Updated Posts, Powerful Ideas
Archive for July, 2010
4 Free Tools You Should Have
Jul 30th
Some people have the idea that the more you spend for something, the better it is. You know the phrase “You Get What You Pay For”, but when it comes to the software that you need to create professional sites and run your online business, that’s not the case. In fact, there are 4 software tools that do most of the things you need to do to get your site up and running, including creating products.
What follows are my list of 4 tools I use all of the time. The first two will allow you to easily create a stunning web site or web pages. The other two make it easy to upload your files to your hosting account and to create PDF ebooks and small reports. And the best thing is that all of these tools are FREE! Let’s get started.
1. Xheader.
Header graphics are almost a must-have element on any web page. In the past, you had to know how to do it yourself, pay someone to do it for you, or purchase and learn how to use software so you could make them yourself. Not anymore. With Xheader, you get software that comes with 500 templates in several categories that you can choose from. Select a template, add text and any graphics you want, add text effects, and you have a professional header. This is not some kind of “Lite” software that has the option to get the “Pro” version. There is only one version, and that’s Xheader. You can learn more by clicking here.
2. Kompozer.
Now that you have a header graphic, it’s time to create the web pages that you’re going to use it on. You can pay a lot of money for some web design software – sometimes several hundreds of dollars. There’s no reason to do that because you can create really nice web site with Kompozer. This is free, open source software that you can use to create web sites quickly. It’s a WYSIWYG web page editor – What You See Is What You Get – so if you can use a word processor, you can easily learn how to use it. There are help files that will answer a lot of questions, and there is a forum that you can access when you go to the Kompozer page. There is no advertising, and never any option to upgrade to a paid version. Free and powerful. Get it here.
3. Open Office.
Creating small reports, articles, and ebooks is a big part of online business. So you need a tool that will make it easier. So you need a tool that will make it easy to write and format your content, including adding graphics, as well as the ability to turn your content into a PDF file. And a tool that would make it easy to create PowerPoint slides would be good as well. If the tool would open Microsoft Office documents as well, it would be great.
The software that does the above and more is called Open Office. It is free software that can take the place of Microsoft Office. It can create PDF files, slide shows, spread sheets, and a lot more. As a marketer, you can create as many PDF files as you need, all with Open Office. It’s a big download, but it’s something that I wouldn’t want to be without. Get Open Office here.
4. FileZilla.
Once you’ve created your header graphics, and have your web pages looking good, it’s time to get them to your hosting account. FTP software makes it easy to upload your files up to the Internet. But which one should you choose? For me, the choice is easy – the free open source software called FileZilla. FileZilla will upload all of your web pages, graphics, PDF files, video files, and anything else you can think of. No ads, no cost, easy to use. It doesn’t get any better than that. Get it here.
There you have my 4 must have software tools. They are all I need to create professional web pages and sites, header graphics, PDF ebooks and reports, and upload them to my hosting account. These tools are powerful and free, so go check them out and see for yourself.
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How To Discover The Markets You Can Compete In
Jul 29th
Finding the keywords that you need to target for your marketing is vital. It’s also important to know when trying to compete in a market is extremely difficult. Here are a few things you should consider before you spend the time and/or money trying to get on the first page of the search engine results pages.
Let’s say you did target “weight loss” and you DID get a first page listing. While that is not something that will likely happen, there are a few drawbacks to getting there. While there are thousands upon thousands of searches for that key phrase, you really don’t know what they’re searching for. They could be looking for:
- Weight loss tips
- Weight loss menus
- Weight loss ebooks
- Free weight loss information
- Weight loss programs ( think Nutri-System)
- Weight loss workout routines
- Vegetarian weight loss
- Weight loss supplements
- Fast weight loss
If someone were to land on your site for the term “weight loss”, do you offer what they are REALLY looking for? And how would you know. The problem is that the term “weight loss” is a very broad keyword, and it covers a lot of potential possibilities.
If someone is looking for weight loss supplements and you’re offering a weight loss ebook…
If someone is looking for fast weight loss, and you’re offering an exercise program…
If someone is looking for free tips, and you’re selling something…
You’re out of luck…
You have successfully generated the dreaded “untargeted traffic”. People who get to your site who have absolutely no interest in what you’re offering.
Mega-market keywords look really good because of the number of searches that they get every day. But unless you have a site that covers just about everything that someone would want, you’re not going to make a lot of sales.
Another thing to consider is that where you rank is going to affect your traffic. If you’re not on the first page of the search engine results, you’re going to have a hard time getting any traffic. Let’s say you get your site in the top 100 sites for your keyword. Most people look at the first page of results, and if they don’t find what they want, they enter another search term. A few of them may go to the second page of search results. Very few of them are going to go through 10 pages of results to find your page.
