There are a lot of talking heads on the internet. Many of whom don't know what the f..... they're talking about. Remember I showed you in the body content of jimisound.com and on Twitter.com that it's not survival of the strongest or the fittest, it's those of us who adapt to change the best who survive. They're the one's who prevail on the Internet. There is outdated information on some blogs you find on the internet. Some blogs still showing up in search results have actually been abandoned for years. And though the information on them may be relevant to your query, check to see if what you're getting from it is dated. In technology sometimes following outdated instructions can foul up your progress for some time to come, unless you're good at fixing tech issues. 

But on the other hand there are thousands more high profile competitors using whatever means they have to excel beyond you to get the booty, the money. I rarely think in terms of the competition concerning my Internet business, I'm busy thinking of how best to say what I want to tell you. Even though there is plenty of money to go around, and more coming as new users join the internet, you must think in terms of the competition. Competition is healthy for you. It makes you better. But if you don't stay conscious of it, it can make you obsolete. The internet can be seen as a worldwide swap meet. But there will always be stern competition for your website, web business and blogs. So keep up with what's going on in your genre. You have the tools to compete and with the right information you can be a winner. Your most popular bloggers have been at it a long time, so if you're new don't stress and don't panic. There's always room for more. It just takes time to adapt to the environment. Some adapt quickly, almost instantly to the environment, others not so much. But tenacity is my middle name and I'm here to tell you it works. Don't give up.  

You need strategies to rank high in your sites subject matter 

You need strategies to rank high in your sites subject matter and your keyword strategy can result in a lot more unique visitors to your site depending on how popular your site's subject matter is. Unfortunately the Google Keyword Tool isn't really much help because it only renders variations of words you put in it. So it's not helping you rank, and really, it's not helping you compete either. But the more times bots and spiders end up at your sites doorstep following links the more popular they will consider your site to be and the more importance they will attach to your site. They combine those two components (keywords & backlinks) to establish their own habitual reliance on your site to provide searchers with that particular information. Having great content does you no good if nobody's coming over to read it. Adding fresh content does you no good if you think Google gives you points for that. That particular SEO strategy is old hat and no longer makes a difference. 

Directories can improve your search engine rankings because they provide a trusted link to your site and you'll get some people to come and read that great content you been writing. (Update: Google  no longer includes directory listings as credit to their SERP for your site.) Knowledgeable accurate information presented at the readability level of your targeted audience is what makes your content good. That's the objective of good content and what gets you ahead of the competition in your genre, a low bounce rate on your page(s). Your content has to make sense, be true and not dated. If you're writing SEO blogs you have to go back and update your blogs when search technology is modified. Evergreen blogs are best whenever possible, and I'd suggest writing to that end. Unfortunately that's not always possible with technology blogs. Residual or passive income does not come easy, there is a great deal of work behind it. But once you've established it, you'll feel like it was well worth the effort. Patience and hard work is a must with an online business and I'm living proof of that. I've learned that you have to keep trying. That means you have to keep learning. If you keep working at it and learning you'll find the knowledge and with that you'll eventually reach the goal of your Internet business. 

Some other ways of getting much needed traffic to your site

So, today I'm going to cover some other ways of getting traffic and backlinks to your site. In this post I'm going to give you information about directories. This particular method is good for getting more backlinks to your site with the increase in traffic. Chances are your competition is not using this method, but even more important is that its traffic from rarely used sources. I have found this traffic to be steady, consistent, reliable and profitable. People coming from these sources are more likely to be within your group of personas and therefore apt to be interested in your website's subject matter and it's products. How do keywords effect directory listings? Is my sites title enough or do I need to put keywords into the directory?  


The most important thing you can do is to be sure your site's description has your <h1> and your <h2> keywords embedded in it. If you can't get them all in there, don't worry about it just do the best job you can. "H" stands for "header", or title. Your keywords should be arranged in an order of priority with <h1> highest and lessor important keywords digressing in their order of importance using the <h2> through <h6> tags. I wouldn't go beyond <h6>. You don't need that many keywords. Bots will ignore any keywords after <h6>.  By the way for those of you who are not familiar with headers, it's easy. Your site is written in HTML, CSS and PHP in most cases, the HTML will begin with the title of your site, this is also the heading. You can have up to 6 headings by an order of priority beginning with h1. Just put keywords in <h2> through <h6> in the order of their importance on your website. Bots will use the order from h1 going forward. So again, be sure the site description you use when joining a directory has your primary keywords in it and if you can squeeze some lesser important keywords into it, do it. 

The benefits of using directories
Update Feb 2020: Hey guys this post is outdated. Google no longer pays attention to directories 

Alright, let's get into the benefits of using directories in your search and website traffic strategies. What is the benefit of traffic from directories? Directories serve a community and thus receive search queries like search engines do from within the community. Some charge while others don't. Obviously the ones that charging are more popular and have a higher ranking than some others, they’re charging for the special benefits you get from their community traffic and their status on the net. That being that when you join them you are creating a automatic backlink. Bots will place a value on your directory links just like they do any other backlink. A new directory is not going to have the juice an older one would. AOL or DMOZ is probably the highest ranking directory on the net. 


Try and check to see if your site is already listed in a directory before you list it. Query the directory using your sites domain name. That'll save you time and any possible penalties. Some directories only allow one listing per website. Here’s where you’d go to get started on DMOZ, they’ll have you check to see that you’re not already listed and they’ll  set you up to check and see if you’re showing on four of the five major search engines along with a couple more directories. When you check to see if your sites listed if it's listed the page where it's listed will come up. If nothing comes up that’s your indicator to list your site. After 4 to 6 weeks if you’ve categorize your site correctly in the listing and if your sites title and category is reasonably active you’ll start to see an increase in traffic at your website. 


Some directories will list you by a web based email address. You’ll have to use the email associated with your website for instance: I put for email address: gene@jimisound.com. If you find that a directory is not taking your listing check to see if you've used the right email address. Sometimes it's easier, faster to use directory maximizer.  You pay a small fee but it's worth it if time is a concern. Here's a coupon to get you started: 10% Discount on General Directory Submission orders over $10 - af-10-off (Valid till 31st Dec, 2015).  I’ll give you a link to the top 10 free directories and the top 10 article directories. If you manage to list with all of them you’ll have 20 new dofollow backlinks. I listed this website with half of them (that's all I had time for that day) and that was about month ago and just in the past week my unique visits double and continue to grow. 


You write good articles for those article directories and you'll get traffic to your site and more backlinks to your site from that article traffic; when you write your article in the same niche as your website is in. Great for increasing conversions at your site. Do I need to renew my listing with directories?  For the most part no. You don't need to renew your listing with them, however I check to see if my listing is still there and active. I have found that sometimes my listing has disappeared. Do they notify me if I need to resubmit? No, they do not. Each directory is an independent entity with its own rules, staff of one or more and perceived backlink value. None that I know of have ever notified me my listing was about to expire. 


Who searches the net from directories/why? Directories all have an intended service for a given community. For example some directories are "business directories" and businesses are all that's listed there. So searchers who belong to that particular directory community will go there for their business inquires. How do I get in these directories, how do I choose which to join, how long before they add my site? Well if your site is about basket ball I'd google for "basketball" directories. To get in you must fill out their short application. They'll visit your site to see if it is compatible with their community and if so, they'll add you. It takes anywhere from two weeks to six months to get listed. 


