Archive for May, 2009
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The Problogger: Chris Garrett
Today’s interview is with Chris Garrett from ChrisG.com. Chris is a very respected professional blogger amongst the blogging community and has co-authored a top selling book called ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income with Darren Rowse. His also a sought out Internet marketing consultant, coach, speaker and industry commentator. Furthermore, Chris has an excellent membership program that will be reopening again in 2009 called Authority Blogger that teaches people how to become a professional blogger.
I interviewed Chris because I wanted to find out how he built numerous profitable Internet businesses. These businesses include his professional blog, ChrisG.com with over 14,000 daily readers and Authority Blogging, his membership program. Chris’ story starts back in 1994 just when the Internet started to emerge and I find out how everything has evolved since then.
In this interview you will learn…
- How Chris provides valuable content that has created a loyal audience of 14,000 daily readers
- The three principles of attracting subscribers to your blog
- What ChrisG discusses in his ProBlogger book with Darren Rowse.
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A popular way to generate traffic to your e-commerce business is through social media networks. You can market your e-commerce website through places such as Digg.com, Twitter.com, Facebook and MySpace. The goal with social network marketing is twofold:
- You are trying to enhance your site’s community by establishing outposts on social networking sites so people who share your interests, or are interested in your products and services, find you and your site.
- Getting involved in social networking multiplies the number of places that your site and your products can be found by search engines, which is critically important to the success of your e-commerce business.
How To Leverage Social Media Networks To Our Advantage?
Simply, we are trying to spread the word about your e-commerce business. You can take your product reviews or blog posts and spread them as far as possible online enlisting the help of these sites. It’s important to make sure the content you’re promoting is interesting and helpful to the audience you’re trying to reach. Remember, people like to do business with their friends if they’ve never met you offline. By being reasonable and participating in social networking, you’ll expand your credibility and potential customer base in many important and helpful ways.
It’s also important to recognize that these social media outlets were designed to serve as conversation platforms, and not as overt marketing channels. Sending messages that are overly promotional or commercial is often compared to shouting at a party where everyone else is chatting quietly, and the backlash can overwhelm the benefits of participation. As an ecommerce business owner I recommend taking a couple of weeks to monitor the various sites to get a sense of the patterns and informal rules before posting anything.
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Recently I asked Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips to do an interview with me. Daniel runs a very successful blog that attracts over 20,000 daily readers and is very popular in the blogging community. Not only that, Daniel has an online membership program called Online Profits that teaches people how to make money from Internet marketing. I wanted to share with you why Daniel is someone who I learn from and also how to model his success.
Why You Should Learn From Daniel?
- He shares his experiences, which are relevant and practical to your Internet business
- His blog is ranked in Technorati Top 100, proving that his information is important
- He is a truly humble and a remarkable coach
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Building an email list is one of the most important aspects within an e-commerce business. The reason why I emphasize the importance of an email list is the impact it will have on the future of your business. Read Why Your Internet Business Needs An Email List? as well. Your email list will comprise of subscribers that are segmented in the following:
- Browsing and want free information
- Have purchased from you and is a customer of your business
- A loyal customer who regularly buys and refers your business to others.
Your goal is to move all your subscribers into the 3rd segment – which are customers who buy and refer business to others. But firstly, how do you get people to subscribe to your email list?
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Something very common new business owners overlook when starting an e-commerce business is not having a professional e-mail address. I have had people give me a business card and the first thing I notice is an email address that says “motorcyclestore@gmail.com”. Using free services like Google, Hotmail or Yahoo is not a smart option and I highly recommend moving away from this. In this post I will show you how to set up your own business email address that will cost you nothing going from “motorcyclestore@gmail.com” to “info@motorcyclestore.com”. If you know how to setup a Google Mail (GMail) account already, this will be a breeze for you and no one will know that you use Google Mail to send your emails.
Have A Professional Email Address
Here are the reasons why it is important to have a business email address when you are running an e-commerce website:
- A business email address makes your business look professional whether you are the sole operator or a company with 100+ employees.
- You keep all your business correspondence separate to your personal emails.
- You can have multiple email addresses for different departments such as sales, support or orders.
- The business email address can always be transferred without having to notify contacts.
The next question most commonly asked is what email addresses should we setup?
