This week, I wanted to share with you a quick lesson that you can apply to your websites.  Whether you are selling information products online, have your own business website to promote, or even for promoting affiliate products and using squeeze pages, there is a good chance that you will be capturing your website visitors name and email address.  But did you know that you could automate the follow-up emails that get sent out to this contact once they join your newsletter or fill in your squeeze page?
Do you have a newsletter that you provide off your website?  What if you could write the content once, and then never have to worry about it again, except may be for some minor updates?  Through autoresponders, you can have your emails sequenced to go out after a set period of time from the time that the person joins your list.

I prepared a short video lesson to explain this and have give some additional resources to check out below.

So, if you want some simple systems for being able to create and manage autoresponder emails and even be able to automate messages sent out to people  that buy off your website, then check out these two services.

World Internet Office - This is the service I use in my business.  You can also integrate this as a shopping cart on your website
Aweber – Another popular services which is great for managing your lists and creating and managing autoresponders.

(NOTE: Both are affiliate links, from which I will make a small commission for referring you to these services)

Ready to learn more?  Join me LIVE at an upcoming event nearest to you.  Simply visit www.timlivenow.com for more details!

Interesting – you think you don’t need to wasting your time blogging on Twitter?  Well, here is some refreshing news for you, if you think your website and business won’t benefit from using the power of micro-blogging.

There have been several recent announcements that Microsoft’s search engine Bing will be intergrating Twitter and Facebook updates in their search engine results.

What does this mean to you and your website?

Well, the way I see this, is that not only will you be missing out on the Search Engine results opportunities that you could be capitalising on by having your site optimised through search engine optimisation, but you could be missing out on potential additional followers and also potential additional traffic by not actively being involved in micro-blogging sites like Twitter.

Obviously, it is still early days as far as how well this would work across the results displayed in Search Engines, the deal to allow integration of Tweets from Twitter into Bing’s results only being announced at the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.  Which I am sure Google will be hot on the heals, to strike up a deal to allow the same search results to appear on their search engine.

This move is very interesting, in light of the recent announcement by News Corp, moving to block the distrubution of their news content on the Google search engine results pages.  What I see it doing, is providing up to the minute news from the social community, even without the search results from big news publishers like News Corp.  Although it will be interesting to see how people adjust to having more user generated content in their search results.

Although, still in its early days, the searche engine results will appear based on a variety of criteria, however, once again, it strengthens the case to have a presence on the micro-blogging platforms like Twitter and be active in creating news and interesting posts around your website, niche or business.

Although I don’t know the exact details of how the search results will be ranked through this integration, it may be important to target keyword specific comments into your Tweets around your business, website or niche to ensure your chances of ranking are increased.

Either way, times are certainly changing rapidly, and it will be interesting to see how search engine marketing changes over the coming months and how users change and react to the appearance of user generated / social community based content from Twitter and Facebook in the search engine results pages.

Either way, your business and website should be moving to capitalise on these changes in the social media space, because it could result in some great additional traffic and interest in your business or website.

Ok, today I am going to get on my soap box. Here is the problem as I see it – your business is potentially losing hundreds if not thousands of dollars in potential leads, sales and … bottomline profits, if your website is not being found on search engines. Why?

Because, in case you missed it, something called Google is being used by millions of people in your local country and billions of people world wide to help them find information, services, websites, businesses and even… yes, you guessed it, find a problem to their solution.  If your website or business is not being found when they type into that search box, the keywords that will help them solve their problem or give them the information they are looking for, then guess what?  You and your business miss out, and that person goes to your competitor.

“But, my web designer said that he knows how to get my website ranking on the major search engines!” I hear you say.  Yes, they may have told you this… but, here’s the simple truth

The simple fact is… YOUR web designer, no matter how good he or she is, generally will have no real idea about optimising your websites so that search engines just love your website.  Most web designers are just that … designers.  They know how to make your website look pretty and have bells and whistle that make you feel like you are getting a great website.  But, if your website is not being found for key words or phrases that your target audience is searching for, it is like having a nice looking sports car, with an empty tank…. your going no where, even if you look super good behind the wheel. 

