自由门软件下载无网界浏览

自由门6.77下载

2008-10-06T02:40:00.000-07:00

自由门6.77下载

自由门6.76下载

2008-10-06T02:39:00.000-07:00

自由门6.76软件下载地址:
自由门6.76专业版下载

自由门6.75下载

2008-10-06T02:35:00.000-07:00

自由门6.75下载地址:
自由门6.75增强版下载
自由门6.75专业版下载

自由之门6.75下载

2008-10-06T01:40:00.000-07:00

自由门6.75增强版下载
自由之门6.75下载

自由之门最新版下载-自由之门6.8软件下载

2008-10-06T01:36:00.000-07:00

自由之门最新版下载:
自由之门6.8软件下载

无界自由门下载地址-自由门7.0下载

2008-10-06T01:29:00.000-07:00

自由门最新版本下载:
自由门7.0下载

自由门最新版下载-自由门6.8

2008-10-06T01:13:00.000-07:00

最新自由门6.8下载地址:
自由门6.8软件下载

自由门软件下载-自由门6.7下载

2008-10-06T00:57:00.000-07:00

自由门6.7专业版下载地址:

最新自由门6.7正式版免费下载

无网界浏览器 9.4下载

2008-08-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

无网界浏览器 9.4是基于微软浏览器（ IE ）的全透明超高度加密代理。用户就象使用一般微软浏览器（ IE ）一样浏览任意网站，无网界浏览器 9.4在后台自动寻找最快速的代理服务器，并在整个过程中对所有浏览的内容进行超高程度的加密传输.在无网界浏览器 9.4一经启动，一切通过微软浏览器（ IE ）的网上浏览都是在无界浏览的超高加密保护下.

无网界浏览器 9.4实现了用户使用互联网的所要求的几乎所有基于 HTTP 的功能，如浏览各种网页，论坛上帖，网页注册，使用网页电邮 (Webmail) 、数据上下传输，声音、图像、动画和电影的实时播放和下载，等等。无网界浏览器启动时打开的微软浏览器（ IE ）会显示无界网络主页，用户也可自己打开微软浏览器（ IE ）浏览自己选择的网页。

无网界浏览器 9.4目前只支持微软浏览器（ IE ）和在微软浏览器基础上改制的各种浏览器，其它浏览器，如 Netscape, Mozilla, Opera 等，目前还不支持。如果用户手动将这些浏览器的代理设置为 127.0.0.1:9666, 或按照无网界浏览器 9.4用户界面上显示的端口号进行设定。用户就可以使用这些浏览器借助无网界浏览9.4访问网页了。

Log Analyzer

2007-05-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

If you don't analyze the log, you'll never know if you are making money or not.

1.reviews for Awsats

Price: free
Pros:
AWStats is a well developed log analyzer. This can show you many different kinds of stats, unique visitors, viewed pages, screen sizes, and you name it.

AWStats is also very configurable log analyzer. I have English and Japanese version of web pages. Both versions' activities are logged in one file, but awstats can analyze those activities separately.

AWStats runs on the server as CGI script. Once you schedule the updating task, it will run automatically. Just visit where you install AWStats and check already analyzed stats.

Cons:
You cannot use AWStats for marketing analysts. AWStats doesn't show you click trails. (It only shows you stats of entry and exit pages.) You won't be able to know if a particular traffic source or ad campaign is profitable or not.

Installation of AWStats is far more difficult than double clicking on an icon. AWStats is written in Perl, and no installer is available.

There is no Graphical User Interface for configuring AWStats. You have to open configure file in a text editor and type the commands manually. If you mistype, AWStats won't work.

No support is available. User manual and online forum are the only help you will get. Furthermore, you need some technical knowledge to comprehend the user manual.

2.reviews for ClickTracks

price:
$495 for software
$49/month for hosted version

pros:

ClickTracks is one of few log analyzer which can show you click trails, so you will be able to find out which marketing effort made profits.

One unique thing about this analyzer is "Visitor Labeling." ClickTracks can show you the stats which only includes the labeled visitors. If you label visitors who bought your products, you will see how buyers (not all visitors) browsed on your site, such as where they were come from, and what page they saw. You can label any group of visitors, so this feature can be used many different ways.

Moreover, ClickTracks downloads your pages and displays what percent of visitors clicked on a particular link next to each link on the page. Even though several links point to the same page, ClickTracks can differentiate the links. (You need to ad different query string, page1.html?abc, to the links.)

ClickTracks is also configurable log analyzer. Like awstats, ClickTracks can show the stats of English and Japanese version of stats separately, even though those activities are logged in one file.

ClickTracks has built in unzipping utility. (Supported formats are tar, gz, and zip.) Once you tell ClickTracks where the file is, ClickTracks downloads the file, unzip it, and then analyzes the log automatically.

cons:

If you buy software version, every time you want to update the stats, you have to download log file from the server. If you live in where broad band internet connection isn't available, downloading log file may be a pain in your neck.

If you sign up for hosted version, you have to insert a few lines of JavaScript on EVERY page of your Website. And, the JavaScript may increase your web pages' loading time.

You cannot delete part of stats, i.e. deleting stats before March 31 and keeping stats from April 1 to today. (You can delete entire stats, though.) If you don't delete the stats, the database grows as you analyze new log file. But, considering capacity of today's PC's hard drive, growing size of database might not be a problem. This won't be a problem if you sign up for hosted version. They take care of growing database.

Test First, and then Keep Testing

2007-05-02T15:22:00.000-07:00

You have made your own web site, and you are satisfied with your work. Your site is up, so now it's time to make money! Well..., slow down a bit. Before spending big bucks on advertising, let's test your web site. You may be in love with your site, but that doesn't mean web surfers will love it, too.

Your Very First Test
Testing your web site is much easier than the final exams you took in school. First, you have to be able to track your visitors because how visitors browse your site can tell you its strengths and weaknesses. For your initial testing, your server's log file is sufficient, but you will eventually need some sort of visitor tracking software or service.

Once you have figured out how to track you visitors, buy some cheap ad space. Your first ad doesn't have to produce heavy traffic to your site. If it generates 30-50 visitors, that's fine. More than 90% of visitors (those who actually come to your site, not those who see your ad) should view pages on your site other than your home page, and 40-50% of them should subscribe to your newsletter. If these numbers are too low on your site, there is something wrong with your site. Before going to any farther, you must correct the problems. Once you get good numbers, you are finally ready to roll.

Keep Testing
That's not the end; that's just the beginning. You can test almost every step in running your business. For example, you can test your ad copy. You can run one ad in an inexpensive but targeted location, and see how it turns out. If it turns out good, use that ad copy. If it doesn't, revise the copy and test it again. You can even run more than one ad at a time using different copy for each ad. Testing may sound like too much work, but just think how many extra sales you will make with better ad copy.

A Tip
A "?" can be very handy for getting accurate tracking results. Suppose your URL is "www.yoururl.com" and you want to track ads to see how much traffic they are sending to you. Instead using "www.yoururl.com" for the link, use "www.yoururl.com/?123" or "www.yoururl.com/index.html?123". Anyone who clicks that link will still see your home page, www.yoururl.com, but your log counts that visit as a hit to "www.yoururl.com/?123". You can tell where visitors come from by the codes after "?". You can code any combination of any letters and numbers after the "?" for each ad. You just need to keep track of which code represents which ad campaign.

Testing takes time, but the test results help you pinpoint any problems. If you don't know you have a problem, you can't do anything with it. Instead of increasing, your profit will decrease.

Let testing be your habit. When you work with the problem, you can improve your business. You won't make the same mistake again and again.

Analyzing Log Files for Profit

2007-05-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

You might already know the importance of analyzing server logs, but not all log analyzers are suitable for business use.

Problem
Once you own a business, you should figure out the profit, and make sure your business is always profitable. Let's say you bought two $100 advertisements at the same time, and you used the query string, "?ad-1" and "?ad-2." Then, you got the following statistics of viewed pages.

hits page
12,000 home.html?ad-1
9,000 home.html?ad-2
500 order_confirmation_page.html

From these stats, you can see that ad 1 generated more traffic to your site than ad 2, but you cannot see where the 500 sales came from. It is possible that ad 2 could generate more sales than ad 1. Or, maybe neither ad generated any sales at all; maybe all 500 orders were made by visitors via search engines.

Statistics of Click Trail
To find out who bought, you need the statistics of the click trail (or content path), which looks like this.

Visits Path
78 page1.htm page5.htm page3.htm page8.htm
45 page2.htm page3.htm page6.htm

It says 78 visitors browsed your site by following the path indicated above, 45 visitors took other paths, and so on. Here are a few vendors of log analyzers with click trails.
• www.clicktracks.com
• www.hitbox.com
• www.webtrends.com
Also, you can read reviews of log analyzers.

Accurate Profits
Going back to the above example, when you count entries of click trails, like

home.html?ad-1 (omit) order_confirmation_page.html and
home.html?ad-2 (omit) order_confirmation_page.html,

you can see how many sales or how much profit each ad made. Now, you can make decisions based on profitability. For example, when you analyzed the click trails, you could see that ad 1 generated only $80 in sales, while ad 2 made $3,000 in sales. It is clear that buying ad 2 was a good investment, but buying ad 1 was just wasting money, even though ad 1 sent you more people. If you were checking only statistics of viewed pages, you would buy ad 1 again, and lose money again, wouldn't you?

Log files don't tell you anything by themselves. But, once you analyze logs correctly, you will get lots of useful information. That would be the best advice you can get.

Log Analyzer Types and Accuracy

2007-05-02T15:18:00.000-07:00

There are 2 types of log analytic tools, the software version and the hosted version. Many internet marketing gurus insist on using the hosted version to get perfectly accurate stats. But are they more accurate?

The Difference
The difference between these 2 methods is how to identify individual PCs (or visitors). The software version analyzer uses IP addresses to identify individual visitors. The hosted version analyzer writes a cookie on every visitor's PC and uses it to identify visitors.

Accuracy
Because new IP addresses are assigned every time modems are turned on, many internet marketing gurus think cookie-based analysts are more accurate. But increasing numbers of always-on broadband users make IP address-based analysts more accurate. Furthermore, just writing cookies won't give you accurate results anymore since today's security software blocks cookies by default, or people have access to more than one PC, or family members share one PC, and so on. Identifying individual users has become a real headache for researchers. (You may use this story to get some discount if you are outsourcing analytic work.)

Fortunately, although you don't get 100% accurate stats, both methods are accurate enough to evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns. You can still reliably determine which campaign made a profit. Forget about getting accurate results; focus on interpreting the results.

Risk
However, using a cookie-based analyst has one big drawback. The code you must add on every page of your site may slow down your page's loading speed. Sometimes it takes an extra 6 seconds to load a page. Only the entry page would be affected, but the loading time of the entry page is the most important one. As broadband internet connection becomes more common, visitors get less patient. An extra few seconds of loading time could turn visitors away.

How to Test

2007-04-28T01:25:00.000-07:00

You know how important it is to test everything you do. But, you might wonder how to do it right.

Know Why
The biggest mistake people make is that they only figure out what worked better, but not why it worked better. For example, you can buy an A/B split test script and use it with different sales pages. After the test, everyone can see which page performed better, but few people think about why one page performed better than the other.

Preparation
To find out why, you need to carefully prepare each test. Conversion rates of sales pages will change by different factors (such as headline, colour scheme, composition of entire page, etc). When you are making different sales pages for the test, you can change only one factor. If you change the headline, the rest of the sales page must remain completely the same. This allows you to make sure that it is the headline that made the difference. If you change the headline and the background colour, you'll never know what made the sales pages performance different - headline or background colour. Moreover, if you change the headline phrase, you shouldn't change size or font colour. If you do, you can't tell what made the difference - phrase or font.

Learn
This is what professional copywriters have done. Because they learned what made the difference, they are able to provide their clients with good sales copies. At the beginning, you might not understand whether a particular change will make the sales copy better. But, if you keep testing, soon you will be able to tell what will make the copy better and what won't. And, you will be able to write sales copy like a real professional.

Test by Yourself

2007-04-28T01:24:00.000-07:00

Many internet marketing gurus talk about test results. Can you trust those results?

No Way
One day, I read an article about the performance of different ad formats on Google AsSense. Basically, it says the borderless (border colour is the same as the background colour) ad format performed better than any other ad formats. Before changing the border colour of all the ad units on my site, I decided to test the findings myself. Below is how I did it.
I picked my 8 most read articles.
I assigned a unique channel to ad units on those pages. (Ad format: 336x280 text only)
I waited for a month and checked the click though rate. (I did this for each border colour: blue, gray, and borderless)
Surprisingly, the results showed that the borderless ad format didn't perform well on my site. The ad format with a gray border had the best performance.

What's Going On?
Why didn't my result confirm the other guy's result? It's simple. Dfferent ad formats suit different webpage designs. The design of my webpages and the other guy's webpages differed. So, the same ad formats shouldn't work equally well on both websites.

Get Your Own Results
Don't take another person's test results. Test things yourself to find out what works best on YOUR site. Yes, testing takes time. But remember this: If I had taken the other guy's words and started using the borderless ad format, I would be making less money today.