If you get listed with http://www.exactseek.com/add.html your listing is free or you can pay them to have your site moved up to top 10 ranking. You can get a free custom made search engine to put on your site for your readers to search your site if you need one right here: http://www.exactseek.com/search-feed.html. If you're a young site just getting started, it'll take a while for you to start getting search engine traffic, but with directories you can start getting traffic within a couple of months in most cases. 
      
Thanks for visiting. Be sure you checkout the rest of the site for more information and learning about business, personal growth for business and life's more important values. See you soon! 

Cheers,
Gene
  

1:10PM PST | October 10, 2015 | Updated November 7, 2015

Developing a business strategy is simply identifying and planning out the coming years goals and operational procedures. I usually get some idea of what the coming business year will look like some time in July for an Internet business and January for a traditional business. I look at the budget, check sales, the cost of doing business (total operating expenses), competitive landscape, political environment and the economy. There are other factors I take into consideration depending on the projections I need to make however, for simplicity's sake I'd like to stay close to the basics. Based on established net profit margins and actual net profit of the current year I assess what my business is capable of at its current growth rate. For an Internet business I determine where I want to be in the fourth quarter of the next year. Then review new tools and technologies on the horizon for the coming year. I do that about mid-way into the current business year. 

This gives me time to learn new technologies coming into my trade the coming year. 

Developing an effective "online" business strategy is no easier for the internet business than for a traditional business. Now that internet purveyors are learning how to generate interest and sales, there is more incentive for starting an internet business. The light's been turned on, we can see the potential now. But starting an internet business is a different creative process than developing an "ongoing" business. You have some sense of where you are, where as starting a new business you're planning without a history to draw upon. It's easier to identify areas that need attention in an established business than it is with a startup business. Established businesses have identified revenue generating processes, created their marketing budgets, and sat about developing a strategy for achieving their goals for 2016 based on operating results of 2015. New businesses don't have a reference point, their strategies are experimental. 

I prefer to show you how to create strategies and things other internet business operators will most likely be doing in 2016. It's better to teach you how to develop a business strategy than to give you a business strategy. The first thing you want to do is decide on where you want your business to be by the end of the last operating quarter of the year. Developing strategies is about moving your business forward from point A to point B. A strategy can be focussed on the business as a whole or focussed solely on one aspect of the the business. For example, you could decide the main focus of next year will be on establishing a mailing list and start shifting business activities towards that goal. Then, a plan to spend the first quarter of the following year meeting a mailing list sales goal of X number of dollars or pounds depending you where you are. 

You created a business plan to open your business? Creating a business strategy is simply updating those plans for another year based on changes in the environment of your type of business. 

Useful business environmental information can come from anywhere and everywhere. Or, from someone you'd least expect. Something sparks an idea that sets off your creative thinking and away you go. You'll automatically start looking for data that might help you engage the challenges of the coming year.   

So you have your business plan, now make sure you hit your benchmarks or goals. You have to strategize for that.   

Each business is different and unique unto itself. I will however say this before going forward, "automation is coming". I'm looking at automating more here at Jimisound.com. Actually I've already started. Notice the Apple Music banner on the homepage, that's automated. There is also some automation on the Gigs page and of course our social media management is automated. Automation insures accuracy or saves time by eliminating a need for hands on. What makes the Internet the Internet is its capacity for automation. However there are things that cannot or should not be automated. I would not automate marketing, that would be suicidal in any strategy. If your business served computers I'd say automate the marketing too, but it doesn't, it serves humans. You can automate repetition. Business is a part of our socialization process and has to adapt to social and cultural changes. So be carefully when automating, only automate what makes sense to automate. 

As a business consultant I often encountered two businesses on the same block providing the same products and services. To survive they'd use distinctly different processes for how they meet their sales and customer satisfaction goals. In those cases everything is predicated entirely on the competition. So, you have to do that yourself, and to accomplish that you need to know how to develop a strategy. Not just any strategy, but one that is tailored to your specific businesses needs, goals and operating procedures. An effective strategy in that environment of course has to be based in individualized personal services and display technique.  

Keeping your business growing is the reason for strategizing. A continual monitoring of, and adjustment to your business process and design will help you meet challenges before they can become challenges. Learning what works is what keeps your business growing and profitable. To do that make plans for going from point A to point B and from B to C, etc. Look at your planning with what other successful businesses like yours have done or do. Your approach should be based on the challenges of 2015, and a main goal that would support the accomplishment of secondary goals, which might be something like increasing sales overall by 20% in 2016.

A main goal will generally break up into several smaller goals. So A, B, and C equals three, and three equals 'one', one is the expected end result of yours and your team's hard work for that goal year.  

Reaching the goal of a 20% increase in sales would probably support your efforts to meet a secondary goal of 5% increase in net profits for the year. There are 12 months in the year so you have four months you can apply to each of the three parts of the goal, which from here on out we'll call the primary or ultimate goal.

Primary goal strategies are what breathe life into your business.

But there is no one strategy fits all kind of thing. You can and will at times see two businesses using similar tools or systems, but how and why they're using them can differ tremendously. For example "programmatic" has been around for several years, but word is that this procedure will dominate online business/marketing in 2016.

Will it be for you and your business, maybe, maybe not? Some are saying it will eventually take over current advertising models created by Google in 2002 by Adwords, a static search advertising system driven by keyword algorithm display media. For those of you who don’t know what programmatic is; it is an automated, bid, purchase, sell "real time" marketing/advertising system created in 1996 by two guys Kevin O'Connor & Dwight Merriman.

They sold it in 2005 to a couple of investment companies. Google bought it in 2008 for just over three billion dollars; it is called "Double Click". The Google marketing tools used by mainstream marketers and businesses is generic compared to Programmatic Marketing and advertising media. It is commonly used by major brands such as Microsoft, Apple, Nike, IBM and so on, but is seeping into mainstream marketing and is expected by experts to become the primary marketing system used by everyone as early as 2017.

I guess we'll have to wait and see about that. There is only one aspect of programmatic I would use in 2016: The Supply-side platform A supply-side platform (SSP) interfaces on the publisher's side to advertising networks and exchanges, which in turn interface to demand-side platforms (DSP) on the advertiser side. It is advanced technology and will not be cheap to acquire. This is why I doubt that literally everybody will be using it in 2016. 

But as an easy process to establish and a possible sales generating component in a marketing strategy for a blogger let's say; whose current ad attributions are nil, this may be something new, reliable, powerful and effective for getting this part of your strategy accomplished. It may be that their business is ready for this automated move. You’d probably be attracted to programmatic advertising to accomplish that goal. You'd have four months to get to know it, run some test and get it set up and running efficiently.

Now let’s say your new operations strategy needs to build up your customer base and establish reliable regular traffic. So you bone up on how to build a customer base online. You decide an effective email campaign program could do the job. Alright then, so you would set about modifying your existing email campaign program or setting up a program if you don't already have one.  You have four months to learn, test and set up an effective email campaign program. So you read my blog and learn that using iContact can greatly improve your chances of completing that part of your 2016 goal. 

Your strategy muscle is getting a workout, your 2016 strategy is coming together nicely, and you are happy with the plan.

Only two more things you need to do for completing your strategy, and goal. By the way, your strategy and operating budget can be done both at the same time. When I was creating budgets at North Island I had six million dollars in sales. I could basically meet any budget I made, within reason of course. I don't have that luxury here, and you probably don't either. So you want to develop a budget you can meet based on your "project operating results". You're projecting a 20% sales increase. So you'd develop a budget based on total project sales for 2016. You would then monitor your processes and operating results and if need be, you'd adjust your budget mid year. 

