This is to be the first in a series on Search Engine Optimization. And we start with on-page SEO.
What is on-page SEO? Well, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it's the process of making your web pages stand out in the rankings and more search engine visible. On-page SEO is the process of optimizing your titles, descriptions, content, tags, and other factors that make up the structure of your website, to make your web pages more easily found and categorized by the search engine spiders.
In years past, this was considered to be the most important activity for online marketers to tweak in order for them to receive a high score when the search engines actually ranked their web pages. However, times change and the search engine algorithms change along with them, in particular, Google. The most recent emphasis has been towards the use of backlinks or off-page SEO.
Some SEO consultants and watchers have actually begun to suggest that on-page SEO is obsolete. Google was no longer paying any attention to on-page SEO and was totally preoccupied entirely with inbound linking (or backlinks). However, the tide shifts again, and the massive changes that Google instituted in early 2011 - their Farmer/Panda update - has swung the pendulum back to on-page SEO and those critical elements that make up effective SEO.
What Google wants to do is tackle the problem of "junk" websites head on. They have started to look much more closely at the "quality" of page content, weeding out those with just meaningless, incorrect, irrelevant, and senseless "crap" that make up a lot of web sites. Heavily linked ad and (even) Ad-Sense pages are out. Quality content with useful information is in.
Benefits of Having On-Page SEO
The benefits of focusing on on-page SEO include:
* Control is with the website owner. With off-page SEO, onliOne marketers will have to get in touch with other websites from the same niche, hoping against hope that these individuals will backlink to them. With on-page SEO, they have greater control with their page rankings. As such, they will at least have an idea of what their page rankings are based on their efforts, unlike off-page site optimization that can be quite arbitrary.
* Less burden on the website owner. Off-page SEO can be very time-consuming and requires constant work in order for a website to have achieve and maintain page rankings. With on-page SEO, once you have optimized your pages, you can just leave these alone as long as you do SEO correctly the first time. High quality content remains high quality whatever else goes on around it!
* Your web pages become better focused. With the right keywords in the titles and the body of the text, even a single glance at your website can make both search engine spiders and site visitors understand what your website is about right away. As long as it's done correctly, your efforts in optimizing your web pages will indicate that you're an expert in your niche, making it more likely for your site visitors to trust you and even purchase from you.
* Less focus on competition. If you've ever tried off-page SEO, you know that it feels like you're running a marathon. You contact other websites from your niche to try to get backlinks, but at the same time, you're quite aware of the fact that some of these websites are actually your rivals when it comes to traffic and even sales. With on-page SEO, you become more focused on the content of your websites, and less on your competitors. This allows you to pay more attention to your website so that you can monitor and make changes that will improve your ranking.
Factors to Look for in On-Page SEO
* Content. When it comes to websites, content remains king. In fact, after the last Google update it has been promoted to Emperor! Some people may have thought that they had got away with using black hat techniques in order to get a good page ranking, but the search engines are now starting to catch up with them. While questionable strategies may work for a time, they will eventually be noticed by the search engines, and will be blocked and penalized permanently.
Focus instead on making sure the content of your website deserves a more permanent place in the page rankings. Do bear in mind that content doesn't just refer to the quality of the material in your website; its presentation is also as relevant. Thus, the design, readability, functionality, and layout also play important roles when it comes to content.
* Having a Theme. Having a theme is a big part when it comes to SEO. You can bring more traffic to your website by simply using keywords that have the same theme as your main keyword. For example, if the topic or theme of the content of your website is birthday, some of the related keywords you can include would be candles, cake, balloons, and other keywords that follow the same theme as that. As such, those who are looking for these auxiliary terms will also be able to find your website, increasing your chances of making sales.
* Keywords, links and meta-tags within the site. Do make sure that the keywords, links, and meta-tags in your website are relevant to the content. Furthermore, do check your links and tags if any are broken, or if there are orphan pages, as these can negatively affect your page rankings.
Of course, this doesn't mean that you will simply set aside all of your off-page and offline SEO efforts for on-page SEO. You will need to focus on these factors to ensure that your page rankings will remain high and will not suffer.
* Google update. Google, the foremost search engine today, regularly changes its algorithm used in an attempt to prevent fraudulent websites from getting top page rankings. Even if you're at the top of the list today, you can go down the next day because of the algorithm change. Do check the news for any updates Google, or any other search engines, will make so you can stay on top of these and make changes to your website accordingly. Google's own webmaster guidelines and their informative blogs can be of great assistance.
Here are some additional resources to learn more about on-page SEO:
Brad Callen's new Elite SEO Membership Site - Search Marketing Elite. he will teach you how to get #1 Google rankings that will last a lifetime:
http://shagmiser.bryxen13.hop.clickbank.net
The Magic SEO Book - voted the best SEO book on Clickbank - 10/10!
http://shagmiser.magicseo.hop.clickbank.net
The Total Traffic Formula - a membership based SEO course designed to teach you how to get more traffic to your site:
http://shagmiser.ttformula.hop.clickbank.net
Friday, June 03, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Niche Reaper - the Ultimate Niche Discovery Tool
One of the hardest things to do as an Internet Marketer is to find a niche worthy of further exploration, a niche that is not only lucrative, but that people are actually interested in and are willing to plunk out cash for. Enter Matt Garret's new product - Niche Reaper.
