Profiting Online Simple Not Easy

One of the simplest and most overlooked aspects of online marketing is that it’s not complicated. Or more to the point,, there are a lot of “experts” who try to make it complicated. Aside from whatever motivation they might have to do that online profits happen as the result of one simple equation –

Traffic + Conversion = Sales

– performed over & over again

There are MANY ways to get traffic (visitors) to your site and cause them to take some action or “convert,” which will either result in more leads or (less frequently) result directly in more sales to your business.

So here’s the other simple rule — you only need to master 1 or 2 traffic methods and 1 or 2 conversion methods, and you will make money. When you drive you only need to know two pedals, and you don’t need to know EVERYTHING about internet marketing in order to add revenue to your business.

With that in mind, there are a few basic traffic techniques I’ve implemented in some of my sites and client sites that have universally and consistently WORKED. Here are a few of those methods — but remember, you only need to pick one or two:

Increasing Visitor Count

1) Twitter — highly effective for targeting your niche and developing the conversation with your customers and prospects. In fact, it is second to none. However, most businesses don’t know how to use Twitter effectively. They spam with “sales tweets” — “Look at the cool new thing I’m selling.” The 80/20 rule is highly effective — 80% of your tweets should be about something interesting, funny or otherwise engaging… a question of the day like “What’s for lunch?”… anything to get people talking, laughing, thinking… Also, keep it consistent and be generous with re-tweets. A few tweets a day go a long way toward establishing a rabid list of followers. The wrong thing to do is to Tweet like a madman for a day or two and then disappear for a month. Or worse, don’t reply when someone direct messages you or @messages you. That’s like ignoring someone at a dinner party when they ask you to pass the gravy. You WON’T get any dessert.

2) Video marketing is a very fast way to rank your site and get lots of inbound traffic. Keep your videos consistent — don’t show up one day in a baseball cap and dark lighting, talking about the rain, and another day bouncing in a jungle gym screaming about business leads. Consistent message, consistent tone, consistent look & feel. Also, be sure to put a call to action in your video’s description, as well as the full URL of your website’s landing page, and use appropriate keywords.

3) Article marketing is an evergreen method for outstanding traffic generation, with one HUGE caveat — mix it up! Putting the same article on 400 article directories will get you nowhere fast. You will get a bump in traffic from all the inbound links until Google figures out they’re all the same article and basically count it as one link. There are content spinners out there that alter the content of your articles automatically, but you have to be very careful here as well. Most content spinners change a word or two to replace it with a synonym, or they mash up the article randomly so the output is basically junk that cannot be read. It has to pass human review. So if you’re looking for a quality content spinner, ideally you want to be able to change the entire sentence many times throughout the article, and then have it spin those into hundreds of different articles. That’s the professional way to do it. At the bottom of your article, have a call to action in the information field; a blurb about you (the author) and a link to a free guide the reader can pick up at your website.

Visitors Taking Action

1) Keep it simple. The landing page has to do ONE thing — get people to ACT. For this reason, it’s been called a SINGLE ACTION PAGE. Pear it down to the bare essence of what you need the visitor to do. Consider placing a video on the page with a very simple message, “Hey thanks for stopping by for my free whizbang. Just type in your first name and e-mail address and I will rush it right over to you. In just a moment after you send your information, you’ll get an e-mail with a confirmation link. Click that link and I will instantly send your free whizbang.”

2) Direct, direct, direct. Notice the video script in #1 above — see how we instructed the user on exactly what they need to do? And then we told them what to expect next, and what they would then need to do. And we closed with a reminder of the benefit — the free whizbang.

If you have trademarked the term “whizbang,” then I apologize in advance.

3) Test, test, test. ALWAYS have two versions of your landing page operating at one time. You can optimize your landing page using freely available Google tools in the Web Optimizer toolbox. You really can’t go on “gut” here — the data will be you every single time. Even on PPC ads, we have literally seen the addition of a question mark in the ad increase conversion by 16.8% So test, test, test.