That’s why it’s in your best interest to drill down in these mega-markets and target the related keywords. It’s a lot easier to attract the kind of visitor to your site that is looking for what you’re offering. And that results in you making sales. I don’t want you to waste your time targeting keywords that you’ll have a hard time profiting from. The sole purpose of writing this is so you can avoid the mistakes that I have already made. Hope this helps.
Finding Profitable Keywords In A Competitive Market
Jul 29th
When it comes to keyword research, most people will enter their main keyword into a keyword tool and see how many searches there are. If there are a lot of searches, they start thinking of all the traffic they’ll get and they create their pages and write the articles. And then they wonder why they aren’t getting any traffic and why it’s so hard to get a first page ranking for their web pages.
Let’s go through an example that will show you why it’s not always a good idea to target a keyword based ONLY on how many searches it gets. This is especially true in the mega-markets such as golf, dogs, and digital cameras. For this example, I’m going to use the weight loss market. Weight loss is a huge market, because there are always going to be people who are interested in losing weight.
I enter the keyword phrase “weight loss” in Market Samurai and find out that there are 818,630 searches per day!
That’s a lot of searches, and if you could get a first page listing on the search engine results page, you’d get a lot of traffic.
Let’s look at how much competition there is for “weight loss” – 65,200,000 sites. Over 65 million sites!
The main lesson here is to ALWAYS look at the competition you’re up against before you decide to use a keyword. Even though “weight loss” is very competitive, you can still enter the weight loss market. When I entered “weight loss” in Market Samurai, I got a list of 200 keywords and the competition for each one.
Looking through the list of keywords, I decided to look for the keywords that had less then 100,000 competing sites that still had a lot of searches each day. Here’s what I found:
- weight loss menus – 325 searches per day – competition of 14,400 sites
- weight loss meal plan – 595 searches per day – competition of 23,400 sites
- weight loss software – 266 searches per day – competition of 26,900 sites
- safe diet pills – 398 searches per day – competition of 45,800 sites
- fastest weight loss – 730 searches per day – competition of 62,300 sites
- rapid weight loss diet – 595 searches per day – competition of 80,600 sites
- weight loss patches – 398 searches per day – competition of 98,600 sites
These are just a few of the keyword phrases that came up, and they show that while there aren’t as many daily searches for these phrases, there is a LOT less competition. And a much better chance for you to use one or more of these key phrases to get traffic to your site.
Weight loss IS a competitive market, but it is also a market where people are spending a lot of money. You can still enter the market using related keywords that don’t have as much competition and will give you a much better chance of getting your web pages ranked well and driving traffic to your site.
Spend your time working with the keywords that you have a chance at ranking well for instead of trying to rank for the keywords that have the most searches. That way, you can still enter any market you’re interested in and start getting the free traffic you’re after.
The tool you use to do your keyword research is important as well. As you’ve already noticed, I use Market Samurai for my keyword research as well as all of the other features such as rank tracker, finding content, publishing content and much more. What you need to know is that the keyword module is ALWAYS free. Once the trial period is over, you can still use the keyword research part of Market Samurai forever. It’s a great tool to make keyword and competition research quick and easy. Get your copy by clicking here.
3 Powerful Ways To Add Subscribers To Your List
Jul 22nd
Have you been to a site recently that did NOT have an offer to join an email list? They are very rare, and for good reason. A list can be the most profitable part of your business. The problem for you is that with so many lists to subscribe to, how can you entice visitors to your opt-in page to subscribe to your list? Free subscriptions aren’t enough anymore, so you have to get creative.
What I want to focus on is getting new subscribers onto your list. The standard advice is to offer a bribe or freebie in exchange for someone entering their name and email address. It can be a report that you created, some plr report, a video, or software. Here are 3 ideas that you can use to get visitors to subscribe to YOUR list.
I’ve recently come across some other ways to get new subscribers, and in some cases making sure that your subscribers don’t leave.
1.Offer free stuff every day.
One smart marketer is taking advantage of the fact that PLR articles are in high demand. What he does is offer 20 PLR articles EVERY DAY in different niches, just for signing up for his list. So every day you get an email with a link to download the articles. The link sends you to a web site where you are presented with a pop-up ad for a product, as well as offers on the download page. You don’t have to buy anything, just download the articles.
He gets to continually put offers in front of his subscribers as long as they are willing to get the new articles. In addition, he also sends out seperate messages with offers in them. So you get 20 free articles every day, and he gets an opportunity to make offers to his subscribers. Looking at ads is a small price to pay to get free articles.
2. Offer header graphics for free.
Another marketer is offering something else that is very popular - free header graphics. With so many marketers searching for header graphics for their web pages, offering something that is in high demand that others pay good money for is sure to lure visitors to sign up for your list. Sign up for his list, and you’ll get a collection of header graphics you can use on your site.
3. Have a password protected subscriber area where you offer free downloads each month.
A list that I have been subscribed to for a long time has a subscriber only download area. Every month he load the subscriber area up with free download of software and free reports. Some of these come with resale rights. A lot of them are demo versions of a paid product. In every case, the free stuff is valuable on its own. To access the content, you get a new password each month in his weekly newsletter.
