3 Ways to Start Building Your Opt-In List
The light bulb has finally started flashing in your head and you realize that you need an opt-in list to make money on the Internet. You’ve read hundreds of articles on the subject and sought expert advice. You’ve head all the stories of people creating a profitable business with opt-in lists.
With that light bulb still flashing away you finally decide to do something about it – start a list of your own. But how do you get started? And better yet, how do you build a list big enough to generate an income from?
It can be pretty scary when you’re first starting out. Do you need a web site? An opt-in form? Should you use an autoresponder service or a script on your own site? How should you format the messages? How many should you send a week? The list goes on and on.
The answers to a lot of these questions will greatly depend on how experienced you are on the Internet. If you have no knowledge of CGI or PHP, then hosting your own script may not be an option. If you don’t know HTML or don’t have direct access to your on-line files, then editing your pages to insert the code for an opt-in form will not be possible.
These, unfortunately, are just some of the obstacles that you will need to overcome if you want to give this ‘Internet Thing’ a go. Having your own web site is almost a necessity. Without one, you would only be able to promote other people’s products (as they would have their own web sites for you to send traffic to through your affiliate links).
Below are three easy ways that you can use to start building your opt-in list:
Offer a free report that contains links back to your web site or even includes an opt-in form on one of the main pages. You can also make it necessary for your visitors to fill out your opt-in form before they can access the report.
Join some of the Fire Sales and Giveaways that other marketers are running (sometimes called Joint Ventures). Add your gift to the site and when visitors want to download your gift make them fill out your opt-in form first.
Exchange ads with other opt-in list owners. You run an ad for them and they run an ad for you. Granted you probably won’t be able to join up with someone who has a huge list (as they won’t be getting much exposure in return) but if you can find other lists that are of a similar size to yours, you should be in with a chance.
Building a profitable opt-in list won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. Keep at it and be creative. Try things outside of the box; put a twist on an old idea. And most of all – be persistent.
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.
Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leadersexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.
Good Design Practices
Your website is where your business resides — it’s like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practice good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.
Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.
Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.
Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.
Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.
Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.
Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.
Yahoo Web Hosting offers 5 Amazing Features
Yahoo web hosting comes with 5 great features and you can get all the features that Yahoo offers and more for a great introductory price. Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting offers a free domain name, free setup and great beginning rates at a reduced monthly cost. Considering Yahoo Web Hosting as your web hosting provider is a smart move.
Plentiful features that Yahoo Web Hosting has to offer include excellent site management and a domain name that comes for free. If you are looking for a great place for a web hosting provider with many other features, then Yahoo Web Hosting has much to offer you. The following are 5 great features of yahoo web hosting…
1. Yahoo Site Solutions – The new Yahoo Site Solutions Web Site Building Tool offer an easy and improved way to design your web site. You can use it to create and easily design a great website that will help you enhance your business. The Site Solutions tool offers simplicity in web site design.
2. Pricing – $11.95 per month and a three-month contract.
3. Free Yahoo Domain Name – Obtain a free domain for $1.99 for the first year and get free setup for any Yahoo Web Hosting Plan. Registering a Yahoo domain name is $1.99 for the first year and then $9.95 for subsequent years.
4. Unlimited Web Hosting – Yahoo’s new and improved web hosting plan whcih combines all 3 plans into 1 and comes with Unlimited Disk Space, Data Transfer and Email Storage. No other web hosting provider offers so much!
5. Customer Support – 24 Hours a Day – No matter what time of the day or night it may be, Yahoo will be there to help you with your questions. Yahoo Web Hosting provides the benefit of 24/7 free customer support with a They toll free telephone number. Email support is also available around the clock as well.
Create a yahoo web site for yourself and see the excellent benefits and features that you can have for a great price. The Site solutions tool alone will amaze you with how easy it is to build a web site. These 5 features are a great beginning on why anyone should choose a Yahoo Web Hosting Plan.
