Tweaking the Steps Along Your Sales Path

Do you sell products and services via the internet?

Do you get the results you want?

If you didn't get the results you want, it is helpful to re-visit each step of your "sales path" to see where tweaks can be made.

For instance, let's say your sales path starts with an email broadcast, which directs the reader to your website. Here are the different statistics you will want to analyze to see what's working and what's not.

1. Open Rate: The open rate indicates how many people opened your email. Open rates, on average, hover around 35-40%. However, you can also assume that 50 percent of people are opening your email in such a way that images are not shown. (When images are not shown, no image "beacon" is sent back to the email company and you can't track that the recipient opened the email.) So if your statistics show a 22% open rate, you can double that and safely calculate that it's really closer to 44% who have opened the email. If your open rate falls below the average of 35%, then you need to re-write your email to be more informative and compelling.
2. Click Through Rate (CTR): Just because someone opens an email doesn't mean they read it. (Surprise!) One way to calculate whether people are actually reading your emails is click-through rate. CTR measures how many people actually took action on what they read by clicking on a link in the email. You can track CTR either through your email system or your website/shopping cart statistics. (I recommend you use Google Analytics, if you are not already using it. It's free and it allows you to manipulate easily what you're looking for.)
3. Time on Page: Once they click through from the email to the website page where you are making your offer, how long are they staying there? You can get this information from your website statistics. This number tells you whether visitors are actually reading the text or not. If you have too much text, people may be turned off by it (I call it the "I'll read it later when I have time" syndrome). Perhaps the way the text is formatted isn't conducive to reading. Maybe it's too hard to read because the font is too small. Or maybe (gasp!) it doesn't answer their questions or is not good marketing text, and needs to be re-written entirely.
4. Call to Action: On every website page and in every email, you must tell the reader what to do next. Don't assume that they know to click on a link or to call for an appointment. Tell them.
5. Conversions: Once they reach your website, do they take the action you want them to? When a website visitor takes an action, we call that a conversion; it converts them from a visitor into a prospect/lead, or even better, into a paying customer. You can compare your website statistics with your own prospect and sales statistics to see how well your website page is converting visitors. For example, if five people call you to ask about your services after visiting your page, and there have been 50 people who visited your page, then your conversion rate is 10%. If they land on your page, read it, and still don't take action, then there are serious problems that need to be addressed.

Every step along the sales path, from email to shopping cart (or prospect phone call) is an opportunity to tweak your technique. Once you find the right combination of steps 1-5 that brings the best results, you then repeat that over and over again.

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Affiliate marketing for beginners 7 steps tutorial 2017 to get faster re...

Ten Free Tools to Manage Your Internet Marketing

Everyone needs a little help with implementing and tracking their internet marketing endeavors.

Here are 10 tools that will make it easier. I use these every day, so I can vouch for their effectiveness:

1. Google Analytics -- If you don't track the results of your marketing, you might as well not be marketing at all. Google Analytics gives you a great overview of your site's statistics plus some very nitty-gritty details that help you track internet marketing campaigns.
2. XML Sitemap Generator -- If you want good search engine rankings, Google likes it if you have an XML sitemap on your site. You don't have to worry about what XML is, just use this generator and it will create the XML file for your site (up to 500 pages per site).
3. BrowserShots -- Are you aware that your site looks completely different on some browsers? Use this browser compatibility tool to see how your site looks in Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. For some real comparisons, check older versions with newer ones (like IE6 versus IE8). Why check older versions? Because 20 percent of people have IE6 loaded on their computer, even though it was created in 2001 and is not fully CSS compliant. Better safe than sorry.
4. Google Keyword Tool -- Want to know which keywords are popular and what people are searching for via Google's search engine? This tool allows you to do some great market research.
5. Alexa.com -- Alexa allows you to see the traffic rank for your site and your competitor's sites. When you enter the Alexa site, click on the Site Info link at the top.
6. Compete.com - Compete also allows you to see ranking information about your site and your competition. Use Alexa and Compete together to get a fuller picture.
7. SurveyMonkey -- If you've been looking for an easy way to do market research, SurveyMonkey is the tool for you. It allows you to do online surveys, and I also use it for course evaluations and brainstorming in my mastermind groups.
8. Search Engine Spider Simulator -- Want to know how the search engines really see your site? Are they picking up all your keywords? Use a search engine spider simulator and see for yourself if your site is search engine friendly or not.
9. WordPress -- You can host your blog for free on WordPress.com or use their free software on your own domain via WordPress.org (note the different domain names...WordPress has two of them).
10. SpamCheck -- There's nothing worse than sending an email that gets caught in filters and never reaches the recipients. This tool will show you which parts of your email text will trigger a filter.

