Archive

Posts Tagged ‘sales’

Keyword Selection And SEO

July 4th, 2011

Keyword selection and search engine optimization are vital tools in producing and running a successful website. Before we continue talking about keyword selection and search engine optimization, I want to make sure that we all understand what the terminology is saying.

Keywords are the words selected by you to define your site. They are the words that you hope to rank well for in Google. So, for instance, if you want to have a web site selling 'fashion' - 'fashion, fashionable, high fashion, haute couture' may become your keywords (more on this later).

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is about presenting your work - the website and any text connected with it - in such a manner that search engines find it easy to crawl and index, which enables people to find you on the Internet.

Let's use Google as an instance of a search engine - after all, it is the biggest, most used and so most crucial. Google wants to present its users with the best results - that is, most relevant results - that it can for each keyword entered, in order to improve customer satisfaction.

Therefore it has built up an enormous database of which keywords appear on which sites. Then 'all' has to do is rank the sites by popularity and, in theory, the most relevant websites ought to pop up for each keyword typed in.

Now there is you, or me, with our dreams of a website on fashion. If you make 'fashion' your keyword, you will be taking on the colossal fashion houses and colossal department stores with their huge budgets and gigantic websites head to head. Who do you imagine is going to win?

It is a no-brainer. You will never even get to page 20 in Google search results. In short, you will have no business. But what if you used a long-tail keyword (LTKW) and targeted your web site? Say, use the LTKW 'fashionable plus size black dresses' and construct a website on that. It may be a keyword that no one else has thought of.

This is why keyword selection is important and there are numerous books and articles written about it. It is a precise job, a bit of a slog, but some individuals, like me, actually enjoy it. Or you could automate the task.

So, that is the first stage: finding relevant keywords to your business so that you have a opportunity of being listed on the first page of Google for that keyword. The second stage is constructing your website search engine friendly so that Google can crawl it and index it for your keywords.

If you do not do this properly, Google's spiders will crawl off onto another website and it might be a whilst before they come back, which leaves your website in dead water.

This article is too short to go into this huge issue in any worthwhile fashion, but I will try to give you the most relevant pointers.

Keep your website targeted on a small range of products and define and use keywords for every item, but do not over use them. Do not repeat a keyword phrase only for the sake of it.

Make your internal links simple to find by using nav bars, menus and sitemaps.

Do not have lots of external links for your visitors to go off to, make your site interesting enough for surfers and spiders to want to remain there.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the SEO Content. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at PLR pieces

Earning Money By Selling Antiques On Ebay

June 12th, 2011

The selling of antiques on eBay has a confusing reputation. Most traders say that it is very problematic to sell for the price that the article deserves, but those that do earn money at it say that you only have to know what you are doing. So what are the tricks and tips to making money by selling antiques on eBay?

This first thing to comprehend concerning selling antiques on eBay is that the sale of antiques can take a fairly long time. Individuals by and large go to eBay for a quick fix to a problem - a shortage of something.

Antiques do not actually fit into this bracket. Another group of individuals do go there for collectibles, but they are usually cheap(ish) modern collectibles like Barbie dolls.

eBay does not have the reputation for selling antiques so those that are interested in antiques do not go there for that, although they do go there. There is also a immense risk of forgeries and copies.

This means that selling antiques on eBay is a little hit and miss, so you have to give an article time to sell. There is a time delay on selling antiques on eBay and you have to take this into account.

If you want to sell antiques through eBay's auctions, it may be better for you to sell cheap collectibles as well as antiques. This will supply you with a cash flow until your antiques start selling and providing a monthly wage for you.

Be prepared to put a reserve price on your items and them have to relist them if they do not sell the first time around. Another good tactic is to position the things in the longest action possible, but permit someone to buy them from you at your reserve price before the auction finishes.

When you list your things, make certain that you sound like an expert. Do not be tempted to dumb down your language, because you need to demonstrate that you are a significant collector or / and dealer.

People are more likely to buy antiques off you if you sound the part, otherwise you might come across as a chancer. Therefore, if you are selling antique telephones, learn the terminology of antique telephones and use it in your advertisements.

Sell antiques that have mass appeal. The chances of you selling an expensive niche market antique on eBay are very small, which means that you would be paying over and over again for relisting the article. This will naturally nibble away at your profits.