Okay, back to your strategy. You want to increase search traffic. You want to improve upon your content and get it more in line with your keywords while at the same time keeping the customer on the site longer to increase conversion opportunities.

You believe that lowering your bounce rate will help to generate more sales and that with the right content you can do that.  Now you're at part three of your strategy to increase sales and net profit. You want to draw new customers to your site and get them to stay longer, increasing your chances of generating more traffic and creating a more productive sales environment on your website.

To support this strategy you decide to hire a good freelance blogger and put a content optimization app in place. You choose Drupal for this. You have four months to find a content writer, agree on content, learn Drupal, do some testing and establish the program. Now you have developed your strategy for your particular kind of business, website, or blog for 2016. 

You should prioritize these three components based on time. For instance, I'd put blogging and content optimization at the first part of the year, I do that first thing to give myself a longer period of time to produce that 20% sales increase. 

Alright so now you have your strategy, your plan of implementation and only one other thing left to do to make your strategy work; you need to monitor sales and expenses every day throughout 2016. You've decided you'll use Google analytics for that and you set a periodic schedule to follow in checking it. Well good for you, you're done! That’s all there is to it. Plan, develop your plan, implement it, and monitor results. You now have your business strategy and operating plan in effect for 2016. Stay on it, stay determined and you'll achieve it. 




 B2B loss leaders, counter gifts etc.

8:55 PM PST | September 20, 2015 | Marketing post | Monetizing Your Website

HOW TO MONETIZE YOUR WEBSITE
WEB MARKETING TECHNOLOGY POST DESIGNED TO HELP YOU MAXIMIZE YOUR REVENUE 

Hello again my friends.  Today let's talk about the best ways to monetize your blog or website. Here's what we will be looking at:

• Local small business opportunities to pay you for space on your blog
• Local small business paying you per click from your blog to their web site
• Affiliate marketing products direct for a company 
  
• Affiliate marketing through an advertizing network
  
• Advertising programs i.e., Google Adsense
  
• Do reviews for companies right on your own blog site for pay
  
• Sell merchandise
  
• Provide a blogging service from your home
  
• Get into a blogging network that pays freelancers to blog
  
• Blog for various websites that pay to have their blogs down
  
• Become a consultant
  
• Write a book
• Write an E book
• Become a public speaker
  
• Sell other peoples product on your blog for a cut
  

Let's discuss each of the monetization bullet points above after we talk a little about what bloggers could do to be a little more helpful . You want to monetize your blog to make money and that's a great idea. But I don't want you to make the same mistake I did monetizing my own websites. Once your site is up and running the first thing that comes to mind is: How to make money with it? Things come to mind like Adsense and Adwords, the Google stuff. And that' good, the Google brand is trusted and we take on a sense of confidence and trust, but not so fast. There techniques and methods to making money with Adsense. 

All it takes is to be sure all the critical points are covered and detailed for you. Granted that does require a little more work. I read a blog the other day where one blogger was putting his friend, another blogger up on a pedestal and showing his site's stats and all the money he's making from his websites with Adsense. It was an interview, so the other blogger was there confirming everything that was being said about his success. 

But not once did they give a link to any of his successful websites, not once did they use their pointer on just one of his website to show his ad placement strategy, his content to ad ratio strategy, text over image strategy or what he blogs about. Never did they talk about which type of ad was making him the most money. That's information critical to your success. Without that you're still left feeling around in the dark for your actual increase in sales. 

Bottom line here is that bits and pieces of the information you need for monetizing your particular business is probably out there but you'll need to do a lot of research and a lot reading to get at it and to assemble it. Then you'll need to do a lot of testing. 

I'm not a Meany, critical yes, but I'm not a meany, and I'm certainly not asking anybody to do anything they don't want to do. I just wanted to touch base with reality for a minute. Because make no mistake about it, you're going to need all the help you can get for your website or blog. Each website, each blog, each blogger and each blog subject will have its own separate and distinct roadmap for success, it's own secret formula to successful monetization. This means you'll need a lot of ideas for a lot of testing. 

A nice thing about Adsense is websites with low levels of traffic can test for which ad types to use and where to place them based on current running results and start making money right away.  

It won't be much money money but at least you get to see some revenue starting to come in for your work. But once your traffic increases, if your adsense income doesn't, it's back to the lab for you. If you only want to make money from ads on your site, which is what most people prefer, you have to develop and project your own personable voice, your own authoritative knowledge, your own distinct and unique character and your readers need to get to know you. 

Your click through rates will definitely increase then. Once that's established continue to experiment with monetizing methods. And be creative about it. Don't forget I teach creativity here too. What better place to practice it than on monetizing your own website. 

In essence you're developing the system/process your website wins traffic with, and generates revenue by. It's really just a lot of little processes that come together to make up the sum total of the whole process that works for that particular website to generate income.  

First and foremost no website is going to make money without traffic. 

The key to all of the above listed monetization efforts is traffic to your website, and unusual amounts of it day in and day out every week, month and year.

Without high levels of traffic you can only make money by knowing exactly what personas frequent your site and how to create sales funnels. Sales funnels tend to get more click throughs. I'm just being honest with you about traffic. I've given you some traffic generating ideas and training for key word strategies inprevious blogs, that will put you on track to generate organic traffic to your site. So you're cool for now, but you'll need to keep your focus on generating traffic your entire online career. Keep posting blogs and work your backlinks strategy. We'll be discussing other techniques for generating traffic very soon, including backlink strategies. I think I may have touched on backlink strategies in previous blogs, but not in detail like we will in coming weeks. Okay, let's talk about some site monetization strategies in detail, shall we:

 Local small business opportunities to pay you for space

You can charge local businesses to advertise on your site. You just allocate a spot to them they like and charge them by the click (You simply create hyperlink to their business from that spot and track the activity on it. You can do that using Google analytics for free). Or give them a flat rate monthly fee for the spot. I prefer the latter, it's simple. You can have varying cost depending on the location of the spaces you're renting out. For example space above the fold on your homepage should probably be the most expensive rental space on your site. When your site starts to get thousands of unique visitors a day, you can go door to door in the business districts in your city and sell ad space. You can sell ad space to other internet business by putting the words "ad space available" somewhere on your site where it will be seen.

Affiliate marketing products direct from a company

This is a good one. You go online and find a product that fits what you blog about and the personas that frequent your site if you go to that company and ask them if they have an affiliate program. If they are not and online business, they be willing to consider developing a program based on your offer, you never know. I've heard of businesses hungry for an internet presence doing this. You may be the first person to give them the idea and they may like it. Always talk to the decision maker about these things. When you go to those lengths however, you have to deliver. Be honest with yourself, can your blog deliver clicks and conversions for this company's product? Your blog traffic has to be pretty high. And the personas there need to match their product. It's a great way to grow your business through other businesses. Word of mouth recommendations are good at bringing you more business. So impress these companies so they'll recommend your website to their sister companies. 

Affiliate marketing through an advertising network

Another one of my favs. These networks sign merchants up and then sign publishers up to market their product. The ad network manages both merchant and affiliate marketer. The benefit to this is that you don't have to go out and find merchants with products for you to sell; the ad network gathers them all into one place for you to choose which products you want to sell. They provide all the links, all the display ads; everything is there for you to go directly to selling the merchant's products and making money. Another thing about this is that you can go through merchants until you find a product that sells on your blog. These companies make affiliate marketing easy but you still have to find the product that will sell on your particular kind of website. There are lots of ad networks around. You can choose one to work with or several all at the same time, it's up to you. You'll be using the same ad strategies with them as would with Adsense and I'll be give your those in just few minutes down the page. 

