Internet Marketing ABC

1. Establish yourself as a trusted expert. People are looking for information on the internet – and they will look to you to provide it to them. Every week (or whatever schedule you determine) provides an opportunity to build on this, while reinforcing your brand. I found that sometimes it’s most effective to email them several times a week, specially after they just signed up. (Because that is usually the time when their interest is the highest in many markets).
2. Build a relationship with your list. It’s common knowledge that people like to buy from people they like. By using ezines to establish a relationship with readers in their homes, you can make your readers like and trust you. Don’t be afraid to share a little about yourself or your company in every issue, whether it be an anecdote, event, or employee spotlight.
3. Keep in touch with prospects and clients. Consideration should be given to eventually developing two ezines: one for prospects and one for clients, as each require different information. (There’s a fancy word for that: it’s called list segmentation. And while it is a bit of work, it absolutely will be worth it!). This is a great way to remind your readers of weekly specials, updates to your FAQs, or new and improved products you will be launching, in addition to articles of interest.
4. Drive traffic to your web site or blog. Call attention to new blog posts or other changes to your web site, with links directly to those pages. Remind readers of your online newsletter archives. Promote special sales (maybe with discount coupon codes only for subscribers) with a link to the sales page. Use links to turn your ezines and newsletters into “silent salespersons” – driving traffic to your web site and building your lists.
5. Build content on your web site. Make a habit to adding your ezines and newsletters to your web site in an Archive area. This serves a few purposes.
   • Visitors can read an issue or two to determine if your ezine will be of interest to them, which will increase sign-ups and retention.
   • If you optimize your article placements, it will not only make your web site “meatier”, but bring new traffic from the search engines.
6. Get feedback from your readers. Make it easy for your prospects and customers to get in touch. Ask them to take action and comment on your articles. Conduct a survey. Start a “Letters to the Editor” column in your ezine. Feedback allows you to fine tune your message, improve your marketing, and expand your product line.
7. Develop an information product. If you deliver your newsletter once a week and include two articles, at the end of a year you’ll have 104 well-researched articles in your portfolio! Pick the best-of-the-best and turn them into a bonus ebook for opting-in to your list, submit to download sites to build your list, or sell in PDF-format!
8. Grow your mailing list. Let your ezine subscribers work for you. Be sure to remind your readers that it’s okay to forward your newsletter to anyone they’d like. In addition, it’s important to include sign-up directions for those who received your ezine from viral marketing methods. A simple line titled, “Get Your Own Copy of XXXXXX”, with a link to your squeeze or opt-in page is all it takes!
9. Gather demographic data. By offering surveys, feedback forms, and niche reports, you’ll be able to get valuable information about your prospects and customers. Learn what makes your readers tick, how to better serve them, and make sure they become repeat customers.
10. Save money! All of the above benefits of publishing an ezine are free or almost free. The small cost for a top-rate ezine publishing system is nothing compared to the cost of brochures, business cards, advertising, direct mail, pay-per-click or other means of promotion. Because your newsletter is delivered online, you can grow your list to be as large as you want without worrying about the expense. Bottom line − it’s been proven that email marketing is the most cost-effective solution for companies just like yours.

If you currently don’t have an ezine yet, but already have a website, then by all means, this should be the first thing you do. Once you have a targeted list, it’s really the easiest way to make money online. I personally use and recommend GetResponse. You can sign up for a free GetResponse email marketing service trial here.

John Reese published a new report called “Internet Marketing 2010: The Road Ahead”. You can check it out here.

Free download. No opt-in. Check it out:

http://www.box.net/shared/static/y576k2d1q7.pdf

Michel Fortin has done an interview with SEO Expert David Jenyns. (Or the other way around). Back in September, Jenyns published it on his blog, and it’s worth listening to. You can find the download link here in this post.

Google AdWords specialist Perry Marshall just published an MP3 of his interview with Joshua Bozwell – you can listen to it online here, or download the mp3.

In it, he covers:

1. An ultra-simplified picture, a widget, a visual tool you can use to dramatically SHRINK the size of the marketing job in front of you. In the middle of the call we give out a link. A super-handy 1-page PDF that takes the entire marketing challenge and reduces it to six questions.

2. The internal resistance, the fear you feel, the procrastination and the head demons that suddenly attack when you’re about to make a breakthrough

Unfortunately, that thing is 56 minutes long, but might well be worth loading onto your iPod and listen to it on your way to wherever.

I (and pretty much any other successful online marketer) will tell you that the most valuable asset your online business can have is your email list. You know that old saying, right? “The Money Is In The List”. It’s true.

My favourite Email marketing service is GetResponse. I use it myself, and I love it. Specially because in the beginning, when I had questions (I am really NOT a technical person which surprises most people with all the money I make on the internet…), their customer service always replied quickly and to the point. You can sign up for a free GetResponse trial here.

The foundation for successful email marketing is a targeted, responsive and permission-based email list. If you have a list of subscribers that trust you and consider you an expert, you’ve completed the first step and are on your way!