SOURCE

�� Facebook Ads in 2018 | From Facebook Ads Beginner to EXPERT in One Video!

5 Ways to Continuously Expand Your Online Following

There are many ways to increase viewer/subscriber loyalty on YouTube. Many of these activities will require time to manage but are free or inexpensive to use.

1. Include accurate and relevant keywords in your video's title, description and tags

As you're uploading and publishing each new video, compose a creative, well-thought-out, informative and captivating title for each video, as well as a detailed description that's short, direct and enticing. Equally important are the tags you associate with your videos.

Every word in a video's title, description or tag(s) becomes keyword searchable -- not just on YouTube but through search engines like Google. Ideally, if someone is interested in a topic that's related to one or more of your videos (or your YouTube channel), they should be able to discover your content easily by entering appropriate keywords or a relevant search phrase into the YouTube or Google search field.

2. Take advantage of social media

Social media can become a powerful tool to promote your company, products/services and your YouTube channel (and its content). Social media also provides another informal way to interact with your viewers and subscribers.

In today's world, it's essential for companies to have a presence on social media. This can be accomplished for free. However, managing various social media accounts (including your YouTube channel) can get time-consuming. You can also use paid advertising on many social media platforms to quickly reach a highly targeted audience relatively inexpensively. This is a popular way for companies to quickly grow their YouTube channel audience.

If you have a budget to promote your videos, consider using keyword advertising on Facebook. These ads are inexpensive, highly targeted, flexible and easy to create and launch. You can begin advertising on Facebook for as little as $50 and begin reaching potential viewers in just minutes.

3. Post comments about videos produced by others

Yet another way to promote your videos is to find the most influential people who are also targeting your audience and become active on their respective YouTube channels, Facebook pages and other social media feeds. This can be done by posting your own comments to their videos and by engaging in online conversations. Comments you post to other videos and channels can help boost your online popularity, assuming the comments you post are constructive and insightful. Never be negative, unprofessional or rude within the public comments you post that relate to content created by others.

4. Host live, interactive real-time video chats

Another way to interact with your viewers and subscribers is to occasionally host live video chats or video conferences and invite your target YouTube audience to participate. This can easily be done using YouTube Live functionality, or you can use a third-party service, such as YouNow (www.younow.com), Twitch.tv (www.twitch.tv) or GoToMeeting (www. gotomeeting.com), that allows you to host free or low-cost live video conferences or to broadcast live -- to an audience comprised of a handful of people to thousands of viewers. You can then publish recordings of the live conference or chat on your YouTube Channel so other people can access this content on an on-demand basis.

A live video broadcast gives your viewers and subscribers a chance to interact with you in a real-time and safe online environment. Many businesses and successful YouTube personalities host weekly or monthly live broadcasts to interact more directly with people who share an interest in them, their company or their products or services.

During a live broadcast, a text-based chat allows people to pose questions to you, the host, which you can respond to. Some live broadcast services also allow you to "guest" people watching your broadcasts. Using their webcam and computer or mobile device, they can be seen and heard using a split-screen video format so the guest can see and hear you, you can see and hear them and your entire audience can see and hear both you and your guest.

Keep in mind, there's no time limit for live broadcasts. However, you'll want to monitor your audience in real time, and based on whether the audience is growing, stagnant or shrinking (because people stop watching the live broadcast), make an educated decision about when to end it. Some YouTubers and YouTube channel operators promote an ongoing schedule about when they'll host live broadcasts, so their viewers and subscribers can plan to attend. Others go live at random days and times, based on their availability or when they have something to say.

5. Organize your channel with playlists and categories

By organizing groups of relevant videos with similar types of content or that relate to the same topic into playlists, you'll encourage viewers to watch multiple videos back-to-back in the order you determine is most beneficial to both you and them.

Using Cards and an End Screen within your videos, as well as links to other content within the descriptions for your videos, you're easily able to promote other relevant content that your channel offers. Encourage viewers to watch multiple videos during each channel visit.

SOURCE

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5 Basic Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website with Online Marketing

Never depend on only one or two channels when driving web traffic to your site. Justin Bridegan of MarketingSherpa writes: "It's always best to have a variety of traffic sources. This minimizes the risk of your website being decimated if your main traffic source dries up."

With that in mind, let's dig into five ways you can drive traffic to your site.