Advertising programs

Google's Adsense is an advertising program. There are lots of other advertising programs out there for you to look at. These programs control who advertises on your site. Similar to Adwords, a merchant bids for a spot on your site they like, Adsense then charges them for every click your site sponsors and shares the proceeds with you. Now, since we're back on the subject of Adsense lets talk about the best ways to use it. I will assume you already know how to get setup over at Google with Adsense. Just follow the instructions after you get there. Okay for those already using Adsense or just beginning, here are some tips: 

• when using banners always choose: text & image
  
• Adsense works best above the fold on a page using the 728x90 image/text ad
  
• I've never seen 728x90 banners work well anywhere except above the folds of your pages
  
• Use the 300x250 rectangle (box shaped) ads above the fold upper right side of pages. These have been know to work on certain sites below the fold, test and see for your site. 
  
• Skyscraper ads don't work. I've never seen one work and I've tried everything
  
• Unit link text ads work great when you modify their color to blend in with your site's text color and background colors. Try to make them inconspicuous. They can be used below the fold.  

Text link units can be placed above content (or page section, large paragraph etc. and the algorithm will read the content and display text ads relevant to that particular content on the site. Likewise if you place one above the fold it will deliver texts ads that reflect what you Website is about as a whole. Your brand in other words. Depending on the subject of your site will determine if it works. Because sometimes there are no ads or bids on that particular subject. For example: If your site is about cutting the heads off of dolls the link unit will choose an advertising bid closest to that subject. So it might put an ad up that's selling dolls, but none about cutting the heads off of them. That's an art you'd be flying solo with. 

Overall Adsense is easy to use, which is one reason it's very popular. But if I may, I'd strongly suggest firing up a friends computer and going on your site to see what kind of ads are being delivered to your site. Remember, you can't tell what kind of ads it's showing people who come to your site because they're tailored to each IP address based on its search history. With one exception: Link Text Units as I mention they tend to reflect your sites content regardless of a visitors search interests. Adsense is in essence a computerized sales person who follows people around on the internet showing them things they've already expressed an interest in. You follow these tips, you'll make money with adsense. 

Do reviews for company's right on your own blog site for pay

This one can be a bit tricky. There are sites that help you find clients for this. You'll need to be a crafty blogger to do this without hurting your own original blog traffic.

Sell merchandise

Here you're simply selling from your own online store right off of your blog. There are companies that specialize in helping you to get set up to do this: CafePress , Printfection and  Zazzle. I make money at will doing this using my Amazon store. I spend a lot of time working out of cafe's and you get to know people in cafes. When I learn of something someone need or is looking into I tell them I have it. They, knowing me tend to go ahead and get it from my Store. I sell cell phones and lots of other electronics that way. Much of my internet income has come from sending people to my sites off the streets. It's really just a kind of word of mouth recommendation, with the difference being I'm doing the recommending. I've gotten marketing clients the same way. Word of mouth. 

Provide a blogging service from your home

Are you a confident writer? If so this may be for you.  You simply work from home by writing the blogs for websites that hire bloggers to write their blogs. Here's some free blogger templates.  Here's a list of sites you can work for.

Get into a blogging network that pays freelancers to blog

A blogging network is a group of bloggers all working under one branded company. You're either paid a flat fee per post or by word count. I recommend flat fee. It keeps things simple and puts you on top when writing about subjects that don't need to be long. 

Blog for various websites that pay to have their blogs down

Talk to people you know or people you don't know who have websites and offer to write their blogs for them. Charge them a simple fair flat rate so as not to make it complicated and to make it easier for them to take you up on your offer.

Work as a consultant

Are you really good at what your blog is about? Are you an expert on the subject of your blogs? If so you can offer consulting services to other people or businesses that could use your expertise. You could offer consulting services related to developing and writing a successful blog as well.

Write a book or an EBook

Do you have large following from your blog? If so you could write a book and self publish. Amazon is great for that. You could sell it there as well. It also brings more credibility to your blogs for some. 

Be a public speaker

Offer your services as a public speaker at events related to your area of expertise. If you've mastered your trade you can join forums and take advantages of opportunities to be the speaker or guest speaker at events of your trade. I can recommend a book that I'm reading titled: "Speak Up For Your Business" by Michelle Mazur, Ph.D.  Copyright 2014. This book will help you get your speaking skills up to par. 

Sell other peoples product on your blog for a cut

This certainly speaks for itself doesn't it? Talk to merchants who sell at swap meets, or anyone who has products and offer to help them sell it on your site. Take nice flattering photos of the product, post it online with a link to your paypal account for them to order and pay at the same time. Paypal provides that complete service. I use the same procedure to sell T-shirts. Something I started and didn't finish yet. You can quietly speak with your local shipper, tell them you'll be shipping a lot of product and would like a discount on your shipping. This way you can even do give-a-ways as loss leaders on occasion. They notify you by email when someone has paid for a product they bought on your site. You simple check and verify the sale then ship the item off or hand deliver it when the person making the order is local. Then you split the proceeds with the product's owner.

Thanks guys, hope this helps
Gene

Updated | September 19, 2015 | Marketing post | Content Optimization

CREATE YOUR CONTENT AND MAXIMIZE ITS POTENTIAL 
WEB MARKETING TECHNOLOGY POST DESIGNED TO HELP YOU MAXIMIZE YOUR PAGE CONTENT AND WEBSITE CONVERSIONS 

Hello again. In this segment we'll discuss content optimization. Sometimes called content marketing or inbound marketing. So lets get to it. Too give you a completed and rounded understanding of content development and inbound/outbound marketing strategies, it will require several different blog installments. I promise to cover the entire spectrum. We'll discuss the basics, touch on a few of the advanced practices, and I'll introduce you to a couple of free SEO tools in this one. 

You've probably heard the expression: "Content Is King" on the Internet right? Well here is another way to view that. In television the most popular shows get the lions share of attention, and therefore they have the potential to make the most sales for any given television advertisers money. Advertisers are willing to pay more for a spot on the most popular shows. And that's because those are the shows with the most audience per half hour, hour, two hours whichever the case may be. Why do these shows draw the biggest audiences? It's their content. They have the content that is most appealing to an audience during that particular broadcast season. These shows are generally very well written, highly entertaining, educational, news worthy or funny. But most importantly their content strikes a familiar chord with their audience. Websites are media and have the same responsibility. 

Bloggers and content will always be the driving force behind the Internet. Like a good sitcom writer, screen writer or story teller is to television. Bloggers provide that little something you were seeking, or otherwise not able to find. It could be information, explanation, education, training or entertainment. Bloggers are in my opinion the informants of the Internet. Sometimes it's a matter of semantics or context that has kept your understanding of a subject unclear to you. Then one day you come across a blog that puts it all into perspective for you. Bloggers are a friend in a strange place who uses weblogs to index information that show you how  to do something otherwise not known or understood before. Readability score is a very important measure that bloggers use. Your readability test score should match your intended audience spectrum. For example: Lets say you're writing about toy safety. Though toys are used by children you don't want to write in language and context that a seven year old might read, you want to write in the 11th-12th grade level so young mothers and fathers age 18- and up will relate to. But, bloggers and other website writers/operators must optimization their content to satisfy search engines as much as they do to help readers. 