Activate Customers

2007-04-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

It's a well-known fact that anyone who has bought from you will most likely buy from you again. But, don't just sit and wait for customers to come back. Make them come back more often.

Shortening Cycle
My favorite example for this subject is EPSON. On that Web site, there are a lot of nice things to print, like calenders, greeting cards, and even board games. You can print as many of those goodies as you want for free. Did you see the points? As users like me print more goodies, EPSON will sell more printing supplies.

You can apply the same strategy to many different kinds of businesses. If you lend money, help people pay back money quicker. Then, lend more money. If you run an automobile garage, tell customers nice places to go. As they drive their cars more, the cars will need more maintenance. Brainstorm for awhile; you will get a lot of ideas.

Encourage to Act
Many products, such as books, don't need any extra supplies or maintenance. (You don't need a battery or any other supplies to read books. You just need books you want to read.) If you sell those self-sufficient products, it seems there is no way to make additional sales. But, you can still encourage people to buy another products of yours.

Let's say you are selling astro-photography related books. Rather than hoping for people to buy another title of yours, let your customers know what is coming up by posting on your Web site or in your newsletter a calender of astronomical events. When customers notice a great astronomical show is coming, they will buy another book. For example, when customers find out an exciting meteor shower is coming, they will most likely buy another title, such as "How to Capture Meteor Showers," even though they already bought one of your books, "How to Shoot Solar Eclipse."

Of course, not everyone will buy another book from you, but you will make way for more sales as compared to doing nothing.

Upselling, Do It Right

2007-04-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

If you upsell right, sales will dramatically be increased. But, if you upsell wrong, you will "lose" sales.

Upsell at Right Time
The timing of upselling is very important. You should upsell when a shopper views his/her shopping cart. Or, if your site is a mini site (promoting one product), upsell when a shopper clicks "Oder" button in your sales copy. Some people upsell when the "Check Out" (starting payment process) button is clicked. This is actually an interruption of payment process. If you interrupt it, you cannot only upsell but you'll also lose sales which the shopper was about paying.

Taboo of Upselling
One thing you should avoid is adding products to shopping cart without shoppers consent. When I was buying Symantec's Internet Security, Extended Download Service was automatically added to shopping cart. I was able to exclude it from my order, but I bought one from McAfee. Because Symantec is well recognized name, many people still buy from them. But, if not-well-recognized Website does the same thing, they will lose visitors' trust. You cannot sell anything online if visitors don't trust you. Don't push upselling too far.

Upsell Right Products
When you order a burger at McDonald, they will upsell fries. But, if you order a burger and fries, they will upsell coke, instead of fries. This is how you should set up your shopping cart. Don't upsell products shoppers have already ordered. Upsell something shoppers want to buy in addition to what they have ordered.

Additionally, when I ordered a burger, fries, and a drink, a casher asked me to super size them. Don't complain about not having anything to upsell. Brainstorm a bit; you will find a lot of things to upsell.

Catching Seasonal Sales

2007-04-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

There are a number of big sales times during the year, such as Christmas. Webmasters who rely on PPC search engines to promote the sale are missing valuable traffic from regular search engines.

Keep Them
Most webmasters put the seasonal pages up for 3 to 4 weeks, then take them off when the season is over. You might get the pages indexed quickly by using blog and RSS, but 3-4 weeks is too short a time frame for any SEO. (Being "indexed" and getting higher rankings are different things.) Instead of deleting pages afterwards, make those pages permanent and let search engine spiders crawl over them all year round. In that way, you'll have lots of time for SEO. To do so, you need one link pointing to each seasonal page. Of course, you don't link to seasonal pages from the home page when the season is over. Instead, link to them from the bottom of the site-map page or from somewhere else.

Keywords
It is a no brainer to optimize the seasonal pages with red, hot seasonal keywords, like "Valentine's gifts," but finding hot keywords is tricky. Because seasonal keywords are used often only during the season, you won't see any soon-to-be hot keyword on top of the chart if you use keyword advice tools before the season starts. You need to keep a record of hot keywords every season. Then, use that data to guess what will be hot for the next season.

Say No
Letting search engines crawl over your seasonal pages all the time means some internet surfers will also find the pages anytime of the year. If people find the pages, they will think you can deliver products on time whatever the date is. When there isn't enough time for on-time delivery, don't forget to tell visitors you cannot deliver. Or, you can temporally disable the ordering process on the seasonal pages.

Gain Trust and Sell More!

2007-04-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

We need to be trusted in order to sell something online. But how can you earn trust?

Address and Phone Number
A physical address and phone number are the most important things to put up on your website to be trusted by visitors. Everything on the Internet is virtual, so visitors want to know if there is a real person on the other end. The physical address of your business (not a P.O. box address) implies that your company does exist. A phone number assures potential buyers that they will be able to get hold of real person if something goes wrong with their order.

About You
People do care to whom they are giving their money, so they want to know about you. In fact, I receive e-mail related to my "about us" page every day. Post a short biography of yourself or a history of your business, along with pictures of yourself, your employees, or your place of business.

Endorsement
Becoming a member of trusted organizations, such as BBB online, TRUSTe, etc., is a good thing to do. However, you don't have to be a member of all of these organizations. Being a member of only one organization is sufficient. Also, this is not as efficient as being a member of trusted organizations, but testimonials from satisfied customers will assure potential buyers that they are not being ripped off.

Policies
Because people are skeptical about your business to begin with, if they aren't sure about what you are going to do, they will not trust you. However, if you blow those uncertainties away by clearly stating all of your policies, people will more likely trust you. Make sure to post all of your policies, such as shipping and handling, return/exchange, and guarantees.

More Than Sales Copies

2007-04-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

Many webmasters only focus on writing good sales copies as a means to sell their products; however, sales copies are just one potential marketing strategy.

Articles
In addition to using sales copies, writing an article related to your products is another useful marketing tool that is commonly used to sell products. For example, this article provides useful information to the potential customer about how following up can improve their sales. Although this article does not deliver an overt sales pitch, it is still a highly effective sales technique because it provides the customer with information related to software programs that can automate the follow-up process. Many savvy internet marketing gurus like to use this technique by designing newsletters that promote their products while providing useful information.

Reviews
Writing reviews is another effective way to sell products. When I first launched my enterprise, my website was primarily comprised of sales copy. When I eventually replaced these sales copies with reviews , my overall affiliate commissions tripled. Rather than merely having a product sold to them, offering reviews allows people to feel that they are being empowered to make good buying decisions. My reviews outsell my sales copies because they fulfill my customers’ needs.

The Close
Although the above strategies are both effective selling techniques, they require a unique approach to be effective. It is important that you employ an effective close. Without an effective close, you can’t expect to sell anything. For sales copies, action words (such as "Buy Now!") offer an effective closing strategy. However, these action words are not likely to work for the strategies described above. Instead, a more subtle approach, such as providing simple text links to affiliate merchants' sites, is usually more effective.

When to Follow Up

2007-04-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

You know that following up with your customers increases sales, so here is some advice on how to follow up effectively:

Opportunities to follow up
Here are some examples of reasons that internet businesses typically follow up with their customers:
Many internet companies follow up immediately after the purchase to ask customers whether they received their merchandise and if the product met expectations.
Follow up a few days after the purchase to ask customers if they are experiencing any problems or if they understand all the product's features.
Follow up to remind customers when it is time to replace consumable parts, such as batteries, ink cartridges, etc.
Companies follow up at the end of the expected product life in order to sell brand new products to customers.
Follow up when updates, upgrades, or new products become available in order to inform customers about exciting new releases.
Follow up to promote related products. You can use this opportunity to introduce customers to different products that they might be interested in. The products don't necessarily have to be new releases; you can simply pick an existing product from your inventory that is related to the product that the customer previously purchased. However, it is important not to overdo this type of follow-up; once a month might be good, but once a week might be too often.
As you can see, you can follow up for many different reasons. Following up with customers makes them feel like they are getting special treatment. Follow up whenever you think its appropriate.

Knowing when to follow up
For examples 1, 2, and 5, it's easy to know when to follow up. However, the timing of examples 3 and 4 can be a little tricky. Initially, you may have to guess when to follow up. You may want to send series of follow-ups around the time you predicted. For example, send a follow-up on the date you predicted, as well as a week before and a week after. That way you can be more confident that one of them will reach the customer at the right time.

Optimize when to follow up
As you collect data about your customers' buying habits, you will be able to better predict the optimal time to follow up. Unfortunately, this type of analysis may require an expensive database system. However, remember that every follow-up is an opportunity to generate new sales. It will pay off!

Increasing Profit, Made It Easy

2007-04-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

We all want to increase profits. But what exactly should you do to making more profit?

The Process
First, you have to break the selling process down into basic steps. In general, selling steps are:
get visitors
show products
convince visitors to buy products
process payment
handle returns/exchanges
make customers come back
This is just an example. There are more steps or different steps involved for different websites. The bottom line is if you break the process down into more detailed steps, it will be easier to find solutions.

The Solutions
Now, think about what you can do better job on each step. For example,
To get more visitors, you can
use different marketing media
write better ad copy
To make it easier to find products, you can
make a simpler navigation scheme
add a site search feature
To convince more visitors to buy more, you can
write better sales copy
create irresistible offers
To make more people complete the checkout process (to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate), you can
simplify the checkout process
To reduce return/exchange rate, you can
write better product descriptions (Customers will get the products that they imagine they are getting.)
offer longer return/exchange periods (Yes, longer exchange periods reduce returns.)
To make more customers come back, you can
offer a frequent buyer program
communicate often with existing customers
These are just examples. If you spend more time on brainstorming, you will get more solutions.

Little note on on step 3:
Many people only focus on convincing more visitors to buy products (increasing conversion rate). But, you can also convince visitors to buy more products (increasing size of each order). You can do this by offering larger units of purchase or bundling existing products.

The Results
Even though the improvements on each step is small, they add up and return huge overall results. For example, if you increase the numbers of visitors by 10% and increase the conversion rate by 10%, you will get 10% more sales on 10% increased visitors! Imagine what will happen if you increase the performance on all the steps!

Membership Sells More Products

2007-04-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

Some websites are offering membership. Does membership helps increase profit?

Money
Frequent-buyer programs (i.e., those that issue points that can be redeemed on future purchases) make members come back more often. By simply calling those points "money" (which is only valid on your site, of course), you can make even more members come back. It's just changing what you call it; because people who live in the capitalist world are obsessed about money, they are eager to come back to your website to use "money" they have earned.

Don't Let Them Use Money Up
When members use up all the points (or "money") they've earned, that could be the last time they shop at your website. To avoid this, you must issue some of your "money" on every sale, even when a customer pays entirely with your "money." In this way, the customer always leaves your site with your "money," and this makes customers remember your website.

Paid Memberships
Most memberships are free, but paid memberships make more customers come back. Free membership has no perceived value with customers; "free" means "free." They may sign up for a free membership, but they will soon forget about it. On the other hand, if people pay for a membership -- even just $5.00 for a lifetime membership -- they will remember the fee they paid. They will try to take full advantage of the membership, so they will keep coming back. It'll take more effort to sell paid memberships, but if you have unique products, it's not too hard. You don't have to charge for membership, but it is worth considering.

Note
At some websites, you have to be a member to browse. You should let visitors browse your site without a membership (unless members-only content is your product). People have to see what you offer before they can decide to be a member. Otherwise, people will just leave your site.

Guaranteed Traffic, What Is Really Guaranteed?

2007-04-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

Once we open a Web site, all of us want to get traffic, lots of it. It doesn't matter how good your products or services are. No traffic means no sales.

Sound Good?
If I offered you 100,000 "guaranteed" unique visitors for $1,000, would that be too good to be true? Well, you can find these kinds of deals on the Net today with no sweat. But you should think about what is really guaranteed. They do send you visitors as they promised. If you buy 100,000, you'll get all of them. But, the trouble is, you won't make any sales. The money you pay for the guaranteed traffic will be a total loss! You are ticked off. Who wouldn't be?

See How You Get the Traffic
To avoid this trick, you have to see how a traffic-selling company directs surfers to your Web site. Review the complete details of how they send you surfers. Also ask to see how they are sending surfers to other companies. For example, what do you think will happen when a surfer visits or leaves their desired Web site, and your home page appears in a pop-up window? If you have been surfing the Web long enough, you know the fate of pop-ups, don't you? Being closed before completing download. But this is still considered one hit. Think carefully: Do you really want to pay for that kind of traffic?

Something They Don't Want to Tell You
They are selling you traffic, so they need to get it somewhere else. Most of the time they use their own Web site to gather the traffic. Sometimes, they buy traffic from other companies and re-sell it to you. Either way, make sure they don't spam. Even though they have their own Web site to gather the traffic, they may still use unsolicited e-mails to get more traffic. When your name is in an unsolicited e-mail, you will not only get a bad reputation, your business can be shut down.

Test Before Buying Whole Traffic
If their service is still attractive to you, test the quality of the traffic. You can ask to buy part of the traffic they offer before buying whole, and check the conversion rate. Buying part might depend on your negotiation skill, but if they don't let you buy a small portion of their traffic package, most likely their traffic won't be worth the money. Don't be eager to take their offers.