Therefore, in summary, endeavour to sell antiques with 'mass market' appeal. Articles that sell well are antique dolls, games and clothes; old coins and stamps and antique domestic things like old telephones. However, you have to be prepared to wait for your sale and relist your item once or twice.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with searching for old fashioned telephones. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Family Plans For Cell Phones.

Tutorial Videos and Sales Demo Videos with Computer Screen Recorders

June 4th, 2011

You need to use the computer screen recorder if you want to increase your online sales. If you are not using video to advertise your online business then you are not with the times. In this online era people are expecting to see video on the websites they visit.

You have to realize that people expect to see video on the websites they visit. If you do not have a video of some sort you are really behind the times. You know that when you see a website with a video that you react differently than if you do not see one.

You will then in most cases bookmark the site to watch the video in its entirety when you do have time. Would you not want people doing this at your website? Of course you would. You say you cannot film a video?

You can do it all very easily with the screen recorder. You can use it with software like power point. You then can use the software to record each slide of the presentation and turn that into video.

You can then use software to add music to the video and also you can dub other people's voices for the presentation if you would rather not use your own voice. It is very easy to do all of this. When you have your video you can then upload it to your website.

You can also take advantage of the social media craze and upload your video to the social media websites where many can see your video without going to your website. You will of course want your website in your video so people can visit your website once they see your video.

You can also use the screen recorder to make email lessons that are related to your website. An effective way to promote your product or service on the internet is to offer an internet course.

Rather than simply sending your lessons in text form you can create a video presentation. If your course is designed to promote your membership site then people will be impressed by your video presentation and will be more likely to join.

The uses of this the computer screen recorder is endless when you let your creative juices flow. Try it out today and take the first step to increasing your online business sales. You will be happy you did.

Many marketers are turning to desktop screen recorder and computer screen capture to increase their bank accounts and customer satisfaction.

How To Make Money Trading Used Cars Part 3

May 28th, 2011

In the first section of this mini series on how to make money buying and selling used cars, we looked at what personal skills someone wanting to be profitable in this business would have to have. In the second part we looked at the best sites to locate such a business and in this section, we will look into acquiring our stock - our cars or trucks.

So, where can you get second-hand vehicles from? You will probably get people coming in off the street attempting to sell you their cars or trucks. That is usually a good supply of stock, if you carry out the essential checks to make sure that they are not stolen, but this source will dry up from time to time - particularly in the summer.

Other places to obtain stock are private auction houses, bankruptcies, bereavements and government auctions, where cars or trucks are often quite heavily discounted.

At private auctions, anybody can bid for the lots that go under the hammer. Sometimes there is a minimum selling price, sometimes there is not, but the vendor must pay to enter his car in the auction anyway, which means that he has a vested interest in selling it to recover this cost. If a car does not reach the minimum bid, try talking to the seller privately, you could pick up a genuine bargain.

If you are oblivious of local car auctions where you live, try looking in the local paper under "Up And Coming Events" or in the Yellow Pages under "Actions" or "Car Auctions" or go on line and make the same query including your locality.

Government auctions are fantastic places to buy stock of any type, including vehicles and machinery. These goods are typically either government surplus (new and used) or assets seized from the public. In The USA, it is best to register your interest in the auction catalogues of the two main governments agencies: the Department of Defense and the General Services Administration (GSA). Other countries have similar departments, which your local authorities can assist you to get in contact with.

These government departments auction off tens of thousands of cars or trucks or every imaginable description every year in the USA. Cars and other vehicles make up a large percentage of these auctions in monetary value - you would really find it hard to comprehend how many vehicles the government owns in the name of the people, from limos to lawnmowers. They all need to be replaced regularly according to a schedule and the old ones are auctioned off.

The unbelievable fact that works so well in the business person's favour, is that the government is more engrossed in clearing out their sheds of all this stuff to make room for more than it is in turning a profit on it. All you need to do is register with the Department of Defense and the GSA and they will send you their auction catalogues automatically. This way you will have time to examine the goods before you tender.

The next section in this mini series will talk about how you can determine the value of the items that are being auctioned off.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a range of subjects, but is now involved with remote car alarms. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Laser Temperature Gun.

How To Make Use Of Facebook To Increase Your Sales

May 21st, 2011

Internet marketing is big. Not only big in that advertising and advertising is all pervasive on the Net, but it can also produce big returns if you know how to use it. However, because the Internet is still a new medium and because it is the most flexible advertising medium ever invented, new ways of advertising on the Internet are being invented every month or two.

