This is, obviously not for a mini-site (created solely for the purpose of selling an ebook) although I have certainly taken a mini-site and grown it into a larger content site behind the sales letter in the past.

Building Value into Your Website

If you are redesigning your website, or growing it for search engine boost and traffic, don’t just add more content on the same topic. Spin off your topic to something closely related and incredibly useful to your visitor.

A few ideas are:

• Add a directory of free offers and products related to your topic. This still brings a a lot of traffic to niche sites. You can include pay-per-lead offers, or cookie-setting affiliate offers, or take it one step further and request a monthly fee from webmasters wanting to submit their free products to grab some of your traffic. You, of course, want to be very careful with what or who you’re linking to in this regard both for your reputation’s and your search engine rankings sake. Finally, to promote your ‘free offers’ page or directory take a few hours and find other free offer sites to trade links with.
• Add definitions and terms pages. Another traffic-puller. Since so many people are still surfing the web for knowledge and information, if your site has a page explaining in detail the terminology of your niche market you will get traffic. Recent experience shows me that just a few sentences per term is no longer enough. You need a few paragraphs of each to gain search engine traffic from this technique. The best part about this technique however is not the gain in search engine positioning, but the increase of value in your visitor’s mind. Your site is obviously the ‘expert’ site on this topic in their eyes.
• Another very important step when you’re growing your site is to take the time during this phase to check every affiliate link. After redesigning Smartzville last week I did this and found that 50% of my year old links to resources and associated merchants led to new offers (and not always related) or websites that were no longer available. Frustrating, but something you want to watch out for more often than annually when you have a high traffic website.
• While you’re checking your outbound links assess every one, once more. For instance if you’re linking out to an ebook (where you make money as an affiliate) and you realize that you’ve never made one sale of that product, dump it. Take time to test and review a new, related product that may convert better. Don’t waste your out-going links or promotions willy-nilly. Concentrate
  on finding the ones that sell and drop the ones that don’t.
• Add a section to your site that educates and informs your website visitors, priming them for the offer by training them to see the value of the coming offer. Then you can lead your educated prospects to your sales page. As an example, if you were selling investing tips one entire section of your website could be devoted to the subject “How and why to invest…”, that linked to the more advanced member’s area or ebook.
• Assess your navigation and traffic flow. You may want to get a friend to sit in front of your computer and watch how a new visitor experiences and navigates your site. When you are redesigning or adding new sections to your site consider also the ‘nofollow’ tag recently adopted by Google. (If you don’t know about this, run a Google search on it.) You don’t want to be leaking rank onto non-performing pages. Keep your rank on your sales pages and home page.
• Add interaction! Online games, quizzes, and reader polls make your visitor think that your site was created just for them! You can find a lot of these – although not specialized – free online to cut and paste into your web pages. If you don’t have a geek-ish mind you can find programmers who will be happy to create something for you relatively cheaply.

That’s my time for today! I do hope this brief article lends a few ideas to your marketing while you grow your website, increase search engine traffic and build a valuable resource for your visitors.

Laura Childs
www.makemoneywithyourideas.com

Find similar: Website Traffic

One issue that comes to mind when I first started out was the number of people who were promoting ebook formating software progams, ranging in price from $20-$200. I sat with my book written, formated and ready to go for 3 days while I surfed around for the best deal and reading every review on these programs…

Learn Why You Don’t Need An Ebook Software Program – Ask Laura (May 2007)

An email came in to one of my sites today asking about these formating programs which tells me that marketing trainers and affiliate promotions experts are still pushing these programs on unsuspecting newpreneurs.

“Enough!,” I say.

This is a blantant waste of money and a blatant mis-use of a newpreneur’s trust in a mentor. Formating your content into an ebook does not take any extra software – it can be done, for free, online.

*******************
My reader writes:

(Laura)…thank you for being available!

I have written a book & I am trying to get it wrapped up so I can do an e-book & also a hard bound book. the snags I have are:

1. in the resizing of photos to intersperse in the pages,
2. finding a software program that will format the book both in e-book format & also ready for hardbound format
3. how to make the links for affiliates live at the end of the book (yours would be a good one to include)
4. formatting a cover
5. also to get an affiliate link do I have to have a website or can I get an affiliate link if I just have an e-book? and how would I go about getting the affiliate link to include?

I liked your e-book & wondered if you had a specific software that you used to format or if you did that yourself.

Also when you added the photos, did you do the resizing yourself to fit in the appropriate location or did you have a software program that did the resizing for you?

My problem has been that I go off on 20 different tangents & never end up completing one. So I have decided to complete the book first & then get the website up & running to accommodate the selling of the book as well as other products.