However, before I go further, I must admit that there are four things you need to know about Niche Reaper.
One - it is an incredibly clever new niche research tool that runs 24/7, constantly generating new niche and keyword possibilities.
Two - It is brilliant. If you are a niche marketer, the hardest thing is finding a steady stream of potentially profitable niches to build sites in. The trouble is that although finding niches is easy, finding the quirky ones that people are spending money in - and that everyone else isn't already doing to death - is very time consuming.
Well, not any more. Niche Reaper finds thousands of them every day - you will never run out and you'll be constantly amazed at the gems it finds.
Three - The number that Matt will sell is very limited and well over three fourths the allocation has already been sold. This thing has been selling like hot cakes and at the rate it is going I suspect that the doors will be closed in a few more days. In fact, the last I looked, total sales had just broached 900. That's 90% gone.
That tells you something because it isn't cheap - but for people who do this kind of niche marketing for a living it will save a fortune over the several other services it replaces, and a ton of time.
One person who posted a comment estimates that what NicheReaper gives him instantly every day would take him up to 5 hours of hard work to replicate just a fraction of it by other means.
It is selling so well because it works.
Four - Sometime later today or tomorrow, depending on total sales, the price is going up. I'm not sure of the details, but indications from Matt are that the price will increase well before Friday.
He has a best seller on his hands, so I can't blame him - but if you hurry you may be able to beat the rise.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
PLR's - Huh?
I have been doing a lot of PLR's lately, and they are a true goldmine. But before I get to telling you more about them, I'm going to list a couple I've recently posted:
1. Simple List Building Blueprint Course - a really comprehensive viudeo course that comes with MRR.
2. Truly Raw - an eBook all about eating raw foods, raw food diets, pros and cons, etc. Comes with an opt-in set of emails that discusses the subject even further.
Plus, there are several more I am working on that are in the pipeline. If you don't know what these terms are (PLR, MRR) you need to watch Liz Tomey's short tutorial on the subject:
http://mymarketingtutorials.com/resell-rights-explained-2
Enough of the prelim stuff - let's get down to it.
Why private label is your best friend.
One of the biggest problems that would-be Internet marketers face is where to get good content to fill up your web pages or blogs. This article looks at private label as being an ideal source, if you know how to use it the right way.
Content is King, for sure. The search engines are not interested in ranking thin, content-poor web pages and are actively working to adjust their algorithms to weed out those pages that don't provide useful information. That makes it increasingly difficult for website builders because with the best will in the world, very few are ready, willing and able to continue to write an endless stream of quality content for themselves.
For many people writing is difficult to start with, but factor in the limited time that people have these days and the likelihood that however passionate you are about your niche, you'll soon run out of things to say, and it gets almost impossible.
And of course, if your web site is on a subject that you don't have personal knowledge or passion about, writing fresh content may be completely impossible for you.
All the evidence suggests, though, that the need for on-topic, well-written content is growing. The search engines have as good as said so and are now, more than ever before, looking to de-list sites that they consider to be lacking authority.
All this means that one supply of content that has gone in and out of fashion over the years, private label articles, it coming back with a vengeance.
Private label articles, or PLR articles as they are commonly known, are very cheap, but can totally transform your Internet marketing and web building.
PLR stands for private label rights and describes the license you get for using them after you've bought them.
Private label means that once you've bought them, all rights of ownership are transferred to you. You then have the rights to treat the articles as your own, as if you had written them.
Unlike other ways of buying 'information', there is no copyright on PLR so you are free to change them, rewrite them, re-purpose them, even put your own name on the top and claim authorship.
In general, you cannot resell them in an unchanged state, and many article directories do not allow you to post them, but other than that, they become yours to do with as you please.
That wide-ranging 'right of use' is a very powerful thing indeed and makes PLR one of the most undervalued heroes of online marketing. Far too few people have really understood just how many ways PLR articles (or even entire books) can be used, and how much money some people are making by using them.
Having said that, it is also important that you understand that as with many things, there is really good PLR material out there and a lot of absolute garbage.
Over the years a lot of really bad articles have been written, more often than not by people with really bad writing and language skills, that are identifiable as private label from a mile away. If you can see an article is badly written and makes no real attempt to cover its promised topic, you can bet the search engines can weed it out too. Using such trash doesn't do your site any good at all.
In fact, with new changes that Google have announced that will make it easier for them to weed out what they consider to be spam websites, using poor quality PLR can be really harmful to your business. So to that end, make sure you read what you buy and at the very least, rewrite it to correct blatant spelling and grammar errors. And if you can, add more meat to the thin articles as well.
