Next Level Blogger » Internet Marketing

I Am a New Contributor on RENewsBlog

Christian Russell — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:59:50 +0000

As many of you know I have a bit of real estate experience. I am still licensed to practice real estate. I help friends and family, as the opportunities present themselves, buy and invest in property. I am a big advocate of owning rental property as well.

The reason I mention this is because a lot of readers here may not necessarily be inclined to read RENewsBlog, a blog about real estate sales and investing. I wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I will now be a weekly contributor over at RENewsBlog.

The content I publish there will be focused on internet marketing and blogging, just like here, so if you like this blog, I encourage you to check out my articles over there as well

The fact is that most real estate professionals, like all small business owners, have a real need to market themselves effectively online. I will be the guy who covers online marketing and sales strategy over there on a regular basis. The concepts I cover will at times have a little bit of a real estate spin on them, which is cool because I know many of you readers of Next Level Blogger are in real estate!

But also this is great for everyone else as well, because the sales and marketing concepts I cover on RENewsBlog will directly apply to YOUR business as well, no matter what industry you’re in.

I invite you to swing by and say “hi”!

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5 Idiot-Proof Ways to Make Money from Your Blog

Christian Russell — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:00:18 +0000

I’m a big advocate of sticking to the basics. These 5 things are what I focus on in my business. Keep in mind that I come from a direct sales background. I believe personal interaction and real relationships are the key to success long term.

This paradigm leads me to look at blogging and internet marketing a little differently than a lot of my peers. I do not focus on traffic, at all. I do keep my site fairly well search optimized, because I’m hardly one to say “no” to free traffic, but I refuse to depend on Google for a variety of reasons.

I would be the last to argue that my way is the only way, but this is the game as I play it. As with all things on Next Level Blogger, this list is focused on what it takes to build a highly profitable niche business online. Stick to these business basics, and you will be on track to achieving your goals…

Build a list: This is the foundation of your business. If you’re not building a list, you’re not building a business. For the foreseeable future, email marketing is still king, and if you want to make money online…learning the art of list building and selling through email is mandatory.
Ask for the order: This is a key sales principle. This often comes off as a “duh” kind of statement. If you want someone to buy from you, you should probably ASK them to buy from you, right? But year after year, study after study shows that salespeople will often perform an entire sales presentation and fail to ask for the order at the end. Internet marketers and bloggers are big culprits of this as well. Most often, as much as I hate to say it, bloggers. So many bloggers want to make money yet fail to ever ask for it. Asking for the order goes for making sales but also for other things. Do you want your readers to comment your posts? Do you want people to tweet out your articles…link to your site…download your free ebook? Tell them what you want. Ask for the order.
Ask for referrals: This is something I see applied only rarely online. The masters do it, but few others even think about it. It’s one thing to make a sale. It’s a whole next level thing to tap into that customer’s entire base of friends as well. Your paying customers should not be on the same list as your prospects (the people who have yet to buy from you). If someone has purchased from you, they have entered the fold. They are on a new level with you and your business, and they should be treated as such. They are easier to sell to in the future, and it is reasonable for you to ask them to refer you to their friends and coworkers. Deliberately seeking referrals is one of the most cost effective ways of significantly building your business online, and few people even try to do it. If you have a customer list of even just a few hundred people, you REALLY have a customer list of many thousands…if you know how to work referrals.
Identify your advocates. Use them, and treat them like gold: Of course, not everyone will refer you to their friends. Not everyone is going to connect with you enough to become an advocate of yours. But when you have an advocate, even if you just have one advocate at the beginning, you better treat them like a king or queen, because an advocate is something rare and powerful. I’ve seen powerful real estate brokers sell several hundred houses a year with a list of only a few hundred people. This type of efficiency is not possible if you don’t know who your advocates are. Can you build a very profitable blog with only 10 subscribers? Yes! If those 10 subscribers are advocates.
Multi-tier product and service development: There really isn’t such a thing as one size fits all. In this day and age we need to connect with your readers in as personal a way as possible. Many internet marketers will come out with a single product and then simply proceed to drive as much traffic as possible to that offering, and rack up whatever sales they can. I can’t argue that it’s a way to make money online; I just don’t think it’s nearly as personal, efficient or profitable as it could be. The beauty of blogging is that you have an awesome opportunity to interact with a large number of people in a personal way. Ask them what they want. Believe me, your readers will tell you what they want if you just ask! Build your audience and your list, and then proceed to interact with them often. Have them tell you what products and features they’re looking for. Use their feedback and come up with products and services based specifically on that feedback. By “multi-tier” I mean specifically that you should have options for people. One Blogger that does this very well is Michael Martine at Remarkablogger. He offers one-on-one blog consultation for an hourly rate, and you can also get group consultation at a much lower rate. You can also invest in one of his very reasonably priced products like Wordpress SEO Secrets to get specific solutions at a great price. He doesn’t just do one thing. He offers multiple solutions, so that he can connect with his readers in any number of different ways. That’s smart.