Affiliate marketing

This doesn't just mean you should become an Amazon Associate or Click­Bank affiliate and use that status to drive traffic to your independently owned website. Instead, you should start your own affiliate program, where you partner up with people who'll promote your product or service -- generating revenue for both of you and building your email list in the process.

How exactly do you go about finding an affiliate and convincing them to promote your product? All you need to do is set up a page on your website that explains the benefits of promoting your product. In addition to detailing how big of a cut they'll get from each sale, you'll also explain how they'll benefit from being associated with your brand. Include a sign-up form to make it simple for them to contact you. Then, promote the page to individuals and a wider audience in a targeted niche.

Co-registration

This traffic generation strategy has to do with online advertising. It's a process for collecting subscribers by co-advertising along with other site owners or companies collecting opt-in subscribers. Here's how it works: When the user opts in to receive an offer from the other participant(s), they're given the option to subscribe to your information as well.

Co-registration allows you to target a specific demographic or customer subset. Depending on whom you partner with, co-registration can be less expensive than other types of marketing. Also, with co-registration, building your email list doesn't depend on the amount of web traffic you're able to generate.

Email

There are two major players in co-registration: Opt-Intelligence and CoregMedia, and many choose to work with them. But, there are also smaller companies worth looking at, such as AfterOffers and BirdDogMedia.

Just a few years ago, the average ROI for email cam­paigns was 4,300 percent. That fact alone should inspire you to focus attention on email marketing.

Because 56 percent of customers are more likely to buy with a personalized experience, you want to personalize your email marketing messages. In fact, the average open rate for emails with a personalized message was 18.8 percent, as compared to 13.1 percent without any personalization, in 2016.

The goal of email marketing is to convert an interested customer into a paying customer by driving traffic to sales pages. You can increase clickthrough and conversion rates by making sure the email and the sales page it hyperlinks to are promoting the same offer.

Google and Bing pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Es­sentially, PPC gives you a way of "buying" visits to your site, instead of earning those visits organically.

Search engine advertising through Google or Bing is one of the most popular forms of PPC advertising. You'll bid for ad placement in a search engine's sponsored links when someone searches on a keyword that is related to the advertised offering. PPC success is achievable if you focus on:

• Keyword relevance. Develop PPC keyword lists of terms relevant to your audience. Use these lists to write keyword-driven ad text.
• Landing page quality. If you're sending people to a landing page, optimize it with persuasive, relevant con­tent and a clear CTA, tailored to specific search queries.
• Quality score. Both Bing and Google offer quality scores, which rate the quality and relevance of your keywords, land­ing pages and PPC campaigns. Advertisers with better quality scores get more ad clicks at lower costs.

Lead magnets

A lead magnet is a free content offer -- an ebook, white paper, case study, e-course or checklist. Your lead magnet should be so relevant to your prospect's needs or problems that they can't help but ex­change their contact information to get it.

Of all the possible offers -- ebooks, white papers, you name it -- which are the most effective lead magnets? Here are five:

1. The cheat sheet. The problem-based specificity of the cheat sheet, also called a tip sheet, makes it very appealing to pros­pects (and it's fairly easy to create).
2. Free templates. These are extremely popular and generate lots of leads, but make sure the template doesn't replace your service or product offering. Templates can be in Word, Excel or any other common program.
3. Free training videos, workbooks or a combination of the two, delivered through daily emails. Think about problems that require multiple steps for your customers to solve. These can make ideal step-by-step training products for your lead magnet.
4. The swipe file. This is a collection of tested and proven copywriting elements (such as headlines and email subject lines) or creative ideas the recipient can use to simplify a project.
5. Tool kits. These can be a little more complex to create, but because they're filled with resources, they can make excel­lent lead magnets. You can use existing resources, blog posts and other content to complete your tool kit. Common tool kits include a variety of content types, such as ebooks, worksheets, checklists and video.

SOURCE

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How To Stop Spam (Especially If You’re Already a Victim)

Spam. Those annoying, time-consuming emails that clog your Inbox and ruin your day. You wonder: How did it ever get so bad? While it’s not possible to completely eliminate spam, there are quite a few things you CAN do about the problem to reduce your burden.

Spam is defined as an unsolicited email trying to get you to buy something. In addition, it’s email that tries to get you to give up something: your credit card number, social security number, login ID, etc., by pretending to be a legitimate email. Here are ten tips for stopping the current spam you’re getting, and avoiding getting on new spam lists.

