Internet Marketing Tips & Online Business Resources

Are you satisfied with the amount of traffic that you currently have coming to your website or blog?

Have you ever wondered how the big guys got where they are today?

Chances are, you need more traffic (who doesn’t) and you are struggling for a sustainable way of getting more people to your website, blog, or e-commerce site.

Now, generally what happens is this … You do a ton of work to generate traffic and then a short time later, the traffic stops and so does your lead generation, sales and income.

Well, guess what … even the gurus struggled in the beginning!

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Someone asked me the other day how to make money online fast. Here are just some thoughts you might find useful if you are also searching for ways to learn how to make money online fast …

Making money online is quite simple. The smartest way to do this is to learn, then apply (or mimic) those before you that have already achieved success. If you are wondering whether you should do exactly as they have done, but do it better, then you are on the right track. Why create a new trail when you have someone else’s road that you can follow?

Before embarking on this journey and taking that road, don’t forget to prepare yourself with the right equipment. Are you starting out the right way? Is this something you are prepared to commit and dedicate time and energy to? Is what you are providing all set and ready to go?

Now, before you begin, keep in mind that you’re just wasting your time if you have a ton of information but no distinct way to organize it. This is something that’s often hard to do because there is so much information available that most people don’t know what to do with it. You shouldn’t worry about it, though, because all you need is some clear direction and guidance along the way.

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Do you want to start a blog but don’t know what do blog about? The authors of “The Step-by-Step Guide to Selling Online” have recently emailed me this great list of 42 blog post ideas you can outright “steal”:

1. Helpful how-to tips related to your product
2. Reviews for products you don’t sell but you know would appeal to your audience
3. Explain why you are so passionate about your business
4. Explain how you got into the business in the first place
5. What inspired you to take the jump into small business?
6. Describe a day in the life of your business
7. Share a photo or video “walking tour” of your business
8. Describe your customer service philosophy
9. Share Testimonials you get from your customers
10. Offer product tutorials, either for your product or other ones your customers use
11. 3 things you love about the current state of your industry
12. 3 things you wish you could change about the current state of your industry
13. What will the future of your industry be like — and how should people prepare for it?
14. What famous people have currently been associated with your industry lately?
15. The 25 best online resources for people in your industry
16. Review other blogs related to your industry
17. Review an online magazine related to your industry
18. Review print publications related to your industry
19. Debunk the top myths that are currently floating around about your industry
20. Go to a trade fair or conference and then write reports about it
21. Take a stand on a controversial issue related to your industry
22. Identify the most prominent experts in your industry, explain why they’re famous or important
23. Disagree with a well-known authority in your industry and list reasons why they’re wrong
24. Post about the best things you’ve read online in the past week (related to your industry)
25. Answer FAQs you get from your customers
26. Admit mistakes! If you’ve done something wrong in the course of building your business, share that information and explain how you dealt with it. People love learning from others’ mistakes
27. Create a list of “best practices” for businesses in your industry
28. Write a blog comparing what your industry is like now to what it was 20 or 30 years ago
29. Post a “Test Your Knowledge” quiz and give readers a chance to interact
30. Make a list of “must-have” free resources your audience will appreciate
31. Ask a question of your followers on Twitter and then blog about the best answers you got
32. Sign up for Google Alerts on topics related to your industry — then blog about breaking news stories
33. Find out which of your blog posts is most popular, then blog about it
34. Get involved in a discussion on another blog or forum and then write up a summary about it on your own blog
35. Post weekly or monthly wrap-ups about what you accomplished with your business
36. Offer a case study of how someone has successfully used your product or solved a common problem
37. Run a poll on a controversial issue and then discuss the results
38. Interview key people in your industry
39. Reveal a generally unknown secret in your industry
40. Create a list of books everyone in your industry should read
41. Run a contest, offering a free product sample or service for the winner. Then ask them to comment about what they thought of it — and make that its own blog post as well
42. Make a list of 42 blogging ideas specifically for your industry

The above will help you — whether you want to start a business blog, or you already understand the value of having a blog on your site but just don’t know what to write about.