Each of these 5 steps deserves a post of it’s own. And they will get one. They are already in the works! I encourage you to bookmark and/or save this page and visit back, because I will link them up as I publish them. Or, subscribe to Next Level Blogger, and I’ll make sure you get an email with the new articles as they come out!

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Blogging vs Internet Marketing

Christian Russell — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:00:38 +0000

There are a lot of articles on blogging out there…and there are a lot of articles on internet marketing. They are mostly treated as two separate endeavors. Are blogging and internet marketing truly two different subjects? Not for my readers. At least I hope not.

Blogging is mostly the activity of posting content on a regular basis in a specific niche, etc. When “internet marketing” is mentioned, most people think of squeeze pages, affiliate landing pages, sales pages of other various kinds, etc. My hope for this post is simple: I’d like to blur the lines a little bit and hopefully get you to realize, if you don’t already…that if you’re blogging to make money online, you are an internet marketer. And it will benefit you greatly to think of yourself as such.

Business blogging and internet marketing are the same thing. It’s important to view every post on your blog as a landing page.

If You Want to Make Money Online With Your Blog…

Bottom line: if you want to make money online with your blog, you need to sell things. This means you are in sales. That’s internet marketing!

Many bloggers do not think of themselves as marketers or salespeople. And then they wonder why they’re not getting the results they want. There is a lot more involved than just writing blog posts.

You Can’t Make Much Money Blogging

The reason I decided to write this post is because there seems to be a line in many people’s minds that divides internet marketing and blogging, and there really needn’t be. Here’s something that may surprise you to hear: you can’t make much money blogging. Really. You can make a bit. If you happen to be building your blog in a high traffic niche, and are successful in building a high traffic site, you might be able to make some cash through advertising. But honestly, this does not apply to most blogs.

If I’m being honest with you, you are probably not going to be the next TechCrunch. I’m not one to be a dream crusher…if you have an idea and a plan, you should work it, and no doubt there will continue to be many huge success stories like this. My point is this: MOST blogs in the vast scheme of things just aren’t going to be high traffic blogs. And that’s OK. You can STILL make a killing!

One more point about this: there are many sites out there that make as much money as TechCrunch does, and you have likely never even heard of them. Popularity does not necessarily correlate to success, or to income. Sales skills, business skills and skillful execution however, usually do.

Low Traffic Blog Niches Rock!

So what about all those innumerable niches out there that just aren’t high traffic niches? Those are my focus and specialty! Look, there are a TON of ways to make great money online. High traffic is just one, and in my opinion it’s far from the best one.

Yes, there are a lot of gurus out there that will tell you magical ways to explode your traffic and build your email list to staggering numbers, but what many of them will fail to mention is that a lot of niches just don’t have the kind of mass appeal that’s necessary to build a high traffic site.

And it’s important to understand that this is NOT a problem…but it SHOULD affect your monetization plan!

For example, you’re not going to get 100k visitors a month to your Lentil Recipes blog, no matter how hard you try. At least probably not . I’ll say it this way, if you’re the lentil recipe guru of the world, and your success depends on getting tons of traffic, you do not have a good plan, and you probably haven’t done your research.

However, there are a lot of ways to make that niche profitable. There are good ways to make any useful niche highly profitable, and I’m going to be going over specific ways to do this in upcoming posts on this blog.

The Often Overlooked, Money-Making Benefit of Low Traffic

To suffice for now…how do you make a low traffic niche profitable? You learn to sell! In other words…internet marketing. Personal interaction is king in the low traffic arena. See, you can do that when you have a low traffic niche. You can literally build a great, intimate relationship with your audience. It’s not that possible when you’re getting several thousand visitors a day…the level of personal attention goes down.

Both high traffic and low traffic niches have their advantages. So don’t think because you’re only getting a few thousand visitors a month right now that you’re at a disadvantage. The fact is that you’re in a great place! Use what you’ve got. The fact that you can interact with and engage your audience on a highly personal level means that you can create a lot more value for each individual who reads you blog, and when you create more value…you can make more money.

So I will be covering different ways to monetize like this in more detail in coming posts over the next several weeks. I hope you can bookmark this site or subscribe, so you can get this information when it comes out.

I think it’s absolutely essential to do a few things here:

Stop thinking high traffic and huge subscriber lists are the only way to make a good living with your blog.
Start thinking of yourself as an internet marketer, and open yourself up to the idea that you are a salesperson. Sales skills will be what enable you to make good money online in whatever niche you choose. Realize that if you apply high traffic methods of monetizing on a low traffic site, your results will always be disappointing. However, learn to apply the right techniques to your business, and your results will be impressive.
Study different methods of monetizing that I will be discussing here in the coming weeks, and write a plan for your blog that makes sure you can get the results you’re looking for…don’t just assume you’re going to follow the same model of another blogger you like. Do your own research, and write a plan that’s appropriate for your own niche. Follow your own path!

This is the crux of blogging vs internet marketing…if you’re blogging for business and to make money, you ARE an internet marketer. You are a salesperson. You do not have to embrace these things, and I will admit that most bloggers do not. I will also tell you that there is a REASON most blogs fail . The difference between blogging and internet marketing? When it comes to making your business successful, there is NO difference!