This was highlighted to me recently and hence the reason for this rant.  I heard an ad on the local radio station for something I was interested in.   Now, being a male and trying to do too many things at once, I missed the contact details for the business in question and by the time I got around to looking them up, I had forgotten their business name or brand.  So, guess what I did first when next I thought to look them up.  Yes, that is right, I hopped on Google and did a search.

Now, their website or offer was no where to be found on the particular keyword phrase that I typed in.  I tried several different combinations and found nothing.  This annoyed me, but it would be even more annoying for the business who had just spent, most likely a fair investment on radio advertising, just to have me as a lead lost (unless of course I hear the ad again and remember to take down the details). 

What could a scenario like the above be costing your small business?  Maybe you are even making the same mistake and don’t even realise you are missing out on leads or sales, and all because your website “looks pretty”.

Obviously, the above scenario is only one of many that could be creating lost opportunities.  But there are a few basics things you can do to correct this.

Now, Search Engine Optimisation is a massive topic to get into, and too be honest, your actions after reading this blog post should be less on trying to learn how to be an SEO expert (unless you really want to be), and more on finding and outsourcing to SEO experts (not simply your web designer), to help you implement some of these key points, so you don’t keep missing out on potential leads and sales.

Some basics for you to undersand and look to improve on your website, that could dramatically increase your website rankings and more effectively reach your target audience that are searching for exactly what you have to offer online. 

There two parts to basic SEO

1. What you do on website to help your website rank better on search engine results pages (SERPs), called on-page SEO.  This is part I am going to talk about right here and,
2. What you do off your website called off-page SEO.  This is includes what inbound links you have from relevant and related websites, that are basically making your website look like, to a search engine, that your site is an authority site on that particular topic.  Now, one great way to get good quality inbound links to your website from relevant authourity sites, is to use Article Marketing.  Check out my blog post on this, but for now, I am going to focus on things you can do on your site.

• Keyword Research:  Ok, this should be the first place you start.  Yes, you can guess the keywords and phrases that people will type into a search engine to find your website, but hey, you are not your target audience, so would it  not be smarter to do the research first and then optimise your site.  Of course right, because without knowing this, you could be optimising your site around keywords that your target audience won’t even be searching on.  Avoid the guess work – try the Google Keyword Tool (remember, you can set this to be pulling information for your local country or territory) or for something more serious, try Market Samurai
• Targeting your keywords in the <h1> heading tags.  Ok, so you have done your keyword research, now what.  Well the first place to start targeting your keywords, is by creating pages on your site that target that particular keyword or phrase.  You can do this in the heading of the page, normally referred to as the H1 tags in website HTML code.  This basically helps search engine spiders understand what this particular page is more than likely to be about.  If the heading is the summary of what the page is about, and it contains your target keyword, then you can target your keyword in the heading.
• Targeting your keywords in the title tags: This is something you can have your outsourcer do for – it is information that should in the HTML code as well.  Basically it is what appears in the blue bar of your browser if you are using Internet Explorer, but it is also the text you would see in the link through to your website when you website appears on a search engine results page.  Having the keywords targeted in here is also a very smart move.
• Targeting your keywords in the meta tags and page description.  Once again, this is information that is not actually visible on your website, but rather in the HTML code.  The meta description and meta keywords should include your target keyword and relevant synonyms that relate to those targeted keywords.  The description is what will appear, once again, below the blue link (page title), that will appear when your website ranks on a search engine.  If you don’t have this, then Google for example will simply just pull in random content off your website, that it’s robots basically think is the best representation of what your site is about.  Not good, if it simply displays parts of your website that are not relevant to someone’s search query – like for example the terms of service, privacy policy etc.

