The Official Internet Marketing Sweetie Blog

Friday, September 29, 2006

The Big Guide that Got Me Started is FREE!

This is exciting news and I figured it was coming - that, or Ken Evoy would have to update the 2002 version of the ebook that massively cut my learning curves in Internet marketing.

Make Your Site Sell 2002 is completely free now. It is a HUGE guide that has helped countless people get on the right track with their Internet business. Yes, it's from 2002 and perhaps some of the information is dated (maybe skip the search engine info), but much of the content of this Internet marketing bible is timeless, no doubt.

I hope I don't sound like a salesman trying to pitch you like crazy. Yes, the link is an affiliate link above (if you buy other products, I get a commission), but I mention this because this guide was really crucial to me at the beginning of my online career. I was SOOOOO lucky to find it a few months into my business and I avoided so many mistakes I've seen others make in getting started online.

You can even see that months ago I listed Dr. Ken Evoy as one of my top 4 Internet marketing influences...and that certainly hasn't changed.

Grab your copy of free MYSS 2002 by clicking here.

Thanks Dr. Evoy!

A Reminder - Your Loved Ones are Not to be Forgotten

It's been just about one year since I posted my But It's for My Family post where I admitted the distorted priorities I adapted while working in Internet marketing. A number of my blog readers posted confessions and thanked me for the reminder.

...but sometimes we forget and it's easy to get wrapped up in business...

I've share a few blog entries with you from Jason "Profit" Moffat before and his crazy Internet marketing rap songs and the ugly Seba/Kern lovechild, but yesterday he posted something far more meaningful:

The Most Important Letter I Could Ever Write & I've Blown It

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Brita Martinis - Delicious!

You might remember my blog post about the oddest and might I mention GROSSEST Brita Water Filter commercial I saw in July.

Tonight, a gentleman named Lee posted a comment about some correspondence he had with Brita about the ad. Apparently, he wasn't impressed with their response, so he created a new ad for the company. Maybe you'll like it (click the image to see a larger view and to read the text):


I Could Give it To You on a Silver Platter...

...but that would be lying.

As you probably know, Mila Sidman and I have a PLR content membership site. Yesterday, I emailed my mailing list to tell them we have just completed and would be adding a step-by-step guide and video to show people how to optimize their PLR articles for search engines.

Some people have asked why our articles aren't ALREADY optimized for search engines. Well, that would be incredibly misleading of us to suggest that they are.

There's nothing wrong with using the same content found on another website (of course some would disagree with that - I'm just going on my own experience), but if all the websites are targeting the precise keyword phrase...it would be impossible for everyone to get good rankings. The key is doing your own simple keyword research and making some minor (and I mean - minor) modifications to the article.

I mentioned something like this on my blog a little while ago when a forum member claimed PLR doesn't work because he wasn't "raking in" the traffic.

Now, I don't blame the people who ask me these types of questions. In some cases, they may just not be familiar with the way search engines work or they didn't think through the possibility.

But I do place a LOT of blame to people who SELL products that claim to hand everything to their customers on that silver platter. There is no silver platter. If you've had the autopilot mentality shoved down your throat, demand to have it removed!

Yes, much of your online business can run online pilot...but you've got to do the work to put things in place FIRST. It doesn't matter if it's PLR articles or any other aspect of your business...there is always some work involved.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

I Got an Award!

Look at me! I got an award! Not some silly Golden Web Award, but an I Cut the Corporate Noose Award that comes with a fancy certificate and a real corporate noose that has been cut in half (i.e. a neck tie).

Thanks to Dan Reinhold of WAHumor.com for sending me this great gift. And kudos to Dan for supporting Save the Children at the same time.

The tie was from The Save the Children Collection and was designed by "Cara - Age 16". The tie was called, "Kids View of Business" (which is very fitting) and can be viewed here.