Search engines have rules for content. If it is to be recognized categorized and marketed by them you must comply with those rules. Otherwise how are going to get your content seen by the largest audience possible. Social networks are great for getting traffic to your site but you need search engines too. The problem is: there are a lot of rules, and most of them are multi-dimensional, meaning there are various angles to the rule. Interpretations can vary sometimes. This can be down right harmful to you. It's what you don't know that hurts you. Remember that from the hope page here? So you need to gather as much information about a rule as you can, once you've learned of the rule. Here is an example of what I mean by that: 

Take for instance the rule against keyword stuffing your content so it ranks for those keywords. Now we all know that you have to be sure your content has your key words in it for crawlers to understand what your content is about so they can index it. Lets say you're writing about a cake making company you own called "The Best cakes In Town". And in your company website's content you write a 1500 word article about your cakes. And you use the "long tail keyword" (key phrase): The best cakes in town. And you really want to rank for that key phrase because not only is it a likely search phrase that will be used by a potential customer during a search query, but it's also the Title of your site and the name of your business. This makes it multi purposeful, it confirms the search has arrived in the place they were searching to be. #1 Increased traffic, #2 it confirms your ideal visitor #3 it converts clicks into sales on your site i.e., online orders and deliveries etc.

So in your content you find a way to use that phrase 200 times to see to it search spiders are influenced enough to rank you for that phrase. But by the ratio of words to key phrase (called a long-tail keyword) you've stuffed your key words and the spiders will penalize your post and rank you lower for your efforts. So not only will you fail to rank for that key phrase, but you may be penalized and down ranked for trying to manipulate the bots. The lesson here is to just make sure you're being honest as you write what you want your readers to know about your product, your brand and its values. The bots will know and respond appropriately. Their algorithms are advanced technology and l lot more so than you might think. They analyze your search term to get at the underlying meaning of your search in order pull the right pages from their index for you to read. Spiders/bots are powerful, complex algorithms that in all honesty; think. They're not self aware but they can do the math and you could find your site in trouble if you break the rules. Also, you stand a better chance of attracting back links to your article when its honest, authentic with no hidden agenda, and knowledgeable about cakes. Here's a tool to help you control the wording in your content. 

Don't use your keywords anymore than what is reasonably necessary in order to make a point during the course of writing the article. The bots will know where you're headed with it and they'll respectfully rank your article based on your sites link quality and authority within their internet index.  

First and foremost your content must be understandable. What you say and how you say it is important. If you are writing about the extinction of white rhino but the title reads "How to prepare a chicken dinner" there is an obvious conflict between content and title. Maybe you're eluding to them being killed because their meat tastes like chicken. Unfortunately designing your articles content like this is not search engine friendly because your head tags will conflict and confuse both search and reader. Not only that but the world knows rhinos are being killed for their horns, not their meat. 

Your title is just as important as your content. Giving your article, blog or story an appropriate title is the top most important part of optimizing your content. 

People decide what they are going to read based on titles and page descriptions in search. Here's a browser extension tool to help you with that. Works for Google Chrome users, take a look. 

The title tells them what the content is about. The title tells search engines in which category to place the content. When there's a conflict bots will decide for you and that never works in your favor because though your content will be made available it will be very hard to find. The accuracy of the content and its readability attracts back links from sites addressing relative subjects and information. So it all begins and ends with the title of your content and it's meta page description if you want people who are searching for the information your content provides to click over to your site. Identifying your audience is critical to your success. Google Trends can help you with that. 

Authoritative content is generally placed higher in rankings and gains more traffic than content that is not pointed and accurate and authoritative. When content is optimized for search engines and search result rankings it will convert to inbound marketing easier.  

Content is created for a purpose but if it is not optimized for search it gets no distribution and it cannot reach or be found by its intended audience. It is most important that your content is seen by it's INTENDED audience. So you must drive searchers to your site via search engines and drive your visitors interest by the sites content, which then drives your visitors to click your sites ads other product marketing techniques that are on the site relative to its subject matter. You can use apps like  

If it is not seen by it's intended audience it cannot attract back links and therefore cannot rank for its key words DUE TO A LACK OF TRAFFIC. Really in all honesty, Google places ranking and traffic generation for a website almost entirely on it's back links. They are what the spiders follow and how your site will rank from within a search engines index. Another problem with content that is not optimized for search is conversions; you'll have trouble identifying your personas. Sites that attract the wrong personas for their product will have trouble making sales. I will not delve into the science of personas in this particular post. I will most certainly address it in a future post though. Here's a little sample: You sell skis on your website, but you write about motorcycles. You will attract the wrong personas to your site if it's skis you sell. We'll get into the science of persona soon. 

Content should be aligned with your title, be organized, be valid, useful, informative and authoritative if your site is educational in nature.  

References should be used when appropriate to qualify what's being said when what's being said is on a educational platform or directed at professionals as an absolute. Smart content writers know their audience like the back of their hand and can develop content that fits them like a hand in glove. Of course this requires experience but once you learn who your audience is and how to write to them, you can increase traffic, back links and sales. These content writers know who they are addressing. They know what their audience wants to know, and how to present it to them. Analytic's are super important decision making tools, but nothing replaces knowing your subject, its audience and how they comprehend and digest the information that drives them forward to wanting more and to grow. 

The best copywriters and bloggers know in what context or nomenclature to write. In other words how to speak in the same language their audience speaks. Knowing your audience and how to address them is half the battle in all writing and in blogging. Lets stay here for a bit and discuss readers. Readers are your customers if I may put it that way. They are consuming your product, which is data or information in this case. So for all intent and purchase you could say they are consumers and therefore customers. Customers are the reason businesses are in business. For this reason I believe writers and bloggers need to learn about customer service values and techniques. If you've ever worked in a customer service position you'll know what I mean and how to apply it to your online business. 

Now, briefly lets talk about "Out Linking"  from your content and your readers. Out linking is when you create a URL link from your content to a place away from your website. A hyperlink. When your content is distinctive, educational or even unique, out linking is probably not much of a threat to your bounce rate. Bounce is a time on site measure which helps you understand your connection with your readers. A high bounce rate means your readers came to your site but your content or site features failed them in some way and they left. Excessive out inking sends your reader away from your site for too many times and too and too long by feeding into their surf impulse. You should limit the amount of out links on your site or within your content. Also, excessive out linking degrades the rest of your out links which can downgrade your sites search ranking. 

Search engines will give your site out links a value. But that value is divided up among all your out links combined. So in other words you are rewarded by search engines for out-linking. If you have done the research on what you write about, if it is informative and presented well; out linking is not much of a threat because your readers will always return to finish what they started on your website because the information is either easily digestible or the information is not available somewhere else. Referencing and expanding information is useful and usually important to readers who gobble up information like a Pac Man. But you must be careful not to persuade them that there is more and better information on another site than yours. Read the entire information string on the site you're sending them too to be sure it is only addressing and adding to that particular isolated point within your content. 

Readers appreciate a reference and won't leave your site permanently just because you introduce them to confirming information that supports what you're saying about the subject located somewhere else. In general they appreciate that you want them to have more information about what they're interested in. But in many cases it's quite the contrary. You send them away, they get caught up in the other site, they may not come back to yours. So be sure you only out link (hyper link) to a site that is only addressing what you are saying in the same paragraph of the hyperlink. I don't want my readers dating other sites, lol. Oh by the way, an out link from your site becomes a back link for the site you linked to. Some sites check their back links, know who's linking to them, and will link back to you giving you a useful and do follow back link in return. This doesn't mean for you to go and disavow your no follow back links. Check with Google before you disavow any of your back links. 

