Learning Lessons From An Online Marketing Expert To Become One Yourself

admin    Web Marketing     Become, Expert, From, Learning, Lessons, marketing, Online, Yourself

Most of us have to start from nothing. Even experts themselves were once amateurs. And the online world is a vast world where you can find lots of people who are newbies themselves yet are willing to gamble their time and effort for the name of success.

That is because internet technology gives people opportunities, regardless of who they are. However, you would need the guiding hand of an online marketing expert to know what’s wrong and right in online marketing.

To seek knowledge from an internet marketing expert is a good starting point to become successful in your online business. Having a professional web site is not enough. You need to work on making it interesting for users to visit it. A real marketing guru knows what it takes to top in Google and he shares his secrets with people. Moreover, these experts are also capable of delivering the right access to resources that can be of great help in aiming for the best results to your business.

An internet marketing expert is the most reliable source for various details when it comes to online marketing. He has gained the title through his years of experience that gave him wisdom. His long years of experience is mostly composed of various marketing disciplines like direct marketing, search engine optimization, market research, advertising, internet marketing, public relations, market research, trade shows, and a whole lot more.

If you are one of those online marketing newbies who know nothing much about techniques and strategies for putting up an online business, an online marketing expert would be what you need most. You also wouldn’t have any problem finding one for yourself as they made themselves available on the internet through various groups and communities from which they publicly share their various insights in the business.

However, these experts can only serve as the primary solution to your problems and business endeavors. It is extremely vital that through the guidance of these experts that you get to transform into an internet marketing expert yourself. There are experts who are honestly willing to share their secrets to you, but there are also those who will take advantage of you and might even put you out of business. Like in the physical world, you do need to grow as well in the world of online marketing. This is perhaps due to the fact that the best weapon we can have is ourselves. An Internet marketing expert is an endless reservoir of techniques and strategies any online entrepreneur needs to maintain, develop, and expand his business. To gain the wisdom that any expert has is the best form of investment for any newbie marketer online.

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage

7 Lessons I Learnt Whilst Losing Thousands Internet Marketing

admin    Website Marketing Resources     Internet, Learnt, Lessons, Losing, marketing, Thousands, Whilst

SEVEN LESSONS I LEARNT WHILST LOSING THOUSANDS INTERNET MARKETING

By Alan Cutler – alan@leadershiptalks.com

This is the story of a novice internet marketer who has spent a
miserable, frustrating and expensive twelve months learning the
lessons of selling on the internet – the hard way! However, he
believes that he has turned the corner and is now looking
forward to, at least modest, future profits. That person is me,
and I would like to share my experiences with you in the hope
that your journey will be less painful than mine. I am certainly
not suggesting that the lessons I learnt are definitive, nor
will they apply to every one else who embarks on a campaign of
internet marketing. I am merely recounting what happened to me
and the problems I encountered.

My journey started in November 2004 when I attended a conference
with a speaker who was, by his own admission, an internet
millionaire. He, like me, was a professional speaker but he had
diversified into selling his products and services to this
world-wide market. Like many of my colleagues, I had previously
heard bits and pieces about internet marketing and I was hungry
to learn more. It is true to say that I was captivated by his
story and, especially, by the rich pickings that he said were
out there on the net, for relatively little time and expense.
‘Make money in your sleep’ was a phrase he used. I was inspired
- well, who wouldn’t be by the prospect of working at home for a
few hours a day whilst watching the money flow in 24/7! I bought
his pack of tutorials, ebooks, CDs etc for $500 – my first
investment in this Brave New World.

Interestingly, I write this article the day after attending
another meeting that had a speaker again telling us how easy it
is to make serious money on the internet. Whilst I do not doubt
that such people indeed do make a very good living for
relatively little effort, believe me, it is not easy! Making
money selling products or information on the net is not a quick
fix! Like any new business (for that is what it is), it takes
time and effort to learn all its intricacies. Unless you have a
product that people want to buy; a web site that sells it
effectively; and a means of driving lots of people to it, you
will end up throwing good money after bad. Hence my first lesson

Lesson No 1. Do not believe all you hear from internet experts
who tell you how easy it is to make your fortune. It isn’t!

