Creative Ideas To Profit With Autoresponders

Creative Ideas To Profit With Autoresponders

by: Zamri Nanyan

An interested visitor who has been strolling through your site has finally come to just what she is looking for and is about to make a purchase. Itกs a sunny afternoon, and her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the visitorกs large fiftyyearold snowrose bonsai tree, suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.

In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and your sale is dust unless you have had the foresight to utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can then followup with her, and in all probability, make the sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her precious bonsai.

Autoresponders are remarkable, versatile programs that do so much more than just automatically answer your email. Here are a few ideas that will help you to creatively and productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual visitor into a profitable customer. Use your autoresponder to:

1. Publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders will manage subscriptions and followup with interested prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed about your services or products, while building your reputation as a credible expert in your particular business.

2. Publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Inform them of current sales you are running and of promotional material that your affiliates can use themselves to increase their commissions. Include tips, advice, and techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go out and promote your business.

3. Write reviews. Cover books, software, music, ebooks, movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder. Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your affiliateกs page in your autoresponder.

4. Distribute your articles. Writing and distributing targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your sales potential. If your articles contain valuable information, many editors will print what is known as a resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and a brief description of your service or product. It can also contain your autoresponder address. Letกs say youกve written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder accounts and create a master list that contains the titles of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief abstract. Then promote your master list. Additionally, include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can add their articles to your list, increasing the number of writers who are represented in your article list.

5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your articles when youกve written new ones that they may want to publish in their own newsletter or website.

6. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances of converting visitors into customers. For example, if you’re selling a particular product, put testimonials about how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a detailed, enticing description of your product.

7. Distribute advertising. Letกs say you sell advertising on your website or in your newsletter or ezine. Set your autoresponder to send the information about rates and how to place an ad automatically to all prospectsก email addresses. Then have your autoresponder followup. It can also send notification of any special deals you are currently offering.

8. Distribute an email course. Each day, have your autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that each lesson has quality content not a sales pitch. Your content will do the selling for you, and will do it much more effectively. You can include tips centered on a different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product. Make sure to include a paragraph or two at the end of each lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a purchase.

9. Automate a reminder about your service or product after a visitor has completed your course. This will increase the possibility of sales from visitors who have taken your course but are dragging their feet about actually making a purchase. You can also use these reminders to promote new products or services, and the products and services of your affiliate programs.

10. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an idea of the type of information you can provide and the quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a potential customer than gain a sale.

11. Create trivia quizzes on your site and place the answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be motivated to request your autoresponder, and you will have a record of the visitorsก email addresses who took your quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter send their responses to your autoresponder. Your autoresponder can be setup to send them a confirmation of their entry.

12. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software, membership, etc. People who are exposed to a little taste often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from your website. Set up your autoresponder to give instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then make sure to followup to try and close the sale.

13. Link to hidden pages on your autoresponder. For example, a hidden page could be your affiliate page that contains graphics, promotional articles, and text links that interested affiliates can make use of. Inform visitors that they may have free access to your affiliate page by simply requesting your autoresponder. You will then gather a list of visitors who may be interested in becoming your affiliates.

14. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request form for visitors to be notified of special offers or discounts in the future. This creates a very effective mailing list that contains the names of people who are already your customers.

15. Put your links page on your autoresponder. It should contain up to fifty links that would be of particular interest to your visitors. Make sure to add your own promotional copy at the top or bottom of this page.

Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant ideas of your own!

About The Author

Zamri Nanyan models a lowcost, highprofit concept to build successful internet businesses, as mentioned at www.LowCostHighProfit.com. He now owns and operates several moneymaking websites from the comfort of his own home. Read more about Zamri Nanyan at www.ZamriNanyan.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 17

by Zamri Nanyan

Website Visitors For Your Business Building Stro

Website Visitors For Your Business Building Strong Website Traffic

by: Peter Jordaan

It is worth looking at some values and strengths of a few technical and promotional elements of your website that will help you to lay a foundation in building profitable online success. Once you have decided on your market and have chosen a relevant domain name for your online business, you need simple and effective tools and methods to put and keep your business on a profitable track. Ideally you will want to make use of easytouse methods that keeps visitors coming to your website. Lets look at a few practical ideas.

When a visitor comes to your website you have to get their followup information by collecting their email address. It is important to ‘enable’ your web site to automatically deliver quality content such as a newsletter to visitors and allow you to follow up with extra information when necessary. Top marketers agree that this forms a large percentage of their online success. How do you do this? You create forms on your web pages, giving visitors the chance to subscribe to your optin list, newsletter or report. This allows you to introduce your service and offer something valuable in order to build relationship. Email followup through autoresponders is totally free and an absolute necessity for implementing. All you need to do is integrate the autoresponder into your web site via a form so that you can preload it with your newsletters. You may say that you’re not a writer, but what do you know about your industry? Write it down and put it into an informative newsletter. Subscribers can now begin to see you as an expert on the subject and look to you for the solutions that your business is already offering.