Some readers are very internet savvy and will save your sight in a new window or bookmark it so they don't lose it when they follow a link you gave them to another site. I try to have all my hyperlinks open in a new window. That way my site is still within their line of site as they explore the other site I linked them away to. These readers are more apt to return to my site immediately afterwards or bookmark it if they've run out of time. They'll come back because of your honest efforts to be thorough about helping them get the right information for their needs. They know you're just putting their best interest first. In all honesty they came to you hoping to find complete and rounded information. So don't under estimate your reader. They are pretty smart cookies. They'll want to get back to your site finish up what they started there if you information is compelling and informative.   

I like to put my readers first in everything I do online of offline, and in every decision I make about what I write. I do that in designing content, the honesty and completeness of the contents information and in my SEO efforts regarding the content among other things. From my perspective they come to me hoping I have the answers they need. And if I can expand on the information referencing another site I will do that for their benefit. People recognize good work when they see it. They'll always come back to you if you do good work in what you provide for them. 

Search engines rely on key words to determine where your content fits in on the Internet. The predominant words and phrases  called long tail key words tell the search engine what your content is mostly about. Upon registration with a search engine your website is placed at the end of the line in search rankings for the subject of the site. As it is called upon by searchers, search engines compare that frequency with other content of the same category on other sites and your content begins to climb in rank. That process speeds up if other sites are back linking to you. By doing so they are validating your content. 

Seasoned copywriters, bloggers and other web publishers develop a knack for their niche and learn how to present it to search engines as they're writing it, which saves time editing for optimization later. 

Okay, so lets have a look at some of the more technical aspects search engines will look for in the basic processes required for achieving maximum content page optimization. Beginning with page title: 

• Make sure your title includes your primary or most important keywords and does not exceed 70 characters (that's characters not words)
• Meta Description of your page should be as accurate as you can get it within 160 characters
• You have the option of 6 title tags which are placed before the heading. You may or may not need all 6. if you use more than one, place the keywords in order of priority with the most important tag at number one i.e., <h1>Georges Ice Cream Blog</h1>  <h2>the story of Georges ice cream</h2> etc
• Search engines don't understand images. "Image Alt Attributes" describe an image in readable text so spiders/crawlers can understand what the image is about  
  
• Try to put more text than html coding on a given page by a ratio of 25 - 70% more. 
• Check your content for broken links periodically. Repair any broken links 
• Make sure your page is mobile friendly. Limit Flash, Javascript and CSS above the fold of your page and make sure you have a mobile redirect in place
• Be sure the text on the page is legible 
• Create a custom 404 error page for your page/content
• Place the most important content of a page above the fold line of the page
• See that your content page loads fast. Page load time can defeat all your page optimization efforts.
• Define the language of your content in its html code (not crucial but does help internationally)
• Make sure you have structured data markup for "Rich Snippets" in place
• Make sure no email is set to "plain text". Scammers and spammers look for ways to breach the security and privacy of email. Your email trust setting should be HTML so they don't come in that way. Anti Virus programs sometimes change your email to plain text during updating. Re-install it.
• Web analytics lets you measure visitor activities on a page. Make sure you have at least one in place.

Depending on your content management system (CMS) you can search engine optimize your site well into the 80 and 90% optimized range. Word Press sites are great for this. When a page is optimized at 80% and above you have a better chance of attracting back links. Your site/content is being seen by more people and therefore giving you a higher chance of being noticed by other bloggers and websites that may want to link their site with yours. This does not mean that a site will not gain back links just because it is not optimized at the 80% range. On the contrary, you can out rank a Word Press or other popular systems with other site systems when your content is good stuff. You will still attract back links, but sometimes at a slower pace. Drag & Drop sites are not as easy to optimize as Word Press or some other CMS's. *Note: Word Press has D & D sites available too. They are not quite as SEO friendly, in which case you'll need a back link building strategy. What ever you do, don't buy back links. Organic back links only. Buying them will get your site into trouble with Google. Your site could be black listed. 

The most popular sites on the web have back links into the millions. But don't be discouraged, those sites have either been around for many years or are managed by a marketing team focused on back link strategies and campaigning for them. And even then, it still takes years to get a million back links. More important than numbers is the quality of back link. More on that in coming posts. Also, just a reminder to look for more content marketing post coming that will address other key aspects of content management optimization and Inbound Marketing strategies. So there you have it. If you follow the instructions in this post your content and website will begin to clime in search ranking immediately. 

Alright, that about does it for this segment. See you at the next SEO blog coming the week of 9/21/2015 
Best regards, 
Gene
 

August 21, 2015 | Marketing post | Increasing Page Load Speed

DON'T SETTLE FOR A SLOW LOADING WEBSITE
WEB MARKETING TECHNOLOGY POST DESIGNED TO HELP YOU WITH CONVERSIONS

Can you imagine spending thousands of dollars and thousands of hours optimizing your website to increase visitors only to have them leave before ever actually seeing your site? Page load speed is very important to your SEO efforts. But it's not a tough egg to crack. Many times I've seen websites and blogs that are big money makers loading so slow that I just have to bounce sooner than I wanted to. I can't name them, I don't think that would be nice. 

These are sites and blog sites, mostly blog sites that earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each month. Some of them I dare say, are indeed generating one even two million dollars a month. Maybe some bloggers have reached the pentacle of their dreams and now rest o on their laurels, I don't know. But I do know is that slow loading websites throw my web experience off and I don't care if the site is popular, if it takes too long to load I'm gone. And I think that's just human nature.  

You find lots of advice about what to do about a slow loading website. The reason I'm writing about this is because most of us don't want to risk loosing a visitor, particularly due to an unresponsive website. I'm writing about it from the perspective of "CONVERSIONS" We're in the business of building up the traffic to our websites, not discouraging or losing traffic and visitors. Not if we can do something about it. 

I might also add that Google does penalize websites that are slow loading. The general rule is your site should load within five seconds, ten at the most. You can test your site's loading speed at Google's site speed tester. It will test your sites loading speed and give you some insights about what's wrong or what could be happening. 

Navigation time between pages increases with a slow loading website. And the more visitors you have on a site at any given time will require it to use more bandwidth which in turn can slow the site down even more. Have you ever been scooping up exciting information on a website and had to navigate to another page to continue with the information only to fine that the page wouldn't load? You end up having to bounce back to the page you were already on, because that next page just wouldn't load? You try it again but it's still slow maybe even slower now. 

Many of your site visitors will leave your site if they experience long load times. It's like they put you on hold all of sudden, like throwing off your data gathering rhythm or something. Your site should take only a few seconds to load the next page. Well today lets talk about that and how to fix it. I'm going to share a couple of need to know things first, not much just a couple of things. Then straight on to some solutions. Lets start with site size. 

Of course if you've created a huge website filled with text, pictures, videos, gadgets, moving banners and other things, you'll end up with a slow loading website no matter what else you do to speed it up. Sites are like anything else, you can over do them. Word Press sites for example are data hungry energy munching websites and it doesn't take much to design them right into a crashing mode. So you should check to see if there are plugins available that might help you with slow loading and crashing. But keep plugins to a minimum, they too in excess will slow your page load time. Reducing the number re-directs on your site will help to decrease load time. Also steer clear of "FLASH", its pretty much out now, but still around in places. 

Another quick tip I can give you is sometimes visitors can be running programs or have programs running in the background on their computer that slow website loading too. One visitor told me my site loads real slow. But her system was old and overrun with programs, actually all websites load slow on her computer. One example is their virus protection. I use Norton and McAfee, but Norton at times will confiscate my computer ignoring any command that interferes with whatever it's doing at that moment. If a visitor isn't aware of this about their Norton sometimes your site might just have to bear the blame.  

