Well, you have finally gotten the website built for marketing and you have done everything right! You even have gone so far as to spend time marketing your website on web2.0 sites – search engines and the like. Building your list by offering a great freebie on your website, capturing the names of people who are interested in what you have. 

All is looking bright and shiny you now have the people to market too and you are ready!!

Then you send out your e-mails and - no responses? Or very few- what is wrong? How can this be? Well here is a list of reasons why you may not be getting the response you deserve –  

13 reasons why you don’t hear back from your e-mail recipients (e-leads)

1. You had a lousy subject line.
2. The email didn’t make it through.
3. Messages get lost in a packed in-box
4. The recipient deleted it by accident
5. Someone else using the computer - deleted it
6. Person to busy to respond
7. Person on vacation
8. The recipient had to discuss it with someone else
9. They want to compare offers – look at competitors
10. It wasn’t written enticingly enough
11. Filed for future reference
12. Forgot
13. Blocked by Spam blocker

None of these reasons has to do with the fact that the person is not interested. 9 times out of ten there either busy, distracted or their anti-virus software blocked you response. 

Research tells us you can do follow-up five time via email (if you have not heard back from the person) before they want to blow up your computer!

 So follow up – yes you heard me 5 times before they are sick of you

 Articulate your message – writing email is not like writing a traditional letter. See my blog post for a great video tutorial on writing effective emails. Get on the fast track – make sure everything you email – will get you the best results possible.

Here are some solutions

11 tips for writing effective emails.

• Proofread
• Your email should have your signature attached - your name, company name, tagline, website link.
• Subject Line Specific – The subject line is the number one determining factor whether someone will open you emails.
• Keep it short – consumers read email like they read Web Sites – they don’t read them!! They scan for sound bites… follow the rule of KISS – Keep it simple stupid…
• Bullet point are important
• Paragraphs should be no longer than 2-5 sentences
• Use formatting such as bold, italics, and underlining to make your most important point – use sparingly
• The total email should be no more than 5 paragraphs long
• Use easy to read fonts - Arial or Verdana. Make sure the font size is at least 10, preferably 12.
  FYI- did you know the font verdana was specifically made for the internet?
• Don’t use light font colors such as pink or yellow. Stick with colors such as navy blue and black.
• Don’t use attachments unless you let the recipient know you are sending them. A lot of email recipients avoid attachments like the plague (virus protection).
• Remember – html e-mails are thrown in the spam folder much faster than a text only email. 

For an in depth video tutorial click here.

Tags: emailcampaign, e leads, marketing, writing effective emails, business development

I am all for affiliate programs – in fact, I think they work amazingly well when done right. The problem comes in when there is no face to a name.

What do I mean by that?

Well, this is what I mean– I personally have worked very hard to be a top notch professional (and with god given talents) been able to build a successful business.

I also understand that when I recommend a product or service, I have my reputation staked on it. Since my name/professional reputation is one of the most important things I have, it is extremely important that all recommended vendors or affiliate programs live up to my expectations – and give you (my client) what they promise and more.

That being said, that is not the case with some of the offers being made out on the internet…

I am an avid researcher, and I have to be, to stay on top of the “latest” technology and information that is on the internet. I also love to buy resell items and offer them to mydata-base for little or no money.

Never has there been such an explosion of free information, 7.00 reports and .99 deals… I decided to take advantage of a few of these offers – and get the information they promised…

Now I didn’t really know the person sending the information, I have no idea what they have accomplished or how professional they really are - but the information was so inexpensive, and it read like an amazing offer.

I bet you would never guess?

I did pay the .99 or 1.75 and I did not get a thing… I emailed them to let them know (maybe there was a glitch). I did not hear back from them and received nothing…

Worse yet - is some product information I bought for 7.00 – when I received the download and started reading it – you would not believe how poorly written it was.

