Hi
Gang,
Thanks for
being here, I value every one of you
and truly hope that you become successful online!
I was reminded
this week that one of the biggest road blocks for newbies
to get started in an online business stems from believing
that they aren't able to learn the necessary technology
in order to build a web site.
As I said
in last edition, I am re-designing this site with a new
look and adding content and tools for your use. In working
on this re-design, I've had to brush off the Dreamweaver
"How To" manual and learn a few new things about
HTML.
I recall
being a newbie and how daunting the whole web publishing
task seemed to be...having to learn about web page structures,
FTP uploads, HTML tricks, linking tactics, etc., seemed
impossible.
But, if you
stick with it, and are really in this for the long term,
one day you will be able to look back and laugh at how
little you knew "then" and how much you know
"now". The key to this is perseverance and the
humility that you should have when you realize that, as
an online marketer, you should never stop learning.
Try to learn
something new every day!
2 Free Resources
1.
If you haven't gone to Mark
Hendrick's Vault, you should take a look.
There's lots of no cost resources for
you to download.
Mark's
Vault
2.
Clickalyzer's Instant
Affiliate Program - This software will allow
you to set up and track affiliates so you can make more
sales. Another solid product from Clcikalyzer. I use Clickalyzer
to track stats, see which pages are popular, how long
visitors stay on certain pages, see which pages work and
which don't etc. Its a great tracking tool.
Warning!
Some marketers will try to sell you this tracking software
from "Clickalyzer", don't pay for it.
I am choosing to give it away to you for FREE...I
value you as a member of this web site!
Get Clickalyzer's
Instant
Affiliate Program here at no cost. Once you sign up,
you will be given the code to use on your web site to
track your affiliates.
This edition
is of average length and has solid content...you'll be
glad you took the time to read it.
There's
2 articles in this edition and an intro with 1 part: Seeking
JV's.
Enjoy the
issue!
Once again,
thanks for being here, your membership to this e-zine
is what matters most to me as an Internet marketer.
"The Regular
Guy"
Karl Augustine
P.S. Webmasters:
If your site is complementary
sites to 9 Mistakes Online and would like to exchange
links, please go to the "Add URL"
link at the bottom of all pages of this site. I'll be
happy to exchange links with you. Thanks.
In
this edition of "Starting
Smart!"
*Intro
by Karl, 1 topic - Seeking JV's.
*Featured Article #1: "How
You Can Get A Free Enhanced Listing in Yahoo With Your
RSS Feed" Copyright 2004 Tinu AbayomiPaul
*Remember to get your Viral tools to boost traffic to
your web site and make money at the same time.
*Featured
Article #2: "Niche
Marketing: Tactics to Use To Make Money With Niche Marketing"
Copyright 2004 Karl Augustine
*Welcome new subscribers!
*Copyright and Publisher Info
Intro
by Karl...
1.
Seeking JV's.
Joint Ventures
are a terrific way to get targeted traffic to your web
site quickly. The traffic is generally 'pre-qualified'
since ideally the list owner promoting the product has
a complementary USP to the developer of the product.
Be careful
when assessing whether a product is worth promoting to
your list, do your homework. Just because a product is
quality doesn't mean that your subscribers will need it
or want it.
You can read
about evaluating 'conversion rates' when evaluating JV's
in another edition of "Starting Smart!" here
---> Conversion
Rates
There has
been lots of opinions about how someone with a product
should approach potential JV partners. Some say that you
should send an email 1st, then call, then send a FED EX
package with a hard copy of the product to the list owner
and potential JV partner. All of these steps may be valid.
but I can't see how getting a FED EX package sent your
office automatically denotes a quality JV proposal...it
is certainly a good way to get the potential JV partner
to take notice of your product, but it is merely a follow
up strategy rather than a MUST.
Here's
some general rules for seeking a JV partner:
1. Be courteous
in your intro email and evaluate whether or not you should
send your product in the intro email. Sometimes it makes
sense to do this, it depends on what market your product
caters to and who may find it useful.
2. Follow
up softly and call the list owner if you can to discuss
his/her business and how you feel your product may fit
within their USP. Remember, the list is the prize possession
of any Internet marketer...don't pre-suppose that you
know that your product will be beneficial to a potential
JV partners list, they will make that decision, not you.
If you
have been subscribed to "Starting Smart!"
for any length of time, you know this is true in my
view. I never send any email to you
promoting any product if I haven't read or used it myself
and have seen first hand results that have benefited
me.
3. Be honest,
don't send ridiculous metrics around conversion rates
in such a way that it sounds like those rates are fixed.
Conversion rates in a JV proposal are nothing more than
a selling tool, they in no way guarantee anything because
you most likely won't know what the origin of the traffic
was that resulted in the conversion rates.
4. Remember
that you will make online acquaintances even if some of
the list owners don't take you up on the JV proposal.