Are you just getting started with your new site?  How about you create a website that the search engines will love from the start!  Check out a system called Wordpress.org.  This is normally used for setting up blogs, but can just as effectively run your entire business website if you get the right person with the right skills to set this up for you.  This will also become what is called a CMS or Content Management System for you, so you can login to your website at any time and

Now, it really pings me off, when I see web design companies offering their own CMS systems, that they charge $1000s of dollars to their unsuspecting clients, because their clients simply don’t know any better.  Wordpress.org is a free service, all you need is hosting and a domain name, and then you can find someone to set this up effectively for you and you are away.  No ongoing fees for someone to manage your site and be charged for simple changes, no huge CMS setup fees to pay up front.  And, the best part is, the website will be using a platform that search engines love.  Keep adding regular content to the website, even run it with a blog for latest news, and target specific keywords and phrases in your content or blogs and you.

“Great ideas Tim, but I don’t have the time!” No problem there either – I would recommend checking out a system for helping you Outsource none core part of your business, including the setup of a search engine friendly site by using Outsource Method. 

PS.  If you are going to do offline advertising that links back to a specific offer on your website (eg. radio advertising for a $20.00 discount in store), then instead of saying, go to www.yourbusiness.com in your ad, why not create a landing page on your website specific to your offer.  Then in your ad, say for this special offer, go to www.yourbusiness.com/radio and have that page entirely focused on your radio ad.  Also, have and SEO expert make sure that particular part of your website is optimised for target keywords that your target audience may type in to a search engine, if they forget the website address.  This is called intergration of your marketing campaigns.  Making sure you integrate your communications offline with your communications online.  And, as I said, if this is all to much for you to setup – Outsource using the Outsource Method System!

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So many people now days are looking for quick wins to making money online.  People, and maybe that includes you, hear a lot about how they (read you) can simply make a fortune promoting someone elses product… And you don’t even need your own website!  Cool, right?  While this is true, I still think having your own website, even if you are just promoting other people’s products off that site is so much more powerful than simply linking directly to an affiliate sites.  This is for many reason, including the fact that you get to build a list or database of potential future customers in the niche market that you are promoting affiliate products for.  That means, you have to me a “double-edged” sword.   Why?  Simply because you don’t just make money once from the sales that you receive from promoting an affiliate’s product, you have the opportunity to create a longer term business.  Once you have a list in a niche, you can continue to market to these people, providing them with value, and creating more sales by upselling to other affiliate products… And possibly, down the track, your own product in that niche, where you keep 100% of the profits. 

Can you see how you are potentially missing out on this, by simply linking directly to the the affiliates site? 

Now… I will get off my soap box, and get to the real point of this post.  You have read this far, and you think to yourself… “Yeah, Yeah Tim…” I know all that, but I just want to start making money online.  “Show me the money, and tell me the secret?”.

Ok.. So, here we go -  If you are still keen to try things out… get in the game so to speak, and don’t want to setup your own site.  And if you are a really tight budget but still want to get started selling on the internet, then I want to share some simple secrets to helping you get started.  Yes, without your own website.

First off, I would suggest picking a niche market.  Micro-niche is even better, but a niche market would be a great start.  Think a smaller part of a broader market.  So many people miss this step, and think I know there is a massive demand for people wanting information about “weight loss”.  And, yes that is completely true.  But think about the competition in this broad market.  It is a huge! 

What if you focused instead on a smaller part or a niche within the weight loss market.  There may be some competition, but your chances of success are greatly increased if you can compete without lossing your shirt in trying to get traffic – even to your affiliate site.  So, may looking at something like “weight loss for celiacs” – that is people with a gluten intolerance.  Smaller part of the overall market.  Now, I know nothing about this market, nor whether it is even hot, I just picked it to highlight a point.  If you are struggling to identify a hot niche market, try using this awesome keyword tool from Market Samurai.

Now, once you have your niche market – identify a strong affiliate product that you can promote.  You can try affiliate networks like www.clickbank.com or www.paydotcom.net as places to start.  You will be able to create your own affiliate link, which basically means that when someone goes to the affiliate link you have been provided, you are paid a commission based on the %commission structure set for affiliates of that product when someone buys.  Simple enough right?

Now, what do you do with this affiliate link.  Here is where the secrets come in.