Friday, September 22, 2006

The Death of [Insert Your Business Woe Here]

Recently, the Internet marketing world has been a-buzz with talk about the “The Death of Adsense” and the resulting, “Life After Adsense Report” by Scott Boulch. It’s no doubt, there’s 50 cents at stake for every person who signs up for the reports. ;-)

How many times have you heard someone say, “Adsense is dead” or “SEO is dead” or “Affiliate Marketing is dead”. This usually comes from people who found the method no longer working for them, usually because:

- It was the method they relied on solely for traffic/income, etc
- They aren’t patient enough to ride it out.
- They turn to the quick money-makers to make a bunch of money/traffic and when it dies they can’t figure it out.

Let’s take Scott, for example. He started out by mass-generating garbage websites to generate Adsense income. He was doing well and he made tons of cash with his 3000 crappy websites. Suddenly, his earning dropped to almost nothing. Therefore, Adsense was dead.

He has theories for the demise of Adsense and they are related to changes made to Google Adwords. However, he doesn’t let us know about how the decrease in traffic affected his income. Please, we know garbage sites don’t last forever.

When Scott decided Adsense died, I noticed a dip in my Adsense earnings. Some of this had to do with traffic and some of it had to do with how much I was being paid per click. That has pretty much stabilized in the last couple weeks and my earnings are back where they were. I admit, I was annoyed to lose that chunk of income for a short bit…but guess what, I had other things to fall back on…so I rode it out. I didn’t run off to seek another money-maker, but kept plugging along with my various income sources and traffic generation techniques.

So, here comes Scott’s new plan – something he has coined “click flipping”. If you want to read his reports and haven’t, search on Google for “death of adsense”. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of sites.

Now, I admit click flipping is an interesting advertising strategy…but that’s what it is, an advertising strategy. It also requires quite a bit of risk, cash flow and maintenance to keep up. That’s not a bad thing, but I think some people don’t realize what’s really involved. And realistically, it’s not a business in itself and is subject to the similar fluctuations as his previous business model.

His “Internet Marketing Food Chain” is baffling because he still seems to believe, after all his troubles with Adsense, that making money from paid advertising in some way is the only way to make money online (and no, I don’t mean paying for advertising and selling products – I mean directly profiting from advertising).

I do not fit into any of his food chain categories and I venture to say MOST companies doing business online, don’t fit in either. He says the higher you go up, the more risky it is, but the more money you’ll make. That’s why you don’t want to go too high up because you want to live a comfortable life with lots of free time.

I’m sorry but - making more money online doesn’t have to involve the risk he is talking about.

Please don’t get me wrong, this Scott guy is clearly a very intelligent person and has some skills to share. But don’t read his guide and think this IS the way for me to finally start making money online. It’s an advertising strategy (that carries risk and requires cashflow and maintenance) that can be PART of your Internet marketing arsenal.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

For Women Again - Womens Power Summit Preview Call #1

I sent a notice to my IBMoms list about this earlier this week, but in case you missed or a woman who isn't on that list...here's some great info for you and it's for TONIGHT:

-------------------------------------

I wanted to give you a quick heads up that the Womens Power Summit will be hosting the first in a series of 4 Preview Calls designed to deliver the key strategies you need to create
more prosperity for yourself and your loved-ones, materially and spiritually.

This Wednesday, September 20 at 6:30pm PST, you'll get a peek at this exclusive event - for business women only.

This call is designed to give you a taste of what they'll be teaching at the Womens Power Summit 2006 event in Atlanta this October.

--> http://www.womenspowersummit.com/learnmore/jeanette/

This call is absolutely free (except any long distance fees). The guest this evening will be co-host for the event, top-notch expert and internet strategist Dr. Jeanette Cates, who will be
revealing a sure-fire method for capturing your knowledge to leverage your expertise.

I've known Jeanette for a couple of years now and she has always been a great source of information. I first met her at a womens-only event where she spoke about this same topic - creating profit from your knowledge. She's the one who gave me the courage and knowledge to start doing just that for myself.

Sign up for the call here:

--> http://www.womenspowersummit.com/learnmore/jeanette/

Space is limited on the call, so please dial-in 5 minutes early to ensure your spot. And yes, we know that women are a busy bunch and if you can't make it live, there will be a replay of the call available....so definitely get your name in.