Once your newsletter is up and running, you can use these very same tips and ideas you share with your subscribers and also write a weekly article about your product or service, and then submit it to ezines online. This is very easy to do and will have great response for your business. There are tens of thousands of ezine publishers online that needs good content, and will give you valuable exposure for your business. You will have many sites linking to your site and people will be able to read what your business is about and visit your website. Then they will also be able to subscribe to your newsletter which provides even more information about your product or service. Each article has got a resource box at the bottom which allows visitors to visit your web site. Write your 4 to 6 line resource box by viewing some samples online and making up your own. Finding details of ezine publishers can quite easily be done through looking up in search engines.

Let’s go a step further and look at newspaper classifieds. By using little snippets of ideas from your newsletters and articles, you can come up with short eye catching promotional messages to use in newspaper classifieds. There are newspaper companies that offer state wide and nation wide advertising in their papers, often covering readership in excess of 2 to 3 million. By placing 1015 word tiny classified ads all over the globe can dramatically increase your website traffic. A big mistake people make when doing this is to try and make sales directly from their ads instead of just generating leads for later followup. You would want to get your leads to your web site first from where they can subscribe to your automated content.

Lastly lets consider the eye opener an affiliate program can have for your business. With the right product or service it is by far the hottest way of building your business and customer base. Submit your program to affiliate directories across the web. You’ll have affiliates making sales for you and not paying a cent in advertising until you’ve made the sale! Your advertising will be covered by your affiliates, and you can concentrate on providing customer service and continue followup with your increasing customer base through newsletter delivery and other product offers. By becoming familiar with how important it is to stay relevant in implementing these factors will benefit your business and you will find that you’ll be achieving better results.

About The Author

Peter Jordaan is the owner of a hosting company and shares information regarding values of hosting a successful online business. In his free onsite ecourse he covers more relevant information about these qualities. You can visit his website by going to http://wirelessbusinessmedia.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 14, 2004

by Peter Jordaan

7 Ways To Get More Repeat Traffic To Your Site

7 Ways To Get More Repeat Traffic To Your Site

by: Ken Hill

1. Make all or part of your site into a valuable directory.
Set up different sections of your site for people to submit their ezines, articles, ebooks or affiliate programs to such as marketing, writing, publishing, etc.
Your directory will not only increase your repeat traffic but will also help you to attract very targeted visitors to your site that are interested in your products or the products of affiliate programs youกve joined.
2. Publish a whatกs new section.
This section will keep your visitors up to date on any new additions to your site and is especially useful if your site is constantly updated by you or by your visitors who submit their own content to your site.
3. Provide resources on your site that your visitors can use on a regular basis such as a search engine submitter, email formatter or meta tag checker.
4. Add a discussion board to your site where your visitors can network with each other.
Post your own tips and advice to your board along with your signature file and use your discussion board to get to know your visitors better.
This will help you to continue to improve your product, copy, and service and can also help you to gain ideas about new products for you to offer your visitors.
5. Create a list that your visitors can subscribe to that announces to them when your site is updated.
For instance if you ran an article directory you could list the titles and descriptions of the newest article submissions to your site along with the URLs where your subscribers can view them.
You could also use your list to increase your revenue by selling sponsor ads to people who would like to advertise to your list.
6. Make polls and surveys available on your site.
Running your own polls or surveys, in addition to providing you with more repeat traffic, can also help you to acquire valuable information from your visitors.
For instance your polls and surveys could be used to find out how effective your copy is and to measure your customersก satisfaction with your products or customer service.
Your polls and surveys can also provide you with needed feedback that you can use when deciding on new products to add to your product line.
7. Publish an ezine.
Your ezine will provide you with a very effective way to keep your visitors coming back to your site to use the resources you provide to them, to view your articles, and most importantly to buy your products.
Provide your subscribers with special sales and discounts to increase the number of your subscribers who purchase from you for the first time and also to garner more repeat sales.

About The Author

Article by writer, Ken Hill. For more articles and a great tutorial on ezine publishing visit Kenกs site today at: http://www.netpromarketer.com

This article was posted on June 12, 2004

by Ken Hill

10 Ways To Get More Of Your Visitors To Subscribe

10 Ways To Get More Of Your Visitors To Subscribe To Your Ezine

by: Ken Hill

1. Promote your ezine on the top third of your site, and on every page of your site with a subscription box that advertises your ezine.

2. Tell your visitors the benefits of subscribing to your ezine whatกs in it for them for subscribing to your ezine.

3. Provide a bonus for subscribing to your ezine. Your bonus could be a free ad, ebook, email course, software, or access to your members only site.