I would be embarrassed if I was the creator, and I would be devastated if I picked it up as an affiliate sending it around to my precious data-base. Can you imagine if I have a list of potential clients that think I am an expert – and they get this crap? My reputation would be down the drain…

Not worth it …

It may only be a few pennies down the drain initially but think of the amount of money it will cost me in the long run.

Moral of the story?

Make sure that when you become an affiliate of any product that you check out the product before sending out your sales letter… And make sure before buying the information you have an idea who you are buying it from.

I am not going to fight to get my few dollars back – time is money, and I just don’t need the headache, however I want you to be aware when buying from anyone soliciting you that if you are not familiar with the name or something about them – you may be in for this flimflam experience. I am sure this happens with all types of e-books and online products.

How can you protect yourself??

• Access the website and/orblog that should be listed somewhere on the email.
• Make sure it a valid website/ or blog, doyou see a person or business at the helm?
• Do you see that the personwriting articles or recommending e-books and products is a viable professional in the field they represent?
• Have they taken the time to build an online business that is carefully thought out and professional?
• Have you, yourself been able to access the information to make sure it is well written and worth paying for?

Bottom-line. People can make a lot of money being affiliates (with products that are quality) – longevity on the internet depends on selling and giving information that is content rich and has value.

Get rich quick schemes do not work …

The few shady people that are greedy and trying to get something for nothing (by representing themselves as something they are not) ruin it for allof us that are ethical and just trying to make an honest living.

Tags: affiliatedoes and don’ts, making money on the internet.

Google Analytics is such a powerful tool to use - it actually allows you to decide what you want to measure on your website. You can literally put this tool to work for you and personalize it as well.

Google Analytics allows you to identify you ideal objective, goals and specifics. If all you want to know is who visited your website and how they got there - that is simple enough, you can do that. However, the power of Google Analytics lies in the ability to define goals and put on filters that will allow you to do in-depth analysis of your website.

What does this mean? Let’s break it down for you so you understand how Google Analytics works to your advantage. First of all, Google works with objectives, goals, and specifics these allow you to really hone in on what you are trying to accomplish when managing your website.

Objectives: An objective is the big picture - what do you want your website to do? What is the purpose for your website - what do you want visitors to do once they are there?

If you are an e-commerce site maybe you want to sell an item and make lots of money. On the other hand, you may want to know what products are selling and what products you should take off your catalogue.

This would be an objective.

Goals: If objectives are the result you ultimately want to achieve with your website,a goal is a short term aim. What has to happen for you to hit your objective. Do you have to track visitors that enter on a certain web page? Or perhaps your goal is to sell 30% more widgets within 6 months.

You can do this using Google Analytics as the tool and setting goals within the application.

Specifics: Now that you have outlined your objectives and goals you are ready to use Analytics to your advantage. Specifics are the “how” the action steps you will take to reach what you really want.

Example: You would set up the sales page and a funnel (using google analytics) to measure how traffic is coming into your website. Google can tell you where they are entering as well as where your visitors are exiting your website. Knowing how your visitors are responding to your website allows you to go to these pages and tweak them - this help you achieve the results you want.

Google has made it easy to place code in your web pages, they do the initial metrics for you and best of all it is free.

If you are not particularly savvy about how your website is put together or developed - leave it up to your website professional to add the code to your individual web pages. Once the code is embedded analytics will start collecting data and within a few days you will see countless stats related to your site.

Once you become familiar with the dashboard that Google Analytic’s provides, you will be able to set up the goals and specifics of your website. You will access all the data through the Internet, you can login and set the parameter right then and there.

Another great function of Google Analytics is that you can set up different profiles for one website. You can break down your website into different sections called “profiles” and monitor them independently, this allows you to see which sections of your website are effective and which need work.

AdWords and Analytics

Google AdWords is a pay-per-click advertising program. Essentially you would buy keywords and then pay a small amount for every time a potential client (website visitor) clicks on an ad you put up through Google.

If you are thinking about using AdWords as part of your marketing campaign or are using them already, Google works seamlessly in providing you with the answers to all important questions like, is this add working or am I making more money on these ads then I am spending? You will be able to monitor visitors who click on the ads and buy and those who just leave your site before every going to the sales page.