-------------------------------------

If you're going to get on the call or listen to the replay, be sure to share your thoughts by using the comment link below. Jeanette always has such great and seemingly endless ideas!

Monday, September 18, 2006

Made Money from 12Daily Pro: You Might Wanna 'Fess Up

According to an ABC4 Story, Tom Lennon, the appointed receiver assigned to deal with the 12Daily Pro mess is going after some of those who profited from the Ponzi scheme (Thanks to Josh Anderson for keeping up with this case and pointing out the the story).

Story is here.

He wrote:
The Receiver believes that certain investors were aware of the fact that 12DP was a Ponzi scheme and invested with the intent of maximizing their investment early in the scheme and withdrawing their funds before it collapsed.

If you happened to participate and made any amount of money, it might be in your best interest to come forward to authorities...instead of having them have to come to you which could result in greater financial hardship and legal troubles.

Earlier this year, I wrote about 12Daily Pro, BEFORE the Feds moved in and shut down the operation. Kelly McCausey and I even did a special recording for her WAHMTalkRadio program warning others about potentially illegal auto-surfs. Kelly and I were largely criticized and personally attacked by some of the members of our work at home mom community. Many of these critics said what they did was their own business and we had no right to be so judgmental.

Well, with the events that unfolded, I hope that we were able to protect others from making a mistake in getting involved and got some people to pull out. I also hope that some of those critics were able to look at the situation and see that if some people don't speak up, many more end up in trouble.

No, wishing that, doesn't make me or anyone holier than though, as some people suggested. It means that we're lucky to live in a world where some people still care about what happens to other people.


Friday, September 15, 2006

Develop the Idea Before the Approach

I frequently get emails from people (sometimes customers, fellow forum members or just out of the blue) and they write to me to say they like my work and perhaps we can work on something together and to let them know if I have any ideas.

Something's missing here. If you approach someone to work together you should have the idea first. Whether it's something as simple as interviewing them for an article or your podcast or offering to promote their product...offer some kind of idea.

Everyone is busy and if you're asking them to essentially help you, you can't also expect them to also do all the brainstorming. Come up with a great idea that the person you're approaching will love...and then go from there.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Did I Remove You From My List AND How to PLR

I sent this out to my mailing list today, but you may have missed it because I wiped out about 2000 or so subscribers on my mailing list the other day. SORRY! If you didn't get any email from me today, please feel free to sign up again. If you were signed up for any of my tips lists, you'll see those links to the right side of this blog.

Anyway...here's the message:

-----------------------------

Since Mila and I opened our private label rights (PLR) article
membership site, we've had a lot of questions about using PLR.

Some people have told us they are worried about penalties from
Google for having content that is on other sites.

Others have told us they've tried PLR sites, but the content was
horrible. I agree...I've seen some sites with plenty of garbage.
In fact, I had to stop providing a link to a service that was
really good at the beginning, but has degraded to poorly written
content with little substance.

There is great private label content out there, you just need to
know how to find and use it creatively in your business, all the
while adding value to your readers' learning experience.

That's why we've created a no-charge course to help you learn
more about using PLR for your business.

Claim your subscription now:

HowToPLR.com

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

For the Ladies - Do We Really Play-Not-To-Win

Here's an article from Dr. Jeanette Cates about women and approaching business with a "play-not-to-lose" attitude. She provides tips to get women to "play-to-win" instead.

What do you think? Do women "play-not-to-lose"? After working closely with women in business for four years, I've formed a strong opinion on this, but I want to hear what you have to say first.

Here's the article:

---- START ARTICLE ----


Women Play to Win in Business and Life

Have you seen this happen to a woman you know?

She gets very close to success - then turns her attention in another direction.

She has an opportunity to "shine" at a meeting, but turns it over to someone else.

You compliment her on what a great job she did and she gives credit to the team instead.

She has a million-dollar idea, but decides to take the safer route and get a steady job and pursue the idea "later."