4. Make sample issues of your ezine available to your visitors by autoresponder.

Your sample issues will increase your subscriptions by giving your visitors a firsthand look at the valuable content to be found in your ezine, the topics you cover, your point of view, and your personality.

5. Provide an archive of all your past issues.

You could provide your visitors with a web based archive of all your past issues. This will not only help you to get more subscribers, but will also fill your site with keyword rich webpages which can help your site to rank higher in the search engines.

In addition, you can create your archive by making all of your past issues available by autoresponder if you don’t have the time to keep up a web based archive.

6. Tell your visitors that if they subscribe to your ezine that theyกll be entitled to subscriber only discounts.

This could be discounts on purchasing your products or discounts on advertising in your ezine.

7. Publish testimonials for your ezine on your site.

This will increase the number of people that subscribe to your ezine by showing them what your ezine has done for other people how it has helped them, provided them with valuable information, showed them how to promote their businesses etc.

8. Let your visitors know that you will never sell or give away their information. Have a strong privacy policy in place.

9. Tell your visitors what your next issue is going to be about. For instance what the topic of the feature article is or anything new you have planned.

10. Have a sweepstakes or contest for free advertising or products. Tell your visitors that if they subscribe to your ezine that they will be entered every month in your contest or sweepstakes.

About The Author

Article Copyright by writer, Ken Hill. Save Money With Affordable Email List Hosting! Fast, easy and cost effective email delivery to your lists. Youกll increase your sales while reducing your investment! Get your First 30 Days Free! Learn more now at: http://www.scstats.com/r.cfm?i=5343

This article was posted on March 20, 2004

by Ken Hill

10 Sure Fire Ways To Get More Ezine Subscribers

10 Sure Fire Ways To Get More Ezine Subscribers

by: Ken Hill

1. Place testimonials for your ezine on your site.
Your testimonials will help you to increase your circulation by showing your visitors how your ezine has helped your subscribers.
2. Give your visitors the chance to see what your ezine is all about before subscribing.
For instance, you could provide an archive of your past issues on your site or you could make a sample issue available by autoresponder.
3. Write articles.
Your articles will increase your subscriptions by showing people that are unfamiliar with your ezine what kind of valuable content they can expect from you.
Promote your articles by submitting them to article directories, article announcement lists, and also to ezine publishers directly.
4. Swap articles with other ezine publishers and webmasters.
Publish other ezine publishersก articles in your ezine in exchange for those publishers running your articles in their ezines.
This can help you to successfully increase your subs by getting your articles run in targeted ezines on a regular basis.
You can also participate in ad swaps where you post other publishersก or webmasters articles on your site in exchange for them doing the same for you.
In addition, to helping you get more subscribers, these swaps can help you to keep your site updated with new content and increase your search engine rankings by increasing the number of reciprocal links you have.
5. Add bonuses for subscribing to your ezine.
Your bonuses will help you to successfully get more subscribers by giving your visitors an incentive for joining your ezine.
Increase the value your visitors place on your bonuses by adding an honest dollar amount to them, by telling your visitors the benefits they provide, or by telling your visitors how many people have already received them.
6. Swap advertising space with other ezine publishers.
Your ad swaps will give you an excellent way to increase your subscriptions at no cost. When possible, swap your ads for at least three issues in a row to maximize the number of new subscribers you get.
7. Swap ‘thank youก page ads.
Promote other related but non competing ezines on the page your new subscribers are taken to after subscribing to your ezine in exchange for those publishers doing the same for you.
This will give you a powerful way to continue to increase your subscriptions for as long as the other ezines are published.
8. Swap welcome message ads.
Like your ‘thank youก page ads, this type of swap can give you very good ongoing promotion of your ezine. The main difference is that not everyone that subscribes to your ezine will read your welcome email while all your new subscribers will be directed to your ‘thank youก page.
9. Swap recommendations with other ezine publishers.
You could recommend another publisherกs ezine within your ezine in your own words in exchange for that publisher doing the same for you.
You could also swap recommendations in your welcome message or on your ‘thank youก page.
In addition, you could run a recommended ezines section in every issue where you recommend a few or several other ezines in exchange for those publishers doing the same for you.
10. Submit your ezine to ezine announcement lists and ezine directories.
Your submissions will provide you with an easy way to start getting more new subscribers.
Getting your ezine listed in ezine directories can also help you to find more people who would like to purchase advertising in your ezine as well as more publishers who would like to do a joint venture with you.

About The Author

Article by writer, Ken Hill. Would You Like To Publish Your Own Successful Ezine? Get Affordable Email List Hosting at: http://www.netpromarketer.com/sf.html FREE 30 day trial. For more articles by Ken Hill visit: http://www.netpromarketer.com

This article was posted on July 16, 2004

by Ken Hill

Your Alexa Rating Is It Really That Important?

