SOLO PROFITS Multimedia Blog and eRadio Podcast

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Re David Fraser’s clip below: It has taken me a long time to get comfortable with the razzamatazz style of online sales letters.

I, like many fellow Brits, have tendency to underplay rather than shout loud about things.

I agree that the format works. If it didn’t then no one would buy online offerings and marketers wouldn’t use that style of promotion.

However, as you say, it is most important that you provide massive value as that will indeed build trust and credibility.

Dave.

clipped from biz-blogger.net Many online entrepreneurs cringe at the thought of flashy sales letters with sugary-sweet testimonials backing up virtual information products set to change the world, and the prospect of guru marketers with that midas touch.� Putting that aside, Internet marketing has the potential to be a very profitable online business venture and there are ways in which you can maintain your dignity while marketing information products. While you may not like the sales letter format it clearly works - if it didn’t, it would be quickly rejected by the swelling body of successful internet marketers.� Using a watered down version of this kind of marketing page can still help you convert to that all-important opt-in list before you approach direct marketing, while ensuring your credibility remains in tact.

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This first class article and podcast from Penny Haynes from Brain Storm! I’ll be following this up myself!I particularly like the idea of using a widget instead of being drowned under email (which I officially hate with a passion).

Dave.

clipped from quikonnex.com Widgets are the buzz word nowadays - small, inexpensive, customizable programs that e-retailers and online businesses hope that their clients will download and put on their desktops. First the businesses create widgets, then they figure out how to bribe their customers to download the widgets, and finally, they monitor their customers’ responses to what they put on the widget. You can create your own widget with online tools, brand an existing one, or hire a programmer to do it for you. In today’s competitive business market, every advantage you have can make a difference in profit or loss. Investing in these small programs can potentially increase your income. In 45 days, one company had 10,000 downloads of their widget and an increase of $7,500 worth of sales DIRECTLY related to the widget. Now, THAT’s impressive. Widgets resemble podcasts and RSS feeds in their ability to connect with potential clients without them coming to your website.

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This just in from Ian

clipped from www.conversationmarketing.com You have a company. You want to grow it online. But, for whatever reason, you still want to design your own site. You could hire an internet marketing professional, work with an agency, or hit Elance and get a design for $500. But this looks easy enough, and you’ve got that free copy of Fireworks you downloaded from Adobe, so why not go for it? I have lots of reasons, but let’s assume I’m not going to change your mind. In that case, here’s how you design a site that might still help you grow your business: Get your logo. Create a blank page. Put your logo on the blank page. Put your phone number under the logo. Write three sentences that describe what you do. Stop. Launch the site and hope you don’t do too much damage.

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Social media sites seem to be springing up all over the internet.
Now AOL are getting in on the act.
Dave.

clipped from www.vnunet.com AOL has launched a trial version of a free website that allows users to post photos, videos and music. The beta of BlueString offers up to 5GB of free storage, and the site can be set to automatically backup files from the user’s PC when they log in. BlueString also enables users to combine content to create multimedia shows which can be shared with family and friends. A ‘String it’ feature allows several people to collaborate and add media assets to one show. AOL has signed a deal with HP to offer co-branded, localised versions of its portal, toolbar and search engine on HP’s desktop and notebook PCs. The Time Warner-owned firm is also planning to combine its various advertising platforms into a single entity known as Platform A. The platform will offer advertising to any site on the internet rather than just serving the company’s own sites. The move uses AOL’s recent acquisitions of advertising companies to create an advertising network.

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I’ve been playing around with “Clipmarks” and as a small test, I thought this article from Brian Turner of www.platinax.co.uk would be of interest.If this works well I’ll start to post more numerous clips between main articles.

If you don’t like that idea let me know and I’ll not do it!

All the best,
Dave.

clipped from www.platinax.co.uk My Adsense has normally chugged along with small amounts, but over the past few months its being going crazy. On the one hand, I have been focused on better quality sites, and pushing traffic in - on the other hand, I know my Google Adsense account underwent a manual review a few months ago, as well, so there’s a good chance I’m also away from price matching territory. The ironic thing is that while I built many of these sites originally for links, I’m not actually using many of them for this at present, with Adsense being used as a stop-gap before selling site sponsorships. The overall result is that over the past two months my Adsense earnings have actually become higher than any individual client on my books. In fact, September looks as though Adsense will account for 25% of my company income.

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By Dave Foster

LAST YEAR SAW THE ARRIVAL OF ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA.

