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6 Ways to Increase Email Subscriptions

July 21st, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in Blogging Experiment, Internet Marketing

Having a large subscriber list can be highly beneficial in any online endeavor. This is because you will be able to send marketing materials to your target audience directly to their inbox. Some people worry about the technical aspects of setting up the subscription form on their webpage but this process is actually quite simple; e-mail management services will give the HTML needed for the subscription form. The real concern is related to marketing.

  1. Premium placement – it is recommended for you to put the sign-up form prominently on the home page. It should be visible to the reader before the break (towards the top of the page without the need to scroll down). You can also use graphics or even animation or rotating images to draw their eyes to the registration form.
  2. Use multiple forms – you can put the subscription form on most of your web pages. Putting the form at the end of the article after the reader has read the content has been proven to be effective. Not only will the added reminder help your subscription rate, but if you place forms after your content there’s a good chance prospects have already been exposed to your information and enjoyed it (otherwise why would they keep reading?).
  3. Provide incentives – you hear this tip all over the internet but I will repeat it here because it works. You should offer something for free such as free articles, free e-books, and free contests. You can even offer discount coupons to your products if you are selling something.
  4. Provide rationale – information overload is an inevitable part of being an internet user. Realize that your readers suffer from information overload as well so take time to explain why they will benefit from subscribing to your site.
  5. Offline methods – exhibits are a great way to solicit subscriptions. When people visit your booth, you can ask them to sign up personally. Many of the methods I discussed in Take Blog Promotion Offline can also be effectively applied to list building.
  6. Co-registration – this is a great way to get subscriptions from other websites. You need to have partners who will place your form at their “thank you page” when their readers have already subscribed to their newsletters. Take note that you will need to return the favor.

What other methods have you used for list building? Have you tried any of these that I listed? If so, please feel free to share your experiences with us in the comment section below!

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WHY Most People Fail Online

July 14th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in Blogging Experiment, Internet Marketing, Make Money Online, Motivation

Ever since I began teaching people how to make money online through my buying & selling websites training class, I’m starting to see why the “make money online guru market” is not a fun place to be.

When I decided to teach people how to make money online, I did so because I truly wanted to help people succeed. Since I’ve been working full time online the last 5+ years, I’ve learned a lot about what to do and what not to do.

I’ve been fortunate to make over a million dollars online during this 5 year stretch, but it wasn’t an accident. I worked my butt off to get where I am today.

Now that I’m sharing my experience with people, I’m constantly hit with the label of “con artist”, “scammer” and many other names not nearly as nice as these.

Those who know me can attest that I’m probably one of the most generous people they know. I always go above and beyond to help someone out and often push my own desires aside if I can help someone else instead.

I had no idea when I got into this teaching business that there would be so much negativity associated with it. Sure, I get to hear a lot of praise from the students who take my training, but the non-customers who contact me are 90% negative, 5% skeptical and 5% excited to hear what I’m saying.

The biggest problem people have when trying to make money is the negative mindset.

If you are constantly thinking people are out to rip you off, you will never be successful. You’ll spend so much of your time trying to “prove” someone else is a fraud that you’ll never have time to actually make money yourself.

I’m yet to find a successful person in business who is always negative and pessimistic. Success just doesn’t match with this type of personality.

But, just being positive won’t make you successful however…

You have to take action!

It’s pretty sad, but most people never take action and actually put in the work to make things happen.

Usually what happens is someone will read an article or take a training class and store away that knowledge in their brain and never use it. Even if it’s the most valuable piece of knowledge in the world, they just absorb it and move on.

They spend most of their lives searching for more information, when in fact they probably already have enough knowledge to be very successful as it is.

An example of this is from my training class I teach. I just got a refund request this morning from a guy who said he “already knew everything I was teaching”. Yet, somehow he was not successful and still searching for a secret solution to his problem of not making any money online.

Maybe he did know everything I was teaching in the class, but if so, he should be selling websites for six figures like I’ve been doing. The problem may be that he is just an information junkie who never applies anything he learns.

It’s interesting when I hear people say “it’s too hard to make money online”.

That’s a bunch of nonsense!

HARD WORK is digging ditches in 100 degree sunshine for 8 hours per day.

Sitting on your butt writing a few articles is NOT hard work. Getting links to your website is NOT hard work. Spending 3 hours watching Google’s free video tutorials to learn Adwords is NOT hard work.

Yes, it takes time and yes, it can be boring, but it is not hard…

Sitting at a job you hate for 8 hours a day is much harder than an internet business.

Most people get overwhelmed.

