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7 Steps to Easier EBay Shipping

admin — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:02:37 +0000

If you’re like me, you probably hate packing and shipping the things you sell on eBay.

Don’t get me wrong, I love selling on eBay. I just don’t like the shipping part. I find it monotonous to hunt for boxes, wrap the items, drive back and forth from the post office, and all the other steps involved in shipping.

Then there’s the waiting for the buyer to receive the item. Has it arrived yet? Did it get damaged in shipping?

It took me a lot of trial and error to figure them out, but the following 7 steps will help make your job easier when it comes to shipping, as well as get rid of the stress of waiting for the item to be delivered to the buyer.

1. Professional Wrapping

When you wrap your item(s), wrap it professionally in nice, clean tissue paper. If breakable, be sure the item is wrapped with bubble wrap as well. Include a business card with your website information, name, address, or a printed statement showing the item(s) name, item(s) number, price paid, and a small hand-written note thanking the buyer for their purchase.

2. Insurance

Insurance is usually a good idea but in general, it should be an optional feature, with the decision left to the buyer. Remember two important things about insurance. First, insurance is VERY inexpensive. Therefore, in your description, you should state how much insurance would cost and recommend it. Second, you should also state in the description that if insurance is not purchased, you are not responsible for lost or damaged items.

3. Weighing

In order to provide accurate details and help in determining shipping costs, you need to know exact weights. The best option, which will save you many unnecessary trips to the post office, is to purchase a inexpensive quality scale for weighing your packages.

4. Postage

Instead of always running out of stamps or having to run to the post office to ship a smaller item, fill out the information located at stamps.com where you can print stamps directly from your home computer.

5. Post Office Freebies

If you use the Priority Mail option through your post office, they will provide all your supplies for free. This includes boxes, labels, and tape. Best of all, they deliver all these supplies directly to your door. Get them at your local post office or go to USPS.com request mailing supplies.

6. Ship-To Locations

Be sure to consider where you will ship to carefully. You will have buyers from around the world but you can limit where you will ship. Some people prefer to ship to the US, Canada, and European countries while others ship anywhere. The option is completely yours but keep in mind that there are some differences in how you wrap the package, the currency exchanges, and communication barriers between you and the buyer.

7. Delivery Confirmation

Unfortunately, some buyers will try to say they paid for an item but never received the auction item(s). When shipping, you should consider using delivery confirmation. This service is generally inexpensive and can end up saving you a ton, especially if the item(s) is higher priced.

Do yourself a favor and put these tips into action - you’ll save yourself both time and hassles. Use the time you save to get more listings up, and watch your eBay income grow.

John Lenaghan offers success tips for making money on eBay, dropshippers and many other topics on the Online Auction Advisor website. Visit http://www.online-auction-advisor.com for more ways to improve your buying and selling on eBay.

eBay Auction Pricing Strategies That Really Work!
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5 Secret Tips to Effective Pay Per Click Advertising

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:05:48 +0000

Yes, pay per click advertising will cost you but if you do it right, it should make you money. If you are running pay per click advertising campaign and more money is going out than coming in, something is not right. Here are 5 steps to targeting the right keywords and minimizing costs.

Are your keywords too broad?

Let’s just say you have developed an amazing diet drink that is safe, effective, tasty and will guarantee that people will lose 15 lbs in 30 days. You know you have a product that is a winner and are excited about marketing it on the World Wide Web. However, you are relatively new to the Web and pick keywords that are too general and expensive like ‘dieting’ or ‘weight loss’. Not only are you perhaps disappointed by your PPC advertising results but it will likely be draining your bank account. This is why niche keywords are so important. Look at bidding on keywords such as ‘weight loss supplement’ or ‘weight loss drink’. Go to Overture or Word Tracker and find keywords that are more niche oriented and not so competitive.

Is your ad dull or attention getting?