…those are a few of my immediate problems.

Thanks for listening!

Karen

**********************

Dear Karen:

Thanks for your note. I’m a little pressed for time for the next week, but wanted to get a quick note out to you today….

My old ebook “Back Road Riches” was one of my first. I bought software to format it as a little piece of software containing the book’s content. I would not suggest following this route. People are wary of downloading software these days. Ebooks are acceptable in PDF format as it has less chance of containing viruses. Plus PDF format allows for easy printing for your end reader.

There’s lots of free software available to create PDF files from your Word document. Actually adobe.com (makers of the PDF format) allows 5 free conversions per email address.

So my modern day advice is write your ebook in Word or WordPerfect, etc. which will also format your photos to fit, convert it to pdf and distribute it as such.

As for hardcover format, you’ll need to follow your publisher’s direction on that as each varies. Generally they would edit then typeset it to their own specs anyway.

If you’re not a graphical person I’d suggest paying someone over at elance.com $20-40 to create a cover for you. Books are certainly judged by their covers. Again, your publisher for hardcover will have their own version of a cover created in-house (generally without your say or control).

As for affiliate links every network is different. You’ll have to check with network of products you want to promote (i.e. http://www.smartzville.com/clickbank.htm). To make them active in Word you just type the url in.

As for your last trouble – going off on tangents and never completing anything – I want you to know we all have this problem. The good thing is that you are aware of it! Now that you know how you ‘operate’ you can force yourself to stay on track and complete one task at a time. Believe me saying it is easier than actually doing it!

Have a great day, write anytime….

Laura Childs

The ‘Ask Laura’ series is published solely to assist you with questions and resolutions to making your online business profitable. Names are never disclosed on this website unless approved or requested. Proof of all email communication between Laura Childs and her contacts can be provided upon request.

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Learn to Market and Promote in 40 Pages or Less – Ask Laura (July 20/06)

“Ha!,” I say!

Internet marketing, website promotion, online business building is indeed very easy – to those that know the game or have already established a presence. But to the un-initiated, the un-taught, and sadly the opportunists who believe it can happen overnight – well, that’s a different story.

Just yesterday I received an email from a very smart and university educated friend of mine. He’s been relying, for the past two months, on someone else to create, maintain, and manage his new dream business for him and it’s not going as quickly as planned.

(Odd about that.)

But my friend has integrity and strengths and he’s wondering how he can learn what he needs to know so that he can step in and help out. The only trouble is, he thinks that one product, ebook, or training series is going to give him the online marketing education required…

Here we go. Laura, again, bursting bubbles of belief.

*******************

Dear Laura:

Do you or anyone you can recommend sell any reports or ebooks on the A to Z of internet marketing – particularly with a product and service (editor note: hardcover book and professional consultation service) such as what I have?

The reason I’m asking is that *edited* has been quite busy lately and, frankly, we thought it would be helpful for him if we had a better over all understanding of what he needs to do and how we should be assisting him from our end. The *url deleted* website project we will be developing is large and we’d like to help him as much as possible. We have a general idea but would like to get more specifics on what needs to be done from day to day…

********

My recommendation is, and likely always would be, if you’re going to run a business online then run it.

Know what it takes, make the decisions, learn how to manage it, promote it, repair it, brand it, sell it. You can’t have a business – without any knowledge of the business – and just farm out all the tasks.

Let’s be clear: You can own a business and not work it personally, hiring others to do all the grunt work. But you must know first what is involved so that you can choose and hire the best, as well as provide direction to, staff or associates performing that grunt work.

Plus, learning the business isn’t going to happen in any A to Z – I know, I’ve read a pile of them. Internet business management, promotion and techniques are in nuggets and on bread crumb trails scattered all around the web. And, what works for one business may not work for another. Each online business needs a leader at the helm that has a marketing strategy in mind.

At any rate, here’s my reply…

**********

A little pressed for time but wanted to send you a quick note…

Any A-Z won’t help you, only confuse and slow you down in your efforts.

Online business is a series of steps.

Create the site, get the traffic, brand your business/self, monetize the traffic, grow a subscriber list so that you can lather/rinse/repeat the process.

You are in site creation stage. *Name edited* is a traffic master (among other things).

If you want to learn the things that will help him in his efforts to help you, then you need to learn about getting your own content (so that the site is created), and the ways to get traffic to your site (#1 way is to have content for the search engines).

Now, since *name edited* is at the helm, your questions are better posed to him and his recommendations followed. His methods and strategy for your site may differ from the methods and strategy I use. You don’t want to follow my recommendations in case it clashes with the current marketing method and strategy he has planned for your site.

