Business Tips
Selecting a Website Hosting Company in 10 Steps
You’ve just returned home from a well deserved and relaxing dinner out with friends after a long hard week launching an extensive promotional campaign for your web site.
Before deciding to call it a night, you can’t resist checking your e-mail one last time to see how many orders have come in over the last few hours.
When you click on your e-mail “Inbox” link, you’re met with a long pause….
The message, “Can’t Connect to Server” finally appears.
A slight tingling begins in your fingers. You wonder how many important e-mails have been lost. You then wonder if the problem is with your connection, the e-mail server, or worse yet, your web site.
Sure enough. The web site is down.
You call your web site hosting company. The voice mail message tells you that office hours will begin Monday morning. As suggested on the voice message, you submit an emergency support request by e-mail.
10-Step Website Checklist Before Promotion Launch
Whether you’re just starting your first website or are re-launching one that has been around for years, there are 10 key things to check before you begin your promotional launch. They include:
- Update the copyright date on every page of your website and blog.Few things will be as quick to tell your website visitors that your content is outdated than having a copyright date from a previous year.
- Proofread content you haven’t looked at in a while. A prospect was reviewing my site when she pointed out that I had a sentence half-written on one of my pages. How embarrassing. Proofread and then proofread again and then have someone else proofread.
- Run your pages through a spell checker. Many HTML editor programs have this built-in or use this free web-based spell checker. Even if a bunch of people proofread for you, spelling errors will get through.
11 Questions to Ask Before You Hire an Internet Marketing Coach or Company
The story is all too familiar. Guy writes ebook, guy sells ebook online, guy starts coaching or consulting business, guy changes name to protect his family from death threats.
Every day, thousands of starving entrepreneurs fork over their $4500+ payments to capture the precious few 15-minute time blocks offered by Internet marketing coaches. Then, they wonder why their Internet marketing coaching doesn’t work.
On the other hand, I have not ever met someone that made any real headway on the web without some type of guidance.
We all have our mentors. We all have those people who taught us how to market and sell online. We all have had projects that bring images of a toilet flushing into our minds. Eventually, if we stick with it, a few things work too.
When you hire a consultant or coach to help with your Internet project, you need to have a realistic mindset. No success will be achieved without time and effort.
The Here Next Year Method
When people ask me how to turn their websites around, they’re quite surprised when I tell them the answer is almost the exact same method every time no matter what industry you’re in or whatever product or service you provide. Here is the HereNextYear method as I describe it to people:
- Determine where your website “is,” meaning, number of sales, visitation rates, search engine positioning, links, design, usability, and a list of other checkup items. The first step is kind of like getting a physical at the doctor’s office. You don’t really try to fix anything but more find out what kind of hand we’ve been dealt.
- Identify the areas that need to have the bleeding stopped. I like to look at exit pages, for example, and find the top 5 or 10 pages where visitors are leaving. Sometimes, a bleeding wound needs a bit more attention than just a few word changes. Web design is a good example. So, we might recommend an immediate re-design of the site to stop major loss of visitation.
How to Get on CNN as a Guest Using Video
I always make a point of giving advice only for things I’ve already done. Then if it works for me, I share what I accomplished. If it’s a dog, I tell why it failed.
Today I need to deviate from that and tell you what someone else did to get herself on CNN.
First, click this link or copy and paste this link to your browser: http://tinyurl.com/na7adu to see the video that was shown on CNN last Wednesday morning, made by someone who identifies herself only as Adriana.
Here are three reasons why I believe she got featured:
1) Her Video is About a HOT and STEAMY SEXY Topic: Health Care Reform – She “attended” a town meeting where the health care plan was discussed. CNN is looking for town meeting attendees right now to hear their “real people” opinions.
35 Reasons Why a Blog is Better than a Traditional Web Site for Your Business
WordPress blog software offers much more than the few five or ten benefits you usually hear about. A blog site is the new evolution of how Web sites are constructed. First, know that a blog is a Web site…a Web site is a blog. There is NO difference!
It’s just that blogs have a few more cylinders under the hood if I can use a metaphor.
In fact, I wrote a blog post a few months ago that suggested a blog is the very heart of ALL of your Internet marketing efforts by the blog working together with social networking and Web sites.
I don’t know why the power of WordPress is being so under rated, because I believe this beloved software has paved the way for a new evolution of Web site. Here are 35 reasons why a blog, specifically a WordPress blog, is better than a traditional Web site for your business and business owners today in a very trying economy.
Best Pay Per Action Affiliate Network
You may have heard of Commission Junction and Clickbank as these are well known affiliate aggregator programs. But, a lesser talked about pay-per-action affiliate network provider in many cases will put more money in your pocket. Why? Because in pay-per-action, you get paid if people simply fill out a form. The selling occurs later by the merchant. Sign-up through our preferred PPA provider and then let me know by sending an email to Marty@HereNextYear.com. Once I have verified your sign-up and approval, I will send to you a short training tutorial for using the system.
In particular will be a step-by-step process for hiding your affiliate links. Google hates when they see affiliate links on a Web site. I don’t know why, but it’s true. So, for best results, always hide your affiliate links. I will show you how once you sign-up as an affiliate for this system:
How to Write a Whitepaper
White papers have become increasingly popular over the years. They are usually more step-by-step and how-to oriented and more detailed than a “free report” but not as long as an entire e-book, but longer than a typical article you see on the web.
People who hate writing…simply love writing white papers because they’re so easy and fast to produce. Subscribers love them because they have (or should have) exceptional value in a small package, usually 3-20 pages.
For those reasons, I believe every Web site should have a few whitepapers to give away as incentive for a subscription to a list. And here are three steps to get you started.
1. Choose a HOT Topic for Your White Paper
No matter what industry you’re in, there is a hot topic out there somewhere. You need to choose one that appeals to a broad audience. My 101TrafficMethods.com whitepaper is a good example. Everyone in the Internet marketing industry wants more traffic to their Web site, right?
Best Internet Marketing Group Coaching Program for Intermediate and Advanced Internet Marketers
An Introduction and Review of Kirt Christensen
By Marty Dickinson
President, HereNextYear, Inc.
My Experience with Internet Marketing Coaching
No matter what level of Internet marketing experience you have, you should always have access to someone who is where you want to be both professionally and financially. My experience with one-on-one Internet marketing coaching programs has always been poor. I either get lined up with someone who has far less experience than I do on the Internet or the program content value itself falls way short of the price. I’ve paid up to $4500 for such programs and have always walked away disappointed.
Group coaching programs have even been worse. The most expensive group coaching program I sat in on was $300 per month. I would have to call a long distance phone number and sit on the phone listening to unorganized and unprepared droning by the session leader for sometimes 3 hours straight! Who needs that?
Internet Marketing Mentoring
Versus Coaching
Internet marketing mentoring is different than coaching in that mentoring focuses on building an individual relationship between mentor and mentee that can last a lifetime. A coach only sticks around as long as you’re paying them. That’s one of the reasons why we believe Internet marketing coaching doesn’t work. There are other very specific differences you should know before looking for Internet marketing guidance so that you can choose wisely whether you really need an Internet marketing mentor versus a coach.
| Internet Marketing Mentoring Programs | Internet Marketing Coaching Programs |
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