Conclusion

These methods work on any business in any industry. Here is some social proof –

Local landscape designer increased her traffic by 7,342% (yes seven thousand percent)

 

• Local artist went from three visitors a day to an average of 41 visitors a day

 

• International digital publisher had zero e-commerce and started converting 16% of all traffic to revenue within 72 hours of implementing one traffic strategy and one conversion strategy

 

• Changing a landing page to a simple design on an e-book site turned conversion from an anemic two sales per week to eight sales a day — on the same traffic.

 

I hope this helps your business. The average business fails to do what it takes to drive traffic or achieve conversions to their website. While they exercise 20-30 traffic methods on average, they don’t do a single one effectively.  There are many sources online to learn about effective marketing strategies, including free resources and some almost-free, like the definitive guidebook  750 Ways to Get a Visitor to Click on You.

Do-it-for-you solutions are also available; experience guides the appropriate strategy for the website and market. The biggest challenge business owners face is knowing which strategy to implement. Experimentation can be very costly in terms of time and lost sales… The key is to find a reputable marketing firm that offers a full range of customized services as well as downloadable products and courses to assist every website owner at every budget level.

Coffee services direct

Coffee services are available in the US because have formed the habit of being steady coffee drinkers. There are all kinds of services tailored to any type of coffee drinker. There are companies that will ship you any type of coffee you could ever want, overnight.

There are online coffee clubs that ship direct, specialty gourmet coffees to your home or office each and every month. You can select from your favorite coffee blends, or you can select the online coffee of the month, which enables you to try different coffees that you would otherwise not try yourself.

What kind of coffee drinker are you? Do you drink more than one gourmet coffee each day? Do you get your coffee on the run to work? Do you get your coffee at the office? These questions will all point to the coffee services you might be interested in.

As an example, I have a Braun Tassimo coffee maker. It is one of those instant coffee makers which can make a latte really fast. My wife loves them but as a true coffee drinker, I will not part with my coffee press. Anyway, we get a box of Tassimo coffee cartridges delivered to the house each and every month. They are, of course, cappuccino coffees.

One of my favorites is the office coffee services package that some companies offer. I highly urge you to get your boss into one of their office packages. Basically, they give you a free coffee machine, much like the Braun or Keurig instant coffee machines and each and every month, you get your choice of regular, hazelnut, vanilla, and other gourmet coffee flavors.

A quality coffee is like heaven to the lips. Take your enjoyment and live!

Free Coffee Recipes and much more! Check out MyOrganicCoffeeBeans.com for everything coffee, including how to get your quality Coffee bean direct and much more.

Search Engine Optimisation by Digitalawol.com and Ebay Auction Sniper

Three Lenses At Squidoo.com About Making Money At Home

Here are three lenses at Squidoo that are about ways I can vouch for to make money from home. Perhaps they’ll be of help to you as we enter the new year. Even if you don’t choose one of these paths for yourself, it may get you thinking about options which ARE appropriate for you.

Home Medical Transcription – One Woman’s Journey is about my wife’s path to working at home as… you guessed it … a medical transcriptionist! It summarizes what we learned and some of the travails we had to getting there. Most importantly it gives you a few simple tricks to see if Medical Transcription might be “for you” before you invest $2000 in training and $2000 in books and software. That’s what a REAL MT program costs. And of course we tell you the ONLY program we recommend. I wish they had an affiliate program but they don’t so we’ll just have to tell you for free.

Here’s one we get lots of inquiries about: How to Make Money with a Digital Camera. This lens discusses a variety of ways to make money from home using your digital camera skills! Not everybody makes money taking pictures of children per se. Some do field inspection, some do antique photos… you name it. There are dozens of ways to begin and make money in the process. If making money with a digital camera is your idea of the ideal home based business, you WILL find ideas here!

