The Internet Marketing Report

Facebook SEO Tricks

Simple SEO Facebook tricks that you probably have never heard about.  In the age of social media, don't forget the usefulness of e mail marketing.  Jim shares the behind the scenes of his huge breaking news story on a $100 million dollar worldwide Ponzi scheme called Profitable Sunrise.  How to deal with poor conversion rates at your website.

 

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Three Ways to Help You Achieve Guru Status

In the previous article, we defined the guru and discussed the general process of achieving guru status. Now, let’s talk more specifically about some of the key steps you can take to thoroughly attain guru status.

Write articles. We all assume that a person whose name is attached in authorship to an article is an expert in the article’s subject matter; why not have your name there? There are many publications in your community that are constantly looking for new material. We talk a lot about online magazines and online article aggregators like Ezine Articles (www.ezinearticles.com) as places through which you can become published in cyberspace, but do not neglect giving consideration to your local marketplace. Most areas have small, community periodicals of one sort or another that would be very easy to penetrate with a thoughtful, well-written article, and that can often get the ball rolling toward larger publications.

Write books. Think of the credibility and authority one gains as the author of an article, and multiply that by ten; that’s the sort of weight that book authorship can carry. What’s more, if you would prefer to author a physical, printed book rather than an ebook, there are now some great ways to get that done that do not involve you humbling yourself to traditional publishing houses. One great resource in this regard is Lulu (www.lulu.com), which offers on-demand printing, publishing, and distribution services. While Lulu’s costs can vary substantially based on which and how many of their specific services you decide to use, the general guideline to keep in mind as far as revenue “split” is 80% for you and 20% for Lulu...which is a whole lot better

Producing & selling information. The production and sales of information is an activity that could, in part, include the activities of writing articles and books, but is cited here to highlight other, less traditional ways of developing information for distribution. For example, creating videos and audios in this age of digital delivery are excellent examples of what we’re talking about. Beyond giving you something else to sell, creating digitally-delivered videos and audios makes you a true multi-media presence, which, again, adds to your authority. Assuming you write articles and put out a book here and there, and now make additional information contributions through these alternate resources, not only do you start to become ubiquitous, but you can cite all of these different mediums and mechanisms as areas in which you have experience.

Helping you make the most of God's money!  

James L. Paris
Founder -  Christian Internet Income
Follow Me on Twitter www.twitter.com/jameslparis 
Jim Paris Radio

 

Internet Consulting - A Smart Way To Barter With Local Businesses

 

In this episode, how to use your Internet expertise to start a local consulting practice and barter with local businesses, why you need a mobile version of your website, building a business with a smaller but deeper customer base, questions you should be prepared to answer if you plan on marketing yourself as a social media consultant.  Hosted by James L. Paris and Robert G. Yetman, Jr.

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Think You Can’t Be a Guru? Think Again

Let’s talk about positioning yourself as an expert in your field, which can be so important in driving traffic to your website or blog. This can be essential to realizing the kind of success you likely seek - the more that others care about you and what you have to say, the more they will be inclined to visit your site and purchase your products.

One of the great misconceptions about pursuing guru status is the idea that, in order to be one, you have to be the best and the brightest in your field. While you clearly must have good, credible knowledge of your subject area, the truth is that attaining guru status is as much about marketing as it is about having a tremendous grasp of the material that makes up your topic.

What, then, is a guru, really…and not the dictionary definition, but the definition in terms of a successful, well-marketed, prosperous entrepreneur? According to Robert W. Bly, author of Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field in 60 Days or Less, gurus are not gurus merely because they are great at what they do, but also because they are great at marketing and selling themselves. As an example, Bly cites the demand for noted attorney Alan Dershowitz, whose track record as a lawyer pales in comparison to many others; however, relates Bly, when the media is looking for a legal expert to interview regarding a high-profile case, it is often Dershowitz’s phone that rings first. Why is that? The answer is because he has gone out of his way to market himself, in addition to maintaining and enhancing his professional credentials. He is a recognized authority in his field, with the emphasis on recognized.

This is the sort of thing on which we would all be wise to focus more, as Internet marketers. What can you do to become more like a Dr. Phil-type of personality in your field, to the point where everyone from customers to radio and TV interviewers are pursuing you? The answer is to market, to self-promote. Always think in terms of the tried-and-true Internet marketing tools that help to build traffic, but do not forget the huge impact that is made by becoming a recognized expert in your field.

In an upcoming article, we will discuss some specific strategies you can implement in order to attain the guru status that can be such a game-changer.

Helping you make the most of God's money!  

