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The Internet Marketing Myth - A Review

Friday, October 05, 2007

Yes, I got a few e-mails about Russell Brunson's new report that he's giving away. With catchphrases such as "The IM-Myth, Showing Why Internet Marketing is Like Having a Lamborghini on a Dead End Road and what you HAVE to do today if you want to still be around tomorro..." and "What If Everything You Were Ever Taught About Internet Marketing Was A Myth...?" I was naturally skeptical.

However, curiosity got the better of me, especially as I was sent the e-mail from a respected name, and he promised there was no big one time offer upsell, just a $1 offer. The fact there was no big OTO finally made me visit the site - ALL internet marketers offer a free report to try and then sell you a $97 offer - why was Russell Brunson different?

I signed up, downloaded the report and started reading...It's 44 pages long, of which only three aren't useful content - header, copyright and contents pages. There is a prelaunch offered, but only as a hyperlink in the footer - it's not in your face at every opportunity.

So what about the content? It really does blow the Internet marketing theory of "the money is in the list" out of the water and gives you some incredibly good ideas for leveraging more sales without irritating your customers / people on the list. Most Internet Marketers seem to think the more they bombard you with offers, the more likely you are to buy. In actual fact, with me, I'm more likely to unsubscribe from the list.

And the ideas he gives aren't just for Internet Marketers - you can apply them for all sorts of businesses, both online and offline. To be honest, this report was a complete shock - I was expecting fluff and got something that I can actually use. And in fact, when you read the report you'll see just how good his ideas are - you'll have already seen something in action without realising what it was.

Go and have a read now - it is free after all, and you'd be daft not to!

And just for your information, here is the 'hype' e-mail:

Labels: biz, misc, resources

Monetize your phpBB forum...for free

Thursday, August 23, 2007

If you currently own a phpBB discussion board and monetize it with AdSense or YPN, you may be earning a little bit of money. However, there is a new tool called Forum AdManager which enables you to earn far more than you would from AdSense alone. If you've not got as far as showing ads on your site, then why not try Forum AdManager and see what you can earn?

In a nutshell, Forum AdManager creates 'ad slots' on every page which you can sell to advertisers. This obviously means you have to have some traffic to your site in order to sell the spaces, but even if you don't currently have many visitors, you can set the ad slots to display AdSense, YPN or your choice of affiliate ads when unsold...a win-win situation.

The software tool fully automates the process of payment, ad submission and showing the rights ads in the right places for the right amount of time - you just have to login to PayPal to pick up your commission.

Forum AdManager is a free download and can be installed for you for free so you could have it up and running in less than five minutes. ..you could be earning a lot more than you presently do with AdSense alone.

Labels: adsense, biz

Beware the Internet Marketing hype

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

If you've ever looked at the sales page for an info-product, you'll know it looks impressive. Screenshots to show earnings, highlighting on the key points, reasons why you will never be successful without that particular software/e-book etc...

Well, it's all persuasive stuff, designed to make you reach into your pocket and fork out the $47 dollars (only until midnight tonight..when it goes up to $97!) and get the product immediately etc...

If you're ever tempted by these pitches, just take a look at Buy My Stupid EBook first, then go back and read the pitch again...it may just save you a few $$$.

Labels: biz, misc

Quickly rewrite PLR content at no cost

Friday, August 03, 2007

If you use PLR content, I'm sure you've seen all the hype surrounding content rewriters. Some free ones just insert a useless comment at the header, footer and somewhere in the middle, so require you to come up with alternative ways of saying the same thing. Some are free, some cost $97 etc...

You do need to rewrite PLR content - otherwise you will suffer by either not being listed in the directories to which you submitted the article, or if it does get accepted, it probably won't feature until number 798 on the SERPS (search engine results position) in which case, you might as well not bother. Google will accept a few copies of the same article in its index, but then decides that only the few in the most respected locations will actually be listed in a good position in the results - that's the duplicate content penalty in a nutshell.