It is worthwhile to spend some time learning about effective copy writing. It could be the difference between mediocrity and success. You want to know how to get someone’s attention. Unfortunately saying “I have the best diet drink on the planet” doesn’t work. You have to motivate and inspire people to take their time to look at what you have to offer. And, in pay per click advertising you have to do it in very few words. This can be a challenge. Learn the words that sell or attract or grab someone’s attention like “Must see”, “Quick results”, “New”, “The truth”, “Groundbreaking”, “Instant”

Double Check your URL!

Sounds like a no-brainer but many times people either misspell their URL or send someone to their home page instead of the page that directly relates to their question. In other words, you may have a website that is dedicated to weight loss but in your pay per click advertising, you want to direct them specifically to your diet drink. So, you would want your URL to read http://www.myweightlosssite.com/dietdrink.html. There is nothing more frustrating to the website visitor than having to go hunting for the information. Your job is to make it easy to find and informative. If they have to look long, they will leave. These are dollars lost to you.

What is your competition doing?

It is likely that your competitors who have a high PR (page rank) and continue to advertise, are doing something right. Learn from those who are successful. While the differences may seem subtle to you, in the World of PPC advertising a word or sentence can discourage or invite a potential website visitor.

What should my title be for my PPC ad ?

Plain and simple use the keyword that is being searched on. Don’t get fancy or creative here. If someone is looking for diet drink then your ad title is ‘diet drink’.
Give the website visitor what they want.

The bidding war is on

Try your best not to get caught in the bidding war game. There are plenty of ways to drive traffic to your site without spending a fortune. General keywords will always have high prices like ‘dieting.’ Don’t fall for the trap. Most refined keywords will have lower priced bids but are excellent because they will target your traffic. A Website visitor may only be looking for diet recipes and dislike diet drinks. They are not your customer. Same for the website visitor who may want to tone-up while they are dieting. The more specific you can target your market, the better you will do.

Two other tips: If all the bids are around 25 cents and the lead bid is at $5.00, you know someone is trying to own the number 1 position. If you want to have fun bid $4.99 and they will get nailed $5.00 for every click and you will only pay 26 cents if they click on your ad. Warning though: if you want to play this game, keep an eye out so they don’t drop their bid. I sometimes do this as a temporary measure to bring someone back to fair playing grounds.

Secondly, keep any eye on all of your bids. People do change what they are willing to bid on any given keyword or search term. I do an overview every few days.

The test results are back

One last key to good pay per click advertising is testing your ads. You can set up two different campaigns and rotate them for the same period of time. What you might learn could surprise you and benefit your bank account!

Jan Peterson founder of http://www.goldstarreview.com researches and reviews business opportunities Over 400 FREE reports available. Successful e-book with reprint rights also available.

earning The Secret To Internet Success
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8 Killer Ways to Improve the Effect of Testimonials on Your Customers!

admin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:03:12 +0000

Every web business should be using testimonials. Testimonials are extremely effective in making visitors take that extra step forward to buy your product because they are given confidence by looking at what other people have said. Testimonials can work everywhere on a website; on the homepage or in the sales letter. Good, believable testimonials on your website can spark a great number of extra sales. Here are 8 ways to make your online testimonials more effective.

1. When asking for testimonials, ask people whose opinions count. If a visitor on your site sees a testimonial from a well known person who is associated with the product you are trying to sell then this will have a great boost for your credibility. Just ask these well known people to review your product and give a testimonial. Do not be afraid to ask for testimonials because really you have nothing to lose.

2. Ask your customers to send in their picture when they give testimonials about your product or service. This will show viewers that the testimonials you show on your site are not fake. It gives the impression that real people have said these good words about your website.

3. Have your customers who give testimonials mail you their hand written signature. This way you can scan in the signature so that it looks like a genuine testimonial. Once again, this is another way to make your testimonials more believable so that visitors will start to trust you more; a crucial part of achieving online success.

4. Similarly, you could have customers to send in a hand written testimonial as a letter. You could scan in the whole letter for boosted credibility. However, in order to get customers to do this you could offer a discount or offer a free gift if they give a good hand written testimonial. Alternatively, you could ask for a testimonial on a post card.