These are examples of "playing not to lose" and it's often a common ailment of women in business. It's taking the safe option instead of really going for it.

While part of this may be a result of our culture, we still have choices. And that choice can be to "play to win!"

There are five principles for a "Play to Win" attitude.

1. Be Decisive. In business there are opportunities that are time-sensitive and if you delay in making a choice, you may lose the chance. From ordering lunch to signing contracts to choosing the ideal outfit, you need to learn to trust yourself and make decisions quickly. Start with the menu at lunch tomorrow. Make your choice in less than a minute, then enjoy more time for your lunch and the conversation.

2. Live with a Commitment to Learning. Part of the learning cycle is recognizing and admitting that you don't know. Be open to asking questions and give up the need to be the ultimate authority. You'll enjoy a confidence that it's okay to be you.

3. Learn from Mentors with Experience. Successful people did not achieve their success alone, yet we sometimes think we need to do it all ourselves. Seek out a mentor and absorb their guidance and advice. It doesn't make you appear less capable by asking for help. It evokes thoughts of "Winner" when you are willing to ask for mentoring.

4. Be Resourceful with Daily Activities. Women are naturally good at multitasking, so we tend to be very efficient. But what that talent does yield sometimes is a lack of focus. So learning to balance the focus and the multitasking is key to the Play to Win attitude.

5. Join a Team of Like-Minded Players. In the famous book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, the power of the Mastermind is emphasized. It is important to align yourself with others who are on the level to which you aspire. So be cautious in your associations with people, organizations and even what you read and watch! Be sure they are on the same winning level.

Learning to Play to Win is a process which can be learned and practiced on a daily basis. Start now to stomp out that "playing not to lose" attitude and start winning!

--------

Dr. Jeanette Cates is the mother of three daughters and three granddaughters. She is the co-host of the Womens Power Summit, an event based on the Play to Win Principles. You can learn more about the next event at WomensPowerSummit.com

---- END ARTICLE ----

What do you think? Please, don't be shy. Man, woman...all your opinions matter.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Is It So Absurd? (For Direct Sales Reps)

As you may remember, Linda Stacy and I created some helpful tips for direct sales reps who want to generate more leads online (you can grab yours here). We recently received a concerned email from a subscriber about one of the messages we sent out. If you're a direct sales rep that is trying to make it online or if you're doing well online already, this will be of interest to you. I definitely welcome your comments and any suggestions you may have for your fellow direct sales reps.

Here's the message we sent out:

One of the first steps to generating leads online will be to establish your online presence with a website. Even if your business opportunity already provides you with a website, you should create your own site outside of the direct sales business site. You want to stand out, and set yourself apart from the generic site that everyone else in the company has.

Building your online presence apart from the direct sales company you are working with has another important benefit.

What happens if the company goes belly up, or you decide for whatever reason you just can't work with them anymore?

This is a real possibility and happens every day. If you put all your effort into sending traffic to the generic company website, all your hard work is all of a sudden gone. But what if you build your site separate from the company? Let's take a look at an example:

Anne is a candle rep for a well-known candle direct sales business. She built her website separate from the site the company created for her and has all sorts of information
about using candles to create a romantic feel in a room, the different aromatherapy benefits of the scents the candles are available in, creative ways to use the candles, candle
gift giving etc.

In other words, she is establishing her online presence as a candle expert. If anything were to happen, and she decides to leave the candle business opportunity, she still has this
website and the targeted traffic of people interested in scented candles. She could use it to generate leads for another candle direct sales company, make and sell her own candles, or join some affiliate programs and continue to benefit from the work she did in the past few months building and promoting her site.

Are you starting to see how establishing your own online presence could benefit you?

Sign up for a 10-day trial of an easy website builder at:
http://www.onlinedirectsalesleads.com/sitebuilder.html

It's easy to get started in just a few minutes!

To your success,
Alice & Linda
DirectSalesDirectories.com


This inspired the following response from one of our subscribers. Now, I must tell you that this lady is an owner of a direct sales company, so she has a slightly different perspective and vested interest in keeping reps focused on her products. Still, I think she has some valid points and for someone who is focusing offline for their direct sales business, this may not be the route to take.