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Steve McKnight is one of Australia’s leading positive cashflow experts and a very successful Internet business owner. He is a trained Chartered Accountant who is highly sought-after to speak at business and property investing events. In 2003 he wrote the book From 0 to 130 Properties in 3.5 Years – a No.1 bestseller in the non-fiction book list. Furthermore, he continued to write two more books that has continued to sell thousands of copies.
I interviewed Steve because I wanted to find out how he created a successful Internet business called PropertyInvesting.com, which also has one of the most active forums on the Internet. Steve’s story is not a rags-to-riches story…
rather it was a matter of him being unhappy with his chosen career and, after a stress related health scare, finding the courage to try something new. His chosen outcome was to seek to invest in a way that would generate enough cashflow to replace his salary income, yet finding the right investing approach to deliver this outcome proved tricky.
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In this post I am going to share with you more ways to optimize your e-commerce website. It will follow on from the article: 8 Steps To Achieve Top Rankings For Your E-commerce Business. If you have not read it, I would suggest you take a look now, as it will also help you optimize your content. Combine what I will show you in this post and it will give you a complete overview of how to get your e-commerce website optimized for profit.
Basic Optimizations For Your Pages
Optimize Your Headings
A lot of e-commerce websites do not realise the importance of having a good heading which can be the difference of having your product listed on the search engines to not being found at all. To understand this, I will be showing you how to place your keywords using heading tags that can be easily implemented. Since there are already many articles explaining what the <h1>,<h2> and <h3> tags are, I will let my friend Nicolas Prudhon explain it to you: Did You Get Your Heading Tags All Wrong?.
Our focus will be optimizing the product and category pages within an e-commerce store. Do remember we are trying to optimize your e-commerce store so that more traffic is driven to your products that will lead to a sale. It is not as important to optimize other non-product pages such as your about us and contact us pages. Though I have covered on how to do that in my article: 8 Steps To Achieve Top Rankings For Your E-commerce Business.
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Recently I had a question from a member in a forum asking me about how to market their e-commerce business using search engines. In light of this question, I thought it was be good to share this with everyone. Getting your e-commerce business listed on search engines can be very rewarding and will drive more “free” traffic to your e-commerce business. I have personally used this strategy many times and it has helped me gain higher rankings for my own e-commerce websites. Not to brag or anything, I want to give you some examples of my success with achieving top rankings in Google: (click on image for larger version)
Keywords: Dragonboat Paddles:
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If you are starting a new e-commerce internet business, one question immediately pops into mind, what name should I choose? Have you heard of the saying in property, “location, location, location”? Most associate buying property with choosing the right location and it may mean that you make or lose money. Your e-commerce domain name is no different. Think of your domain name as your Internet property, which represents your business presence online. Choose a domain name that is customer friendly and easy to remember:
How To Choose A Profitable E-commerce Domain Name?
Keep It Simple And Easy To Remember
Most customers who look for a website want to remember something that is associate with the product or service you are offering. Unless you have a lot of money to spend on advertising like eBay or Amazon your best bet is to choose a domain name that represents your products and services. Use simple and easy to remember words that are spoken often by your customers. For example, your e-commerce business might be selling racing bikes so consider the domain name: racingbikes.com or roadracingbikes.com. Try to avoid names like joesracingbikes.com or smithsracingbikes.com even if your company is called that. We want to make sure your domain name is easy to remember and captures the widest scope of customers.
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Download the MP3 [ 23 Minutes - 16 MB]
Michelle Falzon’s Success With Pow Wow Events
Michelle Falzon is the CEO of Pow Wow Events who is our featured guest on the podcast. She is a very motivated entrepreneur and has done exceptionally well taking this company to the next level. The reason for this interview with Michelle was because Pow Wow Events has achieved phenomenal success in Australia and I wanted to know how it was done.
Pow Wow Events has served more than 250,000 Australians through the provision of quality business and personal education via live events, books, audio and video programs. Since Pow Wow Events started in 1994, it has produced over 800 events ranging from small workshops for 20 people to filling auditoriums of 6,500.
Pow Wow Events’ promotes and markets the programs and products of speakers such as Robert Kiyosaki, Maurice Goldberg, John Burley, Carly Crutchfield, Dolf de Roos, Brendan Nichols, Blair Singer and many more.
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My name is Tyrone Shum and I'm on a journey to outsource and automate my business to allow me to work only 12 hours a week. On this website I share with you my outsourcing strategies to achieve this goal and I have a passion to teach others about what I do. Read more 