5. You could have customers give a spoken testimonial. This can be done easily by the customer recording his or her testimonial with a tape recorder. An alternative and possibly easier way of doing this is to have your customer leave a voicemail or answer phone message and then upload this to your website as an audio file. Have the audio testimonial played whenever someone enters your site so that visitors always get to hear how good other customers have found your product or service.

6. When your customers give testimonials, ask them for their personal profile too. This will make testimonials more entertaining to read for your visitors and will show visitors what type of people your product and service benefits most. Also, your customers will probably be very willing to give a testimonial with a personal profile because it will allow them to include their web address. This way, you should be able to get plenty of these testimonials.
7. When you receive your email testimonials, take a screen shot of the email instead of just extracting the testimonial from the text. This way when visitors see the email, they will see the date, time and ‘who it’s from’ field. This of course will serve as sufficient proof to show that this is a genuine testimonial from a happy customer.

8. Once you have received very positive testimonials, ask the writers of these testimonials to give their contact information so that your web visitors can contact them and enquire on the product you are selling. This is a great way to get people talking about your product positively and your visitors are more likely to believe a positive account from a previous customer than a positive account from your sales letter.

Overall, just be creative about trying to improve the effect of your testimonials. Put them where people will see them and include them on all pages of your website so that happy customers will be associated with your website. If testimonials are used effectively, many more sales will be made.

100s of free ebooks and software products are also available at this address. Gain free access to these by sending a blank email to:

Thank you for reading

William Johnston
(will@info-ebooks.co.uk)

All Marketers are Scammer Pt 2
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6 Forum Management Essentials

admin — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:01:07 +0000

If you are tasked with managing a forum, congratulations to you. If you find yourself weighed down by mundane management tasks, you are not alone. Let’s examine some essentials to help you run an effective and vibrant message board community without the hassles of micromanagement.

1. Find a forum you like and stick with it. Yes, not everyone will be using vBulletin or one of the other wonderful PHP or ASP message board sites. If you like EZBoard or if you like making your own site up with PHP open source, then do it and stick with it. By now you know the pitfalls of the particular sites; can you really afford to regularly change to the latest and greatest technologies? Probably not, unless your site is already generating plenty of income through Google AdSense or similar types of PPC advertising. I am not saying to never update your site, rather weigh the costs of whether your site has to have a certain site or feel to be successful. Even ugly sites can prosper, witness Craig’s List!

2. Find moderators who want to moderate. Not everyone who volunteers to moderate a particular forum on your message board is fit for the task. Some will sign up and then not moderate; better to go without a moderator then to have a “name in place.” Keep your standards high and only the best will volunteer.

3. Envision long term. Unless you plan on rapidly growing your forum and then “flipping” it in a quick sale, you are better off looking at keeping your site for many years. Yes, in the land of the internet, everything changes so rapidly; still there are forums that can and do thrive the longer they are online, with proper management of course!

4. Reward your core constituency. Chances are your site is dominated by a small group of people who post regularly and are generally most helpful overall. Consider having a private forum viewable only to them on your site. Out of this group will likely come your moderators; run contests for this group only. Find advertisers to fund the prizes.

5. Ignore the squeeky, vocal minority. Yes, there will be the small amount of people — usually less than 10% of your members — whose demands on your time far exceed what is normal. They are the ones who want extensive hand holding and technical assistance…if they would only read previous threads or pay attention to announcements, your problems with them would be resolved. As much as it cuts against the grain for some administrators [heck, you are all about helping people, right?], you must cut them loose. You need not do it directly, but by not promptly answering their questions they will either figure things out themselves or move on.

6. Be well funded. Have a treasure chest or Paypal donation box on your site to welcome contributions. Run banner ads and join a successful PPC program. Find an advertising plan that works well for you. Seek grant money if your site is geared toward helping raise awareness about a particular health or social issue. You want to reap some monies from your site and you should pay yourself for your hard work.