James L. Paris
Founder -  Christian Internet Income
Follow Me on Twitter www.twitter.com/jameslparis 
Jim Paris Radio

Look to Subdomains as a Cost-Effective Way to Leverage Your Internet Presence

If you keep buying domains, things can get expensive; still, if you are in the business of providing information, what you have to offer is essentially limitless, and it won’t be long before you realize that having a multitude of domains is in your best interests. It is not unusual for professional Internet marketers to own thousands of domain names, but if you seek to continue to expand your efforts, you will be in the position of needing to expand your domain ownership, and it can get pricey.  

In order to help keep this cost down, you would be wise to look to the use of subdomains. A subdomain is a domain that is basically part of a larger domain. For example, you may be familiar with the blogging platform Typepad. Typad.com would be the root domain that represents Typepad. However, when you first sign up with Typepad, you will be assigned your own domain that’s really a subdomain. For example, if your name is John Smith and you just opened an account with Typepad, the basic subdomain that represents your online presence with them would be johnsmith.typepad.com. It could not be typepad.com, because that is the root that represents the Typepad company, but by allowing for this sort of variation as a subdomain, Typepad can maintain its proprietary interest in your blog while still providing you with a stand-alone web presence.

With most Internet accounts, you receive a large number of subdomains for free in addition to the domain you purchase; for example, with a basic GoDaddy account, you receive up to 90 subdomains for free, and as for search engine usefulness, by using subdomains to your keyword-based root, you can preserve that root, and the integrity of your keyword-friendly root domain, and still maintain a variety of components of your site to which you can direct people easily.

Subdomains allow you to promote something specific on your main website but still give the promoted section its own, easy-to-remember identity without having to purchase another, separate domain. Looking at them in this fashion, as domain mechanisms that can stand alone but still work very much in concert with your root domain, can solve a lot of problems for you as you seek to find the best, most cost-effective way to market.

Helping you make the most of God's money!  

James L. Paris
Founder -  Christian Internet Income
Follow Me on Twitter www.twitter.com/jameslparis 
Jim Paris Radio

Add Weight to Your Internet Business with an Offline Newsletter

Internet businesses are everywhere precisely because they are so easy (relatively) and cost-effective to set up and maintain - that’s part of the attraction. That said, even if your Internet presence and online product(s) are obviously valuable, there is still a perceived benefit to having an offline presence, as well, and one of the best ways to gain that presence is through a traditional newsletter. Having a physical newsletter that is received by your followers/subscribers by mail gives your Internet business the look and feel of something more substantial.

There are basically two ways you can use an offline newsletter. One is as a free mailer that you can send to your followers as a way to get them to “adhere” a little more to your online presence. The other is as a stand-alone product for which you charge a subscription fee. These are the same two ways in which ebooks can be used; as free marketing tools, or as saleable products.

One of the things that’s great about offline newsletters is that they can serve as the representative physical product that you present to the general public on behalf of your business. Your offline newsletter can actually become the product for which you are principally known and through which you chiefly market yourself. You can go from being “John Smith of Auto Repair.com” to “John Smith, Editor of The Auto Repair Newsletter.” For a lot of folks, whenever they hear someone referred to as the editor of the thus-and-so magazine or newsletter, they will tend to give that person a little more of the all-important credibility you seek as an expert in your field. Your role as the editor of that newsletter can be just the ticket that gets you booked on local or even national media.

There are a great many software applications you can use to create a professional newsletter, including the popular Microsoft Publisher. They are easy to use, and once you have finished laying out your newsletter online, all you have to do is convert the file to a PDF, send it (along with your list of subscribers) over to your printer, and you’re done. It’s relatively easy, not terribly expensive, and can give you a tremendous leg up on your competition!

Helping you make the most of God's money!  

James L. Paris
Founder -  Christian Internet Income
Follow Me on Twitter www.twitter.com/jameslparis 
Jim Paris Radio

A Facebook Page in Addition to Your Website or Blog? Absolutely!

The world of Internet marketing is ever-evolving, and one way in which it certainly continues to do so is in the availability of quality platforms from which you can market yourself and get out your message. On that note, the Facebook Page for businesses is just one more great resource that can add power to your “reachability” and thus your overall marketing efforts. Facebook is very much “spidered” by the search engines, meaning that the appropriate programs that exist to find web pages and feed them to the search engines in the form of results will find Facebook quickly, easily, and effectively.

Setting up a Facebook Page is also something that will give you a great deal of credibility with your existing website or blog. Take a random look around at the websites of the biggest and most popular companies, and rarely will you come across one these days that does not also have an associated Facebook Page noted. If companies like these have seen fit to recognize the value of the aforementioned “social capital” that Facebook can generate, why would you not use the mechanism for your own business?