In addition to the product recommendations he includes in his newsletter, there are offers in the subscriber area as well, so he can profit while at the same time offering real value to his subscribers.
These marketers are good examples of how to offer a good incentive to get subscribers and how to keep them subsribed to your list. Do something a little different and you could see your list see some really good growth. To your success…
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How To Quickly Create Niche Blogs
Jul 10th
Finding profitable niches is the key to making profits. You start with market research to find what’s hot right now. Then you do your keyword research to make sure there is traffic in the niche. Create and upload your site and start promoting. The key to all of this is to get your sites created quickly.
The quickest and easiest way to do this is to use WordPress blogs to set up your niche sites. There are hundreds of free themes that you can choose from for your niche site. Every time you put up a new post, your blog will send out pings, or notifications to several sites, and you have a much better chance of getting your site listed in the search engines and getting traffic than you would if you used a standard web site.
Knowing what to do is a good start. What would be even better would be the information on how to do all the things you need to do to set up a niche site on WordPress that has the best chance at getting traffic. The information that I got hold of that actually showed me what to do was Niche Blog Advantage.
So what is Niche Blog Advantage? It’s a video training system that has over 8 hours of content covering the 4 steps you need to create these niche sites. And once you go through the system, you can have a site up in about an hour.
The first module is how to do market research. A lot of people make the mistake of doing keyword research first, get a list of high traffic keywords, and THEN go find a product to promote. Your first step is to find markets where there is a lot of demand AND where people are spending money. You’ll discover 8 different free sources where you’ll find enough profitable niche markets to keep you busy for a long time.
Module 2 is about doing keyword research using free tools. And you’ll know what to do with these keywords once you find them so you can get more free traffic to your niche web site. You’ll know what to do to effectively use these keywords, and what NOT to do with these keywords that can actually lower your rankings in the search engines.
Module 3 is where you see step by step how to set up your niche site. Once you go through module 3, you’ll know how to install WordPress, how to select a theme, and you’ll have all of the essential plugins you need along with instructions on how to set them up for maximum effect. In addition, you’ll get a list of the best ping sites to add to your WordPress blog so they will get notified every time you make a post. How to easily find the content you need for your site, and how to set up a network of highly profitable niche sites.
Module 4 is all about traffic, free traffic. You’ll learn about how to effectively use social bookmarking sites for backlinks, how to use on page SEO to get the search engines to get to the front page, how to effectively use articles to get the most traffic and backlinks from them, and more.
One of the biggest challenges that a lot of people face is getting their first site up. They may think that they need to spend a lot of money on tools, services and software to make any money online. Niche Blog Advantage will show you how to get your first site up in less than 2 hours and start to get traffic in a few days.
There’s no guarantee that you’ll make money by putting up niche sites, but one thing is certain. If you never get around to getting your sites up and getting traffic, you’ll never make any money. So go check out Niche Blog Advantage right now by clicking here…
Niche Marketing Is Here To Stay
Jul 3rd
Niche marketing is a hot topic, and niche marketing is going to be a popular way to make money for a long time. Focus on a smaller part of a larger market, get traffic, and make sales.
And that’s where a lot of new marketers make their big mistake. They do a little keyword research, see a market that has thousands of searches a month, and decide that they want to get some of that traffic. So they invest a lot of time and money into creating a site using these popular keywords and wait for the profit to roll in. And wait, and wait, and wait…
What some people fail to realize is that it is very difficult to enter a huge market and get their site listed on the first page of the search listings if they target the keywords with the most traffic. Their competition will outrank them in most cases.
When I mention huge markets, I’m talking about markets such as golf, dogs, video games, digital cameras, weight loss, cell phones, computers, software.
That’s where niche marketing comes in. Let’s first define what a niche market is:
A niche market is a subset of a larger market, a market that is made up of a narrower segment of a larger market.
Here’s a way to explain it. I decide that I want to enter the dog market. It’s huge and there are a lot of searches. Since it will be very difficult to get on the first page of the search results or the first page of adwords, I decide to select a segment of the dog market.
I decide that I will focus on selling dog collars. I’m still in the dog market, but since I’m selling dog collars, I will have less competition, and have a better chance of getting visitors to my site.
Or I decide that I want to sell digital cameras as an affiliate. Getting ranked for the term “digital cameras” is probably going to be hard and time-consuming. Instead, I focus on selling Fuji Digital Cameras. To narrow it down even more, I am going to select a popular model of Fuji digital cameras to target.
The whole point is to do your research so that you find markets that are profitable AND that are easier to compete in. This is also known as Niche Marketing. And that’s the reason that it is a hot topic right now, and will be for a very long time.
Instead of trying to jump into a huge market and try to compete with the big sites, narrow your focus on the areas of that market that you can more easily enter and profit from.