1. Maintain two email addresses: a Personal Email Address (that you give to family, friends and business associates), and a Safe Email Address (one you use whenever you’re ordering something online, signing up for an email newsletter, or creating a profile on a website). For instance, I use a Hotmail account for my Safe Email Address. If a spammer were to get a hold of that address, fine. All the spam will go into my Hotmail account, which I only look at once a week. Hotmail has a great anti-spam filter built in, so it’s easy to see what’s spam and what’s not. This practice leaves my personal email account relatively spam-free (maybe I get two spam emails a day to my personal account). Some free email services include Hotmail, Yahoo and GMail (Google’s new email service).
2. Use your Safe Email Address to send emails to companies who might be harvesting email addresses from incoming emails. For example, say you want to write to a company to ask them about their products. Some companies will harvest your email address from the email you send to them, and put you on their mailing list. By using your Safe Email Address, you can avoid seeing messages from these companies come to your personal email address.
3. Stop giving your email address to everyone who wants it. Does your local bank really need your email address? Does your grocery store need it? Just because someone asks for it doesn’t mean you have to give it to them. If it’s a non-local company, or you are signing up for a mailing list, then they probably do need it. But it’s okay to leave the email address blank when filling out forms. Always ask yourself, Do I want to be contacted by this company via email? (Speaking of mailing lists, make sure the companies you subscribe to have a public, posted Privacy Statement on their website.)
4. Do not put your Personal Email Address on your website. Instead, use a form so that your email address is hidden. However, some spammers use special software that looks at the HTML code hidden in the form to steal your email address, so using a form by itself isn’t always the safest route. Better yet, use a free Form Processor so that your email address is never even in the HTML coding on your pages. The service I use is Bravenet’s Form processor (www.bravenet.com). You can see ours in action here:http://www.passionforbusiness.com/send-mail-consulting.htm
5. Never buy anything that’s sent through a spam email. First, it just encourages them to continue to spam. Second, it tells them that your email address is accurate, and they can then sell that address to someone else.
6. Never reply to spam and ask to be unsubscribed. They’ll just ignore it anyway, and it tells them that your email address is accurate, which just keeps you on the list. Note: many legitimate emails newsletters and mailing lists use automated unsubscribe links at the bottom of their emails, and you CAN use these to get off of mailing lists.
7. Use anti-spam software, like Norton Internet Security, on your own PC to filter spam as it comes into your email system. You still receive the spam, but it gets filtered to a Junk Mail or Bulk Mail folder, and segregates the spam from the legitimate email. Most anti-spam filters need to be trained, however, so you’ll have to occasionally tell the filter that something is NOT spam that it inadvertently put into the Junk Mail folder. Many of these anti-spam filters work on the principle of White Lists (legitimate email addresses that you DO want to receive email from) and Black Lists (spammer email addresses that you do NOT want to receive email from). Learn how to train your anti-spam software and it will work wonders for you.
8. Check to see if your ISP or hosting company has anti-spam technology in place, to catch spam before it even hits your Inbox. Be careful, though, because sometimes these filters are over-zealous and you have to train it to accept emails from mailing lists that you have subscribed to.
9. Do not use a catch-all email address. A catch-all email address is set up if you have your own website, and it is intended to catch all of the incoming emails sent to your domain even if there is no legitimate mailbox by that name. For example, your email address might be mary@mydomain.com. If that mailbox is set up as a catch all, and someone sends an email to marie@mydomain.com (with a spelling mistake in the email name), it will be forwarded to mary@mydomain.com. However, spammers know about catch-all email addresses, and will take your domain name (mydomain.com) and add common prefixes to it, like info@ or admin@. If you have a catch-all, then those spamming emails will come to you, even if you don’t have a legitimate mailbox of info@mydomain.com or admin@mydomain.com set up with your hosting company. See how easy it is for spammers to get to you?
10. Finally, if spam is really bad, create a new personal email address for yourself, tell everyone about the new address (give them several reminders that you are changing email addresses), then delete the old personal email address. This may seem a little drastic, but if you receive 200 spam emails a day, it might be time to time this final step to eradicate it.

You are not powerless against spam. But you do have to take action to fight back. Don’t let them bully you into accepting hundreds of unwanted emails a day! Take action now to reclaim your Inbox!

SOURCE

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How To Choose a Hosting Company

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of hosting companies out there. They come in all price ranges, and with all kinds of bells and whistles. Here are some things you may want to look for in a hosting company, especially if your website is part of your overall marketing plan to sell products or services.