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If you’ve got a content-based website or blog, at some point you will probably try making money with Google AdSense.

AdSense allows you to display contextual ads from Google AdWords advertisers on specific areas of your site and share in the revenue generated by Google from bids paid by advertisers to display their ads when visitors to your site click on these ads.

Joel Comm – who many consider to be one of the world’s leading authorities on making money with AdSense, calls AdSense “the easy button of the web” and his ebooks on the subject have been some of the world’s most popular for the past five years!

Yesterday I received an email from Joel letting me know that he is currently offering his best-selling 4th edition of his Adsense Secrets eBook (235 pages) for FREE! This same ebook has been selling until recently for up to $97! [Read more →]

I’ve just received an email from one of my clients asking me for more clarification regarding adding “categories” to her blog, so I thought I’d share part of my response below, as you may find it useful and helpful when setting up your own blog …

Blog Categories

Keeping your site’s content organized is very important, as this makes finding information easier for your visitors. The way to do this, is to work out what kind of broad yet distinct “topics” you will be publishing content about on your site regarding your specific niche (my client is setting up a blog for her marriage celebrant business).

You then convert these broad topics into “categories” (Posts > Categories), so that everytime you add a new article or post to your site, you simply tick the category box before publishing your post and this will immediately organize the content on your site in a logical way that makes the information easier to find.

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I recently got the email below from an online visitor to our blog interested in starting an online business with a membership site:

Subject: Self Publishing My Website

My interest is to start an online business ( I’m interested in a membership site ) my knowledge is limited around getting this set-up  and running. Do I need a site first for your services. . . or do you set this up from start to finish?  Also, what is the cost ? I can add the content my self, I’m ready to go so far. THANKS

Below is my reply – I thought I’d share this with you, in case you have similar questions …

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The 2 most crucial things about your article marketing strategy is to:

• Just get started, and
• Make sure that your articles are always high quality.

Getting Your Article Marketing Strategy Started

So … you know you need an article marketing strategy, but you don’t know where to start? The good news is it’s not as hard as you might think. The most important part of any article marketing strategy is that you just begin to do it in the first place, then make it a consistent habit to write and publish your articles on a regular basis.

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You may already know that a blog allows you to attract new customers, build brand awareness, and inspire more prospects to buy from you. Did you also know that the average blog attracts 55% more visitors and gets indexed 434% more by search engines than a traditional website?

Even if you’re already sold on the value and benefits of blogging, however, launching a blog for your own business and jumping into the blogosphere can be a daunting prospect. Starting a blog and then turning it into a successful online venture requires careful planning and strategy.

Our step-by-step blog tutorials will show you exactly “how” to install, set up and configure a blog that will help you grow your business faster. If you want to know “why” you should start business blogging and how to plan for success before you go ahead and start a blog, however, then I have found just the perfect guide that will explain to you why merely having a web presence today is not enough to drive your business growth, why, in fact, a static site with no regular new content and no engagement with visitors might even work against you, and why blogging is the simplest and most effective way for your business to deliver what your customers are after.

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If you have already installed and configured your blog correctly, then, by simply continuing to post great content to your blog on a regular basis (assuming, of course, that you are providing real value and information to readers), you should find that the number of visitors to your site will increase over time.

If you don’t know how to set up a blog to automatically drive new visitors to your site, then please subscribe to my “insider tips” newsletter (see form at the top of the sidebar), or go here to learn more about my “step-by-step” tutorials on how to set up a blog.

Now, if you have been involved in any type of business marketing before, then you are probably familiar with the concept of lists, e.g. customer lists, email lists, prospect lists, opt-in lists, customer database, etc.

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In my previous post I talked about using Twitter to grow your business and showed you a simple strategy for driving more traffic to your sites with a couple of tools that automate the process for you.

I’ve just come across a great new service today that I just have to share with you.

Everyone on Twitter uses shortened URLs. With only 140 characters to say your message it only makes sense to use the shortest possible links.

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