Here several ways to help you grow your list faster:

1. Become Sir Blogalot. Blogging is a great way to communicate with your potential customers, and it creates a nice synergy with your email marketing. Be sure to include your newsletter sign-up form on each page of your blog. You can start a free blog at Blogger or Wordpress.
2. Add a subscription form to every page of your website. Make sure it stands out so it is easy to find. If appropriate, you can also include it in more than one place. For instance, your opt-in form might always appear in the top-left corner of your site, while you also include an opt-in at the bottom of some of your popular articles.
3. Add a squeeze page. A squeeze page has one goal − to get an opt-in and build your list. Think of it like a mini-sales letter for your subscription or opt-in bonus. It features a powerful headline and a couple of very important benefits that should make subscribers salivate to sign up to your list. Once created, use a service such as WordTracker to find hundreds of targeted keywords, and advertise there using pay-per-click advertising from Google, MSN and Yahoo.
4. Post on other blogs. Post great comments and information on similar blogs with a link to your squeeze or opt-in page. Also comment on others’ blogs through trackbacks. In most cases, your comments will be posted on their blogs with a link back to your site. This is an easy way to generate new traffic and subscribers.
5. Make it easy for your reader to sign up. The more information you request, the fewer people will opt-in. In most cases, a name and an email address should suffice. If it’s not necessary, don’t include it here. (Note: If you don’t have a Privacy Policy, put the words “privacy policy generator” into a search engine and you should be able to find a suitable form for your readers to review.
6. Show your first issue or other sample to your visitors. This lets potential subscribers review your newsletter before they sign up to determine if it is something they’d be interested in.
7. Archive past newsletter issues. A “library” of past newsletters is both appealing and useful to visitors and builds your credibility as an authority. In addition, if your articles are written with good SEO techniques in mind, they can send additional traffic to your web site through good search engine positioning.
8. Contact other newsletter publishers. Introduce yourself and explore ways you may be able to help each other. Perhaps you can introduce other publisher’s newsletters or print articles they have written to your list, with a link to sign up. When you contact them, be sure to tell them why you think THEIR readers would like what you have to offer and why YOUR readers would benefit from their newsletters. This is a win-win scenario; both of you will build your lists faster!
9. Ask your subscribers to pass it on. Word of mouth is a powerful viral technique that works great with email marketing. If your subscribers find the content you share with them to be informative, they will pass your newsletter on to their friends. This can be a good source of new subscribers.
10. Include a “Sign Up” button in the newsletter. If you are using plain text instead of HTML, provide a text link to your subscription page. You may feel that this is not required because the subscriber is already on your list, but remember that readers will forward your newsletters to others, or reprint it online. You want to make it easy for them to subscribe.
11. Include testimonials on your squeeze page. This is crucial. Put 1 or 2 strong testimonials from satisfied subscribers on your squeeze page. This can be in any format, but you may find that multimedia (audio or video social proof) is more “believable”. To increase that believability, include full names, locations and/or urls; don’t use “Bob K, FL” as a testimonial name.
12. Let others reprint your newsletter as long as the content is not modified. Many webmasters and newsletter publishers are actively looking for high-quality content and, if they reprint your newsletter, you will get new subscribers, traffic and links pointing to your site.
13. Give away bonuses subscribers can use. Create an opt-in bonus for joining your subscriber list. You can write an ebook or PDF report, or even hire a programmer to create downloadable or web-based software. But don’t limit yourself to only a gift for new opt-ins. Remind your readers that the next bonus is coming soon. People hate to miss out on things. If you systematically pass on “goodies” throughout the year, your subscribers are unlikely to leave.
14. Publish a Privacy Policy. Let your readers know that they can be confident you will not share their information with others. The easiest way to do this is to set up a Privacy Policy web page and provide the link to it below your opt-in form.
15. Provide useful, relevant and unique content. Your visitors will not give you their email addresses just because they can subscribe to your newsletter free of charge. You have to provide unique and valuable information that will be useful to your subscribers.

I hope you foound these tips useful and will try them yourself. These are all “basic” list-building strategies, but the basics work better than all the new shiny tools I have ever tried. Constant practice will build your list fast. Again, my service of choice is GetResponse. You can sign up for a free GetResponse trial here.

When you start out with a new domain, remember to build things slowly. It’s easy to get overly excited at the beginning, but you really want to appear natural in order not to raise a red flag with Google.

Joel Comm wrote about using Keywords in Twitter, and why it might be a good idea.

One of  the best domain name registrars has rolled out a new affiliate program: Namecheap.

If all you care about is affiliate commissions, then I suggest you instead promote GoDaddy. But if you not just care about how much you earn for your referrals, but also care about recommending real quality, then NameCheap should be your number one choice. They have been in this business for a long time and have established a rock-solid reputation with serious online marketers.

And by the way, if you are looking for a Namecheap coupon, then try this one: DREAMTIME

for domain transfers: SWITCH2NC

These are working as of right now, but are temporarily.

With an Autoresponder like GetResponse, you can set it so that you get an email notification about every time someone subscribes. And not only that, you also get to see where exactly they come from. (The Country, the state, the city). Plus, you can see which signup form they used (if you have ref codes in your different signup forms).

This can be very valuable data. For example, I recently found that one of my nichesites gets almost exclusively non-US and non-European signups.

If you are running PPC campaigns, you can use these infos for your geotargeting. And you might also want to check your stats and see how large a percentage of the people who visit your website is American.

If there are many Americans visiting your website, but nobody is signing up, then that should get you thinking why.

Check out this really cool landing page. It’s all handwritten. I don’t know what it does do the conversion, but I think in a super crowded and jaded market like marketing, it definitely is an attention grabber. Frank Kern and Perry Belcher recently experimented with handwritten letters, and his handwritten squeeze page is kind of interesting. I signed up for it just because I was wondering what you guys coming up with gets the idea and actually implements it to write such a squeeze page.

Part of that, the idea obviously gives him some extra exposure, because more people like me are not talking about it and linking to it, so it even has some SEO benefits.