Sunday, November 9, 2008

6 Tips To Create Effective Solo Ad That Pulls Results

Writen by Arina Nikitina

How many times have you... heard that running solo ads in ezines is the most effective way to advertise? Every single marketer swears that solo ads can bring you big profits.

Well, I've been placing solo ads in various marketing ezines for 5 months now. And I have to agree: solo ads work... ...if you know HOW to use them.

How to write effective solo ad I've learned the hard way. I've lost $527.00 in my first two months. Now, here is the good news: you don't have to waste your time trying to figure out how to create a good solo ad. I've done it for you. :)

By following these six tips you'll be able to create solo ads that produce incredible results.

1. Choose the ezine you want to advertise in very carefully.

Don't only consider ezine size. The truth is that smaller ezines produce better results than ezines with large subscriber base. I always prefer to run my solo ad in ezine with 8,000 subscribers than in ezine with 100,000. Not because it's cheaper, but because small lists are usually more responsive.

Before buying the ad in any ezine read a couple of issues. Does it provide readers with quality content? Does it shows the personality of its editor? Would you subscribe to that ezine?

Advertising in poor quality ezines is a waste of money. No one is reading them anyway.

2. Get the readers attention with the headline.

It is very important to make sure that you can add your headline in a subject line of solo ad. If the subject line reads "Our Ezine Solo Ad" most of subscribers won't open it. You have to add your *attention grabbing* subject line.

Headlines like "Check this out" or "Here is my new product" won't work.

Get their attention! Spark the desire to learn more! Give them a *reason* to open your email.

Bob Leduc wrote a great article "How To Create A Captivating Headline". You can find it here: http://online-internet-marketing-strategy.com/headline.html

3. Don't sell anything in your ad.

Yep, you've read it right. Do not sell anything in your ad. Your main goal there is not to create a sale, but to create a lead, create a prospect who will buy from you later.

Would you prefer to generate 3-5 sales or to get 300-500 prospects ready to buy from you?

Offer free trial, free report, free ebook, free ecourse. Give away something valuable first. Create a prospect list. Establish relationships. And then *suggest* your product. Using this simple technique I achieved 10-15% conversion rate with my ecourse.

4. Make your ad easy to read.

Readers usually scan the message. They are busy, they don't have time to read your ad in complete details. It is your job to make it as easy for them as possible to scan it.

Use a short paragraphs. Use short sentences. Like this.

Use simple words. Don't forget that subheadlines work great. As well as bullets. Often subheadlines and bullet list is all that people read.

5. Tell the benefits.

If you offer something for free that doesn't mean that all the readers will jump into your offer automatically. You have to "sell" your free stuff too.

Tell me why should I bother and subscribe to your ecourse? What's there for me? Will I improve my life? Business?

Write down the complete list of benefits. Then make every benefit as powerful as you can. Use a power words. Give details.

And then put all your benefits into a bullet list. You're almost ready!

6. Create sense of urgency.

Make the readers act now. Tell them that tomorrow will be too late. Cause you've got just 50 free copies. Or they will be available only till midnight.

Give them a reason to act now. Explain why there is no time to procrastinate. Create a fear of loosing, create a sense of limited availability. That always works great.

Now you know everything you need to create a killer solo ad that pulls amazing results. All you have to do is to put it into practice.

About The Author

Arina Nikitina is the author of exclusive report "The Guru's Secret Formula To Creating Massive Online Cash Flow". For a limited time the report is available absolutely free of charge here: http://www.online-internet-marketing-strategy.com

arina@online-internet-marketing-strategy.com

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Lead Me On Learn About Internet Marketing Leads

Writen by Mal Keenan

Every business is engaged in selling something, whether a product, service, information, or something else. And sales usually begin with sales leads. As an offline example, new insurance and car sales people are frequently asked to compile lists of their friends, families, acquaintances, and so on. This list is used then as a lead builder - something to get the ball rolling towards that first big sale. The online world is no different. Every for-profit web site needs a steady flow of internet marketing leads. A big part of any online marketer*s job is to generate the leads that will ultimately be responsible for another sale. In particular, in the highly competitive online marketing arena, someone selling products and services to other marketers will need a steady flow of fresh internet marketing leads to fuel their sales.

Selling to internet marketers is a tough market segment to compete in. New products and services are released at an amazing rate. These new products and services are sometimes driven by new technology, other times by changes in market conditions or search engines, and still others are variations of existing products. Some of these products are themselves designed to help capture internet marketing leads!

There are several basic ways to capture new leads online. The most commonly recommended method is to build an email list. There*s an old direct marketing axiom *The money is in the list*, and this has held true on the internet as well. Email marketing may not work as well as it used to, due to spam filtering, but that*s not to say it*s not effective. After all, other than your time, it*s free to send, and response rates for email that does reach the intended recipients have remained steady. The theory of this type of internet marketing leads generation is that an email list works as the first part of a funnel system, whereby subscribers get some incentive to sign up for the list. It may be a free product, program, or report, or some other incentive that will then *funnel* responsive customers to your main products and services.

Other common lead generation techniques include using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, adding information about a site, product, or service to an email signature file, and posting and answering questions on marketing related forums. Just think, for someone selling to other marketers, what better free way is there to generate internet marketing leads than posting in forums where other marketers *hang out*?

Whatever the lead generation techniques a marketer uses, the most important thing to remember about finding internet marketing leads is this: to be effective, they must be targeted. This means that the leads you generate must be generally interested in the product or service you offer. For an extreme example, it probably wouldn*t make sense to try to generate leads for a knitting product on a site that is football-related. The target audience of a football site isn*t generally going to be interested in knitting products.