5 Quick Newsletter Tips
You know you need to stay in touch with the people on your list, but you’re in two minds about starting a newsletter. Will it take up too much of your time? What if you run out of things to say? Can you maintain quality over a period of time? How long should your newsletter be?
Your first aim should be to offer useful or interesting information. (If you don’t do that, you won’t have subscribers for long!) Your second aim should be to keep your newsletter short. Remember that people are inundated with email these days – they actually prefer something they can skim quickly and then put to use.
Spend some time thinking about the best format. You need a model that will be easy to reproduce week after week, month after month. Any one of the following five ideas will make your job easier. Choose one and keep it as a regular format, or combine several of them (for example, you could use the “Tip of the Week” format for weeks 1-3 each month, and offer a checklist every fourth newsletter).
—————– 1. Tip of the Week —————– This one speaks for itself. You can easily brainstorm enough content for six months of weekly newsletters (you need to come up with 24 tips, which you will present weekly). Anyone with a degree of expertise on a given topic should be able to do this without any trouble. A handy way to organize this is to (a) explain the problem then (b) offer the tip which will solve it. Length? Anything from 150 – 500 words.
———– 2. Top Ten ———– This is a tried and true format, and easy to create. Example: if you are an expert on finance, you could offer advice on the Top Ten Ideas for Getting Out of Debt, or the Top Ten Ways to Save Money on Car Expenses, or the Top Ten Tips to Pay Off Your Mortgage in Ten Years. Make sure you keep a tight rein on word length – just offer a couple of sentences for each tip, not half a page.
—————– 3. Three Ways to… —————– Sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge to come up with ten ways to do things, whereas just three ideas is a cinch. You can also explore three ideas in more detail. Alternatively, you can alternate the “Top Ten” format with “Three Ways to…” the two of them will work together nicely.
—————– 4. Before and After —————– Who doesn’t like makeovers? This works in a similar way to ‘Tip of the Week’ in that you show the problem and then provide a solution, but the ‘before and after’ approach lends itself better to case studies. This is a good way to interact with your clients – invite them to send in details of whatever needs a makeover: an article, a website page, their wardrobe etc, then present your solutions. Alternatively, you can ask for ‘before and after’ examples from readers who have managed to do this themselves, then showcase it for the rest of your customers. (If you don’t use HTML for your newsletters, you can add a link to a website page for the accompanying photos.) This works particularly well if you have a health and fitness related newsletter – your readers will be motivated by seeing the changes others have made through diet, exercise and weight training.
———— 5. Checklists ———— When you’re learning to do something new, there’s nothing like a checklist to make sure you don’t leave out a crucial step. Checklists can save a lot of time, and your readers will be delighted to get one. Write a brief introductory paragraph, present the checklist, and then follow it with a few final tips. You can either base your entire newsletter on the checklist format, or present one at regular intervals as a change from the standard article format.
Final tip: set up an address at yahoo or gmail just for newsletters. Spend a few hours checking out sites related to your own interests, and sign up for any free newsletters. Every so often, check your new email account and browse, looking specifically to see what approach other editors use for layout and articles. When you see a format you like, print it out and put it in an ‘ideas’ folder. Unsubscribe from any that are constantly filled with junk or endless sales pitches.
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leadersexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.
5 Easy Steps for Writing an Article that Gets Top Results
You may not know it, but you have an easy way to bring targeted traffic to your site. You can write articles for publication in ezines that will continue to bring you traffic to your site long after they appear online. Just think of this as an unstoppable traffic generator for your online business.
You do not have to be a Hemingway to be a great article writer. There are some basic rules to follow though. Here are 5 steps to writing a good article that will attract attention and result in more traffic and sales for your business.
ACTION STEP 1 – Create A Hot Title
You must grab the attention of the reader first. People scan everything before they commit to reading it. Let them know what the article is about in a way that makes them want to dig into it for more information. Two classic ways to make a good title are to use a “How to” format, such as, “How To Get A Base Hit 7 Times Out Of Ten”, and the “Tips” format, which might go something like this: “5 Super Easy Tips To Relieve Stress”.