Anyway, I was wondering how to rewrite PLR content fairly quickly but manually, to increase the chances of it being accepted into article directories and I had a brainwave. And trust me, it works. It's not a magic bullet - you will have to do some work, but your article will be a better quality and therefore get you more visitors for it.

Very simply - open your PLR article in notepad, Word, whatever format it's in, select the text, copy it and paste it into Google Translate. Choose to convert from English to French (or German or Spanish etc...), then select and copy the translated text and paste it right back in, converting it from the language it's in back into English.

Now, you have an original article in pidgin English which you can quickly rewrite.

Labels: biz, misc

Plagiarise and you will be found out...

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

While doing a routine check on my Alexa stats, I decided to look at some of my blog's backlinks that Alexa lists. One of the sites listed had decided to use one of the articles I wrote and submitted to several article directories at some point in the past. The resource box at the bottom contained a link back to the LittleFish Web Design blog and it was here that Alexa found the backlink.

When I looked at the site, I saw my article but there was no resource box so it looked like the site owner had written the article him or herself. How rude!

There was no way of contacting the webmaster listed on the site, nor on any other site that was linked to and appeared to be owned by the same person.

So, I trotted over to allwhois, typed in the domain, found an e-mail address and typed a perfectly polite but firm e-mail asking them to reinstate my author information. I never did receive a reply, but a further check showed that my entire article has now been removed.

Another and admittedly easier way to check your content for plagiarism is to use Copyscape.

Message to people who copy other people's content and pass it off as their own..? Either reinstate the author's resourcebox or you will get found out far more often that you would have guessed at.

Labels: biz, legal

Listbuilding At Warp Speed

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

If you are an Internet marketer, you may have heard that 1 subscriber equates to $1 in monthly income. This means that if you have 1000 subscribers you could be generating $1000 in monthly income, all from your list. The phrase "The money is in the list" does seem to make sense when you look at it in these terms.

But take it a step further, what if you could get 2500 subscribers or 5000 subscribers or even 10,000 or more? You've guessed it, you could be generating $1000's per month, all for sending an e-mail out.

First though, you have to build the list. And just how do you do that?

I suggest grabbing a FREE account at List Bandit - it's a brand new program attracting the attention of a lot of people including some highly known Internet Marketers.

Labels: biz, email

Website law revisited

Friday, June 01, 2007

Previous posts on this blog have mentioned articles on internet legal issues and where to get your website privacy policy from.

Now there's a new website to add to the list - Websites and the Law - which explains different types of legal issues you could face with your website in simple terms.

They also have free legal documents to use (subject to their license) which will cover you for your website disclaimer, T & C (terms and conditions), privacy policy and really usefully, T&C for the sale of goods if you have an e-commerce site.

Obviously if you are unsure, run them by your legal advisor first, but these should provide a good starting point.

It's very simple to add these documents to your site, will cover you in different circumstances, and even the search engines like websites to at least have a privacy policy.

Labels: biz, legal

Free toolbar builder

Monday, April 16, 2007

So you've seen the Google toolbar, the Yahoo! toolbar, and in fact a whole host of others. Wouldn't it be nice though to be able to offer your website visitors a free toolbar of your own? It can remind people your site exists, and help increase the traffic to your site.

A company called Conduit allow you to build your own toolbar to offer to people. You can brand it with your own news, offers, alerts, podcasts, RSS. Add a popup blocker, multiple search engines, weather, chat, radio player and multilingual versions and you've got a powerful customised solution to adding 'sticky'* content to your site, even when your visitor is elsewhere on the web.

Conduit says their toolbar is completely safe with no spyware, adware or malware and that you can create a toolbar in 15 minutes with their easy wizard.

*sticky = visitors will come back as they like what you offer!

Labels: biz, internet, misc, resources

Special offer for blog readers

Saturday, March 31, 2007

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This software will protect your affiliate links and make them look 100 times more professional.

The Result - Testing has shown that you can make up to 9X more sales by using it!

I have made a special deal with Richard Legg to get it for you at No Cost. You save $147!

Click Here to Download

Labels: biz, resources

A millionaire's personal rolodex...for free?