A lot of times people are not successful online because they are simply overwhelmed. There are two possibilities here.

1) People are overwhelmed by opportunities.

Maybe you are signed up to 80 different internet marketers’ email lists, and each week you get a new “magic button internet billionaire training program”. So you jump from one idea to the next without actually doing anything. This is a very common problem. The solution is simple though, just unsubscribe from all of those email lists.

Very few email lists, from what I’ve seen, actually provide much value. In most cases, you just get hit with offer after offer of things to buy, which doesn’t help you one bit. In fact, it hurts you more than anything because of the distractions.

If someone truly wanted to help you by making recommendations, they wouldn’t be promoting a membership site coaching program one week and then the following week be promoting a software program that churns out 400 adsense websites per hour.

It’s no wonder you’re not successful, you’re getting pulled in 100 different directions that teach completely opposite business models.

2) People are overwhelmed by projects.

If you do have the ability to focus without the distraction of the “product launch of the week”, another issue you may face is being overwhelmed by the scope of your project.

You might decide to start a website on dogs, but when you are planning your website you think about all the things you want to cover.

You want to cover dog training, but then dog supplies look interesting too, so you plan out that section of your site. Then dog breeding looks like a good topic to get into, so you spend a couple weeks researching that topic. But then you figure some people might want to learn how to start their own dog sitting business, so you think about how you are going to get into that sub niche as well.

After you figure out all 214 dog related topics you want to cover on your site, you look at your outline of things you want to cover and say “there’s no way I’ll have time to do all of this work”.

And since it looks too much like work, you file it away until the next time you are feeling ambitious.

The months and years pass and you still never start your web business because there’s just too much to do.

Resolution to this problem - just break up the project into small chunks. Give yourself a deadline to complete each small chunk and slowly but surely you will get where you want to be. Maybe focus 3 weeks to building the dog training part of your website, then move on to the next part.

So what do you think? Any of these common problems apply to you?

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Link Building Success

July 11th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in Blog Optimization, Blogging Experiment, Internet Marketing

Every web owner wants to get one way natural links but oftentimes this is easier said than done. If you’re not a link baiting enthusiast then you’ll need to get links the old fashioned way: ask for them. First though, you need to ask yourself, “Do I really want to get this link?” don’t just link for the sake of it, make sure that it is relevant to your site.

Analyze Your Competitor’s Backlinks

One of the best tried-and-tested recommendations is to analyze your competitor’s backlinks. You can make this the starting point of your link building campaign. Remember though that you need to keep track of all information you get in excel or word file; this will not only make you organized, you will also discover the link map of the whole industry as you progress along. Soon, you will have an impressive list of link prospects.

When you visit the sites that your competitors are linked from, look for the “recommend as site” and “add URL” links. There are times when it would be easy to just fill out the form and submit your link but there will also be times when you need to dig a little before you find the “add URL” link or even find their contact info.

Stay Organized

Once you have a healthy list, stay focused and organized by grouping your prospects into different sections including authority links, blog links, directory links, social media links, newsgroup links, and forum links among others. And depending on your industry, you can further categorize your list. For example, if you have a “make money online” site, you can categorize your links into:

  • Sites about Blogging
  • E-commerce Sites
  • Auction Sites
  • Search Engine Optimization Sites
  • Web Development
  • Business Information Websites

Having an organized list will also help you determine the anchor text you should use. Once you’re organized, you’re ready to start your successful link building campaign.

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Making Big Money In Weird Niche Markets

July 9th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in Blog Optimization, Blogging, Blogging Experiment, Motivation

Typically when I talk about making money online, I tell people to focus on the big, proven money making website ideas like health, wealth and relationships. Those markets are always in demand so it’s easier to make money in those markets.

BUT, every once in a while I come across a story of an entrepreneur who takes an unlikely idea and turns it into a huge money maker.

Here’s one of these examples I just came across…

As you know, gas prices are out of control right now. It’s a super hot topic that is on the news pretty much everyday. Most people sit around and complain about it because they think there is nothing they can do.

Here is one guy who is not complaining one bit!

Basically this guy found a way to run a car using WATER. It sounds crazy to me, but after watching the video on the middle of this page, it’s pretty impressive.

He says in the video that his car was about to drive about 100 miles or so on 4 OUNCES of water.

I’m not trying to start an argument over whether or not you can run your can on water or not. I don’t know anything about cars or how they work and I don’t see myself converting my car into a water burning machine anytime soon.

But it’s a great lesson of taking a huge problem in the world and coming up with a possible solution to the problem.