At this stage, it’s all about focus, taking one step at a time, and a targeted approach. Too many cooks…

So drop *edited* a note. Ask him what you could and should be doing.

If it was my ‘place’ to offer a suggestion I’d tell you to save your money on marketing products and ebooks right now. Invest in a satellite hookup or high speed connection (ed. n.b.: my friend is currently surfing at 28.8) and make the effort to learn site creation as *edited* teaches it. You could easily spend $1,000 in marketing products or ebooks (the extensive ones anyway) or $1,000 on a satellite system which would serve you well to gain the knowledge required; as well as moving quicker online after the learning process.

Laura Childs

The ‘Ask Laura’ series is published solely to assist you with questions and resolutions to making your online business profitable. Names are never disclosed on this website unless approved or requested. Proof of all email communication between Laura Childs and her contacts can be provided upon request.

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Nasty Emails in Your Inbox – Ask Laura ( October 11/04)

Now there are a lot of people who have ‘issues’ with internet marketers. They think the all the gurus are scam artists and money grubbers. I’m not about to tell you that those types of gurus don’t exist (there are a number of them I keep at arm’s length), but I will promise you that Joe Vitale does not fit into that category.

In the last 4 years I have listened to, taken the advice of, worked on promotions, and co-written two books with Joe. I can completely vouch for his products, tools, methods of teaching, and writing. My current income and following is a testament to what I’ve learned from Joe and a handful of other marketers with integrity.

But, back to the web rage issue.

Repeatedly over the years I have received angry, frustrated, nasty, mean emails from complete strangers who aren’t even my customers! Usually I try to respond to them on a personal level – help them sort out where their frustration with their online business stems from and how to remedy the situation – as in the case below.

On other days I just can’t do it. I just can’t play the punching bag game and take the abuse. On those days I just delete the offending email, unsubscribe the person if they’re on my list – and yes, I’ve been known to send a nasty quip or two back – of course never quite as personal and cutting as the one I received.

Through the years in this business I’ve discovered one thing. Those nasty emails only come from the entrepreneur crowd. The ones struggling to make a living online and not having much success. People who buy my country living ebooks and products never send me nasty emails – as a matter of fact one customer sent me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers! Others have sent thank you cards, paypal donations, and even a few amazon gift certificates.

So what’s going on with the entrepreneur sect?

It’s frustration. It’s jealousy. It’s mis-directed anger.

Mad at themselves for their own inadequacies, poor buying decisions, time wasted chasing foolish dreams or creating businesses on sand. If you ever get into the internet marketing business publicly you’re going to get messages like the one below, some a lot meaner…

Nasty Email #1

Nothing I have tried has worked. I’m tired of being ripped-off. These so-called Internet Gurus are the only one getting rich, and on my hard earned money. I don’t trust the internet or the people who market in this bad neighborhood!

Greg

************

Greg:

Usually I don’t respond to this type of negativity, but something in your email (perhaps your frustration) cries out for help.

I am not an Internet Marketing guru so I feel I can respond to your message without you mistrusting me.

Just FYI, I have followed many of the gurus advice and most of it has worked. I find it odd that it hasn’t worked for you. I wonder what element of marketing you are missing and if there is something I can do to help.

True, there are a lot of scams out there (read email and make money!, etc.) but hard work and perseverance and an ethical business will earn you a sizeable income. If you’re looking for the easy way out, an unethical or immoral way to make money – you’re sunk.

Listen if I can make enough money to pay my bills selling an ebook on raising chickens, then anyone can make money online.

You’re just giving up too quickly. Don’t blame others, or bash marketers for it, that’s no way to success.

Life is a state of mind. Operate in a state of distrust, frustration, anxiety, anger and blame and that’s what you’ll get back. It’s not up to ‘them’ – it’s up to you.

Laura Childs

p.s. If you have a website and you want me to look at it and help you, I’ll do what I can to help you, but I ask that you first place yourself in a kinder mindset.

**********

Greg actually wrote back, which was very much appreciated:

Laura,

Thank you for writing back. I apologize to you for my rude comments. I won’t detail or justify my frustration and anger. I am very sorry.

Greg

************

This email sequence is a mild version of some of the emails I’ve seen from complete strangers over the years. Please just remember that each one of us, whether we’re in the public eye or not, you or I, we all have feelings. And no one, absolutely no one deserves to be attacked by another. Besides, sugar goes much further than salt.

