Online Marketing Secrets: Free Books

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Tom Antion

No, we're not giving away free books. Not at the moment anyway. But it shouldn't stop you from doing so.

Here's a strategy for building a loyal and receptive physical mailing list that can help create brand awareness and make money too. Create a small, physical soft cover book to give away to your email list. It doesn't have to be huge — maybe just 60 pages or so. Use it to have a contest such as “Name The Title” or something creative so people will read it and engage with it.

The book can be printed for very little money up front. Small books like this from CreateSpace or Vervante can be printed for as low as $2.00 or less. Have a promotion where you ‘give the book away' for free, but charge for shipping, maybe $5.00. Have your list read it and come up with a working title for a grand prize at a later date.

Here is why this works:

A physical mailing address is a powerful way to market to your list. With ever decreasing open rates, marketers are turning to direct mail marketing to help advertise their products and services.
When people read the book, they engage with it in a more direct fashion than an ebook that they download, but may not even get around to reading.
A physical, printed book doesn't get thrown into a folder somewhere on the prospect's hard drive, it stays visible on their shelf or office space keeping your brand top-of-mind. Books are often loaned out to friends, spreading the brand awareness to others.
Even after printing and shipping the book out to your list for the $5.00 S&H, you may end up keeping $1.00 for yourself. That's $1000 for every 1000 books you ‘give away.'
Prospects that opt-in to get the book with their physical mailing address are ‘hotter' leads than the rest of your list. They will be more receptive to higher priced services such as live events, seminars and personal coaching. Now you know who they are.
The book is a branding device: it's sole purpose is to make you look like the expert and the ‘good guy.'

Not all Internet marketing strategies take place on the Internet. Reaching out to prospects in a non-digital way is a powerful technique that can make you stand out from your competition. Learn more about offline / direct marketing.

Why You Should Be More Active On Your Youtube Account

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Tom Antion

A number of perks become available to those Youtube users that have had a channel in good standing for some time and regularly upload videos to their channel. One perk is an extended time limit for videos. When you first sign up for Youtube, the video length for uploads is limited to 15 minutes. After some time goes by with an account in good-standing, you can begin to upload videos that can be as long as 2 – 3 hours or more. This is very helpful in using Youtube to share recorded webinars with your registrants. You can't just ‘ask' Youtube for extended video length either. They will basically surprise you with a notification that states “Congratulations! You can now upload videos longer than 15 minutes in length.” The only thing we've found to expidite this is to be as active as possible on your account and upload videos regularly.

Another perk that is a lot of fun is the ability to upload a custom image for a video thumbnail. With new users, you're only offered a choice of three random thumbnails to choose from for your videos. But active and longer standing accounts will now see a ‘browse' button for uploading the image of your choice while in the ‘edit video' mode. Again, length of time and regular uploading will help hurry these perks along for users.

What is Social Bookmarking and How Can it Help Your Business?

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Tom Antion

Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public Web site and “tagging” them with keywords. Bookmarking, on the other hand, is the practice of saving the address of a Web site you wish to visit in the future on your computer. To create a collection of social bookmarks, you register with a social bookmarking site, which lets you store bookmarks, add tags of your choice, and designate individual bookmarks as public or private. Visitors to social bookmarking sites can search for resources by keyword, person, or popularity and see the public bookmarks, tags, and classifications that registered users have created and saved.

The most popular social bookmarking sites are Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious. They are all free to join and can create powerful backlinks to your own sites as well as sharing your resources with millions of other people.

Activities like social bookmarking give users the opportunity to express differing perspectives on information and resources through informal organizational structures. This process allows like-minded individuals to find one another and create new communities of users that continue to influence the ongoing evolution of folksonomies and common tags for resources.

If you are looking for information about sailing, for example, you might find that other users saw a connection between sailing and boat repair, taking you in new andvaluable directions.

These kinds of tools also encourage users to keep coming back because the collections of resources are constantly changing. This fresh and constantly updated content is good for search engine results as well.

People search for information every second – information that involves what you are writing or teaching about. Social bookmarking gives you yet another connection to potential customers and media through increased search results and networking opportunities.

Marketing on Discussion Forums

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Tom Antion

Discussion forums are a great place to get to network with like-minded people and express your expert opinions and answer questions for others. Many forums are heavily populated with users that log in a couple of times a week, and have a large subscribership. Most forums are broken down into a main topic and many sub-topics, attracting a narrow interest focus of highly qualified visitors. It's for this reason that forums can be used as a great marketing tool.