Unfortunately, there are people who will deceive you to take your money. Don't be nailed. Discovering that your marketing campaign is a total loss after the fact is too late. Be cautious; be wise.

Hit Exchange Programs: Should You Participate?

2007-04-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

Some Internet marketing gurus say Hit Exchange Programs are worth trying. But, many webmasters were disappointed by the result. Should you try it or not?

That's an Advertisement
Think of those programs as other sorts of advertisements. For normal advertisements, you use banners or simple texts. When your ads get viewers' attention, people will visit your site. With Hit Exchange Programs, your home page is the ad. When your home page grabs other participants' attention, they will view other pages of your site.

Who Sees Your Site
In order to get good result from advertisements, you have to present your ads to targeted audience. Now, think about who will see your home page when you participate in Hit Exchange Programs. People join the program because they have a Web site to show the world. Otherwise, there is no reason to join. So, all participants are webmasters; webmasters see your Web site. Therefore, if your site is webmaster-related, most likely, you will get not-too-bad results. If your site doesn't have anything to do with webmasters, the result will be awful. Let's say your Web site is all about gardening. You can tell that putting an ad on Entrepreneur magazine is wasting money. Participating in Hit Exchange Programs is almost the same as that. Presenting a gardening Web site to a bunch of webmasters is literally a waste of time.

Quick Stats
Followings are Click-though rates of Hit Exchange Programs I have tried. Hope you can see a rough idea of what you should expect from Hit Exchange Programs. Of course, you can try them and figure out stats by yourself. Those programs are free to join.

autohits.dk 0.17%
topsurfer.com 0.43%
trafficswarm.com 13.11%

At trafficswarm.com, the rate is significantly higher than others. That's because participants are given a list of links, then participants click one of the links they are interested in. (Here is what participants see .) This makes traffic more targeted.

As I said above, if your site isn't webmaster-related, these numbers will be much lower.
other available traffic exchange programs:
trafficattitude.com
AutoSurfHeaven.com
hitshaven.com
maxvisitors.com ultimatevisitors.com
awesomevisitors.com
surfersrus.com
extremevisitors.com
autosurfing.us

Initial Traffic and Supplemental Traffic

2007-04-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

You can find many different traffic-generating techniques on the net, but before implementing any of them you need to understand the difference between Initial Traffic and Supplemental Traffic to maximize the results. (Targeted or not is a whole different story.)

Definitions
Because you haven't heard these words before (I coined them), I'll start with the definitions.
Initial Traffic:
The traffic which you can receive regardless of current volume of traffic to your site.

For example, whether your site receives 1,000,000 visitors a day or zero, if you place an ad on Yahoo!, you will receive a lot of traffic.

Example sources of Initial Traffic are:
advertisements and
search engine listings.

Supplemental Traffic:
The traffic which is generated by using traffic you already have. In other words, if no one visits your site, you can't generate Supplemental Traffic.

Let's say John has a website offering his own affiliate program. If his site receives 100 visitors a day, his affiliate program will exponentially increase the traffic. However, if no one visits his site, no one will sign up to his affiliate program. His affiliate program will not generate any traffic. To generate traffic by his affiliate program, he needs to get traffic from somewhere else, first.

Example sources of Supplemental Traffic are:
your own affiliate program and
viral marketing.
Rule of Thumb
If you are just starting your website, you have to focus on generating Initial Traffic. You can still profit from Initial Traffic without Supplemental Traffic. As you profit from Initial Traffic, you can invest the profit in generating Supplemental Traffic.

If you've been doing business online for a while, analyze your access log, and check which kind of traffic you are lacking. By doing so, you can invest your time and money in the right method at the right time.

Of course, you can work on generating both types of traffic at the same time if your budget permits. But, never forget that there won't be any Supplemental Traffic without Initial Traffic; no traffic means no money.

Losers and Winners

2007-04-27T15:28:00.000-07:00

Not every business succeeds. We all know that, but what makes the difference between the winners and the losers?

The Loser
Marketing mistakes are the most common reason of all that businesses fail. When business owners encounter financial hard times, they cut their marketing budget. That's a mistake. If they cut their marketing budget, they'll obviously get fewer customers and visitors. Fewer visitors mean less in sales. So, their financial situation gets even worse. As their budget gets ever tighter, they cut even more of their marketing budget. If they keep repeating this death circle, they will eventually not have enough money to run the business at all. (An even bigger mistake than cutting the marketing budget - is no marketing budget at all. Some webmasters especially seem to think that if they build a website the world will make its way to their door. It doesn't and their online business efforts are on a death cycle before they get a fair chance of starting.)

The Winner
On the other hand, companies that do overcome financial hardships and succeed tend to cut other expenses, such as payroll, not their marketing budget. That's why you continue to see their ads on TV and everywhere else, even after they announce the layoff of large numbers of employees.

The Solution
With a very tight budget, you obviously cannot increase your marketing budget. The solution, however, is to work on improving the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns that you do have. If the ads you run pull better results, you will get more customers without spending extra money. With more customers, you will make more money. Then, you can spend the extra money on marketing to get more customers (and more money). Now, you can spend even more money on marketing to get even more customers. In a nutshell, this is the cycle of success in growing your business.

If you test every marketing campaign, you will know (or you already know) what works and what doesn't. Knowing this, you should be able to make better ads by yourself. If you cannot, then you obviously need to hire a good marketing firm. Good ones are expensive, but if you don't do what you have to do to effectively market your business, you won't be in business for very long.

Cached Right by Search Engines

2007-04-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

Major search engines cache your web pages. You must make your web pages look flawless on search engines' caches or you will miss a big proportion of search engine traffic.

Broken Links
The most common problem with cached pages is broken links. All cached pages are stored on search engines' servers. Any link with a related URL points to somewhere on search engines' servers. To redirect the links to your site, search engines use BASE element (BASE tag). But, some links, especially within JavaScript, don't work with BASE element. Those tricky links will be broken when cached, even though they work fine on your site. You can solve this problem simply by using absolute URLs instead of relative URLs.

Hotlink Protection
Hotlink protection is commonly used to prevent copyrighted images from being used by somebody else. This feature also prevents images from being downloaded by cached pages. As long as your pages have good content, searchers will be interested in your site. However, texts which look good against background images may not be visible when hotlink protection prevents the background images being downloaded. When this happens, searchers cannot see anything on the cached pages, so they will go to other sites suggested by the search result.

Script
Scripts, such as PHP and CGI, can be disabled by any websites other than their own. This is a good idea from the point of view of security. But, if you disable scripts from other websites, they will not be executed from cached pages either. Make sure this won't cause serious problems when viewing cached pages.

Reloader
If you use reloading JavaScript, you can automatically send people to your site from cached pages. This sounds like a easy solution for all the glitches. But, keywords used for searching won't be highlighted on your site. Many people view cached pages because keywords are highlighted and it is easy to find what they are looking for. Searchers might dislike you if you force them to visit your site.

2007-04-20T17:09:00.001-07:00

What do people do online? They search. If your site doesn't have a search feature, it cannot be called a website.

The Difference
Recently, I was looking for accommodation. I browsed a few websites listing available housing. I also looked at local newspaper ads. But I quickly stopped looking at newspaper ads because I couldn't search. I had to read all the ads to find interesting ones. It was quite a time consuming process. By using websites, I was able to search entire ads based on type of house, price, location, and many other criteria. The search feature saved my day.

Gotta Have Search
This is the power of a website; you can search for whatever you are looking for. So, a search feature is one of the most important features of your site. Many internet marketing gurus suggest you should add a search feature if your site has 100 or more pages. Because internet surfers are getting more and more search dependent, I would say if you have only 10 pages, you should add a search feature.

Google AdSense for Search
Today, you can use a high quality search feature, Google AdSense for Search, just by adding a little code. Some people might think it appears unprofessional because you need to add Google's logo. However, the name "Google" has become synonymous with "search," and people know the quality of Google's results. Also, when visitors see Google's logo, they will instantantly know what the box next to the logo can do for them. On top of that, you can make money by adding Google AdSense for Search to your site. Why don't you take full advantage of it?

How to RSS

2007-04-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

RSS will take over e-zines when Microsoft bundles RSS reader into Windows. So, why don't you prepare for it right now?

Basics
RSSing is simple. First, make regular web pages you want to RSS. Then, make a list of the pages you made by following the specification of RSS . That file is called "RSS feed," and that's what you need for RSSing. Once you add a link pointing to the RSS feed file from where you are promoting your RSS, you are ready to rock 'n' roll. I haven't found any official rule, but using an icon of white letters with an appropriate file extension (e.g., XML or RDF) on an orange rectangular is the standard.

Tweaking
An RSS-feed-file-pointing link works perfect on RSS-reading software, but it doesn't work on web-based RSS readers such as My Yahoo!. For a web-based RSS reader, you may want to add one-click-subscription links, like an "Add to My Yahoo!" link. Here are some examples of add-to links.
Google:
http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://YourFeedURL (Details )
Yahoo:
http://add.my.yahoo.com/rss?url=http://YourFeedURL (Details )
MSN:
http://my.msn.com/addtomymsn.armx?id=rss&ut=http://YourFeedURL
Bloglines:
http://www.bloglines.com/sub/http://YourFeedURL
newsgator:
http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.aspx?url=http://YourFeedURL

(Replace "YourFeedURL" with the actual URL of your RSS feed file.)

I would, however, only add links for Yahoo! and MSN (and Google, when they start providing the service). If you were to add links for all the available web-based RSS readers, your pages will be cluttered.

Live Bookmarks and Auto-Discovery
Two more things you need to know about RSSing is FireFox's Live Bookmarks and Yahoo! Toolbar's Auto-Discovery . Because more and more software is supporting these features, you should make your pages Live Bookmarks and Auto-Discovery compatible. To do so, just add the following anywhere to the head section of your pages' HTML code.

(Replace 'Your Title' and 'YouFeedURL' with yours.)

Link Popularity and Search Results Rankings

2007-04-20T16:33:00.000-07:00

Many webmasters focus on exchanging links (via cross-linking, Webrings, etc) with as many websites as they can. Does this really improve their sites' rankings on search engines?

Why Incoming Links Are Important
Google was the first search engine to come up with the idea of ranking websites. Google assumes that people link to good sites, not bad ones; therefore, a site with lots of incoming links should be ranked highly. This new idea worked so well that soon all of the major search engines began to factor link popularity into their ranking algorithms.

Quality vs. Quantity
In reality, link popularity isn't based simply on the numbers of incoming links a particular site has; who is linking to whom is also important. Incoming links from websites related to the linked site are given more credit in terms of "link popularity." For example, if your site is about computers, a link from a site about software would give you more "credit" in terms of link popularity than a link from a gardening site. (Please note that link popularity and Google's PageRank are different things. Link popularity takes into account a quality factor, whereas PageRank counts only quantity. Google itself does count factor quality into their site ranking system, though, through other means.)

No Quick Fixes
When the idea of link popularity first became public, some people found quick fixes, such as free for all websites and reciprocal links, to increase the number of their incoming links. As you can imagine, one cannot guarantee any quality incoming links from free for all websites. Even reciprocal links are not guaranteed to be deemed "high quality." You might carefully select which sites you exchange links with, but if your link partner has posted your information alongside tens or hundreds of other links, yours would hardly be considered high quality. The bottom line is, forget about these quick fixes. Instead, make your site "link worthy." Once you've done this, other webmasters will link to you without you having to ask them. This is the way to get high quality incoming links, which will in turn improve your search rankings.

Bid Smart on PPC Keywords

2007-04-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

Several years ago a dime would give you a top position for a PPC keyword, but those good old days are gone. You shouldn't really be surprised that you cannot afford even the 10th ranking on some words or phrases. After all, price have gone up everywhere and PPC Search Engines (SEs) are catching on. The question is, how do you get better results with a limited budget?

Find Affordable Words
If you cannot afford a high placement for some words or phrases, look for words or phrases you can afford. Most of the PPC SEs give you a list of words and phrases and how many times those words and phrases were searched. You will find that the less-searched words are cheaper. For example, at the time of this writing the top ranker in Overture (one of the PPC SEs) bids $3.30 on the phrase, "auto insurance." But the highest bids on the phrase, "auto insurance brokers" and "auto insurance agents" are both $0.51. Paying $3.30 for a visitor is quite astonishing, but $0.51 is obviously more affordable. Of course, if you can afford it, you will get more visitors from the top ranking on the most-searched word than if you are the top on less-searched words. But, this is also true: you will get more traffic from even the 3rd placement on less-searched words than 100th on the most-searched words.

Be Specific
On PPC SEs, you have to pay every visitor from them. Make sure you bid on very specified phrases to get right visitors. Using the above exsample, let's say you are an auto insurance broker. Bidding on the word, "insurance" isn't a good idea. You don't want to pay for a visitor who comes to your site looking for a dental plan, do you? This can be avoided by bidding on a phrase like "auto insurance."

Need More Money to Bid?
Now that you know how much money you can spend, you go to one of the PPC search engines. Then, you find out that even the entire 37 cents won't give you good placement. That's entirely possible.

Also, if you sell insurance only in a particular province or state, localize your phrase to include that information; for instance, "auto insurance in New York." Again, you don't want to pay for a visitor who lives in Florida.