Monday, March 12, 2007

Mike Filsaime has just released his personal 'rolodex' of every resource he uses (some on a daily basis) to build and run his multi-million dollar business. Some sources claim he's worth over $7 million, so I assume he knows what he's doing.

Apparently, before now, the only people who got access to the 'rolodex' paid $5,000 to attend his 2007 Figure Business Workshop. But he's now offering the report for free.

I've already checked out the report and found some useful pointers. My usual cynical self decided that all the links would be affiliate ones, making money everytime someone signed up to a product via the report. In actual fact, there is a healthy mix of affiliate and non-affiliate links - quite a surprise.

Download The Resource Report and see for yourself.

Labels: biz, internet, resources

Pay Per Post Pays More

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Well, I did try to craft a headline where all words started with 'P' but failed on the final word! Any suggestions?

I logged into Pay Per Post earlier and noticed that they've now got opportunities* worth up to $1000. That's crazy money to me, and shows that people really do pay bloggers to create a buzz. Obviously there are more restrictions on the higher paid opps - your blog has to have a higher pagerank (traffic) and has to blog about the same topics or themes, but why not use the link below to register and see what all the fuss is about? And if you do have a blog with a high pagerank and want to get paid to blog, there are several blog ad networks out there to choose from, but PPP does seem to give a higher proportion of their fee to bloggers - 65% compared with the average 50%. And they give opportunities to all blogs that fit the opportunity criteria - they don't freeze out younger blogs that haven't had time to build a huge reputation yet.

* An opportunity is your chance to blog on a particular topic / website etc... Each opportunity has its own criteria and will pay a defined amount of money for your post if approved.

Click on one of the Pay Per Post links to register and see for yourself (not the blog disclosure button - that won't help you!)

Labels: biz, pp

Get paid to build your own blog traffic?

Friday, February 16, 2007

PayPerPost have recently introduced a new scheme called 'Review My Post' where you actually get paid for people blogging about you. It's an interesting twist in the paid blogging arena - when someone signs up to PayPerPost through a 'get paid to review my post' button on your blog, they get an offer to blog about your post for $7.50 and you get paid $7.50 for each new signup. Whilst $7.50 in itself isn't much, a couple of new signups soon add up. If you integrate the button code into your blog template, it even gets added automatically to each and every post, so you don't even have to remember to edit the code.

As far as I know, the eligibility requirements still need to be met, so to review someone's post, you need a site that's at least 90 days old and has 20 or more posts (gaps of more than 30 days between posts are not allowed). Reviews tend to be between 100-300 words and you may be asked to include a picture. You choose which opportunities to take, so your blog can stay tightly niched and you don't have to compromise your blog integrity by posting about something you don't believe in.

It's a very clever solution - PPP get new 'posties' and you monetise your blog AND get new links and generate traffic to your site. It useful too for people who aren't interested in sponsored posts ? just adding the button means anyone with a blog can earn from the scheme.

Why not review this post - just click on the 'Get Paid to Review My Post' button below my name!!!

Labels: biz, pp

Pay Per Post - money making on your blog!

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Pay Per Post is a new blog marketing technique that works for both bloggers and advertisers. If you have a website, the best way to get known is to get links back to your site - the more organic (natural) a link the better. For advertisers, rather than pay to have your text links on sites where your site is listed in a links section, Pay Per Post allows your site to be mentioned as part of a blog post (see the 'blog marketing' link above).

And for bloggers, Pay Per Post is an easy platform to make some money - signup for the program by entering a few details about yourself and your blog, and once approved, look through the opportunities to see what you want to blog about. Specifications are straightforward with a minimum word count, whether the tone of the post should be positive, negative or neutral, how much you'll be paid, the links and/or images you need to include etc...the Pay Per Post website programmers have done well in producing a site that takes you through step by step so even Internet beginners will manage. Payment is by PayPal once your post has been approved and left for a 30 day minimum.

There are some rules - paid for posts cannot be successive and your blog must be at least 90 days old with 20 pre-existing posts. This helps keep the quality of blogs for potential advertisers. Conversely, you don't have to take any opportunity that you feel is unsuitable for your blog, which keeps the quality of your blog at the standard you set.