Let me continue my story. So, off I went on my new venture. I
eagerly read the information that I had just bought, along with
lots of other advice and guidance from internet marketers. Many
recommended additional software that would make selling on the
web more effective. I took their advice and bought some of the
products they championed, for example a programme for making
attractive website banners, and another that promised to produce
amazingly effective sales pages for the website that I was to
produce. However, the banners I made were far from attractive
and when I sought advice from the company I bought the software
from, they failed to reply. As for the sales page generator, it
did teach me some good lessons but was far too inflexible and
restrictive so I soon reverted to writing my own copy.

What I did not realise at the time was that the internet
marketers who were recommending these products were affiliates:
they received a commission from every sale resulting from their
recommendation. I now know that affiliate marketing is big
business and can produce significant income flows. In fact, let
me put my cards on the table: I am going to recommend two
products to you later in this article and I will gain a
commission if you take my advice. However, these are products
that I truly believe in and have been extremely helpful to me. I
believe that they are worth every cent to someone serious about
making money. You can, of course, take my word for that, or not.
At least I have been up-front about it!

Lesson No 2. Beware of advice from ‘experts’ who may be more
interested in making money as an affiliate than in helping you.

Of course, to make money in any business you have to have a
product that people want to buy. What was I going to sell? Well,
I have always been fascinated by quotes – words of wisdom from
those who can add so much meaning in so few words. Indeed, my
first book is entitled ‘Leadership Quote Unquote’ and contains a
host of quotes from, as my publisher added to the book cover,
‘world figures – the famous, the infamous and the downright
dastardly!’

Imagine my excitement when I researched how many people were
looking for quotes on the internet. Google estimated that over
5,000 people every day searched for an appropriate quote. I
estimated that if I sold my book for $25 and one in a hundred
people who clicked on my website bought my book, I would make
$369,014 profit a year. Wow! Even if only a modest one in three
hundred bought it I would still make $61,684. Wouldn’t you be
excited by that income earning potential?

To cut a long story short, whilst lots of people do regularly
seek out appropriate quotes, I now know that very few are
prepared to pay for them! Why should they, when they can get
them for free on other websites? I am now just about breaking
even with this particular campaign – a situation I am prepared
to accept for the time being as the website does provide me with
other spin-off benefits. However, I have subsequently
diversified and am now selling a number of other information
products, using a different website for each – some more
successful than others. Inevitably, not all sales campaigns will
be initially successful, hence you have to continually fine-tune
several aspects of the marketing process to gradually improve
their effectiveness.

Lesson No 3. It might sound obvious – but make sure that you
sell something that people want to buy.

Note: The purpose of this article is for me to share my
experiences with you. It is not designed to be an internet
marketing tutorial. I am not, therefore, going to go into detail
about technicalities such as website design, Google AdWords,
Google AdSense, market testing, copy writing etc. That said if I
have whetted your appetite and you do want to learn more, email
me at alan@leadershiptalks.com and I will send you a free ebook
all about creating successful sales websites, entitled ‘The
Three Page Site Builders Manual’ ( I make no money by doing
so!). Also, if you are really serious about creating a
profitable internet marketing campaign consider checking out the
specialist guidance of Perry Marshal, especially his ebook
entitled ‘The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords’. This is one
of the two products that I really believe in and that I
mentioned previously. A link for you to learn more about him is
provided at the end of this article.

The next step on my journey, having deciding that selling quotes
was to provide the basis of my pension fund (!), was to design a
website to sell my ebook. The most well-known website design
software, and the one that was recommended to me, was Microsoft
FrontPage so that is what I bought. Unfortunately, I found it to
be extremely confusing, frustrating – not at all user-friendly.
I did make a website but it was far from professional. In fact,
a friend of mine who is a successful internet marketer politely
commented that he would certainly not buy anything from a site
like mine!

He went on to tell me that he had recently discovered a new
website design programme called XSitePro that is two thirds the
price of Front Page and infinitely easier to use. In fact, he
was in the process of redesigning all his many sites using it.
Having faith in his advice, I shelled out $197, bought the
software and was absolutely blown away by it! XsitePro is
designed specifically for people who sell on the internet. It is
so easy to use that I am now churning out professional-looking
websites in less than half a day – and they work. In fact,
having not sold one of my ebooks for weeks beforehand on my
FrontPage site, I launched my new site, using XSitePro, and sold
one within half an hour. I could hardly believe it!

Hence, my fourth piece of advice. I make no apologies for being
so direct – if you want to produce easy websites that sell,
click on the link at the end of this article and check out
XSitePro. The link takes you to a web site that I have made to
tell the world about, what I believe to be, the best web site
design software available today.