ACTION STEP 2 – Get Your Reader’s Attention With An Interesting Opening Sentence
The next most important part of writing your article is to grab the reader with a powerful first sentence. This will keep them interested and wanting more information. Two of the best ways to hook your reader is to ask a question or to state a fact.
A question should make the reader curious to find out the answer by finishing the article. If you state a fact, you must make it the basis for the rest of your article.
ACTION STEP 3 – Discuss The Main Points In The Body Of The Article
Here is where you provide the content of your article, and the solutions to the problem that you are solving for the reader. Your purpose here is to educate and inform. Address each problem and follow it with the solution. Or if you are giving tips to your reader, you can list each tip in the order that best solves their problem.
ACTION STEP 4 – Summary and Ask Your Reader To Take Action
Always include a brief summary for maximum results. Then tell your reader why it is important for them to take action now. Give a benefit or two as an incentive for them to respond now. This can be a link to your website or newsletter. After all, this was the primary purpose of your article.
ACTION STEP 5 – Include A Powerful Resource Box After Your Article
You absolutely need to make a resource box promoting your website, eBook, eCourse or affiliate program. The resource box gives the reader another way to get more information. This will spur the traffic to your promotion as more people read your article. Create a resource box that tells who you are and what you are offering to the reader. This should take no more than 3-6 lines of text.
These 5 steps will ensure that you have an article that people will want to read and then visit your website. Just use this easy 5-step format and simply fill in the details with your own information. Then distribute your articles to ezine and newsletter publishers in your business niche. The result will be more targeted traffic and increased visibility for your business.
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leadersexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.
Use SEO Blogging Techniques To Boost Your Website’s Ranking
It’s a no-win situation – you must be ranked high in search engine results to attract more web visitors and to get ranked high, you need to have a lot of web traffic. Sadly, the days of rich content alone attracting lots of web visitors are long gone.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques are what makes a website appear among the first pages of a search engine. The ways to do this vary from paid and legitimate to almost illegal.
Some of these optimisation methods include writing keyword-rich web content, articl submission and link exchanging. These were the most practiced SEO techniques until some wise soul came up with the idea that blogging can be a valuable SEO tool. It has become a phenomena since then.
A weblog, better known as a blog, are created for both personal and business purposes. Your blog gives you the freedom to talk about anything you want and it’s quite an enjoyable task that’s worth all the effort. Blog attract loads of traffic and you can have your blog either within ot external to your website.
You decide what the content on your blog should be, and you can put as many links as you like in you blog posts. If it is within your site, you can boost your site’s position in searches by incorporating links. If it is not in your site, you have a priceless way of getting regular one way links.
Exchanged links can boost your ranking, but one way links are definitely more valuable than exchanged links. This is a wonderful way of making sure that you have a lot of valuable one way links.
The content is another key. If your blog is within your site, this is an excellent way of making sure that you have keyword rich content. Of course, since blogs are much more informal and reads more like a chat than articles, incorporating key words can be a daunting task, but once you manage it, your ranking will definitely improve.
The best part about blogs is that unlike articles, people can comment on them. You will know what people have to say to you, and there is nothing like constructive criticism to improve your site. This is also an excellent way of building contacts, and, therefore, prospective customers for your business, whatever that might be.
5 Common Mistakes Affiliates Make
Avoiding some of the common mistakes made by affiliate marketers should quickly and easily improve your chances of making affiliate sales. Here are five of the top mistakes:
Common Mistake #1: Not researching the affiliate program before your start promoting it – it really is amazing just how many affiliates grab the first affiliate program that comes along or signup simply because it has a high commission rate or promote it because every other marketer is also promoting it. If the program does not complement the overall theme of your site, you may find it difficult to convince your subscribers to purchase the product if it does not have anything to do with the area you are targeting.
Common Mistake #2: Not using your signature file correctly – many affiliates will add a signature file to all of their out-going email messages and message board posts that is totally inappropriate. Twenty lines of text full of affiliate links, is not considered a signature file – it’s usually considered ’spam.’ Try keeping your signature file under five lines with an attention grabbing or intriguing first line.
