Author Archives: Tom Antion

Essential Blogging Basics

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When your blog is brand new, it may seem as if no one is reading it. Keep on posting and keep on asking readers questions. You have to go out on the edge and stir things up a bit sometimes, but do it authentically. Also, you must educate your readers and tell them how to comment. Many people are new to blogging. Tell them to click on the comment link and share their opinions. The more you persist with this, the more likely you will get people to comment and participate in the conversation. Commenting also helps your findability on search engines. When readers comment, that adds new content to the page on which your blog post is created. New content alerts the search engines to index your blog on a regular basis.

Most blogging software can be set up to notify you when someone has posted a comment. Be sure to respond by sending them a personal email thanking them. You can also respond to them in the blog comment section, just make sure they are notified that you have done so. Your list of recent posts and recent comments should reflect an active blog with information that's relevant to your targeted group of readers. If it doesn’t, take it up a notch by writing more frequently, focusing on your blog’s purpose, and directly encouraging readers to leave comments.

Link to useful websites, products and services

Linking is the currency of the Web. Besides being common courtesy to link to your sources of information, you can also link to your own posts, websites, and your products and services. Weave them into your posts so they contribute to the context of your writing, however; too much blatant marketing of your own products and services doesn’t make for good reading, and can turn readers off. Think of a blog posting as a conversation at a cocktail party: you wouldn’t monopolize the conversation just talking about yourself and expect people will stand around for a long time listening. Every time you post, review your article for names, books, and places.

All of these can be linked to a site on the Web. Even ideas and concepts can be linked to a page in Wikipedia. Failing to link to outside sources is bad etiquette in the Blogosphere. And, don't forget to add links to your products and services in the sidebar of your blog. Make sure people know how they can get more information about you and what you offer.

A career as a professional blogger is only a click away…

What Is Google Adwords Express?

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Adwords Express is an easier version of Google's Adwords. It's designed for local businesses to easily set up ads for their brick and mortar store. It's specifically made for local businesses looking for local customers. Adwords express gives business owners the benefits of a targeted online ad campaign without spending a lot of time to manage it.

How it works:

When people search your area for the products or services you provide (“flowers in Dallas”, or if they're already in Dallas, just “flowers”) an ad for your business will appear above or beside their search results. Your business will also be marked with a distinctive blue pin on Google Maps, helping it stand out to potential customers.

 

The blue pin indicates a paid ad created by adwords express. The blue pin is only available for businesses that have paid for the listing. The orange pin indicates businesses that are listed with Google Places but have not paid for a listing. The lettered order of businesses is determined from organic search results. The orange dots indicate businesses that are listed with Google Places but are not ranked high enough with organic results to get a lettered pin.

There's a growing need for experts in paid Internet advertising. How about you?

 

 

 

How To Use Email Signatures

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Creating a custom email signature is a great place to help advertise your websites and services.

In most email programs you can add images and clickable links in the signature to drive another source of traffic to your business. Take a look at a few examples:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parents Work From Home

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http://www.imtcva.org

Are you a parent? Wouldn't you like to work from home? The Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia is an Internet marketing school designed to teach you everything you would need to know about selling your products online. No only can you sell your products and services, you can also get hired by companies looking for the same thing. Check out http://www.imtcva.org for more information.

IMTC: What Are Merchant Accounts?

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To make money at this Internet game you have to have some way to take credit cards. You must have a way to capture a sale immediately when you create the impulse to buy in your customer.

You don't even want your prospect to have to get up from their computer. Anything that distracts them could translate into a lost sale.

One of the most important ways to grab the sale NOW is to have your own Visa/MasterCard/AMEX merchant account tied to your shopping system. It used to be really tough to get a merchant account, especially if you work out of your home.

Now, you can't turn on your computer without 200 ads hitting you in the face from companies wanting to give you merchant account status. . . .Well “give” is not exactly the right word. . . It's going to cost you.

You can visit http://www.HowToUseAShoppingCart.com  to find the one we recommend.