One of these new methods of Internet advertising is known as Facebook. In fact, it is a very subtle advertising machine, because most of the individuals who use Facebook are aware just of the benefits of using Facebook and think that the promoting is incidental or even useful.

This is a tribute to the organizers of Facebook and the flexibility of the Internet. They have managed to imitate a quality newspaper, where the reader is not bothered by the adverts, because they are unobtrusive and the information delivered is well-worth the money.

For those unacquainted with Facebook, it does not deliver global news, rather it allows users, friends and family to stay in touch and spread their micro-news. Facebook is what is called a social networking web site and has a global membership surpassing most countries and even a continent. Any advertiser would be crazy to ignore the marketing opportunities that Facebook presents

Facebook permits a couple of kinds of marketing. You can put an object up for sale and visitors to your web site can select to look in your 'shop' if they desperately want to spend money, but needless to say this approach does not yield results. The other form of marketing is pay-per-click or PPC. This is similar to Google's Adsense, but it only takes place on the Facebook web site.

However, the Facebook PPC advertising set up can be a great deal better targeted than Google's Adsense. This is because Facebook has so many more personal details about the users who sign up for a free web page. For example, an advertiser can choose whose web pages his adverts go on. In fact, the advertiser has no end of flexibility.

An advertiser can pick: male or female; adult or child; gay or straight; from any continent or any country; any degree of education; any earnings bracket; marital status; home owner or not and so on and so on. This equals that I could target an ad on central heating to only those Facebook members who, for instance are: married with children; more than forty; home owners; earning a salary of over $50,000 and are living in the USA or not.

That would be precisely the group of individuals who would require a functioning central heating system and could afford to pay for it. And you pay merely for the click throughs that are made on your ads. If they are ignored, then there is no charge.

There are also a number of other tools that can help you promote your web site on Facebook such as the in-built links to other social networking sites like Stumble Upon, Digg and many more.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with sales force automation software. If you would to know more, please visit our web site at Sales Force Tools

SEO Copywriting Service Companies

May 17th, 2011

SEO copywriting services are provided by companies or individuals who will either compose pieces of writing to order or will permit you, for a fee, to re-use and rewrite pieces that they have written previously. Some of these companies are fantastic, but most of them are worse than bad.

Some of the pieces that these companies sell are so bad that it would have been easier to compose the pieces from fresh rather than rewrite the gibberish that they sell.

The difficulty when you are searching for SEO copywriting services is that most people who require these services are working alone and often those who do know a good firm offering SEO copywriting services would prefer to keep the information to themselves.

Asking in a forum is practically useless, because there are too numerous members who do not know but have to say something and there are others who would not know a decent piece if they read one.

Therefore, the best advice is to be vary wary before you listen to advice and be very, very wary before you part with any money. There are different levels that these businesses work on, so it also depends what you need.

Do you want a firm to supply SEO copywriting services in toto - that is, do you need them to write the pieces and advertise your company for you or do you need to buy pieces from them and promote your own web site yourself?

The first choice is costly, but there are two degrees of the second option: first, if you purchase original pieces, you will have the same problems mentioned above, but if you buy PLR pieces (private label rights), you ought to rewrite them a little anyway in order to render them unique. This is an simple and far less costly quest.

Let's begin with the top end of the market. if you want someone to take over promoting your company on the Net, then you have to be certain that that firm understands the business that you are in. For example, would a company that has had success promoting a garden centre be able to promote a butcher's?

Therefore, you have to see examples of the firms that they have run successful campaigns for in the past and you should look at their web site and even contact the company to see if there were any concerns. A bona fide SEO copywriting services company will be glad to show you these details, because they will be proud of their repute.

If you only need someone to write original articles for you, you can afford to be a lot less curious. All you require to know in this example is the details of the guarantee. If there is no warranty that you will like the pieces, then go elsewhere.

If you are willing to do a little rewriting of the articles that you have bought, you can render them your own. This is the route that most webmasters using SEO copywriting services take to add content to their web sites or use as articles to promote them.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with the SEO Content. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at PLR pieces

SEO And Getting More Backlinks Part Two

May 16th, 2011

Look at the subject matter of your website. is it relevant or is it ostentatious? Does the content set out to help and inform your visitors or does it set out to prove how clever a graphic designer you are? Most search engines cannot actually read graphics, but they can all interpret text.

Also, do not forget that only because you have high-speed broadband, not everyone else does. Some of your potential customers may simply stop, if they have to wait ten minutes for one of your pages to download at 56 Kbps or even 28 Kbps dial up.