And if you’re into blogging with WordPress, then you really want to visit Cool WordPress Plugins. This lens is about the WordPress plugins I personally use and recommend to others. In fact, I start by showing you the VERY first plugin you should add to any Worpress blog to make adding every OTHER plugin “child’s play”. Then, of course a laundry list of other WordPress plugins to make the webmaster’s life easier.

Free Classified Ad Traffic

Lots of web site owners are using free classifieds affiliate programs to tap new markets and give their visitors a reason to keep coming back. If you give your prospects a reason to return to your website, you have additional opportunities to earn their trust…and their business.

Here’s how it works. You place a link to your classified ads site using appropriate keywords for your market (“Free Camaro Ads”, “Hot Rod Classifieds,” “New Car Ads,” etc.). Engines like Google just love these types of links, and including these key words will undoubtedly improve your ranking for exactly the type of buyer you want to attract to your web pages. Greater visibility means better traffic.

Here’s an added benefit. When your visitors post free ads, they are presented with an offer to upgrade their free ad with enhancements (feature ads, color, italicized listing, etc). This sets their advertisement apart from the other ads and gains better exposure for them. Most classified ad programs will pay you a percentage (usually 10-25%) of the upgrade cost. You’ve just created another income stream for your site.

By joining and incorporating a free classifieds affiliate program into your web pages, you create the ultimate win-win-win. You provide your prospects with a free value-added benefit, you improve your rankings with the search engines by incorporating keyword links into your site, you attract additional markets to expose to your product, you create an additional revenue stream as they upgrade their ads, and you give your prospects a reason to return to your site again and again.

Sign up for a classified ad affiliate program today and watch as your traffic, and your business, improves.

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Getting out of debt for good with an IVA

If you are struggling with unmanageable debts that you cannot see yourself repaying within a realistic period of time, an IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement) could help.

An IVA can allow you to avoid bankruptcy by agreeing to repay a set percentage of your debts over an agreed period of time, after which the remaining debt will be written off.

Why might an IVA be right for me?
In general, an IVA is useful for people with very large debts – usually £15,000 or more – who cannot see themselves being able to repay that debt in full within a reasonable time period.

Until IVAs became available, the only real option for people in this situation was bankruptcy. Bankruptcy can still be the most appropriate option for some people, but an IVA is widely considered to be a preferable alternative, since it avoids some of bankruptcy’s downsides (such as losing your home).

As with any debt solution, you should always consult your debt adviser to establish whether an IVA is right for your circumstances. It may be that an alternative debt solution, such as a debt management plan, would be more effective in helping you to reduce your debts.

How does an IVA work?
Before you begin an IVA, you will work with your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) to draw up your IVA proposal. This details the terms of your agreement – how much you are able to pay to each of your lenders, how long you will make payments for, etc.

Your creditors will then be invited to ‘vote’ on whether or not they approve the proposed terms. Creditors accounting for at least 75% of your total debt must approve the terms for the IVA to go ahead.

If it is approved, the IVA will begin and you will start making regular monthly payments to your Insolvency Practitioner. This will then be divided amongst your creditors, normally on a pro rata basis (according to what percentage of your total debt each creditor is owed).

Your IVA will normally last for five years. On successful completion, your remaining debt will be written off, and you will be legally debt free.

However, since the IVA will be recorded on your credit history for six years after the start, there will still be a record of your IVA for a further year, which will affect your ability to obtain credit.

Also be aware that if you are a homeowner, you may be expected to release some of the equity in your home in the 54th month (half way through the final year) of the IVA. You may also be expected to give up most of any increase in income during your IVA, including pay rises, bonuses and commission.

What if I struggle with my IVA payments?
At the first sign of trouble, you should always call your Insolvency Practitioner to discuss your situation, and to establish whether an IVA is still a viable option in your circumstance.

If you have experienced a reduction in your ability to keep up on payments, then you may be eligible to alter the terms of your IVA to meet your new circumstances. However, this will have to be approved by your creditors once again, in the same way as your original IVA terms.

Likewise, if you experience an improvement in your financial circumstances, your IVA payments are likely to be increased.