Common Mistake #3: Not writing your own ad copy – there’s nothing worse than seeing the same advert all over the Net or in an email message from ten different marketers. How much perceived value will your message have when it arrives and the reader is seeing it for the tenth time? Take the time to tweak the ad to suit your target area and readership before sending it out. Personalize it; make the ad your own.
Common Mistake #4: Not paying for your own domain name and hosting account – yuck, nobody wants to visit a site that looks like www.somefreeserver.com/thisavenue/overhere/mysite.html with a contact email address of bobsnetbiz@somefreeemail.com. It’s very unprofessional and suggests to your subscribers that you haven’t made any money on-line because you don’t know what you’re doing and are too stingy to spend any money on setting up your business properly. $8.95 a year for a domain name at GoDaddy.com and around $4 per month for a small hosting account won’t break the bank; it may just help to add to the bank in the long run.
Common Mistake #5: Not capturing your leads before you send them through to the affiliate product site – if you can actually get someone to click on one of your affiliate links and they leave the product site without purchasing, what have you gained? Nothing! Nothing that is, except the expense and/or time to get that one click-through in the first place. Set up a squeeze page so you can capture your lead’s email address before you send them onto the product site. That way, if they don’t buy, you can follow up with them later and try again (and again and again and again). Priceless!
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leadersexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.
Basic website security measures
With more people setting up their own home based, online business every day, the amount of vulnerable web sites is increasing at an alarming pace. And the blame for this lies mostly within the Internet Marketing community itself. Why? Using the powerful techniques of persuasion at their disposal, many so-called Internet Marketing Gurus lure people into setting up their own online business by providing them with ready-made, plug and play web sites that contain basic security flaws. Do not forget that most of these sites are made by marketers, not programmers! And the consequences for you can be disastrous…
One of the most common vulnerabilities – and paradoxically the most easily cured – is to ensure that each directory on your site contains an index file. By default, web browsers, when directed to a directory look first of all for a file named index. This could be followed by a variety of extensions such as .html, .htm, .shtml or .php to name the most common ones.
If the browser does not encounter the index file, it will display the entire directory in the form of a clickable navigation list, disclosing all its contents for the world to see, thus leaving your precious and often restricted content wide open to any type of malicious action.
To prevent this from happening you should make sure that you have at least one or a combination of the 4 following basic security measures in place:
Security measure 1: Ensure that each directory contains an index file by renaming the default page you want to be shown to index. Then make sure that all the internal links to that page are updated as well!
Security measure 2: Create an empty index file. When arriving at the directory, a blank page will be shown, but you will no longer be displaying a directory listing. You could also provide a message and a clickable link on that page to take your visitors to the correct page.
Security measure 3: Create an index file that contains a redirection to the page you want to be shown. There are many free and easily implemented code snippets available that will allow you to do so and your visitors will not even notice that they are being redirected.
Security measure 4: If you have downloadable content that people have to pay for, do not keep it it the same directory as the sales page, but keep it in a separate, secure directory and set up your payment processor to that directory. This way you ensure that only people who have paid for the content have access to it.
When selling products online as an Internet Marketer or otherwise, you are more prone to people trying to get to your restricted content so as to avoid having to pay for it. These 4 basic security measures should help you drastically reduce the risk of unlawful access to your site and save you from a lot of headaches and worries.
Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.
Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leadersexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.
Interested to buy domain names as investment
If you have always been curious as to what it takes to make money from the Internet, especially through buying domain names an using them as investments, you will be pleased to know that this is one of the most exciting and fun ways to generate profits from the Internet today.
Due to the fact that each website on the Internet is differentiated and identified by its domain name, the domain market has now become and extremely large and important playing field in Internet commerce today. This is largely because all business done on the Internet is normally linked back to a particular domain name. And if you have a domain name that is well selected, individuals visiting your site will deem it reliable and credible.