Just a Penny but a Penny
The minimum bid is still just 1 cent on most PPC SEs, so don't over-look the difference that a penny can make. For instance, if you`ve determined that your conversion rate is 1%, that means you need 100 visitors to make a sale. A slight difference in bid price will make a big difference in your profit. If you bid one cent less, you will pocket an extra $1.00 per sale. When you sell 100 products, you will make $100 more. (Think what kind of hosting service you can get with $100.) Conversely, if you bid 1 cent more than you can afford, you will lose $100. And remember, these figures add up faster as you sell more.

Also, you need to remember that the more selective your keyword or phrases is, the fewer visitors it will take to make those sales. That will rase your conversion rate and increase your profit per click so that, if bidding become intense for your keywords/phrases, you can afford to rise your bid a little to keep your position.

You still need to do some homework like finding good phrases for your business, but you now have all the information you need to bid on PPC keywords for profit. Keep calm, and don't bid more than you can afford. Happy bidding.

How High You Can Bid on PPC Keywords

2007-04-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

If you want to have a good position on search engines, you need to know many things, such as meta tags, keyword density, link popularity, and so on. The learning curve and time involved to secure and maintain a good position can give you quite a headache. Compared to them, Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine submission is very straightforward. You just outbid others for keywords or phrases.

How High Should I Bid?
Before bidding on a PPC, you need to know the limits of your bidding budget. You don't want to find out you lost money at the end of the month because you bid too high, do you? Fortunately, you don't have to be a mathematician or a CPA to find out how much you can afford to pay for a visitor. Let's do an example together.

During the month of July, you had 10,238 unique visitors and sold 100 products at $49.95 each.

During the same month, you made
$49.95 each x 100 sales = $4995.00 (gross profit)
Your total expenses for July (hosting fee, cost of the products, banking fees, etc.) is, let's say, $1205.00. You keep
$4995.00 - $1205.00 = $3790.00 (net profit)
For each sale, you keep
$3790.00 / 100 sales = $37.90 (net profit each sale)
Your conversion rate (visitors to sales ratio) is
100 sales / 10238 visitors
= 0.0098 (0.0098 x 100% = 0.98%)
You have actually made
$37.90 net profit for each sale x 0.0098 conversion rate
= $0.37 per visitor to your web site.
This means if you bid 37 cents on a PPC, you break even. You don't pocket even one red penny. You have worked for nothing.

Note
Here is an important point when you do the math. "Unique visitors" is NOT the same as "hits" or "visits". "Unique visitors" is the number of different people (different IP addresses) who visit your site. "Hits" is the total number of requests to view files on your site. "Visits" is the total amount of incoming traffic. For example, if I visited your site at 10, 1, and 5 o'clock on the same day and viewed 8 different pages including 10 images in total, the stats will show 1 "unique visitor" (myself), 18 "hits" (8 pages and 10 images), and 3 "visits" (at 10, 1, and 5 o'clock). There may be a slight difference between stats software, but be sure to count "unique visitors" when figuring your per visitor profit and determining how much you can afford to bid.

Need More Money to Bid?
Now that you know how much money you can spend, you go to one of the PPC search engines. Then, you find out that even the entire 37 cents won't give you good placement. That's entirely possible.

When PPC search engines were new to the Internet, 10 cents gave you a top placement. Today, you can easily find bids of more than $1.00. Do you have to outbid them, even though you know you will lose money? Absolutely not. The purpose of any business is to make a profit, not to be ranked at the top of search engine listings. Don't get involved in heated auctions. unless you can afford them.

Search Engine Optimization

2007-04-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

Someone says search engines can send you a lot of ready-to-buy people; therefore, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important. Often, "someone" is an SEO professional promoting his or her service. But, it is true.

Rules Are Changing
First, you should understand that SEO isn't one-time work; it is an on going project. Search engines regularly change the algorism (the rules of ranking) to improve relevancy. Whenever they apply new rules, your ranking will also be changed. For example, my page was ranked 4th at Google. That rank lasted for a month or so, but, one day, my rank went down to 20-something. You'll never know where you will be ranked tomorrow. To keep staying near the top, you have to re-optimize your site or hire a professional whenever a new algorism is applied.

Be Current
Search engines update the algorism. That means you also need to updated the SEO techniques you use. Using outdated techniques won't do any good on your rankings (i.e., keyword rich alt tag only jeopardize your listing, today). You can learn the latest SEO techniques at following Web sites. That's how I was ranked at 4th (even if it was only for a few months). Maybe, you will get good ranking, too.

www.1stsearchranking.com
www.highrankings.com
searchenginewatch.com

Choosing Keywords
Choosing keywords is one of the very important steps of SEO. You will receive heavy traffic from search engines only if your site is optimized for popular keywords (searched a lot of times). Because everyone tries optimizing for those well-searched keywords, it is often too hard to beat others and get high rankings. Then, someone invented KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) to chose keywords that are popular, yet not too competitive. (For detailed information about KEI, please go to www.1stsearchranking.com/keywords.htm .) KEI is helpful if you do SEO by yourself, but if you are hiring a professional forget about it. Ask the professional to optimize your site for well-searched keywords. You will get more traffic from more popular keywords. In that case, just your SEO professional (not you) has to work harder.

Outsmart Competitors at PPC Search Engines

2007-04-20T16:27:00.000-07:00

Bidding at PPC search engines isn't cheap anymore. But, don't give up. You can still find cheap keywords.

Baseline
Whatever the bid prices are, you cannot make money if you bid higher than you can afford. Before bidding, calculate your maximum bid price .

Product Specific Keywords
A few years back, you could find a lot of cheap keywords by looking for variations of keywords related to your website. Unfortunately, many of those variations have also become too expensive to bid on. To find affordable keywords, you need to look for keywords related to each "product" you sell. For example, if you sell sports equipment, don't just look for variations of "sports equipment." Look for keywords of your products, like "ice hockey stick" or "snowshoes." These product-specific keywords aren't searched often, but they are affordable. Most importantly, if you directly link those product-specific ads to specific product pages instead of your home page, you will get a better conversion rate.

Misspelled Keywords
You may also bid on commonly misspelled keywords. Surely, misspelled keywords are cheap, but there is a question mark on conversion rate. Some say conversion rates are good; other say not. Do your own test before running a full-scale ad campaign.

Find Real Competitors
You don't always have to outbid all other competitors. You only need to outbid others who have the same product lines as yours. For example, if you are selling DVD movies and are bidding on the keyword "DVD," you need only to outbid other DVD movie sellers; you don't have to outbid the bidders selling DVD players. Do a web search with the keyword you are bidding on, at the PPC search engine you are working with. The search result will show you who is selling what. You'll see who you have to outbid.

E-zine Saves Ad Budget

2007-04-20T16:24:00.000-07:00

How many free e-zines have you subscribed to? There are tons of them on the net today. Have you ever wondered why almost every web business offers free e-zines?

Ad Campaign Madness
When you start a business, you need to advertise it. Otherwise hardly anyone will come to you. An advertisement has 2 functions. One is, of course, to tell the world you exist. The second is to familiarize prospects with your business.

People tend to buy products or services from the business most familiar to them. Have you ever been told there was a store in town where you could buy that special thing you're looking for but you'd completely forgotten about that store. Chances are it's because you hadn't seen an ad for that store since its "Grand Opening". When people see your ads more often than your competitors', your business will come to mind when they need something. Unfortunately, pouring money into ad campaigns is expensive and is how most dot coms go bankrupt. Only the big names with deep pockets survive this madness.

Keep Prospects Aware With Your E-zine
An e-zine helps to keep you in touch with your potential customers. You offer some valuable information to them, and they give you permission to send e-mails to them (they opt to receive, hence the name "opt-in" mailing list). Now you have a chance to repeatedly embed your business into their brains.

Once they remember you well, they will most likely do business with you when they are ready, and because you use e-mail, this sweet exchange can be made at no extra cost! You still have to pay for new visitors, but now you are also growing your list of potential customers as opt-in subscribers to your "in-house, essentially free, name-recognition advertising campaign".

If you don't have an e-zine, surfers come to your site and leave. Maybe they will "bookmark" your site, but as bookmarks become unmanageable, they're likely to forget who you were and delete you. You have to buy ad after ad to bring them back, otherwise your URL could be forgotten forever. This is what the dot "bombs" did. They paid to get new visitors and re-paid to bring them back.

More Exposure With Your Own Articles
You can do more with your own articles. E-zine directories (web sites listing e-zines and articles) are always looking for quality e-zines to pass along to surfers, and some e-zine publishers use other writers' articles. You can submit your articles to them. Just including your "micro" biography (bio) and link to your web site, you can gain exposure to others' lists at no extra cost.

It can be hard to write articles periodically, but can you ignore the benefits your e-zine can deliver? You don't want to become a dot bomb yourself, do you? Publish your own e-zine and be competitive.

Communicate More and Sell More

2007-04-20T16:23:00.001-07:00

It's a well-known fact that most people will not buy until the 5th or later contact. If you are relying on one-time impression selling, you are missing a big chunk of sales.

Make Your Prospects Feel Special
As you make more contacts with the same persons, you will be able to make more sales from them; but it doesn't mean you should bombard their in-box with advertising e-mails. You will just irritate your potential customers, and that kind of e-mailing will most likely be considered as spam. To sell more, you have to make recipients feel they are specially treated when they read your e-mails. It sounds tricky, but it's easy. Sending follow-up e-mails does the job, yet it is overlooked by many Web masters.

Follow Up with Prospects
You can send follow-ups to anyone who asks you a question or sends you any kind of inquiry. In my case, anyone who sends me an inquiry gets 4 follow-ups -- 3, 7, 14, and 25 days after I replied to the inquiry. (I send my subscribers only 2 follow-ups, on the 3rd and 7th days, because I think 4 follow-ups AND a newsletter is a little too much.) In those follow-up e-mails, I simply ask if there is anything more I can help with.

Closing Sales Is the New Start
Don't forget to follow up with customers who have bought your products or services. Many businesses have a "got-money-good-bye" attitude. But remember: Anyone who bought from you before will most likely buy from you again if you treat her or him right. Say "thank you" to your customers. Also, you can ask how they like your products or, on later follow-ups, if they have any trouble using your products. Don't think that closing sales is the end; think of it as the beginning of the next sales process.

Automate this Sweet Deal
If sending follow-ups sounds like too much work, you can automate the entire follow-up process just by getting one of the autoresponding services, such as the ones from http://www.webmarketingmagic.com or by buying software like Group Mail .

Service or software? Each has pros and cons. You have to pay a monthly fee to service providers, but they maintain the system. It's hands-free on your side. You pay only once for the software, but YOU have to make sure the software and PC are running properly all the time. If it isn't working right (or just turning your PC off), no autoresponding message is sent.

Just simple follow-up helps to build relationships, and relationship helps to sell. Don't be shy. Talk to your customers more and double, or even triple, your sales.

Communicate More and Sell More

2007-04-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

Play It Safe with E-mail

2007-04-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

Using e-mail is probably the most effective marketing technique online. However, if you use it wrong, your business can be shut down.

Spam
Let me start with the story of someone who had trouble with his host from sending too many e-mail messages. He bought software that collects e-mail addresses from the Web and sends e-mail to those addresses. According to the software vendor, using the program wouldn't cause trouble with his host. However, a few days after he started using the software, his Web site was shut down without notice. Despite what the software vendor had said, this process is how unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) is sent. Most hosting companies have a zero-tolerance policy against spam. Once they receive enough complaints from your e-mail recipients, your site will be shut down in a matter of minutes. Then you'll have trouble getting a new host. So, don't spam. It's not worth the trouble.

Safe List
There are companies who make their own opt-in e-mail lists and rent them to you. Because people opted in to receive third parties' advertisements, using these lists isn't supposed to put you in trouble. (Hence the name "safe list.") If the recipients are not being paid to read the messages, renting safe lists is worth trying. But, "safe" doesn't mean "profitable." You have to calculate the profits and find the lists that work for YOUR business. Unfortunately, some people sell spammers' lists as safe lists. Even if you aren't aware of it, using phony safe lists is still spamming. Your host will shut your site down. Be careful when you use somebody else's mailing lists, especially when you see advertisements for safe lists in spam e-mail messages.

Abusing Your Opt-in List
The safest and most profitable mailing list is your own opt-in list. Depending on the size of your list, you will generate a lot of income every time you use it. But don't abuse your list. Bombing subscribers with advertisements triggers lots of "unsubscribe" requests. You can send special promotions (advertisement-only newsletter) or include advertisements in every issue, but you should limit the amount of ads, such as not sending special promotion e-mail more often than you send your regular newsletter. Remember, your subscribers opted-in for information, not ads.

E-mail marketing is very effective if you do it right. When you use it wrong, it will backfire. Think twice before clicking the "Send" button.

Get More Subscribers

2007-04-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

Publishing your own newsletter is good only if you have lots of subscribers. Here is how to increase your subscribers base.

Privacy
People subscribe to your newsletter because you protect their privacy, not because it is free. You have to state: "We will never sell or share your personal information" or similar promises right at every "subscribe" button. Or make a link to your "Privacy Policy" page. You can make your privacy policy as you wish, but no-sell-no-share is a minimum requirement to get people's e-mail addresses. Otherwise, these days, visitors won't subscribe to your newsletter. Of course, once you SAY you won't share, don't share.

