What’s In Your Marketing Arsenal?

June 26th, 2008 by Shirley Grant No comments »

By Liz Tomey

This should be a question that everyone asks himself or herself. What is in my marketing arsenal? Let’s first talk about what a marketing arsenal is.

An arsenal as defined by http://www.nps.gov/prsf/history/glossary.htm is a building or establishment for manufacturing, storing, repairing, and issuing arms and ammunition.

A marketing arsenal defined by me is a “database” that includes all of my techniques and tactics for making money online.

My marketing arsenal isn’t technically a “database”. It’s a folder on my computer labeled “Marketing Arsenal”. Inside this arsenal, I have other folders with different labels like:

List Building Traffic Generation Adsense Revenue Niche Research Product Creation

… and a few other ones. Inside each of these folders are step-by-step plans, techniques, resources, and the like that help me to make money online.

For instance in my List Building folder of my Marketing Arsenal, I have templates that I have used to build successful landing pages, plans to help me create these sites for maximum subscriber conversions, a few ebooks that I refer back to on list building over and over again, and a few other things.

Now every time I want to build a new list, tweak an existing list so that I can get more subscribers, I open up my Marketing Arsenal go into my List Building folder and everything I need to know and use is right there at my finger tips.

So, that’s why you need to ask yourself. What’s in my marketing arsenal? If you said I don’t have one, it’s time for you to get started on building one. All you have to do is create a new folder on your computer somewhere and name it “Marketing Arsenal”.

Now what is it that you want to do? Let’s say it’s get traffic to a brand new site you have created. Then inside your marketing arsenal folder create a new folder called “Traffic Generation”.

Now open up your word processing program and create a new document and save it as TrafficPlan inside this folder. Right out a plan of action and save it again. Don’t know where to start? Then it’s time for you to start researching. Read articles, ebooks, blogs or whatever it takes to start finding ways you can drive traffic. Record all your findings in your TrafficPlan document.

While you’re researching if you find resources on getting traffic that you want to refer back to, just save them to your Traffic Generation folder.

Once you’ve done all your research, it’s time to take action. Start with the first technique. Use it. Does it work? How well did it work? Record all of this in your TrafficPlan document.

Overtime you will be an out of this world Marketing Arsenal that will allow you to do anything and everything you want! I wouldn’t take a million dollars for my marketing arsenal because it has the potential to make me millions of dollars, and with time and focus you could have a million dollar marketing arsenal too!

Liz Tomey is a successful Internet marketer who has produced several amazing products about creating an income online. If you’d like to get started with an internet marketing strategy, visit http://www.UndergroundMarketingStrategy.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Liz_Tomey

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Posted in Internet Marketing

How You Can Find The Best Affiliate Programs To Make You The Most Money Every Time!

June 9th, 2008 by Shirley Grant No comments »

By Liz Tomey

As affiliate marketers finding affiliate programs can be difficult. By following a few rules, you can find a good affiliate program that pays well, and fits your business. Before you decide on your affiliate program, I have a few things you need to look at before you commit to any one program.

The first thing you want to make sure of is that the affiliate program is reliable in paying you every time and on time. You can do research for yourself by searching the search engines for any information on the affiliate program, or by searching for affiliate program or affiliate marketing forums.

Speaking of money and getting paid, another thing you want to look at is the affiliate programs payment structure and their commission rate. You want to start by looking for high commissions items. However, some of the best affiliate programs are high ticket items that you get a small commission from. You just have to be the judge, and decide how much you want to get paid.

Another thing you want to look for before you decide on any one affiliate program is what kind of statistics that they offer you. Statistics show you how many clicks your link is getting, from where, and how many sales you have made. This is important because you want to know if you are making any money from promoting the affiliate program or not. These statistics can show you if you need to be promoting the product differently, or finding a new product all together.

Probably the most important thing you need to look for when deciding on an affiliate program is the actual product and the site that is selling the product. You need to study both. Make sure the product is a good product. You can do this by either buying it and using it, or searching for reviews of the product. Visit the site where the product is being sold, and make sure that the site does a good job of selling visitors on buying the product. If you feel like you wouldn’t buy the product, chances are that anyone you send wont buy it either.

When choosing your affiliate program, and your new to affiliate marketing, finding ones that offer some kind of affiliate marketing training could be good for you. A site that gives tips and information on making money through affiliate marketing would be perfect for a newbie because they could learn as they promoted the product. Some of these sites will even tell you what their top affiliates are doing to make sales. You can learn from successful affiliate marketers, and do the things they do so that you also could become successful with affiliate marketing. Now this shouldn’t be required, but it is a great benefit that some affiliate programs do offer.