When you sign up for Google AdWords use the same account number as you did with analytics (Google uses your gmail accounts login and password). You will then be able to link both accounts together. AdWords will be imported into your Google Analytics account. This helps provide you with a safety net so you can watch the behavior of your visitors and change what isn’t working.

The development team at Google has a way of making their tools very usable and Google Analytics is just one of many tools that lives up to Googles high standards.

Tags: adwords, google analytics, web site success, marketing your website, analyzing your website visitors

Many moons ago websites were the only thing that a business or person had to showcase his wares with (on the Internet). Now with the advent and explosion of blogs many people have chosen to use blogs over websites. Depending on your business and what you are trying to achieve most businesses need both.

There are exceptions to every rule, using both will give you a big advantage over using one over the other.

What is the difference?

There is a big difference – a website is a carefully thought out and executed store (for lack of a better word). It is like a corporate office or an exclusive piece of property. The look and feel of the interfaces are branded to attract your perfect clients and to create an experience for the visitor. The domain name is an important piece of your branding as well and should be an extension of the business.

A blog on the other hand is more of a social networking site. A blog can brand you as the expert in a certain field or gradually help you to become a well known personality. It has constantly changing content and is made to interact with visitors.

It is like inviting someone into your home or to a coffee shop to chat or to tell them about things they find interesting or useful. A blog can have its own domain name but it is of less importance – that it be named a business name.

A website and a blog go toward hand in hand.  Well built websites selling services and/or products will stay pretty static.

While a blog will back link to your website and provide the communication so vital to keeping in touch with your clients and potential clients as well as help to push up you rankings on the search engines. A website will provide stable communication – on task messages about your product and/or service as well as various other items such as online portfolio, testimonials, e-commerce store, ability to accept payment through merchant accounts, policy and warranty information etc.

Anyone can set up a blog, sometimes it can be a challenge to make it look professional.

A website takes a lot more time, work and money. This works in your favor if you are trying to portray a successful image (,or you are successful and want them to know that).

I hope this clears up the debating; I see going on in cyberspace – to blog or not to blog:

Should I blog? (YES BLOG)

Is a website the same as a blog? (NO IT IS NOT).

Do I need both? (MOST PROBABLY!)

To your success!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Tips

When optimizing your pages for a search engine there are so many variables depending on what search engine(s) you are targeting.

There are also however, some basic’s that hold true for all search engines.

Meta tags (back end code) are still crucial when building your web pages. Search engines use to look at meta tags only, that is no longer true. It is important that you also match your meta tags along with the content (text) of your web pages.

Why you ask did the rules change?

In the past unscrupulous web developers stuffed all kinds of keywords into meta tags – even those that were not related to the site. This caused the website to be indexed on pages they didn’t even belong to.

Search engines regularly change algorithms (the way they index and analyze web pages) but most of those changes are subtle. Below you will find a list of what search engines look for when indexing (placing) your website.

robots.txt

An often overlooked but important file, ALL robots that index the Web are supposed to request this file before they do any indexing of documents found on your Web site.

If this file is not found on your server when the robot visits it may cause your Web server to return a 404 (Page Not Found) error or even a redirect to some other page.

Title Tag

A title tag should contain keywords and keyword phrases that are important to your site.

This text will show up on the gray bar at the top of your browser.

Maximum recommended number of character for this tag is 60.

Meta Keywords Tag

This tag should contain keyword phrases and keywords that are reflected in the page of your site. Choose words your clients would look for in a search for your site.

No words should be repeated more than 5 times.

The maximum number of characters for this tag should be 874. You do not want to be penalized for keyword saturation so less is recommended.

Meta Description Tag

This is the description that will show up on the search engine page underneath the link that goes to your website.

The maximum number of characters for this tag is recommended at 150.

Image Alt Text

This is text that is placed in your html – that describes the image(s) you have on your site. Each image has its own alt tag.

