Get Your Subscribers Begging

The Experiment

Just as an experiment, a friend of mine subscribe to ten
different opt-in e-mail marketing lists to see which ones
are effective. Many websites and online businesses have
resorted to sending promotional materials to people who
have subscribed to them in an effort to boost their sales
or traffic. Opt-in email marketing sends newsletters,
catalogs updates and many more promotional materials to
website visitors who have agreed to be updated whether
monthly, weekly or semiannually.

Through e-mail, an internet user that is on the list will
receive their updates through email. If a promotional
material piques their interest they will go to the site to
learn more or to purchase outright. For the website
operators or owners, this is a chance to remind their list
of their existence and parlor their wares. With the
numerous sites in the internet that offers the same
products or services in one way or the other, the
competition can get pretty tight and it is easy to be
forgotten.

What Makes An Opt-in Marketing Strategy
Effective?

Back to my experimenting friend, he tried to find out which
opt-in marketing strategies grabbed a person into begging
for more. Some would send in very simple fashion, some
would very outlandish while there are some that would just
lie in between. The differences could easily be noticed and
some have gotten the idea of an effective opt-in marketing
strategy. He dubbed them effective because he felt like he
just couldn’t wait to go their site and learn more, the
more persuasive ones even got him halfway to reaching for
his wallet and to his credit card before he realized this
was only for an experiment.

Creativity Is The Key

Many companies and site present their promo materials
in a wide variety of concepts. Each has their own
distinctive style and designs, but more than the outline
and the presentation, the content and the articles are what
keeps the attention of your potential customer locked on to
your opt-in marketing medium. Creativity is the key here.

From talking to many satisfied opt-in list subscribers and
forums, I have learned of what is essential in opt-in
marketing and what makes the subscribers begging for more
instead of lining up to unsubscribe.

Opt-in Marketing Essentials

Keep Promotional Materials Light Hearted

Keep your promotional materials light, creative and
original. Many people are stressed out as it is. Getting a
stuffy business proposal rather than a light hearted e-mail
may just agitate them more. A warm friendly smile or banter
is always more welcome than a serious business meeting or
proposal. While you do want your customers to take you and
your products and services seriously, you also want to show
them that you know how to have fun.

Make Your Materials Eye Catching

Splash some color in your emails as well as provide some
photos and articles that can be related to you but show
good news or good light hearted images as well. Provide a
newsletter or promotional materials that will keep them in
a light mood. Make your materials eye catching and grabbing
that they wont be able to take their eyes of them. Pique
their interests.

Provide Effective Content

Provide relative and interesting content, even if it means
investing in an experienced and professional copy writer to
write them for you. An effective copy writer should be able
to build trust between you and your customers. They should
be able to establish your credibility in what they write.
It must be informative but not too stuffy. Let go of the
professional jargons and “talk“to your recipients.

Effective content should be able to provide products and
services that they need. But do not look overeager or try
to be too persuasive. Your newsletters should entertain as
well as lead your subscribers to buying from you.

Promotional Materials Should Be Clear

Your promotional materials should be clear. Don’t leave
people guessing. You should lead them to you and not vice
versa. Explain to them what they need to do in a manner
that won’t be confusing. Try to anticipate also what your
target client needs. Do your research and information
gathering, many sites will be able to help you with that.

Provide Clear And Crisp Images

Provide clear and crisp images of what you are offering. If
the people know what you have for them, they are more
likely to beg for more. For example, if you are selling a
car, provide them photos but only enough to encourage them
to go to your site for more.

David Hudson, webmaster of webcashlink,
business articles author, and a successful affiliate,
can help you with your online business.
Visit: Webcashlink

Designing a Website That Sells

Website Design Can Make Or Break Your Sales

Would you buy meat from a
grocer that you knew left
bad meat with good meat or
wasn’t clean? Would you buy
a car from a sales lot that
had totaled automobiles on
the front row? I wouldn’t and
neither would you. Your website is your grocery store
or car lot. You must have an atmosphere that is pleasing
to buyers and one that tells the buyer that you aren’t
an amateur, but that you are a trained and seasoned
professional. Your site is a direct reflection of you
and your business, and that is why having a well
designed website can make or break your sales.