Your Alexa Rating Is It Really That Important?

by: Richard Grady

A discussion in my forum has prompted this newsletter as I think it is important for any online entrepreneur to understand how Alexa ratings work in order that they can understand why they may not be that important to the success of their online business. Too many people make the mistake of concentrating entirely on improving their Alexa ratings but at the end of the day, these rankings are just numbers they won’t put money in the bank.

Alexa is a company owned by the Amazon group and it aims to rank every single website on the Internet in terms of how much traffic it is receiving.

Quite simply, the lower your Alexa ranking, the more traffic your website gets. The ideal scenario would be to have an Alexa ranking of ก1ก. This would mean, in theory, that your website receives more traffic than any other website in the world. Currently this position is held by Yahoo.com and as you would expect, other top sites include Microsoft, Google and eBay.

It is generally considered that a website with an Alexa rating of 100,000 or less is receiving a reasonable level of traffic but Alexa can be wildly misleading and very easily manipulated.

To understand why the rankings are misleading, you need to understand how Alexa gathers the data that it uses to create the rankings in the first place. This is really very simple Alexa has a free toolbar that you can download and install within your Internet browser and this reports back to Alexa with the details of every single website that you visit.

Alexa can then use this information to see how many users are visiting a particular website. Then, because not every Internet user has the Alexa toolbar installed, Alexa will multiply the number of visitors by a specific margin to estimate the total number of visitors that a site may typically receive. The important word in the last sentence is กestimateก.

Letกs assume that the above multiplication margin is ten that means that for each Alexa toolbar user that visits a specific web page, Alexa assumes that another nine nontoolbar users will also visit the same page. This means that if 100 toolbar users visit a specific web page on a given day, Alexa will take this as meaning that a total of 1000 people visited the same page in that 24 hour period.

This is where the figures can get distorted. If you have a website that attracts a higher than average number of Alexa toolbar users, then you are going to gain a lower Alexa rating because Alexa doesn’t make any allowance for the fact that their toolbar users visit certain types of site more often. A typical example of this is Internet marketing sites. Most Internet entrepreneurs will have the Alexa toolbar installed because they like to see the Alexa rankings for sites as they visit them (the toolbar shows you this information as soon as you visit a site). But this means that if your website attracts a lot of Internet marketingtype visitors, then your Alexa rating will be inflated above what it should be.

Here is a truelife example:

There was a popular Internet marketing site for sale last year and it had an Alexa rating of about 19,000. I figured it must be getting heavy traffic but when I discussed the matter with the owner/seller, I found that it was only receiving 6000 unique visitors a month! The reason that the Alexa rating was so low was because the majority of these visitors had the Alexa toolbar installed and therefore the calculations were being thrown out massively.

It is also possible to purchase software that will generate false hits to your site using the Alexa technology so that Alexa is fooled into believing that more people are visiting your site. This pushes your Alexa ranking down.

At the end of the day though, what is the point of having a low Alexa rating if you are not making any sales? Sure it is nice to be able to say that your site is in the top 20,000 websites in the world but if the site isn’t earning you an income, this ranking means very little (assuming that it was your intention for the site to earn you an income of course). Personally, I would much rather have a high Alexa ranking but a good income than a low ranking and minimal income.

Of course, there are benefits to the Alexa service and it can be worthwhile installing their toolbar. The toolbar will give you an indication of how busy a particular site is and in turn, how popular it is. This can be helpful when making a decision as to whether to make an online purchase for example. It is also handy for checking out your competitors 🙂

Just don’t get too hung up on Alexa as a measure of how well your business is doing. The real statistics that you should be watching are actual traffic numbers, conversion rates (ie. how many visitors actually buy something) and overall sales. These are the figures that will help you put cash in the bank and improve and grow your business.

If you are interested in finding out more about Alexa and if you wish to install their toolbar, you can do so at http://www.alexa.com

Copyright 2004 Richard Grady

About The Author

Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more about Richard at: http://www.thetraderonline.com. Free wholesale search engines: UK http://www.wholesale118.co.uk and US http://www.thewholesaletrader.com.

This article was posted on September 16, 2004

by Richard Grady

$27,817 Monthly With Affiliate Programs

$27,817 Monthly With Affiliate Programs

by: John McLaren

I still remember thinking that promoting Affiliate Programs was a waste of time. Until I started making a small fortune.

At the end of 2004, I started some time exploring the concept of promoting affiliate programs through payperclick search engines. I knew of some Internet Marketing gurus who were claiming you could make thousands of dollars every month. But I was skeptical. I remember thinking, ขI know what these guys are about. They just want to sell more books.ข

But I decided that at least it was worth a look. The concept is quite simple. Choose a product – and one that has an affiliate program, of course. Set up an advertising campaign at a PPC search engine like Google and choose how much you want to pay per click. Write a three line advertisement and add your affiliate link. Whenever anyone clicks through your ad and buys the product, you earn a commission.

