Part 11 - Marketing Your Product (Plus - all about Blogging!) 

"Success usually comes to those who are to busy to be looking for it"

Henry David Thoreau

- A SIDEBAR FOR WRITERS - "No More Poverty for Writers" Making Money with Blogs and online Articles Writing was one of those careers where you would either make it big or end up in poverty. The difficulties of finding a publisher to print and sell your novel or a magazine to take in your column cannot simply be described. Luckily, this image of a writer may already be a thing of the past, thanks to the recent technological advancements. While in the old days, individuals in the writing profession had to rely on other people to earn; today's writers can now generate an income out of their craft by turning their passion into business. Hard as it may sound, this endeavor can indeed be an easy-to-achieve possibility with the use of blogs and online articles. Surprising, as it may seem, you can indeed be making money with a blog by just whipping up your hidden writing talent.

Marketing is an extremely broad and specialized topic - Too broad, in fact, for the scope of this get-you-introducted style "boot camp" book.

The underlying key to success in this area is this: Do not jump from one strategy to another. Rather, pick a couple you are comfortable with and become very good at them.

While we will not cover every strategy known, I will introduce you to the mainstream concepts, including Blogging.

There are many useful resources which cover the immense array of marketing methods, written by masters in the field.

Here are some of the most popular methods:

Google adwords / Pay Per Click (PPC): This is where you "rent" certain keywords from Google so that when someone types in that particular word or phrase, as a search term on Google, your website will come up as one of the results. These results are usually displayed on the right-hand side listing. Extremely popular keywords will cost you more.

When someone clicks on your listing Google charges you for it. That's why it's called Pay Per Click. When your money runs out, the word is "rented" to someone else. Google is just one of the PPC companies. There are rules to watch for so make sure you check these out thoroughly.

Just as an important side-note: Getting visitors to your page is one thing, but keeping them on your site and converting them into customers is another. Check out this amazing book from conversion expert Mark Widawer: "Landing Page Cash Machine". I know Mark personally. He will give you that unfair advantage over your competition and set you light years ahead. Here's a couple of tips from Mark:   The Landing Page Cash Machine

Articles: In this eBook I discussed using articles from free article providers. When you check out these articles you will find a "resource box" at the bottom of each article with information about the author and a link connecting you back to their site.

This is how you promote your site through articles. By offering your well-written articles free of charge to anyone who wants them. This way, your articles become "viral" and you get free advertising on countless websites, blogs, email campaigns, and eZines.

Articles are possibly one of the cheapest and best ways to get traffic to your sites. Free articles are high in demand on the Internet. Website owners, eZines publishers (electronic magazines), and bloggers, to name a few, crave and devour fresh content on a regular basis. When they don't have to pay for that content it's even better.

This creates an incredible marketing avenue for you - by providing content free of charge, through articles. You can either write a great article - actually you should write about 6 - 10 for an effective article campaign - or have them written for you.

Add your resource box and a link to your new site at the bottom of your articles, then submit them to free article sites. The more articles you write and locations you submit to the better. Check out Jim Edward's authoritative and mind-blowing eBook "Turn Words Into Traffic". You will learn, step by step, how to develop an ongoing stream of highly targeted website traffic through writing and submitting power-packed articles online. Why pay for traffic (visitors) to your site when you can get them free. Jim is an expert at writing and marketing through articles. "Turn Words into Traffic" was one of the first eBooks I ever purchased.

Here's what Jim says about writing articles:

"Now some people - maybe even you - may wonder if promoting with articles always works to drive HUGE numbers of visitors to your site instantly every single time you do it. The truth is not every single article you write and distribute online will hit a "home run" and bring an avalanche of visitors to your site... in fact, some of my articles are "bunts" and "singles." But I have so many articles out there now that they all add up to a tremendous volume of steady traffic! Periodically I hit a "grand slam home run" with an article that takes on a life of its own and dumps thousands of visitors on my site in a couple of days! 

But I have great news! Here's the worst thing that can happen with each and every article you publish:

·         You continue to build your reputation and credibility with your target audience as a trusted expert.
  

·         As your credibility increases, "Joint Venture" partners will begin to seek you out and be open to your approaches.
   

·         You'll create additional tools your affiliates can use to sell more of your products.
   

·         You create more valuable content for your own and other people's websites that the search engines can index - driving even more traffic to your website or affiliate link.
   

·         You create additional installments for your autoresponder series that you can easily turn into profitable "mini-courses."
   

·         You'll get better and better at picking topics, distributing articles and your traffic logs will snowball with targeted visitors.
   