Each page ought to have between 500-1,000 words of relevant, unrepeated content. Bear in mind too that the text must be in regular text (or HTML), but definitely NOT embedded in graphics or the search engines will not be able to read it and classify your website.

Without spamming the search engines by repeating yourself too often, look for legitimate methods to repeat your keywords. How? you might ask. Well, one way is to have several menus or navigation bars. You could have one in the left or right hand margin and one either in the info bar (between the header and the body) or the page footer. That gives you two, but if your pages are long, you could have three: top, side and bottom.

Another way of putting a limited menu on the site is to have a 'locater' or a 'You are here :' line. You could also add a sitemap to your menus. You can also put a copyright notice in the page footer with an active link back to your home page. These methods give you four of five internal legitimate links on your site for which no search engine should penalize you.

Back to getting more backlinks, because getting more backlinks ought to always be your first priority. Compose pieces for each of your web pages with deep links directly to the page for which they were written. If you are allowed two links, one goes to your home page and one goes to the page within your web site that you wrote the piece to promote.

I personally have discovered that three articles per web page usually does the trick, but it can take more. You ought to join some relevant blogs and forums and take part, leaving just worthwhile, practical comments, but be certain that your backlink is in your sigfile (signature file).

This technique can produce hundreds of relevant unreciprocated backlinks, but be careful to keep it low profile and relevant or the webmaster might delete your comments or even your account, wasting your work of weeks or even months.

Make a sigfile for your emails as well. This does not supply real backlinks that a search engine will read, but it will produce random traffic to your website, particularly if your sigfile is attached to a good joke or a topical report.

Try to be innovative and work on getting backlinks on relevant websites. As you go up the search engine rankings, people will email you asking to exchange links. Do not do this, no matter what how they put their case. A link out of your site is like having a hole in your bucket; you ought to be plugging the holes in your bucket, not making new ones.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the SEO Content. If you want to know more, please go to our website at PLR Articles

SEO And How To Get More Backlinks Part One

May 14th, 2011

If you are at all serious about making money on line, then you should be concentrating a great deal of your effort on SEO and getting more backlinks. SEO is 'search engine optimization', but for those who are not sure what backlinks are, here is an explanation.

Backlinks are links from other websites back to your website. Google and other search engines use the number of backlinks it can find to a website to judge how popular (and therefore how good or and helpful) it is. The most popular websites float to the top of the search engine rankings.

However, there are two kinds of backlinks: reciprocated and unreciprocated backlinks. Reciprocated backlinks are those where Google finds a link from your website back to the other website, which it perceives as a one for one swap.

These links are deemed to be of less worth. Unreciprocated backlinks are perceived to be of high value because, Google reasons, you have to be so useful that people will link to you for nothing.

I am sure that you appreciate that it is very useful to get to the front page of Google's search results for the keyword phrase that you want to rank for, but perhaps you do not realize quite how important it is.

On average, more than 85% of surfers arrive at the website that they would like by looking for it on a search engine and most people use Google. Not just that, but most surfers do not look further than the first page of results and most of those do not even scroll down to check the others that they cannot see on the first page (below the fold).

It could be that the numbers 1-5 in the search results have 10 times more clicks than the numbers 6-10 (assuming 10 results per page) and 100 times more than anybody on page two. After page two, you can forget it really.

Not just will your website get more clicks up on the top of the search results, but the people who click through to your site will be searching for what you have to sell, which results in more targeted visitors. If the product sells, the top three do very well indeed.

I will return to getting more backlinks later, because there are a couple other little tweaks that you can check on to improve your search engine ranking (SEO). Firstly, make sure that the title of your web site is relevant to what you are using the site for.

For example, if you are selling T-shirts, it is better to call the site "Mike's T-shirts" than "Mike's Clothing". There are other methods of linking websites, if you choose later to sell collared shirts or jumpers. Stay targeted. Start making money by selling T-shirts and then move on.

If you have a number of pages, be sure that the titles of each page are relevant too. Check the source code for every page as well and be sure that the META tags are relevant: that is, put at least six keywords in the keyword meta tag and put a relevant description in the description meta tag - again keep them targeted but do not repeat a keyword over three times per page.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of subjects, but is now concerned with the SEO Content. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at PLR Articles

Sales Marketing Strategy: How To Use One

May 9th, 2011

Each product has to have a sales marketing strategy to support it. You can sometimes promote a few things together like a table and seats, but any device for which you do not have a sales marketing strategy is doomed to failure.