Not all forums are meant to succeed on the internet, nor should they. The successful sites are well managed and positively impact members and guests far beyond the internet. If you have one of these sites, congratulations and good management to you!

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5 Powerful Ways to Make Money Online with a Website

admin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:03:19 +0000

There are many ways to make money online and the best way for you is to simply be creative with your skills, knowledge, and abilities. However, the following five options are powerful ways to make money online with a website and definite something you should consider.

#1 Knowledge

You can always sell your knowledge, which many times is the best way if you are an “expert” of any type or subject matter. People are looking for your knowledge and input, regardless if it is self taught, learned in college, or wherever. People are always looking for answers online, so if you sell your knowledge you can simply make money from what you know.

#2 Affiliate Programs

Become an affiliate for products based on your website theme and then simply promote these programs where you earn money from referrals. It is easier than it sounds and only takes you creating a website full of rich content.

#3 Hard Goods

Selling hard goods is a traditional way of making money and it transfers to the online forum as well. No matter what hard goods you have to sell you can certainly find a buyer online. Create a website that focuses on your goods, have a good shipping plan in place, and then start selling online.

#4 E-books

Selling e-books, articles, and other written materials is also a powerful way to make money online and if you are good at writing it is certainly something you should consider. You can have your own website selling pre-written topics or else you can also write on demand, whatever works best for you and your web business.

#5 Auction Goods

Auction web sites are also very powerful ways to make money. The reason for this is you can sell a wide variety of products, do not necessarily need your own website although it helps, and can change your products from time to time as you need to. Many people enjoy working and selling via auction sites because any number of things can be sold from old personal items to new products as well.

The best way for you to make money online is for you to do something that you like and enjoy. When you do some thing you like and enjoy you will be able to commit yourself to doing it fulltime. The reason for this is working online can be difficult at times and if you do not enjoy it then it will be difficult for you to be successful making money via your website.

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8 Free Pay Per Click Tools You Can Use To Improve Profits By 211 Percent

admin — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:04:43 +0000

When Used Properly Pay Per Click Search Engines can make you money. But you don’t want to just jump in and start bidding on Keywords you need an action plan. By using these Free Online Tools you can Improve your Pay Per Click Profitability by 211 Percent or More.

All of these tools are available on Yahoo which is the prouder owner of overture at searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/

1 - Budgeting Tutorial

This Free tutorial teaches you how to use the budget manager to automatically manage your Daily. Weekly and Monthly Spending on your PPC Campaigns

2 - How to Find More Keywords

This Tutorial will show you how to find and maximize your keywords

3 - Tracking your Results Tutorial

This Tutorial will show you how to track your results so you know how visitors arrived at your site.

4 - Best Practice

This Tutorial will show you how to manage your PPC Campaigns

5 - Keyword Selector Tool

This Tool helps you find more keywords. You type in a keyword and hit enter and it returns a list of similar keywords and search frequency.

6 - Bid Tool

Shows you the bids for the keywords you are interested in The top 40 bids for the term life insurance range from $1.14 - $6.08

7 - Return on Investment Calculator

Helps you determine your return on investment. You enter the following values and it calculates your profit or loss

Total monthly clicks : Estimated average CPC ($): Conversion rate: (%) Average profit per conversion ($)

8 - CPM Calculator

This is similar to The Return on Investment Calculator from number 7 but it measures the cost per Thousand, Many People buy Banner Ads or text ads and pay for impressions rather then clicks. This is a good way to compare how effective your different Advertising methods are

Search Engine Masters Course
A FREE 5 day email course on how your web site can get
top 10 rankings in the other search engines.
http://ewguru.com/free-seo-ecourse

About The Author:
Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001 When he Built
an Organization of over 100,000 Members

Get Mike’s Newsletter:
http://ewguru.com/newsletter

Weekly Tios and Tricks
http://ewguru.com/tips

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7 Reasons Why Using CSS is a Must

admin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:01:31 +0000

CSS is a new option for website designers that have been using HTML and tables for most of their web designing careers. Of course, it is a huge change and requires learning a new language and skill, however most people are saying CSS is worth it and it will give you more control, options, and is easier to edit. Consider the following 7 reasons why using CSS is a must and see if it convinces you to change your method of web design.