As a member of a forum, it's bad etiquette to simply try and sell from the forum discussions. In fact, leaving a URL to an outside website address in the post body itself can get you into trouble. But most forum mediators let members create a ‘signature file' that is appended to the end of each conversation and response, that can help drive traffic to websites and information. These sites can be blogs, websites or affiliate products that each member has a chance to promote. Here is a snapshot of a signature file in a member's post:

For a member like this, who has posted over 2000 times on this forum alone, think about the millions of people who have read these posts and possibly clicked on the links in his signature file at the bottom (clickable links in blue). And these clicks aren't random — they are from people who are familar with this member's expertise and trust what he has to say. How can you use forum marketing to your advantage?

Careers in Internet Marketing: Be Your Own Consultant

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Tom Antion

Making money online is far easier with a good education like the one you'll get at the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia. You can sell your own products, books and services no matter what they are if you implement the proper marketing strategies. But there is an even more lucrative way to make money with this knowledge: being a consultant for others.

When you understand and successfully implement the strategies you learn at IMTC, there's a thousand other business owners who want to know how you did it, and they'll pay well for you to help them. Internet marketing can be a mysterious – it's a bit different than what most people are used to in terms of retail store marketing. Someone like you with specialized knowledge can become quickly sought after for your expertise.

There's no shortage of businesses that need consultations for their online marketing. just about every business, local or national, is looking to get more traffic to their website and more sales from the visitors that make it there. They need printable coupons, Facebook pages, Youtube videos, newsletters, search engine friendly text, ecommerce system help and much more. Having your own consulting business could be the most profitable career you've ever dreamed of.

Careers For Stay At Home Moms

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Tom Antion

http://www.imtcva.org

Don't think you have a choice between staying at home and putting your kids in daycare? Watch the video to see how you can discover the hottest and most in demand training available today. At the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia, you can get a dedicated certificate in as little as six months and be on your way to a great job. Visit the site to download your free career guide.

Certified to operate by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

Email Marketing: Online Videos

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Tom Antion

Sending email is still an effective way marketers sell their products and services on the web. But with ever decreasing open rates and inbox clutter and competition, making that email message convert is more important than ever. There are ways to stand apart from the crowd, and online video in email can make for an interesting and dynamic presentation.

In most email programs such as Gmail and Yahoo, a link to a Youtube video in the body of the message will make the video playable right in the recipient's inbox. I tested this not too long ago: I sent an email to myself from 1shoppingcart and mailchimp, with a URL to a Youtube video in the body, to my personal Gmail account and I could play the video in the email. I didn't have to click out to Youtube to watch it. Even if your recipient has to click out to Youtube, it's a safe way to watch a video that doesn't get caught in spam filters like an attachment.

Videos are far more entertaining and informative than just text alone. You can product how-to's, show off software applications with a screen-capture video or just pass on great information with a ‘talking-head' style video presentation. It easier for people to grasp information presented via video than having them read plain text. For those marketers who are trying to increase their Youtube channel views, sending out an email can do the trick. Think about how many views you can get very quickly if 500 people open an email and watch a video.

More video and email techniques are only a click away…

Websites That Google Loves (and ones they don’t)

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Tom Antion

Google loves websites that look like an authority on a certain subject. Search engines strive to give their customers (the searcher) an exact match of the best and most relevant information. If a website has too many keywords that are unrelated, Google won't put that website anywhere near the top of the results.

What most website owners fail to understand is that the more narrow and selective the keywords are in a specific niche, the better. Often, website owners try and stuff as many various keyword phrases in their site as possible thinking that more is better – that they will attract a larger number of results and hits. But the opposite is really what happens.

Too many keywords that are unrelated to each other makes you look like a ‘jack-of-all-trades' to a search engine. They know that the site may not be an authority on anything at all, and may be just a bunch of half-hearted information on smaller topics. That's not the kind of website that Google wants to deliver to their customer. And they'll avoid a website like that every time.

If you are an expert on various, unrelated topics, you may consider having two or more websites that focus on specific keyword phrases and not try and cram all the topics onto one site. As obvious as this sounds, this is one of the most common problems keeping a website from coming up high in search results. Look at some websites next time you're surfing around and see if you can notice multiple topics. It could be a hard assignment because they rarely come up for anyone to find.

How can you make a website for yourself that Google loves?

Distance Education Night Classes

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Tom Antion

http://www.imtcva.org

Learning at night could free your life up for important things. Learn how you can discover the hottest and most in demand jobs available today. At the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia, you can get a dedicated certificate in as little as six months and be on your way to a great job. Visit the site to download your free career guide.

Certified to operate by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.