Let me put it simply, if you went out one day and noticed that someone was selling his entire stock of bicycle tyres cheap because they were going bankrupt and you bought them, who would know except you and the person you bought them from? And he is not going to like them back!

You might say: 'But I would not do that. I would put an advert in the paper'. Well, that is your promoting marketing strategy. I am not saying that it is a decent one, but at least it is something. Something to improve on really.

The first thing to think about is who your target market is and how can you best reach them. The answers to these two questions will allow you to choose whether you are going to concentrate on on or off line sales. Never forget that the vast bulk of sales are off line, although the on line market is growing every day.

If you have a shed load of bicycle tyres, for example, you would almost certainly be better off promoting them in the classifieds section of the local paper. Or you could promote a one-off garage sale of cheap bicycle tyres or you could take them to a car boot sale. In your spare time, you could create a small web site, but in this instance off line sales are more likely than on line sales.

If however, you hook up with a bicycle tyre company that is willing to drop-ship (ie deliver) from their warehouse for you then a car boot or garage sale is useless to you. In this instance, you should go straight on line, create an automated sales and payment processing page and promote it on line by the various methods available.

If you really would like to, you could back up the on line sales with a bit of off line promoting. For instance, you could put a postcard in the newsagent's window marketing that your web site has a stock of cheap bicycle tyres that can be delivered to the customers' door. Then imply add the URL of your website.

Your sales marketing strategy must be customized to what you are attempting to sell. In other words, you have to have a great deal of marketing tactics so that you can select the ones that are correct for your product. No one sales marketing strategy is ever going to fit all the products. Therefore, if you rely on only one sales marketing strategy you will not succeed.

In summary, once you have your irresistible deal ready for sale, sit down and think about who will buy it and how you can reach them - ie how you can tell them that you have what they would like. Then draw up a plan - yes, I mean write something down! Write down how you are going to accomplish this and write down when the stages of your sales marketing strategy have to be completed by.

It is merely by having a solid sales marketing strategy that you can cite that you will succeed in marketing. Failing to plan is tantamount to planning to fail.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with sales force automation software. If you would to know more, please visit our website at Sales Force Tools

How To Generate Sales With A Viral E-book

April 28th, 2011

Are you aware of the concept of viral marketing? Viral marketing is a way of getting other people to pass your website's URL or address around the Internet for you. It is a similar idea to the old fashioned chain letter, but not really the same.

The trick is to write something so interesting to so many people that surfers who read it will send it on to their friends and family. And your contact details are attached at the end of it.

Viral marketing can show your contact details to thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of surfers in a very short time and for no financial outlay. It is one of the most efficient types of marketing known to the Internet Marketer.

There are two principal ways of beginning the viral marketing snowball rolling down hill. The fastest way is to find or compose a very good joke, attach your contact details to the bottom of it and send it to your friends and family. They will pass it on and the snowball is off. The only problem with this method is that the message is not targeted.

In other words if you are selling insurance you want to get your contact details in front of people older than the age of 18, but you have no control over who reads your joke. Half of the people reading it may be children who do not have a credit card or require insurance anyway.

If you would like to reach a targeted audience, then you have to put a bit more effort into your campaign, but not too much more. This approach involves writing an ebook on the advantages of insurance and sending that to your friends and family. They will send it to their friends, if it is interesting enough, but no-one would send it to children, would they?

Hey presto, thousands of people who probably have a credit card and require insurance of some sort have your useful information on insurance and your contact details. This approach works for most concepts. Do you have web site on the Internet game 'Halo'?

Fine, write about Halo mods (modifications) and send that out. Very few kids would send that on to adults, but they might pester their parents to buy them Halo for Christmas. Viral advertising is free and other people do your promoting for you. The 'only' thing that you have to do is compose an ebook (or report) that is interesting enough for people to want to pass on.

There are a few of interesting variations to this simple ebook. You could fill it full of associate links to items. If someone purchases anything after clicking on one of your links, you will earn a payment. If they join the same scheme from your link, you will earn a payment off all of their sales as well.

In the same vein, you could permit people passing the book on to join your sales structure (downline) and rebrand the book as if it were theirs. This gives all the Internet Marketers who see it a better reason for passing it on and you still earn a proportion of their sales. You could soon have thousands of marketers in your downline earning you commission.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with sales force automation software. If you would to know more, please visit our website at Sales Force Tools