Reason #1 Present Data Logically

When you use CSS in the layout of your website you can present your data in a logical way and CSS can then manage how the information appears. This is significantly easier than other methods and is one reason why CSS is a must.

Reason #2 More Options

With CSS you have more options for changing the location of information on your screen. This is important for a variety of reasons, especially if you anticipate the need to change columns or links at some time.

Reason #3 Complements HTML

Another reason CSS is a must is because it complements HTML. HTML and CSS alone both have weaknesses, but when used together your website design will be significantly stronger.

Reason #4 Editing

You can edit your website design if you need to for whatever reason without that much hassle if you are using CSS. All you do is go in and edit the definition. This is a lot easer than searching and replacing of years past.

Reason #5 Faster

When you use CSS your pages not only load faster but they also can be scrolled quicker than ever before. This is a huge deal to most web surfers as well as webmasters because speed is a huge implication in whether someone stays on your page or moves on. CSS increases speed, and as a result is a tool you must learn how to use.

Reason #6 Print

When you use CSS you can also include a printer friendly version of the website that makes it easier to print and can eliminate color, images, and other things that do not print easily.

Reason #7 Control

If you have been working with tables for layouts you are probably tired of the guessing that goes on. However, with CSS you have more control and can issues commands and know exactly where the result will appear, rather than guessing. This is in itself makes CSS a must have.

Now that you have some information on CSS, you are probably interested in knowing more details about how it works and above all how you can learn to use CSS. Fortunately, there is tons of information available online that will provide you with the answers to your many questions on CSS and how it can help you.

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5 Proven Techniques to Build a Profitable Web Forum

admin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:06:01 +0000

You may have heard that having a web community is a great way to increase sales, customer loyalty and word of mouth for your web business. In fact a web community itself, if large enough and targeting an affluent demographic (or one that advertisers like to target), has the potential to bring in revenue. Commonly people use a web forum as the centre point for a web community. However building a popular forum is no easy task and requires patience and dedication.

Start at the beginning: Which forum software should I use?

Perhaps the least important variable, but certainly a vital aspect, is the forum software you choose. I came to settle on Invision Board as my favourite forum of choice. Over the years I became very familiar with Invison Board functions so it would take a lot for me to switch to different forum software. Unfortunately the team at Invision recently stopped offering a fully functional free version and the most current free version has limitations on numbers of users. I’m a strong supporter of Invision so I still recommend using the free service and then paying to upgrade once your board is large enough to warrant it. Chances are with your forum being that popular means you can justify the fee anyway.

The other top quality free forum out there is phpBB which is the open source offering. I haven’t used this myself but with Invision no longer being free I can see this being the main player for all small business forums. I see this forum everywhere so I think you can take that as a strong endorsement.

Another popular choice, especially for large companies that can afford the fee is vBulletin. This seems to the professional forum of choice for those with the moolah to afford it. I only played with this forum many years ago when they had a limited use free version (in fact it was the first forum I ever installed). It’s definitely a top forum with a great design, but you pay for it.

As I said which forum software you choose is not too important. You are going to have to learn to use at least one, so choose the one that satisfies your criteria and then get playing. If the idea of installing forum software is daunting to you then I suggest you look at the installation services most forum businesses offer. You can pay a small fee and one of the staff or community members will install the software for you. There are also remotely hosted forums where you don’t install any software at all on your server but instead use one hosted by the forum company. Note this often either costs money or is advertiser supported so you might have some icky banners or other ads streamed across your forum. I recommend you host the forum on your own server because you get control, ownership and better search engine benefits.

How to attract and keep members

Regardless of which forum software you choose the hardest part of building a community is getting members, and members that stick around. Obviously your forum should be targeted to your business niche or target market if it’s not a business site.

