SuperTips Ezine: Issue 19
IN THIS ISSUE
2. "Giving Away Free Stuff On The
Net Is Big Business!"
3. Readers Forum
4. "The Top 10 Internet Marketing
Blunders" 5. Submitting to Search Engines 6. Next Issue
1. Greetings! As you know I constantly stress the importance of offering useful free information at a website or in a newsletter. So I was pleased to receive today's article from Don Cirillo which gives real examples of how this has worked out successfully for some Netrepreneurs. As if to prove the point I was then asked by Daniel Kornbau if I would mention his free course "Rank at the TOP of the Search Engines". This was very timely because today I am going to describe, as promised, my attempt to improve my search engine rankings. So why not pop over to Daniel's course at http://www.pfl1.com/search-engines.html and join up with me for today's edition. Harvey
2. "Giving Away Free Stuff On The Net Is Big
Business!" Internet giveaways are getting new online businesses off the ground. And many small businesses are becoming big businesses by offering profitable freebies on their web sites. Adam Prentice 25, quit his technical support job for Compaq Computer. He decided to risk it all and jumped into an online business venture. Realizing the intense competition for Web customers, Prentice came up with the perfect battle plan . He was going to draw Web surfers to his site in droves with the perfect price for over a 1000 products. NOTHING! His site totallyfreestuff (www.totallyfreestuff.com) links visitors to giveaways on hundreds of other sites ranging from bath soap to computer virus protection. Prentice's site and sites like his are a huge magnet for Web surfers. Despite his generosity and lack of price tags, Prentice estimates his income from the site this year will be $70,000. The income comes from advertisers who are willing to pay big bucks to take advantage of the sites numerous visitors. The bargain hunters look at the site's advertising, supply contact information and buy related products. Another online company Freemania(www.freemania.net) gives away free space. A product called Free Drive, which gives computer users free storage space for their files on the Internet, rather than using their hard drive. Many businesses give away free software and services to lure people into buying premium versions of their products. Efax.com (www.efax.com ), for example offers a free service that enables people to receive faxes as e-mail file attachments. They signed up over a million customers. Many of which upgraded to their premium service at $2.95 per month, which enables them to send faxes as e-mail attachments. The tremendous enticement of offering giveaways on your Web site cannot be overstated. Dangling a carrot of free stuff on your site could be exactly what your business needs take it to the next level.
Don Cirillo CFI Crash Course:
3. Readers Forum 3.1 How to make friends on the Net I was delighted to receive this note from Willie Crawford Harvey, Just wanted to say thanks for using my article on creating doorway pages in your 1 September issue of supertips. Every issue is really packed with useful information. It sort of gives me a mark to shoot for in the quality of my ezine. If you missed Willie's article you can read here or pay a visit to <http://www.williecrawford.com>
3.2 How NOT to make friends on the Net In the course of your online travels you may well encounter upsetting Emails ranging from those who complain about being sent a newsletter (to which they have actively subscribed) to the extreme case of abusive mail. Or you meet people who promise one thing and do a complete turnaround.
My favourite example was a lady who read one of my articles and asked
some questions which she was pleased to have answered. Later I followed with
more information and her reply included the remarks
Two weeks later I wrote her a personalised message advising that she was
welcome to collect my free E-book. Her answer: I answered her and included her previous correspondence, but did not get a reply.
Last week I received this mail which began aggressively. "The problem is that you have used the relative links improperly so instead of going to "http://www.supertips.com/01.htm" I am being sent to "http://www.01.htm" which does not exist ...(snip)... Here's a tip for setting up and promoting your site: Test it and make sure it works before putting it on the internet"
This surprised me because I do make very careful checks of the links at my web site and also there have been no reported errors. Besides I don't think the sender's example of a relative link is correct anyway. So I visited my site and checked all the links to 01.htm and they were in fact correct. I wrote a polite note back, thanking him for bringing the matter to my attention, and asked if he could give more detail of the problem as I could not find anything wrong. But ... a reply never came. Another time I was the subject of abusive remarks from someone who visited my site to collect my free E-book and was upset to come across the statement that there was no Mac version available. "Why did I have to come all the way over here to find this out - why could you not tell me earlier" he complained (expletives deleted). Giving him this information 'earlier' by the way would have just saved him one 'click' ! So I thought how can I bring a positive outcome from these examples and it occurred to me that there's a few tips I can suggest. 1. When you have aggressive or critical Email don't rush out with an angry reply. Take your time and give a polite reply. 2. If you sense that you are dealing with someone who is obviously unreasonable don't bother answering or getting into a series of conversations where you try to justify your point of view. 3. Checking your links: I use AOLPRESS to construct my web pages - it's free at http://www.aolpress.com There's an option to check all your links. You can check all the internal (or relative) ones while you are offline and you can go online to check the external ones. This still leaves room for error as you may have used an absolute URL such as C:\My Documents\nextpage.html which works correctly on your local offline site but not at your real web site. So I always visit any new or changed links after uploading to make sure that they are working correctly.