• Money Back Guarantee - I put this first, because if you are unhappy with your hosting site, you'll want assurances that you'll get your money back.
• 24/7 Customer Technical Support – This is critical. Find out if they mean "there’s voicemail or email 24-hours-a-day" or if they mean, "we will answer the phone and help you 24-hours-a-day."
• Control Panel - The Control Panel where you control all aspects of your account, such as managing email accounts, reading statistics, and configuring autoresponders. Make sure your hosting company has a centralized control panel for your management needs and make sure it's easy to use. (Some of them are so poorly designed, its a wonder that a hosting company would have the nerve to even show it to their customers.)
• Website Statistics – From a marketing perspective, it’s important to know who is visiting your site and what pages they read. Your hosting company should keep track of all of this information for you, and present it in an easy to read format. Make sure your statistics are updated on a daily basis, and that you can configure the display to show you by day, by week, by month or by year. You can learn more about how to read and interpret your statistics here.
• CGI - CGI stands for the "Common Gateway Interface" and is a protocol through which web pages interact with scripts on a server. Your hosting company should allow you to install and run CGI scripts your account. They may also offer you some pre-installed CGI scripts for free as part of your hosting package, such as a message board or email forms.
• POP Email Accounts - A POP (Post Office Protocol) Email Account is an email account hosted on your site. Your hosting company should allow you to have more than one POP account, so that you can set up email addresses for all your needs. For example, clients requesting information about a workshop can send email to workshop@mydomain.com, while clients can send their homework to homework@mydomain.com. Also make sure your hosting company support email forwarding.
• Autoresponders - Autoresponders allow a visitor to send an email to a specific email address and automatically receive a reply. For example, if you have a FAQ, people can send an email to faq@mydomain.com and automatically receive the FAQ list in their email inbox.
• SSL Secure Server - SSL stands for "Secure Socket Layer". This is a protocol that allows for encrypted transmissions on the web, and is especially useful if you are collecting private information from visitors, such as credit card information, or running a shopping cart from your ecommerce site.
• Shopping Cart - If you plan on having a catalog on the web, like selling your ebooks or audio tapes, a shopping cart is a must. It lets people browse through your “store” and pick the items that they plan to purchase. When they are done, they proceed to the checkout where they can review their order and pay by credit card. If your hosting company does not offer a shopping cart system, there are plenty of stand-alone shopping cart systems you can use with your website.
• Password Protected Areas – If you want to create a "members only" or "students only" section of your site, you will need to make sure that your hosting company supports password protected areas (folders or sub-webs).
• Mailing List Software - Keep your users informed by offering to put them on the mailing list. Make sure your hosting company supports double-opt-in mailing lists, where the person signs up and receives a confirmation email that instructs them how to officially sign up for your mailing list.
• Multiple Data Center Locations - Does the hosting company have backup sites around the country? If not, and the power goes down or a hurricane floods their data center, what happens to your site?
• Hard Disk Space - if your site is extensive and have lots of audio and video files, you need to be sure that you can store all them on the hosting server. In addition, bandwidth may be an issue if you're streaming audio or video, so check that out as well.

As you can see, there are a lot of things to consider. While some of these may not be important to you now, you’ll also want a hosting company that can grow and support you as your business grows.

SOURCE

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Top 10 Website Mistakes: Are YOU Making Them?

Although personal and business websites have been in existence for more than 15 years, I’m still seeing small business owners make the same mistakes on their websites. Here’s a list of the ones that will drive people away from your site and cause you to lose business (and your reputation as a professional business person).