·         ... much more!

In fact, just by writing and distributing free articles on the Internet (something that gets pretty easy once you start doing it), you will become recognized as a world-class expert on the topic of your choice and you will have people seeking you out for all kinds of lucrative opportunities.

So you see, promoting with articles represents one of the best ways to not only get FREE traffic, but to build your business and your reputation online as well!"

Here's a sample of what an online article looks like with the resource box at the bottom:

============ BEGINNING OF ARTICLE ================ 

5 Cool Time-Saving Shortcuts for Windows

Copyright © 2007 Jim Edwards

I think most of us feel that expensive operating systems like Windows can do more things than just keep the computer running, the problem is we don't know what they are!

Well, over the years I've discovered a few shortcuts that rate extremely handy for saving time, recovering from mistakes, or avoiding effort.

Now, a few geeks among us may immediately say I could have read the manual to discover these instead of tripping on them over the years, but that would take out all the fun!

And now dear reader, I pass these magical secrets on to you.

The Ultimate "Do Over" -

Does this sound familiar?

You spend 30 minutes typing up an email message, get ready to hit send, your hand slips, and the message disappears.

You feel a rush of anger, fear and sadness in your gut, take a deep breath, and start typing again.

Next time something like that happens, just hit the "Ctrl+Z" keys and it should undo the last action you took in a web browser, form, word processor, spreadsheet or virtually any other Windows application.

I can't tell you how many times "Ctrl+Z" has pulled my bacon out of the fire when I accidentally hit the wrong button or key.

File Finders -

The more you use your computer, the more files you seem to create and collect.

Often, finding files you already created rates harder than just creating a new one, especially after any significant length of time passes.

Two shortcuts can help you quickly find the files you need with just a few keystrokes.

+F - This combination of the Windows logo key and the F key at the same time launches the Windows Search utility.

This enables you to search for files based on partial filename (because if you could remember the entire filename, you would have found it already), file type (all your MP3 files), contents of the file (I know the spreadsheet contains these words), creation date (I created this file last month), and more.

+E - This allows you to open up the Windows explorer feature in Windows to explore your hard drives, memory sticks, CD and DVD drives.

Windows Explorer makes it very easy to get your hands on a file if you know where it is (or, at least where it should be the last time you used it).

Zoom IN / Zoom OUT -

Okay, I'll admit it.

My eyes seem to suffer from a combination of too much computer time and the slow creeping wheels of Father Time (I'm getting older).

Bottom line: sometimes the words on the screen are just too darn small!

You can solve this problem with +Mouse Wheel.

Just hold the key down and roll your mouse wheel up and down to adjust the zoom.

This little shortcut works in many applications, including Word, Internet Explorer, FireFox, and Excel.

Shields Down Captain! -

Ever look down at your task bar and see 20 open windows and realize you need to make your way to the desktop in a hurry?

+D will minimize all open windows on your computer to expose your desktop.

Hit the keys again and your open windows spring back to life and allow you to continue working.

I've Got a Case! -

Ever need to convert text to all CAPS, or change to Title Case, or convert to all lower case?

Simply highlight the text in your word processor and hit + to cycle between all caps, lowercase and title case.

This shortcut rates very handy when you don't want to retype blocks of text.

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, affiliate links, or blogs... Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? "Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.moovurl.com/go?turnwordsintotraffic

===== End of Article =====

(Notice the Resource Box at the bottom complete with link).

Joint Ventures: The fastest way to market your new information product is through a highly targeted email list of prospects.

By "highly targeted", I mean you're not trying to market mountain climbing equipment to an email list made up of librarians or real estate agents.

If you don't have a quality email list, you need to find people who do, and "joint venture" with them. It works just like affiliate programs. They promote your product to their list and get a healthy commission from each sale.

You can find Joint Venture (JV) prospects through various means; one of them is through ClickBank.com.

When you contact your JV prospects, you need to give them a free copy of your product so they can evaluate if it's for their list or not. If they agree, you may want to provide them with an email promo message they can send to their list, which makes it even easier for them. In your introduction email to them, make sure they know you are flexible and willing to adapt to their situation.

Another way to locate JV partners is through attending seminars and networking with as many entrepreneurs and speakers as possible. Ask lots of questions, and swap business cards. Use a business card with your photo on it and make sure you write details on the cards you are given. You want to remind yourself of their situations, experience, products etc. Have your photo taken with each of the presenters. Then, if you need to contact them about a JV possibility, you send them the photo with the email. They may not remember you but they will at least know they met you!