Here's what she wrote to us:

Dear Alice & Linda,

I have been receiving your emails and for the most part I have found the information to be useful. However, I am a little disturbed by the email shown below. Encouraging sales reps. to have multiple websites is the most absurd thing I have heard in a while. Especially, when the companies provide websites for their reps. I think it confuses the consumer, because they are not sure where to go in order to shop. Also, many companies allow their reps to personalize their homepage in order to "stand out" from others.

In addition, companies work hard to project a credible image in the direct sales industry, so its important that everyone has the same "generic" website. This uniformity is critical for brand awareness. Now, I know reps. need to be creative when trying to generate leads, but I totally disagree with the idea of multiple websites especially if the company does not promote that.

You also mentioned that companies "go belly up" all the time. Putting this kind of doubt in a reps mind is not the best way to sell your service. This negative idea implies that your company do not put much stock, as it were, in the direct sells industry. I think that most reps. are smart enough to research "good" companies.

There are many ways that a rep. can establish themselves as "experts" in their field. This can be done by educating themselves about the products that they sell and being able to share the information at parties, through emails and when meeting individuals one-on-one. Most "good" companies offer the tools needed for reps to do just that. After all, "good" companies want to do all that they can to move the inventory.

I realize that coming up with eye catching and unique marketing strategies are critical to selling a service or product, but the way you all worded this email is simply wrong on so many levels. Nonetheless, I wish you much success in your business venture.

Regards,
XXXXX

I do feel like our message might have been too brief and didn't really illustrate our whole point, so we wrote back. I had to remove a number of specifics below because they are related to her personal information, but I still think you'll get the point:

Dear XXXXX,

Thank you for your feedback. As our valued client and subscriber, your opinion is important to us. It's not our goal to change your opinion on the matter because we all approach business differently, but perhaps we can explain ourselves better.

We are absolutely not experts in promoting direct sales businesses offline. As you'll note, we offer no offline marketing advice and your mention of home parties, meeting one-on-one and following up with email is obviously a very viable strategy, since many successful reps build wonderful businesses in this very way.

We cater to people who want to do business online. We work with a lot of mothers who don't want to have to leave the house for business - i.e. they want to stay home with their kids - and they attempt to run their businesses exclusively online. Unfortunately, we've seen very few success stories when people rely on the websites and marketing materials provided by the company they work with.

Where we see online success stories is where people think outside the box and build something uniquely their own. This doesn't take away the branding of the direct sales company, it is a completely separate issue. For example, if we talked to a XXXXXXX consultant, we would never say take the products off the site and build your own shopping site. Absolutely not. The sites you provide your reps are extremely valuable in completing the sale and the fact that they can be personalized, is an added bonus.

Here's the problem. If someone wants to exclusively market their XXXXX site online, they run into a few problems:

- They will have to pay for most of the leads they generate.
- They are competing with others that have virtually the same sites. Think of Tupperware reps, there are countless numbers of reps and tons of websites out there.

A duplicated site, even if customized, leaves little opportunity to receive free traffic from search engines or to generate any great level of word of mouth. Consultants will have to pay for pay-per-click ads and other advertising. If they’re going to advertise on Google, only 1 advertiser is allowed to advertise the same site per keyword. Other advertising networks may have similar policies. That puts a lot of restriction on your consultants.

The worst part of this is that most of the traffic sent to the site is wasted...since the depressing part of online business is that very few visitors that go to a site actually buy anything. Most will leave and never come back.

If consultants set up their own unique content, mailing lists or ecourses – they have a much better chance of getting search engine traffic, generating great word of mouth and other viral (and free) means of generating traffic and leads.

We’re talking about “going wide” when trying to capture leads. Yes, sometimes you are specifically advertising your opportunity or sometimes you’re advertising your product. But if direct sales reps want to generate a large pool of leads that keeps growing without the continuous effort and expense of advertising, they’re going to have to “go wide”.