Lesson No 4. Don’t waste you time with other website design
software, buy XSitePro.

So, once you have designed your website, you will need to
ensure that your potential customers can find it. Essentially,
you have two choices: work hard at driving it up the search
engine rankings or pay for the privilege by using Google
Adwords. Perry Marshall’s ebook ‘The Definitive Guide to Google
Adwords’ goes into great depth about making the most of Adwords
but, essentially, you bid to have an advert promoting your
website featured on the right-hand side of a Google search page
as a ’sponsored link’. However, you only pay when people click
on your ad.

Most experts will argue that using Pay Per Click (Google
Adwords) is the best way to promote websites of limited size
like the ones internet marketers use to promote their products.
And that is what I did.

Unfortunately, though, I did not pay sufficient attention to
setting up my sites. I accepted Google’s recommended daily
budget; set my pay-per-click rates too high; advertised in too
many countries and advertised in its content network as well as
its search network. Perry Marshall’s ebook explains all these
settings in fine detail. I only wish I had bought it in the
early stages because I ended paying much more than I needed to.

So, I had set up my Google AdWords campaign and was up and
running – but was not selling any products. I was, however,
getting hundreds of clicks a day, so was ever hopeful. My wife
and I then went away on holiday and I put my internet marketing
campaign out of my mind, in the confident knowledge that when I
returned my In Box would be full of orders.

Imagine my horror when I returned to find no product orders but
a $700 Google AdWords bill. It doesn’t take much time to
accumulate those costs when you are getting hundreds of clicks a
day; you are selling no products; and your daily Google budget
is set at $50!

The lesson here is crucial. In the early stages at least, you
MUST keep a close, daily eye on your Google Adwords account. As
time goes on and you have fine-tuned your account you can leave
it for a day, or two, but initially you must not let it get out
of control.

Lesson No 5. Keep very close control of your Google AdWords
account in its early stages

I mentioned previously that you must fine-tune your ad campaign
if you want to maximise its sales potential. The critical factor
here is the Click Through Rate (CTR) – how often people click on
your ad when it is displayed on a page of Google search results.
If your ad features 100 times when people enter, for example,
‘inspirational quote’ as a Google search term and two of them
actually click on your ad the CTR would be 2%. Improving the CTR
is important to maximising your sales potential.

This is a very detailed process where specific changes, for
example trying out different ad formats or even using capital
letters in certain areas of your ad, can make a real difference
to your CTR. Perry Marshall is an accomplished expert on using
Google Adwords and I have, personally, learnt a great deal from
his ebook.

Lesson No 6. Work hard at fine-tuning your Google Adwords
campaigns to maximise their CTR and, if your website and your
product are attractive, your revenue will gradually increase

And so to the last lesson that I have learnt. Going back to
where I started, I have realised that making money on the
internet is not, as I told my wife, ‘the pot of gold at the end
of the rainbow’. However, I do believe that there is serious
money to be made by people like me who are prepared to work hard
at ensuring the three essential elements are in place, namely:

* A product that people are looking for and are prepared to buy
* A website that is effective in selling that product * A sales
campaign that directs people towards your website

Personally, over the last twelve months, I have struggled on all
three counts, and have thus paid the price. However, I have
learnt my lessons and am confident that I will now begin to reap
at least some of the riches that definitely are out there on the
World Wide Web.

I have been told that my experiences are not unusual. Surprise,
surprise: contrary to what some internet experts tell us, very
few people strike gold immediately. It takes time and a lot of
hard work and determination. It does not surprise me, therefore,
that many people who embark on the journey as I did, fell at the
early hurdles. My final lesson, and piece of advice, is
therefore to ensure that your internet strategy is sound and
then work hard at making it successful.

Lesson No 8. Don’t give up – make it work.

Here are the links for the two products that I am happy to
recommend. To see the website I made to promote XSitePro, please
go to www.diy-websitedesign.org. To check out what Perry
Marshall can teach you, please see
http://perrymarshall.com/cmd.php?pg=305720 .

Being a professional speaker, should you wish me to deliver a
presentation developing the content of this article to your
colleagues or company, please contact me on
alan@leadershiptalks.com

Copyright Alan Cutler 2005

This article is written by Alan Cutler. Permission is granted to
copy and use it for any purpose as long as it is not amended in
any way.

