headline that should be in the biggest font size you'll use in the entire copy. Preferably, it should be in a startlingly different color and in bold.
C. A line that would elaborate on your main headline.
Here is an illustration of a headline using this method:
Do you want to gain substantial earnings even while you're sleeping?
"AN AUTOMATED BUSINESS SOLUTION IS THE DIGITAL EQUIVALENT OF A 24/7 SECRETARY OR YOUR ONLINE VENTURE!!!"
Take And Deliver Orders Without Even Having To Log On To Your Website!

STEP 2: Write an INTRODUCTION that your readers can relate to. You could do this by sharing a problem that should be familiar with them.

STEP 3: Tell them who you are and share a list of your relevant accomplishments. This would help establish your IDENTITY and your CREDIBILITY. Many of your potential clients are wary about doing business online. By doing away with the unwanted anonymity and by assuring them of your reliability, you'll be able to make their fears go away.

STEP 4: Offer your PRODUCT. Yup! You have to do it here instead of earlier. The reason is that Internet users generally hate sales pitches. If your headline is about the product itself, they might just switch to another site.

STEP 5: Assure your readers that the PRODUCT IS EFFECTIVE. This can be done in two ways:
A. Offer confirmable statistics that would support your product's needed usage.
B. Present testimonials from people who have actually used your product.

STEP 6: Enumerate the SPECIFICS OF YOUR PRODUCT. But make sure that this part is not riddled with technical jargons. Explain your product's details in a colloquial way that anyone would be able to understand.

STEP 7: Tell your reader the reasons why your PRODUCT SHALL BE BENEFICIAL to them. This step is crucial, as it is the point where you could transform the potential client's interest into a perceived need.

STEP 8: For that killer blow that would make them feel that yours is the best deal in the planet, bundle your product with BONUSES, and inform your readers of the corresponding VALUE for each freebie.

Remember that a sales copy is that very integral component that bridges a page hit to a sale. By following the steps we have outlined above, there is no doubt that your conversion rate would dramatically increase!

Recommended Reading: Web Sales Letter Supreme

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Five Ways To Win The Favor Of Search Engines

You've got a cool new website with all the works: cool Flash presentations, eye-catching colors, informative text, easy-to-use layout, and an interesting topic. You think your site is amazing, and you know that others will agree with you. If only they know it exists.

How do you make your website known? How do you make yours stand out among millions of others? You can spend lots of money on advertisement, but that will not work if you don't have the money to spare on advertising. So what do you do? Make search engines work for you, that's what!

Google, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, Altavista - you want to be at the top of their results list. The higher your site is in a search results page, the better chances that it will be visited. The science behind making your site a popular search result is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Don't worry, though - even if SEO is referred to as a science, it is not all that complicated. You just need to take note of a few things, and before you know it, your site will have more visitors than you could ever dream of.

Here are five tips to ensure that your site would be a favorite of search engines all around the cyber world.


  1. Give importance to substance over appearance.

    Do you want to share your knowledge on a subject that you have authority on? Do you want to sell products? Do you want to build an online shrine for your favorite actress? Whatever topic you have chosen for your website, make sure that you are able to give useful information on it. Search engines work by scanning sites for keywords. They search text and completely ignore everything else. So if you have made your site rich in colors, don't forget to make it rich in content as well. After all, a beautiful layout can make people look, but relevant content is what will make them stay. Remember, in this day and age: content is king!

  2. Know your topic well

    If you know much about your topic, you will know what people usually ask about it, and what they ask about it is what they will type in the search bar. When writing the content for your website, put yourself in your other people's shoes, people who will be your target audience or market. Know the possible questions they might have about your topic, and give answers in your site.

  3. Learn from the best

    Take time to browse and read sites that get lots of visitors and have the same topic as yours. Take note of any recurring phrases in these sites' text. These phrases are most likely keywords. Incorporate them in your own site's content. Don't saturate your site with keywords, though. You don't want to sound redundant to your site visitor. A 3% density level would be enough.


    In searching for the right keywords, use Overture's services. It may take quite some time, as it is more of a trial-and-error method, but the results are conclusive, and a pattern can easily be observed.