So I looked. And thought about it. And looked some more. I was still very uncertain about the whole concept, but I finally decided to test for myself whether it could really work. And since I knew I’d be spending quite a bit of money on advertising clicks, I felt it was well worth investing in a book so I could learn from more experienced marketers how to maximize the profitability of my campaigns.

As my business grew over several weeks I purchased and read several ebooks. By far the best I read was Chris Carpenter’s Google Cash ( http://tinyurl.com/6gdaq ). His approach is genuine, downtoearth, and he explains very clearly how to build your own affiliate marketing business. And importantly, he makes a fortune doing what he explains in the book.

I started by testing 2030 campaigns on various products. Most of them were unsuccessful, but I expected that from what I had been reading. I would test a product, and if it didn’t work, I would drop it quickly. The key with this business is identifying the affiliate products and campaigns that are successful. Once you find one that works, the money starts rolling in.

By February of 2005 I had identified several campaigns that were turning a profit. With one of these I was spending $0.08 per click to promote an affiliate product that pays me $18 commission on each sale. Approximately 1 visitor in 100 buys the product, so I make around $10 profit for every 100 visitors that I send.

What a formula! For every 1,000 visitors, that’s $180 in commissions. That might not seem like all that much, but remember once you have a successful campaign it keeps going all day, every day. If you send just 1,000 visitors to a program like this every day, then by the end of the month you will have earned $5,400 in commissions, of which $3,000 is profit.

Does it seem too simple? Well, if it was so easy everyone from your Aunt Mabel to the mailman would be doing it. In fact, while the concept is simple, getting your campaigns to run profitably does take some work. Since I can’t possibly teach you all you need to know in one article, Iกll give you a few tips here and recommend Google Cash for a detailed explanation:

Choose Your Product Wisely. The program should pay a commission of $15 or more, otherwise it won’t be worth paying for your clicks. And if the commission is very high, be careful. Some products like web hosting and satellite dish installations may pay commissions of $100, but you face intense competition from other affiliates, so the price you need to pay to get ad exposure and clicks will probably also be very high. Sometimes it is better to identify a niche product with less competition from other affiliates.

Track Your Campaigns Carefully. If you’re paying around 7 or 8 cents per click for a program that pays close to $20 commission, you need to make at least one sale for every 250 visitors. If you send 300 to 400 visitors with no sale, consider dropping it.

Days Of The Week Do Matter. When testing campaigns keep in mind the day of the week and even the time of day. Some products sell better on Mondays through Fridays, during business hours. Others, like entertainment products, sell better in the evenings and on weekends.

Getting back to my own experience, after identifying several campaigns that ‘worked’, I spent some time finetuning them using techniques I read about in Google Cash. By the end of February I had earned $27,817 in commissions for the month, all on products I had never even heard of at the end of 2004. My profit was a neat $10,795.

It’s incredible really. I made this money without a web site. From home. Working an average of just an hour or two a day.

I’m finally making the amount of money online that I dreamed about.

How about you? Would you also like to build an affiliate marketing business? Could you use some additional income? I encourage you to proceed, but be smart about it. There are risks involved and you should be aware of them. You should read Chris Carpenter’s book. That way you’ll be on a fast track to more profitable campaigns. And his book will save you hundreds of dollars, easily, as you avoid some common mistakes and pitfalls.

Good Marketing!

About The Author

John McLaren has worked for many years selling IT consulting services. Now he works from home, just a few hours each day, building his highly successful affiliate marketing business. For more professional advice, he recommends the book, Google Cash, available at: http://tinyurl.com/6gdaq.

This article was posted on March 26

by John McLaren

Is Something Missing From Your Keywords Research?

Is Something Missing From Your Keywords Research? (Part 2)

by: Serge Botans

In my previous article, I raised the issue that proper keyword research must take into account countries. The reason for that was that the demand for keywords can vary between countries. I gave examples of that fact using the Overture keyword tool.

To support my argument (that we need to be aware of countries when doing keyword research), I gave 2 reasons:

1. it will help us determine which countr(y/ies) to target, and

2. it will help us know what countr(y/ies) our visitors are most likely to come from.

I would like, in this article, to expand on these 2 reasons. I would also like to add further reasons why any keyword research must be country based.