Picking the niche area you target is vital for success, and the individual forums you create for your community must clearly represent the purpose of your community. However this is where some lessons can be learnt. At first when you start building categories and individual forums you might get carried away with all the interesting forums you can create. You dream of your users lapping it up and talking away about every little area of interest you can come up with. This is the first major mistake you can make. You end up creating way too many forums that have no topics in them. Even if you do manage to bring some quality visitors to your site, they hit your forum and see an empty place and then move on. No one feels compelled to join an empty forum.

But you may ask then, how can you go from having an empty forum to one filled with topics when no one wants to get things started? It’s a catch 22 isn’t it! The number one concept to remember is that people bring in people. If visitors see topics and posts and discussions they are interested in they are more likely to contribute. It’s hardest early on when you first launch but there are some tricks you can do. Here are the key pointers I’ve learnt to get passed this early stage of a ghost-town forum.

1. Think minimalist when building categories and forums

Look to about four forums maximum to start with, even less if possible. If you find yourself coming up with many different forum subjects, try and group them together under one forum. Then in that forum you can create individual topic posts to cater to each area. That way you are creating conversation starters and making the place look a little busier. As the forums grow and you have enough individual entries to start breaking down forums you can justify creating new ones. You can then move the existing topics into the appropriate categories and the forum doesn’t start off empty.

2. As the owner you must keep contributing

This might seem obvious, but it’s hard to keep motivated when week after week you create new topics and try to stimulate conversation and you seem to be talking to yourself. Personally I get the most excited when I first build the forum, thinking of all the great topics that can be discussed. Unfortunately once everything is done it does take some effort to keep writing fresh content. The only rule I can give is stick to it. Get into a routine of making a few posts everyday.

Expanding on this idea…

3. Create some fake personalities

This may seem a little dishonest, but a little trick you can use to stimulate conversation is to create a few different member accounts each with their own personality. Basically you create some fictional members and get posting. You can even have full forum conversations between your characters (just don’t go insane!). Only you know which characters are fake. To everyone else it appears as if your forum is getting popular.

I had a friend take this idea so seriously that he kept profile notes on each character such as age, sex, personality type, occupation etc so whenever he made posts he made sure to get into character first. It’s like forum acting.

This method again takes dedication because you need to keep logging in with each character and making new posts. However it can be MUCH more effective than if it was just you making all the posts as your own identity. It looks sad when the webmaster is chatting away to no one, but not quite as sad when Jim, Katie, Chris and Jane are having conversations even if they really are all controlled by the webmaster.

4. Publish content

There are sites available such as Ezine Articles that have articles you are allowed to publish on your site provided you follow their terms of use policy (which usually means you publish the articles exactly as they are and keep all links intact). The authors of these articles make them free because they get good promotion if their article is widely published. Note that because these are free articles you will most likely find that you are not the only site out there with the content.

If you want unique content you may have to pay for it and consider hiring columnists. With MTGParadise.com we had such a good community that many of our members were happy to write articles and reports for free. They enjoyed writing and seeing their article published. It’s not easy to generate free unique articles this way especially early on before you have a community running, so it might be necessary to throw around a little cash and buy some articles.

If you can find content relevant to your market and distribute it to your community you have a good way to stimulate conversation and make your forum look a little busier.

5. Recruit your mates and spread the word

This is harder than you’d think. If you are like me, most of my closest friends are too busy or not really the forum community types so they won’t help out much. Generally though you should have a few friends that are interested in the topic of your forum and they might help out with a post every now and then. Don’t put to much pressure on them and be thankful for anything they contribute. You don’t want to get carried away trying to get your forum off the ground that you lose your friends because you constantly pester them to make posts or join up.

As a general rule, don’t be shy; tell everyone you know about your forum. But only do it once in a polite manner. Say you are inviting them to check out something you have created and that you want their valuable opinion before you officially launch. This “sneak peek” will make your friends and family feel special because you are demonstrating that you value their opinion so they will be more inclined to check out your site.