Online Press Release: A press release online will cost you a little money ($80+) but is worth it. Check out prweb.com. They have tutorials there. Online press releases get the word out rapidly about your product launch.

BLOGGING

As you will discover below, blogging can be an extremely effective marketing tool.

If you're not sure what a blog looks like, check out these blog sites before you proceed:

http://www.watchmebuildacompany.com/

http://www.thequickandeasyguide.com/blog

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/

http://www.techcrunch.com/

The links above will give you an idea of what come blogs look like.

The word "Blog" is short for "Web Log" which used to be a way of logging your opinions, journaling your life or a vacation trip around the world, or anything you could imagine writing about on the Internet. It was for absolutely anything you wanted others to read online.

If you can use a word processor and click on "print", you can publish a blog.

In a blog, you type whatever you want others to read. Then, instead of clicking on a "print" button, you click on the "publish" button. Immediately, your words are posted onto the Internet for everyone to read, without you even needing to know how to create a website or even how to transfer files to the Internet. The blogging software does it all for you automatically. Also, as soon as you click on the Publish button, blog search directories from all over the world are notified that you have updated your blog.

Today, the face and use of blogging has changed somewhat. Even though the purpose has remained the same - the sharing of information - blogging has become so much more.

Blogs now provide commentary or news on just about any subject. You will find blogs on politics, food, business, technology, sexuality, religion, or local, national, and international news. And this is just a micro-slice out of the pie.

Some blogs still function as personal online diaries and opinions about life. I know couples who use bogs to record the growing activities of their children. But companies and entrepreneurs are pushing blogs to their limits and beyond.

Blogs are now hailed as the “new media”.

The ‘old’ media - traditional TV and newspapers etc. - are losing influence as more and more people seek out their daily dose of information from blogs instead.

Consider this: If someone was only interested in the latest updates in politics, why would they listen all the way through the six o’ clock news just to get five minutes on politics? They can now go straight to a network of blogs covering the latest in political affairs? And, through the power and convenience of RSS feeds, they can be notified and updated automatically with fresh news.

Although blogs are primarily textual, this is rapidly changing as the new face of blogging opens its eyes.

A typical blog today combines text, images, videos, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other new media sources related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is also an important part of today’s blogs. This gives the reader a voice - a chance to participate in the information creation process.

Here's a tip: If you're into business, take note of the previous sentence. Allowing your customer to participate in the "creation" process is primetime as we move into this new era of "social media", of which blogs are an integral part.

Blogs have been an immense source of as-it-happens news from all over the world - especially news that doesn't get covered by the mass-media TV stations. Blogs were an important news source during the December 2004 Tsunami, such as "Medecins Sans Frontieres", which used text messaging to report from affected areas in Sri Lanka and Southern India which weren't given a at glance by TV.

Similarly, during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, and during the aftermath, a few blogs located in New Orleans, including the "Interdictor" and "Gulfsails", who were able to maintain power and an Internet connection, disseminated information also not covered by the Main Stream Media.

Many journalists even write and maintain their own blogs.

People want blogs.

According to Federated Media Publishing: Technorati, the number of blog sites on the Internet increased from virtually zero in March of 2003 to over fifty-million by July of 2006! It's still growing.

BIG MONEY FOR SMALL BUSINESS:

Blogging has also become big money for small businesses.

Michael Arrington, a 36-year-old entrepreneur, was reported in the September, 2006 issue of Business 2.0 magazine to be making over $60,000 per month from his blog TechCrunch.

In the same issue, FARK founder, Drew Curtis, claimed to be on the verge of generating $600,000 per month in revenue from his blog.

So, how could you use a blog for your business?

1) Stay in touch with your customers

2) Train your customers on using your product and get their feedback.

3) Write articles for you blog which educate your customer, and link to your product.

4) Use a compilation of your posts to create a sellable product.

5) Use your blog to increase your static website's ranking with the search engines.

Read on...

Your blog can keep you in touch with your customers, or future customers, about your products and their advancements. It can survey your customers about future product possibilities, pass on company information, or notify them of issues you discovered with possible solutions. If you have information you wish to convey on a timely basis, your blog and its RSS feed is the perfect medium.

Email used to be the medium of choice, and still is for certain marketing strategies, but with the ever-increasing amount of aggressive spam filters, not all your customers will be reached - guaranteed. I have conducted email campaigns where less than 70% of the emails reached their targets. Even some of the email services we covered previously, who have special programs to check if your email will be classed as spam, have emails that get stopped at the gate. There are strategies to help increase your odds but they are the subject yet another book!