Simplicity
Simple subscribing processes lead to more subscribers. As business owners, we want lots of information from potential customers. But making extra fields to fill out will discourage visitors from subscribing to your newsletter. Remember you only need e-mail addresses to send the newsletter. You could ask for their first name in order to personalize the newsletter, but that is still an extra. Asking for first AND last name is too much. You will never need last names to send a newsletter. The more you ask; the fewer subscribers you get. Also, you don't need a double opt-in process unless your host requests. With either single or double opt-in, you will still get complaints from forgetful subscribers, and people might change their minds when you ask for the second opt-in.

Show Your Newsletter
Showing previous issues of your newsletter will describe your newsletter best. Doing so gives visitors enough information to make a decision. The decision might be "yes," or it might be "no." But not giving enough information always returns one answer: "no." Also, archiving lots of interesting articles is the best way to promote your newsletter. With all that valuable information at their disposal, people cannot resist subscribing to your newsletter for more.

Because Web surfers have already subscribed to a numbers of e-zines, it can be hard to get new subscribers. Use these tips and turn more visitors into subscribers.

E-mail MarketingOutsmart Spam Filters

2007-04-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

More and more people have started using spam filters. Unfortunately, those filters sometimes block innocent e-mail. I am against spam, but legitimate newsletters like the one you publish shouldn't be blocked. Know how the spam filters analyze e-mail, and outsmart them.

Ways to Get Blocked
Spam filters give e-mails demerits based on rules. When e-mail gets enough demerits, the spam filter thinks it is spam. Following are common rules adopted by many spam filters.

Being listed on black lists.
If your e-mail server's IP address is on black lists, your e-mail gets big demerits or immediately gets blocked. You can view some black lists at:
http://www.spews.org/
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/index.lasso
http://www.abuse.net/lookup.phtml
http://www.njabl.org/lookup.html
If yours is listed, ask your host and get a new one, now!
Please note that the e-mail server's IP address may be different from your Web site's IP address. Also, if you use one of the list hosting services, see if that service's IP address is listed.

Mentioning spam laws.
Only spammers do this, so don't do it.

Including a disclaimer.
You don't have to tell your "opt-in" subscribers why they receive your newsletter.

Using e-mail software listed on a black list.
Such as: jpfree, VC_IPA, StormPost, JiXing, MMailer, EVAMAIL, IMktg, and Outlook Express.

Using words or phrases often seen in spam e-mail.
I made a list of common spam phrases. You can see it here . Avoid using them as much as you can.

Using ALL CAPS words and too many punctuation marks (??, !!, **)

Having more than 50% of HTML tags and using certain Java Script.

Including unsubscribing information.
You'll get demerits, but don't omit unsubscribing information. It should be in every issue. Try not to use the words "unsubscribe" or "remove." For example, say "to stop receiving" instead of "to unsubscribe."

Test Your E-mail
It's impractical to familiarize yourself with all the latest filtering rules. It will take tremendous time. Instead, send your e-mail message to spamcheck-thatswise@sitesell.net by the same way you would send to your subscribers. You will get the free report back in a few minutes. The only requirement (very important) is you must put the word "TEST" (in all caps) at the beginning of the subject. If the subject is "Weather Report," change it to "TESTWeather Report" (without quotations). Otherwise you won't get report back.

Get Your Newsletter Read

2007-04-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

People don't read every e-mail they receive. Learn what e-mail people read, and get your newsletter read by more subscribers.

Facts
A newsletter study conducted by Jacob Nielsen of useit.com shows that:
11% were read thoroughly
57% were skimmed
22% were never read
10% were saved for later reading (and most likely not opened again)
It sounds like it would be hard to be one of the 11%. Fortunately, a few simple things make the difference.

Keep It Simple
Jacob's study shows that shorter newsletters are more likely read. People don't want to spend all day reading e-mail. Therefore, they read newsletters only if it won't take long. So, make your newsletter brief and get to the point right away, or at least make it easy to skim. Many Internet marketing gurus tell you to write about your personal things, like vacations and family anniversalies, in order to get intiminate with readers. That technique worked five years ago, but today you should tell readers only what they need to know.

Don't Send them Too Offten
Jacob Nilsen also found out that readers most frequent complaint was about newsletters that arrived too often. I'd think "too offten" in term of "taking too much readres' time." According to Jakob's study, Dictionary.com's "Word of the Day" is the most read newsletter. It is sent every day, but it's still read. That's because the newsletter is short. It's only definition of a word and a few usage examples. It doesn't take too much readers' time, so people read it every day. For a-few-hundred-word newsletter, don't send it more offten than once a week.

Additionally, some e-zine publishers send 2 e-mail messages for each issue, actual article AND new-issue-is-online anouncement. Publishers are trying to reach subscribers behind the spam filters. But, this process irritates subscribers. Just send one of them.

Format E-mail Correctly

2007-04-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

E-mail plays important role when communicating with your customers. Be certain to make your messages, including newsletters, look neat.

Variable Width
A recent study conducted by EmailLabs revealed that people tend to read their e-mail within preview pane. Therefore, you should ensure that your message should look nice in that format. The same rule for web pages applies; your messages should fit within the preview pane without horizontal scrolling. Because the width of preview panes varies, your messages should be formatted accordingly. For simple text message, don't use hard carriage returns to wrap lines. Instead, make a paragraph consisting of one long line, so that the reader's e-mail client wraps the paragraph to fit within the preview pane. For HTML message, set the width with percentages rather than with pixels.

HTML or Simple Text
Today, almost no one uses e-mail clients which cannot display HTML formatted messages. You can send HTML messages, if you prefer; however, be aware that most people configure their e-mail clients not to display images. Also, keep in mind that the same HTML message might appear differently on different e-mail clients and web-based e-mail services, such as hotmail or Gmail. Be sure to check how your message looks on each of them.

Actually, the primary advantage of using HTML formatted messages is not the images, it's the ability to incorporate tables with clickable content and links within nice anchor text (not bare URL). Remember to use HTML messages to their full potential.

Character Encoding
English speaking webmasters tend to ignore character encoding; however, if you use characters outside of the ASCII character set, these letters could be interpreted as non-English characters. For example, right single quotation mark would become foreign character in non-English language environment, even though it still may look like an apostrophe in English environment. Assign proper character encoding to avoid displaying strange characters.

Good Customer Service Equals Good Communication

2007-04-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

We've all had good and bad shopping experience, and if you'd like to explore the topic, Planetfeedback.com has the statistics on shopping experiences. Though it's not a research company, it can show you the kinds of feedback each company gets. For better or worse, consumers are talking about human relations, like customer service or staff attitude. If you communicate poorly with your customers, your business will be ruined. If you do a great job in customer relations, your business will rock'n roll.

Pay attention
You know Larry King, don't you? I know him, even though I don't have a TV. (Sorry, Larry.) He didn't become a great newscaster accidentally. There is a reason for his success. He pays attention to his guests. Ted Koppel told Time magazine years ago, "Larry listens to his guests. He pays attention to what they say. Too few interviewers do that." This is the key. If you want to make your customers happy, you must pay attention to what they say or what they want. Pointless reply e-mails do nothing but irritate your customers. But pointless messaging isn't the only e-mail mistake you can make.

Enthusiasm
Your enthusiasm also makes big difference. When you talk to a person face to face, you can pick up on many things other than just what is being said. That can't happen in e-mails, but you can still make difference.

Let's say you are looking for RAM for your computer. You send an e-mail message to two different companies to see if their RAM fits your computer. Here are their replies:

-Reply #1-
Thank you for your e-mail.
The RAM is compatible with your computer. If the RAM doesn't work, call 24/7 Tech support at 1-800-555-5555.

This reply isn't too bad, is it?

-Reply #2-
Thank you for your inquiry.
Yes, our RAM fits your computer. If you have any trouble installing it, don't hesitate to call our tech support at 1-800-555-5555. Our technicians are ready to help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We will not leave you alone.

How about that? Which guy are you going to give your money to? Both want to give you the same deal, but the messages make you feel very different, don't they? If you can feel the difference, your customers can feel it too. The tone of voice can't be attached to your e-mails, but your enthusiasm can be sent.

Reply e-mails are a big part of customer service. You can make customers angry, or you can make them happy. Pay attention to what your customers want, and write e-mail messages with enthusiasm. The technology gave us a new way to communicate, but computers don't read your message. The human being reads your e-mail. You are still talking to REAL people. Whether they become angry or happy is a direct result of your willingness to take the time to communicate.

Say More Than "Thank You"

2007-04-20T15:54:00.000-07:00

Most Websites are gathering e-mail addresses. When you submit your e-mail address, you will be redirected to a thank you page. There is nothing wrong with it, but that page can do more than saying "thank you."

The Result
A while ago, I added some affiliate links to my thank-you-for-subscribing page. Even though you can close the window or go back to the home page, 98.8% of viewers of that page have clicked one of the links listed. This is astonishing when compared to the click-though ratio of banner ads (other than Google AdSense) on my site, which is about 0.9%. And, 98% is not a stat of one lucky day. It's an average of one year.

They Will Listen
98% sounds unrealistic, but it makes sense. Visitors subscribe to your newsletter because they liked your site in some way. So, they will listen to you as they listen to their friends. When you recommend some places to go, most people will go.

Additionally, you will get better results if you link to a page with one product rather than linking to a page with a lot of products. People who have submitted to you an e-mail address are open minded. This is the time to tell them your recommendation (your favorite product), not to show them options (list of your products).

Note
However, do not use this technique on a thank-you-for-ORDERING page. If you send buyers to another Web page asking them to buy more things, visitors will feel you are trying to suck all the money they have. You may add links on this thank-you page, but be selective which pages you'll send buyers to. I am not saying up-selling won't work. Up-selling does work. You have to up-sell before receiving payments, not after you received payments. Chasers at McDonald's ask, "Would you like to have French fries with that?" when you order a burger, not after you have paid for your order, don't they?

Myths of Using RSS and blog

2007-04-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

Using RSS or a blog makes Google and Yahoo crawl your site frequently. It's been a hot topic among webmasters. But, do you really need to use them?

Wrong Way
Search engines crawl RSS and blog frequently, because they want to provide up-to-the-minute content to their users. If you don't have frequently-updated content, there is no need for being crawled frequently. Don't confuse frequent crawling with good search result rankings. All the SEO professionals whom I trust say frequent crawling has nothing to do with search results.

Right Way
However, there are beneficial ways to use blogs and RSS. A recent survey shows that the number of blog readers are increasing sharply. So, blog readers can be a good source of traffic. Create a blog that interests human beings (not search engine crawlers) and attract lots of blog readers. Then, lead them to your site.

Unlike blog, RSS hasn't become a hit, but publishing interesting RSS feeds will attract RSS subscribers (and hence more traffic to your site). Also, RSS can be used for sharing content between websites. Like exchanging links, you can look for other sites that will publish your RSS feeds.

Special Note about Using RSS
The most notable aspect of RSS is that it will become more popular than e-mailed newsletter. To subscribe to an e-mail newsletter, people have to give strangers their e-mail address. But they don't need to give anyone any personal information to subscribe to RSS feeds. I know you want visitors' e-mail addresses, but what you want isn't what Internet users want.

Currently, not too many people are reading RSS feeds, because people have to install RSS-aware programs to view RSS feeds. However, once Microsoft bundles RSS-aware program into Windows, the number of RSS subscribers will dramatically increase. So, be prepared.

Changing Your Host Without Worry

2007-04-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

When you do business online long enough, you might want (need) to change your host. Here is a smooth way to do it.

Moving Site
Many hosting companies move your site for you as part of their service, but you won't have time to check if your site functions well at the new host. You want to at least make sure the order process works fine at the new place, don't you? To do so, just follow these simple steps. First, upload all of your files to the new host. Then, visit the new site by using the IP address and fix all glitches. Once you are confident with your site at the new host, change the DNS hostname with the new one at your domain name registrar. Until changing DSN information, no one comes to your new location, so you have plenty of time to test your site.

Search Engines
Maybe, most of you are wondering, changing hosts would affect search engine rankings of your site. Fortunately, if you don't make any significant changes to the content of your site, changing hosts won't affect search engine rankings, and all of the search engine robots will find your new location. The worst scenario would be if your site isn't accessible when search engine robots come to your site. In that case, your listing may temporarily be dropped. Your site will be listed again if your site is reachable at the robots' next visit, but it can be 4 weeks later. Try to minimize down time as much as you can. Following the above steps would be fine.

Don't Leave E-mail Behind
As long as your old site is up, there will be visitors to the old place and e-mail messages sent to your old mail boxes. This happens because it takes days for all the DNSs on earth to know you moved to a new host. You don't need to wait for residual traffics and e-mail to stop before closing your old site. DNSs are smart enough to find your new location. However, you should check old mail boxes until the old host completely closes your account. You know how important it is to answer all the e-mail in order to run a business online, don't you?

Web Hosting for Business

2007-04-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

If your web site is sitting on your hard drive, it won't do you one bit of good or make you any money. You have to publish your web site. You have to look for a host. A host puts your site on the web, so your web site is available for web surfers 24 hours a day 7 days a week. But choosing the right host is a little tricky. Learn from my painful and costly mistakes, and pick the right host for yourself.