You'll run into all kinds of deals where people will want to lease you card swiping equipment . . .unless you do a ton of live sales at trade shows or flea markets, you will never see a actual credit card when doing business online. All the sales are either via Internet or telephone.

Sometimes a fax will come in. You simply don't need a card machine. You can even take an order over your cell phone while on a plane before it takes off!

Get firm numbers on upfront fees, monthly fees, credit card percentages, and per transaction costs. While you're at it, find out exactly what a transaction is? Does calling for an “authorization only” constitute a transaction? Does doing a return equal a transaction? All these fees add up, but you’ll consider them chump change when you start doing lots of business.

Five Major Parts

For an online store to work there are five major parts that must all work together.

• Your website where your products and services are described

• Your Shopping Cart: that's the interface the customer uses to shop and put in their credit card information

• Online Gateway: that's the mechanism that connects the shopping cart to the merchant account and keeps the credit card information encrypted and safe as it travels between the shopping cart and the merchant account.

• The Merchant Account: that's the company that actually runs the credit card charges.

• Your bank that receives the money from the merchant account

 

 

Learn more about setting up a merchant account for your online business.

 

 

Making Money With Membership Sites

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Attracting and Keeping Members

A membership site without members will not make any money. Finding the right target of customers is critical to a membership site's success. A well constructed site will be about delivering niche information to those who need it.

Your market for members are already in places that you may know about:  discussion forums, social media sites, professional organizations and Internet groups. People also search for information with keywords that will pull up articles, videos and blogs where you can advertise your membership site.

Elements of a membership site that people will find attractive will be the amount of material they can access, how often it is updated, whether the site has guest interviews, insider information from the experts and material that they can't find anywhere else.

Other incentives can be discussion forums, networking possibilities, freebies, invitations to member exclusive events, discounted products and labels and logos that you can display on your website.

When advertising your membership site, include the fact that there is a webmaster or someone in charge of the site. Too many lazy membership site owners put the access on ‘automatic', with no one to interact with or too little updating of new material.

The real money in membership sites is made from recurring income, when the member pays every month to stay in the site. If material runs dry and is not updated frequently enough, there is no reason for members to keep paying.

Interaction is a big benefit to belonging to a membership site. Members want to feel they are a part of a family or belong to an exclusive club. The discussion forum plays a big part in this. Knowing that members can ask questions of other experts that they would ordinarily not have access to is a huge value.

How can membership sites create large amounts of passive, everyday income?

What is Keyword Density?

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Keyword density, also called keyword weight, is the ratio of a certian keyword on a webpage compared to all of the other text on the same page. How does this work? Let's say that you have 100 words on your homepage and 5 of them are keywords. Therefore, you have a 5 to 100 ratio or a 5 percent keyword density.

The importance of keyword density is that the search engines look for a certain density to determine a webpage's importance. If Google is looking for a 3 percent keyword density, a webpage with less than 3 percent density will look like it's not significant enough on that particular keyword and anything over 3 percent looks as though it's spamming the search engine.

Having just the right amount of keywords on a page compared to the other text is critical in search engine placement. But to keep webmasters from figuring the exact percentage out and manipulating the search results, search engines constantly change the ratio to keep it from being abused.

That is why some pages will rank high for certain keywords one month, then drop a few positions the next. This is normal and to be expected. The average keyword density however, is somewhere between 1 to 5 percent. Each search engine has different densities that they favor for positioning.

One way to get around the fluctuating density percentage is to create modern day sidedoors for your website. Side doors are article pages added to your website that will have varying percentages of density. One article on your website may have a density of 2 percent and another may have a density of 4 percent.

As each search engine changes it's ratio of what it is looking for, one or more pages of your website will meet the right criteria for keyword density. Having many articles, even on the same topic, with varying densities will give the search engines an bigger target to hit, increasing your chances for good placement in the results.

Learn the techniques that get the best results. 

eLearning at IMTC

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http://www.imtcva.org
Learning online is the future of education. It's easy, affordable and convenient. 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