Norton is heavy, and a hungry selfish program. That shouldn't stop anyone from using it though, it's just good to know. So how do we fix a slow loading website built within the average website size of  320Kb? 

Another thing some operators should have to lookout for are videos and images. It is easy to exceed your page load time with just videos and JavaScript. So lookout for that too. My first suggestion is to cut back on javascript (per page) on the site. I think the magic number is 6, no more than. Do the same with CSS, particularly above the fold on a page. The fold is the top portion of a page generally preceding the body or content, about the top quarter of the page. You can compress your images to make them load faster,here"s a tool and there are other tools around the net you can use. Also "Sprites" or CSS image grouping can be used for sites highly dependent upon images.  

A CSS file requests can significantly slow a browser down because it has to go fetch, load, parse and execute all the CSS files in the  <head> before it can begin to render your website. And don't let here be JavaScript and CSS in the <head>. You can get around this and speed your site's loading time up anyway by identifying your critical CSS files found in the <Head> of the page and keeping them in the head while taking any other CSS code out and placing it inline with your HTML code after the opening <body> tag. You're basically just moving the non critical CSS files down to the body in the background of the page. keep them between the style tags but within or "inline" with the HTML code found after the open >body> tag. Otherwise your browser has to download all those CSS references and your site visitor has to sit and wait while it does that. Your CSS extraction code would look something like this. 
 
<!doctype html> 
<head> 
 <style> /* inlined critical CSS */ </style> 
 <script> loadCSS('non-critical.css'); </script> 
</head>
 <body> ...body goes here 
</body> 
</html>

Since this blog is not about coding I'll stop there on the re-coding aspect of your page. I just wanted you to know about that alternative and give you a little peak at what it might look like. The process is a lot more entailing than this brief mention of it. Unless you know HTML and CSS I suggest you call your webmaster about the CSS extraction and relocation processes. If your webmaster is not familiar with the process have him/her visit this site for the complete steps. Again let me warn you not to experiment with the coding layout of your website or any of it's pages unless you really know what you're doing. 

Also keep in mind you don't have to keep the same layout/design on slow loading pages. You can simply take some things out or off the page to speed your page load time up. Look for pages with several video players on a single page. Try reducing the number of players on a slow loading page. If your site is on shared hosting you can put in a work ticket and have your host take a look at it too. It won't cost you any thing. Sometimes a hosting server that doesn't use caching can be the cause of a slow loading website. Of course if your site is on a dedicated server or on VPS hosting you'll need to fix problems of that nature through your webmaster or do it yourself. If your site slows down just after something new was added to it then you already know what's causing it to load slowly. So  #1. Don't lose sleep over your site loading too slow, it can be fixed relatively quick and easy.  #2. Take it seriously.  #3. Find out what's causing it.  #4. Do something about it. 

I hope you're having a great day.  See you at the next SEO How-To blog
Best Regards,
Gene  

 

July 29 2015| Marketing post | Conversion Optimization

START CONVERTING CLICKS INTO SALES!
WEB MARKETING TECHNOLOGY POST DESIGNED TO HELP YOU WITH YOUR PPC, BANNER AND AND WEBSITE CONVERSIONS

Hello everyone, welcome. Lets start with a little about my SEO experience, before tackling the PPC & SEM conversion process. I have spent the past five years hands on SEO in the field and in college. I have real world experience from start to finish. From acquiring clients to performing the work for them. I have taken websites to the top of search results or hovered them mid page in search results. Some businesses prefer not to be at the top of first page in search results because smart searchers know being at the very top doesn't mean the answer to your question is there. They scan titles and page descriptions before clicking. We've found that on average the best results appear about mid-page as per search surveys of 2014.  

I will discuss the topic of search engine optimization and conversions often during these blogs, they are two of the hottest topics of today as many internet entrepreneurs are maturing to this stage of their careers. 

In the busy world of the online business person there are a lot of things grabbing at your attention. You're steady taking in tons of information on various subjects and projects. SEO requires you to wear a lot of hats. You don't get much time for researching peripheral responsibilities either.  

Responsibilities like learning more marketing sciences, and other details that directly effect the operating results of website projects you're responsible for optimizing will require all your time. While you're changing from hat to hat, link building, social media managing, search channel marketing, public relations, psychologist, researcher, and tech, people's desires, needs, likes and habits are steady evolving. 

What worked yesterday may not work today so you must evolve too. 

Welcome to SEO, also known as search engine optimization. There are various marketing channels and SEO applies to all of them. Today's channel discussion will be on PPC or pay per click campaigns. SEM or search engine marketing is a different channel but so closely related to PPC the same principles will apply to both.

With PPC you are paying a search engine to identify the appropriate sites suitable and relative in some way to your product and to broker deals with those website owners to advertise your product and spread word of your brand. Google brokers with websites using Adsense. Each time a visitor to one of these sites clicks on your ad banner you are charged according to your agreement (cost per click) with the search engine.  SEM is advertising right on the search result pages. You are charged when someone engaged in an internet search lands on a page relative to your ad. Based on your bid your add will appear on that same page so the internet searcher can see it. If they are interested and click on your ad, you are charged what you bid. Someone with a similar product as yours who made a higher bid for the same key words as you did will have their ad shown there instead of yours. 

This is one of a series of technology blogs I have planned and I will  be covering all aspects of digital or internet marketing as the weeks and months go by. Being a member of a vast network of Internet bloggers, Web marketers, digital marketing companies, Internet businesses, techs, and consultants I've amassed a respectable master mind. I am surrounded by experts of my trades and I am excited about bringing you new ideas, techniques and technologies as I learn them or as they are made known to me from within my networks.  And I am excited about using my reach to bring you useful, relative and authoritative information. So lets get started!

Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of many digital marketing channels retailers, and businesses build brand and create conversions by. Though building the brand kind of comes automatic for businesses and merchants due to sub channels that yield exposure i.e. affiliate marketers; turning this exposure into clients and sales is yet another level of internet marketing science to be learned. It is indeed a science and it is absolutely critical to your success. Why, because this science turns clicks into money. I can hear someone mumbling "yu gotta get the clicks first". True that, and we'll get to how to do that in a different segment. 

You're in business to make money and to do that you must make sales. Technologies have been emerging in recent years that deliver tools marketers can use to make their job easier and faster, but the tool is an aid only, nothing will replace marketing know how, because trends rule. We know a little more today about turning clicks into money than we did yesterday. If we are unconscious does life exist, is it real? If a tree falls in the woods but no one saw or heard it, did it fall, does it matter? Internet science is similar. 

If someone visits your site but clicked on nothing were they there, are they important, do you care sense they clicked on nothing? Well if enough trees fall, whether we saw or heard doesn't matter if one day the forest is gone. And the same applies to the internet. If someone visits your site, they were there, really there, just not physically. What are you going to do about it. What can you do about it? Your going to optimize your site. You're going to make your site appealing based on what you know about humans and human nature. 

Your going to motivate them, even though you're not there, your going to motivate them to click further into your site. And when you've led them to where you want them to be and see, you're going to have what it is you want them to see prepared to be materialized into their reality for them. For them to follow that they have to want it and for you to do that, you have know what they wanted and have it visualized for them. Then you have make it extremely easy for them to get it in their hands. The internet is virtual. It resides in space and occupies nothing. It's not a physical place you can stand on or in. You can't see touch or feel anything or anyone there in real time. So you have to make it look and feel real.  