Design Your Website For “Surfability”

The first thing to keep in mind when designing your
website is “surfability”. Take a few minutes and look
around at several web pages. What makes them
appealing? Were there some that you closed out of
immediately? Why? Take notes and do your research.
Keep in mind that when a person visits your site, they
have a goal in mind. They are either seeking
information or shopping for a product. Give the
person what they want without having to search for it.
Be sure all the information on your site is
relevant to your product. Make the buyer think that
they need your product to solve their problem.


First Impressions Of Your Business

Your main page serves a very specific purpose. It
should be an avenue by which the customer can shop
your site. It should be easy to view and needs to load
very quickly. First impressions of your business will be
determined here, and we all know that first impressions
can either close the deal or loose it. Make it simple. It’s
best to have links that are easily viewed by the reader
and that will allow them to navigate with ease. Tables
are often a great choice when deciding on a way to
design the main page of your site. Again, your main
page should load very quickly. Chances are, if it takes
the page more than ten seconds to load, even on a 56k
modem, the customer will click away to save time,
hoping to find the information or product elsewhere.
To increase the loading speed of your main page, you
should avoid large graphics or excessive graphics. Too
many banners or special effects can cause a page to
load slowly as well.


Make Your Web Site More Appealing

To make your web site more appealing to the eyes, you
should stick to mild colors. If your site is a content
site where the user will be doing a lot of reading, it’s
best to stick to black and white. Color can be added
when using tables as a way to brighten up the page,
but you need to remember to keep the overall
look of the page professional and appealing to the
audience that will be visiting most often. Since
screen resolutions vary among monitors, it is a good
idea to set the pixels to a standard 800x600. You may
also choose to set the tables in your web page to span
a percentage of the page rather than a set number of
inches. This will help to accommodate all screen
sizes. You should remember that a lot of internet
users will not use the same browser as you, and
therefore you should be sure that your site looks as
good on other browsers as it does your own. You can
do this by downloading several browsers through which
to look at your page.


Website Design - An Excellent Marketing Strategy

Be aware of the fact that the overall look of your
website can enhance your ability to make money.
The appearance of your site, if designed properly,
can be an excellent marketing strategy for your product or service.


David Hudson, webmaster of webcashlink,
business articles author, and a successful affiliate,
can help you with your online business.
Visit: Setuponce

Internet Advertising Options

Online Business Advertising

Your online business will likely require more
advertising than a contemporary business downtown.
Some new to the world of online business do not invest
the time or money to advertise their business
appropriately and therefore loose money. Your online
business is crammed into the World Wide Web along with
thousands of others selling the same product or
service. For example, in your hometown you want to
open an art supply store, but there are already
several art supply stores in that location. In order
for your business to be successful, it will have to
stand out in some way from all the others. This is
exactly what happens when a business is opened online.

Promote Your Online Business

There is so much competition that you must take
drastic measures to ensure that you are getting
noticed. Advertising can be done in so many ways
online. Here are some of the most successful ways that
you can promote your online business:


For more information about how to start and succeed in
your own home based business, check it out here


Advertise In Ezines

Advertising in ezines is a popular way to promote your
online business. Ezines are the magazines of the
internet, as they're written on a particular subject
and read by those interested in that subject.
Therefore, ezine readers are already potential
customers, and advertising your site in ezines that
are related to your business is an excellent way to
drive targeted traffic to your site and increase sales
for your product. Be careful to insure, when
advertising in ezines, that you are not advertising
along side competitors. Ask the ezine producer if
there's a policy concerning posting competing ads.
It's also a good idea to subscribe to the ezine before
making a decision about whether to advertise in it. An
ezine that runs fewer ads is a better choice than one
that runs many. You can look at the online Directory
of Ezines to find publications that are relevant to
your company.