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Top 10 Myths and Mistakes About Blogging and Internet Marketing

Christian Russell — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:24:02 +0000

As more and more of my peers in small business come online and start trying their hand at blogging and internet marketing, there are a number of common myths and mistakes that need to be addressed.

If you’re considering starting a blog or using social media to promote your small business, I applaud you. My goal for this post is to simply dispel some of the biggest lies, misunderstanding and obstacles I’ve come across that you will likely run into.

Hopefully you can use these as a way of saving yourself some time and get straight to the business of making your blog or website reach your goals.

Internet marketing as an afterthought: It’s a great idea to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. For many business models (dare I say nearly ALL business models) a customer’s most common point of interaction with you is your website. Your internet presence should be given a proportional amount of your time and attention. Many businesses ironically spend very little time on internet marketing. They’ll have a site that gets thousands of visitors a month, but they do very little if anything to effectively engage them. Instead, they expect people to call them and wade through an automated phone system in order to get information. You may prefer to do business a certain way, but it’s likely that your customer would prefer your website to be a lot more usable. And it may interest you that if you help them out in this regard, they will likely reward you for it : ) Don’t let your internet marketing be something that you’re just trying to squeeze in. It needs to be as integrated into your business as your customers would like it to be.
Let me just slam this website together. Let’s get this sucker DONE! This is a powerful myth and mistake many people make! Your internet marketing is an ongoing process. Think of it more as a dialog than anything else. When you walk away, the conversation stops. Ideally you want to be as active and engaged in your internet marketing as possible. Trying to crank out a website and then thinking that it’s going to keep pulling results for you without any additional effort is the wrong way of looking at it.
Marketing online is not the same as traditional marketing: Traditional marketing is interruption-based, which means that advertisers have always concentrated on grabbing people’s attention however they can. Getting a response was key. In online marketing, people are already paying attention, so trying to cram a message in front of them is just rude. Cultivating a relationship with your visitors is hugely important. That’s why blogging is something I consider to be pretty much mandatory for most small business owners, because it enables you to communicate with a large number of people very effectively and in a personal manner. Applying traditional marketing methods to your internet marketing most often comes off badly for you. It’s important to embrace the fact that a social approach to your marketing, while it takes more time, really is going to be the best approach.
Failing to build an email list: You want people to come out to your site, correct? And after they visit, you want them to come back. The number one way to get people coming back over and over again is by getting them to subscribe. And the number one way people subscribe is still via email. RSS is very convenient, but most readers still use email. If you’re not building your email list from day one, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. For email listing building tools and campaign management, I personally use Aweber and recommend you get in on that action as well.
Failing to have a coach or someone on your team who specializes in new media: Let’s be real. You have a business to run. You’re not a SEO expert. You’re not a web designer. You’re not going to be. You don’t have time. Too many business owners try to do too much. Consult with someone from time to time. Get someone on your team, whether it’s an employee or a virtual assistant, a coach or whatever asset your most comfortable with, and use their expertise to make sure you’re being effective. Have them critique you and tell you where you can improve. Talk with someone whose job it is to stay on top of these things, and take their advice. You will be 100% more effective by not trying to do everything yourself.
Focusing on design and SEO over content and communication: Everyone, especially business owners, want their site to look great. Yet look at some of the most successful blogs on the internet today, and not all of them look all that great. Why are they popular? How can you possibly create a winning online marketing plan without a $20k custom built website? Because believe it or not, all consumers really want is quality content. And they want it to come from you, because they care to know if you’re actually as cool as you want people to think you are. A glitzy website doesn’t impress many people any more. But quality, genuine content always will get the job done. What’s nice is that you can produce quality content for free. It just takes a little time and introspection. It’s highly worth it. Design is important, but content and quality interaction with your customers is WAY more valuable. It’s what your customers care about, so it’s what you should focus on.
Spending too much time and money on marketing that doesn’t work: This one isn’t so much of an internet marketing thing as it is a business thing. So many of my friends in business are still locked into a mentality that they HAVE to pay for certain forms of marketing that they’ve always done in the past, even when they’re not pulling results anymore. On the flip side, I know some forward thinking business owners who have literally cut out their print advertising completely, and it has had NO negative effect on their business whatsoever. Obviously I’m not telling you specifically what to do with your specific business, but I urge you to look at the results your marketing is getting you. Are your customers flooding your websites, but meanwhile you’re still spending thousands a month on billboards and space ads? It happens a lot. If your advertising is not working, CUT IT! And put your money into your online business; it’s where your customers are most likely to find you anyway : )
Not having fun: Fun is likely the most important element of this business. With all the options and tools at our disposal (blogs, websites, SEO, Twitter, Facebook, blah, blah, blah), it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But there’s an underlying opportunity here that most people seem to miss. You can do anything you want! You can literally make a great living doing anything you want, and as long as you’re willing to work like crazy you can do very well. Don’t become overwhelmed by your options; revel in them! Don’t be all stiff and proper with everything you do; have fun! With the amount of work that needs to be done, fun is mandatory. It also enables you to tackle the next step…
Not diving in: There’s a lot of concern amongst business owners as to the value of Twitter, for example. I get a lot of comments regarding how it just doesn’t make sense. There is a reasonable concern over wasting time on something that is not going to produce results. Time is valuable, and that concern is prudent. However, things change quickly these days, and it’s important to act if you want to get results. Instead of using your lack of understanding as a gauge, I recommend using something else. Look at the value of the network. If there are millions of people all in one place, and the community is very active, there is a huge amount of value there, and it’s a good idea to tap into it. Dive in. Trust me, after you’ve spent some time conversing with people on Twitter (or any valuable community), it will make more sense. And so it goes with the internet in general, the biggest community of all. Being committed to getting results is key to actually getting results. Being tentative with your internet marketing endeavors will only ever produce tentative results. Don’t focus on what you don’t know. Yes, there are things to learn, but the most important thing is to dive in.
Wanting results fast and automatically: I can’t blame anyone for wanting to get turnkey results from their internet marketing work. But it’s essential to measure your results properly. Measuring results from a blog or a social media profile in the same way that you measure results from a space ad you run in a magazine is not going to make you a happy camper. It doesn’t work the same way, and it doesn’t produce the same kind of results. Measure results using web analytics. Measure results via how many subscribers you’re getting and how many of them are buying from you. The details of this are certainly a topic for another post, but to suffice for now, don’t set up a blog and expect the orders to start pouring in automatically. Trust me, there are many points of data that you can use to keep your analytical mind more than pleased with the results you’re getting. Results are trackable using new media. But setting up a website and then sitting back and waiting for the money to start rolling in is going to lead only to disappointment.