Companies are emerging everyday with a better mouse trap. And professional marketers are constantly being provided with these new tools. But its important to know that now days you have to choose tools by channels, otherwise you may choose a tool that doesn't quite cover the full spectrum of the metric you're focused on. In other words, internet marketers have to work the magic I just described and more tools are coming each day that make it easier for them to do that. The Internet is a vast wonderland so we need computerized technologies to navigate it. Marketing tools give us the ability to make better guesses and more success at meeting our goals. 

Here's one example: if you have chair how do you bring some who is interested in buying your chair to your chair. It'd be easy just to scream chair but who's gonna hear you?So you'll need to describe what you you have with key words. But how many key words are there and how many minds think the same? Not many. So now what? I could write down: sit, rest, four legs, seat, chair but my minds gonna wonder when enough is enough and it can't really know that. But not a key word generator it knows. And a keyword generator is what? It's a computer. 

So what I'm telling you is use the tools available to you to complete the job. And that's never been more important than now in a society that depends on computers for everything. 

Quality of a tool, another very important aspect when choosing a marketing tool pretty much means how reliable is it in helping you make KEY decisions? As business person the biggest part of your job is making decisions. The more you know about a dilemma the better you are equipped to deal with it. Marketing tools equip you to deal with marketing dilemmas that occur on the internet. As a researcher I've learned a few tricks along the way. What the right questions are to ask is one of them. 

I've learned you can't know what the right questions to ask yourself are until you have considerable experience. And as you grow, new questions have to be asked which spawn more growth. 

All businesses struggle with conversion management; because like technology what people like and want changes. There's no sitting around waiting for things to happen in this business, you have to always be in flux. If something is not happening, you need get started making it happen. 

And, there's no guessing, you have to develop what works for you and your type of business in real time online by keeping track of what's working and what doesn't anymore. And that has a lot to do with your competition. But now there are some incredibly functional tools for the job. 

So first you have to know what you need before you can choose a tool that will be instrumental in helping you achieve your desired operating results buy informing you so you can make better decisions. Many useful tools are free, but of course getting into the best one's will require you pay a little something. 

So how do you get an ROI with PPC when most PPC campaigns end up costing more money than the campaigns make?  Here are a few things you can do to increase your chances of turning a pay per click campaign into a series of conversions. No. 1, be patient with the process. No 2. test, test, test. Nothing worth having comes quickly or easily. test you banners and note the designs that bring about clicks. 

You must run tests and document what works and what doesn't. No 3. Increase your knowledge of PPC marketing. I'll give you a bit of that in the next few sentences. No 4. keep track of what's going on, or not going on, so if you get confused you have some idea of what's going on. Any little thing you do or change makes a big difference either way, profit or loss in PPC marketing. So keep track. Use an outline or a spread sheet like Excel, segment you campaigns, watch them daily or weekly and note progress or a lack of progress. Don't change what is making progress, but experiment with what is not making progress. 

You cannot approach PPC guessing about any part of it. In fact this applies to all facets of virtual marketing. Each change you make should be carefully calculated, and target as close as possible best landing page design and wording to achieve desired results. You want cumulative positive results. Conversion snowballing in other words. You want an avalanche. Price, product, position, relevancy and content. 

Begin with your banner design, use a design known to be good at prompting clicks. How can you find this out? Easy, just closely examine the ones you yourself have clicked. What was it about that particular banner that got your click? Leave no details unnoticed. Determine what elements of that banner got you to click and design the same elements into your own campaign banners. 

PPC or Pay Per Click advertising is placement of your ad on a hosting site such as jimisound.com. The host provides a place for traffic to the ad, kind of like a store located on a busy blvd; better than one on the back of building facing an alley. People learn about your business through ad hosting sites. Many sites won't allow our ads on their site, so use what you can get. Just make sure that every minute of your marketing efforts are spent well and you'll get there, it may take a little time and few mistakes but you'll eventually get there.  

In return when somebody clicks the ad, the company that created the ad (you) pays the search engine that negotiated the placement of the ad to the host site. The search engine then pays the ad hosting site i.e. jimisound.com a percentage of the click yield. Maybe you bid or pay five cents for each click. The search engine takes three cents and pays the ad host two cents. Once more, not all clicks and payments are equal. And keyword values vary. The stronger the key word the more it will cost you to get and use it. 

Sites with high volumes of traffic generate more clicks but not necessarily more conversions. Again, getting clicks and getting conversions are two very different sciences.  

It all depends on traffic volume, and the know how in the company for producing the tools i.e. banners, independent product links, or html coupons and other techniques that prompt interest in the company's products. The company's marketing team, and other departments must think as one mind. That maximizes ROI. Individual departmental cooperation (thinking as one mind), the hosting sites knowledge of the products psycho-graphic make up relative to it genre, and associated display methods, or ad placement technique, and everybody involved can profit, including the customer by the matching product with interested buyers concept.  

That having been said:The key to ROI for the company that owns the ad is its landing page. 

That is the page that opens up when someone clicks the ad. It is the page's design and the designers knowledge of human nature; how that particular product should be profiled, and their understanding of the psychologies in the purchasing decision process concerning that type of product that can make the difference from a click to a conversion. 

There are also other selling sciences i.e. where on the page to place the product based on the natural direction of eye movement relevant to page content, color coordination, pop-up coordination (timing), demographic targeting, and key text relevant to product or company. Display features, and well you get the idea. There's a lot to successful Internet marketing, and it's a team effort.  

PPC and SEM are highly dependent upon keywords. They determine where and when an ad should be displayed. Googles Keyword Planner found in Webmaster Tools is probably the best free tool out there in general, although I've had the pleasure of using some pretty powerful proprietary PPC dashboards that really worked for me.  Adwords is Google's PPC campaign initiation site and there's a nice functional dashboard that you can use to manage your ad campaigns. Try it.   

Most major search engines and many private sites provide keyword planners, word generators, and phrase generators. Googles Adwords program is probably the most widely used PPC program tool. Once more, the key to PPC campaigns is keeping track of what's going on within them. 

When you start tracking from the beginning and analyse what trends and keywords are producing the best results you will be able to improve the campaign as required, but if you don't you'll just leak money like a water from a bucket with holes in it. 

Combining your PPC campaign with SEO and organic search results is probably that best way to get the most relevant people traffic to your product and of course conversions. It has a greater call to action. Your business is amplified on the organic search results pages. Use ad extensions right after your primary ad line such: as "sign up and get an immediate $50 off coupon to use anywhere on the site". 

Last but not least is your ad budget, only increase it when you know the increase has already been paid for buy measurable increases in a previous sales period, quarter etc. If you can compare with same time last year, that's even better. 

If you want to advance your progress 'Semrush' remembers what you fail to remember and knows what you don't. With it you can take charge of your SEM/PPC search engine marketing. Its a good SEO tool that puts you in charge of your SEM/SEO work while helping you stay one step ahead of your competition. PPC is SEM or "search engine marketing. 

More and more marketers are looking for tools that simplify tedious but essentially important root work, giving them a reliable outline to follow while providing competitive data which gives them an edge. 

Successful eCommerce operations use this type of  tool as well as other businesses, bloggers, and so do I. They save me labor while at the same time aid me in getting desired results faster. They cut down on what otherwise would be tedious time consuming routines and I love that. I just don't have time to get caught up in it like that. The time just goes by too quickly. I need to diagnose repair and move on. Was this helpful? Did provide any answers for you?  

Alright that does it for this segment. Remember a firm commitment to landing page optimization, good SEO and you should start raking in some cash from happy customers with your PPC & SEM programs.
See you at the next SEO blog coming the week of 8/15/2015 
Best regards, 
Gene

more about conversions.