Check out our subscriber's preferred ezine
advertising choice here.

PPC Strategies

Pay-per-click programs are an excellent way to
advertise your business without taking a risk that you
have advertised in the wrong place. With
pay-per-click, you can advertise your site, yet only
pay for those clicks that actually go to your site.
Another popular "pay-per" program is the pay-per-lead
program, which only requires you to pay for leads.
Usually, this means you pay for those leads which
download a trial subscription, fill out a form, or
enter a sweepstakes, etcetera. Lastly, you can display
pay-per-click banner ads. Basically, you place a
banner on another businesses' site and are charged for
every click that your banner receives.

Email Marketing

Opt-In email is another great way to advertise your
business. However, it is expensive and very easily
misused. To use the opt-in email program, you must
submit your sales copy to the company that will in
turn email it to those on their mailing list. You
should be very careful since some of the companies
that advertise their mailing lists as an opt-in email
service are the product of SPAM. It is essential that
you have an error-free effective sales letter when
using opt-in mailing lists. Without and effective
sales copy, your money and time will have been wasted.


David Hudson, webmaster of webcashlink,
business articles author, and a successful affiliate,
can help you with your online business.
Visit: Webcashlink

Download "Online Advertising Exposed" A Free Report Here

Does Your Biz Really Need Video

Download Your Copy Here










Don't you wish you could wave a magic wand and poof! Your
optin leads would start flooding your inbox with orders
each day like they do for the gurus?

But you need a ton of optins each day to do that, dont you?
Or do you.....

What if I showed you how to start converting the few measly
optin leads that you get each day to start buying from you
like they do from the gurus?

Its totally possible...

In fact Frank Bruno was only getting about 1-5 optin leads
each day through his squeeze page and was happy converting
them nicely at about 2%...

Until....

He put a specific 40 second video in a specific location on
his site and then the next morning when he checked his
stats he about fell off his chair to see that his optins
were actually buying from him.

He just dismissed it as some sort of fluke and didn't
expect the same thing to happen again the next day.

But then it happened again... And the next day again... And
the day after again...

He couldn't figure out how he was getting so many sales
when hardly anybody was opting into his squeeze page.

This was impossible, the conversions were way too high for
the amount of subscribers, This wasn't normal Frank
thought.

The only change that he made was by adding a 40 sec. video
to his site. Could this video be that powerful Frank
Thought??

To check out Frank's Video that’s converting 35% of his few
measly optins each day into buying customers click on the
link below.

http://www.Custom-Niche-Videos.com

David Hudson, webmaster of webcashlink,
business articles author, and a successful affiliate,
can help you with your online business.
Visit: Webcashlink

The Need for Video with Internet Marketing

If you aren’t using video to promote you products then you
are completely missing the boat. Video is the best way to
promote your products and if you aren’t using it then you
are literally allowing money to slip through your hands and
into the pockets of someone else who is using video.

Put another way, if you aren’t using video then you are
still living in 2001, still trying to sell like it’s 2001,
but everyone who’s buying is years beyond that.

Do I have your attention? I hope so. Because what I am
about to tell you will increase your profits AND make your
life easier. Sounds good, right? Well, it is good.

All the big Internet Marketers have already discovered the
advantages to using video. People love to watch things –
especially in today’s world. If given the choice, 90% of
people will choose to watch something rather than read it.
Therefore, more people will watch a video that’s pitching a
product than read a sales letter that’s pitching the exact
same product.

This is perhaps the greatest reason to use video – you and
your product get much more exposure. Helping you get even
more exposure is the fact that most videos can now be
shared. So if you have a great video, people can watch it,
like it, and then share it with their friends. This equals
even more exposure.

Now, the two keys to video that are often overlooked are
sharing it with the proper sites and making the video
interesting and/or entertaining. If you don’t share it with
popular sites then no one is even going to be exposed to
your video. And if you don’t make it interesting or
entertaining then people will click out of the video before
you can even pitch the product.