Labels: biz, blogging, pp

Text Link Ads Review

Monday, September 18, 2006

Text Link Ads is a service for matching up website owners offering advertising space and advertisers wanting to buy advertising space, a bit like a dating service really!

The website is very straightforward to use - as an advertiser or as a publisher:

Advertisers: Search by keyword or category for the suitable sites. Alternatively, you can request a free custom proposal - just give your website address, monthly budget and an explanation of what you're after, and you'll be sent back suitable suggestions. Full information is provided on each site (number of links available, popularity, price, number of pages where your link will appear, description and Alexa Rank). The price you pay is a flat rate for 30 days so you needn't worry about running out of cost-per-click budget. Furthermore, the links are static links on the target website which are search engine and website visitor friendly.

Publishers: As long as your site supports a server-side technology i.e. your pages aren't just html files, you'll be able to join the Text Link Ads program. Just complete the form for review which includes your URL, site title, short site description, keywords, whether you'll display the ads sitewide or on one page, the number of pages if the ads are to be sitewide and how many ad spots you'll provide (4, 6, 8 or 10). Once you have been approved, you are given simple instructions on how to integrate the Text Link Ads script with your site. Payment is either by cheque or PayPal and is paid at the beginning of each month. Text Link Ads choose the price of your links, starting at $15 per 30 days, and take a 50% commission.

If you signup through the following link as an advertiser, there's a special offer of $100 in free links.

Labels: biz, internet, linking

Resell rights explained

Monday, August 14, 2006

Resell rights can be confusing, especially when there are so many offers on the Internet. Wikipedia gives a concise explanation of the differences between resell rights and master resell rights:

"Many ebooks and pieces of software, especially in the field of online or internet marketing, are sold with resell rights included. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between normal resell rights and master resell rights. Normal resell rights mean that after you buy the item you will be allowed to sell it to your customers. On the other hand, when you acquire master resell rights, not only you can sell it to your customers, but your customers also have the rights to sell it and pass on the resell rights.

Most resale rights packages will not let you alter any of its content or in any way change/tamper with the information. Always read the disclaimers surrounding them. If you wanted to change the content you would have to contact the author and request a partner ship or buy the editing rights to the product."

Labels: biz, internet

Enterprise Quest newsletter

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

There are hundreds of newsletters out there - most of which you probably unsubscribe to fairly quickly. However, the Enterprise Quest newsletter is different. Based in the UK, this newsletter contains loads of useful information for small businesses, both online and offline based. To keep up to date with UK business information, take a look:

http://www.enterprisequest.com/

Labels: biz

A review of LiteCommerce

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

If you are looking for an e-commerce package, there are plenty of options available to you, but the one you choose depends on your level of expertise. OSCommerce, ZenCart, cpCommerce and CubeCart are all free solutions, but to make any changes requires a level of coding knowledge. If you are happy to have an 'out of the box' appearance and be restricted to the original functions, this could be your way forward.

LiteCommerce on the other hand is a commercial package, and a younger sibling of the hugely popular X-Cart. The basic package costs $95 (approximately £55) for the linux version and paid-for add-on modules cost from $8 (approximately £4.60). Free modules such as bestsellers, froogle integration and multi-currency are also available.

Litecommerce is incredibly easy to install, with both windows and manual install options. Once on your webspace, there is a Quick Start Wizard, guiding you through all the steps required to getting your shop up and running. This wizard is available at all times, so you can refer back to it when needed.

In the administration interface, there are options for all aspects of running the store - both the front end, including how the store appears - and the back end so you can keep track of orders, popular items etc...Everything is presented in a logical way, and you are not bamboozled by the sheer number of options available to you.

When using free e-commerce software, the support can be hit-and-miss e.g. you can post questions in the user forums but no-one is obliged to answer them or give you the correct information (this is not usually the case that I've experienced but it has happened).