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage

Lessons From the Failure of Apple

admin    Misc     Apple, Failure, From, Lessons

Apple has a long history of producing winners: Apple, Apple II, the Macintosh, PowerPC, iMac, iPod, iPhone, and pretty much every laptop that they ever produced have met with almost universal praise.
There is a side of Apple that we rarely see, perhaps because of all the success, perhaps because they have learned from them, mostly because the vision and practicality of Steve Jobs have kept them out of the ditch.
There is one product in Apple’s history of shining accomplishments that sends shudders down the spine of all Apple stockholders. Ladies and Gentleman, for your consideration, I present what seemed like a great idea at the time: The Newton.
In fact, the Newton was a brilliant idea, that was way ahead of its future competitors. What was it? Merely a personal digital assistant, with all the purported features of a future PalmPilot. The only difference was that the first Newton shipped nearly 4 years earlier than the first PalmPilot. It also tanked, whereas the Palm did not.
The problems with the Newton were many. It has been reported that Apple rushed the development of the Newton. They also tried to push the Newton at a price point that was too high for the average consumer. Some applications were buggy, and contrary to the Apple model of today, rudimentary compared to the other software available in the ’90’s.
Then, there were the marketing problems. Apple’s propaganda department put forth the question “What is Newton?”. Just genius, except they asked an open-ended question, and never really gave an answer. In addition, they promised features that could not be delivered via the technology of the time. In an interview I once read, one of the people who worked on the Newton project knew it was dead from the moment he read the marketing
brochure.
It said something to the effect of ” The Apple Newton can read your handwriting.” It could not, of course. The gloriously expensive hunk of silicon could interpret gestures and a few low-level commands, but nothing approaching intelligent interpretation of handwriting.
The main problem it suffered from was hardware pricing. Later, well received versions of the Newton went for upwards of $1100. At this point, the Palm had been introduced. The price point was a much lower $450, and any user with half a brain was willing to pay $650 less for a device with most of the same features.
When Steve Jobs returned, the Newton was on its way out. It has been projected that Apple spent over a billion dollars in development of the Newton project, and made less than one-fifth of that amount in returns. Not only were the expenses out of sight, but so were the chances of Apple leading the PDA market. Windows was on the scene with CE, Palm owned the market, and Handspring was on the horizon ready to make a run. Apple cancelled the project, and reabsorbed the spinoff that developed the Newton OS.
So what has changed in Apple’s strategy? What has kept another Newton from haunting the company? It’s a simple change in strategy:
The first part was bringing back Steve Jobs as figurehead of the company. Since his return, he has not made the mistake of asking a question like “What is Newton?”. If he does, then he does not make the mistake of never answering it to satisfaction. Apple now defines what their products mean, what they will mean to the consumer.
The software was buggy on the Newton, and the product was rushed to market. Apple does not make that mistake now. They test their software, user interfaces, and everything else in the product to make sure it is at acceptable quality levels before release. Usability has been the center of Apple’s success, and they aren’t going to stop now.
Apple takes a grand idea, and then improves on it based on its success. First came the iPod, the iPod nano, the shuffle,then the iPod with video support, then iPhone, then the iPod with 802.11 g. On and on it will go, as Apple reduces prices of previous models, and makes a profit on its quickly obsolete inventory. This has kept stock prices high, and kept Apple fresh in the mind of consumers.
Lastly, there is the cool factor. Their has always been a hardcore group of Mac users who would buy anything that Apple produced. In recent days, Apple has expanded that group, via their promotion of Apple products as a lifestyle brand, rather than strictly a technology choice. Owning Apple products makes a statement about the user. They like trends, recognize them, and are a discerning consumer. Apple is now a proprietor of fashion and culture, like Gucci or Louis Vuitton. This status ensures that their products will be desired and bought for the forseeable future.
Apple is at its best when innovation, usability, and profitability meet. The pursuit of these three will keep Apple from producing the next Newton for the forseeable future. Hopefully, you will be able to apply the successes of Apple to your own entrepreneurial pursuits, and have some measure of success yourself.

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage

SEO Article – SEO Optimize Your Website. Free SEO / Search Engine Optimization Lessons / Video. Need Help?

admin    Website Design Resources     Article, Engine, Free, Help, Lessons, Need, optimization, Optimize, Search, Video, website

So you want to SEO your website. You and thousands of others. There is no magic potion or tricks to SEO. I hate to bore you but SEO is just math. If you know how Google does their math to rank websites then guess what? Your on your way to the first Google search results page and an increase in sales big time.