Here is a list of fourteen of the most popular video sites
right now. The first six or so are in order of their
popularity in the United States and the rest are in no
particular order.

Places you want to upload your video to:

1. YouTube
2. Google Video
3. vids.myspace.com
4. Yahoo! Video
5. MSN Video
6. AOL Video
7. Daily Motion 8.
Halaro.com
9. Metacafe
10. iFilm
11. Addicting Clips
12. Heavy.com
13. Break.com
14. Veoh

You should shoot to get your video ranked high on the
Search Engines. To help with this make sure you include
your keywords in the description of the video. Also,
include the most important keyword (or key phrase) in the
title of the video.

It’s not quite so easy to make your video entertaining
and/or interesting. In fact, there is a fine line that must
be walked – keeping your video fun while still selling
something. You want to come-up with a creative idea and
make sure that you aren’t talking in a monotone on the
video. Some people are better off hiring a voice
professional to do the speaking for them.

Of course there is a lot more that can and will be said
about video marketing in the future. There are also many
new products that will help product sales even more. Video
marketing is the future and the future is now. So make sure
you aren’t living in the past.

If you want to learn one of the simplest ways to put video
online without having to hire someone else to do it for
you, check out Easy Web Video:

Check it out here:
http://www.webcaslink.com/recommends/1236659

David Hudson, webmaster of webcashlink,
business articles author, and a successful affiliate,
can help you with your online business.
Visit: Setuponce

Want More Visitors to Your Site?

The main point of your site is obviously to get people to
visit and then to come back as often as possible. Of course
the first thing you need to do is work hard on your site to
make sure it looks great and that people can find what they
want quickly and easily. After you put in the hard work of
getting your site looking just right, then you just need to
draw people into your site and then get them to keep coming
back.

Here are a few ways to do just that.

Create a Newsletter

It’s really quite easy to send out a newsletter by email
every month. All you need is content and a mail client.

You can collect names easy enough by having an opt-in box
right on the home page of your web site. Then make sure you
provide quality information to the people who receive your
newsletter. This will keep people reading your newsletter
and it will also keep people coming back to your site.

Update Your Web Site Often

If people come back to your site and they find it the exact
same every time then these people will get bored and stop
coming back. So you want to update your site with new
content everyday or at least two or three times a week.

You could have a joke of the day. You could have a picture
of the day or even a quote of the day. Just something that
is easy to change and will be interesting to people.

Of course if you are extra energetic and you have the time,
you could even update your site with new articles every
single day.

Bookmark Buttons

It’s helpful and very effective to place a Bookmark Button
on your web site. This way people can bookmark your site
and come back to it easily.

Article Marketing

Writing articles that are related to your niche is also a
very great way to direct traffic to your site. You can
submit the article to ezinearticles or a similar article
site and then place your site in the signature line of the
article. Then when people read the article, they will click
on the link to your site in order to get more information.

Run a Contest

Holding a contest is a great way to get new visitors and
return visitors as well. You can publicize the contest and
then have people submit something to your site. Then they
will probably tell their friends (viral marketing) who will
also visit your site and enter the contest. If you will be
selecting winners and posting the winning entries then
people will check back in order see or read the winning
entries.

Use Forums and Web 2.0 Sites

Another great way to get the word out about your site is to
belong to forums and include your site url in your
signature on the forum. You should also take advantage of
Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and Gather.com. These sites
allow you to create pages that are of interest to people.
From these sites you should direct people to your site.

For over 50 Super Specific Methods for generating massive
amounts of traffic to your website, check out Ross
Goldberg’s Traffic Manifesto Here

David Hudson, webmaster of webcashlink,
business articles author, and a successful affiliate,
can help you with your online business.
Visit: Webcashlink

Advertising Success Online

It is easy for me to tell you that you need to
track the success of your online advertising. It
is also easy for me to tell you that you must do
so in order to know which of your advertising
is helping you to make a profit, to break even,
or to break the bank. Far too many advertisers
get caught in the online money pits in an effort
to develop their online business.