It is still worth your time to get to know those Internet
marketers.
Side
note: If you'd like to do a JV, go ahead and
send me an email. I don't care if you send a hard copy
to me in a FED EX box, I care about what the product
is and how it may benefit anyone with an online business.
Its the product that matters, not the
package that it gets delivered in to me!
"Product"
- Includes the actual product, the sales copy, the delivery
to the purchaser, the customer service, the reputation,
the proven benefits of the product, etc.
Enjoy the
rest of this edition and thanks again for reading.
Karl Augustine
"The Regular Guy"
(c) Karl Augustine
*Featured
Article:
"How
You Can Get A Free Enhanced Listing in Yahoo With Your
RSS Feed" Copyright
2004 Tinu AbayomiPaul
Last week, I cheated on
my long-time lover Google, with my old boyfriend Yahoo.
And ever since that day, I have considered becoming
a bigamist.
(To full understand what
that crazy drivel was about read my last article about
how to get your RSS feed listed at Yahoo within hours
- in 5 simple steps here:
http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/rssyahoo
.)
Today, I decided to go
ahead and break the law - Yahoo is my new other husband.
What am I talking about,
and what does this mean for your site?
When I first discovered
that you could get into Yahoo’s RSS Feed directory so
quickly, I started making a lot of observations about
their site. The first thing I noticed is that they made
some subtle changes to their search page. That same
day, I noticed that certain sites have more information
in their listings than others.
Try this search at Yahoo
for example "Get Your RSS Feed Listed Within Hours",
quotes and all.
Scroll through the results.
Notice for search results number 7 - www.marketingproductreview.com
and number 8 www.searchenginejournal.com - the link
for a searcher to add your feed from search results
is right on the page.
If you're an RSS user,
you get the power of this already.
Just in case you're not,
lemme spell it out for ya....
Thanks to Yahoo, people
won't even have to go to your site to add you to their
Yahoo page, if you have the right Meta Tag in your site's
header.
And if they don’t use the
My Yahoo page to track their feeds? They’ve been kind
enough to include a link to your XML link as well.
How do I know this works?
Do another search for need
free traffic - without the quotes this time. Scroll
down to search result number four - see the
one with the feed links?
That’s my site.
Not only did this work,
apparently it only takes a few days from submitting
your feed. I added this simple code to my site header
on the 6th of July. I noticed another traffic increase
to my site on the 8th, and I couldn’t figure it out,
which led me to check the listings in Yahoo that had
sent me the traffic.
How did I do this? I added
a simple Meta Tag called RSS Auto Discovery
to my site.
It’s very simple to use.
Here’s what it looks like:
< !-- RSS Autodiscovery
-- >
< link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="RSS"
href="http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/members/backend.ph
p" / >
<br>Just replace my RSS feed link with your own,
and add
the tag to the header of your site.
About the Author:
Tinu? Normally a forthcoming
woman, her free traffic mental affliction prevented
her from telling you the *most* important thing about
the RSS Auto-disovery tag.
http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/yes2yahoo
| Webmasters:
Feel free to publish
any article that I have written to your web site.
To get a list of articles
that are "publishable",
click below - new browser
Karl's
Articles You Can Publish |
Get
your Viral Tools Here!
Viral marketing
does work!
Get your 2
free re-brandable books and increase traffic to your website
and make money at the same time. It only takes a couple
of minutes!
Give these books
away as free gifts to your list.
To get both
re-brandable versions of the mini version of "9 Deadly
Mistakes..." send a blank email to:
brand9
@ getresponse.com with no spaces
of course :)
*Featured
Article #2:
Niche Marketing:
Tactics To Use To Make Money With Niche Marketing" Copyright
2004, Karl Augustine
Niche
marketing has always been a key any success in
marketing but lately it has become quite a prominent force
in the online marketing world. Many books, manuals, courses,
and web sites have been developed that focus on niche
marketing. It is easy to find solid resources on the Internet
that can teach you how to make money with niche
marketing.
Niche
marketing online is a distinct segment of Internet
marketing and is the quickest way to get maximum exposure
if you know how to leverage the search engines to draw
attention to your niche web site.
There's
many things to learn to be successful and profit from
niche marketing and your USP (Unique
Selling Proposition) will dictate exactly how to plan
your attack to successfully market to customers in your
niche.
If you plan to use niche marketing to
draw visitors to your web site, here's a few tactics that
you can use to make money:
Niche Marketing Tactic #1, "Research"
Fully utilize
all of the research mechanisms that you
can find in order to make sure that you truly understand
your niche and all of its nuances. This requires understanding
what tools are best to use so you can understand what
your target niche market does day to day, where they spend
their time online, and what makes them tick from a personal
and business perspective.
Niche
Market Research is a fantastic service and offers
free reports and articles to help you make the most of
your research time.
