Internet Marketing Ideas by Steve Weber   Reply to Me On Twitter: Click Here

Wow! Just what I have been looking for! Here is a new tool which details the maximum AdWord bid, the daily search volume and the estimated number of daily clicks for chosen keywords…all via one clean and simple interface.

Technobloggie has hit a homerun with this new Keyword Tool!

Not only is it great to check popular keywords for AdWords and SEO purposes, if you are using AdSense on your pages you can get an idea of what the clicks might pay for given content.

Plus, I REALLY like the chart which shows the click trends for the past several years for given keywords! What a gold mine of information!

However, (Don’t you hate that when someone adds a “however”!) I just want to point out that you should not trust any keyword tool when it comes to choosing keywords for SEO purposes. I wasted significant time early on optimizing for keywords which the tools said were great, but turned out to have little traffic. Always do your own research! Spend a few bucks testing those keywords with a quick AdWords campaign!

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I had a customer PM me the other day in my forum and told me something very profound. He said Internet marketing was like getting a brand new Hummer for free…except the Hummer came unassembled in a very large box in its 10,000 some odd pieces. The Hummer is yours! All you have to do is put it together!

Imagine trying to put the Hummer together without any training or instructions!

Internet marketing is just like this example. You have all the parts needed to succeed with Internet marketing. You have a computer, you have some typing skills, you can read, you have an Internet connection, you have or can purchase a web editor, you can afford $5 or $6 per month for hosting your site, etc. You have all the tools at your fingertips.

Give the computer you are using right now to any successful Internet marketer and they will make money with it! Think about it! All you need to do is put the pieces together!

How do you put all the pieces together? Education is the answer. You must dig in and build a solid foundation of Internet marketing skills and knowledge. Then you must practice what you have learned! There is a saying in Internet marketing: The key to success is failing fast! The great thing about Internet marketing is that individual failures need not be costly. Learn from those mistakes! Continue to tweak and modify your failures and success will come.

Steve

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Many people put a lot of energy into choosing a domain name. A great domain name is important, but it is far down on the list of what will make a site successful. A perfect domain name does not make a great site. Likewise, there are plenty of very successful sites with lousy domain names.

But hey, if you don’t have one picked yet, you might as well do the best you can while choosing one.

Here are a few I would not choose and why:

MissisippiCookers.com
Too many people can’t spell it. Your domain should be easy for most people to spell.

KnightWars.com
If you tell someone this is your site, will they know if it is knightwars, nightwars, or nitewars?

4sisters.com
Again, is that 4sisters or foursisters?

ILikeDogs.com
If your domain has multiple words in it, make sure it looks good with the first letter of all words in caps. This is also very important when advertising the site with AdWords. Compare these two domains: ILikeDogs.com and WeLikeDogs.com
Notice how the words look better in the second example.

BestUsedCarPricesInDallas.com
Too many words! It looks cheesy.

LincolnLogs.net
The search engines don’t care, but try to find a .com domain for your main site. People in general still expect .com sites.

Cooking-Tips.com
Read this to yourself ….. “cooking dash tips.com”
Do not put a dash in your main site. The search engines are ok with it, but you don’t want people who hear about your site from a friend going to CookingTips.com

Best-Used-Car-Prices.com
If you absolutely have to use a dash, just use one. More than one makes it look like a spam site.

Avoid these common mistakes when choosing your domain. If you have a site with one of these mistakes, (and you have already put in significant work marketing the domain) don’t fret about it. Plenty of great marketing work will negate any flaws the domain name might have.

Also do a search for your chosen domain name in Google before buying it. What if in a past life the site was porn related or a spam site? Do your home work before buying a site!

Steve

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You can be a great person. Your product can be the best thing since DSL. You, your relatives, and all your friends think your idea is going to make you rich. However, none of this matters unless you can convince strangers to buy your product. The single most important tool for this is your sales page.

I listened to a 90 minute tele-seminar yesterday by Perry Marshall about the important components of building a sales and/or landing page.
I will summarize the high points for you.

•    List building is the number one best method of increasing long term conversions for any product with any sales page. If you are not actively building a list of targeted leads, start today! A potential buyer is about 5 times more likely to sign up for your free newsletter/videos/other download than they are to make the purchase right at that moment. If you can capture their email address and build a relationship with them, you have dramatically increased the chances that they will make the purchase sooner or later.
•    Speak directly to the visitor. Speak to them on their level. Speak to their needs and desires. Relate to their problems.
•    Know what your visitors are looking for. Are they looking for information about symptoms, problems, or solutions? How ready is the visitor to buy right now? Can you sell to them right away or must you build a relationship first?
•    Telling a true and captivating story within the copy is a great way to guide the visitor to the sale or action you seek.
•    Long copy is best. Very long sales pages out-perform short sales pages. However, you must create the copy with both “skimmers” and “readers” in mind. Some will read every word. Others will skim. Use headings, colors, etc. to help guide the skimmers.
•    Don’t try to re-invent the wheel. Study the sales pages of the super-successful Internet marketers. There is no guess work involved with their pages. Don’t copy the format exactly, but don’t vary from it too much either.

