Technology Toolkit

It is surprising to find so much information on ways to earn extra money on the internet these days. There are numerous blogs about article marketing, affiliate marketing, and niche marketing all over the web. The question, of course, is how much of what is written on this subject reliable?

Undoubtedly, there is plenty of misinformation on the internet, not to mention outright lies coming from quick-buck artists and the like. Which is why so much research and education is needed to become successful.

My previous articles have focused on ideas to earn extra money and SEO optimization to bring in the traffic needed to produce prospective customers on our websites. But now that we have the amount of exposure necessary to create revenue from our sites, what is the next step?

This is where testing becomes vitally important. Rather than just taking someone’s word for a specific technique being suggested online, put it to the test. Certainly, beginners are going to have to rely on the information that they receive from successful internet marketers when first starting-out, but with experience these exercises will become more familiar. That is the time to start testing the techniques that we have learned.

There are complicated methods of testing advertisements called split testing, A/B testing, or bucket testing that were first developed back in the days of direct mail marketing. Basically, one establishes a baseline, an ad’s basic layout for instance, and then tests the ads effectiveness using different variables like colors or product placement to find what produces the best results. This type of testing made a natural progression into email marketing with the advent of the personal computer and the world wide web. Not at all surprisingly, split testing is being used more and more for website landing pages and squeeze pages or sales pages as well.

It is important to remember that testing is only effective if there is enough traffic entering your site to make a distinction between the different variables being tested. So, do not jump-the-gun here. Be sure to optimize your website prior to performing any form of market testing. It would be pointless, if not misleading, to come to any conclusion based upon fluctuations from a handful of visitors to your website.

Many tools are now available at little or no cost to provide valuable marketing information on the internet. If Adsense is your site’s primary or secondary target for monetization, Google offers many helpful tools to test your website’s effectiveness. These tools are absolutely free and can be found in their “Business Solutions.”

Another handy tool that I have used many times can be found at statcounter.com. It provides relevant information like page loads and unique or returning visitor counts to help gauge traffic patterns on a particular website. This tool is also free of charge.

Whatever methods of testing a marketer chooses to get the most from his or her campaign is completely up to the individual. The important thing is to use some form of testing to maximize your potential to earn extra money on the internet.

There are a number of event companies in existence in the UK and all provide various services depending on your requirements. Event companies can cater for all kinds of events whether they are for private individuals, large organisations or for government events. An event company in effect will handle everything for your event from staffing to the way the day will run, they will organise all the other individual assets aswell for the event including catering, entertainment and all other assets.

An event management company essentially takes away the headache of putting your let’s say wedding or conference together as they will go away and source everything to your requirements. Remember event managers are highly experienced people with a large numbers of contacts within the industry so if you are looking for a chocolate fountain with people dancing around then I’m sure these are the people to help you.

Obviously you have to pay their costs i.e. travel, management and the costs for the catering, staff and other items they provide on their list. By no means is it a cheap endeavour but you have to realise that trying to organise large scale events outside you daily life is not going to be easy by any means at all. Assuming you are going to be quite precious of your event (why wouldn’t you be?), you will want it to go off without a hitch and going with an events manager is probably the best way of doing this.

That’s all well and good but most of us don’t even know how event planners work or operate so here are some tips on finding your ideal coordinator. First of contact a few event planners and definitely contact any where you have had recommendations from friends or family. Meet with them and discuss your requirements and find out exactly what it is they can do for you, if this means you have to sit there for a couple of hours and discuss everything then so be it.

Now you have an idea of what they are all about, you then look through their portfolio of work and make sure the portfolio is quite wide and varied but also includes examples of the kind of event you are looking for yourself as this help you generate ideas aswell. It may also be an idea to ask the company whether they have any upcoming events where you can see them in action, it’s a little cheeky but there’s no harm in getting an invite for yourself.