1. When doing keyword research, we need to understand the limitations of our research. This is necessary in order to remove any assumptions we make about our findings. For example, if you find that the demand for a keyword is very high in the US, you cannot assume that the demand for that same keyword will also be vey high in other countries. You will only know for sure how much demand there is worldwide by doing country specific keyword research. Such research can be done using a tool such as the Overture keyword tool,

2. It will tell you where your visitors are most likely to come from. This in turn will tell you what features you need to add to your web site. For example, if you are targeting a keyword that is in demand in the US only, then obviously most of your visitors will come from the US. This then means that you need to design your web site primarily for US visitors. You will hence need to:

use US spelling such as กcolorก and not กcolourก,

if you sell products, then list your prices in US$,

if you live in the US, then add a fax number so your visitors can place orders by fax,

if you live in the US, you could organise a US free call number for your visitors to ring you should they need to,

if you live in the US and you ship your orders, then you could include shipping costs. You could also include how long it will take for them to receive their order,

if you don’t live in the US, then you will need to make it possible for your visitors to pay you in US$,

if you don’t live in the US and you ship your orders, then you could include shipping costs. And you could include how long it will take for them to receive their order,

and so on . . .

If on the other hand, you are wanting to target several nonEnglish speaking countries, then:

you may need to add a translation service to your site so that your visitors can read your site in their language,

you may need to add a currency exchange service so that your visitors can convert your prices into their currency,

you may need to make it possible for your visitors to pay you in their own currency,

you may need to add other ways for your visitors to pay you apart from credit cards. You could offer international cheques/checks, money orders, direct bank transfers, . . . I once had a customer who wanted to pay me in Euros from Italy and needed my address to do so. The easier you make it for people to place an order, the greater the chances someone will place an order!

if you ship your orders, then you could add the shipping costs to each of the countries you are targeting. And include how long it will take for them to receive their order,

and so on . . . May be you can think of other things you will need to add to your site to accommodate your international visitors.

3. It will help you target the right keywords for the country you want to target. For example, if you want to target Canada, then you will need to use keywords that are in high demand in Canada only. There is absolutely no point doing keyword research in the UK if you are wanting to target Canada as the keyword demand between the 2 countries may vary greatly.

4. It will help you develop a keyword strategy so that you can target several countries at the same time. This can be achieved in several ways depending on the keywordsก demand and supply.

you could use keywords that are in common demand in the several countries. For example, if you sell กwidgetsก with your site and you find that there is a healthy demand for กblack widgetsก in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. Then you could target that keyword with your site as that keyword will help you target 4 countries in one go,

you could use keywords in demand in each country, as long as they complement each other and are highly relevant for your site. For example, using the widget idea, if you found that กcolored widgetsก are in demand in the US, กwhite widgetsก are in demand in the UK, กblack widgetsก in Canada, and กcoloured widgetsก in Australia. Then, you would just target all these keywords with your site which would not be hard to do as all these keywords can easily be targeted together.

Given the right circumstances, you could even use both strategies at the same time.

As I mentioned in my first article, the Overture keyword tool enables you to research the demand for keywords in some 19 countries around the world. To see the countries that Overture supports, go to www.overture.com and have a look at the top right corner of the page. By clicking on any one of the countries listed, you will have access to the Overture keyword tool for the country you selected, and this will enable you to research the keyword demand in that country.

As you may know, keyword demand is only one half of the equation. Keyword demand needs to be looked at together with its supply numbers. One of the ways of determining keyword supply is to use Google. This means that to you need to know how to use Google to research the supply of keywords in your country of interest. This is a bit harder to explain and beyond the scope of this article.

I hope that this second article has convinced you about the need to be country aware when doing your keyword research. The success of your web site may depend on it.

Serge M Botans

About The Author

Serge M Botans is the CEO of http://www.metakeywordadvice.com a web site that provides advice on keywords. Free evaluation available. He is also the inventor of CID, which is an altenative to KEI.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 08

by Serge Botans

How To Run A Money Making Website

How To Run A Money Making Website

by: Ronald Gibson

All Internet business owners want their websites to be profitable.Here are a few tips that could help you make your website a profitable one.

1. Address your targeted audience on your business site. Example: กWelcome Internet Marketersก or กGreetings Fellow Dog Loverก. If you have more than one, address them all.

2. Make sure your content and graphics are relevant to your websiteกs theme. You wouldn’t want to use a bird graphic on a business web site.

3. In order for a website to be profitable, it must have repeat visitors. Offer your visitors incentives to get them to return to your website. You could give them new content, ebooks, software, ezine, etc. Alert visitors by email when you add new content to your web site. This will remind people to revisit your web site.

4. Bend over backwards to answer any questions that your visitors might have. Publish a FAQs for your business, product and web site. It should feature questions about multiple parts of your business. If the FAQ does not answer their question, then you should provide a way for visitors to contact you on each web page. L.ist your email address, fax number and phone number.

5. Give people the option of viewing your web site offline. Offer it either by autoresponder or printer friendly version.

6. Make sure a least 50% of your content is original. Another option is to offer your visitors something else original like software or an online utility.