If you operate a website or blog, you would be well advised to realign your site to exploit the popular social media sites for increased traffic.

Before we move on, you can now choose to do any of the following:

1. Read on - or scroll to the end of this post and

2. Watch the full online video

3. Listen to the podcast

4. Download the mp3 audio file

5. Download the FREE pdf report and process map

You should also introduce social media components to your site because web users are experiencing these new forms of interaction on more and more sites and they will have an expectation of the same from your site too.

If you want to attract repeat visitors and want them to stay longer, your focus for the next few months should be on the social aspects of your site.

Social media uses technologies like RSS, blogging, podcasting, tagging, etc. and offer social networking (MySpace, Facebook), social video and picture sharing (YouTube, Flickr), and community-based content ranking (Digg, MiniClip) features.

The central theme of these sites is user generated content used for sharing amongst other users. The social aspects of these sites allow users to setup social communities, invite friends and share common interests.

You don’t have to change your site immediately to take advantages of these new technologies. Introduce small changes incrementally and you will be well on your way to measure up to your visitors’ new expectations.

Step 1. Declare who you are to the online community. People should be able to relate to you. Unless they know more about you, you will be just an unknown identity and most people don’t like to deal with people they don’t know. Create an About Me page to list your achievements skills and aspirations.

Step 2. Create a MySpace page and link your biography in the Profile of your MySpace page. Also provide a link back from the MySpace page to your website. Spend an hour every week to develop your online social network in MySpace. Invite a few of your new friends to write blog articles at your site about your products or services.

Step 3. Install a free blog and start publishing at least one article in your blog every week. Provide an easy bookmarking feature to social bookmarking sites like delicious (just like the ones at the bottom of this post). This is done by providing an action button for each article in your site. The action button takes users to the submission page of the bookmarking site.

Step 4. Provide an action button for direct posting of blog articles to digg. Digg is a popular news ranking site. A well dugg article will bring thousands of visitors to you.

Step 5. Provide a forum at your site for users to discuss your products and services. Don’t delete negative comments because they provide insights into the improvements needed to serve your visitors better. However, censor hate speeches and meaningless bantering. Register your forum at BoardTracker. BoardTracker is a forum search engine.

Step 6. If you are offering products, allow users to review and rate your products. This will help you in inventory management because you may want to discontinue low rated products.

Step 7. Provide RSS feeds for your new products, blogs, forum postings, etc. An RSS feed provides teasers of your content. Users will use RSS readers to scan your teasers and visit your site for more information if the teasers interest them.

Step 8. Publish all your feeds at feedburner. Feedburner provides media distribution and audience engagement services for RSS feeds. They also provide an advertising network for your feeds. If you have quality content, you will be able to monetize your material using their services.

Step 9. Create short how-to or new product videos and post these videos in social video sharing sites like YouTube, Google video. Provide a few start and end frames in these videos to introduce your site with your site url. Post these videos using catchy titles, teaser descriptions, and appropriate tags to make them easy to discover.

Step 10. Provide embedded links to your remotely hosted videos on your site. This will save your bandwidth and storage space because the videos reside in the video sharing sites rather than on your own site’s server.

Step 11. As well as videos, use social photo sharing sites like Flickr and SmugMug to share pictures related to contents in your site. Use the same title, description and tag techniques discussed earlier for social video sites.

Step 12. Provide a “Send to Friend” feature for all the products and services you offer. This feature is a link that sends the article, product description, etc. to a recipient via e-mail.

Social media is not a fad. It is here to stay and brings a profound change to web surfers’ experiences. Now is the right time to implement features that will make your site Social-Media-Friendly. Also, using marketing techniques that utilize popular social media sites, you will see a massive increase in traffic to your site.

Webmasters and Blog Owners, want to use this article on your own website, in your blog or eZine? Click here to grab a FREE copy.

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Liane Bate writes:

Are you wondering what all the hoopla is about blogging? Are you wondering if it’s worth your time and energy to start one, or more than one blog? Are you curious to know if blogging is going to be the secret weapon that helps you start making money from home? Many online business owners ask these questions, so here’s a little insight into blogging that might help you build your business.

“Blogging” is a fun word, so it must be fun, right? Well, only if you really like to write something meaningful that your readers are interested in and willing to keep reading as you make more and more blog posts. The thing is, if you want to start making money from home, you have to maintain a blog to make it effective, and keep posting valuable content on a regular basis, otherwise there is no point in having a blog. (more…)

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