Below are the key components of building trust. Without trust, the page will make no sales.
•    Sound (or videos) is a huge asset. Many visitors will enjoy hearing what you have to say. Include a picture of yourself also.
•    The page must contain a clear, no-risk offer.
•    Be sure your contact info is clear and easy to find.
•    Make sure the site is working correctly (links, etc.)
•    Use trusted logos on the site (like credit card and verified PayPal logos).
•    Put testimonials (real) on the page as soon as possible.

After your sales page is complete, allow as many other people as possible (both Internet marketers and “regular” people) to critique your page. Tweak it a little, but unless you have a script or shopping cart system (like 1shoppingcart.com) you can use to rotate and test different versions, leave it alone at some point for a while. As I have said, what you like or dislike about the sales page really does not matter. If it makes sales, it is good…if not, it is bad. Do not get emotional about it if it does not make sales; study more and try to understand what the problem might be. Remember, that many people consider a 1% conversion rate as good. A 2 to 3% conversion rate is great! Keep everything in perspective. Of course you need a great sales page, but you must also have plenty of traffic!

Steve Weber

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There are many ways to get started with Internet marketing. One method I am partial to, and the way my wife and I started, is with eBay.

Many people do not think of eBay as Internet marketing. However, eBay gave us a big head start when it came time to start our “real” Internet businesses.

Some good reasons to start with eBay:

•    eBay is a great place to practice the art of making simple, HTML sales pages. Serious eBayers have little choice but to learn how to create simple web pages whose code can be copied and pasted into the eBay auction.
•    eBay teaches basic keyword usage; keywords are very important in the auction titles for attracting traffic.
•    PayPal is the main payment gateway used on eBay. Learning the ins and outs of selling with PayPal on eBay will make the transition to selling on a website easier.
•    Sales on eBay will require shipping physical items or setting up digital downloads for winning buyers. Fulfillment of customers’ orders with eBay is much the same as with a website. Believe it or not, there are quite a few issues involved in shipping. Ebay will help get all those kinks worked out.
•    Customer service is another area where eBay provides “hands on training”. Online customer service issues are a little different than with brick and mortar stores. eBay is a great place to learn about online customer service.

Another benefit of eBay is how easy it is to test products. In most cases, the potential market for a product on eBay is relative to the available market on the “real” Internet. For example, if a product generates pretty good traffic and sales on eBay, it will generally do very good with its own website. On the other hand, if sales and traffic are slow on eBay for a product, things may also prove tough for it on a website.

If you want to give eBay a try, here is what you will need:

•    A product to sell – If you can’t think of a theme to get started with, start cleaning out your closets! Almost anything will sell on eBay. Start selling just for the practice!
•    You will need a digital camera to take pictures of your auction items.
•    Even with eBay, you will be miles ahead if you know basic HTML. With your own hosting account and an HTML editor, you can create really cool auctions with unlimited numbers of pictures (instead of paying eBay for extra pictures).
•    If you don’t already have one, sign up for a PayPal business account.

There is no shame in starting with eBay…none at all.

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Linking is an important aspect of SEO!

Internal Linking

Did you know that even with only a small handful of incoming links from other sites you can still build your pages’ rank to at least one or two! (I am talking about Google Page Rank which you can see with the Google tool bar installed.)

That’s right! In order to help page rank, you should start with interlinking your pages together. No, I am not talking about having the same navigation bar on every page linking to every other page. This does not help.

What you must do is link to other pages from within your written content. Notice how I am doing it from within this post. This is the type of linking Google loves (and Yahoo and MSN too of course). It is extra work, but well worth it! Additionally, it makes your site “stickier”; visitors are more likely to follow links from within the text they are reading and remain on your site longer.

Linking to External Sites

If you must link to external sites, make sure the site you are linking to has some page rank; you want to know that Google has at least some respect for it. If you link to a page with a grayed out Page Rank bar, you risk linking to a site Google has deleted from their index. You do not want to link to a site like that. Of course not every site without page rank has been banned; most simply have not been indexed. Simply be careful with the sites you link to.

If your site’s theme is gardening, do not put a link on your site to your friend’s music site! You must only link to sites in the same theme. Likewise, it does no good for your friend to have a link from his music site to your gardening site.

If you must put a link on your site which you can’t vouch for, use a no follow tag in the code like this:
<a href=http://www.Friendsdomain.com/rel=”nofollow”>
This way Google will know you are not promoting this link.

Reciprocal Linking

This type of linking does not offer the benefit it used to. A one-way incoming link is worth FAR MORE to your site than a reciprocal link. If you do trade links with a site, make sure the other site is trusted by Google AND is in the same themed area as your site.

Never ever fall for a “Get 1000’s of incoming links for just $19.99” kind of scam! More than likely this is what’s called a “link farm”. You could get your site banned for this!

Steve

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