Now I haven’t covered everything you should look at before joining an affiliate program, but these are some of the very important factors you should be looking for. You can’t make money with a bad affiliate program. One that doesn’t pay well, or doesn’t sell the visitors that you send them is something you want to stay away from. There are many affiliate programs online, you just have to do the research to find them, and find the ones that best suit your site or newsletter. Once you can find good affiliate programs, you’ll be on your way as a successful affiliate marketer.

Liz Tomey runs an affiliate marketing website that focuses on educating people about the different ways of making money through affiliate marketing.You can enjoy reading tips, tricks, and other information about affiliate marketing and finding the best affiliate marketing program on her site at http://www.TheAffiliateMarketingBlog.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Liz_Tomey

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Yes! You Can Make Money Online Without Your Own Product Or Service!

May 29th, 2008 by Shirley Grant No comments »

By Liz Tomey

Many people are lead to believe that the only way to make money online is to have their own product or service. If you believe this, you have been misinformed! There is a wonderful way to make money online without having anything of your own to sell, and that’s via affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is when you are selling a product that belongs to another person or company and they pay you a certain commission for selling their product. There are basically two types of products that you can promote as an affiliate marketer. They are physical and digital products. A physical product will be one that will be shipped to the customer, and a digital product will be one that the customer will be able to download.

From my personal experience, I have made more money as an affiliate for digital products than I have from physical products. The commissions are usually higher (between 50-75%), and I make more sales. So, all around I am making much more money with digital products.

However, there are many affiliate marketers who make a lot of money as an affiliate for those selling physical products. The commissions are usually lower, but the price tags for the products are usually more expensive.

My advice is to look at both digital and physical products and decide what route you want to take. There’s also nothing wrong with being an affiliate for both physical and digital products. By doing this you can even test what makes you the most money, and focus your marketing on the one that makes you the most money.

If you are promoting digital products, there are some great places online to find products that you can instantly sign up to promote for free. Places like Click Bank and Pay Dot Com are the two best places to find digital products that you can promote. They have all products broken up into easy to search categories to help you find exactly what you are looking for.

You’ll never have trouble finding physical products to promote as an affiliate marketer. There are so many sites out there that need affiliates for their physical products, and there are just too many to list. You could try affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Share A Sale, or go to your favorite search engine and search for an affiliate program for a certain product you have in mind.

For instance, if I wanted to search for an affiliate program paying me commissions on computers, I could go to a search engine and type in “computer affiliate program”, and find several different sites with affiliate programs for selling computers. You can do this with anything you can possibly think of to sell.

My advice is to pick one thing to promote, and then focus on learning how to promote it and make the most money that you can. Once you learn the ropes of affiliate marketing, you can then start promoting other products and services to make even more money. That to me is the best part of affiliate marketing. I can add to my income whenever I want just by finding another product to promote.

Now it’s time for you to get started. Pick a topic, and find an affiliate program for that topic. Once you have your product picked, seek out resources that will help you make money from promoting the product. All it takes is you getting started today!

Liz Tomey runs an affiliate marketing website that focuses on educating people about the different ways of making money through affiliate marketing.You can enjoy reading tips, tricks, and other information about affiliate marketing and finding the best affiliate marketing program on her site at http://www.TheAffiliateMarketingBlog.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Liz_Tomey

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Posted in Affiliate marketing

10 Mind Blowing Ways To Increase Your Sales

May 29th, 2008 by Shirley Grant No comments »

By Larry Dotson

1. Show your prospects how much enthusiasm you have for your product and business. If you’re convincing enough, they will be enthusiastic too.

2. End your sales letter or ad copy with a strong closing. It could be a free bonus, a discount price, a benefit reminder, an ordering deadline, etc.

3. Please your complaining customers. You can refund their money, give them a discount, give them a free gift, solve the problem quickly, etc.

4. Make your customers get excited about your business and they will tell their friends. Give them a free vacation certificate, a coupon, etc.

5. Give your prospects extra confidence so they will order. Use endorsements, testimonials, a strong guarantee or warranty, etc.

6. Build your opt-in list by allowing your visitors to sign up for a free e-zine, ebooks, software, contests, sweepstakes, etc.

7. Give your prospects or customers a breath of fresh air. Don’t be afraid to design your web site and ad copies different from everyone else.

8. Allow your customers to get part of your total offer right after they order. If you have to ship the item, make one of your bonuses available online.