Step 1: Register a domain name that relates to that niche market.  Try use keywords in the domain name that relate to niche market.  You can get cheap domain names at places like www.cheapdomainsfromscratch.com. 

Step 2: Forward the domain name you have just bought using the domain manager to forward permanently through to your affiliate site URL.  Remember, this is the site URL or website address that you were provided by the affiliate network to promote your affiliates site.  Don’t just use the affiliates actual site, otherwise you are just going to end up sending traffic to that site without getting paid for the traffic.  Turn on the cloaking in the domain manager, so that basically, when someone types in your new domain name, they won’t see that they have been redirected to your affiliate link.   If you are not sure on this, contact the domain name registrar’s support and ask them to help point you  the right direction.  It should take about 24hours for this change to take a effect, so that when you type in your new domain name, it goes straight to your affiliate linked site.

Step 3: Traffic – now, this is where you need to get traffic going to your new domain name.  Sounds simple enough – get traffic to the site, and you make money.  Yes, true, but if you are tight budget, paying for Google Adwords or any other forms of online advertising may not be an option.  So, how do you get traffic.  Well, here are just 3 ways you can start getting traffic:

1. Article Marketing:  You can either write articles yourself, if you know something about the niche that you are promoting, or have someone write these for you by finding a writer with skills in the niche on www.elance.com.  This will cost you a minimal amount of money and only need to be 300-500 words in length.  You would then create what is called a resource box entry.  This is what appears below each of the articles you have written.  You should use this to promote back to your affiliate link, but instead of inserting your actually affiliate link you insert your domain name.  Submit these articles to sites like www.ezinearticles.com or www.goarticles.com or even use services like www.articleautomation.com.  The more targeted you can make your articles around specific keywords in that niche, the better your articles will perform.  Then, there are two ways your articles are picked up.  Either in the natural side or free side of Google or other search engines.  Or when someone actually publishes your content in their email newsletter or ezine.  Either way, the people reading your article could be clicking through to your domain name, giving you free traffic to promote sales of an affiliate product.  Nice!
2. Video Marketing - This works the same as article marketing, in the fact that you are trying to get free traffic, but this time it is using video content rather than text based content.   So, if you can create a simple video, possibly talking about your experiences in using the particular affiliate product to solve your problems, or use pictures relating to the niche market and lines of text that you can customise from the affiliate site, to highlight the major problems in the niche and the benefits of the affiliates product in helping solve these problems, you can use services like Animoto.com to make this into a short video. ”But how is this going to help me get traffic?”  Well, firstly make sure you plaster your domain name across the bottom of the video.  That way when you are finished actually making the video, your domain name is across the bottom.  Then, you take your video and submit it to video sydnication sites  like Tubemogul.  This will basically submit your video to many different video sites.  If you target the video with keywords that you found to be relating to the niche, and use these in the video title and description – remember, these can’t just be weight loss for example.  Then you should see your video start to rank fairly rapidly for the keywords you targeted.  People search for the keywords, watch the video and then if they find the information useful, they visit the website domain on your video.  Free traffic!  Affiliate sales!A great system that can seriously help you get results fast, is Traffic Geyser, which allows you to submit your videos to many different video sites and social networking sites.  This means that if you correctly target your keywords in the title and descriptions for the videos you are submitting, you can potentially end up with a lot of views, that converts to truck loads of people visiting your domain name and buying off your affiliate link.  Cool, hey?
3. Forums  - Forums are online communities.  There are online communities for all sorts of niche markets.  Find the ones that are most actively talking about the niche market you are promoting.  You can join these forums, and then start adding content / comment to forum posts, leveraging information that you collected for the articles you had written in the article marketing part of this post.  Remember, you want to be adding value to the community and not just be seen to be there to sell something.  After your forum posts, put a promotion back to your domain name.  Because it won’t look like an affiliate site because of your domain name, people would trust it more and particularly if you have given good content, they will want to find out more.  Every click you get on your domain name results in free traffic to your affiliate site.  This is obviously fairly time consuming to look after, but if you have more time and limited budget, this can work well for you.