  4. Submit…and re-submit

    You will never get a certain job if you don't send in your application for it. The same thing applies to SEO. If you want your site to be recognized by search engines, then go out of your way to register your site with them. After a couple of weeks, search for your site by putting in the keywords you used in your content. If your site is still not coming up in the search results, do not give up, and just re-register and resubmit your site. It's possible that your initial registration was discarded without being processed. This usually happens because a lot of submissions are being done everyday.

  5. Constantly update your site

    This can't be stressed enough: search engine spiders love sites which constantly change their content. You can't build your site and expect it to last forever without any updates. There will come a time when those search engine spiders would stop fetching your site for query requests. Here's a tip: integrate a blog program in your site. Blogs have a user-friendly interface that allows easy updates.

Additional Resources: SEO Made Easy

Monday, January 23, 2006

6 Ways To Publishing A Successful E-zine

The most important asset of an Internet Marketer is his or her list of subscribers, the opt-ins. Nevertheless, efforts are needed to be taken so that you can build your subscriber list and improve the size of it every day. There are several ways to have your e-zine successfully published and they are:

1. Ad-swapping
You can exchange sponsor, feature, or solo ads with another e-zine publisher to promote each other's newsletter. This is one of the most effective ways for promoting your e-zine, gain publicity, traffic, as well as generating a greater income through increasing your list of subscribers.

It is a win-win situation for both of you, but make sure the ad-swapping is done at least 3 issues continuously to have get the best response. Similar to selling a product, following up is important to get people interested in something you promote.

2. Offer a bonus for signing up
This is a good way to increase your opt-ins. You can increase your subscriber conversion rate by giving away a free bonus to your visitors with a condition - that they need to sign up for your e-zine or newsletter.

You can increase the urge and value for your bonus by setting a time limit so that only people who subscribe during the period of time will be able to receive your bonus.

3. Write articles
Writing articles and submitting them to article directories help you gain traffic and establishing yourself as an expert in your field. To do this, you just need to add an appropriate resource box/signature after each of your article, saying that people can subscribe to your newsletter - state a price, but they can get it for free. Put a link and direct them to your opt-in page.

You don't even need to sell them anything yet, just focus on building your list and only promote your products to these subscribers later on.

4. Have a private policy for your e-zine
To do this, simply include a statement that tells people that you will not rent, sell or give away their information to any third party. This helps to build your relationship with your subscribers as well as allowing them to trust you more.

5. Submit your e-zine to e-zine directories
Submitting your e-zine to these directories helps increase the number of subscribers to your e-zine and also help you find more people to advertise in your e-zine or swapping ads with you. Do this correctly and you can get targeted subscribers and much more partners for building a huge subscriber list.

6. Posting in discussion boards
You can find high traffic discussion boards related to your niche and promote your e-zine through your own signature. Try and post more often to these discussion boards, contribute useful information, and people will be keen in subscribing for your newsletter.

To Your Success,
Debra

Additional Reading: 77 Questions & Answers For Your Ezine Success

Monday, January 16, 2006

Profiting With Private Label Rights

There are three basic rights you should know about when it comes to resale rights marketing. These are:
  • resale rights
  • master resale rights
  • private label rights
Whenever you purchase a product with resale rights, you will only have the license to sell the said product to other people. When you purchase a product with master resale rights, you will have the license to sell the product to other people, and you will also have the option to sell the resale right for the same product as well. This means that the people to whom you sell the resale rights of the product whose master resale rights you own will consequently acquire the license to sell the said product to other people.

Confusing as this may sound, our focus for this article are private label rights which, of the three rights enumerated above, is undoubtedly the most empowering and the most profitable.

Private label rights are embodied in a license that comes with an information product you may be able to purchase. These rights would allow you to alter, modify, enhance and rearrange the contents of the said product to suit your own needs and wishes.

What exactly does this mean?

With private label rights, you could divide the chapters of, say, an eBook, and sell them as a series of articles. The reverse is also true. If you purchased a set of articles with accompanying private label rights, you could compile them into one nifty and seemingly novel eBook or special report.

Better yet, you could add any information on the said information product, without having to seek the permission of the original author. You feel that one section is wanting in details? You could freely insert your own additions!

But the best part of information products with private label rights is that, in most cases, you could put your name as the author of the work, without having to pay royalties or ghostwriting charges to the original author.