Using new media is a little interesting…you basically cannot ignore this shift in the way of doing business. You really can’t. You have to learn to use these tools, and learning to use them is basically going to force you to rethink a lot about your business, how you measure results, etc.

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The Power of 100 for Blogging Success

Christian Russell — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:00:10 +0000

I’ve learned something from being in direct sales. It’s something that I feel a lot of other bloggers don’t get. As internet marketers, we spend so much time working on our sites, to optimize and get more traffic. We want to capture as much search traffic as possible, and I think it’s smart to make those efforts.

But I think there’s something a lot more important that we should put at the front of our priority list when it comes to building our small business online. And that something is the power of 100.

For the past week, I’ve been tweeting out updates like “30 down, 70 more to go!” I’ve received many inquiries about what the heck this means, and what it means is that I have a rule, and I’ve decided it’s important to once again follow that rule.

Here’s the rule:

Make 100 contacts a day.

That’s it. Touch 100 people every day. Whether I respond to an email, call someone on the phone, send a letter in the mail…it doesn’t matter. 100 daily. That’s the rule.

Why? Because it forces me to be social. And being social is not only energizing and a heck of a lot of fun, but it’s also an essential process for building your business. In case you haven’t noticed, people rock!

Where the Power of 100 Came From

It comes from my direct sales experience. In direct sales, if you’re not making contacts you’re out of business. Well, I’ve learned to adapt to internet marketing, and here is something I’ve learned about internet marketing…a lot of us hide behind our computers.

It’s very easy to tweak on your site all day. VERY easy. I’ve done it. It’s very easy to spend all day reading blogs or studying tutorials, or God forbid, coding! Tweaking ads, the list goes on…and I’m not busting on any of these things. It’s important to have your site looking good. It’s important for your ads to be optimized, etc. But it’s MORE important…MASSIVELY more important to talk to people.

Why the Power of 100 will Transform Your Business

Why? Because no matter how awesome you are, and no matter how awesome your site is, if you’re not talking to people every day, no one is going to care. Because at the end of the day, no one cares if you’re awesome! People want to know what’s in it for them, and if you want to make money online, you need to be interested in interacting with them to find out how you can help!

Here is My Challenge to You

So here is my challenge to you: make 100 contacts a day. Do it with me! I will continue to put out my updates, and I encourage you to do the same. Are you following me on Twitter? Do it, and let’s kill this thing together! There is power and motivation in numbers! Make 100 contacts a day. It will build your business; I promise!

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.

I’m using the #powerof100 hashtag to track tweets related to this program. Even if I’m the only one doing it, it’s cool. I’m doing this because I know it works, and since I write a blog, it occurred to me how cool it would be if I could get even one or two other people doing this also. I guarantee, it’s difficult to produce like this every day, and it also changes your business like you wouldn’t believe!

Like I said, I have seen many top performers over the years employ a simple rule like this, and it creates tremendous results. Bottom line, it goes along with all the basic concepts I cover on Next Level Blogger:

It’s very simple
It’s a lot of work
It gets MASSIVE results over time!

Here’s what counts:

Respond to a message: email, tweets, phone calls…it’s all good.
Blog comments: real, thoughtful, engaging ones…not thoughtless spammy ones. The point is real contacts.
Writing a letter, emailing a friend, following up on a lead, etc.
You get the idea…here’s the rule: it needs to be a PERSONAL, ONE-ON-ONE contact.