An RSS feed delivers your message 100% of the time to its subscribers - your target audience.

So what is RSS? Essentially, a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed is a means for a blog reader to subscribe to that blog's updates anonymously. Through an RSS "reader" on their computer desktop, they are notified each time an entry is posted on your blog.

Use your blog to train your customers on the best ways to use your product. Consider also that other customers may have applied your product to uses you never realized possible. By allowing them to comment back on your blog, that information can easily be shared.

Write articles relating to your products or services which can be posted to your blog on a regular basis. These articles will educate your customers and prospects on your subject matter, and brand you as an "expert" in the process. If you have a book about health, or you sell nutritional supplements, write articles relating to living a healthy lifestyle, or how to avoid fat in your diet etc.

If you don't write well, you can always find free "open-source" articles - articles contributed to by many authors and which are free to use - from locations like Wikipedia at http://www.wikipedia.org/. Or you can search through free articles at locations like EzineArticles.com which you can find at http://www.ezinearticles.com/.

If you have employees who can write, consider delegating the task to them.

To be honest though, anyone can write a blog. If you're passionate about what you do, and you can tell someone else about it when they ask you, you can write a blog.

Blogs are usually written in an informal conversational tone. As long as your writing "flows", people don't care as much about incorrect uses of grammar. Just make sure you spell your wirds corrictly - see what I mean? In general, write like you speak.

Write on a certain topic and post regularly to your blog. Then, once you have enough posts, compile your posts into an eBook, add affiliate and product links, then either sell it or give it away.

Search engines, like Google, Yahoo, Overture, etc., absolutely love blogs because they offer fresh content. In comparison, most websites are 'static' - the information doesn't change very often. Blogs, on the other end, change almost daily, or at least weekly.

Search engines always look to bring people the best and newest information possible, relevant to the search being conducted. Blogs offer the latest in fresh content.

When you have a static website that rarely changes, search engines may rate your site fairly low in the rankings. Yet, if you attach a blog to your site, and the blog becomes popular, the blog will move up in the ratings and take your website with it.

To do this, however, your blog must either be the domain name itself or be in a subfolder of the domain.

For instance: Imagine your domain name is www.mydomain.com/. When visitors enter your domain name, in the address bar of their web browser, they see your blog immediately. A link on your blog will take them to your website at  www.mydomain.com/mywebsite.

Conversely, your website could be at www.mywebsite.com and your blog at www.mywebsite.com/blog - where "blog" is a subfolder of the domain "mywebsite.com".

Either ways will work.

HOW TO BLOG

Check out these bonus QuickView videos on how to blog, located on the Extra Bonuses page. I made these just for this book.

Blogging can be accomplished through various means. There are blogging sites where you can get a blogging account free, such as MySpace.com, Blogger.com, and WordPress.com.

Or, you can sign up for a paid account with a company like TypePad.com, who charge you a modest, monthly subscription fee. Typepad.com also allows you to add more design elements into your blog than the templates provided on the free blog sites.

The best option for business, however, is to host the blog on your own website. You have two choices: Either upload the blogging software to your website hosting account, or use a web hosting company like 1and1 - who make setting up a blog on your own website one-click-easy, using their built-in blogging software. Setup is fast and painless. Of course, 1and1 also allow you to upload blogging software to your account also, if you choose.

1and1's Control Panel - Showing how easy it is to set-up a blog

I do both. http://www.watchmebuildacompany.com uses 1and1's built-in WordPress blogging software. http://www.thequickandeasyguide.com/blog uses the upload-your-own WordPress blogging software.

WordPress blogging software is probably one of the most used and most promoted blog authoring tools on the planet - so to speak.

The software itself is called "open source" software - meaning that many individual programmers contributed to creating and enhancing it, not a company - so that it can be freely used and distributed by the public. Basically, it is made by the community for the community and costs you nothing. If you are a programmer, you may also request the computer source code, so that you may also contribute to program.

As mentioned, WordPress.com also has their online account version where you can sign-up to get a free account. Your blog name would be: www.myblogname.wordpress.com.

However, to acquire the uploadable version of the software, you must go to WordPress.org - not ".com" - and download the free software for yourself.

They give you excellent instructions on how to install the software onto your website yourself. However, if you choose not to install it yourself (it's actually quite easy), you can email WordPress and someone from the programming community will contact you. They will install it for you when they have time available.  These are programmers who essentially do it for the love of doing it.

When you do the install, WordPress requires you to set up a database on your hosting account so that the blogging software can retain, log, categorize, and "remember" all your post entries.