You can put a note in your signature file in your email about your new community, make a few posts at newsgroups that focus on your target market and hit some other complimentary (not competitor) forums to advertise your new forum. Remember always be courteous, follow rules and don’t come across too desperate whenever you promote your forum. All this will come across negatively and harm your chances of new members signing up.

Don’t give up

The most important tip I can give you to grow your community is to not give up. Even though YoungActivist.com is sitting out there all alone with no members and very old content I still value the site. While I didn’t achieve the success I wanted off the bat, I haven’t given up and hope that one day can I can get the site growing again.

Sometime after months, maybe even years of making new posts, adding content and spreading the word, you will find that your forum has grown to have a few hundred members, a handful of devoted regulars and no longer requires daily injections of posts from you. You reach a critical mass and your community moves forward without too much intervention from you. This is the holy grail of forum building because your members became the best advertising tool you could ever have. Word of mouth helps the site to continue to grow and attract new members. You can start creating new forums with confidence that they won’t be empty for long. Best of all, you now have an audience that you can either leverage around your own products or services or start to derive revenue from through advertising, premium services or subscriptions etc.

By Yaro Starak
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

Do you want to profit from your own successful home based Internet business?

Learn from Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia. He works part time from home on several web based business that generate between $2,000 and $8,000 per month. Get your free articles and audio now - visit his Internet Business Blog.

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5 Quick Tips to Get Your Ezine Rolling in the Right Direction

admin — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:01:04 +0000

Publishing your own ezine is critical to establishing a long term and successful Internet presence for you and your business.

Your own ezine will allow you to build customer loyalty and your public image to your target audience.

Following are five tips to help you publish a successful ezine.

(1) Write the content yourself.

Publishing an article from an outside source every once in a while is fine.

Just keep in mind you want to attract business to you and establish yourself as the source not someone else.

(2) Don’t over advertise to your list

Publishing advertisements about products and services to your list is fine.

In order to keep your subscriber’s you should only do it sparingly.

You can add a little blurb at the top (or bottom) of your ezine about your products/services and that will work wonders for promoting your business and keeping subscribers happy.

You can also add a little blurb just after the article about yourself and a little tag for your product/service.

Placing it right after the article will give reader’s no chance to get distracted and they will see it.

(3) Keep solo mailings down to 1-2 per month

By keeping your solo ads, which is an ad that goes out to your list unscheduled you will keep more subscribers.

1 or 2 per month is what works for me. However I’ve also waited 5 months before I mailed a solo ad to one of my lists.

Keep your newsletter intact and add the solo ad to it. Your mast head and other ezine designs shouldn’t change. This way your reader’s will not think it’s spam.

(4) Offer extreme value or Over Deliver

Each issue should offer value to your readers. The content should give value and not the advertisements.

If reader’s like your content and view it as valuable the odds of them coming to you and buying is increased.

As an ezine owner mixing value driven content with value driven advertising is a tight rope walk.

Careful attention needs to be taken when developing your ads and content to retain as many reader’s as possible.

(5) Understand people will unsubscribe

I have a friend who started an ezine and after his first mailing he lost 5% of his subscribers.

He called me on the phone and complained that his article must have driven off these people. Well truth be told maybe that was the case, but people sometimes subscribe to an ezine, find they don’t like it, unsubscribe and that’s that.

Nothing personal that’s just the way it is. Once you understand that you will lose subscribers with every mailing the stress will be reduced.

Operating an ezine isn’t easy. There will be work involved and careful planning is crucial to long term success.

However if you:

Think before you publish

Direct each issue towards giving your readers what they want

and write value driven content for your ezine

You will find it much easier to create a successful publication.

About the Author
Jason Mann is a profitability consultant who works with small Internet businesses to increase profits using unique and powerful strategies. For more infortmative business articles visit:
http://www.majorprofitmargins.info

Ezine Publishing - 3 Quick Tips To Boost Your Ezine Publishing Results
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6 Ways to Catch More Opt-ins Than Ever Before

admin — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:05:02 +0000

Remember that when you have new visitors at your website, your #1 goal is to get them on your ezine list! That way you have permission to contact them again and again, educating them about your helpful services and products that they came to learn more about.