There are many benefits to private label rights. Some are quite apparent. Others only manifest after a deeper scrutiny. Let's take a look at some of them:
  • Private label rights would allow you to come up with a variety of new products from the original source. Being empowered to alter the contents to suit your needs, you have the liberty to repackage them as novel offers for different markets.
  • Private label rights would allow you to improve on a work that you may have found lacking. Tired of purchasing products to sell, when such products do not meet your standards of quality and they are disappointingly unalterable? You won't have to worry about such with private label rights. You have the freedom to change and improve on what is written as you see fit.
  • Private label rights are perfect for branding yourself and your business. You need to get the word out about your online venture. Purchasing a number of information products with private label rights and naming them as your own would impress upon the online world that you are an expert in your chosen field, and they would trust you more easily when the need arises to procure your services or avail of your products.
The purchaser is not the only person who stands to earn from private label rights, however. An information product creator can also consider this route if he wishes to make some fast money. The information product creator can offer the private label rights to his works at a substantially higher price, considering all the perks that are attached to it.

There has been an age old debate as to whether or not a creator should sell the private label rights for his products. Though there are many schools of thought on the matter, the following scenario seems to be the most beneficial for the information product creator: he should sell the private label rights for his products only when the same is nearing the end of its market life.

At this point, it is widely believed that the product has already been squeezed dry of its moneymaking potentials, and by allowing other people to alter it in creative ways, the said product might find new life in different markets.

Private label rights are excellent offerings in the world of Internet marketing. When you encounter a hot commodity that would give you the liberty to alter its essence and call it your own, it is very much worth your time to study the profitability of purchasing the same. Offers this good don't come everyday.

Additional Resources: Resale Rights Report (windows), Resale Magnate (windows and mac)

Friday, January 06, 2006

How To Choose A Good Autoresponder Service

Ask any veteran Internet marketer about converting visitors into sales, and you'll get one answer: it's all about the follow-up.

Truly, it's more than just increasing the volume of traffic that gets to visit your site. After all, a good 98% of your daily visitors, at the average, won't decide to purchase your products or rent your services. But that's not to say that they won't be interested in the same offer tomorrow, or that they won't be interested in future offers.

Hence, it has become necessary to "capture" these "leads" so that they may be informed of upcoming offerings, or better yet, so that you could warm them up for your current offers. This can be done by employing an opt-in system that would invite them to subscribe to a mailing list. By gathering their names and email addresses, with their permission of course, you would be able to contact them periodically with informative materials, usually carried out through the use of an eZine or a newsletter, as well as occasional distribution of freebies to win their favor for a possible sale.

There would be no problem if you're dealing with ten or twenty subscribers, as you could write to them individually. But such number isn't sustainable by a long shot, however. You should aim for a mailing list that would reach the thousands. And that would make it difficult for you to prepare personalized emails.

The crux of an ideal mailing list, therefore, is an efficient autoresponder system that would cater to your every need with regards to the matter.

A mailing list of considerable size powered by a good autoresponder system consistently provides some generous earnings for many Internet marketers the world over. A lot of online businessmen can rake a profit from their mailing lists alone.

But what is an autoresponder system? An autoresponder system is like a digital secretary. It will take care of your subscribers by providing for an opt-in system that would allow them to subscribe to your mailing list. An autoresponder system would also take care of the distribution of emails to your subscriber base.

You could simply prepare your messages in advance, program them in the autoresponder, and preset the intervals by which the said messages will be delivered. You could even separate your subscribers into various groups. One group would be for those who have yet to order, for example, and the other is for those who have already made a purchase. This would allow you to use two different approaches in dealing with them.

Also, a good autoresponder system would help build the customer's, prospective or actual, trust in your services. With a good autoresponder, you could provide for an efficient technical support program. If your client would email you a question about one of your products, for example, you could preset the autoresponder to reply with a general FAQ so that he may be properly guided.