Think about it, people come online every day for information. They don’t always want to buy a spa product that day, but they are definitely in the market for some pampering. A smart online marketer has created a number of ecourse for these information seekers.

She might have a free ebooklet on how to give yourself a pedicure. Subscribers to this ebooklet will learn how to do a pedicure and discover that they should definitely try the highly recommended XXXXX Foot Scrub and the XXXXX Foot Lotion too. A typical subscriber to this course just wanted to know how to give herself a pedicure and wasn’t necessarily planning on buying products or was possibly going to go out to her local market to buy what she needs. Instead after reading about these great product, the subscriber decides to order XXXXX products online instead. In addition, the consultant has collected an email address, so she can follow-up with her subscribers and make other relevant product recommendations in the future.

This can all be automated. The free report is written up, the follow-up emails can be scheduled into an autoresponder.

A typical Internet surfer might also want to know how to get rid of the dark puffiness under her eyes. Unfortunately, your great soothing eye mask probably won’t pop up on a search engines when a surfer enters “how to get rid of dark under eye circles” in a search engine. However, a consultant who has taken the time to write an informative article to help her readers solve their problem AND recommends the XXXXX product at the same time will more likely find herself at the top of a search engine.

The important thing is the RECOMMENDATION. The XXXXX consultant has positioned herself as an informative and trusted source of information. Her subscribers grow to like her and trust her. They take her recommendations for the great XXXXX products she recommends. It’s much easier to sell to people when they know you a little…we’re sure you’ll agree. Well, we’re showing people how to get to know people lots of people online and gain their trust, without having to email or phone people individually.

In our years of marketing exclusively online, we’ve learned that content is an amazingly powerful tool when marketing online. It can generate endless free traffic and leads for you…it’s hard to sneeze at that. Of course, we don’t mean to make it sound like it’s not hard work. It most definitely is and it takes a while to get things really moving along really well. However, in our experience and with our experience of working with countless others it’s well worth it. Once the initial hard work is done, it keeps paying you back over and over again.

We do hope we’ve been able to clarify our advice a bit further. It’s never our intention to steer anyone in the wrong direction, but rather provide strategies that have worked for us and others. We welcome your input and feedback anytime.

Respectfully,
Linda Stacy & Alice Seba

Friday, September 8, 2006

Netscape Calls Me a Phisher

I recently launched a new site and received this private message from one of my forum members:

"I'm sending this to you privately, not seeking advice of any kind, only because I wasn't sure if this was something I should post..... but did want to let you know that when I opened the site, netscape came up with a message stating that it was a suspected phishing site; but then followed up to say that Whole Security had verified the site as a known phishing site and cautioned me not to proceed. "

What? A phishing site? The site talks about online scams and how to avoid them, but there's definitely no phishing going on. Add to that, the site is brand new, not indexed in search engines and I'm the first owner of the domain as far as I can see. I can't possibly be KNOWN as anything.

I contacted Whole Security, a Symantec company and this is what they told me:

I have confirmed that you are not in the list of sites we are sending Netscape.

Netscape currently has a bug where *any* site typed in with a period at the end will show as a phishing site reported by us. Most people are probably seeing this when they receive an e-mail talking about a web-site and click on the link listed at the end of a sentence.

Since Netscape is falsely attaching our name to this bug, we are working with them to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

Geez Netscape, let's get that fixed up, all right? :-(


Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Alice = Technology? Please, Don't Waste Your Money

I've seen these auto-generated keyword ads before, but this was new to me (as found on Technorati.com):



If someone thinks they can sell books about TECHNOLOGY by using my name...well, they're crazy. I'm just a gal who writes on the 'net. I get by with the technology, but I'd never attach my name to any technology book!!! Save your money people. ;-)

Good-Bye X-Site Pro

A little while back, I made a blog entry wondering whether I should stay with X-Site Pro or not. The main issue I mentioned at the time was with updating the site with multiple people working on it. I got some great suggestions on how to work around this, but all the suggestions were cumbersome, added to work and required that we actually REMEMBER to keep things up-to-date at all times.