I found a few websites that are extremely helpful to the internet marketer and website owner. If you are having a problem with your website not showing up in Google search for your products, then you might as well not even have a website.

Does your website get minimal traffic and you don’t know why? There are a lot of questions on this subject, but I am not here to answer them. I will refer you to the experts and the best online sources where I learned my SEO skills.

I will also be telling you about how I increased traffic to my website by taking a couple of online Google Adwords and Article Marketing classes.

You can take a Google Adwords Class or a Article Marketing class online in one evening for the condensed version of the course.

I don’t want to overwhelm you so I will give you three things that will improve your knowledge on this subject beyond belief. Later on when I update this article I will be offer more info on improving your ranking on Google.

The top things I recommend you do first is to help your ranking:

Take the Article Marketing Course & Adwords Pro at WA by clicking here. Watch this SEO Video Stop back by the website and leave your feedback and let us know what you thought. If you found this article helpful please say so to let others know.

Bookmark this article now. It will be updated often.

You will see future articles on:

seo services
seo tips
seo techniques
google seo
seo software
seo help
seo tools
seo optimization
seo report
seo forums
learn seo
seo ranking
seo keywords
seo copywriting
seo marketing
search engine optimization
seo blog
seo forum
top seo
seo experts
seo service
seo program
seo promotion
seo positioning
seo optimisation
seo search engine
seo copywriter
seo expert
seo submission
seo pricing
seo tutorial
seo training
website seo
seo content
keyword seo

Keywords
seo article
seo marketing articles
articles for seo
seo articles
seo article writer
buy seo articles
custom seo articles
free seo articles
articles and seo
article for seo
submit articles for seo
best seo article
seo article writing
custom seo article
free seo article
seo optimized articles
write seo articles
seo article marketing
article marketing for seo
seo article writers

I wish you luck and hope you stop back by for updates and to leave your feedback.

Thanks

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our website design company homepage

Website Marketing Lessons From The Nerdiest Websites On The Planet

admin    Website Marketing Resources     From, Lessons, marketing, Nerdiest, Planet, website, Websites

Copywriters like me tend to feel superior when we come across a certain type of website.

You know what I mean. Websites that clearly haven’t been touched by anyone remotely familiar with copywriting. Websites that seem put-together by well-meaning, sincere people who never typed “internet marketing” into a search engine, let alone taken a copywriting class.

They open with “Welcome!” They send a message with paragraphs. Not a bullet in site… er, sight.

They don’t get into benefits or offer you a compelling reason to buy. Each sentence begins with “we,” not “you.”

They don’t even show their smiling faces in photos on the home page. In fact, their home page tends to look a little dull and inviting to the experienced eye.

But to the horror of us copywriters, they’re doing well, thank you very much. They’re attracting clients and earning a good living.

How do they get away with it?

Well, maybe know their markets. Their clients have very specific questions when they’re choosing a resource. Their content immediately answers their clients’ top-of-mind questions.

Or maybe they sound friendly and authentic. There is something to be said for the “plain brown wrapper” effect.

And maybe they market offline, so they find clients at face to face networking meetings.

Possibly that’s why their nerdy web sites work so well. But I think the killer difference (a phrase you’d never find on those websites) is this:

They have mind-blowing testimonials.

Real, identifiable people have said, “I hired these services. I got amazing, tangible results. They transformed my health, wealth, life and/or business. Here are my numbers.”eeeeeeeee

So if you want to win the War of the Website Nerds:

(1) Begin collecting testimonials as soon as you meet your very first client -even before you create your website.

It takes awhile to create results and attract the names and claims that will rock your visitors. Once you start collecting results-oriented testimonials, your web site will begin to work for you.

(2) Emphasize results that are most important to your clients when they hire you.

If you’re a warehouse consultant, they need to squeeze more inventory into a smaller space. If you’re a career coach, they want to get well-paying jobs – fast.

Your testimonials and success stories need to demonstrate that you have systems and skills to produce these results, over and over again.

(3) Test 2 or 3 versions of your website.

Let’s face it: These nerdy websites are generating leads, converting visitors and creating a profitable business. But who knows what would happen if you turned a copywriter loose?

The answer: Test and see. Try a simple “this is just me” nerdy version but go head-to-head with a more benefit-oriented style.

Then you can shrug off the well-intentioned copywriters and web designers who say, “That will never work. Too nerdy!” You’ll be taking your website marketing all the way to the bank.

website design company