Not all autoresponders are built the same way, however, and much care should be exercised in choosing the right one perfect for your particular needs. Here are ten questions you need to ask before you decide enrolling for an autoresponder service:


  1. How many accounts can you create with their system? Some business plans would require you to have different accounts for different product.
  2. How many lists can you build? There are also some business plans that would require different lists for different groups of clients?
  3. How many follow-up messages can you preset?
  4. How many subscribers can the system hold? And correspondingly, how many subscribers can the system respond to?
  5. How much customization is allowed? You need to make your subscribers feel special somehow, so the names included in your message, as well as some parts of the message itself, should be customizable.
  6. How can the system gather prospective subscribers? The process should be simple and convenient, otherwise, the target's patience will just be tried.
  7. Will you be able to send your messages in .html and .doc formats?
  8. Will you be able to track your subscribers for the purpose of target marketing?
  9. Is the scheduling system fully automated?
  10. Is the autoresponder easy to use?

If the autoresponder service you are considering favorably satisfies all the questions above, and it is being offered at a reasonable price, then it would be wise to grab that deal as soon as you can.

Remember, if you're running an online business, a good autoresponder should be one of your primary investments. It could be the key to an excellent conversion rate.

Check out GetReponse.com or Aweber.com.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Five Steps That Will Help You Succeed in Niche Marketing

Niche marketing is a manifestation of how much internet marketing has evolved in recent years. Niche marketing is based on a real world model, that is, it is a business strategy that is focused on real people with real needs and with real money to spend.

Niche marketing is a technique that seeks to conquer small and usually unattended markets that are fueled by a strong passion for a particular interest. The benefits of cornering these markets are enormous. First, you will encounter little competition. Second, the market is driven by enthusiasm and they will continuously support a product that they like.

To illustrate, five years ago, internet marketing strategies focused on general markets. "I want to make money online," one would have said, "so I'm going to sell products for dog enthusiasts." But dog enthusiasts comprise a pretty broad market. A lot of online businesses are already catering to their needs.

But today, internet marketing strategies are focusing on specific markets. Instead of targeting dog enthusiasts, they target Sharpei owners. This is niche marketing in a nutshell.

Succeeding in niche marketing isn't as difficult as you might think. Here are five simple steps that would guarantee your conquest of the niche you would choose.


  1. Know what people are searching for online. You need two important ingredients for this step: instinct and Overture. You think you have them? Let's proceed then. Point your browser to: http://www.inventory.overture.com

    This is Overture's super powerful and useful keyword selector tool. Type in any word and the system will tell you how many searches were made for it in a particular month.


    Now you will need your instinct, as the process is all trial-and-error. Think of a field that not many people know about. For the purpose of this discussion, let's choose the word "widget."

    By typing in the said word, Overture will tell us that 2136 people searched for "widget" in the month of April. This would be a perfect niche market. It's not a popular subject, and you have 2136 people, less a few repeated searches, that are potential clients.

  2. Determine the profitability of the niche. Overture would have given you a list of keywords pertaining to your targeted niche. Now it's time to see if we could make money out of them. Log on to Google Adwords and check out the pricing of the keywords. The higher a keyword's price is, the more profitable it can be.

    But you don't have to rely on Googles Adwords alone. You could conduct your own research by reading books and newspapers. Be on the lookout for particularized markets you could exploit.
  3. Evaluate the potential market. You could do this manually by running your own search and checking out the websites that cater to your chosen niche. Scout the competition! This could take some time though, so a better option would be to invest in some useful tools. One good software you could use is Word Tracker, which would provide for you a supply vs. demand. Word Tracker would survey multiple search engines and pinpoint competing websites.
  4. Create your own product. You do have to sell something, so you have to create an item that the members of the niche would want to buy. Since you're operating an online business, information would be the most ideal product that you could offer. By packaging information in the form of electronic books, membership sites, software, subscriptions to newsletter or even streaming media, you'd have an offering that the target market would always have a need for.
  5. Content is king. You would want the members of the niche to visit your site, and the way to do this is by offering good, quality content that they can never find anywhere else. As we've mentioned earlier, the members of a niche are fueled by passion, hence they will always be searching for information on their particular interest. If you provide this in your content, they will come to you, and you could expose your products to them.

Niche marketing is not difficult indeed, but you can't be successful with it lying down. Some effort is still required, as is the case with all viable businesses. With steps outlined above, you will be able to corner the niche of your choice. May it be very profitable for you!

Niche Market Reading: How To Niche, The Niche Report, and Resale Rights Report (Resale Rights Report for Windows only, sorry Macs)