Remember in the whole process of your event you need to make clear who is responsible for what. For example a simple thing as cake knife, who handles this? Who is providing the knife you or the management company? Granted on the scale of things this is small aspect but you don’t want to be left with using a meat cleaver to cut your cake or do you? In fact please don’t answer that.

No matter what you decide, make your decision very carefully and consider all aspects. You do not want any disappointments on your events as whether it is from a business or family point of view it will always be remembered.

What does it take to sell LOTS of your products and services in today\’s slow economy? You can double, triple, even expand your sales by a factor of 10. But you must think a little differently about what it takes to win over customers.

Here is how selling online and off has changed in the past few years. Customers have different values these days. Meet those new values and you make a sale.

I\’m ALSO going to tell you about important values that HAVE NOT changed. You should come away from this article with some good ideas you can use immediately to boost your sales.

1. People want LOW price. As the price of gas, food, and healthcare skyrockets, people and businesses are forced to cut back drastically to make ends meet. That means putting a high value on lowest price.

Drop your price as low as you can while still turning a profit. Think about offering loss leaders. These are popular products or services offered at prices so low they are below cost. The idea is you grab new customers, please them, then keep them coming back for many more sales.

I fully understand the fastest way to wealth is to sell at high prices. These days you have to think about making big money by selling bigger volume at lower prices.

2. Offer a stripped down version of your product or service. For years I charged $325 to write a press release and have it sent to media by a top distributor. As the economy slowed, customers wanted a stripped down version. So I now write a press release and give customers a list of free distribution services for $99. Sales have jumped.

3. Hype it up. The old saying in advertising is \”sell the sizzle, not the steak.\” Hype up your product or service by telling the prospect how it will improve her life. Talk about the prospect\’s frustrations, his dreams, and how YOU can make those dreams come true — by saving the prospect money, making him look good in front of his boss, or making his spouse adore him.

Now for some values that have NOT changed. I stress these because a LOT of businesses have left these qualities at the door. More than a few, especially online, or losing out because they have forgotten some of the key qualities that made them a success initially.

1. Be reachable! I can\’t tell you how many new customers tell me \”I emailed three other sites before I emailed you. You\’re the only one who answered.\” Guess who gets the sale?

Give customers several ways to reach you. Depending on what works best for your business, offer your email address, phone number, number to text, online chat, mailing address, and office location.

Then REPLY back to people. Even if you just say, \”Thanks for your message. I looked at your site and think you should get x product. It should work well for you. Let me know if you have questions.\”

2. Offer value. People want a low price, but most don\’t want junk. Make sure your product or service does what it promises. This was the number one customer value in the 1990s up until 2008. It still ranks very high in what customers want.

> The restaurant that offers good food, in large portions, at a reasonable price wins.

> The writer who produces well-written articles on time and doesn\’t charge an arm and leg wins.

> The plumber who fixes the problem the first time, stays a few minutes to chat with the homeowner, and keeps his price competitive wins.

3. Do the job when you say you will. Many business owners, especially service providers, say this is the number one thing their customers value.

I always make a point to tell customers when their copywriting will be completed. Since it\’s often hard to tell exactly when I will get through my list of projects, I tell customers \”your website copy SHOULD be ready early in the week.\”

My customers get antsy if their work isn\’t done within a week. You probably know how long YOUR customers will wait and still be happy. Try to structure you business so you can meet those expectations. You\’ll have happy customers, lots of referrals, and many more sales.

Social video marketing is one of the hottest emerging trends in 2011. Marketing executives are finally realizing the power of online video to engage their audience, increase brand awareness and improve the reach of their social media efforts.

If you want to promote your latest online video with social video marketing then these video hosting sites are your best options:

1. Youtube

Youtube continues to dominate the online video space. With over 2 billion videos watched every day on the site, no other site comes close. Every video marketing campaign should use Youtube because it offers the best opportunity to capture a large audience.

2. Vimeo

Vimeo is a more social-based video hosting website. It tends to be the favorite of independent producers and it has some of the highest quality short films on the Internet. I think overall Vimeo has the best looking embeddable player of all the video hosting and sharing sites.