9. Write and submit articles to e-zine publishers or webmasters. If you want it to be published, it should be like an article and not like an ad.

10. Show your prospects that you are an expert, because authority can persuade people to buy. You could publish an article, write an ebook, etc.

About The Author

Over 40,000 Free eBooks & Web Books when you visit: http://www.ldpublishing.com As a bonus, Bob Osgoodby publishes the free weekly “Your Business” Newsletter – visit his web site to subscribe and place a FREE Ad! http://adv-marketing.com/business

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Larry_Dotson

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Posted in Internet Marketing

Copywriting Productivity Tools

April 4th, 2008 by Shirley Grant No comments »

By Michel Fortin

When I write copy, some tools help me tremendously. Whether it’s the copy itself, or interactions with my clients, there are certain websites I use that help make it a lot easier for me.

There are quite a few pieces of software, so let me just stick with the web-based ones. How about posting yours? What are some of the tools you use in your work to improve your productivity?

Here are some of mine…

Google Writely

Google is coming out with some pretty impressive tools of late. Writely is certainly one of them.

Writely is an online web-based word processor. Great for writing copy and sharing/collaborating, especially with other copywriters, clients, associates, etc. The beauty is that it can also import and export in various formats, including MS Word, Rich Text, HTML, OpenOffice, image files, and even zipped files.

Google Notebook

Research is an incredible part of our job as copywriters. Surfing the web or reading your email, you will come across a ton of passages and clippings you want to copy, reference to, gather for data research purposes, quote in your copy, get ideas from, etc.

Google Notebook is an personal online repository of all things important. It even offers a browser plugin to copy clippings on the web, save images, add sticky notes and file bookmarks, on the fly. You can easily “click and store” as you browse.

Google Spreadsheets

I use to have a PC-based spreadsheet to keep track of all my copywriting projects, which my junior copywriters, my accountant and my assistant had access to and could work on. But emailing back and forth was a nightmare.

Like Writely, Google Spreadsheet makes it possible to have it all in one central location, online. It even imports and exports in a variety of popular spreadsheet formats, including Excel, CSV, text, and so on.

Google Analytics

I love Google Analytics. Not only is it free, but Google Analytics is a lot more than your typical traffic and web-tracking software (giving you typical stats like referrers, pageviews, search engine traffic, keywords, etc). It’s also a really cool split-tester and conversion tracker.

When I test copy, or when I want to track how well the copy I wrote for a client performs, I simply add a snippet of code on the salesletter and another on the resulting action page (i.e., “thank you” page). And that’s just an iceberg’s tip of the information you can gather.

SendThisFile.com

When I need to send files — like copy work, video, images, etc — that are too large, either for my email or my client’s email, I used to upload it to my server and email the link. (Not only is this a two-step process, it’s also taxing on my resources.)

Now, I use SendThisFile to email any size file to my clients/associates in a snap. You enter the recipient’s data (and you can even send files to multiple recipients), browse to your file on your hard drive, upload, and send. That’s it!

BaseCamp

BaseCamp is a project management system and central repository I use to share information between clients, co-workers and junior copywriters.

It’s complete with message boards, group emails, whiteboards, file sharing, to-do lists, milestone planning, discussion room, goal setting, and more. One of the benefits is that, when I need information from a client, rather than a phone call or email, the client can respond via BaseCamp and it keeps, sorts and tags important communications.

Answers.com

Answers.com is an online dictionary. But it’s a lot more than that. While you can use it as a research tool, Answers.com also offers a free downloadable program that sits in your system tray and works at any time, when you need it the most.

While writing your copy or doing research, you simply ALT-click any word or phrase in any document, web page or software, and out pops up a window giving you: dictionary, encyclopedia, almanac, references, web searches, wiki entries, translations, thesaurus, you name it. All in one.

Textalyzer

MS Word offers a readability analysis built-in. This is great when you want to know if you’re using words that are too complex. (The best copy is almost always easily readable at a 6-7th grade level.) But what if you use FrontPage? Or if it’s online?

That’s where Textalyzer comes in. (It’s also a great tool for SEO purposes.) Need to know the word count, sentence count or character count of your copy? Perhaps to quote fees, measure project sizes or analyze competitor’s copy? Textalyzer does it all for you online.

RhymeZone

Sometimes, you need a word that rhymes. Or you’re looking for a famous quote. Or you’re looking for a word but can’t seem to find it in a dictionary. Or you want to quote a famous passage, adage or document (like the US Constitution).