LiteCommerce comes with 150 support points, which equates to quite a few queries to technical support. You can 'hot rush' your queries meaning that they'll be given priority, but do cost you double. Their technical support staff are second-to-none, both times I've had to use them - with information being both timely and accurate. In addition, you can join the LiteCommerce forums, and chat with other users of the software, for support information, how-to's and general stuff relating to your e-commerce site.

The appearance of your store can be controlled through the admin interface, or you can actually edit the store templates in FrontPage, DreamWeaver etc...The entire package is template driven which means you can alter almost anything you want. The version I have used is written in PHP, which means that if you do want to get your hands dirty, you can do! (But remember to always make a backup first...).

To extend the functionality of the store, there are different extension modules available. Installation of these literally takes seconds from the admin interface which is a huge time-saving on some of the free packages.

To summarise - as a user of the free e-commerce packages, I was pleasantly surprised by the cost, support and functionality of LiteCommerce, and would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to get their e-commerce website off the ground in a short space of time, whilst being able to expand the site as necessary through extension modules.

To see LiteCommerce in action, see their demo. A full feature list can be found here.

Labels: biz, internet

Free internet marketing video tutorials

Friday, March 17, 2006

Michael Cheney's been online since 1995, has been featured on NBC and makes thousands every week. Now he has developed a series of internet marketing video tutorials, that he is giving away for free.

After watching them, I can whole heartedly recommend them, whether you are a 'newbie' or need revision.

More information and the video tutorials...

Labels: biz

Internet Marketing and the Small Business

Thursday, March 16, 2006

The internet marketing landscape has changed quite a bit in the past 3 years and has further defined itself further in the past 12 months. With Google raising $4 Billion from new stock offerings in 2005 we will see more changes underway over the next 3 years. Unfortunately, I fear the small business is going to be left out in the cold in this process. Perhaps a better statement would be that the small business has already been left out in the cold.

This writing is certainly not designed to provide a solution to the growing problem. More so, it has been written to raise the awareness and acknowledge the difficulty small business has on the web. Certainly the small business does not receive any sympathy from the major search engines in their quest to provide quality information for those that are searching the web.

Let's review how the situation has been created. We have to make the assumption a small business does not have the financial resources for a proper advertising campaign on the web (even though it is less costly than offline advertising) and they do not have the man-power to devote time for the non-costly methods of marketing. Yes, I have distinguished between advertising and marketing.

Marketing is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service. Advertising is to make your product or service publicly known an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.

Can the small business market at no cost? Yes, absolutely, however, the issue at hand is not expenditure but time. Time they are already spending on their business and do not have more time to spend on non-costly marketing methods on the web. What are these non-costly but time-consuming marketing methods? This would include but not limited to writing articles, maintaining newsletters, maintaining email addresses with auto-responders, submitting their articles through a variety of methods and resources over the web. Let's not forget standard search engine optimization issues and HTML coding. Oh, the best one of all is 'natural' link exchanging as defined by Google. If you have not already been there, manual link exchanging is a time consuming process even if you do decide to spend money on lost cost services that can assist. You cannot use 'link farms' as that is against search engine policies and will cause your listing to be down graded.

In order to reach top ranking on the search engines it all boils down to links (or link exchanges, link popularity) and content. Inbound only links better than reciprocal inks. Writing content for your site, articles, news, newsletter is time consuming to properly write a 500 word article and the submission process is not easy either. Some services and software exists to help you in your submission of articles, but just like link exchange services they can only do so much. Could you create a blog and place your articles, certainly. However, you can see the 'things to do' list only keeps growing for the small business owner.

Could they engage in pay-per-click campaigns? Sure, however, you now are entering in a financial issue and one that does not necessarily provide a great return on investment. Pay-Per-Click campaigns are good as an overall marketing strategy and if you use it in combination with a variety of other internet and search engine marketing methods. On its own it cannot provide the returns the small business is seeking. Searching the key phrases (no longer key words) and understanding which ones to select is equally not an easy task. It requires due diligence, research and analysis to understand the information and make an informed decision. Assuming they can get past this part of the pay-per-click process, the next phase is writing the pay-per-click ad headline and content. Unfortunately we see many small businesses flocking to pay-per-click advertising in hopes of a quick return. They might as well go to a casino!