4. "The Top 10 Internet Marketing Blunders"
We are the first to admit that there are no Internet marketing geniuses behind the pages of this newsletter. We continue to learn something new each and every day. But that's what is so exciting about it -- each time we act on our newfound knowledge our online sales increase. You should make an effort to do the same, and this week we're going to help you do just that by sharing with you what we feel to be The Top 10 Internet Marketing Blunders. Chances are you're making at least one of them, so you may want to give the following some serious thought. Keep in mind that the following really only applies if you are trying to run some sort of business online, which most of us are. You can afford to make a few blunders with a personal homepage, but if you're running a business online the following "rules" are written in stone. Because the following are serious mistakes which all detract from your bottom line, we're going to tell it like it is at the risk of sounding elitist or egotistical. We don't want to offend anyone, it's just that there are certain things that you really shouldn't do. Here goes ... Blunder #1: Using free or cheapo web hosting services. Let's get one thing straight, you absolutely can not run a business web site using a free web page such as those offered by Angelfire, Tripod, GeoCities, HyperMart, FreeYellow, etc. No matter what you may think, it just isn't going to work. As they say you get what you pay for. There is no bigger turnoff than visiting a web site that is hosted on an obviously overloaded web server. We won't mention any names, but a few of the free services are just terrible. Your web site is the most important asset you have, and it must give a good first impression. Besides, nothing is really free anyway. When you get "free" web space you are normally required to show the hosting company's banners and advertisements in prime locations on your web site. This is absolutely insane if you really think about it from a business standpoint. These days you can find a good web hosting company that will provide what you need for as little as $20 a month. Let's be real, if you aren't willing to spend $20 a month on a good web host how serious can you be? Many good prospects are immediately turned off by this blunder. And while we're on the subject of web hosting, be sure to get your own domain name. Again, if you aren't willing to spend $70 to claim your stake on the web ... what are your potential customers going to think? Take your business seriously, or you will ultimately fail. Blunder #2: Destroying your site with graphics, java, music, etc. This has got to be the 2nd most offensive Internet marketing blunder. If you are running a business online, your web site's most important job is to sell your products and services. Anything that detracts from this should be avoided like the plague. And we mean it, literally! Unless you are a graphic designer, graphics that take forever to load are not going to sell anything. And neither is java that crashes your visitor's browser. Same thing for any but the most popular plug-ins. Sound or music clips on your web site? Heck no! Unless you are selling CDs, sound does not belong on a web site -- not yet anyway. Sure you can argue this, but the bottom line is that it can cause your visitors problems. Fancy graphics, java, plug-ins, sound files, etc. do nothing but make your pages take forever to load. Don't take it from us, just look at any of the top 100 sites on the web. Heck, look at Yahoo which is undeniably the most popular web site on the Internet. When was the last time you saw fancy java apps, needed a plug-in, or heard music coming from Yahoo's web site? Blunder #3: Not asking for, and acting on, visitor feedback. This is another big one, and we can personally attest to the value of asking for and acting on feedback. One thing that many people seem to forget is that it's the prospect who has to like what they see -- and not much else matters. Here's a real-world example. A while ago we launched a web site, and initially used a frames-based layout. We were aware of the potential problems, and spent lots of time tweaking it to be as browser-friendly as possible. But after asking for feedback we discovered that many visitors hated it. And the scary thing is that unless we asked for feedback we probably never would have realized this. Everything looked and worked well for us, but a significant number of our visitors had problems with it. We redesigned the entire site and immediately our sales increased. You will be literally amazed at the valuable feedback you will receive if you just ask for it. Remember that your prospects are the ones buying your products and services, and despite what you may think, the way they perceive your site and your business is what counts. Blunder #4: Wasting valuable time on unproductive activities. As an Internet marketer your most valuable asset is time. And yes, time is more valuable than money so spend yours wisely. Because your time is a limited resource, you will need to learn to prioritize. There are certain things that are more important than others. For example, consider the amount of time you spend on various promotion and marketing activities. Do you actually know which is most productive for you? If you don't you're wasting precious time. Test all of your advertising and spend your time appropriately. Search engines are another example. One of the biggest myths that is circulating the web marketing community is that getting a