You will often see offers online of thousands of articles being sold for peanuts. 10,000 articles for $10 is not unusual! Steer clear. The articles in these packages are almost all horrible. They have been around for many years, have been used to death and, all too often, are not PLR material at all - they have been stolen from non-plr websites. It is a case of buyer beware.
Luckily, there are many very reputable sources of great PLR articles. Some will sell you packages individually and others are membership sites that provide a steady stream of articles to their members.
Look to see examples of their work before you buy - all reputable PLR sellers will be happy to provide you with a sample or two if you email and ask - and check for spelling, grammar and language use. If they make mistakes in the articles they send out as samples, you can bet they are equally sloppy in what you'll buy.
Look also, for the articles to have a certain depth. A good article should read naturally and not appear as if it has been created purely as a keyword holder.
And when you get the articles, rewrite them.
I know I said that PLR makes your life easier, and it does. It is far, far easier to rewrite an article into your own words - just take it one sentence at a time - than it is to research and write a new article from scratch. You'll save a huge amount of time and effort, but the end result will be content on your website that is fresh, relevant, authoritative and, to the search engines, exactly what is needed.
And that is money in the bank.
BTW - the above article is a perfect example of a PLR - how about them apples?
TTFN - Till We Talk Again -
RD
1. Simple List Building Blueprint Course - a really comprehensive viudeo course that comes with MRR.
2. Truly Raw - an eBook all about eating raw foods, raw food diets, pros and cons, etc. Comes with an opt-in set of emails that discusses the subject even further.
Plus, there are several more I am working on that are in the pipeline. If you don't know what these terms are (PLR, MRR) you need to watch Liz Tomey's short tutorial on the subject:
http://mymarketingtutorials.com/resell-rights-explained-2
Enough of the prelim stuff - let's get down to it.
Why private label is your best friend.
One of the biggest problems that would-be Internet marketers face is where to get good content to fill up your web pages or blogs. This article looks at private label as being an ideal source, if you know how to use it the right way.
Content is King, for sure. The search engines are not interested in ranking thin, content-poor web pages and are actively working to adjust their algorithms to weed out those pages that don't provide useful information. That makes it increasingly difficult for website builders because with the best will in the world, very few are ready, willing and able to continue to write an endless stream of quality content for themselves.
For many people writing is difficult to start with, but factor in the limited time that people have these days and the likelihood that however passionate you are about your niche, you'll soon run out of things to say, and it gets almost impossible.
And of course, if your web site is on a subject that you don't have personal knowledge or passion about, writing fresh content may be completely impossible for you.
All the evidence suggests, though, that the need for on-topic, well-written content is growing. The search engines have as good as said so and are now, more than ever before, looking to de-list sites that they consider to be lacking authority.
All this means that one supply of content that has gone in and out of fashion over the years, private label articles, it coming back with a vengeance.
Private label articles, or PLR articles as they are commonly known, are very cheap, but can totally transform your Internet marketing and web building.
PLR stands for private label rights and describes the license you get for using them after you've bought them.
Private label means that once you've bought them, all rights of ownership are transferred to you. You then have the rights to treat the articles as your own, as if you had written them.
Unlike other ways of buying 'information', there is no copyright on PLR so you are free to change them, rewrite them, re-purpose them, even put your own name on the top and claim authorship.
In general, you cannot resell them in an unchanged state, and many article directories do not allow you to post them, but other than that, they become yours to do with as you please.
That wide-ranging 'right of use' is a very powerful thing indeed and makes PLR one of the most undervalued heroes of online marketing. Far too few people have really understood just how many ways PLR articles (or even entire books) can be used, and how much money some people are making by using them.
Having said that, it is also important that you understand that as with many things, there is really good PLR material out there and a lot of absolute garbage.
Over the years a lot of really bad articles have been written, more often than not by people with really bad writing and language skills, that are identifiable as private label from a mile away. If you can see an article is badly written and makes no real attempt to cover its promised topic, you can bet the search engines can weed it out too. Using such trash doesn't do your site any good at all.
In fact, with new changes that Google have announced that will make it easier for them to weed out what they consider to be spam websites, using poor quality PLR can be really harmful to your business. So to that end, make sure you read what you buy and at the very least, rewrite it to correct blatant spelling and grammar errors. And if you can, add more meat to the thin articles as well.
You will often see offers online of thousands of articles being sold for peanuts. 10,000 articles for $10 is not unusual! Steer clear. The articles in these packages are almost all horrible. They have been around for many years, have been used to death and, all too often, are not PLR material at all - they have been stolen from non-plr websites. It is a case of buyer beware.
Luckily, there are many very reputable sources of great PLR articles. Some will sell you packages individually and others are membership sites that provide a steady stream of articles to their members.
Look to see examples of their work before you buy - all reputable PLR sellers will be happy to provide you with a sample or two if you email and ask - and check for spelling, grammar and language use. If they make mistakes in the articles they send out as samples, you can bet they are equally sloppy in what you'll buy.
Look also, for the articles to have a certain depth. A good article should read naturally and not appear as if it has been created purely as a keyword holder.