Here’s what doesn’t count:

Emailing your list: if you email a bulk list of 1,000 contacts, it doesn’t count as 1,000 contacts! Emailing your list is good and necessary, but this principle is only for PERSONAL, ONE-ON-ONE contacts. The point is personal engagement.
Spam commenting: you surely understand this, right? Any form of automation is not the point.

If you make the effort to personally engage 100 people a day on a personal level, you will see real power and real results from this. Like I mentioned, I learned this in direct sales, and I know some of the top sales people in the US literally are employing this concept right now, today, as you read this. It works! Get to it and let me know how it goes!

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The Problem of Working for Money

Christian Russell — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:00:02 +0000

Most of us work for money, right? I’ve said it myself when asked…I don’t make it any secret that I expect to be paid for what I do professionally. So how could it possibly be a bad idea to work for money? Isn’t money absolutely necessary after all?

The Problem of Working for Money

Yes, money is indeed a necessity. We all have bills to pay. What I’m referring to here is your focus. If your focus is on the almighty dollar, you have your head in the wrong place. Contrary to popular belief, we are not multitaskers. We are capable possibly of juggling, but we can only truly focus on one thing at a time. What I’m getting at is this: since our focus can only be on one thing at a time, if we’re focusing on the close…on making a sale…on how we’re going to make money on our site…on how we’re going to get more traffic so we can make more money, etc…then our focus CANNOT be on our readers and customers.

Don’t let your focus be on “targeting your niche” or “making more money”. Focus on creating value for and interacting with your readers.

Blogging is a powerful promotional tool for your business. But the points of the game are interaction, engagement and value. Do these things, and money will come. Have faith

Have Faith. Have Focus.

It’s necessary to have faith that the money will come if you create value, because that is the only way to focus on value. If you focus on making money, you’re not using your blog in the optimum way, and you’re not creating a property that is truly valuable to others. It’s self-serving. And I’m not saying you can’t get anywhere by being self-serving, but in this completely connected market space…it’s not up to you whether you’re valuable or not…it’s up to your readers. And if you efforts are self-serving, how do you think your readers are ultimately going to vote?

Do you really think you can game this system? Maybe for a minute, but not forever, so why even try to play it that way? You’re just creating something that may or may not make you money in the short term. If that is your focus, you’re not creating anything of lasting value.

Create something of lasting value…THAT is how you make money online…long term. That is how you build wealth.

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How to Make Sure Your Email Gets Delivered

Christian Russell — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Here is another Fantastically Simple set of rules for all of us bloggers and internet marketers to follow. It’s one thing to build a powerful and targeted email list. It’s essential if you want to make money online, and if you’re going to go through the trouble of building a list, you might as well make sure you’re your subscribers actually RECEIVE your email, wouldn’t you agree?

There is something to know here: nothing you do can guarantee 100% deliverability. Some of your email is going to get blocked, but what’s odd to me is that most business owners don’t even bother to address this directly. As it turns out, most of us assume that all of our email is getting through. Well here’s a hard fact of life: IT’S NOT! Some of your email is getting blocked by spam filters…yes that’s right, YOU are getting blocked as a spammer, even if what you’re sending is not spam! Even if you’re only sending to legitimate subscribers, some of your messages are not getting through. And here is why: technology is not perfect. Plus, not everyone knows how to use their machines very well. They may have their spam filter set too high and not even know it.

Regardless, there are steps you can take to make sure as much of your email is received as possible. This is simple stuff. Some of it you will have heard before, but I guarantee most of you will learn at least one thing from this list that you’re not doing. I will admit that I even have not yet implemented 100% of this, but soon will be.

As I said, most of us do not address these things at all and just assume our messages are being delivered. Even though nothing GUARANTEE your email is delivered to every single recipient, taking these steps will take you almost no time at all, and they will improve your results.

Don’t be surprised if your response rate goes up after implementing all of these steps! It really does help your business when your customers actually receive what you’re sending them!