7. Make sure all links on the navigational bar are clickable. If people can’t get to where they want to go, then they will more than likely leave.

8. Organize you web site in logical and profitable sequence. You don’t want to give your potential customers a freebie before they learn about the product(s) you’re selling.

The above tips should help you to make your website a profitable one for years to come.

Copyright © 2005 Ronald Gibson

About The Author

Ronald Gibson is a Web Designer and Web Marketer. He is the Webmaster of AffiliateUtopia.com, which offers information about some of the best money making opportunities on the Web. For more information, visit: http://www.affiliateutopia.com/ and http://www.affiliateutopia.com/blog/.

This article was posted on August 03

by Ronald Gibson

Search Engines: The Life Blood of InternetBased H

Search Engines: The Life Blood of InternetBased Home Businesses

by: Kirk Bannerman

Anyone involved in an Internetbased home business will soon come to recognize the importance of search engines as a vehicle to attract potential customers.

Since the inception of Google in 1998, the popularity of using search engines has increased dramatically. Nielsen NetRatings reports that about 114.5 million Americans, or a whopping 39 percent of the US population, currently use search engines.

Through February of 2004, Yahoo and Microsoftกs MSN ranked as the two favorite spots on the Internet with 87.3 million and 86.2 million unique monthly visitors, respectively, according to figures produced by Nielsen NetRatings.

Microsoft.com, ranked third, with 64.2 million visitors, but this figure is somewhat misleading because this site attracts much of its traffic by repairing flaws in the Windows operating system. Google was the fourth most popular site with 60.8 million visitors.

The market shares of MSN and Yahoo haven’t changed much in the past three years while Google has emerged as a powerhouse without spending much of anything on advertising. Googleกs audience is now approximately six times larger than it was in early 2001, when it was the 26th most popular destination on the Internet.

As they vie for position, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft plan to continue upgrading their services healthy competition that can only serve to improve the search experiences of Internet users in the future.

According to comScore Networks, an estimated 3.5 billion online searches are performed in the United States each month, making searching the second most popular online activity, ranking behind only email.

In 2003, businesses spent an estimated $2 billion on advertising related to searches and some knowledgeable sources expect the searchrelated advertising market to triple during the next three years.

There are various search engine formats including natural search, pay for inclusion (PFI), pay per click (PPC), and hybrid approaches which combine both PFI and PPC characteristics. Because of the immense and growing popularity of search engines, their effective utilization is the life blood of Internetbased home businesses.

About The Author

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and resides in California. For more details, visit his website at http://businessathome.us

This article was posted on March 25, 2004

by Kirk Bannerman

Leading eCommerce Consultant Admits You Should Onl

Leading eCommerce Consultant Admits You Should Only Listen to One Real Expert! (And it’s not him..!)

by: Eric Graham

Let me share with you a secret that most marketing experts and consultants don’t want you to know… (many of them don’t even understand this secret themselves.)

The secret is… There is only one true expert who can show you how to drastically improve the effectiveness of your website and your marketing. With dozens of socalled guru’s, consultants and experts ready and willing to give you (or charge you for) their advice, there is actually only one person you should listen to on a regular basis. Only one! And his name is Eric Graham… No, no… just kidding…

The only ขexpertsข that you should listen to and trust are your visitors. The visitors that come to your website or view your ads are the only true experts. They will share their expert opinions with you by the actions they take while on your website.

Not sure what headline to use at the top of your page… You have a couple of options:

Pay an ขexpertข consultant like me to look it over for you and give you copywriting recommendations, for a few hundred dollars an hour.

Or…

ขAskข your visitors which one is best, by split testing each element of your headlines and letting your visitors vote with their credit cards… The one that converts to sales best wins!

Trying to figure out how much to charge for you new ebook? You can hire an expert… I can talk to you all day about advanced pricing theory and explain to you how prices with a ข7ข in them (such as $17, $97, $777) usually convert better. I can walk you through an analysis of the price points of competing/similar products…

Or…

Simply test 3 or 4 different prices to see which one is most profitable. Often the greater perceived value of a higher price actually converts better than a lower price. But you won’t know if that’s true for your product and your visitors until you test it. Again your visitors will teach you more about pricing than any consultant ever could. You just need to ขaskข these experts by testing.

If done properly, the questions you can get your ขvisitor expertsข to answer about your website by simply testing, is endless.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you should never hire a consultant or expert after all my clients happily pay me a lot of money to help them improve their conversion rates. And I am worth every penny! 😉

But what you need to understand here is that the best experts, became experts by studying and testing, testing and testing different elements over and over until they developed a set of ขbest practicesข. So, by hiring someone who has been in the trenches you can save time and money in the long run.

However, every website, business, product and visitor demographic is different. Just because something works at one website, doesn’t automatically mean it will work at yours. The best consultants will tell you that you still need to test everything. So in the end it’s still your visitor who’s the true expert.

