Saturday, February 25, 2012

Blogging 101

If writing is an art, then, blogging is one way of using words to come up with an art. This is because people who are into blogging are the ones who are artistic on their own sense, carefully choosing words that would best describe their feelings, sentiments, wishes, desires, and everything.Basically, blogs were first introduced as weblogs that refer to a “server’s log file.” It was created when web logging hit the virtual market. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web logging gradually saturated the virtual community making the Internet a viable source of greater information.However, with web logging, you still need a web site and domain names, but with blogging, you do not need anything just an account with blog providers. In most cases, these kinds of blogs are free of charge.With the onset of blogging in the industry, personal journaling had been a common ground for people who wish to be known all over the world. However, not literally famous as this is not a case on being popular or well-known personality.Generally, blogs are created for personal use. Like a journal, people can write their daily adventures, sentiments, and whatever ideas they want to express online.Nevertheless, with the advent of the online businesses, blogs had gradually taken the limelight in providing businesses a chance to boost their productivity online. This is where the business blogs have taken the limelight.Business blogs are, basically, created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or online business in order to increase online sales.Moreover, business blogs are also one way of promoting the company so that the other readers will know that a certain company exists online. With blogs, entrepreneurs are able to establish a name in the virtual market through articles that can be very useful in the reader’s life.From there, you can make money out of blogs by simply syndicating it to your business’ web site. This can be done through the RSS technology.So, if you are thinking to create a blog, whether for business or for pleasure, you need to know some tips that could help you get through and make your blog one of the interesting blogs online.Here’s how:1. Consider your audienceEven if your blog is generally personal, still, it would be better to consider the minds of your readers. You have to think of something that would interest them.After all, most of the reasons of people who write blogs are not at all confined to their own personal motives. Most of them would love to be “heard” (or read) and would love to be known, in some way or another, even for just a minute. Hence, it is very important to come with a write up that everybody can understand, not necessarily that these people can relate to it but they can understand it.2. Pictures speaks a thousand wordsTo make your blogging worth the browsing effort of your readers, it would be extremely nice if you will put some pictures in it. It does not necessarily mean you have to place a picture of yourself. Any photographs will do as long as it does not pose danger or insult to anyone who will be reading your blog.3. Make constructive and beneficial blogsEven if you are free to write anything you wan to say to the world, still, it would be better to create some write-ups that would be beneficial to your readers.After all, its information technology that you have there so better be inclined to provide information rather than sheer quirky entertainment.4. Avoid making multifaceted and complicated blogsIn order to have an interesting blogs, try not to use some highly technical and highfalutin words. After all, it is not a science discourse or a debate that you are making, so better stick to simple facts and short blogs.Bear in mind that most people who use the Internet usually do more scanning than scrutinizing each site word for word. Therefore, it would be better to come with blogs that will not bore your readers just because you have these lengthy articles.5. Make it interactiveAs much as possible and if your capacity will allow it, make your blog interactive. Yu can do this by placing some video or audio clips in your blog.You can even place an area for comments or for some feedbacks. In this way, you can get some impressions or reactions of other people. Who knows, you might even gain some friends just by making them feel at home in your blog site. Indeed, blogs are not created just for the mere fun of it. It also has its own purpose in the world of the Internet. Therefore, for people who wish to harness their craft, as far as writing is concerned, blogs are the best way to do it. As they say, blogging is the contemporary term of creative and commercial writing.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Why Start Your Own Membership Site

Setting up a membership site is a highly popular business model for both internet marketers and business owners alike. Here are just some of the reasons why you should seriously consider adding a membership site to your online business, no matter which niche you are in.

There are many different membership models to choose from and it is easy to pick one that will fit both your business style and your markets needs. Do some research within your niche to see what other membership sites are available. It will help you decide on your price point and what you like and don't like about existing memberships so that you can create your own accordingly.

One of the greatest advantages of having a monthly membership site is that you can expect a regular income each month from that membership site. This can be a huge weight off your mind as many internet marketers can't guarantee their income from month to month. It is also adding extra monthly profits to your business.