As you begin to build your marketing-related web business, be sure to plan a good internet marketing lead strategy from the outset. It shouldn*t be an afterthought that you*ll take care of someday - Give it a lot of consideration early on.

About The Author

Mal Keenan is editor and publisher of Home Business Tips Newsletter: Work at Home Business Opportunity.

For all your work at home business needs, visit here: Home based business opportunity work at home

Friday, November 7, 2008

4 Secrets To Turn Any Business Into A Successful Web Business Part 1

Writen by Lynn VanDyke

There are a few secrets that I'd like to share with you. You may have been privy to a few of them before. Actually you may have heard of all 4, but I can promise that you will finish each article with a fresh perspective. I will show you how 4 simple secrets can create a powerhouse web business. This is the first part of the 4 article series.

Before I divulge the vault of successful web business secrets I must warn you of one thing. All the information in the world will not take the place of determination and persistence. A web business is just like an offline business. It takes hard work and resolve to succeed. However working smart is heads and tails better than plain old working. These 4 secrets will turn any smart working, dedicated average Joe or Jane into a successful web business owner.

Web Success Secret #1) Content is king.

Heard that before? I know I have. The thing I never knew was how to use content to my advantage. Content is useless unless it is optimized for the search engines. It must also be optimized for your reader. You have two customers- readers and search engines. You must satisfy both with the same exact content.

Content is king only if you have exact and highly specific keywords placed in correct locations. Unfortunately the hard part is determining what keywords to use. A keyword can be a single word or a phrase. It is the term that web surfers use to search for information. Place yourself in their shoes and try to discover what search terms they use. You must then evaluate the search term. How many people search using that term? How many sites already deliver information on that search term? Simple demand and supply rules. The more demand with the less supply equals more profitability.

You have several options for determining keywords and their profit potential. Search yourself, pay a company to search for you or have your hosting company do a complete keyword search for your niche or web business topic. If your hosting company does not offer this service I recommend you switch to a plan that does. This feature alone can make or break your business' future. If you would like my recommended hosting plan, please contact me.

Without a proper keyword search and analysis you may as well forget about becoming successful with an Internet business. Investing in this one secret is literally the start of planning your website.

Your next action step is to plan your site layout based on the 50-175 high-demand and low-supply keywords. Your site should be structured in three tiers. Tier one is your home page. Tier two is made of all of your main topics and also constitutes your navigation bar buttons. Tier three keywords are sub-topics of tier two pages. Organize your 50-175 keywords into three tiers. Doing this makes it easier for visitors to navigate through your site and it makes it easier for search engine spiders to find all of your pages.

Search engine spiders do not like to fish around for all of your pages and links. This is why many sites offer a "site map". A site map is one page that contains links to all of the content pages. This is a fine route to take; however most people agree that pages with a lot of links on it are valued less than content pages that casually link to other content pages.

Using three tiers allows you to go from topic to sub-topic to sub-sub-topic all by natural in-content links. For example, tier 1 is the homepage on a fitness site. Tier 2 is a page all about cardio activity and its benefits. A tier three page off of that tier 2 page is about different treadmill routines. Do you see how the site visitor would like this structure? They click on "Cardio" and are given links to more specific pages about cardio topics. Search engine spiders like the three tier structure too. It means they do not have to dig through layers and levels of useless links.

There is even more to content than finding profitable keywords and structuring your site into easy-to-navigate tiers. You must optimize each and every page on your website to perform well and rank high at search engines. Many people devote their working life to optimization secrets. A full length article just on optimizing is possible. Heck, a full length book is possible. My recommendation is to use a hosting company that automatically teaches you how to optimize web pages for the engines. Doing that will cause less headache and frustration and it will keep you focused on building content.

A quick education in optimization: place your specific keyword in the file name, title, description and keyword section of your page. Then sprinkle the keyword throughout the content. Also provide a link using your specific keyword in the link text. If all of this has you spinning your head, I recommend going the hosting company I use. They literally teach you to build a website using blocks. It's all simple and easier than you think.

There is one last piece to content. It must effectively pre-sell your product or service and position you as the expert in your field. When your website has 50-175 optimized pages for your visitors to read through it will start to position you as the expert. Your site will become known as the place for information about (insert your niche).

When visitors find your site through search engines they are seeking information about a problem or question they have. If they land on your site and you try to sell them something right away one thing is sure- they click the back button and find another site that will give them information. This is why pre-selling your product or service is paramount. Give your visitors what they want. Answer their question and in the process let them know about your services and products.

All of the information develops rapport and trust with your site visitor. It positions you as an expert. It keeps your visitor on your site longer since they are actually reading content. Search engines notice this and rank you better. How well your site can keep visitors is known as "stickiness." Your site must attract and keep visitors for as long as possible.

Provide content that pre-sells your products, positions you as the expert and focuses on highly profitable keywords. You cannot go wrong with your web business if you do those things. The secret to content is to satisfy both your visitor and search engines. Lose one or both and you are doomed. As I mentioned earlier, it is best to work smarter and not harder. Your hosting company should be providing most of these services to you free of charge. There are a small few that do this, but it is well worth the investigation. Contact me for further resources and information. Having a successful web business starts with effective content. Stay tuned for parts 2-4!

Lynn VanDyke builds successful websites. She provides several options for business owners including a "Jump Start Your Online Business" CD-ROM. Visit http://www.LynnVanDyke.com to learn more about her and her services. Lynn's content website is ranked in all 3 major search engines and is in the top 1% of all websites worldwide according to Alexa.