You will notice that when you go to a website and hold your mouse on top of the image you will see a description (if they have an alt tag). Many search engines consider the image alt text when indexing a site.

Doing these things are some of the most basic steps towards search engine optimization (SEO) and will assist you in reaching the rankings you want.

These things are crucial –

There are other factors in seeing your Google ratings and website get top ranking in search engines – things like back links, reciprocal links, article marketing, and more. However, even doing these things will not get you where you want to go unless you make sure your website is thoroughly optimized.

I have gotten a lot of positive feedback on my blog entries about writing and article marketing. So since a lot of you are now becoming article writing experts I thought I would give what I feel are the top 15 article marketing directories on the Internet.

The crème-de-la-crème of the crop (in my opinion) is EzineArticles.com. Christopher M. Knight owns the website, he has written an article and it is worth reading – “Article Writing Mistakes - 7 To Avoid”.

Before I get into the list, let’s look at the different ways to submit articles to article distribution websites.

I have always submitted my articles by hand, I had heard horror stories early on about article directories that have blacklisted – or not accepted articles sent in by automated processes.

I do not know this to be a fact – I just have chosen (so far) to do it this way, just my personal preference.

Submitting articles by hand can be time consuming so if you are into saving time (and who isn’t) you may want to automate your efforts there are two ways to do this:

1. Use software that you purchase.

 Examples are ArticleBlaster.com or ArticleAnnouncer.com (horrible web page – I just had to say it being a designer!)

I am not endorsing these two software packages – I don’t know how effective they are.

2. Use an article distribution service

A lot of article distribution services claim to submit you articles by hand it can become costly if you have a lot of articles to distribute. Even so, time is money as they say so it may be well worth the price.

Top 15 Article Directories

v     EzineArticles

v     WebProNews

v     GoArticles

v     SearchWarp

v     ArticleDashboard

v     ArticleBase

v     Buzzle

v     ArticleCity

v     IdeaMarketers

v     SiteReference

v     ArticleAlley

v     WebSource

v     Directory gold

v     ArticlesFactory

v     SubmitYourArticle

Now get moving and post those articles so everyone can see you are an expert in your field. Oh and don’t forget the most important thing the resource box at the end. Make sure you have a great blurb and some links back to your site and blog…

To your success…

I may be shooting myself in the foot with this entry. Being a web designer I believe in having a unique website that is branded just for your business.

I am smart enough to realize that there are a fair number of entrepreneurs that are into niche sites making money on Adsense and affiliate accounts.

For those of you who are into this market I have found a remarkable website that can build niche sites in an hour or less. It is so simple that I was really surprised when I watched the tutorial.

As a matter of fact I had been subscribing to this website for a few years now due to the top quality, private label articles and information.

This site has been great for providing me with information that allows me to get content for clients websites (in markets I am not familiar). I have found infogoround to be invaluable for research as well, you can re-write the articles (and it is all legal!) or use as is.

In all this time I had not ever checked out the niche website builder. I had no need to, especially since most of these types of builders are hokey at best. Little did I realize that this particular software application that is so powerful it can access all the articles in the data– base and put Adsense right into the website it creates as well as an opt-in box to build your data-base.

We are talking literally thousands of articles on hundreds of different subjects.

It is outstanding! If you are into making money with niche sites, Adsense or affiliate programs you need to check out infogoround.com, make sure to sign-up and take a tour of the great niche website builder that allows you to build a website in literally minutes.

You would genuinely think it would cost a fortune to belong to this, but it is a very low monthly fee.

Oh and one more thing remember; I can create a unique banner for you one with your domain name in it, costing far less than a customized website! This will give your niche website a customized look, filled with articles in a niche market you choose along with affiliate links and/or Adsense. Of course the niche builder already has banners you can use if you prefer.

I really love to bring you solutions to problems that you may be facing, saving you money or time and after all time is money!

Pamela Jacob – Artista Design

To Your Success