Another advantage about starting a membership site, you don't have to have all the content ready for the full duration of the membership. The important thing is to get the first months content created and then you can launch the membership site and create the rest of the content later. With the income from the launch you can even pay someone to create the content for you which frees you up to do more promotion of your membership site.

If you already have content created in the form of articles, reports, ebooks, videos or software you can use a membership site to repurpose that content. Rather than selling it as one package you can drip feed the content over several months and charge accordingly.

When choosing the best membership model for your business you will want to keep things as simple as possible. The simpler you set things up, the less headaches you will get later on. There are fixed continuity programs, which basically means that the length of membership is fixed. This type of membership is great if you want to set it up, fill in all the content and then leave it as it doesn't require too much effort to maintain the site. Another membership model is nano membership sites, where you charge a very low monthly fee but there is no end date to the membership. Within this model you could have discounts to your main products and services available only to paying members.

Having a membership site also allows you to market your own and affiliate offers within the membership site too. Offer a quality membership with lots of value to your members and it will be the best business decision you've ever made.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Why building your mailing list is important

Ask any successful internet marketer and they will tell you "the money is in the list". By list, they mean their mailing list, those who have opted in to receive emails from that particular marketer. It may seem obvious to those who have been online for any length of time, but there are many websites who do not have any way of capturing visitors email addresses on their website. This means they are missing out on earning a lot more profit, for very little extra effort.

You may have heard the terms "cold list" and "warm list". A cold list is a list of subscribers who haven't been contacted in a long time, so their response to any emails would be low. However, a warm list is when the list owner has been regularly contacting their list, interacting with them and offering them a reason to stay subscribed to that list.

Having a warm list is very important, not only does it mean that any offer or call to action you send out will be given a better response, but it also means that your conversion rates will be higher. Your conversion rate is the number who actually buy or take action, divided by the total number of subscribers you send the email to. After you've had your list for a while you should know what your conversion rate is for different mailings. Knowing this information will tell you how profitable each new subscriber will be to you, as well as existing subscribers. This is the main reason building a mailing list is important, once you know what your conversion rate is, you can almost guarantee how much money you will make each time you send out a sales email.

To keep a list warm there are some things you should do, namely build trust with your list. Let your list know a bit about you, be approachable and send quality, non-sales information regularly and only sprinkle in sales emails and affiliate offers. Be trustworthy about the offers that you send out, never promote junk offers just to make a few bucks. Think long term profits from your list rather than quick profits that could ruin your long term future.

Unfortunately some internet marketers after hearing that the money is in the list, start to spam their lists with offer after offer hoping for that big pay day. It is very easy for your subscribers to unsubscribe and chances are they will never resubscribe either and it's your reputation on the line.

There are numerous ways to build your mailing list and it is important to note that by testing and measuring which methods bring the most opt-ins, you can create a highly effective list building strategy which you will profit from for years to come.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

3 Tips in Using PLR Articles

There are many ways that you can use plr, here are just 3 tips on using plr articles for maximum benefit.

1. Rewrite the article for article directories and web 2.0 websites.

Often getting started writing content can be stressful so using a plr article as a starting point can take away that stress. As there will be other people using the same plr article as you, it's a good idea to rewrite the article before using it so that it becomes unique to you, as the author. There are many different article spinning softwares on the market and once you've rewritten the article you can put it through this software to get many more versions of the article that you can use. You can then use this as content for your own site, article directories and all the different web 2.0 websites that you may be using to create backlinks to your main website.

2. Combine the plr articles into reports

If you have plr articles on the same subject, you can easily put them together, in a logical order and create a short report from it. With this report you can use it as a promotional tool to give away to new opt-ins subscribing to your mailing list, submit it to document sharing websites or sell it to your mailing list and site visitors. Before you do this, it's often a good idea to edit some of the content and personalise it so that it has your voice. Another great way to personalise it, is to create an ecover for it with your branding. Adding graphics is a great idea, you can also add related photos and images within the report to make it even more unique to you. There are lots of image sites online to find just the right images for the job.