Ways to Make Sure Your Email Gets Delivered

Don’t spam. I hate to start off with such an obvious one, but the fact is that many of you still think that renting opt-in email lists is not spamming. It is. Sorry, but the only way to email legitimately is to build your own list from scratch. Yes, it’s slower, but it’s also the only way to do it. The list of 100,000 “opt-in” email subscribers you rented may have opted in for something, but they didn’t opt in for YOUR email list…how could they have? Rented lists are spam lists. Of course the brokers don’t call them as such, but that’s what it is. Build a legit list of your own, and you’ll have taken the biggest and most important step toward getting huge results from your email campaign.
Get whitelisted. When someone subscribes, ask them point blank…”please add this domain to your safelist”. Even go so far as to provide simple instructions on how to do this. This will ensure (for those that follow through on it) that email from you will be given free passage into their inbox. Getting whitelisted (or safelisted, whatever you want to call it) is the only way to fly
Don’t use ALL CAPS IN YOUR SUBJECT LINE. This makes spam filters happy. They get excited and eat your message up, so your recipient never receives it.
Don’t use massive amounts of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It attracts attention, just as you wish it will…it attracts attention from spam filters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t talk about sex! Use of certain words sets of most spam filters. Words like “sex”, “viagra”, you get the idea. This is an example of spam filters not being so smart, of course there are many completely legitimate uses for these words, but the fact is that tons of spam contains certain words, and spam filters are updated to catch as much of it as possible. Also avoid the words “free”, “make money” or any other overtly sales-oriented language. It’s not fair, I know, but it’s a fact. Using the word “free”, for example, will not necessarily get your message blocked, but it will be noticed, and if you have a number of things like this, your message scores higher on the spam rating, and if you get enough of these points, out the window it goes.
Label your message appropriately. Is your outgoing email a newsletter? Use the word “newsletter” or “weekly news” in your subject line. Other options: “monthly newsletter”, “News from …name of your site…”
Use Aweber. I have to be honest, I’m in the process of setting up with Aweber but have not made the switch yet. I have just started this blog, and I don’t want to wait until I have thousands of subscribers before I switch over. Aweber is certainly not the only autoresponder out there, but they are pretty much the king of autoresponders. Can using Aweber really improve your delivery? Yes, it can. Do you have whitelist agreements with internet service providers? Aweber does. They maintain your lists for you and make sure everything is done by the book. This means playing by their rules. I’m not one for jumping through hoops, but I’m also committed to getting the best results. That’s why I’m moving my email delivery to Aweber. I highly recommend them. They also offer a ton of other features to make your email marketing more effective, but as far as ensuring deliverability, Aweber is really a great asset to have on board.
Bottom line: if you want to be treated as legit, separate yourself from spammers as much as possible. We’ve all seen our share of spam. We know what it looks like it. Take steps to avoid looking like it. For example, don’t use a subject line like ://///FREE Viaaagrrrraaaaaaa****. Seriously, do you think that’s gonna get through, you sly dog you?

Once again, the rules of success in blogging and internet marketing are Fantastically Simple. A few extra steps here and there make all the difference!

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Top Myths About Business Blogging

Christian Russell — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:00:44 +0000

Writing a business blog is a great way to promote your products or services. There’s no doubt about it. There are a large number of professionals and business owners from all different fields who are entering the blogging world, and understandably…they want to get results!

A big part of getting good results from your blog is simply writing consistently and creating content that is valuable to your readers over time. Truth be told, it’s not rocket science. Building a successful blog can give your business some very significant results. It just takes work. Like anything you build from scratch…it starts off very small and builds up over time. Eventually it will truly become a force to be reckoned with. It just takes time and diligence.

One of the biggest reasons many blogs are not successful is not because making them work is all that difficult. The reason is because most blog authors simply don’t stick with it and do the necessary work to get the results they want.

One thing that can help you stick with it over time is simply having a realistic perspective on what to expect when you launch your blog. I’ve come across a ton of misconceptions over time, and these seem to me to be the most prevalent. I hope that reviewing these Myths About Business Blogging will help readers know a bit more about what to expect.

Myths About Business Blogging

You can always make money from advertising. This really isn’t true. Unless by “money” you mean a few bucks a month. You need a lot of traffic to make any meaningful amount of money from advertising. A LOT of traffic. Most adveristing methods will pay out somewhere in the range of $1-3 per thousand visitors. I’ve tweaked Adsense modules to average $5 per thousand visitors, so if you’re getting 50,000 visitors per month…you’re making $250. If your blog is getting 50,000 visitors a month, you’re not going to be excited about $250
Blogging is easy. Blogging is simple, not easy. Many people approach blogging, unfortunately, with a traditional media mindset. In other words, they want to set something up and watch it grow, but they don’t want to tend to it much. The fact is that blogging is simple, and it doesn’t have to take all your time. But if you want significant results, you need to work on it a bit every day. It is that consistent effort and hustle that will make the difference. Think of all the millions of other websites out there. You have to stand out. The process is simple, but it requires consistent effort over time.
I can automate this sucker! We’ve all heard this before, and there are more tools out there now than ever before. Search engines and humans alike reward original and valuable content. Trust me, I’ve explored em all…automation is definitely doable. I could show you tools that will fill your blog up with awesome articles every day without you having to lift a finger. You will have an awesome looking blog that takes almost no time at all…and it will never go anywhere, because at the end of the day there are no short cuts. Tread lightly with any sales copy that claims to be able to make your blog or blog marketing automatic. Nothing replaces diligence and hard work.
This sounds like too much work. I don’t really need a business blog. One of the biggest mistakes is to assume that because you’ve not had a blog before, you don’t need one now. Your customers are online…you need to be here. Yes, it will take work, and you’ll have to learn some new things. But the alternative is not being here…where your customers are. The alternative is losing business more and more. There are no good alternatives to having a good blog for your business. You need one.
I should be able to have a thousand visitors a day or so within a few months…or any other completely arbitrary number you’ve pulled out of the air. Everyone wants a lot of traffic. It’s only natural. But the fact is that not every niche is a high traffic niche. That’s first off. Second of all, if you’re running a blog for a small business, especially a very small business like a home based operation, you likely don’t NEED a lot of traffic to meet your goals. Don’t get wrapped up in arbitrary numbers. Yes, Yahoo! gets 300 million visitors a month or so…you don’t need that much. I’ve had more than one very profitable site that gets less than 3,000 a month. It’s not always about high traffic. As more and more people get involved in internet marketing, and as it becomes essentially mandatory for all small businesses to have a strong internet presence, it’s less about volume and much more about high quality and creating value for your readers.

