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Are You A Squidooer?
Sunday, March 18th, 2007I have found Squidoo to be an excellent source of Traffic and indeed an increasing number of sales. I love the way you can easily create a Lens about any subject under the sun and make money for charities as well as yourself.
If you haven’t checked out Squidoo yet then you are really missing out! Take a look at Squidoo by clicking on that link!
Tiffany Dow is an expert on using Squidoo and her superb ebook Dominating Squidoo is the definitive work on the subject. She even has John Reese recommending her ebook as well as me! Gosh could she ask for more!
Tiff is currently running a Squidoo challenge which I am participating in and really enjoying. You can take a look at my Hair Loss Remedy Lens again by clicking on the link!
Top Homebased Business Idea - What You Need to Operate a Niche Marketing Site
Sunday, June 11th, 2006Top Homebased Business Idea
Before you can sit back and reap the rewards from operating your own niche marketing site, there are a few vital components necessary to create a successful and profitable website:
1) A Product or Service to Sell.
Not just any old product, you need to do a little research and find a hungry market. The secret to making money is to find out what problems people are facing and offer them unique solutions.
Don’t try to sell what every body else is, be unique. You need to stand out from the crowd by offering a better solution. Offering a cheaper solution doesn’t always work. Any product or service will have a perceived value to it; try to sell cheaper than that and people will wonder what’s wrong with it.
2) A Domain Name
Despite what people may think, a well worded catchy .com domain name will enhance your sales. It adds to the perceived value of your product or service.
There are many places to buy domain names and a simple search on any search engine will lead you to many of them. Many hosting packages will include a domain name for no extra cost.
3) Hosting
Before setting up the website on your domain you will need to join a hosting service. There are thousands of hosting services to choose from, and not all of them are reliable. Don’t be misled by price, there are many cheap reliable hosting services.
There are two basic types of hosting:
i) Shared Hosting - This is the cheapest hosting but your domain will be hosted with many others on the same server. When your website traffic is low, it makes sense to share the server resources and cost with other people.
ii) Dedicated Hosting - This is more expensive, but your domain is the only one hosted. When your website traffic increases beyond a certain point you will have to consider dedicated hosting.
When choosing a host, take note of their “uptime” which is often shown as a percentage. This is the proportion of time the host’s servers are working properly (i.e. your website will be online). Any host who claims to have a 99.99% uptime is lying to you.
4) Website
The type of website you decide to use will greatly affect your sales. The most important point is don’t confuse your visitors. If you want to sell a product, don’t offer them anything else, just the product.
A website with a single sales page will nearly always outsell a content website with many pages. The reason… a single sales page offers your visitor two choices, buy or leave. A multi-page website offers your visitor many options and confuses them; they will click to a few different pages and then leave without buying.
5) Good Sales Copy
This is the make or break of your niche marketing site. A sales page with poor copy will not sell very well.
Sales copy, what’s that?
Sales copy is the wording you use on your sales page. It encompasses:
- What types of words you use.
- The way you use the words.
- The layout of your page.
- How you present your product.
- Above all else, it explains how you customer will benefit from owning your product.
Writing good sales copy is a skill which most people do not possess. It is the area of a niche marketing site which will take up most of your time, and if you’re not prepared to study copy writing, is best contracted out to a professional.
6) Sales Processor
The one thing you don’t want to do with your niche marketing site is process sales manually. The internet doesn’t shut up shop for the night; it keeps going 24/7. If you process sales manually, you’ll be doing it at all sorts of odd hours.
To get around this you need to use an automated sales processor. This is simply a system that will automatically process credit cards on your behalf. Your customer simply enters their credit card details into a form and after these are successfully verified, they are sent to a webpage explaining how their order will be delivered.
7) Autoresponder
This is the only optional part of a niche marketing site. You don’t have to use autoresponders, but once a customer has purchased something from you they will be inclined to buy more from you. If you capture their contact details you will be able to tell them about future product launches, or fantastic special offers you have put together.
There are many autoresponder services available and even scripts you can purchase to install on your website. Before committing yourself to any particular provider, do a little research. Forums are a great place to learn who are the best or cheapest.
Top Homebased Business Idea
Top Homebased Business Idea - Explode Your Website Traffic With Simple Niche Articles
Tuesday, June 6th, 2006Top Homebased Business Idea
For your internet business to be successful, you need to get large amounts of targeted traffic to your website, and internet marketers have found some pretty ingenious ways of driving targeted traffic to their websites, including pay-per-click campaigns, SEO (search engine optimization), email marketing and ezine advertising. Many marketers, however, have neglected a simple top quality method of driving traffic to their sites: writing short 400 word articles and submitting them so they appear all over the internet.
Don’t be mislead into thinking this is a waste of time, having your articles appear on lots of different websites helps you in two major ways:
1) Each article provides a link back to your website. If the content of the article matches the content of the web page you set the article link to, the search engines will deem this a relevant link. The more relevant links you get to your website, the higher it will be ranked in the search engines. The higher your site is ranked in the search engines, the more traffic you will receive.
2) People who use the search engines are looking for information, and if they come across one of your articles, and while reading the article find the content interesting and helpful, they will be inclined click on the link to your website so they can continue their research. The more places you can find to display your articles, the more people will find and read them and the more traffic you will get to your website.
What should your articles consist of? Nothing fancy, each article should be around 400 words long and contain just enough content to:
- Give the reader some useful information.
- Interest an ezine editor enough to want to publish your article.
- Get the readers interest raised to the point they want to click on the link to your website to get more information.
Your article could be:
- One or two tips lifted from the info product you are selling from your website.
- Paraphrased information from a particular web page you would like the reader to visit.
- A review of a product you would like the reader to purchase. The link in a review would point to your affiliate page via a link tracker, or to a page on your website where you offer more details.
You don’t even have to write your own articles… You can pay a ghost writer to write them for you. To do this, visit websites like Elance.com where you can list details of the articles you want written and find people who are interested in writing them for you. Make it quite clear to the person who writes your articles that you keep the copyright.
Once you have your article ready for distribution, you need to submit to as many places as possible, including these three places:
1. Article Directories. After a quick content check, the directories will then publish your article instantly, and once you submit your content to one of these directories it will begin to be republished all over the internet. People are constantly on the lookout for quality articles, and you can allow them the rights to re-use yours as long as they leave intact the link back to your website contained in the bio at the bottom of the article. Anyone who wants to visit your site can do so by clicking on this link.
2. Ezine Editors. Submitting your articles to popular ezines related to your niche website will get you lots of well-targeted traffic. Many ezines desperately need new good quality content. If you submit an article for publication in one, you will get a lot of publicity in return. Having hundreds or even better, thousands of people reading your articles is always a good way to increase your website traffic.
3. Your Own Article Directory. Many webmasters and ezine publishers don’t know that article directories exist. After reading one of your articles they will visit your website and you should prominently display a link to your own articles. The link must make the reader aware that you content is free for use in any website or ezine. For example, use the wording “Get Free Content For Your Ezine” in a link in a very noticeable place on your website.
Top Homebased Business Idea