Free hosting
I started with a free hosting service. I thought, "Why do I have to pay when I could get it for free." Right? Wrong!! Their server was down periodically, once a week or so. One day, it became inaccessible. I couldn't see my web site, I couldn't log into my account. No support was available. About 6 month later, the server sent me an e-mail which said they had shut down the business. The worse thing was I didn't have any backup. The server had had an online html editing tool. Earlier I had logged onto my account and edited my site, so all my files were in their computer. Unfortunately, I never made my own back up file. When that host was gone, my web site was gone too.

Cheap hosting
I got a little smarter. I picked a cheap hosting service. I thought again, "Why do I have pay more when I could get it cheaper?" Right? Not really. It was OK at the beginning. All of my web pages were able to be downloaded in 8 seconds with a 56k modem. Once in a while it slowed down. Sometimes it took more than a minute to download! Then once in a while became almost every time. When I started considering switching the host, I got an e-mail that said they would shut down the business. This time I got the notice a month prior to the shutdown. Again, I had to find another hosting service. Finally, I decided to pay extra for reliability. Since then, I don't have to worry about my site is up or down. A reliable host definitely takes your headache away.

Domain name
My hosting mistakes ended up not being all mistakes I made. I also didn't have my own domain name. My domain name read www.freehost/myname or myname.freehost.com. My plan had been when I made a little money, I would buy my own domain name. Then I would redirect visitors from my free-host domain name. That plan didn't work. Every time my host shut down, I had to promote a new URL. I lost all previous visitors. They had no way to find out what my new URL was. I wasted time and the money I had to spent on promoting the URL. If I had bought my own domain, I could have kept my previous visitors at least when my host shut down. On top of that problem, I learned that web surfers can tell you are using free hosting service from the URL you have. Having folks know you are using a free hosting service makes it very difficult to earn credibility, and credibility is THE key to making sales in syberspace.

You don't have to buy the latest equipment and spend beaucoup money on every top-notch service, but do pay for your domain name and a good hosting service at least. You can't afford cheap stuff. Really!

Matching the Customer and the Sales Copy

2007-04-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

To make your sales copy sell your products, just writing a good sales copy isn't enough. You need to target the right type of sales copy to the right type of audience.

Classifying Customers
First, let's learn about the types of people. In many psychology books, people are classified into four categories. Here are those categories described in marketer's language.
Emotion Follower
This type buys products by emotion, and doesn't need any logical reason to buy.
Fact Seeker
These people need evidence that your products are as good as you claim. Testimonials or reviews by third parties are essential.
Keep-It-Simple
Just tell this type what your products can do FOR THEM. Don't tell anything extra; you'll most likely turn them away.
Analyst
You need to provide this type of person every detail of your products that they want to know. If you fail to provide details, they will buy from others who do.

Types of Copy
No sales copy works on all the types of people, so you need to write a copy aimed at the people you are targeting. For example, let's say you are selling firewall software. When writing for an analyst type of audience, you'd talk about the technology used to protect PCs from intruders. For emotion followers, you might emphasize how dangerous it is to connect to the Internet without a firewall. (Fear is also a kind of emotion, and it's a strong one.)

Matching
Even though you write a good copy, it won't sell a lot unless you match it with the right audience. For example, the emotional copy in the above example won't work on analysts. They might get scared, but that's not the way they buy things. They need to know the details of how your firewall protects them before they'll buy it. On the other hand, the same emotional copy can scare emotion followers instantaneously, and they will give you money before they think. Make sure to show people the right sales copy.

Identifying the Types of Audience

2007-04-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

Identifying the Audience
Most of the feedback received was about how to identify the types of audience. Most of time, your products will make it obvious. For example, if you are selling software developing tools, you are most likely dealing with analyst types of people. If you are selling jewelry, your customers will be emotion followers. Of course, not all visitors fall into one type, but you only need to identify what type the majority of your audience is. You'll get a better conversion rate if you deal with majorities rather than minorities.

Also, where you are placing an ad gives you good clues. It's easy to understand that the majority of people visiting programming tutorial sites are analysts. When you place an ad there, you will be dealing with a lot of analysts.

When You Cannot Identify
Unfortunately, identifying the type of audience isn't always possible. Let's say you are preparing for an ad campaign by using AdWards. Because everyone uses Google these days, you cannot tell who your audience will be unless it is obvious from your product. In this case, you should test different types of sales copies. Then, stick with the one that pulled the best result.

More Matching Techniques
Even though you are marketing the same product, the type of audience could change according to where you are placing ads. Even so, you can send them to the page with the right sales copy. Let's say, you are placing ads on 2 different websites, and you have identified that visitors to each website are different types of people. Then, you may want to make 2 different landing pages with a matching sales copy. By linking each ad to the appropriate landing page, you can show sales prospects the right sales copy.

This isn't always practical, but you can make a special page for each ad campaign rather than send everyone to your home page.

Every Word Counts

2007-04-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows the importance of good sales copy, but not many people realize that other things like newsletter subscription offers, links, or even navigation menus are as important as sales copy. You should also give the copy for these serious attention.

Short But Big Effect
For instance, newsletter subscription copy is only a few sentences long, but the quality of the copy makes a big difference. I have tried 62 different versions of copy myself, so far. Visitors-to-subscribers rates range from 0.22% to 16.85%. Don't think those sentences have no effect just because they are short.

What You Should Say
Short or long, the basics of writing effective copy are the same. But when you are writing short copy, you'll have extra challenges; it is hard to get your message across with fewer words. You might not be able to say everything you want, but at least tell people what you want them to do, such as order, click, or contact us. If you don't tell visitors what to do, most likely, they won't do anything but leave your site. Then, tell readers why they should do it, if you can use more words. It is better if the reason tells the benefits people will get by doing what you are asking. But, any reason would work. (Read this article for more details.) If you can still use more words, tell the uniqueness of your products. Unique things will give readers freshness and hook their curiosity.

Don't Waste a Word
You can use only a limited number of words, so do not waste any words by duplicating what you are saying. For example, "Click here to order My Firewall" tells visitors what to do twice, "click" and "order." Even though the copy is telling action twice, it doesn't contain any reason to act. You can easily improve the copy by changing it to "Order My Firewall to protect your PC." This copy tells an action, "order," and a reason, "to protect." If you choose the right words, you can write better copy without lengthening it. It's not how many words you use, but what words you use.

Call to Action

2007-04-11T15:28:00.000-07:00

To sell your products, you have to tell visitors to buy. This is known as the "Call to Action." Are you doing it effectively?

Reason and Action
Call-to-action words won't work by themselves. To make such words work, you have to give visitors a reason or several reasons to act. For example, when you are selling products, yelling "Buy now!" won't do any good. That's why you need sales copy that explains the different benefits of your products. Those benefits are the reasons visitors should buy your products. Call-to-action words will do the job only after visitors are given reasons to act. Whatever your intention is, whether it is to get people to subscribe your newsletter, contact you for more information, or to take surveys, always give visitors BOTH reasons to act AND an action to take.

One Action
According to Gary Halbert of thegaryhalbertletter.com, with fewer options, you will get more responses. For instance, if you have different ways of taking orders -- say, by online shopping cart, fax, or by phone -- fewer people will buy. Instead, if you give visitors only one option, i.e. the online shopping cart only, far more people will buy your products. You can give different reasons, but you should give visitors only one option for action.

Crystal Clear
Also, make sure your call-to-action words are very clear. Let's say you want visitors to contact you for more information. Don't just say "more information." People might expect to see more information on another page of your website. To be clear, say "contact us for more information." It doesn't sound like a big deal, but when outcome mismatches expectation, even just a bit, people will stop acting; people will not comply with the actions you desire. So be extra careful that the wording is clear.

Don't Fight A "Cheapest Price" War

2007-04-11T15:27:00.000-07:00

As a business owner, you want people to spend money on your business rather they go and shop at other places. Because of the e-commerce boom, shoppers have too many choices these days. Your business must stand out from hundreds or even thousands of competitors.

Cheaper is Better?
Maybe, you are thinking the cheapest price will attract customers. Sure, it does, but that's the way most of dot coms end up deleted from syberspace. They priced their products or services too low. Their profit barely covered their expenses. Webmasters hope increased business volume will give them big bucks someday, but that "someday" never comes. If each sales doesn't make any net profit, increased sales volume won't make any profit either. Zero times one million is still zero. That's simple arithmetic, isn't it?

The Best is Good?
OK, the cheapest doesn't work. How about being the best or better? Well, providing the best products or services is essential, but telling people yours is the best doesn't work. Phrases like "the best deal," "the best quality," etc., are overused already. Today's shoppers are accustomed to those phrases. They don't think any product can REALLY be the best. They just think "Here comes another one," and they are gone.

Be Deferent and Be Unique
To win the game, make your business appear different from others. Be unique. Again, using over used phrases won't make your business unique. It only makes your business alike - like other businesses. So, how do you make your products or services different from others? You can call your products or services by a special name, or in some cases, tell the world what you have been doing. Honestly and in detail.

Here is An Example or Two
You might be a photographer and offer on-location wedding photography like many other photographers do. Don't just list "weddings" in your ad. Instead, offer your service by saying "Ask us about our 'Moment of Life' wedding photo package." If you sell walking aid equipment, don't promote your business by advertising, "Try the latest walking aid." Say instead, "Try our 'Space Walk' for your next fun excursion."

More Example
Now, let's say you own a gas station along a busy highway with competitors on both sides of your store. You and your competitors put up the same price. You want more customers, but you don't want to risk your profit by lowering your price any father. Instead, you put up a new sign that says, "We clean your car's windshield so it's clean!" The competitors also clean windshield but they don't SAY so, and customers aren't sure. When you drive into a gas station that offers full service, you "assume" they will clean your windshield, but you are not 100% sure. Putting up the sign gives customers "confidence" and makes them think your service (and product) are special. You have just made your service different! But don't stop there. You can add, "We clean your car's headlights." or even "Clean washrooms are available."

Do you see how to make your products or services extraordinary and how easy it is? Do you think it won't work? Remember when you had to go to a washroom while you were on the highway. Now, you can see the BIG difference, can't you? Make your products or services different. Don't fight the "cheapest price" war.

Tell Visitors a Reason and Sell More

2007-04-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

People need reasons to act. We work because we have to make a living. We eat because we are hungry. We have hobbies because we want to have some fun. Furthermore, people need reasons to buy from you. If you tell people why they should buy from you, you will dramatically increase sales.

An Experiment
Harvard social psychologist, Ellen Langer, conducted an experiment. She asked people waiting in line to use a photo copier if they would allow her to go ahead of them in line.

When she used the phrase, "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?" the success rate was 60 percent. When she used the phrase, "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I'm in a rush?" the rate climbed up to 94 percent. This makes sense, doesn't it? But here is a surprise. When she used the phrase, "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?" the rate still clicked 93 percent, even though her reason didn't make any sense at all!

Just Tell People Why
This result is weird, but it reflects how people behave. Also, this experiment tells you that you don't have to make up any reason to attract customers. Just tell people an honest reason, whatever it is. For example, you may not want to tell people you are having special sales because it is a slow month. Don't be shy. We all have busy days and slow days. If you don't tell, people might wonder if you are offering a special deal because there is something wrong with your products. Tell it like it is and remember that any reason works better than no reason. In the photo copy machine experiment, "because I have to make some copies" worked as well as "because I'm in a rush." The important part is giving a reason, not the logic.

Answer All the Imaginable Questions
If you receive inquiries from every potential customer and reply to all of them, you will be writing e-mails all day long. Instead, you should answer all imaginable questions on your site. Making a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page is one way. The best way is putting all the reasons in the sales copy. As visitors are reading the copy, all of the reasons are given. Thus, when visitors finish reading the copy, they are ready to buy.

You need to give prospects a reason to buy from you, but you don't have to be creative. Just tell people honest reasons. Even though those reasons might not sound right to you, they will work way better than nothing.

Don't Be The Best

2007-04-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

The word, "best" is already over used, and doesn't attract potential buyers any longer. Forget about that powerless word. Instead, use "first." That word sells your products way better than the best. Skeptical? Read on.

The "First" Impresses People Most
You know Neil Armstrong was the first man who walked on the moon, but you probably can't recall the second person who walked on the moon (unless you are a space mission geek). We don't remember the second, even though Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin landed on the moon with Neil Armstrong in the same space ship and walked on the moon moments after he did. We remember only the first, and we remember the first extremely well. That means once you get across the message that your product is a first, your business will stick in people's minds. People will come to you when they need your products.

Find Your First
Fortunately, you don't need to invent anything we've never seen to be the first. You just need to make some unique twists on existing products, or your product's unique feature might already be the first of its kind. So, re-examine your products thoroughly. Once you find your first, don't forget to tell the world about it. No one knowing your first is the same as not having it.