And when you get the articles, rewrite them.
I know I said that PLR makes your life easier, and it does. It is far, far easier to rewrite an article into your own words - just take it one sentence at a time - than it is to research and write a new article from scratch. You'll save a huge amount of time and effort, but the end result will be content on your website that is fresh, relevant, authoritative and, to the search engines, exactly what is needed.
And that is money in the bank.
BTW - the above article is a perfect example of a PLR - how about them apples?
TTFN - Till We Talk Again -
RD
Monday, February 28, 2011
Membership Sites - The Route to Residual Income
Membership sites are not a new thing. Way back in 1996, Bill Gates said that he estimated membership sites to be a $20-$30 million dollar per year industry.
Mr Gates has got more things right than wrong in his career, but that wasn't one of them. Just 14 years later and the figure is more like $2 Billion Dollars annually. Membership sites are big business and despite the worldwide recession, continue to grow in importance.
A membership site is, by and large, one that charges subscribers a monthly fee to access its website. But charging a monthly fee isn't the only game in town - another perfectly viable business model is to allow members to join for free, but to monetize the site through special subscriber offers made each time the member logs in.
Whichever membership model you choose, you will need a few things in place:
* A domain and hosting
* An autoresponder
* Membership site software
* Content to regularly post to the site
Domains and hosting, and autoresponders, are beyond the scope of this article. We will consider the membership site software you can use and the content you need to post.
Membership Site Software
There are dozens of options - from the plugins that you can add to a WordPress blog, through newbie-friendly programs like Easy Member Pro, right up to powerful scripts such as Login Frequency Marketing.
There is software available to suit every pocket - even one or two free options.
Why are membership sites so popular?
The Internet has become synonymous with 'free'. People expect information to be available for free and sites like Wikipedia are happy to provide that service. However, people have also come to realize that with free information there is relatively little quality control. If they want good, premium content then they know that they will sometimes have to pay for it.
In addition, people like the idea of belonging to an exclusive club, and online membership sites can offer that kind of exclusivity that they crave.
Of course, no membership site can survive for long if it doesn't provide those things: great, fresh content and a sense of belonging.
The Advantages to Building Membership Websites
One of the problems with Internet marketing as it is generally practiced is that you constantly need to find new customers and make new sales. You can have a great month and sell a lot of the latest big launch product, but what do you do next month? Or the month after? The wheel has to be reinvented over and over again.
With a membership site, you remove most of that ongoing stress. You do your job of selling the memberships and then they pay you month in, month out, automatically. You don't have to ask for the money - your payment processor just takes it - and you never need to remind anyone to pay up.
Although three will be a number of people who will unsubscribe and cancel their subscriptions each month, on the whole most will stay.
The industry average is reckoned to be that members stay for about 4 months, but many of the quality membership sites expect their members to stick around a lot longer than that!
The result is that you work once to set up the site to begin with and then again to attract members in, but after that the financials of your business will be based on residual earnings - in other words, once they've started paying, they'll keep on.
Residual income is the sweetest money of all and can quite literally last for years with no extra effort on your part.
Of course, with a membership site you do have to add new content, or provide some kind of service to keep your members interested.
If you have a site based on the use of a piece of software you've written or had created for you, your ongoing input may be negligible after the initial set up, but if you are providing information, you will need to develop a routine for creating new stuff for your members on a regular basis.
Many people ignore the power of membership sites to build themselves a very useful income, but to do so is a folly. After all, 100 members paying just $9.99 per month amounts to $1000 a month and may only require you to write a new article each week.
Some membership sites are even set up so that the members themselves create the ongoing content. Recipe sites, for example, encourage members to post new recipes for all to see, and to participate in discussion forums that only members can access. The site owners can charge a nice monthly fee, but in actuality don't have to create any content at all!
Whatever your current online marketing business model, consider adding a membership site or two to your stable of Internet properties. Your residual income will skyrocket and your workload may well be lower than you ever imagined possible.
Your Internet lifestyle could be just a membership site away!
Here's an added resource that can help you along the way towards your membership site:
| Membership Gold Rush To Your Evergreen Success RD |
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Email Marketing - The Most Satisfying Way to Make Money Online
In a very short space of time, email has completely changed the face of direct marketing. Over the last 100 years or so many millionaires have been created by direct marketing - sending ads out to thousands of people by mail. But a lot of people have lost their shirts because although the potential rewards are great, the potential losses can be huge too. Mail shots cost a lot of money and if they don't pull in the orders, you can be looking at a huge expense. Email marketing has changed the ground rules. Now, almost anyone can get involved and the cost of entry is virtually nil.
With email there are no printing costs, no envelopes to buy, no staff to employ to stuff the envelopes and no postage costs.
Of course, there is a thin line between legitimate email marketing and spam. The very first known case of spam (unsolicited commercial email) was sent to 393 recipients by Gary Theurk, then an employee of DEC computers. It was sent out over the old ArpaNet system - the precursor to today's Internet - in May 1978.