Just imagine the results you could achieve over the next year, if you took the time to test only one new element every week. Even if half of the tests were failures and didn’t produce improvements in your conversion rates, you would still discover 26 ways to improve your sales. Even if each improvement only boosts your conversion rate by 1/10th of 1%, you would have improved your conversion rate by over 2.6% (and probably much more!)

Look over your current sales statistics, and ask yourself, ขHow much more profit would I be making if my conversion rate jumped by 2.6%?ข

With most sites currently converting at an appalling 1% to 2%, a 2.6% improvement could triple your sales…

Let me ask you a question: Imagine you have a website selling information on how to learn to play the guitar, getting 1,000 visitors per day. And I came to you and showed you how I can change a few things about your page, improve your search engine positioning and triple your traffic? Would you be excited? Sure.

Then, why not get equally excited about optimizing your website for maximum conversion rates?

Many online businesses will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars optimizing their sites for the search engines. But then they waste 99 out of every 100 visitors that they spent so much time and effort getting, simply because they failed to invest in ขasking the expertsข (their visitors) first. Had they taken the time to optimize their site for conversion rate, before driving the traffic their results would be 10x more profitable.

The great news for you is, so few online businesses are currently testing anything! This means that you are in a position to absolutely dominate your competition by simply listening to the true experts… Your visitors!

Copyright 2004 Eric Graham

About The Author

Want to improve your conversion rates? Eric Graham is the CEO of several successful online companies. A top authority on eCommerce & Internet Marketing, heกs an indemand speaker & consultant. Visit www.websiteevaluations.com today for an indepth evaluation to boost YOUR websites conversion rate!

This article was posted on September 14, 2004

by Eric Graham

6 Reasons Why A Website Is Crucial To Your Busines

6 Reasons Why A Website Is Crucial To Your Business

by: Jamie Kiley

Since Iกm a web designer, I have a tendency to think everyone understands that having a website is important. Every once in a while, I have to remind myself that some people just haven’t heard yet!

Why is having a website such a big deal? Here are 6 reasons:

A website increases your credibility.

Your website has a powerful impact on a potential customerกs confidence in you. A professional design, wellwritten copy, helpful product information, and good contact info can tremendously increase trust in your company. It lets people know you’re knowledgeable and uptodate. If you take the time to develop a goodquality site with helpful information, visitors will have no choice but to be impressed.

A website makes your company visible anytime, anywhere.

As of April 2002, there are roughly 165.8 million people online in the US alone. Some of them are looking for your products and services. With a website, you open yourself up to a world of opportunity in reaching people who might not otherwise find you. With the click of a mouse, anyone can get to your companyกs website 24/7.

A website makes it easy for people to refer new customers to you.

For many businesses, referrals are a crucial source of new customers. Having a website makes it easy to encourage referrals, because customers can simply send friends and business contacts to your site. Website addresses are easier to remember than phone numbers. Plus, giving people multiple ways of contacting you makes it more likely that they will do so.

A website is a powerful sales tool.

Selling your products through an online store is often a killer way to expand your business. You have a perpetual, easilyaccessed storefrontone that costs a fraction of a brick and mortar store and can reach many more people. Effective sales copy can do an incredible job of hooking visitors on your products and compelling them to click that กbuyก button.

Even if you can’t sell your services directly over the internet, a website is still a powerful asset. Itกs a primer that you use to convince visitors of why they need your services. You get them salivating to buy, then invite them to contact you through your site.

A website increases the value of your advertising.

Adding your website address to all your advertisments, business cards, and company literature is a great way to draw potential customers to your company. Providing a website gives people a way to act on your message whenever they hear about you or see an ad for your company. Going to a website is easier than writing, visiting a store, or even making a phone call. Customers get the information at their convenience and don’t have to wait for a salesperson to help them. Also, itกs often more comfortable to visit a website, because there is no obligation. Visitors don’t feel pressured.

A website helps you stay in contact with potential customers.

There are frequently people who are interested in what you have to offer, but they might not be ready to buy right now. You need to stay in contact with them so that you immediately come to mind when they ARE ready. A website is a great way to facilitate this. You can use your website to collect email addresses from visitors. Then you can periodically send out promotional emails or a newsletter. Staying in contact keeps your company fresh in visitorsก minds.

Well, there you have it6 ways a website benefits your company and helps you sell more. Do you want to leave this opportunity to your competitors? Surely not! Each day you wait, you’re letting them establish themselves online as THE resource in your field. Stop giving them that advantage!

About The Author

Jamie Kiley is the editor of Passing Notes, a web design newsletter. Get a hot, fresh web design tip delivered to your inbox every two weeks! Sign up now at http://www.kianta.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 9, 2002

by Jamie Kiley