There is indeed another problem associated with Pay-Per-Click campaigns. The ratio of exposures to hits is equally a problem when you are supposed to keep a certain percentage ratio between the two. When search engines like Google are allowing your ad to be placed on other websites with their Google Adsense, your exposures are indeed going up, however, how many people actually click on the links? From Google's perspective probably a lot, but from the individual advertiser's perspective this is not necessarily a good situation. Google is now dictating what key phrases you 'should' bid on and ultimately consolidating the bidding war into small key phrase groups and larger number of advertisers.

Lastly, at least for this writing, but not necessarily on the subject, is time to see revenues. There is no doubt that it takes months for a website to propagate through the Internet. This is by no means a short-term situation and expectations need to be set accordingly. Just because you have a website does not mean that you will see rewards anytime soon. Once again we get into the dilemma of time resources to do the necessary internet marketing work in order to see benefits 6 - 9 months later.

Requirements set by the search engines as they seek to provide quality responses to those that are searching are making it increasingly difficult for small businesses to compete on the web. So, who will end up on the first page or in the top position of searches for key phrases? Unless something changes and the small business is given a chance, it will be the larger corporations that have the man power time and the money.

About the Author

Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing. A internet marketing firm specializing in turn key marketing solutions for businesses including research, analysis, planning an strategy. Please visit SmartFinds at http://www.hsfideas.com

Labels: biz, internet, ppc, searchengines

The highest priced domain name sales of the year

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

If you are interested in selling domain names for profit, you should have a look at the Domain Name Journal's reported sales charts for the year to date. As well as showing the overall top 50, there are separate charts for the top 40 global (net, org, info and biz), and top 40 country code extensions. With the top domain selling for $550 000, it shows just how important people perceive online marketing to be!

Labels: biz, domains

Find niche products on eBay for free

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

If you want to sell on eBay to make some serious money, part of your strategy should be to find what people are searching for, which of these sell at high prices, and sell those items. Luckily there are several ways to do this:

1) most popular eBay search keywords used by eBay UK users - this is exactly as it sounds

2) search completed listings - on this page, enter your search term, and tick the "completed listings" box underneath. This will show you all items that have ended in the past 15 days that match your search query.

Using these two ideas, you can quickly generate a list of possible items to sell. Happy money making!

Labels: biz, ebay

Free Internet Marketing Courses

Thursday, January 05, 2006

If you've spent any time trying to work out how to make money from the Internet, you'll probably have come across Cody Moya. He has recently released five different Internet Marketing Courses, for free, that you receive daily by e-mail. After subscribing to a couple myself, I can recommend them, whether you're a complete "newbie" or more experienced on the net. They may seem a bit slow if you are more experienced, but revision never hurt anybody! So far, I've not come across any blatant links to purchase products either, which has boosted their integrity in my mind. Personally, I think there's nothing worse that a sales pitch disguised as something different!

The courses are:

• Article Marketing


• Earn As Affiliate


• Web Site Traffic Generation


• SEO


• Internet Marketing

Find them all at http://freeinternetmarketingcourses.com/

Labels: biz

Domain Name and Hosting Reseller Business

Sunday, December 04, 2005

GoDaddy, one of the largest domain name and hosting sellers worldwide have several reseller plans that look to be good value. On the basic plan ($99 per year), net rates start from $7.75 for domains, $3.35 for hosting and $23.10 for SSL certificates. You set your selling price, and pocket the difference. GoDaddy also provide you with a fully customisable website, allows you to sell through affiliate programs such as Commission Junction and ClickBank, throws in loads of useful extras such as customer support for you and your customers, reporting tools, search engine submission software, a free SSL certificate and gives you a Google AdWords credit ($100 credit on the basic plan).

So what's the catch? With all these "sounds too good to be true" opportunities, there is always a sticking point somewhere. With this opportunity, the obvious catch is the $99 annual outlay. However, the real question is whether you are able to commit yourself to marketing the site. If you are established on the web with a mailing list of eager potential customers, it will be a lot easier than starting up with no contacts. See my previous post on a free dating website business for more marketing ideas.