Before you run away screaming, companies like 1and1 make it extremely simple to do this. If you can name a word processor file you are saving, you can create a database. It's that simple.

So, why would you install the software when 1and1 offer you an already built-into-your-site, one-click-away blog setup?

Well, consider photography: Some people like a point-and-shoot, fully automatic, no-hassles camera; One with a built-in flash for low light, automatic focus, and a couple of buttons for zooming in and out.

Other people, who may be more "techie", prefer the bulkier SLR type of camera where you can change the lenses, buy a bigger flash, and add accessories.

Both cameras essentially do the same thing - take photographs. Both cameras will take a picture people will go "WOW!" over.

The difference is this: For those who like to delve into the technical side of things, the SLR will allow more versatility and add-ons, whereas the point-and-shoot camera is made for the people who just want good photographs fast and don't care about the extras.

The 1and1 "built-in" WordPress blog is the point-and-shoot camera. It does a great job of blogging without all the bells and whistles. There are different "skins" or "templates" you can choose from to suit your style and the type of blog you're writing. It even has statistics reporting on such details as how many people are reading your blog on a daily basis, and where they are coming from, etc.

The expandable and flexible SLR camera is the WordPress software you download from WordPress.org (or Podpress - which is the multimedia version) and install on your website.

You can easily add "plug-ins" that provide extra features like "tracking" which post/article is read the most. Or maybe you want people to have the opportunity to search other blog directories for the same topic - all at the touch of a button from your blog. Or maybe you want to offer your readers the option to click a button to automatically open their email program and send a friend the link to the blog post you just wrote.

This can all be done automatically with a click of the mouse – also from your blog. These are called "plug-ins" and are very easy to install into WordPress. They provide you with a variety of conveniences and services.

SOME QUICK TIPS ON BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS:

Focus on a narrow niche. In general, it is better to have a dedicated group of readers who will respond to what you say than to be so general that you have many readers but they are not consistent. This holds especially true if you plan on advertising products to your market. If you want to reach people who are into extreme airplane adventures, don't talk about the latest pair of shoes you fell in love with, or about the latest ballet. If you're into health issues, specialize in one area such as migraines, or heart disease, or overweight toddlers.

Research keywords - words that people search for - and use those keywords in your headlines and in the body of your posts, without going overboard, which scares off the search engine robots.

Categorize your posts. Add categories to your blog so that visitors can search through the category they're interested in. Avoid placing the same post into more than one category as the search engines view this as duplicate material and rate your blog lower because of it. If you must categorize the same post into two or more categories, consider changing the wording somewhat on each article. There's always more ways than one to say the same thing.

As an example, using the last sentence: "There's always more ways than one to say the same thing." - could be written as, "You can say the same thing but say it differently." Or, "The same thing can be said in different ways."

Write for your target audience. A conversational style of writing, which means writing how you speak, usually works best for blogs. However, consider your target audience. Engineers, literary writers, and medical doctors all have communication styles - so, essentially, go with the flow.

Blog frequently. Search engines love fresh content and you can train their indexing "spiders" to crawl your blog more often if you update your blog on a regular basis. At a bare minimum, if you want your blog to be taken seriously, you should blog at least three times per week. Power-bloggers have been known to update their blog up to six times a day, and all before lunchtime. This strategy targets those readers who take a break from work to check out the blogosphere.

Use images and videos that impact. Use striking images and videos. If you caption your pictures, you'll gain additional traffic and also it will be easier for visual search engines to index your images. In Seth Godin's free eBooklet "Really Bad PowerPoint and How to Avoid it", he explains the "Show. Don't tell" concept that writers follow on a daily basis - only they do it with words.

I could attempt to tell you about the ground fog that drifted in behind a lone aircraft sitting desolate against an open expanse of sky - which was a scene I fell in love with on a family trip out the lake cabin. Or, I could show you the photo I took of it and let you share in the experience yourself...

© 2007, William Sinclair. All rights reserved.

I love airplanes. Sometimes it's easier to show than tell.

Definitely easier to show than tell here!

Allow for comments. Comments give your reader the opportunity to interact with you. Comments also build fresh content for the search engines, which could improve your ranking in the search engine listings.

Allow pinging. Pinging allows other blogs and blog search directories to know when you have updated your blog.

Link to other bloggers. If you link to other bloggers and leave good comments on their sites, chances are high they'll do the same for you. Get to know other bloggers in the blogosphere.

If you're a person who soaks up encyclopedias then you really need to check out this link on blogging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging.

Bonus VIDEOS ON BLOGGING

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