3. Repurpose the plr article into a video

You may find that there are hundreds of people using the same plr article as you, this is especially true when using free plr articles. One way to get extra mileage out of these articles is to turn them into videos. By creating videos out of your articles you can then submit them to the many video directories available online and get more viewers for your article as well as creating backlinks to your website. It is very easy to create a video from an article by inserting the article into a PowerPoint presentation and recording the screen show with software such as Camtasia. Another way to create your video is by using one of the many video to article software applications that you can easily find online.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

How to Monetize a Wordpress Website

If you thought that selling your own products and services was the only way to monetize your WordPress website then you are in for a treat. There are many ways to monetize your site and add extra income streams that will effectively make you money while you sleep! WordPress makes it very easy to monetize your website just by installing a few appropriate plugins. It's so easy that you could get set up in less than 10 minutes.

The simplest way to monetize a WordPress website is to add an advertising plugin such as Ad Squares Widget which allows you to place affiliate banners in your sidebar or anywhere else on your template which allows widgets. Make sure that the banners you choose to appear on your website are complimentary to the existing content of your website and something that your target market would be interested in buying. Once you've had your banners up for at least a month, it's a good idea to work out which affiliate banners are bringing in the most cash from your website. Many website owners stick with the same banners all the time, even although they don't attract any clicks and purchases, be smart about it and only have banners that are actually giving you an extra income.

Many internet marketers choose to also install a Google Adsense plugin so that their ads are specific to each pages content. There are many different places within your website that you can place these blocks including the header, before and after content and within the sidebar, however you are only allowed a maximum of three ad blocks per page. When setting up your adsense channels track which ads are giving you the most revenue, change the size and placement of ads to find the combination that gives you the maximum income possible for your website.

Pay per view is another option for monetizing your website. There are several plugins that will allow your visitor to view a limited amount of a blog post and in order to read more, they need to pay a small fee. You can also use the pay per view method for videos as well, this works well if you have created a training website with many how to videos or content posts.

A step up from the pay per view model is the membership site. These are becoming more and more popular with website owners. If creating fresh monthly content puts you off then you can create a one time payment membership site, with no pressure to add regular fresh content. There are many different membership models to suit every business within every niche that you can copy if you decide to monetize your website by creating a membership site.

These are just a few ways that you can monetize your WordPress website, implement these ideas today and you could be profiting from them in no time at all.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Why you need a facebook fan page?

There are many reasons why you need a Facebook fanpage for your business and here are just a few of them.

Facebook has over 500 million active users and if you have a local business, the majority of people within your local area will have a Facebook account. Having a fanpage is free advertising for you and it's a great way to keep in touch with your customers, using the platform that they are using regularly. If you are looking to expand your business into new markets and areas then having a fanpage can help you do this too. Facebook by it's nature encourages viral marketing, which means your information is easily shared with others which is even more appealing.

You can easily link your Facebook fanpage to your website, as well as your website to your fanpage and cross promote each other. Facebook makes it very easy to connect the two, allowing your website visitors to join your fanpage from your website as well as fans from your fanpage to click through to your website.

In order to become a fan of your fanpage they need to "like" your page. This is a little button on the top of your fanpage with the word like on it. That triggers Facebook to start showing the content that you create on your wall to show up on your new fans newsfeed. Facebook gives this information the opportunity to go viral very easily. What this means is that when it appears on your fans newsfeed they can "like" the information you have just shared, which then lets all their friends see that they've liked your status. Even better is when a fan shares your status. Sharing your status puts your information on their wall so that their friends can see it in it's entirety.

Like many other business owners you may just be using Facebook for personal use and don't want to mix your business life with your personal one. That's great because this is the whole point of Facebook fanpages. Having a fanpage allows you to post comments and network as your business rather than with your personal account.

With a Facebook fanpage you can install different applications to help you interact with your fans. You can encourage your fans to leave comments or testimonials for others to see, create events, competitions, give updated information, start discussions, share photos and videos, import your blog posts, the list is endless. Also for the more technical amongst you, you can create a "reveal tab" which is a hidden tab within your fanpage. The reveal tab is only visible to people who have liked your page. It's a great way to incentivize people to like your page because behind your reveal tab you can have links to free reports or videos, discount codes, fan only competitions etc.

Facebook fanpages are the online version of word of mouth advertising. Hopefully you don't need anymore reasons why you need a Facebook fanpage and get started with yours today.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

What Is Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. New sites need not be "submitted" to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.

Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.