Nobody liked it then, and nobody likes it now. It is estimated that over 85% of all email sent is spam of one kind or another.
Legitimate email marketing can be very profitable, but the most successful, and ethical email marketers go to great lengths to ensure that they are only sending emails to willing recipients and that their emails comply with local regulations such as the American Can-Spam act.
To be successful in legitimate email marketing it is important to build a relationship with the people to whom you are sending your messages. That usually means establishing your own reputation and making sure you provide people with interesting, readable content. Of course you will want to include promotional messages to sell things, but if that's all you send out, your readers will soon get tired and unsubscribe from your list.
As an email marketer your mailing list is the most valuable commodity you own. In general, most email list marketers say that the average return should be $1 per subscriber per month. So a list of 5000 people should, on average, make its owner $5000 per month.
Averages deceive though. A marketer who sends out ad after ad, sales pitch after sales pitch, with no attempt to communicate, entertain or inform will usually see a much lower rate of return. On the other hand, someone who sends out a well written newsletter filled with interesting and useful information - that also happens to include a personally written sales message - can enjoy a rate of return many times the industry average.
It takes more work to write an interesting newsletter or ezine, but the long term rewards can make the effort very worthwhile.
There is an old adage that 'The money's in the list', and it is true provided you have the right list and have established a trusting relationship with the people on it.
Too many email marketers think of their 'list' as a commodity and forget that it is made up of individuals. The most successful ones never forget that they are writing to people, not lists.
There are many ways to become an Internet marketer and email marketing is just one of them. It may not be the easiest to succeed at - you will need to develop your writing and communication skills and learn how to build your list in the first place - but for those of us who make our living writing email newsletters it is by far one of the most satisfying.
With email there are no printing costs, no envelopes to buy, no staff to employ to stuff the envelopes and no postage costs.
Of course, there is a thin line between legitimate email marketing and spam. The very first known case of spam (unsolicited commercial email) was sent to 393 recipients by Gary Theurk, then an employee of DEC computers. It was sent out over the old ArpaNet system - the precursor to today's Internet - in May 1978.
Nobody liked it then, and nobody likes it now. It is estimated that over 85% of all email sent is spam of one kind or another.
Legitimate email marketing can be very profitable, but the most successful, and ethical email marketers go to great lengths to ensure that they are only sending emails to willing recipients and that their emails comply with local regulations such as the American Can-Spam act.
To be successful in legitimate email marketing it is important to build a relationship with the people to whom you are sending your messages. That usually means establishing your own reputation and making sure you provide people with interesting, readable content. Of course you will want to include promotional messages to sell things, but if that's all you send out, your readers will soon get tired and unsubscribe from your list.
As an email marketer your mailing list is the most valuable commodity you own. In general, most email list marketers say that the average return should be $1 per subscriber per month. So a list of 5000 people should, on average, make its owner $5000 per month.
Averages deceive though. A marketer who sends out ad after ad, sales pitch after sales pitch, with no attempt to communicate, entertain or inform will usually see a much lower rate of return. On the other hand, someone who sends out a well written newsletter filled with interesting and useful information - that also happens to include a personally written sales message - can enjoy a rate of return many times the industry average.
It takes more work to write an interesting newsletter or ezine, but the long term rewards can make the effort very worthwhile.
There is an old adage that 'The money's in the list', and it is true provided you have the right list and have established a trusting relationship with the people on it.
Too many email marketers think of their 'list' as a commodity and forget that it is made up of individuals. The most successful ones never forget that they are writing to people, not lists.
There are many ways to become an Internet marketer and email marketing is just one of them. It may not be the easiest to succeed at - you will need to develop your writing and communication skills and learn how to build your list in the first place - but for those of us who make our living writing email newsletters it is by far one of the most satisfying.
To learn more about what all this is about, I've got 2 products from Clickbank I'd like to recommend. The fist is Tim Bekker's Autoresponder Code, and the second is the Complete List Building Package. Both are credible products that could help you with your email projects.
Tim Bekker's Autoresponder Code:
| http://shagmiser.theacode.hop.clickbank.net |
Complete List Building Package
| http://shagmiser.soniia21.hop.clickbank.net |
As ever, your non-guru poster,
RD
PS - both of the above links are affiliate links, as if you didn't know.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Education and the 2 Year Option
A 2-year degree is a great way to get a degree or certification quickly and effectively, and at a much lower cost. Online students can attend classes from their home, from their job, or while in another city, using only a computer and Internet connection. Students save huge amounts of time and money. There is no campus to drive to, so no travel expenses, no time invested in commuting to class, no out-of-state fees, and no room and board fees.
Campus students, on the other hand, can attend evening and weekend classes if they work during the day. They offer personal interaction with other students and are great for courses that require hands-on activities, labs, and training.
Campus students, on the other hand, can attend evening and weekend classes if they work during the day. They offer personal interaction with other students and are great for courses that require hands-on activities, labs, and training.
OVERVIEW.COM college and career website was one of the first databases of colleges and career information on the Internet.