1. "Under construction" signs on your site. Websites are intended to be Living Documents. They are supposed to change and grow. Putting an “under construction” sign on your website marks you as an amateur. If your site isn’t ready to show to the public, don’t publish it to a public location.
2. Visitor counters. Visitors generally don’t care how many other people have visited your site. If the visitor counter shows a low number, that can be a psychological turn-off to people; if it’s too high, people might believe that you’ve forged the number. Take the visitor counter off your site and use your website statistics to get a more accurate assessment of the people visiting your site. If your hosting company doesn’t provide good statistics, get a new one. Check out our article on how to choose a hosting company.
3. Lack of copyright statements. Everything you write, and your website design itself, is copyright-able. Make sure you include copyright statements on every page, and update the year in the copyright statement as appropriate. Nothing screams “not-up-to-date” like having a copyright statement from 1997 on your site.
4. Overuse of technology. There are some really great, cool and wild techie things you can program into your website. But if they are going to distract the visitor from your message, or if they’re going to slow down the loading of your page, ditch the extra technology in favor of simplicity. This includes large Flash shows when your site opens, animated graphics and other large graphics, as well as scrolling text and audio that comes on as soon as the person hits your website. Recent surveys show that people crave simplicity and easy navigation in sites.
5. Passive verbs. Use active verbs and active sentences when writing your site’s copy. Active verbs are powerful and lend energy to your site. Need to brush up on using active verbs? Check out this site: Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab
6. Long sentences. When people read long sentences, they have to keep the first part of the sentence in their mind when reading the last part. People are easily distracted. Help your visitors by keeping your sentences short and crisp.
7. Long pages. Studies show that most people will not read a long page of text off of their computer monitor. They’ll either print it or they’ll scan it looking for major topics and bullet points. Keep your pages short. If you have a lot to say, consider creating a series of pages that explain your topic, with good navigation between each page. Also, since people DO print web pages to read later, make sure your contact information is at the bottom of each page.
8. Not identifying the benefits of your products or services. People make purchases for two reasons: to get rid of pain or to get pleasure. People want to know how your products and services will help them with their specific pain/pleasure situation. Instead of telling them that your widgets are made from steel and are 3 inches across, tell them that your widgets will stop their faucets from leaking for a lifetime.
9. Forgetting to ask the visitor to do something. In marketing, this is known as a Call To Action. Tell your visitors what you want them to do next. Sign up for my newsletter. Call me. Order today.
10. Believing in “build it and they will come.” It might have worked in the movie Field Of Dreams, but the reality of internet marketing is: build it, MARKET it, and they will come. Once you’ve built your website you have to tell people about it. Think of your website the same way you’d think of a box of marketing brochures: if you don’t get them into the hands of people, they’re not worth the money you spent to create them.

SOURCE

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4 Ways You Can Build Your Email List

Let’s review how you can use direct mail (self-mailers and post­cards), conventions, meet-ups and trade shows, and TV and radio spots to grow your email list. But first, an unexpected offline list-building strategy: cold-calling.

Cold-calling

Nobody likes the idea of calling someone out of the blue. Bear with me for a moment: This strategy costs you nothing but time (or a bit of cash if you hire a virtual assistant to do the calling for you). It re­quires knowing the name of the individual you’d like as a subscriber and a short script:

“Hi, this is Sarah from ABC Company. I have an important email to send to Mr. Bill Bower. Would you mind connecting me with him to get his permission to send it?”

If that doesn’t get you to Mr. Bower, continue:

“The reason I’m asking is that I work for Kathy Flores, a well-known and respected insurance marketing expert. She puts out a weekly email newsletter that several thousand insurance agents receive, read, and enjoy. The only reason I’m calling is to ask Mr. Bower if he’d be open to us emailing him the weekly newsletter. Our readers tell us it takes about six minutes to read each one, and they are finding a lot of value in it. Can you connect me?”

Of course, if you’re connected with Mr. Bower right away, you’d use much the same language to convince him of the value of reading the email you’re requesting permission to send. (Don’t worry about legalities because by getting permission directly from Mr. Bower to send an opt-in email—and not just getting verbal permission and then adding Mr. Bower’s name to a handwritten list of email addresses for later list inclusion—you’re compliant with CAN-SPAM laws.)

Direct mail

Self-mailers (folders that can be sent by mail without enclosure in an envelope by using a gummed sticker to hold the leaves together) and postcards are two of the least expensive ways to add names to your subscriber list.

Postcards are cheap: You’ll pay anywhere from a nickel to 15 cents apiece for standard-sized postcards, depending on the volume ordered. Self-mailers will cost you far more, but the advantage of extra selling space may prove worth the cost.

Self-mailers give you more area to work with than a postcard, and since there’s no envelope hiding the contents, both self-mailers and postcards make it easy for recipients to see the contents of your mailing immediately.

Networking

If you attend live events like trade shows and association meetings, you’ll have many opportunities to add email subscribers. Some are passive: Your business cards and product or service brochures should feature a sign-up link or, better yet, a QR code. The QR code will allow people to opt into your email list simply by scanning the code.

Is collecting email addresses at such face-to-face events considered “opt-in” by email service providers (ESP)? The answer is yes if you do so using a form that clearly indicates the person is signing up to join your email list. Many marketers have found using a tablet computer with a data collection app to be the most efficient (and ethical) way to gather contact information. Be sure to send these contacts a welcome email as soon as possible confirming their opt-in to your list.