3. MetaCafe

Metacafe is one of the world\’s largest video sites and has lots of short videos, funny movies and clips. This site also has a social-focus and integrates with Facebook so that every time you upload a video, it can automatically be sent to your Facebook Page.

4. BlipTV

Blip TV is a free video blogging, podcasting and video sharing portal. They also have a decent revenue sharing program. If you have a regular online TV show, Blip TV is a great platform because they make it easy to distribute your show across the web.

5. DailyMotion

DailyMotion has one of the largest collections of music videos, short movies and extreme sports videos on the Internet. They offer many of the features of Youtube and the other video hosting websites. They are based in Europe.

6. Revver

Revver tends to collect videos from other video sharing sites but they also have a massive collection of videos uploaded by their users. They have an interesting revenue sharing program where an unobtrusive ad is shown at the end of your video and if anyone clicks on the ad, you get a 50% share of the revenue. They also offer unlimited video storage and file size.

7. Google Video

While overshadowed by Youtube, Google\’s other video site still gets significant traffic and ranks well in Google Search. Google Video has many of the features of Youtube but with more specific content categories like Business, Documentary, Educational, Music, Comedy, etc.

8. Veoh

Veoh has made a name for itself by hosting TV and film studio content but it also has lots of independent films and user-uploaded videos.

9. Viddler

Videler is an easy-to-use video platform for promoting your online videos. They really focus on helping people and brands with social video marketing. To help you with this they offer detailed video analytics, ad revenue sharing and better support than most of the other video sites. You can customize the embeddable player, overlay your logo and easily link back to your website.

10. LiveVideo

LiveVideo is another great option to upload your videos. Unlike many other video sharing sites they offer dofollow links to help boost your website ranking.

If you are currently promoting a product or service on the Internet then finding ways to drive traffic to your website is uppermost on your mind or it should be – and, the cheaper the better. If you have large budget for advertising then just skip this article. If however, you\’d rather save your money for other things then continue reading because I\’m going to reveal 5 tips to drive traffic to your website without spending any money!

Tip #1 Submit your Website to Directories

Submitting your URL to directories is a great way to get free traffic to your website. Although there are many services that will submit your URL for a fee, you can do it yourself at no cost other than time. Submitting to directories is easy. Just do a Google search on \’directory submission\’ and you\’ll get lots of information on the subject and places to start. This is a great way get visitors as they browse the listings plus you\’ll be accumulating a lot of one way links that point back to your website and that helps to increase your rankings in the search engines.

Tip #2 Submit to Search Engines

Another free way to drive traffic to your website is to submit to search engines. You want to make it easy for searchers to find your site. And submitting to search engines is an excellent way to do it. Submitting to search engines like submitting to directories won\’t make you an overnight success, however in the long haul it will bring traffic to your website. When searchers use the key words that you\’ve listed then your website will be returned in the search results.

Tip #3 Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal links are another set of tools to increase your search engine rankings. When trading links with another website be sure to choose sites that are similar in nature to your own. You want links from related websites. You\’re not shooting for the number of links, rather the quality of links. Links from like sites will have a greater value than links from unrelated sites. So, be sure to focus on quality links rather than the quantity of links. Don\’t think of reciprocal links likened as to holes in a sieve; Rather, think of them as funnels from other sources.

Tip #4 Plaster Your URL Everywhere

Your URL needs to be on every type of communication available to you. Be sure your URL is included on your business cards, in your email signature, stationary, books that you lend, Classified ads in local newspapers, posters down at the supermarket, the phone book, just to name a few. When your URL is ubiquitous, traffic to your website will be increased.

Tip #5 Email List

You can begin building an email list from the visitors coming to your website due to the actions listed in tips 1-4. You can set up an opt-in form offering a free report in trade for their name and email address. You can then begin to email those visitors informing them of any new information regarding your offer and giving them solid reasons as to why your offer will be of benefit to them. Be sure to make it easy for your recipients to unsubscribe as well.