Today, a steadily growing number of businesses are beginning to take to the Internet to grow and develop their current area of business. This is another reason why investing in domain names will be an excellent choice, as all companies will definitely need to buy domain name that matches their company name. It is unallowable for a company to own a domain name that is different from its name, which is why you should immediately move into buying a domain name for yourself, especially if you run your own business.
Another method you can employ to generate a steady stream of income from domain names, is to buy as many as you can. Once you begin to build up your collection of domain names, you will begin to realize that the chance of you reselling a domain name at a significant profit will increase. Even though owning a large number of domain names might cost much more than simply owning several, you should note that as more and more companies are registering and looking for a domain name online, over a period of time, you will begin to have companies approaching you and requesting to buy domain name you own.
Apart from owning as many domain names as possible, you should also note that certain domain names could be extremely valuable, and generate a constant flow of income for you. Some domain names are searched for on the Internet at increasing rates, which is why certain domain names can be turned into profit generating opportunities. All you need to do is build a website with that particularly popular domain name, and you will be able to generate profits from the many means available.
Other people are also running different affiliate programs on the Internet, and making significant profits from doing so. However, a key ingredient is to ensure that you have a domain name that gives consumers confidence in your website.
Lastly, you should also try to buy domain names that are highly in demand, as they can often bring you a lot of resale value. Once you are able to get your hands on domain names that are very popular on the Internet, you should be able to make considerable profits from reselling them.
With these tips, you should be able to generate a constant flow of profit and income from domain names. All you need is a little ingenuity, to give you the edge over others in this field, giving you profits simply by dealing in domain names.
Site Rubix – Website Creation So Easy A Caveman Can Do It!
Spectacular! In a word, that’s how I describe the new website designer software developed by Kyle and Carson over at Wealthy Affiliate. I want to keep this thing for myself- but then even I’M not that selfish- YET! Are you aware that Wealthy Affiliate has been consistently graduating affiliate marketing genius’ at a steady pace for a couple of years now? There’s just so much good relevant information, 24/7 support, and cutting edge tools that I just don’t have the real estate to do it justice here in this article.
One of the barriers for affiliate marketers on the internet today is website design and creating a professional clean looking website. Designing a professional, clean-looking, and well-organized website can make or break an affiliate marketer when it comes to trying to market products online. Speak to someone who is successful at online marketing or who owns a business and you’ll soon find out that you have about two seconds to wow someone who is potentially looking to buy from you and keep them from hitting the back button away from your website. That’s just the way it goes when doing business on the internet. Lots of people wanting to make money online just aren’t giving it the attention it deserves. If you don’t make the right impression- it’s make or break.
Why not invest your money and time into the most crucial ingredients of successful affiliate marketers? Enter Site Rubix – from the secret development team at Wealthy Affiliate.
Site Rubix is designed to be a plug-n-play solution for affiliate marketers to be able to create professionally designed websites. No experience is necessary. You might even decide to sell your website design abilities on the side or full-time. It’s so simple to drag-n-drop tables and graphics anywhere to the template and plop them where you want them, all without any html experience at all.
Let me post a question to you. Have you bought Photoshop(tm) before? How must does that cost? Probably $500-700. With Site Rubix, you don’t need a graphics program like that. You’ll be able to do a screen-capture, save it, and put it on your website in seconds. Site Rubix will not cost anything near what Photoshop will cost you- and its capabilities are so much more. The small price for Site Rubix is really amazing for the sheer power you have at your fingertips.
Ok, you’ve got me excited, James. What else can Site Rubix do? How about you having the ability to duplicate pages that you’ve already created, or even full sites just by clicking your mouse? No need to reinvent the wheel. If you have a page or even a whole site that is working- use it again!
Do you want the ability to customize your site in terms of banners and images and let the system worry about resizing, rendering, and making things look great? You’ve got it!
You’ll be pleasantly surprised when you checkout just what Site Rubix is capable of. I know of no comparison for true drag-n-drop website design. It won’t matter if you are designing landing pages or selling your own website creation services. Site Rubix has your back.