The cost of acquiring subscribers at live events can be difficult to calculate. It’s not the cost of printing business cards and brochures; the cost is more in the amount of time spent and the amount of money you spent to attend the event. Still, it’s relatively inexpensive -- especially when compared to TV or radio promotions, our last option.

TV and radio advertising

Now, we’re in the big leagues when it comes to spending. Radio ad­vertising production costs can run you between $500 and $1,000, to which you’ll have to add the cost of airing your radio spot.

And what will it cost you to run a local TV advertisement? Rates vary depending on the time of day and year as well as location. You may pay anywhere from $200 to $1,500 for a 30-second spot at noon, but an ad seen between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. will cost you far more. National TV advertising, which can run $100,000 for a 30-second spot, is beyond the budget of most small businesses.

SOURCE

How To Start A Profitable Blog Step By Step For Beginners

EBAY SELLING: HOW TO LIST AND PRICE LIKE A PRO! MAKE MONEY FAST!

Great information for new and experienced eBay sellers. What do you think?

How to Dropship from Aliexpress with No Start Up Money or Capital

Amazon’s advertising power continues to grow. The Seattle-based e-commerce company reported in its first-quarter 2018 filing that “other” revenue — which it said “primarily includes sales of advertising services” — grew 132 percent year over year to reach $2 billion.

In the fourth quarter of 2017, the ad business grew to about $1.7 billion, up about 60 percent year over year.

That’s a massive jump for the company, which spent the past quarter making improvements to its advertising offering. Media buyers have reported the company has been running a series of attribution tests to see how its advertising stacks up against the Facebook-Google duopoly and that it’s also been testing application programming interfaces for the Amazon Advertising Platform with a small group of agencies, as it plans to let marketers manage their programmatic campaigns on their own.

Speaking on the company’s earning call Thursday, CFO Brian Olsavsky said “Advertising continues to be a bright spot from a product standpoint and a revenue standpoint, and a strong contributor to profitability. It is a multi-billion program.”

One note is that in January, Amazon changed some accounting standards. That changed moved some ad revenue into the “other” line item, which led to, according to Amazon, an increase of $560 million attributed to the “other revenue” line item, the majority of which is ad sales.

Amazon continues to expand its agency development group into “hundreds” of staffers as well.

Advertising has been a quieter growth driver for Amazon’s business. It still remains a small drop in the bucket, of course, but it’s gained attention. Even on the company’s earnings calls over the past couple of quarters, analysts have asked about ads. In the fourth quarter, Olsavsky specifically noted that “advertising was also a key contributor, as we’re continuing to make the offerings more valuable, both to customers and advertisers alike.”

The ad business was noticeably absent from CEO Jeff Bezos’ shareholder letter, but there has been serious growth in both sponsored products and headline search ads. It’s also becoming pricier: Merkle numbers show cost per click for sponsored product ads has increased 65 percent year over year as marketer interest grows.

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WHAT is Affiliate Marketing and HOW Does it Work? For Beginners!

This is great for beginners to Affiliate Marketing....check it out and let me

know what you think.

How To Sell On Amazon FBA For Beginners | The Complete A-Z Tutorial 2018...

A complete A-Z to get you started selling on Amazon this is awesome, what do you think guys?

Facebook: GDPR and data privacy concerns won’t hurt growth

Facebook’s had a rough time in the media over its approach to user privacy and election hacking. But it’s party time on the business side, as the money keeps coming in thanks to more people using Facebook and mobile ads driving revenue, and despite impending data regulations in Europe, Facebook executives said Wednesday they expect to continue winning media budgets. In what’s become a regular occurrence, Facebook posted eye-popping business results.

The highlights:

2.2 billion monthly active users and 1.45 billion daily active users, both up 13 percent from the previous year

Added  67 million users from the last quarter (13 million in the U.S. and Canada)

$11.97 billion in quarterly revenue (down $1 billion from the prior quarter, but up $3.94 billion from the previous year)

Profit was $4.99 billion

91 percent of its ad revenue came from mobile, up from 85 percent from the previous year

Overall ad revenue up 50 percent from last year

Yet Facebook’s future success won’t be easy. Facebook’s relies on targeted advertising, and impending privacy regulations in Europe and Facebook’s restrictions for data partners, in the wake of Cambridge Analytica, could decrease its efficiency. After the General Data Protection Regulation goes into effect next month, user data will be severely restricted in one of its crucial demographics for revenue. While U.S. and Canada is Facebook’s biggest revenue driver at $5.6 billion last quarter, Europe follows at $3 billion. Europe also has been its fastest-growing segment with average revenue per user up nearly 50 percent from the year prior, Axios noted.