Don't Be Afraid

I also know that when I say these things, some
people get spooked. People get spooked because
although they might run an online business, they
may not understand the technology that keeps
their business running.

Let’s face it.

More people are learning how to design and
develop their own web pages. In fact, software has
been created to help them do so rather easily.

But when it comes down to the more complex
technologies such as web logs, database
technology, and web programming, most people
just freeze up and fail to make an informed
decision.

Some will turn to a programmer with hopes that a
programmer could save their online business, and
many will get burned by their personal
programmers. When a programmer burns a webmaster,
the cost can be very high. And at the end of the
day, the programmer may leave the webmaster with
a broken web site.

The only real choices left to most webmasters is
to learn how to install pre-made scripts on their
own, or to keep their websites technologically
simple. *Technologically simple* often fails to
help the webmaster find the success that he or
she so fervently desires.

The Nature of Pre-Made Scripts

Web software is often very simple in its
installation, so the webmaster really should not
fear it.

All one needs to install their own pre-made web
scripts (software) is an online web site file
manager or optional FTP software. They will also
need the ability to change the *permissions* on
the files on their web server.

When downloading scripts for installation on your
server, the file may come in .zip, .tar, or .gz
format. Each of these are variations on the
compressed / zipped file format. There are
many utilities available for unzipping files. One
such utility is WinZip which can be found at:
http://www.winzip.com

Most scripts, once downloaded and unzipped, may
appear in text format with extensions such as
.php, .cgi, .pl or .cfg.

Most of these files can be read as plain text in
an application like NotePad. Occasionally, the
file will be in a binary format which cannot be
read with a text editor.

The files which can be read in a text editor are
often written in the Perl or PHP programming
languages.

While most of the scripting will seem like
Chinese to you, you will be able to pick out
certain sections that can be read and understood
easily.

If the application also contains a .cfg file,
this is your configuration file that can usually
be changed to reflect your own personal needs or
desires for the operation of the software.

Next Step, Upload The Files To
Your Server

Most of these web applications will have a
readme.txt file included with it. If it does,
please read it. If it does not, don’t worry, this
section is for you.

You must upload the files to your server as plain
text. If you are using FTP to upload the files,
then you must tell your software to upload the
files in ASCII format. If you are using your web
file manager, then the files will automatically
upload correctly.

Once the file is on your server, then you must
change the file permissions.

Files with the extensions .php, .cgi, or .pl are
executable files and there permissions must be
set to 755. Files with the extensions .cfg, .txt,
or .html must have their permissions set to 644.
Files and folders that will be written to must
have their permissions set to 777. Files with no
extensions can be classified as any of the above,
so check the readme.txt file.

755 defines an executable file. 644 defines a
read-only file. And 777 defines a writable file.

Once the files are on your server and the
permissions are set correctly, the application
you have placed on your server should work for
you just fine.

Locating Pre-Made Site Tracking Scripts

Probably one of the best resources for locating
pre-made scripts is:
http://www.cgi-resources.com

If after reading this article you still fear the
task of installing a pre-made script on your
server, then you might seriously consider
remotely hosted site tracking software. If
you opt for this route, be sure to buy the pro
version of the software offered. If you don’t
choose the paid version, you might find your own
competitors having access to your site tracking
data! That should not be an acceptable option to
you.

The Purpose of Site Tracking

With site tracking software running on your
server, you can review how many people came to
your website and what URL’s they might have used
to find your website. You can also see where your
visitors have come from, when they came, how long
they were on your site, at what page they entered
and left your site, and much more.

This is the kind of information that will help
you to determine with some certainty how
effective your advertising is and how profitable
your advertising can be.

Operating without tracking data is tantamount to
operating a business with the intent purpose of
failing.

I truly want you to succeed with your online
business. I know deep down in my heart that the
more people who find success online, the greater
my own chances for remaining profitable over
the long haul. *A rising tide floats all ships.*

David Hudson, webmaster of webcashlink,
business articles author, and a super affiliate,
can help you with your online business.
Visit: Webcashlink