But you can’t just put up a link that says “free newsletter”. No one cares! You need to carefully craft an opt-in box that works like a big net, catching the exact type of “fish” you want as your ideal clients and customers.

Also remember, don’t hide your box at the bottom of your web pages. Right now, most testing shows that the best place for your opt-in box is the upper right corner… loud and proud!

Here are six simple things you should have in your opt-in box that will help you get more signups than ever before.

1) An Attention-Getting HEADLINE

Remember that online readers SKIM copy - they don’t read it word for word. So the headline in your opt-in box may be the ONLY thing they read, which determines whether they sign up or not. So don’t waste this space saying something like “Free Newsletter” or even worse… “Sign up for our mailing list.” Ugh! Instead, tell me the MOST exciting thing your ezine will give me!

Examples:
“Are You Ready to Blast Off Your SALES This Year?”
“FINALLY: Learn How to Keep That Weight Off For Good”
“Insider Secrets to Writing Novels for Big Bucks”

2) A Raving Description of Your Ezine

Work hard at putting together a description of your ezine that gets prospects excited to sign up! Remember they’re tuned into station WIIFM (”What’s In It For ME?”). Tell them what your information is going to DO for them as well as everything they GET. Examples: How-to articles, quick and easy tips, free resources, insider secrets. Aim for your description to be between 15 and 30 words.

3) A Field to Enter Their FIRST NAME.

Getting people’s names along with their e-mails allows you to personalize your ezine for them. For example, if I was on your list, your e-mail would come to me saying, “Dear Ali…” The subject line could even say, “Ali, here’s your free tip”. Why do you want to do this? Studies prove that having the recipient’s name in the subject line of your e-mails can increase your open rates by 60%!

The problem is, many people value their privacy and are hesitant to give you their full name. For this reason, just ask for their FIRST name. It’s been proven that you’ll get MORE names from people if you only ask for the first name. (And their first name is generally all you’ll need anyway.)

4) A Field to Enter Their Primary EMAIL ADDRESS.

Many people have a backup or personal e-mail address that they use just for receiving newsletters and promotions. The problem is they are often from free e-mail services like Yahoo or Hotmail. These services filter e-mail like crazy, and their mailboxes fill up quickly, so there’s a good chance your e-mails won’t even reach these recipients.

The solution is, simply ask for their primary e-mail. It’s amazing, but simply ASKING them to enter their primary e-mail will get you more quality e-mails on your list! (You’ll also get less bounce-backs from undeliverable e-mails. If you get too many of those, it raises a red flag to some spam filter programs.)

5) A BUTTON That Says “Subscribe” or “Sign Me Up Now”

Make it very clear what they should click on to activate their subscription once they type in their name and email. Don’t use something confusing like a link that says “submit form”.

6) Your PRIVACY POLICY, right then and there.

Everyone’s scared to receive more spam these days, so put your prospects at ease. Don’t make them wonder what you’re going to do with their e-mail addresses. State right next to or below your opt-in form what your policy is. Mine is, “We will never sell, rent, trade, or share your e-mail with any other organization.” (Feel free to use that yourself.) DON’T make people click on a link to read your privacy policy - it looks like you have something to hide. In fact, in some U.S. states, it’s now required that you state your privacy policy right at the point of opt-in, so it’s a good idea no matter where you do business.

Want to See a Sample of This in Action?

If you’d like to see many of these components in action, see my pop-under box at www.ezinequeen.com/popup.htm.

And if you’d like MORE step-by-step instructions on how to get more signups at your website (and beyond) and build your list bigger than ever before, see my SPECIAL REPORT: “101 Simple, FREE and Low-Cost Ways to Quickly Build a Massive EMAIL LIST”, which you can learn more about here.

Techniques for Free Website Promotion
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