But Facebook claimed that these restrictions will not lead to a disaster in ad effectiveness.

“Targeted ads that respect people’s privacy are better ads,” Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in her prepared remarks.

Privacy advocates will turn red in the face over the statement on the assumption that targeted ads rely on data collection that doesn’t respect privacy. But that’s a fight Facebook appears willing to have, as its defense against concerns has fallen squarely in the be-more-transparent approach rather than the change-the-product-that’s-making-us-billions tack.

For what its worth, Facebook said user growth in Europe may be “flat” in next quarter, and there is the “potential for some impact on advertising revenue,” Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said.

“We will be monitoring this closely,” he added. “Fundamentally we think we can build an ad business while providing the protection. We don’t expect the changes will significantly impact advertising revenue, but there’s certainly the potential for some impact [on] our optimization potential at the margin.”

Facebook positioned GDPR as a larger industry issue. Wehner and Sandberg argued that they can still be strategic of winning budgets.

SOURCE

How To Create A Facebook AD 2018 - From Start To Finish

Really like this video as it show the end to end process for Facebook Ads

Sep 6 Benefits of Internet Marketing

Consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet for their buying decisions. This makes Internet marketing more important than ever before. According to studies, to carry out preliminary price and product research, consumers are turning to research on mobile Internet and social media before making their final purchasing decisions.

Through regular, affordable customized communication, you can build relationships with prospects and clients with Internet marketing. This serves as a stark contrast to the days of mass marketing, a tactic that is slowly going extinct. Still not convinced that Internet marketing is the direction your company should go in? Then, let the six benefits of Internet marketing listed below help change your mind.

1. Internet Marketing Is Inexpensive

Marketing products through a physical retail outlet is much more expensive than marketing them on the Internet. The recurring costs of property maintenance and rental are not relevant to Internet marketing. Plus, for display in the store, you do not need to fill your shelves and windows with stock. Consequently, you can keep you inventory costs low by ordering stock in line with demand, instead of ordering it in anticipation of demand.

2. Internet Marketing Allows for Convenient Store Hours

Without having to worry about overtime payments to workers or opening hours, Internet marketing gives you the freedom to keep your enterprise open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Clients will also find it incredibly convenient to shop for your services and products on the Internet on their own schedule. When it is convenient for them, they can browse your ecommerce store at any time of day and place orders.

3. Internet Marketing Provides a Customized Advertising Approach

By building a profile of your customers’ preferences and buying history, Internet marketing enables you to personalize offers for them. You can make targeted offers that are a true reflection of their interests by tracking the product information and webpages that potential customers visit. Also, to help you increase the value of sales by consumers, you can get data for planning cross selling campaigns with the information available from tracking webpage visits.

4. Internet Marketing Helps You Take Advantage of Social Media

Social media is growing in importance every day. Internet marketing allows you to leverage this. The link between online revenue growth and social networking was highlighted in a recent study by the Harvard Business School’s Executive Education area.

The study found that there were increased sales of about five percent generated by those consumers who reported that they were most strongly influenced by social networks. By incorporating social media tools in your Internet marketing campaigns, you can take advantage of this type of influence and watch your profits soar.

5. Internet Marketing Provides a Way to Really Build Relationships

When it comes to increasing client retention levels and building relationships with consumers, the Internet is a crucial platform. By sending a follow up email to thank the consumer and confirm a transaction, you can start the relationship out on the right foot when they make a purchase from your online store.

You can help to maintain the relationship and provide a personal touch by emailing clients regularly with special offers that are customized for them. You can also help build a sense of community on your website by inviting these customers to submit product reviews for the items they bought.

6. Internet Marketing Allows You to Reach More People

You can overcome all barriers of distance by using marketing on the Internet. Without setting up local stores, you can sell products in any part of the nation, or even beyond. This widens your target market significantly. Plus, without opening a network of distributors in various countries, you can build an export company.

To make certain your products and services comply with local business regulations and are suitable for the local markets, you should enlist the help of localization services if you plan on selling internationally or even in some remote locales nationally. Localization services include product modifications to reflect local market differences and translation services.

By now, you can plainly see that an expertly crafted Internet marketing campaign can open up a whole new world of opportunities for your business. You may be tempted to jump right in. However, it is important that you take the time to create a plan and coordinate all of your online marketing efforts. Otherwise, you will likely cause confusion among consumers. And, these days, the typical web savvy consumer can spot a company with a disorganized online presence from a mile away.

SOURCE