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Dear Laura,

Good Morning! I’ve been reading through www.smartzville.com, and keep running into new ideas on new pages. And I’ve found out that I’ve made what may be a definate beginners mistake. Without doing enough research, and going on what I thought was a really good idea (since I loved it), I went out and plopped down $45 for a domain name and hosting account. Then I went back and started reading the sites of people like yourself, Brooks Owen (big in mail order), Jim Edwards, Michael Campbell, Joe Garris, and such and went “oh crap, bad move”.

So, after a day of “oh well”, I read some more, and I found a really good idea. And honestly this idea was so simple and so much of a zebra in a herd of milking cows that I just wondered why I didn’t think about it before. What’s the idea? Simple, find an already running site, grab it, and do a little remodling to make it better.

After doing more research on words and searches (like I should have done first), going on eBay was like going into a supermarket looking for just the right brand. Mind you, there are alot of junk sites, half baked ideas, and domains that you would never think of trying, on eBay. But, after two days and about four hours each day, I found two good brands. And what’s really sad, is I only paid about $48 for both, hosting and all. All set up, and one even comes with a product in hand.

The one with the product is …url removed…, and is not all the way transfered and up yet. It comes with a credit repair guide for $14.95 that you can download. The other site, …url removed…, is a site designed for downloadable scripts, ebooks, tools, and software. This site is up and running, but has no product yet. Both sites come with blog, newsletters, chat rooms, and multiple subdomains. Both sites can have individual sales letters within their own subdomains and the purchase button going to a Paypal account. Both sites can also have affiliate links and banner ads so I can get more income off the main pages.

Anyhow, I was thinking of putting some of your items on the second site, as well as content from Jim Edwards and some others. Eventually I will put my own ebooks (when they get written) up as well. I’m trying not to spend too much more since I’ve already gone $100 into this without one sale yet (and half of that was a misstep). And sadly, all I need is $900 a month to replace my current income. Do you know of any other good programs or affiliates to look into? Is there a way to research to find more? Are there any more costs that I need to be aware of?

Well, thanks for the help.

William

**********

Dear William:

By the way, it’s great to hear from you again!

My friend to be honest, I liked your first idea. It was original. I’m not sure where you’re going with it, but I envision it to be personable, interesting and has the potential to grow quite a following. Please don’t give up on it just yet – a lot of times a first inspiration (especially when you started with a love for it) is one of the best ideas ever!

And don’t bemoan spending $50 for start up. A few years ago we all had to pay $45 year just to register our domain names! And hosting used to be out of this world. I once worked for my hosting – exchanging hours in lieu of a hosting fee each month!

Now I can’t say much about your new credit site, because all I can see is a parked page, but I urge you to not buy any more sites off ebay without dropping me a line first. For instance some of those existing sites may be blacklisted, been used for spam in the past, and/or are cookie cutter sites. There are ways of checking first, before you bid.

A download site and a credit repair site may seem perfect at first blush, but it may be some work gaining the traffic and clientelle to make them lucrative. There’s just so much competition and only so many things to write about much less originality to set yourself apart.

For instance look at this http://www.digitalshelf .net/ and this http://www.lmphotonics .com/dlstore/index.php and this http://wizzworldwide .net/ and this http://eworldcenter .net/downloadstore and http://wubs-hub.tripod .com/ and http://www.marketandpromote .com

All copycats of the site you bought. There are many more. As I suspect, the same is true with credit repair.

I am not trying to burst your bubble, I’m just making sure you don’t buy more sites on ebay, and that you know that you must rewrite every bit of text on those new sites or you’ll never get any search engine traffic.

Google in particular does not like duplicate content or cookie cutter sites.

The only other expense I could alert you to is an autoresponder account for website subscriptions (once you start getting traffic you’ll want to start getting that traffic to subscribe so you can continue to keep them updated and promote products that will help them).

Drop me back a note if you want to talk more about any of this.

Laura

***************

Back and forth our conversation went. Eventually William decided (on his own) to rewrite the content on the cookie cutter sites he bought on ebay and continue on with his original idea – which was really quite good and I hope one day I can link to it to show you. He’s an original person with an original idea, just like you are, and that is where the potential to make money online lies!

William did write back again shortly after and said this:

“…and now the stupid news. The person who sold me the credit repair site still has yet to send me a copy of the site so that I can make changes. I cannot change the contact info nor the paypal info pages. I don’t even know what the downloadable product looks like due to I can’t seem to find it, but it’s for sale for $19.95. I should have seen this coming I guess. I’m sure this would make a good lesson for your readers. Thanks again, William”

Friends the big lesson of this story is be careful of what you buy on ebay websites. Although there are some smokin’ deals and some good sites available for just the right person to take to the next level, there are also some real duds, just selling a dream. Remember too that some of the auction sellers are as brilliant at copywriting as my good friend Joe Vitale! The only difference is that Joe serves up value with integrity to his customers…

Laura Childs
www.makemoneywithyourideas.com

******

Parts of this correspondence have been edited to protect the identity of the email author. I will not publish last names, urls or email addresses (unless given express permission by the owner). Each letter has been stored on my private files however to supply to the authorites if need be. I urge you to follow a similar practice whenever you you publish, sell, or reference another online.