Find the reseller plans here at GoDaddy.

(Approximate prices in GBP - $99 = £57; $7.75 = £4.50; $3.35 = £1.95 ; $23.10 = £13.35)

Labels: biz, domains, hosting

Zero Cash, A Little Talent and 30 Days

Sunday, November 27, 2005

If you are thinking of trying to make money on the internet, a series called "Zero Cash, A Little Talent and 30 Days" couldn't be more appropriate. Jennifer Laycock, editor of The Search Engine Guide, set herself a challenge:

"I've decided to set up a little challenge for myself and to both blog and write articles on it over the next month. The idea is to try to setup some type of business in my free time and see if I can start to turn a profit in a 30 day period."

The result is a series of articles charting her progress and how she went about making money with no initial budget. Highly recommended reading - find the series at www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/

Labels: biz, internet

Free - your own dating website business with over 10000 members

Monday, November 21, 2005

Well the old Yorkshire saying "You don't get owt for nowt" doesn't quite apply in this case. Follow this link to your free website business. It's (almost) as simple as that.

How it works

• You visit the dating website to see whether it is suitable for your needs
• You choose whether:
  • To use one of their (potentially recognisable) subdomains OR
  • Register a unique domain name (web address)
• You sign-up and customise your dating site - e.g. choose which payment plan you are going to implement or decide which one of the 20+ templates you are going to use for your site
• You market your site
• People visit - and sign up as members
• To contact other members they must sign up to a paid membership
• You earn 50% commission on paid memberships

Marketing

You need to be able to dedicate some time to marketing your website. Just because a page is on the Internet doesn't mean it will be found. Here are some ideas to get started with:

• Search engines
• Pay per click / Google Adwords
• Local radio
• Local TV Channel (Cable)
• Link exchanges
• Banner advertising
• Mailshots*
• Local newspaper
• Local newsagent and supermarket notice boards
• E-mail campaigns*
• Local free ad papers
• Local shops
• Friends, family, neighbours and anyone else you know!

There are more marketing ideas available on the dating website

*ensure you do this legally - no spam!

Labels: biz, internet

Cheapest Hosting and Domain Names

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

We can recommend several affordable and reliable domain name and hosting providers:

Hosting:

GoDaddy
1&1

Domains:

For cheapest .co.uk domains - 1&1
For cheapest .com and most other domains - GoDaddy

Labels: biz, domains, hosting

What's your PENGUIN score?

Monday, November 14, 2005

No, I'm not going mad! I've found an excellent website - www.penguinscore.com which tells you how to appraise your business communications to remove the boredom factor.

For each of the letters in the penguin, there is a an associated attribute that you score from 0 - 2. Your final score determines whether you should scrap it and start again or go with it:

Position: Did you take a position? Will people take notice?
Easy: Did you make it easy to understand or is your message enclosed in 'techno-babble'?
Narrow: Did you narrow it down to a few simple ideas?
Genuine: Is it genuine and sincere? Does it have the human touch?
Useful: Is it practical or applicable?
Infectious: Will it spark conversations?
uNexpected: Did you wake people up?

For further explanation, see the website www.penguinscore.com!

Labels: biz

If you've got it...flaunt it!

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Far too many small businesses have a website because they think they should. Not because they know how to use it. A website can be used for many purposes e.g. selling a service/product or providing information, but this is no good if people don't know the site exists.

When setting up a website, there is so much emphasis on SEO (search engine optimisation) and SEM (search engine marketing) that it's easy to forget about offline promotion.

Make sure that you let people know that your site exists:

1. Put your web address on all company literature
2. What about on your company car/van?
3. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth
4. Use your web address in advertising, whether it's via the media or by giving away freebies e.g. mousemats to the local college
5. Include your web address on your answer machine (after all, you are open 24/7 on the internet) or holding messages

Well, I hope that's got you started!

Labels: biz, seo

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