Till Next Time,
RD
PS - If you want to learn how to save even more money on a college education, then check out
PS - If you want to learn how to save even more money on a college education, then check out
Debt Free College Degree - Half Price College!
Ebook with over 150+ pages of rock solid content shows students and parents how to pay less than half of normal costs to attend college, and get it done in less time.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Information Products - Hungry Buyers Pay Top Dollar
There are so many ways to make money online that entire books have been devoted to the subject, with each chapter offering a different idea. Creating and selling your own information products is a very viable method of building an online business - and can be an extremely profitable one too.
Before we look into the ways that you - or anyone - can start to create your own information products, we first need to define what information products actually are. To many people starting out, the very term, information product, is daunting and can put one off. But get past that and you'll soon realize that like most things connected to online marketing, the jargon often hides a simple concept.
In the main, people are searching online for information. When we do a Google search we almost always are trying to find an answer to a question.
Some of those questions are about mundane things and can be answered very easily. But some questions are more complex, more important and more pressing. For those, while one may be able to find answers after long hours of intense research, it is far easier to buy a ready-made solution.
The more intense the question, the more we are willing to pay for an answer.
The difference between online and offline information products is that offline everyone has a view as to how much a 'book' or a 'magazine' is worth and will rarely pay more than the accepted norm. Online, however, it is the information that is valued, and not so much the delivery vehicle. So people will often pay a lot more for an answer to a pressing need online that they will offline.
Information products come in all shapes and sizes. A few to consider are:
Ebooks - Usually PDF files formatted to look like a real book, but with fewer pages. A typical ebook is between 70 and 100 pages, but can be a lot less, or a lot more. Ebooks can sell for anything from a few dollars to hundreds. A price point of $67 or $97 is not unusual.
Special Reports - As with ebooks, special reports are normally supplied as PDF files, but they tend to be much shorter. 5-10 pages is typical. Special reports are usually focused on answering a single problem or teaching a specific method for something and have a lot less fluff and filler than ebooks often do.
White papers - Sometimes the answer to a question can be contained in a page or two - a list of resources, for example.
Videos - with the ease of use of hand held video cameras such as the Flip, and screen capture programs it is very easy now to produce short videos to answer people's questions. Buyers seem to like video products and are often willing to pay a premium price for them.
Audio - spoken word information products - often called podcasts - are popular with people who regularly use MP3 players and Smartphones as they allow folks to learn while on the move. Sometimes it is quite easy to simply read out an article or short report into a program like Audacity to make an audio info product that will sell well.
Membership sites - When information can be delivered over time, in instalments, it can be very profitable to do so from within a membership site. This gives the vendor an ongoing income from subscription fees as well as a frequent opportunity to offer members other offers.
Creating your own information products has one very big advantage. When you sell it, you determine the price and you keep all the profits. And as the cost of creating, producing and supplying digitally down loadable info products is virtually nil, the potential profits can be enormous. You can literally start a real business but with no overheads.
For more on this subject, go to:
http://urlcx.com/yoeb - Your Own EBook Business
In addition to sales you make yourself, you also have the chance to attract and recruit other people to sell on your behalf. In Internet marketing these people are called affiliates. They will promote your product to their lists, and if they incur any advertising costs will be entire responsible for them themselves. You simply pay them a commission for each sale they make.
Typically, you will pay them 50% - 75% of the sales price, which may sound a lot, but consider the sale one you wouldn't have otherwise had, and it has cost you nothing. You may 'only' make 25%, but that 25% is 100% profit. It is a great deal!
Not all info products are created to be sold though.
Sometimes it is better to offer your product as a free gift in return for some body's email address. Building up an email list is a vital part of online marketing and can massively increase your profitability. It is an effort to attract new traffic to your offers, but if you have already got a list of 1000 people to tell about a new information product you've created, you can really boost your launch results with no extra effort.
Creating free information products as giveaways to attract subscribers is very effective and easy to do. It should be a part of all marketers' routine.
Jim Edwards said it best in his book:
EBook Secrets Exposed - http://urlcx.com/ese
Online marketing is, at its heart, about selling. Information is one of the most valuable commodities we can sell. While it is great to be an affiliate for other people, producing and owning your own info products is the best way to secure your personal success into the future.
In closing, you really must investigate PLR's. See my earlier blog post on that very subject. Scroll down, it's there somewhere.
Wishing the best for everyone in this business,
RD
PS - One more freebie resource for you guys:
http://rdavidhale.com - my free giveaway for kick starting your own online business.
Before we look into the ways that you - or anyone - can start to create your own information products, we first need to define what information products actually are. To many people starting out, the very term, information product, is daunting and can put one off. But get past that and you'll soon realize that like most things connected to online marketing, the jargon often hides a simple concept.
In the main, people are searching online for information. When we do a Google search we almost always are trying to find an answer to a question.
Some of those questions are about mundane things and can be answered very easily. But some questions are more complex, more important and more pressing. For those, while one may be able to find answers after long hours of intense research, it is far easier to buy a ready-made solution.