Trust me, you can do some serious damage with your small business blog over time. ROI is difficult to measure if not impossible, which is another hurdle we need to get over as business owners. We’re used to getting a fixed or predictable result with each marketing piece we put out. Blogging is marketing, but it’s more like networking. You’re contacting and communicating with your readers and customers through the use of this medium. This work, when you do it well, leads to more business coming your way.

As a business owner, you don’t demand a specific ROI from a social event in order for you to attend. You understand that getting out there and shaking hands, meeting people and talking about what you do is essential. You do it because it’s a good, necessary business practice. Blogging, likewise, is a necessary business practice.

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How Much Time Should You Spend Blogging?

Christian Russell — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:00:30 +0000

Clearly, I talk to a lot of people about using a blog to market their business. One of the most common concerns expressed by business owners is that it will take too much time. It’s not too much of a secret that blogging can be a very, very powerful tool in your marketing plan. Here are some reasons why:

It’s highly cost efficient.
It enables you to reach a huge number of people effectively, personally and quickly.
It gives you the power to reach NEW customers that you would not have reached otherwise.
It makes possible NEW revenue streams that you may not have ever considered before.
It puts a powerful publishing tools at your fingertips…you can promote your business 24/7, as often as you want, and the cost doesn’t increase the more you use it.
A well-designed and maintained blog will establish you as an expert in your field, building credibility and trust with your audience, an invaluable asset to your business.

These are just a few ways that a blog is a highly recommended marketing tool for your business. So it’s easy enough for me to argue, can you afford NOT to have a blog? And that really should be enough. However, it’s reasonable to consider the time issue, because no tool is going to work for you if you don’t use it. In other words, a blog doesn’t write itself, and if you don’t do it, it’s not going to do you much good.

So, How Much Time Should You Spend Blogging?

Here’s the bottom line: you get out what you put in. The fact is that most highly successful blogs with an immense amount of traffic, making big money from advertising, etc…are powered by individuals (or even teams of individuals) who put a LOT of collective time and energy into the site.

Do you even WANT a high traffic blog…one that is considered to be highly successful by traditional standards? It’s an important question. Here’s why: I’ve argued from the beginning of this blog that high traffic is only one of many ways to make money with your blog. It’s very possible that promoting your blog doesn’t have to be a big deal at all. It’s very possible, in other words, for you to have a very successful business, make a lot of money and have a blog at the center of it all…powering a lot of your sales, without it having to be a very big time commitment.

It’s very important to have accurate expectations however. If you do not work your blog every day, build your community every day…if you do not moderate comments and respond to inquiries aggressively and promptly, and if you do not do these basics every day over time, it’s unlikely you’re ever going to have a blog that gets 100k visitors a month.

What Are Your Goals?

When considering how much time you want to commit to blogging, it’s important to consider what results you want to get from your blog. You can probably tell at this point that there’s not going to be a hard and fast rule about how much time it takes to be successful blogging. Simply, you need to do as much as is necessary to reach your goals. So what are your goals?

Do you want to have 100k+ visitors a month and make several thousand a month in advertising revenues? If so, you’re going to need to work it full time, period. Blogging is going to have to be your full time job. It doesn’t mean you cannot start part time and build up to that point, but to acheive that type of traffic, it’s going to require a concerted effort on your part.

Do you want your blog to simply serve as a powerful and convenient way for you to interact with your customers? Do you want to build a good, targeted list of customers over time and use your blog as a way of gaining market share, getting new customers and building your brand? All of this can be accomplished over time with only a part time effort. Let me be clear, it will still require a consistent effort over time. But it hardly needs to be something that consumes all of your time.

I believe most professionals and business owners fall into this latter category. Blogging can be an absolutely impressive and powerful way to extend your business and market your products or services. And it doesn’t need to take a lot of time.

What About You?

What are your goals? Do you have a blog already? How much time do you spend using your blog to market your business?