Be the First to Show
If you still have trouble finding your first, you can tell publicly anything that hasn't been told to the public. For example, during the mad cow disease epidemic, one meat shop guaranteed his beef was disease-free because he was able to track his beef's shipping route. Tracking beef wasn't his first. That wasn't even his idea. His supplier tracks their products. The owner just told the public how he gets the beef. If you are the first person who publicly shows something, even if it is just your industry's standard, you will be credited with the first as this meat shop owner was. He saved his store. Remember that just because YOU know something doesn't means everyone knows it.

This one simple word will super charge your business. In addition, "first" lasts forever. You can beat the best and become the best yourself, but you cannot beat the first. Forget about "best." Be the first.

Save The Lost Customers

2007-02-21T19:24:00.000-08:00

As you already know, crystal clear navigation is important. However, clarity isn't enough to lead visitors to the right place.

People Think Differently
Categorizing is often used to navigate a large website. When you categorize your site, you need to clearly indicate what each category is about so that visitors can pick the right one. Most websites are doing a good job on this. The problem is you and your visitors don't think a particular product can be found under the same category.

An Example
Let's say you are looking for a memory card at amazon.com. Which category would you pick from the drop down menu for searching -- computers, electronics, camera & photo, cellphone & services, or what else? People will pick different categories. That's not because people are confused (Amazon.com clearly indicated each category); it's because people all think differently. People will pick a different category based on what the memory card is for -- digital camera, mp3 player, cellphone, etc.

See The Difference
If visitors cannot find a product under the category they think the product should be at, they will think you don't carry the product. To avoid this, you need to find all categories a product could fit into, rather than find the best matching category for a product. Then, list the product in all of those categories. You could cross-refer other categories, i.e. adding see-also links. But I prefer listing the same products in multiple categories. At amazon.com, you can find memory cards in multiple categories, so visitors can find the products no matter what category they choose, and amazon.com is not losing any sales.

Common Mistakes with Navigation Bars

2007-02-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

Most of today's navigation bars are very useful. But, some of them still need a little tweaking.

Too Cluttered
Many webmasters are trying to put links to every single page of website onto their navigation bars. But, the more buttons you put on the navigation bar, the more confused visitors can become. Once they are confused, they will just leave your site. Your navigation bar doesn't have to contain links to all of the pages. It only needs to have links to the essential pages, such as the "home," "about us" and "contact us" pages. Use main content (not the navigation bar) to link to all the other pages of your site.

Basically, if you cannot nicely put links to all of your website's pages on a navigation bar, your site is too big to browse in this way. Visitors will give up browsing your site and try to search. So instead, offer a site search feature and let your visitors use it, rather than having a cluttered navigation bar.

"Back" Button Compatibility
Because the browser's "back" button is the most-used feature, your navigation bar should be compatible with it. Some expandable navigation bars aren't fully compatible with the "back" button. Visitors can expand one of the menus and visit one of the pages listed in the expanded menu. Nothing wrong so far. When they click the browser's "back" button, they can go back, but all expanded menus will collapse. So, they have to re-expand the menu to visit another page in the expandable part of the navigation bar. Even though it is only one extra mouse-click, this will irritate visitors enough to leave your site.

Website Navigation, Redefined

2007-02-16T16:06:00.000-08:00

We all know that confusing website navigation turns visitors away, so we often aim to develop an easy-to-understand navigational structure. But this isn't the solution.

Searchable, Not Navigateable
Every webmaster is working hard to create better navigational structures. Unfortunately, visitors don't care about it. When people come to your site and they become interested in seeing more of your site, they will try searching on your site. (They want information fast, so yes, they do search, not browse.) When they want to search, they expect there to be a search box on the page, and will look for it. A plain and simple search box is way more important than a fancy navigation bar. Add a search box to every page of your site.

Scannable
Also, don't forget to make your content easy to scan. Scannablity doesn't seem to have anything to do with searchablity. But, while people are searching, they scan the content of pages that come up in the search results, to see if that is what they're looking for. So, scanning is part of the search activity. "Easy to scan" means "easy to search."

Links
Additionally, adding a few links pointing to similar pages will help visitors a lot. Search engines provide very good results these days, but they are not perfect. People will find something very close to what they are looking for through the search engines, but maybe not exactly. Links to similar pages might lead them to exactly the one they are after. The anchor text must describe clearly what the linked pages are all about, though.

Cannot Search? Cannot Be The Web!

2007-02-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

Shape Your Home Page

2007-02-12T23:00:00.000-08:00

Your home page might be the most important page of your Web site. Warm greeting to visitors isn't enough. It serves important jobs that can change your online business's fate.

Grab the Attention
Your home page must grab visitors' attention in 15 seconds. Otherwise, they will be gone. You need an irresistible headline, and make that headline the most visible thing in your home page. Also, during the first 15 seconds, surfers only scan the page, so make your page scan friendly. Highlight, bold, or use bullets to make words that clearly state visitors' benefits more visible. This strategy helps to convince more visitors to stay at your site.

Lead Visitors
You got their attention. Now, your home page has to guide visitors without confusion to where they want to go. Listing lots of links only confuses visitors, so you have to limit the number of links. If your site is too big to do so, consider making a site map or adding an in-site search feature. Furthermore, nice descriptive link names aren't good enough. Link names are only a few words long, but make them good sales copy. If you make them attractive, more visitors will click those links.

Lightning Fast Download
On top of that, your home page must download quickly. Ten seconds is about the limit Web surfers will wait. If your page takes longer than 10 seconds to download, surfers will leave your site and go to your competitors with fast loading pages. Because there are a lot of small communities where high-speed Internet connections aren't available, I would still stick with the old standard of 30KB per page. People living in those communities are more adapted to the Internet. They can shop for anything they want without an hour drive to a shopping mall.

Appendix: Estimating Loading Time
You can estimate loading time by:

1,024 X file size (KB) X 8 / connection speed (Kbps) X 1,000

KB: Kilo Bytes
Kbps: Kilo bits per second

1 Kilo Byte = 1,024 (2¹º) Bytes
1 Byte = 8 bits
Capital "B" indicates Bytes; lower case "b" indicates bits.
Connection speeds fluctuate due to network conditions.
Don't think about this formula too much unless you are an IT engineer.
It is very tricky to make a good home page. You need to test it a lot. Try different home pages, and keep the one that pulled the best results.

Make People Come Back

2007-02-12T22:59:00.000-08:00

All of us are working on getting more traffic. Unfortunately, it isn't enough. You also need to make people come back for more.

Stickiness
Isn't that nice when people come back and spend lots of time at your site again and again? This is called "stickiness." Good examples of sticky Web sites are free e-mail providers like Yahoo and Hotmail. Most likely, you visit those free e-mail Web sites more often than any other sites and spend lots of time there to read e-mail messages. You do this because there are new messages, "new content." If there isn't any new mail, you will log off as soon as you can. Or, if you are sure there won't be any new mail because you have not told anyone the address, you won't even go back. So, new content is the key to making your site stickier.

Ways to Add New Content
A simple way to add new content is archiving your newsletter. As you send subscribers a new issue, add it to your Web site. Your newsletter is great content for your Web site. (Don't publish a newsletter? Start publishing one, today!) Also, label new content "NEW" so visitors will know what they should pay attention to, just as new e-mail messages are bolded in your mail box. In addition, according to Jakob Nielsen of www.useit.com, just by archiving past content, you can increase your Web site usability by 50%.

Also, don't forget about your products. You can pick products for specials (i.e., "this month's special"). If you want to go farther, you can make a special catalog for holidays, such as Easter or Christmas. These are also new content and increase stickiness. Specials can be completely new products, or they can be selected from your existing products.

Take It Down
Please note that you should take these "NEW" labels and specials down on time. When new content becomes old, the "NEW" label has to come down. You should take a Christmas special catalog down when you can no longer guarantee before-Christmas delivery. Otherwise, you will lose credibility and customers.

Even though thousands of people visit your Web site every day, if your site isn't sticky, your profits will be limited. Make your site stickier than chewing gum.

To Hire a Web Site Designer or Not

2007-02-12T22:58:00.002-08:00

Making a Web site will be one of the biggest projects of starting your online business. And with it comes a big question: Should you hire a professional Web site designer or make the site yourself?

Do-It-Yourself
Making a Web site by yourself may not be a problem for those who know HTML (coding of Web pages), but it would be hard for those who don't know anything about it. Even so, I recommend doing it yourself. It'll take a while to learn HTML and build Web pages, but you will save lots of money. Whole Web site design by a professional can cost a few grand. More importantly, knowing HTML, even just basics, will help you run your business more successfully. For example, you don't have to wait for your designer to get around to it every time you make changes on your site.

Tips for Hiring a Designer
If building a Web site is still too much for you, then you will need to hire a designer. In that case, make sure you will get a usable Web site--one that generates income. Making a usable Web site is tricky. For example, you have to make your Web pages visitor- and search-engine friendly. No matter how good your Web site is, no visitors means no sales. Furthermore, getting the #1 position on every search engine listing won't help you make money if your site isn't visitor-friendly.

Don't assume Web designers know all of that. You have to tell them what to do. One way to communicate that message is to draw your design on a piece of paper, including all the details, from size of font to ordering processes, and show the designer your drawing (the blueprints). When the designer makes the Web site from your blueprints, you will have the usable Web site that you want.

Important Note
You pay designers big bucks, but they may keep the copyright of your Web pages because they created them. In that case, they can put you in trouble in various ways. You cannot make new pages by copying from existing pages, since the designer owns the copyright. Also, you can be banned from using your Web site anytime. Straighten out this issue before hiring a designer. If you have trouble getting the copyright, find another who gives you all the rights.

Knowing HTML helps a lot in running your business, but don't push yourself too hard to learn. You can hire a Web designer whenever you need one. Should you hire someone, make sure you will get what you want--a Web site that makes you money.

A Money Making Web Site

2007-02-12T22:58:00.001-08:00

Once you start your online business, you're going to spend lots of time to get traffic to your site. But, if you don't build your web site right, your visitors will leave as quickly as they came. Most likely, they will never come back. Your URL will be forgotten forever. You won't make any money. You'll just waste your effort.

Quick download
People surfing on the Internet are in a rush. This is the information highway. No one stops in the middle of a highway. First, your web site has to be downloaded very quickly. People will not wait 10 seconds for downloading a page. Have you ever left a web site because it took too long to download? Probably. You don't want the same thing to happen to you, so make your site less than 30K in size. It should download in 8 seconds with a 56K modem. In the near future, all of us will have high speed internet connections, but today, some people are still using 28K modems. You can make your web site very fancy, if you ignore the download time. Those fancy pages are good only if they can be viewed and QUICKLY.

Slow the web surfers down
Now, your home page is front of the web surfers, but they are still in a rush. If the first few sentences they read don't talk about their interests, they are gone. So, you ask, just what is their interest? It is "their benefit." Web surfers don't care what your web site can do. They only care about what your web site can do for them. First, they look at the headline or the most visible words in your home page. You cannot say many things in one headline, but you must talk about your customers' benefit. Then, they will skim your home page. They will read subheadings. You cannot tell a whole lot with a few subheadings, but continue to talk about their benefit. Finally, a surfer can become a regular visitor and will read your home page more closely. But don't forget to talk about their benefit. ALWAYS!

Free information
Now, your visitors have looked around your site, but it doesn't mean they are ready to buy your products. Most of the time, people go online to find some free information. It's important to put lots of free expert advice on your site. If you give your visitors valuable information, they will remember you. Hopefully, they will come back later.

Get e-mail
Unfortunately, only a small percent of visitors buy your products on the very first visit. You may even have to get in touch with your visitors several times before they make a purchase. Thanks to the technology, there is a great free way to keep in touch with your visitors. You guessed it. That's e-mail! So, ask for an e-mail address on your web site. Now you have lots of time to convince your visitors to buy your products. I will cover e-mail campaign strategy in a later issue.

Remember, people are in a hurry. Make sure your site can slow the surfers down, so they will browse your site. Don't let them pass you or your product by. The only way to slow the surfers down is talking about THEIR benefit.

Web Surfers' Trends

2007-02-12T22:57:00.000-08:00

As technology is advancing every day, trends of Web surfers are also changing. Catch up on those trends and impress more visitors.

Screen Resolution
At the beginning of this year, more than 50% of visitors to my site were with a screen resolution of 800x600. Visitors with 1028x768 screen resolution were less than 40%. Today, 1028x768 (52.3%) is the most common screen resolution, followed by 800x600 (37.2%).

Even though monitors are getting sharper, I would still design Web pages for an 800x600 screen. 37% is too many to ignore, and not all 1028x768 users are surfing the Web with a maximized browser window. People who upgraded the monitor from 800x600 to higher resolution tend to use a window size close to 800x600. Also, there will only be extra empty space when 800x600 optimized pages are viewed on a larger window size, but it is quite awkward when you see 1028x768 optimized Web pages on an 800x600 screen.

Web Browser
You might already know Internet Explorer dominates the browser world. More than 95% of visitors use IE. The second most popular browser is Netscape. But, Opera is gaining in presence (recent stats: Netscape 1%, Opera 0.9%). One thing to note is that you can configure Opera to pretend to be other browsers. If you set Opera to be IE, for example, the access with that Opera will be counted as an access with IE. Somehow, default configuration is set to IE. So, there might actually be more Opera users than Netscape users. The bad thing is that your Web pages may look different on Opera than on IE or Netscape. Make sure your Web pages look good on Opera as well.