top 10 listing will make you an overnight success. Don't believe the hype, and don't waste your time trying to get there. One of the most important things you can ever do is to automate as much of your day-to-day activities as possible. This includes order fulfillment as well. To succeed online in a big way, you will need to spend most of your time advertising and marketing your business. Blunder #5: Not managing email communications efficiently. Your email communication with prospects and customers will make or break you. Since most of the time you will never get a chance to impress them in person, you really need to learn how to use email to your advantage. Much of it is common sense actually. Each and every day we receive emails from people asking us to do business with them in one way or another, and many of them look like they were written by a 10 year-old. Spelling errors, grammar problems, poorly formatted and difficult to read ... you name it. No one is perfect and we all make mistakes, but there is no excuse for this. Get yourself a good email program, learn how to use it, and spell-check all of your correspondence. You know what they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression. For email we like Qualcom's Eudora Pro, and if you're using your web browser for email now you really need to check it out. Download a free demo at http://www.eudora.com -- it'll make your life a lot easier. Blunder #6: Failing to create and build an opt-in mailing list. Red flag! Alert! Serious blunder! If you do not have a mailing list to keep in touch with your prospects and customers, you are literally throwing money down the drain. If you get nothing else out of this issue, trust us when we say that you need one badly. People buy things they want from people they know and trust. And there's no better way to get people to trust you than to show them that you are good at what you do. Starting an email newsletter will allow you to keep in touch with your audience and do just that. With it you can keep them informed of site updates and new products. You'll never have to worry about them forgetting you because your name will always be in front of them. You can even sell advertising. But most importantly, you will build trust and relationships. Think about it. If you wanted to become a real estate investor, would you purchase a home-study course from a door-to-door salesman or someone who had been sending you a free newsletter for the past year? Starting an opt-in newsletter should be a top priority! Blunder #7: Ruining your reputation via inappropriate advertising. A list of Internet marketing blunders which didn't include spamming just wouldn't be complete. Despite what you may have heard, there is no better way to run your online business into the ground than the act of sending unsolicited email. It is the ultimate blunder. If you have to learn this the hard way than so be it, but don't say we didn't warn you. For every spammer that is actually making any money, we can show you 10 responsible marketers who are making lots more. There is absolutely no reason to spam. The same thing goes for posting ads in Usenet newsgroups where they don't belong. Why hassle with the negative effects of these questionable methods when there are so many ways to advertise online? Forget morality issues, it just makes no business sense. The most important asset you have as an Internet marketer is your reputation. And spamming is about the fastest way possible to ruin it, short of blatantly ripping people off. If you have any intentions of being around to realize long-term profits, please don't spam. Blunder #8: Forgetting that marketing is the key to your success. Even if you have the greatest product in the world you will never sell anything if you don't tell anyone about it. Without advertising there will be no prospects, and without prospects there will be no sales. It sounds like common sense, but it's also a common blunder. You only have to do two things to be successful in business, and you only need to do one of them on a regular basis. Can you guess what it is? If your online endeavors are not as successful as you'd like them to be, do yourself a big favor and return to the basics. First of all, you need to develop a profitable business model. Until it has been proven that you have a viable product or service and a method of selling it that turns a profit, anything else is premature. Do not waste time and money promoting a dud, testing is critical. Once you have determined that your business model is sound you should concentrate most of your efforts on promoting it. If you make $10 per sale, you simply need to find 100,000 customers to make a million dollars. Marketing is the lifeblood of your business. Blunder #9: Thinking you're going to get-rich-quick online. Here's another blunder that isn't exactly limited to the Internet, but it is just as dangerous as the others. If we had to pick just one, this would probably be the number one cause of failure -- both online and in the real world. Making money is easy, but you must work for it. A successful online business isn't built overnight, it is the result of many late nights. If anyone says that they can teach you to make a substantial amount of money without hard work, run as far away as you possibly can. And be sure to bring your checkbook with you. The get-rich-quick mentality seems to be quite popular online. But the truth is, there really isn't a way for the average person to do so. And getting caught up in the hype is only going to