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Dear Laura,

Well, to put it shortly, I’ve been busy. In the past few weeks I’ve managed to pick up 25 or so ebooks for $19.95 from ebay, and about 1000 templates for websites for $10. But, let’s not say that it may be wasted money, because the education that came with pouring over all the new information was well worth the cost.

I’ve managed to aquire a few master resell rights and get myself onto about five different marketer newsletters….This all reminds me of years ago when you would see ads for resale rights in income making magazines. It’s the same game, but with modern spins and new faces.

I’m guessing that with the resell rights I now have, I could get some money coming in. The trick is to write my own letters and make some projects that fit the formula that everyone else seems to follow. I don’t want to go with “marketing” as a niche though. It seems so filled up with more and more names that wouldn’t really mean much to the average person. So I need to find my own path, and make use of the research I’ve gained so far.

But, first things first. Like I said, I picked up some master resale rights to a few products. How do I change the “changeable” parts of the sales letters to brand them as mine? Second, I have at least two PDF files that I want to sell on ebay for now, but do I need to have them on a website of their own for people to gain access to them after the purchase? Which leads to the last question. Do I need a separate page for each downloadable item, or can they be grouped onto one page?

Oh, the ebooks I picked up range from…..to an HTML editor to a FTP freeware package. I originally started with a purchase of an ebook on how to resell webhosting. That led to another page where I found 25 more ebooks, and I just went on from there. And the more I read, the more I find, and the more time gets spent roaming the internet marketplace. So far I’ve seen sites from the very useful, to sites where it’s just one long sales pitch of blatent “buy my junk” sputtered out over and over on one long page. And does everyone call themselves great just because they managed to get a site up and running and a few sales?

Anyhow, thanks for reading.

Bill

*************

Hi Bill!

You’ve been having fun! Just don’t get too deep into all of it that you never actually accomplish anything. One thing, done poorly, is far better than one thing not done at all.

I’ve got server issues to deal with the next few days but I felt that I should at least send you a quick note.

Use your html editor that you bought to make changes to those sales letters.

Unless you’re selling everything as one big package you need separate download pages for each product.

I’m not much of an ebay seller so I can’t comment on what works there and why…alot of the stuff on ebay has already saturated the market, especially the marketing and website management stuff (you’re right).

I agree. It’s the same game – direct marketing, only online. There’s a number of ways it’s done – draw the customer in with a high priced item and then sell them low priced stuff later vs. draw them in with a low priced item then upsell them with the big tickets.

If you’re just struggling over the download issue and you’re only going to be selling on ebay – you can email your buyers the files at a later date – just say so in your auction (product will be delivered within 24 hours of auction close by email, if you haven’t received your product within 24 hours please contact me at you@youremail.com).

The biggest headache of being in the marketing niche isn’t so much making a name for yourself as it is living up to that name. You’re a public figure and people expect greatness from you. They want you to answer all their questions, they are often abusive (you wouldn’t believe the nasty stuff people have sent me!), and they’ll even send you emails saying things like “what are you working on now? I want to know what direction to go into so that I can be one step ahead of you.” What the heck is that? And, they watch your sites (once they know what they are) like a hawk and often duplicate your market. I’ve learned to start making my new sites private. Anyway, apart from being a name among many there are a pile of reasons why I wouldn’t wish this gig on most people.

On the other hand, “And does everyone call themselves great just because they managed to get a site up and running and a few sales?” They have to call themselves great – it’s part of the story that the consumer buys into. Just a few sales? You’d be surprised how much money is made online from crappy sites. It even boggles my mind.

Anyway, I’m knee-deep in code and config errors on 6 different sites (one of the reasons you don’t want to host your sites with a fly-by-night hosting company – because they don’t know the first thing about customer service, or for that matter how to fix server issues), so I’d better run.

Laura Childs
www.makemoneywithyourideas.com

********

Some parts of this letter have been edited out to protect the integrity of ideas from the email author. And although I will not post first and last names (unless given express permission) of my email writers, I can prove the validity of each letter written including email addresses, dates, and headers to the authorites if need be. I suggest that everything you publish online, sell online, or reference online, have a similar back up system in place.

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