Niche Marketing Tactic #2, "Define
your paying niche"
Clearly
define who will make up your niche market and make sure
that the people in that niche market are willing to pay
for the solution that you provide to their problems.
A niche is
a clear subset of a larger category.
An
example of what a niche market is not: "People
who want to learn how to shoot better scores in golf."
In this
example, there are far too many people within the main
category (golf) to make this a true niche. Virtually everyone
who plays golf will want to play better and shoot better
scores so this wouldn't qualify as a niche, much less
a category worth pursuing.
An
example of a niche market: "Women who play
golf who want to learn how to drive the ball longer and
straighter."
This would
be a niche because it clearly defines and segments who
you'll cater to and why they would need your service.
After clearly
defining your niche market, you should make sure that
they are willing to pay for your services. The easiest
way to determine this in the online world (other than
using common sense) is to find web sites that may be close
to, or even in your niche, and see if those web sites
charge a fee for their services.
In addition,
you should look to see if there is a reasonable level
of competition between those web sites. If you see more
than a few sites listed on a SERP (Search Engine Result
Page) that cater to female golfers for a fee, chances
are the people who are your target customer will pay for
your services for solving their problem - women who can't
consistently hit long straight drives in golf.
Niche Marketing Strategy #3, "Choosing
keywords and domain names"
Research
and choose your keywords carefully so you can acquire
the best domain name for your site. Niche marketing
most often includes maximizing the way search engines
work to make sure that your web site gets listed on the
first page of the SERP's from your chosen keywords. Your
domain name contributes to getting those first page results.
Go to Digitalpoint's
keyword suggestion tool and type in keywords that
you feel people would use to find the product or service
that you offer within your niche. Look at the number of
searches performed per day for those keywords and review
the other keywords listed.
Type the
keyword phrase that you think best suits your USP's target
customer into Google and assess whether or not you can
reasonably compete with the sites that are listed on page
1 of the SERPs. Can you get a page 1 ranking knowing that
you'll have to compete with the sites already listed?
Repeat the
process until you have decided what your main keywords
will be for your product or service within your niche.
Those keywords
should be in your domain name and preferably, they should
be your entire domain name.
Example:
if you've concluded that 'blue widgets' best suits your
USP and you feel that you can compete for page 1 listings
on the SERPs with the sites that come up on page 1 for
the keyword 'blue widgets', then a good domain name for
your niche marketing site would be 'bluewidgets.com'.
Niche Marketing Tactic #4, "Posting
keyword rich articles or reports throughout the web"
Niche
marketing doesn't differ from any other online
search engine marketing, posting relevant content
is the best way (bar none) to get the right type of traffic
to your niche site.
Writing keyword
rich articles or reports and posting them to high traffic
web sites is a great way to make sure that you get maximum
exposure within your niche market. People will use your
keywords to search for information about the topic that
they have interest in, and they will come across your
web site on the search engines results.
To learn
how to write articles that are optimized for the search
engines for better rankings, go to Article
Optimization.
Niche
marketing caters to a distinct and select group
of people who need what you have to offer. If you
define your niche properly and make sure that your ability
to solve their problem is something that they will pay
for, you will have established a "money maker".
Utilize
the search engines to make it easy for your niche market
to find your service or product. Niche marketing
is the easiest way to be successful on the Internet if
you do the proper research.
Be humble,
work hard, work smart.
Karl
Augustine
Niche
Marketing
Webmasters:
To get a copy of this article emailed to you for publication
on your web site, send a blank email to:
nichemarketingart AT getresponse.com
Featured
resource - Niche Marketing:
Priya Shah has written an
excellent book about niche marketing. The case studies
a step by step guides that Priya delivers regarding getting
top listings for your chosen keywords is "dead on".
I know these tactics work
because I have implemented them myself for my other site
and have gotten top listings for many of my chosen keywords
to dominate my niche. (Check out SEO
Exert Interview to see proof).
Priya's book "Number
1 In Your Niche" is a must read if you want
a fast track to dominating your niche!
I have read the book and
used the information in the book to profit handsomely
from a specific niche. This eBook is a must read.
Click
here to read more about "Number
One In Your Niche!"
*Welcome
New Subscribers!
For those of you just joining,
welcome!
Your time is valuable
and I'll do my level best to make this "read"
time well spent. I am just a regular guy, just like many
of you out there. I stuck with it, and now am having a
blast doing what I love to do. Keep a positive attitude
and you can do just about anything...seems like old news,
but it works and we all can use a little reminding now
and then.
Please forward this e-zine
in its entirety to any friends or colleagues who you think
may find it useful. Or, refer someone by using the Bravenet
button at the bottom of the page.
Thanks for helping
us grow!
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newsletter
http://www.9mistakes-online.com/startingsmartnewsletter.htm