The more intense the question, the more we are willing to pay for an answer.
The difference between online and offline information products is that offline everyone has a view as to how much a 'book' or a 'magazine' is worth and will rarely pay more than the accepted norm. Online, however, it is the information that is valued, and not so much the delivery vehicle. So people will often pay a lot more for an answer to a pressing need online that they will offline.
Information products come in all shapes and sizes. A few to consider are:
Ebooks - Usually PDF files formatted to look like a real book, but with fewer pages. A typical ebook is between 70 and 100 pages, but can be a lot less, or a lot more. Ebooks can sell for anything from a few dollars to hundreds. A price point of $67 or $97 is not unusual.
Special Reports - As with ebooks, special reports are normally supplied as PDF files, but they tend to be much shorter. 5-10 pages is typical. Special reports are usually focused on answering a single problem or teaching a specific method for something and have a lot less fluff and filler than ebooks often do.
White papers - Sometimes the answer to a question can be contained in a page or two - a list of resources, for example.
Videos - with the ease of use of hand held video cameras such as the Flip, and screen capture programs it is very easy now to produce short videos to answer people's questions. Buyers seem to like video products and are often willing to pay a premium price for them.
Audio - spoken word information products - often called podcasts - are popular with people who regularly use MP3 players and Smartphones as they allow folks to learn while on the move. Sometimes it is quite easy to simply read out an article or short report into a program like Audacity to make an audio info product that will sell well.
Membership sites - When information can be delivered over time, in instalments, it can be very profitable to do so from within a membership site. This gives the vendor an ongoing income from subscription fees as well as a frequent opportunity to offer members other offers.
Creating your own information products has one very big advantage. When you sell it, you determine the price and you keep all the profits. And as the cost of creating, producing and supplying digitally down loadable info products is virtually nil, the potential profits can be enormous. You can literally start a real business but with no overheads.
For more on this subject, go to:
http://urlcx.com/yoeb - Your Own EBook Business
In addition to sales you make yourself, you also have the chance to attract and recruit other people to sell on your behalf. In Internet marketing these people are called affiliates. They will promote your product to their lists, and if they incur any advertising costs will be entire responsible for them themselves. You simply pay them a commission for each sale they make.
Typically, you will pay them 50% - 75% of the sales price, which may sound a lot, but consider the sale one you wouldn't have otherwise had, and it has cost you nothing. You may 'only' make 25%, but that 25% is 100% profit. It is a great deal!
Not all info products are created to be sold though.
Sometimes it is better to offer your product as a free gift in return for some body's email address. Building up an email list is a vital part of online marketing and can massively increase your profitability. It is an effort to attract new traffic to your offers, but if you have already got a list of 1000 people to tell about a new information product you've created, you can really boost your launch results with no extra effort.
Creating free information products as giveaways to attract subscribers is very effective and easy to do. It should be a part of all marketers' routine.
Jim Edwards said it best in his book:
EBook Secrets Exposed - http://urlcx.com/ese
Online marketing is, at its heart, about selling. Information is one of the most valuable commodities we can sell. While it is great to be an affiliate for other people, producing and owning your own info products is the best way to secure your personal success into the future.
In closing, you really must investigate PLR's. See my earlier blog post on that very subject. Scroll down, it's there somewhere.
Wishing the best for everyone in this business,
RD
PS - One more freebie resource for you guys:
http://rdavidhale.com - my free giveaway for kick starting your own online business.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Traffic Generation - The Missing Link For Internet Marketers
Traffic is the lifeblood of the Internet and traffic generation is what drives Internet marketing.
A website on its own is like a store at the wrong end of a one-way street: it can be the most wonderful thing that you can possibly create, but with no passing trade the sound of the tumbleweed will be louder than that of the cash register.
Search engine optimization is mainly done to entice Google to send your site free traffic from its natural searches, but search engine traffic isn't the only game in town. There are lots of other ways to get people to visit your site.
There is an ongoing argument among the expert marketers - which is more important, getting traffic or converting that traffic into paying customers? On the one hand you can't convert what you don't have, but on the other, all the traffic in the world is useless if it doesn't turn into buyers.
The reality is that they are not at odds at all - they are simply two sides of the same coin.
It should be simple. Go and tell people about your whizzy new website and they'll come take a look. It is called advertising. Unfortunately it isn't that easy - or simple. You can tell how hard it really is by taking a quick look inside any of the big Internet marketing forums. There you'll find people constantly complaining that Internet marketing doesn't work and that they've wasted years doing everything they were told, building the exact sites that the guru's methods told them to; and yet they still failed to make any money.
When you scratch under the surface you almost always find that yes, they did do everything right, but the methods they were taught fell short at the important part. They were told to build sites. They were tutored in some of the most effective online marketing strategies, but they were not told that the site building was only the beginning. Traffic generation is the ongoing, never-ending process that only starts when the website is finished.
So, doing great on and off page SEO to claim high Google rankings that will send free traffic your way is still and will probably always remain the #1 traffic generation method. But it isn't the only one.