delay true success. Save yourself lots of grief by accepting the fact that there is no free lunch. We're still not sure why the get-rich-quick mentality is so prevalent on the Internet, but we do know one thing. There are no secrets, and there is nothing mystical about making money online. With some hard work and a little perseverance, absolutely anyone can do it. Blunder #10: Not understanding the real power of the Internet. The Internet is a communications tool. It was created for this purpose, and you'll get the most out of it if you use it as such. There has never been an easier or more cost-effective way for a business to reach its target audience, and there never will be. So take full advantage of it. Use the power of the Internet to reach millions of customers all over the world. And then use it to provide them with the sort of customer service that was impossible without it. Use the Internet to gather information, research the competition, and network with others. There is a goldmine of information and resources floating around in cyberspace, but you have to know where to find it all. Learn how to use the search engines to easily find almost anything you need and your productivity will skyrocket. This tip alone is invaluable. In a nutshell, use the Internet to communicate more effectively. Don't forget that business is about people, and that the Internet is nothing more than a great way to interact with them. Don't hide behind it, get involved and witness the way it changes the world firsthand. There you have it, our Top 10 Internet Marketing Blunders. Sure there are lots more, but these costly mistakes are common and they provide a good starting point. If you steer clear of these Top 10 Blunders, you are absolutely guaranteed to be more successful on the Internet.
============================================
Editor's Note: IMC have now developed the Internet Marketing Challenge which combines some of the Internet's best marketers and writers with a variety of online tools to help your web site succeed. Details here
5. Submitting to Search Engines Three weeks ago I changed every page (about 70) at my web site to make them more suitable for the search engines. That meant putting in improved titles, descriptions and keywords - I'll provide details of these changes in the next edition. For now here is a record of the submission process itself. The top 8 engines (or directories) are reckoned to be
AltaVista -------- http://www.altavista.com
With the exception of Yahoo submission consists chiefly of entering your main Url, or in some cases all required Urls, in the 'addUrl' option of the engine. So I will be treating Yahoo as a special case at a later time. My findings for the others were as follows Alta Vista The instruction said - submit just your main Url and you will be indexed in a day or two. It actually took about 6 or 7 days but only my main url was indexed. What about the rest of my site ?
Alta Vista told me I asked what was meant by "some time" but the inconclusive reply was that "the time it takes varies". However I asked whether I was allowed to submit the remaining pages 'manually' and, if so, was there a limit. I was told that I was free to submit the remaining pages individually. 3 or 4 days later my whole site had been registered.
Infoseek With Infoseek you do have to submit each Url that you want to have indexed. But when I visited they said that the online submission option was not available over the weekend and that I could submit them as a batch by Email.
A confirmation message stated that After two weeks however they had still not been registered. I was told that "The normal processing time for a URL to get indexed is 24 to 48 hours, but presently we have a tremendous backlog of URLs to add to our index, so the turn around time can take up to one week or two" So I then decided to enter them all online. A day or two later they were registered. I am not sure however if these were the original Email submissions from 2 weeks before or the online ones from a few days before so I cannot comment on the speed of registration.
Other Engines The other engines have not yet registered my site after 3 weeks. Excite and WebCrawler, which appear to be similar, stated that registration would complete after 2 weeks, so I will be chasing them up. Hotbot gave a much longer period - 60 days Lycos and Northern Light did not indicate how long it would take. -------------------- In the next issue I'll be showing you how I ranked number 1 out of 617930 pages at Alta Vista - but wasn't satisfied !
For a detailed description of how to submit to search engines look no further than the book "Traffic Building" which Ken Evoy supplies as a free bonus with his famous book "Make Your Site Sell". If you have any plans to build an online business I would urge you to splash out a mere $17 for this outstanding work. There's a special review on it in the issue of June 27th which you can read here. Visit here - you can even download two key chapters for free. While you're at the site, don't forget to enter the MYSS! Sweepstakes. Ken is offering a monthly first prize of $500 and a second prize of one year of free Web hosting.
6. Next Issue SuperTips Ezine will be with you again on September 29th. If you have any suggestions to improve this newsletter so that we can make it a great resource for all our readers please drop me a line.
Thanks, To SUBSCRIBE to the SuperTips Ezine:Click here ARCHIVES: Click here Copyright (C) 1999 by Harvey Segal, SuperTips
http://www.supertips.com/ezine/e19.htm
|