Ready to learn more about Internet Marketing? Join me LIVE in Sydney, Australia 19th-20th of September 2009, where you will actually be able to join a very unique event.  One where you get to bring your laptop and work on your own online business LIVE! 

But seating it limited – only 21 7 spots left, so act fast and get along to http://www.timlivenow.com  for full details and to register.

Having sound or a video on your website can increase your conversion rates dramatically.  Whether it is sales or even optins from your web page, having a small audio player on your site can really increase your visitors engagement with the site.

Although video is a great way to get interaction with your visitors to your site, sometimes video may not be the best option for you.  Possibly you don’t know how to create the video, or you just don’t have a camera or screen capture software to record your video.  This is where having an audio option on your site is really good, because it can be easy to capture the sound and just as easy to put the audio file on your website or blog.

Here are a few applications for audio that you may not have thought of on your site or blog:

• Use it as an introduction to the website.  So put a picture of yourself on the site and just below the picture, but an audio player with a personal message from you.  This could be great on sales pages, blogs or even product landing pages
• You can use them to play actual recorded testimonials.  This can be far more powerful than written testimonials, because it is more authentic than a written testimonial that anyone could have posted.
• Provide your visitor with instructions on what to do next.  You could have this on your optin confirmation page for example, where you ask the visitor to check their email and add your email address to their white list
• Use it as part of an upsell page when a visitor is placing an order.  A great way to increase conversions and also potentially result in more sales.

But you are wondering, this is all well and good, but what if I don’t know anything about audio files, creating an audio file or even how to get it onto your website or blog.  Well, here is a simple 3 step process that can make it really easy for you.

3 easy to follow steps for getting audio on to your website:

Step 1: Record your audio.  This is something you can do easily if you are just recording your own voice using free software called Audacity.  You can download this software to your computer and then simply open the software.   Plug a mic into your computer (you can buy headphone mics in most good electrical stores), if there is not one already installed on your computer or laptop.

Open the software and when you are ready to record, simply click the big red button at the top of the screen.  This will record your audio.  To make sure you get the best results from what you want to record and so that you don’t have to continually record the same audio over and over again to get it perfect, I would suggest writing a script of what you want to say and then use a Teleprompter software to read your script off.  It may sound a little unnatural, but at least you won’t waste hours trying to get it right.

When you are done recording, simply click on the “File -> export as MP3″  You can also use WAV if you are going to provide the audio file as an audio product for download, but for the purposes of this setup, it is recommended to select MP3.  Save the file somewhere on your computer that you will remember.

Step 2: Upload your audio Now you have your audio file, you need to get it onto your website right?  I use a system that makes this really easy to do.  It is a called Xiosoft instant audio.  There are others that will do the same job, but I have found this to be a great service to get audio onto a website in the shortest amount of time.  You can get a trial of the software by going to Xiosoft Instant Audio. Simply upload your audio file that you just created.  This is easy to do under the upload and encode section of the system.

Step 3: Get the website code for the audio Once your audio file is uploaded, you will now be able to create the HTML or website code that will provide you with a neat audio player for your website.  These images demonstrate how you select the audio player look and colour and then what the HTML code is that results from this.

You then simply take this HTML code and paste it in the appropriate location of your blog or website.  Or provide this to your website designer to implement for you.

Really simple and straight forward – 1 hours work and you have an audio player on your website.

Examples:

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Welcome message example:

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Audio Testimonial:

You can use audio on your site to give your visitors easy to listen to audio testimonials about your product or service.

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I use a system called Xiosoft Instant Audio.  Here are a few reasons why I use it and therefore recommend it:

• Super easy to upload and get audio published to your website – which means your audio can be up in minutes
• Ability for your customers to dial a phone number and leave you a voice recorded testimonial that you can publish to your website in a matter or minutes
• Creates various audio player buttons in various different colours suitable to your needs
• Easy to create audio postcards that you can use in email marketing campaigns

Check out this awesome audio software for easily getting audio onto your website, blog or Wordpress site in a few easy clicks.
Xiosoft Instant Audio

Please leave your comments about this below.

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