Enter RhymeZone. It’s a writer’s all-in-one reference tool. It will even search word variations, antonyms, homophones, spellings, you name it. It’s an awesome tool I use quite often.

iDictate

Often, I need to transcribe copy I’ve recorded, a telephone conversation (such as one with a client), a teleseminar, or an audio file that’s relevant to my copy. iDictate is an online service that will transcribe audio files of any type and email you a document by email within a few hours.

It’s all done by human beings. (This is important since software, like Dragon Naturally Speaking, have to be trained and can only transcribe the speaker who trained it.) They even offer a 1-800 recording service, which is great for doing it on the phone.

I have more, but hopefully this will get things started.

— About the Author —
Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, marketing strategy consultant, and instrumental in some of the most lucrative online businesses and wildly successful marketing campaigns to ever hit the web. For more articles like this one, please visit his blog at http://www.michelfortin.com/ and subscribe to his RSS feed.
——————————————

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Posted in Article Writing

How to Get Instant Targeted Traffic Without Paying For It

March 8th, 2008 by Shirley Grant No comments »

Traffic is the life-blood of your Internet business.

No traffic, no business.

So how do you get traffic?

With joint ventures and affiliates you’re relying on someone else to get you the
traffic.

Your business (and the size of your bank account) is in their hands.

With hocus pocus SEO techniques, you’ve got to stay a step ahead of the search
engines.

Good luck.

With pay-per-click, you’re p-a-y-i-n-g.

Through the nose.

Forever and ever.

Ouch.

What if you can get INSTANT targeted traffic to every single one of your sites,
courtesy of the search engines?

No, not Adwords.

You NEVER ever have to pay for this traffic.

http://www.mmezine.com/recommends/gsnatch

There is a whole world of buyers out there looking for what you have to offer.

And you don’t need to pay Google (or anyone) for them to beat a path to your
website.

Think about it… you can actually earn 5 or 6 figures a year without spending a
cent on advertising.

This means you can start earning NOW, without an investment.

And you can do this whether you have your own products, or you’re an affiliate.

Doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that YOU get the traffic you need to make your living online
NOW, starting today.

http://www.mmezine.com/recommends/gsnatch

Shirley A Grant

P.S. No matter how much you’re currently spending on Adwords, it’s too much. Why
PAY for traffic when you can get the same traffic for…
nada…
zip…
zero…
zilch…
diddly-squat…
and don’t forget…
F*R*E*E?

http://www.mmezine.com/recommends/gsnatch

P.P.S. Not paying for Adwords? Scrounging for traffic where ever you can find it? Stop
wasting your time on the latest SEO voodoo, and stop chasing affiliates. Get
your own steady stream of traffic NOW.

http://www.mmezine.com/recommends/gsnatch

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Posted in Traffic Generation

Free Website Traffic Generation Techniques For The Little Guy

September 24th, 2007 by Shirley Grant 1 comment »

By Akin Alabi

The importance of generating website traffic cannot be over emphasized. We all need to generate a decent amount of traffic to our website. Without it, your online businesses will all die. The higher the traffic you are able to generate to your website, the better your site will perform all things being equal so we really need to go out there to get the traffic.

Generating website traffic can be a daunting and expensive venture if you don’t know how to go about it. But if you do, you will find it extremely rewarding. Today, I’m going to reveal to your three website traffic generation techniques anyone can begin to use starting today. I call them the website traffic generation techniques for the little guy.

Here they are.

Little Guy Traffic Generation 1: Post Comments on Blogs

Search for blogs related to your niche. Go to their comments segments and drop useful comments. Drop comments people will appreciate you for. Resist all temptations to directly advertise. Make insightful comments and leave your link behind.

Little Guy Traffic Generation 2: Forum Participation

Participating in forums is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Search for forums related to your niche and begin to post your comments. Respond to people’s questions and genuinely help them. Have a very decent signature line with your link in it and people will find you.

Little Guy Traffic Generation 3: Offline Article Marketing

This method involves writing quality articles and sending to targeted and niche newspapers and magazines. In the past, I used to think that only professional writers and journalists were allowed to contribute. Not so. If you send in quality articles, many editors will use them. Editors are always looking for contents. If they see you are ready to write quality articles for them for FREE, they will take a second look.

Start using those techniques today and I guarantee you will see positive results in no time.

I wish you all the best.

Akin Alabi

Make Your First Sale Online In The Next 24 Hours. 100% Guaranteed. Get More Details at http://www.FirstAffiliateSale.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Akin_Alabi

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Posted in Traffic Generation