Miscellaneous
Here are other stats that might help you to make more user-friendly Web pages.

Java Applet (not JavaScript) support - 98.6%
Note: Microsoft has stopped distributing Microsoft VM , so use Java VM .
Macromedia Director support -- 51.9%
Flash support ---------------- 95.8%
Real audio support ------------ 55.3%
Quick Time audio support ----- 46.7%
Windows Media audio support - 95.2%
PDF support ------------------ 77.9%

Don't "Wow" Visitors

2007-02-12T22:56:00.000-08:00

Every webmaster has thought or is thinking about making an eye-catching website. But, it's a big no-no.

Distraction
Today's Internet browsers are multimedia capable. (In fact, according to my stats, more than 95% of visitors use browsers that support Flash.) There will be no problem attracting visitors' attention by using nifty animation effects. However, as visitors get more and more attracted by those effects, they are more distracted from your products.

Sell, Not Entertain
Your website is supposed to sell stuff, not entertain your visitors. From simple graphics to fancy Flash animation, eye-candies shouldn't be on your website unless they help to sell your products. An easy navigation scheme, sufficient information on your products and your business, and an easy checkout system are the stuff needed to sell product. These boring things are way more important than fancy animations.

Examples
Here are two hypothetical websites:
Web pages are professionally designed and very attractive. There is an impressive Flash presentation on the home page. Also, lots of features are available to entertain you. However, it is hard to find the product you are looking for, and there is little information on the product.

Web pages are very simple, no bells and whistles. You think you can make those kinds of web pages by yourself. But, the website is easy to navigate and the search feature brings back relevant results. It is very easy to find the product you are looking for. Finally, the checkout process is straightforward.
You can easily tell website #2 sells more products. But, when people are making their own website, they focus on the appearance of pages too much and end up having a website like #1. Don't do that to yourself.

Encoding Decoded

2007-02-12T22:55:00.000-08:00

Encoding and Search Rankings
The most asked question was, If you use UTF-8 (the same encoding used by major search engines -- Google, Yahoo! and MSN), will you get better search rankings? Using the same encoding as theirs doesn't do anything with relevancy, so it won't affect search rankings at all. However, adding proper "charset" attribute to your web pages may affect the rankings. Each letter is a set of bits. The same set of bits can be different letters in different character encoding. If you don't tell search engines what encoding you are using, they cannot match search queries to your content properly. Hence irrelevant search result for your site. This doesn't mean you will get better rankings; you will be on the same page.

Compatibility
The next most received feedback was that UTF-8 is supported by very few computers. However, it is hard to find one which doesn't support UTF-8, these days. Just because a computer is unable to display UTF-8 encoded web pages doesn't mean it doesn't support UTP-8. It most likely means the specific font hasn't been installed. Once you install the proper font (not encoding), the computer can display the words properly.

Character Size
Some technically oriented people claim Unicode is a double byte character set, so using Unicode will double file size. Using Unicode or UTF-16 will, but not UTF-8. UTF-8 encoding uses double byte characters only when needed. In UTF-8 encoded file, basic English characters (ASCII) are 1 byte, and characters beyond ASCII become 2 bytes. For example, in my Japanese version of web pages, all HTML tags are in ASCII, so each letter is 1 byte. But each Japanese character of my content is 2 bytes. This is the same as using other Japanese encoding, i.e. iso-2022-jp. So, the file size remains the same.

NB
To save files in UTF-8 with Windows XP notepad, simply select "UTF-8" from the "Encoding" drop down menu on the "Save File" window.

Sell to International Customers

2007-02-12T22:54:00.000-08:00

One powerful thing about internet is people from all over the world can see your web site. Make sure to sell to those international customers.

Format
Your online form should be designed for international users. For example, many order forms have a nice drop down menu of the 51 US state codes, but reject non-US addresses. Also, the forms reject phone numbers that are different than the 10-digit, North American format, 555-555-5555. Each country has its own format; if your form only takes your home county's format, international users cannot order your products. Give your forms flexibility for different local address and contact information.

Encoding
Having a multilingual website attracts more customers from all over the world. If you want to do this, using UTF-8 encoding is the best bet. It is the only encoding type that allows you to display multiple languages on the same page. (Most likely, that's why all major international search engines -- Google, Yahoo, and MSN -- use UTF-8.) And, you don't have to worry about compatibility. UTF-8 is supported by both the Mac and Windows operating systems, and most Internet software like FireFox, IE, Outlook, Thunderbird, do too. Keep in mind, some cell phones do not support UTF-8. If you are making content specially for cellphones, you need to check on this.

Measurement
When you give size of your products, show them in different measurements, i.e. for shoe size, US 8, UK 7-1/2, Japan 26, or for length, 5 inch and 13 cm. You should not expect all of your customers to be able to convert measurements correctly on their own. You may think these are "just measurements," but giving these conversions will greatly reduce the return/exchange rates for your products and increase your customers' satisfaction.

Importance of Web Site Usability

2007-02-12T22:51:00.000-08:00

On many Web sites, you can personalize Web pages and they will remember your preferences. But, do Web surfers really want personalized Web pages?

Research
Jupiter Research came up with interesting data. About 50% of Internet users want to see better basic Web site usability, such as faster loading and easier site navigation, rather than personalizing pages. Here are the results of the research:

Which of the following features would make you visit/patronize/buy more from a certain site?

Content Services Commerce
Pages load quickly 54% 41% 37%
Site was easy to navigate 52% 50% 48%
Ease of registration/check-out/login 28% 44% 42%
Pages are easy to read/not confusing 35% 37% 27%
Search function works well 32% 17% 30%
None 16% 22% 22%
Ability to customize site to my needs 8% 11% 4%
Personalized offers/recommendations 8% 7% 14%

This is most likely because Internet users are goal-oriented, meaning they want to find the best deal, buy a particular title of video game, and so on. They want to finish the job without spending extra time personalizing Web pages.

Usability Is First
Nonetheless, personalizable Web pages are not just a useless feature. They can give visitors a better user experience, but only if usability of your Web site is good. So, before adding a personalizable feature, improve usability. Also, make sure adding a personalizable feature won't cause any usability problems. For example, personalized pages must be displayed as fast as Google's search results appear. If this isn't possible because of a server's poor performance, you should upgrade the server or forget about personalization. Moreover, don't ever make your Web site unable to browse until visitors complete the personalizing process.

Beat the Competition
The Jupiter Research results also indicate that Web surfers often notice Web sites with poor usability. That's why many people demand Web sites with better usability. This demand means many of your competitors might have usability problems. If you improve your site's usability, you will have a big advantage over most of your competition.

Content Does Matter

2007-02-12T22:48:00.001-08:00

Making a content-rich website is the key to succeeding online, but "content-rich" doesn't mean having War-And-Peace-length content. You need a collection of short but informative pieces.

Collection
The more articles you have on your site, the more internet surfers you can capture. Because search engines provide page-by-page results, articles on different topics show up in search results for different keywords. So if you have a lot of articles on different topics, searchers can find your articles in the search results for a wide variety of keywords - hence, more traffic to your site. In reality, however, not every article generates the traffic directly from search engines. But having a large collection of articles generates consistent traffic far better (because there is less of an effect on algorithm changes) than the average SEO.

Length
Many people think longer articles are better, but that is not so. Ideally, your article can be read within 60 to 90 seconds. This is how long the average person will pay attention. For my newsletter content, I try limiting the length of articles to less than 300 words. Considering the fast-paced behavior of internet users, I'd say 300 words is still rather long.

Special Concerns
If your target audiences are members of low-literacy groups, such as children or people with developmental disabilities, writing short content will become more critical. Low-literacy users need more time to read any given article than average-literacy users do. Also, average-literacy users often scan and find the part of an article they want to read, but low-literacy users generally cannot do this; they read your content from top to bottom. Pay extra attention to every word you put in the articles to determine if each one is absolutely necessary.

Choosing the Right Products

2007-02-12T22:42:00.000-08:00

"What should I sell?" This is the most asked question. Well, you can sell anything you want, but if you want to rock your wallet, you should pick a hot product.

Find a market first
First, find a market. Then pick a product. In this way, you can find profitable products. If you pick a product first, there might not be a market for it. It is important to find a market, and it is easy. Just go to some expert sites, bulletin boards or news groups, and look for hot topics. You can also check magazines. Look at some back issues. Find the ads appear every month. They must be for a hot product; otherwise, advertiser would not buy another ad.

"Problem" is the key
I am not saying to get into trouble. Just look for problems you can fix. People are lazy. (That's why I started my own business.) They want an easy quick solution right now. People are looking for solutions everywhere. Look at the lottery. It seems like a quick and easy financial solution. Lots of people spend money on what would be a solution. Online groups aren't exceptions. People put up questions or problems and wait for answers or solutions. As you are looking for markets, look for problems.

Improve it
You're got a product. Now, make it little better. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You can't sell new inventions many times because people resist paying for unfamiliar things. It takes time and money for newly invented products to gain public awareness. Just give your product a little twist. Providing better guarantees or more bonuses can do the job.

Consumable
Wouldn't it be nice if you could sell your products to the same customer month after month rather than once in a life time? Once your customer buys from you, she will most likely buy from you again. It costs you to get new customers, but repeat customers won't cost you a penny. You only really need a good repeat or consumable product. If yours isn't, split your product, and sell each as a different product.

Price for profit
Don't underprice your products. If you want to make money, the margin (the ratio between the cost of your product and the selling price) has to be 1:4 at least. If a product costs you $5, you have to sell it $20 or more. A low-margin-high-volume business plan doesn't work either. It's not only hard to get a large number of visitors, but increased sales doesn't guarantee an increase in profit. As business volume increases, running costs also increase, so your net profit won't increase. Only your work load will increase. To avoid this ugly scenario, set your price for profit.

Love your products
Whatever you sell, you have to love your products. How do you suppose your customer will be happy with products you don't like. How do you even sell products you don't like?

This is not rocket science. Just do a little research and brainstorm. You will come up with a nice bunch of ideal products.

The Most Profitable Products

2007-02-12T22:41:00.000-08:00

You can make more money if you create products for people who have a lot of extra money. This sounds like common sense, but most businesses are ignoring this.

No Money No Business
Here is an example. When I was starting my Web sites, I found a good book about HTML. It was only $30, but I couldn't afford it. I was working at minimum wage. $30 was too much for me. No matter how good your products are and how much prospective clients love your products, if potential customers don't have money, you'll have a hard time selling your products.

Higher Price
More sales aren't the only advantage you will get. You can also sell your products at a higher price to people who have extra money. Let's say you write the book "Play Beethoven in 30 Days" and price it $30. $30 for a book is nothing for people who can afford a piano. You can sell the book at $60 or even higher. On the other hand, if you write the book "Clear Debt in 30 Days", it is going to be very hard to sell a book to people who have trouble balancing their books, even if it only costs $30.

Less Headache
Moreover, if the products are harder to afford, people demand more out of the products. Harder to afford doesn't mean higher priced. $30 has a different value to different people. You can easily satisfy people who feel "It's only $30." But you need way better products to satisfy people who feel $30 is too expensive. If buyers aren't satisfied, they will return your products for refunds. Even worse, they may return the products after making a copy to keep, or crack your server to download a free copy. Either way, less profit for you.

Also, Consider This
Creating products for the right audience is a very important factor, but don't ignore other aspects of profitable products.

The 8 Steps for Starting a Business Online

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1.Chose Your Products
Find the needs or demands, not the products.
Go to wordtracker (commercial) or overture (free), and look for well-searched keywords (searched a lot of times). Then, find a product related to those well-searched keywords. Being searched a lot of times means a lot of people are looking. If you find a product which a lot of people are looking for, you can sell it a lot.
Other things you may want to know about choosing products

2.Buy a Domain Name
You need your own domain name, not like YourISP.com/~UserName. You can get one less than $10/year. Though, don't buy any keyword-rich domain name. It won't give you a boost in search engine rankings. (At least, it isn't a significant factor.) Your domain name will be your own brand name, like aol.com or amazon.com. You don't want a keyword-rich domain for your brand name, do you?

3.Make Your Site
You have only 8 seconds or less to grab visitors' attention. If you fail, they are gone. Moreover, if you confuse visitors, they are gone. You need to make a website that people want to brows.

articles on building website

4.Get Hosted
Forget about free hosting services; find a reliable hosting service. For conventional businesses, time is money. For internet businesses, uptime is money.

articles about articles on website hosts
reviews of hosting services

5.Publish Your Own Newsletter
Using your own opt in list is the most effective way of marketing. Don't forget to ask visitors to subscribe to your newsletter.

articles on e-mail marketing
reviews of opt-in list management tools

6.Sell It Right
No matter how many visitors you receive, you cannot make money if no one buys your product. To sell your product, you have to do it right.

articles on copy writing
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7.Get Traffic
You might already know that if your site is ranked high at any search engines, you will get a lot of visitors. But, that isn't the only way to get visitors. There are other things you can do to generate traffic.

articles on Search Engine Marketing
articles on generating traffic

8.Test & Revise
Successful online business depends on consistent analyst and test. So, always analyze the results and find flaws. As you correct those flaws, you will make more money.

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