I also mentioned the problem with the program handling larger sites. It takes too long to save, to publish and so forth. A program that once saved time, ends up being a slow-poke once the site grows.

I've also had trouble with text formatting in text area tags being lost when I re-opened pages, which is very frustrating when I set up my affiliate center in X-Site Pro.

I've never been able to import the X-Site Pro files required to make changes to a site you're working on with multiple computers/users. I've contacted support, reinstalled the program and tried installing on other computers to no avail. Of course, other people don't have this problem, so I didn't think it worth mentioning.

But in discussions with others, I've found they have all kinds of quirky things happen with the program too and are unable to come to a resolution. Some report files becoming corrupted, no longer being able to open the program and other seemingly isolated things. It seems to me, and I am NOT a software expert - just a lowly software user - that the program can easily conflict with other programs/settings you have on your computer.

I am not trying to bad-mouth the software, but provide a different perspective. The software enjoys a lot of good press in the Internet marketing community and most often nobody mentions the potential problems. I just want to provide a more balanced view.

Overall, everyone has their own preference and TONS of people continue to use X-Site Pro every day in their business. It's just not the tool for me anymore. I am no longer building new sites with it and will eventually remove my current sites from the program.

If you're on the fence and thinking about X-Site Pro, here's my humble opinion on why you might want it:

- For small sites that you don't update or add to often.
- For sites you throw up very quickly and move on.
- For sites where you don't want to vary the template from page to page (ex. make different targeted offers in the margins, marketing-maximized thank you pages, etc).

If you think you want it because you don't know how to build websites, I'd say there's plenty of WYSIWG software that is worth the SLIGHTLY longer learning curve. Look at FrontPage (yes, forget what coding geeks say about it), Dreamweaver or other options.

I'm open to a discussion about the software and would love to hear your comments. It would be great to know what kind of sites you're putting up and how you're working on them. We don't need to know what niches you're working, if you want to protect that. It's just helpful to have a good idea on how you're using the software.

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Do You Know Your ABCs?


Today, this mama sent her oldest off to kindergarden for the first time. It's going to be a big change around here - we actually have to follow a schedule and be somewhere ON TIME, every morning.

As I sent him off, I thought it was time that I review my own ABC's - my Internet Marketing ABC's and I'd like to share them with you.

Download this free PDF guide entitled, The ABCs of Being an Internet Marketing Sweetie. It's a quick and easy read, but with some important lessons about running a low-maintenance and profitable business that doesn't take over your life.

After all, there are way more important things in life than biz. Click the link below to access the PDF:

http://www.aliceseba.com/ABCs.pdf

Monday, September 4, 2006

The New "If You Build it, They Will Come" Mentality

First, I apologize for singling out the person who wrote this comment on a forum, but I think it illustrates an important thing that many of us Internet marketers fall into the trap of. So, let's think of this person's post being a lesson to all of us, no matter what we're working on for our online business.

I recently read this in a discussion about the rumored "Google duplicate content penalty". The member wrote:

I see exceptions all the time - but I still think there is a dupe content penalty. Otherwise my unchanged PLR sites would be raking in the traffic but they are not.


My response was:

Unfortunately, that isn't proof of a penalty. The articles may not be optimized for search engines or if they are, they may not be for high traffic phrases. In addition, there are plenty of other factors involved in ranking/getting traffic then the words in an article.


When we first start our Internet marketing education, we're told it is NOT true that "If you build it, they will come, " - meaning you can't just a build a website and except instant success with no work. I think most of us get that, but along the way, many of us forget this important lesson.

Perhaps it has to do with the over-hyped marketing that is shoved down our throats about instant profits and riches. Or maybe we're just hoping for the easy way out.

Just remember, you are in charge of your online business and its success. It doesn't matter what it is, if you think:

- a pre-written article
- sales copy written by a top copywriter

OR

- a nice-looking website designed by a professional designer

...etc, etc, is your one key to success, you're in for a big wake up call. So, wake up and take control...please!