I’m sure this guy will make millions if not BILLIONS of dollars if this thing actually works.

Anytime it feels like everything is going wrong, the economy is crashing and the sky is falling, a few smart people always find a way to capitalize on the situation and become wealthy…

I wonder what other kinds of solutions we can come up with like this guy just did?

Website Flipping Business Model Explained

July 7th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in Blogging Experiment, Internet Marketing

Most of your know by now that my main business model is in buying and selling websites.

But what most people don’t know is HOW this business works or why I strongly believe it’s the most profitable internet business you can ever run.

Well, one thing I’ve learned to be successful in business is to take what’s already working in a different industry and apply those same principles to a new industry.

Basically what I did was model the real estate investing industry for the internet. I guess you could call it “virtual real estate investing”. Only, rather than buying hundred thousand dollar homes or apartment complexes, I buy “fixer upper” websites and make a lot more profit per deal.

Watch this video to see how I restructured the real estate investing model into a strong and viable internet business.

Real Estate Video Example

The main difference between my virtual real estate investing business vs offline real estate investing is the cost to get started and the minimal risk.

The way I run my business, you can literally buy websites for as little as $400, compared to buying homes for $150,000. You can even build the websites yourself for virtually nothing besides an $8 domain name and $8 for web hosting.

Last I checked, you can’t build a home yourself, especially for $16 )

It really is as simple as that!

The more complicated something is, the less likely it will work, so I keep everything I do as simple as possible.

If you want to learn more, you can signup to watch more free videos like this one on this page.

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Information Sources for New Blog Content

July 3rd, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in Blogging, Blogging Experiment

After you’ve picked your domain name, brand, bought hosting, and installed the blogging platform; the next step is to develop your content. However, you should be extremely careful in selecting which informational source you will choose. This is to ensure that your blog post will not only be timely, it will be accurate as well.

An essential tool you should have is a good RSS feed reader. It can be time consuming to look into multiple sites several times each day for fresh content. So the most convenient way is to pull all these content into one location: your feed reader. Whenever possible, you should make it a point to subscribe to an authority site’s feed reader. Below are the sites you can look into for information:

  1. Blogs within the same category – you can find interesting news from other blogs in your niche. This includes news blogs and even non-news blogs.
  2. Online Magazines and Newspapers – this resource can provide a lot of information on your chosen category. It is also a good complement for social news websites and blogs which can overlook important pieces of news.
  3. Trade Publications and Academic Journals – you can highlight published reports and new findings on your blog. This will make your blog stand out from the rest of the web clutter. Take note thought that some publications requires a paid subscription before you can access its content.
  4. Press Release – you need to accumulate media contacts especially if you are just starting out as a blogger. Tell web services and e-mail companies that you are open to receiving press releases through e-mail. You should also make it a point to monitor Press Release websites such as PRWeb.
  5. Meme Trackers – these are basically websites that categorize blog posts according to their topic using an automatic algorithm. It will give you an overview of popular topics of a niche industry at the particular moment. Some sites you may want to look into include Technorati, Megite, and Techmeme among others.

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Not Getting Enough Traffic Love from Google?

June 30th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in Blog Optimization, Blogging Experiment

Search engines are probably the single most effective way to generate traffic to your web page. Because of this, web owners will inevitably complete with each other in order to get a higher ranking. But how would then do this? Well, a lot of e-books, blogs, websites, podcasts, and other kinds of content are dedicated to this topic. But there will always be web masters who complain that they are not getting visitors from search engines. This can be due to different factors but some of the most common reasons I know of include:

  1. New Website – when your site is new, you should expect that it will not perform that well with search engines. Take note that there are over 30 billion pages on the internet and a lot of these can be categorized as “spam”. Before search engines start to give your site a good ranking, they need to achieve a certain level of trust with you and this will grow over time as you build your content, traffic, and one way links.
  2. Black Hat SEO Techniques – very few people want to be called a black hat marketer; or in layman’s term, a spammer. But no one can deny that being a black hat marketer does have its own appeal because of its immediate results. If you decide to take this route, you should realize that you can be hit by a penalty or in some cases, banned altogether.
  3. Useless Content – even if you invest a lot in creating your website, it would not matter if you don’t have good content. Searchers are exactly that, they search for information that is relevant to their needs over the internet. In addition, good content will generate a lot of links which are “votes” for your website.
  4. Duplicate Content – some people debate on the impact of using duplicate content on their websites. But as far as I’m concerned, search engines love fresh content and it will reward websites and blogs that frequently posts new and original articles.

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