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8 Ways Your Business is Losing if You’re Not Blogging

Christian Russell — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:00:51 +0000

You’re losing word of mouth advertising - Any business owner I talk to would be quick to admit that word of mouth advertising is the best advertising they can get. Owning and operating a blog enables you to be part of the conversation online. People ARE talking about you, you know? If you have a blog, you have way more than a traditional website, you have a personal presence…one people are comfortable and happy to send their friends to and talk about. People are a lot more comfortable referring someone they know to you if you have a personal blog, as opposed to a traditional static website. It makes you more personal, more approachable, if people can read about you and get a feel for what you’re like. Yes, people like to stalk. If you’re in business, and you want people to do business with you, why would you not want to be part of that? On the flip side, when you DO have a blog, you can set the record straight anytime someone’s talking trash. You can also build a strong community of people who are advocates for you. Strong bloggers eventually build networks consisting of thousands of people who consistently link to them, send them traffic and talk positively about their content. This is word of mouth for the 21st century.
Your name is being dragged through the mud, and you don’t even know about it - People are talking about you. The process of learning how to blog is about a lot more than just writing an article every now and then. It’s about networking. Having a blog will teach you how to be part of your online community. And don’t think you don’t have one…you’re just not aware of it! If you own a business and you’re doing business with people, people are LOOKING for your blog, right now. And they’re not finding it. They’re commenting on other blogs and forums about you, and you’re not there to be part of the conversation.
Your competition is establishing themselves as the expert, while you are quickly becoming irrelevant - Blogging is personal. You don’t use it as a way of simply placing ads or “building a list” or making sales. You’re selling yourself. You’re telling the public about yourself. You’re networking. You’re having a conversation with people. What happens when you do this is people learn that you actually have a lot to say. This is a good thing. Of course, this is assuming you DO have a lot to say. If you’re not actually creating value for your customers at this point, that will become apparent also. It’s best to either BE good, GET good, or NOT blog. Having a lot to say about your industry and how you can honestly help your customers and maintaining a blog together are a very dangerous combination. If your competition is blogging, and you’re not, they are quickly and quietly building a very compelling network of people who love them and who don’t even know who you are.
Customers are simply not connecting with you, so they don’t buy from you - This is an inevitable consequence of not having a blog. Seriously, it’s that big a deal. First, search engines love blogs (well-built and actively maintained ones that is), and if you don’t have one, you’re missing out on a lot of love from the search engines, which means your getting a lot less traffic than you should be. But it’s a deeper problem than that. The type of content people want is different than what it was 5 or so years ago. Yes, things have changed that quickly. People don’t want static content. They don’t want boring ads that talk at them and tell them what to do. They want interactivity. They want to connect with you. Think about this…they WANT to connect with you and like you on a personal level. It’s how they make buying decisions. Your static website is most likely turning them off. Your competition realizes this. They’ve learned to think of marketing differently. They’ve realized that they can connect with many thousands of people through blogging, on a personal level and massively extend the reach of their business. Your customers are connecting with them, not you.
Your expenses are getting out of control, and the money you spend on traditional marketing gives you a less impressive return each year that passes - Let’s face it…traditional marketing, like newspaper and magazine ads, mailing campaigns, billboards, etc…they are getting more expensive each year, and they are getting LESS effective each year. Anyone who’s been in business for more than 5 years knows this intimately. How long can you tolerate your expenses rising coupled with more and more inept returns on your advertising dollars? When you look at this commonly understood fact, it’s obvious that you need to make a change somewhere, isn’t it?
The quality of the contacts you make is going down, which means your return on investment is going down - Like I said in #5, traditional media is getting less effective. The reason is because people are drowning in advertising. If it doesn’t connect with them personally, it’s unlikely to have any effect on them whatsoever. That’s not very much bang for your buck, is it? Traditional marketing is based on “interruption marketing”. The idea is to jolt your attention and get you to notice an advertisement that you ordinarily not be interested in seeing. People have built up some serious walls to this type of advertising. Social media connects with people on their terms. Believe it or not, people want to buy cars, books, appliances, all types of services, or whatever it is that you’re selling. If you connect with them on their level and on their terms, they will love you for it, and they will buy from you. That’s what you can do with a blog that is impossible for you to do with traditional advertising.
You have a lot of talent and expertise that is not being shared – Blogging is therapeutic. As a business owner, you have a lot to say, and blogging can be a channel for all that expertise. Not only is it good for your business and good for your customers, it’s also good for you. C’mon now, let it out!
You are losing your most valuable asset of all…your time - It is a myth that blogging has to take all your time. It can. Make no mistake about it. But it doesn’t have to. As a business owner, you know that time is your most valuable asset. And you know that time is money, right? So stop wasting money on advertising that doesn’t work. You know it isn’t pulling it’s weight lately. I say this confidently, because I know you know it’s true. I’m in the real estate business for example, and I know for a fact that many Realtors are dropping print advertising and mailing campaigns altogether. It just doesn’t work. Yet NAR reports that less that 8% of Realtors have a blog. What gives? You can’t do NOTHING to promote your business. You need to simply do what works.

Blogging will force you to learn new things. It will certainly be a learning process. And it will take time. It’s not a magic bullet. It’s one of the things we need to learn as business owners…good things take time. Blogging will not pull immediate results like a banner ad will. But blogging also will not cost you several hundred dollars a week. And once you get past the start up period, the online network you’re able to create will continue to reward you passively for the life of your business…and if you do it right, it will even continue to reward you beyond that…even if your current business fails for whatever reason, your network will know you, they’ll understand you, and they’ll support you in your next venture as well. What kind of newspaper ad can do that?