Having a Facebook business Page also gives you a format through which to do some interesting things. For example, a lot of Internet marketers are getting into the use of video nowadays. You can create a video, put it on YouTube, and then link that video directly to your Facebook Page. Additionally, there is a tab that allows a discussion group to be started, as well as many other features that embolden your presence in the social media realm without you having to build another proprietary website.

Facebook has become so popular now that there is a great chance you will be found through your Facebook Page before you will be found through your own “regular” site. Accordingly, your Facebook Page and your website can do a terrific job serving the needs of each other in the way each picks up traffic. In the end, having a Facebook Page for your business is just too easy...and too valuable...to ignore.  

Helping you make the most of God's money!  

James L. Paris
Founder -  Christian Internet Income
Follow Me on Twitter www.twitter.com/jameslparis 
Jim Paris Radio

How To Use Hashtags To Increase Traffic And Followers

On this episode - What are hashtags and how do you use them?  Twitter's new cover graphic. How to get more from your e mail campaign. Tips on dealing with procrastination.

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Internet Marketing - It's The e Mail Address Stupid

Most of the “gurus” will tell you that you’re better off grabbing the email rather than making an attempt at the direct sale. Most of the people who visit a site for the first time will not buy anything on that first visit, so unless you have a way to at least capture their email addresses, there’s a good chance that you will lose many of those people forever. Even if you have a website that’s not selling anything, you still want to have a way to dial in a more permanent connection with site visitors, and email marketing mechanisms are a good way to do that.

One solution to creating a more “captive” visitor base is to offer to give something to the person who passes along his email; it could be a free ebook, a free subscription to a simple newsletter you create (it could be just a page in length), or another enticement to get visitors to give you their emails.

Think about the fact that you go to all of the trouble of attracting visitors to your site in the first place, but then have no tangible method in place by which to at least try to keep that visitor better “tied” to your site; the solution could well be an email list, and it could prove to be your greatest business asset, overall. If you picked up just three names a day, over the course of a year you would have an email list of 1,000 names.

In order to install an email marketing mechanism like those that will allow you to do what we’re talking about, you can use a service like iContact (www.icontact.com). iContact will be able to do everything you realistically would want to do in the realm of email marketing, and the pricing begins at about $10 per month. Note that pricing does vary based on the number of subscribers you want to be able to reach, so the pricing range, while beginning at $10, can go up to $700 per month for 100,000 subscribers, and they have specialized pricing and services in the event your list is larger than that (a nice problem to have). Another thing that’s helpful about a service like iContact is that with all of the rules in place now about spam, iContact will ensure that all of your emails and associated mechanisms are compliant with current laws. Get started! 

Helping you make the most of God's money!  

James L. Paris
Founder -  Christian Internet Income
Follow Me on Twitter www.twitter.com/jameslparis 
Jim Paris Radio

Explode Your Traffic With Simple No Frills Videos

In your quest to build traffic, you’re missing out on a large audience if you don’t go to the (very minor) trouble of getting your message out through the use of video. The world is composed of people who like to receive information in a variety of different ways, and the advent of the “new media” allows an audience to read, listen to audio, and view video all via the mechanism of the Internet. If you’re not taking advantage of the YouTube craze (which is more than a craze and likely something that’s here to stay), you are unnecessarily handing yourself a significant disadvantage.

Very often, people thinking about using YouTube are concerned that perhaps their topic is not “video-friendly;” that is, it is not a topic that lends itself to visual excitement. However, it doesn’t have to be, and that’s the great thing about this. Because of the way you will usually be assembling your video...that is, with you simply speaking into a camera...there really is no topic that does not lend itself to being the subject of a YouTube video. Remember that the written word, the audio file, and the video file are simply different means by which to disseminate information. If you’re struggling with this issue, it may be because you’re still thinking that a video has to be some sort of contrived production beyond simply a person looking into a camera and speaking—well, it doesn’t, and what’s more, that would be a risky type of video to produce if your ultimate goal is to simply put out information; unless you have some real experience producing anything remotely clever on video, your best bet is to keep things very straightforward. Otherwise, you run the risk of having a video that is indeed popular...but for all of the wrong reasons.

In the end, a video can be as simple as a graphic version of your most recent article. You could even go as far as to simply “read” your article into the camera, although I wouldn’t suggest being quite that simplistic. Rather, you could do a video that paraphrases the article, and perhaps includes some other points that the article doesn’t cover. That’s a good approach, because you can then invite the viewers of your video to read your article for more information, while inviting your article readers to refer to your video for “further insight,” or something along those lines – you can develop a nice symbiosis between the two mechanisms for your benefit.

Helping you make the most of God's money!  

James L. Paris
Founder -  Christian Internet Income
Follow Me on Twitter www.twitter.com/jameslparis