The second most effective way to keep that traffic flowing is to build a list. Too many Internet marketers forget that the cost in time, money and effort of getting a person to visit your site can be quite substantial. So it is crazy to let someone visit your site, do nothing while they are there and then leave. That's a total waste.
Every website should have some means of capturing the email address and name of at least some of those 'lost' visitors so that you can hopefully persuade them to stop by again at a later date.
Once you have their contact details, by means of an opt in form on your site that is linked to an autoresponder, you don't have to pay an acquisition cost for them ever again. Each time you email them with a new enticement to come back to your site they are your own free traffic generated by you.
The third favorite traffic generation strategy is currently article marketing. Writing articles that other people can use on their websites may sound odd, but in practice it can be very effective. The deal is that when they use your article they agree to display a short ad below it - called your resource box - that you write in such a way as to make clicking a link through to your site an attractive proposition.
Each article you write may only generate a few clicks, but get enough of them out there working for you and you'll build up a steady stream of traffic that you'll never be able to turn off.
Article marketing isn't as effective a traffic generation method as it once was, but many Internet marketers still swear by it and base their entire traffic generation strategies on it.
Generating a constant flow of traffic is where your online business starts and ends. Learning its importance and how to do it in the most effective ways is what separates the people who complain that Internet marketing doesn't work for them from those of us who make a great living.
To learn more about SEO, I have a couple of products I'd like you to take a look at.
The first is called SEO Elite:
http://urlcx.com/seoe
And the next is Stupidly Simple SEO :
http://urlcx.com/ssseo
I highly recommend both of these digital products. And there's one more really worth your while:
http://backlinkbattleplan.com/ - Shane MeLaugh's wonderful technique for generating backlinks to your site, an SEO necessity.
A website on its own is like a store at the wrong end of a one-way street: it can be the most wonderful thing that you can possibly create, but with no passing trade the sound of the tumbleweed will be louder than that of the cash register.
Search engine optimization is mainly done to entice Google to send your site free traffic from its natural searches, but search engine traffic isn't the only game in town. There are lots of other ways to get people to visit your site.
There is an ongoing argument among the expert marketers - which is more important, getting traffic or converting that traffic into paying customers? On the one hand you can't convert what you don't have, but on the other, all the traffic in the world is useless if it doesn't turn into buyers.
The reality is that they are not at odds at all - they are simply two sides of the same coin.
It should be simple. Go and tell people about your whizzy new website and they'll come take a look. It is called advertising. Unfortunately it isn't that easy - or simple. You can tell how hard it really is by taking a quick look inside any of the big Internet marketing forums. There you'll find people constantly complaining that Internet marketing doesn't work and that they've wasted years doing everything they were told, building the exact sites that the guru's methods told them to; and yet they still failed to make any money.
When you scratch under the surface you almost always find that yes, they did do everything right, but the methods they were taught fell short at the important part. They were told to build sites. They were tutored in some of the most effective online marketing strategies, but they were not told that the site building was only the beginning. Traffic generation is the ongoing, never-ending process that only starts when the website is finished.
So, doing great on and off page SEO to claim high Google rankings that will send free traffic your way is still and will probably always remain the #1 traffic generation method. But it isn't the only one.
The second most effective way to keep that traffic flowing is to build a list. Too many Internet marketers forget that the cost in time, money and effort of getting a person to visit your site can be quite substantial. So it is crazy to let someone visit your site, do nothing while they are there and then leave. That's a total waste.
Every website should have some means of capturing the email address and name of at least some of those 'lost' visitors so that you can hopefully persuade them to stop by again at a later date.
Once you have their contact details, by means of an opt in form on your site that is linked to an autoresponder, you don't have to pay an acquisition cost for them ever again. Each time you email them with a new enticement to come back to your site they are your own free traffic generated by you.
The third favorite traffic generation strategy is currently article marketing. Writing articles that other people can use on their websites may sound odd, but in practice it can be very effective. The deal is that when they use your article they agree to display a short ad below it - called your resource box - that you write in such a way as to make clicking a link through to your site an attractive proposition.
Each article you write may only generate a few clicks, but get enough of them out there working for you and you'll build up a steady stream of traffic that you'll never be able to turn off.
Article marketing isn't as effective a traffic generation method as it once was, but many Internet marketers still swear by it and base their entire traffic generation strategies on it.
Generating a constant flow of traffic is where your online business starts and ends. Learning its importance and how to do it in the most effective ways is what separates the people who complain that Internet marketing doesn't work for them from those of us who make a great living.
To learn more about SEO, I have a couple of products I'd like you to take a look at.
The first is called SEO Elite:
http://urlcx.com/seoe
And the next is Stupidly Simple SEO :
http://urlcx.com/ssseo
I highly recommend both of these digital products. And there's one more really worth your while:
http://backlinkbattleplan.com/ - Shane MeLaugh's wonderful technique for generating backlinks to your site, an SEO necessity.
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